Demystifying Unix Workshop
At the first WIC meeting in 2004, a lot of people were concerned about
their lack of skills with Unix like operating systems. Running an
informal student-directed course introducing Unix (slightly beyond
lab0 level) sounds like a good idea.
The idea is that the facilitators(s) suggest some things that can be
done in Unix, and demonstrate them. Various people run demos of
things they think is cool (this is because a lot of people said 'we
don't know what questions to ask cos we don't know anything yet').
This would be done in a lab environment where the students can see
what the facilitator is doing, and can replicate it in their own
environment if they like. We can use VNC viewing thing for
this purpose.
An idea is, ask SS for a temporary standard account, then through
the course of the workshop make it more and more useful.
After the demos, we have an open question time. The students can
ask how to do $foo, and the facilitator shows them how to, they
can then replicate it on their box as usual.
The facilitator publishes a log of all her actions, so students
can look it up for future reference.
Some ideas for demos:
BASIC
- working from home (scp, winscp, cygwin, putty)
- chwm
- different terminals
- setting path
- setting prompt
- stulocal
- conventions
- browsers
- mail clients
- acc
- book
- IRC/mail lists/website/forum
- dot files
- Kill and friends
ADVANCED
- screen
- compiling things
- shell scripting
- shells (chsh)
- finger
- more dot files
- xsession
- Unix file system structure { /usr /bin /local /home .. special dirs.. root}
If you have any more ideas, please email wic@cse.
Goals:
- Familiarity with systems -> more effective work
- Familiarity with language of system -> better communication
- Being able to talk on the same level as 'the guys'
- Understanding the system will hopefully make it less scary
Assessment:
- Are the participants confident in what they learnt
- Can participants do what they learnt on their own
- Can participants explain what they learnt to someone who wasn't there
- Are participants eager to learn more
Evaluation:
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Women In Computing