Overview
Winter of 2014 I am teaching a course: Open Source Tools. Yep, we will explore, work with, and try out OS tools. I'm still creating the course, but it is going to be largely project-oriented and centered around working with OS tools.
Part of working with OS is enculturation, getting used to the culture, practices, and expectations of working with OS software. While some of my students are familiar with OS, most of them only know that OS exists or have very, very limited experience working with OS. Personally, my experience with OS is limited as well. I have worked with a number of tools, read quite a bit, follow OS developers online, and learn what I can, but I am more a user than a creator. So the course is a way for me to learn and work with something I care about while helping out students, too.
Increasing OS Platform Awareness
I have found that while students may be aware of OS tools, like Apache Open Office, they are rarely aware of alternative OS operating systems like Linux and it's many offspring. So, to stir things up a bit, I decided to include working in an OS operating system as part of the initial orientation. Few things compare to having your platform shifted on you. Visually and physically, you are forced to see how things operate differently. Again, this is more to help users/students see that there are ways outside of iOS, Android, Windows, and Chrome to organize and present working environments.
The course will not require students to download CentOS to their own computers. Few have extra computers, and I doubt that many students have the drive or desire to focus their learning curve on having multiple OS's on their computer. Our focus is on using OS tools, so providing a new OS operating system will be done virtually. Working with University Computing Services at WOU, they have been able to set up virtual desktops for my students. This requires using terminal server, so the speed won't be top notch. Also, the virtualized CentOS won't work with Macs for some reason. These are shortcomings, and I have several workarounds. However, since the main goal is simply to test drive CentOS and live/work briefly in a new operating system, I think these shortcomings are viable.
Which OS Operating System?
Note: When looking at different OS operating systems, we had to keep in mind a variety of different licensing and virtualization issues--stuff I rarely deal with but that has an impact on what software can be run where, how many desktops we can send up, and so forth. Fortunately, the UCS folks let me know what is or is not viable. My response is usually: let's do what's easiest and generates the learning experience for the students.
Initially, I wanted to use Ubuntu because of the interface--honestly, I feel it blends the best of Mac and PC. This meant there would be less shock to my users. However, the EFF's critique of Ubuntu's tracking user data (I'm not sure if that has been corrected or not) pushed me away. An awesome member of the WOU UCS team, Dave M., suggested CentOS. And that's what we're rolling out.
So now, as we move close to the first week of classes, I'm testing it out. And I'm discovering bugs.
Here's one of those bugs:
The screen looks fragged--it happened when I enlarged or shrunk windows. It's amazing how small things pop up here and there. The other short-term challenge I have is getting up to speed on downloading Linux-based software to Linux-based systems, like CentOS. Yeah.
I'm excited about this, and I feel stoked that I can teach this course, but I'm also feeling a bit overwhelmed. Having said that, this is just too cool to not work hard and keep learning.