[Fedora-livecd-list] one-livecd-per-child?

[Jane Dogalt]

Here is an idea I had which may be similar to other projects
(lfs,olpc), but interests me as it relates specifically to
fedora-livecds.

Imagine a spin/strain/variant of a fedora livecd, which had the
following properties-

###
a) boots up into firefox displaying a "howto program computers" page.

b) this howto presents a simple step by step procedure for creating a
simple text file with a favorite phrase in it (e.g. 'hello world'). 
Note
these steps include alt-tab or desktop-switching to-and-fro the howto
web browser page.

c) the howto then describes the steps (ideally one-button simple) to
create and test(virtual boot) and burn a new livecd which only differs
from the current one by displaying a splash screen with monster
letters, displaying the phrase created in the text file from (b), until
the user hits any key, at which point the splash screen disappears, and
things are otherwise normal (i.e. identical to the original livecd
environment)
###

basically what I am getting at is how to go about educating
children(/adults) about programming.  Clearly the method I and others
went through (using logo on an atari, etc...) is not going to be the
way of teaching programming in the future.

What I like about the above self-reproducing-but-modified livecd
scenario, is that it is a very idealized complete system.  I.e. "the
program" are these bits on the cd.  As the programmer, you make a new
cd/program with a slight difference, and now the behavior is different
(big hello world splash screen).

>From there, I would add longer tutorials, starting with a hello world c
program (both as terminal under gnome-terminal, and graphical with some
educationally simple gui library).  And then some simple html web page
programming.

I imagine of course that this sort of thing may have already been
discussed WRT OLPC.  I've read a bit on LWN and slashdot, but haven't
really looked at it's development.  But it seems like they are
targeting that type of education with the whole view source thing.  I
wonder, will the firmware on OLPC be 'educationally reflashable' like
so?  Maybe it would be ok, if there was an effectively irreplacable
boot option to restore the original firmware.

anything missing or wrong with this picture?

(of course I eventually want a full local copy of the
wiki-university-graduate-computer-engineering-video-lecture-series
included on the live-blu-ray as well...)

-dmc/jdog



 
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