[CentOS] Centos for Interested Children

[David Beveridge]

I have been considering doing a basic intro to computing course along
these lines aimed at 8-12yo kids.
The school where my kids go have XO machines that run Sugar Desktop
for the little kids and gnome for the older kids.
We just upgraded all the XO machines to something based on Fedora18. (from 17)

That school has a lot of Window PCs and tablets, but the XOs outnumber the PCs.
A Typical class will have 20-25 XO (1 per child) and maybe 5 PC and 5 tablet.
The computers are really there as a tool to teach them reading, maths,
science etc not really for them to learn about computing.

I was hoping to introduce them to some of the fundamentals of
computing and let them make up their own minds.

I don't think you can just jump into CentOS or any other operating
system and truly understand how it works without some background.

I started to write down some topics I might teach at a lunchtime computer club.
The idea is to give a basic introduction, so they have heard of the
terms and can go look up more things in Wikipedia or Google.

Of course I would use the Linux based XO laptops for any practical
hands on stuff.

COMPUTER BASICS AND INTRO TO HARDWARE
Input, Store/Process, Output
Binary, Hexadecimal, ASCII, UCS2, GB2312, UTF8
CPU, Intel, AMD, ARM
Memory, RAM, ROM, Flash
Hard Disk, SSD, SATA, SAS
Removable Media, USB, SDCARD
Power Supplies, UPS


INTERNETWORKING
Ethernet, Packets
Network layers - Physical, Link, Network, Session, Presentation, Application
WiFi, PPP, DSL (Link)
TCP/IP, DHCP, NAT (Network) [mention IPv4 & IPv6]
Domains and DNS, Email
HTTP, FTP, SSH, SIP (Session)
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Linux (Presentation, Application)


OPERATING SYSTEMS
Microsoft Windows & Metro
Apple OSX & IOS
Google Android
Linux, Fedora/RHEL/CentOS, Ubuntu/Debian, Mint,
FreeBSD, OpenBSD


LICENSING AND OTHER LEGAL STUFF
GNU, Free, OpenSource
Shareware
Proprietary software (EULA) - Payware
Software patents


PROGRAMMING FUNDAMENTALS
Hello World
Assignment, Operators
Flow Control
Looping
Events
Classes

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE TYPES
Assembler
Compiled
Interpreted
Template
4GL


DATABASES
Row, Column, Key
Create, Update, Retrieve, Delete
Relationships
SQL


AUDIO VISUAL DATA FORMATS
A: mp3, ac3
V: jpeg, png, gif, svg
S: sub
AV: mpeg, divx, xvid, mp4, avi
AVS: mkv


WHAT ARE APPLICATIONS AND WHAT DO THEY DO
Word Processing
Spreadsheet
Presentation
Photo Editing
Accounting


OTHER IDEAS
Gibibytes vs Gigabytes
OpenGL vs DirectX


THE NEXT YEAR
Arduino Projects


If anyone see's any gaping holes please point them out.