Middle School Ubuntu Lesson Plans

**Prospero2006** · June 5th, 2008

Hello All,

My name is Josh Beck and I'm a technology teacher in San Antonio, Texas.
I teach with a magnet technology school called iMAK. (Interactive Media Applications at Krueger.) http://www.neisd.net/imak

I've been working extensively with Ubuntu in the classroom for 2 years now. This year, the 150 seventh grade students on my team used Ubuntu in my class for everything. It was awesome, and the baseline curriculum I have in place is working very well for this generalized teenage group.
http://www.neisd.net/imak/computerlabpage

This year I petitioned, and subsequently got the school board to approve, an Advanced Ubuntu Programming class. The strands that I have to cover pretty much match what you would expect from a high school computer science curriculum. This class will consist of 7th and 8th grade students who have excellent grades and have demonstrated aptitude above and beyond their peers with technology. This will be a motivated, smart group.

I'm very good at developing technology curriculum as I have been doing it for years, but collaboration always yields superior results. So, I am asking the community for some advice/help.

Over the summer I am going to develop a 36-week course that will begin with basic Ubuntu administration. (I have a class set of laptops that I can give the kids full admin privileges on.) From there, I'm probably going to move into bash scripting and then python. Then probably LAMP setup and dynamic web page development through the used of Linux Apache MySQL and PHP. --It's totally up for grabs at this point.

I'd like input. Like I said, I have to develop a 36 week course and I'm looking for people who are interested in collaborating with me on developing concise, great lesson plans that will turn this group of 20 kids into power users. Any ideas/contributions are welcome!

My goal is to eventually make this class accessible online so that all of the content can be accessed at any time. It's a big project, but one that is worth the effort and should be fun.

The field is wide open. I can use any applications I want and I can teach any type of subject matter I want. Anyone who wants to contribute ideas is welcome, and I'll be sure to give you credit along with the final publications.

How you would teach a tech-savvy group of 13-14 year olds if you had a 90 Ubuntu computers at your disposal?

Thank You!

**tentwelveeight** · June 5th, 2008

Hi Josh,

My name is Joe and I'm also a teacher. I teach K-8 technology in San Diego and have been trying to learn Ubuntu and Linux better for about 2 years now. I use LTSP mostly so I'm not going to follow you real well in areas outside of the desktop/LTSP realm, but I'd love to help you out in any way I can. I've got a master's degree in Educational Technology so I've got some background in course design principles and pedagogical and androgogical theory. I've also taught middle school previously (6th grade math and science). I'm already kind of booked this summer with some online networking courses and trying to teach myself python, but I'd love to collaborate on your project as much as possible. At this point I can only commit to reading every lesson you send me and providing feedback, as far as real time collaboration it is going to be difficult time wise for me. At least I can serve as another pair of eyes though, and since a lot of what you'll be doing is over my head I can provide some feedback from the learner's perspective. What do you say?

BTW, I teach at an International Baccalaureate school and have spoken with some other IB teachers about pushing Linux and Open Source Apps within the IB program (being international and all it only seemed right). If your project turns out as good as I think it will, maybe we can work together next summer to port it over for the Middle Years Program (or even the Diploma Program) for all the International Baccalaureate schools in the world! How sweet would it be to have kids all over the globe learning ubuntu on this kind of level? Just a thought. Cheers! -joe

**Prospero2006** · June 5th, 2008

Hey there Joe,

That sounds about right. If you review my stuff, and better yet, implement some of it in your own classes, that would be great. If you have a gmail account, I'm thinking google apps shared documents is going to be the best way to put initial drafts online.

Eventually I'd like to have these things for every lesson:
-An office document that explains the objective and activity.
-A webpage that also lays out objectives and activities.
-A screencast that demonstrates the same.
(Take a look at my http://linuxclassroom.com content.)
Some lessons will not translate to a screencast as well as others. So, I think I'm going to incorporate that third element as much as possible, but not every time.

Here's a question: What kind of a format should the plans take?
I want this stuff to be readable and accessible to a larger audience
as well. So, I'm thinking a very straight-forward, down to business model with as few distractions as possible is going to be best.

A couple of questions for you:
1.) Do you use google apps?
2.) Do you have any Linux machines in your school yet?
-If not, I would suggest getting a few into the mix as soon as
possible. The sooner you start road testing applications and
compatibility on your network, the less hassle a big deployment
will be later on.

Anyway, thanks!

