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

[Andy Gospodarek]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 08:40:04AM -0800, Jane Dogalt wrote:
> 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
> 

I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development.  The students
could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone.  This would
also allow the kids to take the CD's home and use them on their parent's
computers without having to install linux -- just reboot them with the
liveCD when you want to do school work and take it out and reboot again
when you are done.