On Monday 02 June 2003 06:56, Togan Muftuoglu wrote:
* Anders Johansson; <andjoh@rydsbo.net> on 02 Jun, 2003 wrote:
from or to programs.
No it isn't. It is completely useless knowledge for, say, the company secretary. In fact, it is worse than useless, since it's just distracting from his/her real work.
There are users for whom that type of knowledge would be useful. And then there are most users, for whom it is not.
Correct, when conducting any training there are two types of information
a) Need to know b) Nice to know
The problem with a "need to know" approach means that you must have a very clear idea of who your target audience before your class starts. Granted if you were providing "in-house" training to all of the secretaries it would be pretty clear. Also if you provide specific classes like KDE, kernel internals, and so forth then it is also pretty easy to make that determination. However, if you provide a course on "Linux Administration" then what a user "needs" to know is not easily determined. A couple of years ago, I took the level II Solaris admin from Sun. In it, we were taught how to configure serial terminals. Not one single person in the class wanted to know about it. However, it was important to others and that's why they continued to include it in the course.
Need to know information is essential to get the job done while nice to know is just for the interested person. Especially in an entry level training the educator must carefully select the need to know information to be presented to the participants. This will make sure that success is guaranteed and speed of learning is fast. Everybody wants to be successful when they take a class and making sure they are achieving their goal should be the major concern of the program designer.
Okay, how does the instructor make that determination? Assume the course is called simply "Intro to Linux" or even "Advanced Linux" , just what is "essential to get the job done"? For some it's being able to configure new hardware devices. For others its writing shell script to perform automated data import. To get **my** job done, I need to know about scripting, how process interact, how to interpret what is in /proc, and so on. The guy in the office next to me needs to know about routing, TCP/IP stacks and various network protocols. So, which should one teach in a Linux class? You also have to look at it from a business. You could create 20 different course offers, some that only address hardware issues, others that address networking and so forth. However, will you have enough students and do you have enough space and instructors?
Knowing a thing or two about the /ever present/ standard text processor tools is useful too, if only to give them a feel for the power of these tools for future uses.
For most regular users there are not now, nor will there ever be a time when sed, awk of vi is useful. This is why companies have admins.
It is extremely detrimental to the "linux on the desktop" movement to include this type of material in "luser" classes. It scares people away.
Well said unfortunately not many people realize this.
Again, I must disagree with this. If someone is going to the trouble to learn something, then they are not going to be scared away. In my experience, they are going to rely on the people providing the course to make some decisions about what is relevant and what not. Granted you may end up with cases like my serial terminal example, but I really don't see a problem with people being scared away. Regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups, mailing lists or forums are subject to reposting.