**tentwelveeight** · June 5th, 2008

Hi Josh, glad I can help out. I use Google Docs extensively, so no worries. In fact we use Google Apps here for both our staff and students. I also have implemented a fair amount of linux boxes here (around 100 or so I'd say) but they are all in LTSP setups and not connected to any central server or anything (it's political) so I'm totally unfamiliar with that stuff. Here's my blog if you want to see what I've been doing. It shouldn't be a problem to implement the lessons on a small scale next year within my own class, but a large scale deployment will likely be impossible simply because we lack the computing power to do so. Most of our machines are Pentium 3 or below which is why I run them in LTSP. We do have some money for a mobile lab in the Middle School though, so maybe that could work. We'll keep in touch on it.

If we use Google Docs for the objective and activity and then publish it then that would take care of the web page as well as the document right? As far as the screencast that seems great, I've used Adobe Captivate before but I'd love to try an opensource linux screencasting program too and have several resources on the topic if not a lot of experience.

All of the above sounds good to me.

As far as the format I'm guessing you mean teacher driven versus learner driven? This is a very good and important question to ask because it will definitely affect how the lessons are structured. From my experience if there is little to no support for a lesson then people will give up, even if they are highly motivated. Therefore I would recommend that we at least provide teacher instructions for each lesson and then the learner can reference them if there is no teacher present.

This brings up another idea I had, which is the use of Google Presentations. This is a very versatile tool now that it includes the embedding of videos (so we could embed the screencasts into certain slides) and it opens up the realm of distance learning since users can log in with a google account to a presentation and type questions or comments in to the side of the presentation. Coupling this with a rudimentary conference call program (like skypecasting) means that students could literally learn the lessons online from a teacher in another country.

We'll also want to think about assessment, both in terms of deliverables (learner produced results) as well as concepts. You might think about setting up a simple surveymonkey multiple choice quiz after each activity to check for understanding of concepts. The deliverables should speak for themselves.

Therefore, what I'm envisioning right now is a centralized website divided into 36 different modules (one for each week) or more or less if it works better. Each module page describes the objective for the module and embeds or includes links to five things:

The published google doc activity page with written step by step instructions
The screencasts that demonstrate the activity
The lesson plan for teachers including materials needed, new vocabulary, faq, etc.
The published google presentation with embedded screencasts for distance learning
The surveymonkey concepts quiz at the end.

How does that vibe with your objectives for the course? -joe

**Prospero2006** · June 6th, 2008

That's good stuff.

-I'm not familiar with the Google presentation stuff, but I'm very big on Google services. I'll read up. --I like it.

-I'm also not familiar with survey monkey. We use Moodle on our campus. Are you familiar with it? If not I highly recommend you get it set up.
It's a really great educational CMS.

I'll look at the monkey.

-36 modules: The toughest part about structuring a course like this is building in flexibility. I spend a lot of time during the year
looking at what the class didn't get and building lessons that reteach concepts that they seem to be struggling with.
So, building in flexibility is a big consideration. I'm thinking of shooting for something that would take up maybe 26 weeks at first.
Then, the ability to go back and reteach will be there. Also, students always need more time on stuff than I think they need to finish a project.
I extend class deadlines all the time because the kids need more time.

Anyway, I'll probably start hashing out the first few lessons as I have time this weekend. (I just started my summer break! Woot!)

My gtalk contact is josh.beck2006(AT)gmail.com <-- Trying to throw off spam bots.

Throw me a line

**PinkFloyd102489** · June 6th, 2008

My name's Brandon.

Im 18 but didnt have any type of "computer science" instruction in high school other than "here's how to point the mouse" type stuff. I had to learn everything about Linux and Ubuntu on my own. Tooting my own horn, Id have to say that I know a great deal, as does my fellow cohort who got me into Linux. He's 18 also.

If you need anything like help, ideas, etc, just ask. I'll do what I can. Ive had 3 years experience with Ubuntu and there'll be many, many more.

**girijesh** · July 30th, 2008

Originally Posted by tentwelveeight

Hi Josh,

My name is Joe and I'm also a teacher. I teach K-8 technology in San Diego and have been trying to learn Ubuntu and Linux better for about 2 years now. I use LTSP mostly so I'm not going to follow you real well in areas outside of the desktop/LTSP realm, but I'd love to help you out in any way I can. I've got a master's degree in Educational Technology so I've got some background in course design principles and pedagogical and androgogical theory. I've also taught middle school previously (6th grade math and science). I'm already kind of booked this summer with some online networking courses and trying to teach myself python, but I'd love to collaborate on your project as much as possible. At this point I can only commit to reading every lesson you send me and providing feedback, as far as real time collaboration it is going to be difficult time wise for me. At least I can serve as another pair of eyes though, and since a lot of what you'll be doing is over my head I can provide some feedback from the learner's perspective. What do you say?

BTW, I teach at an International Baccalaureate school and have spoken with some other IB teachers about pushing Linux and Open Source Apps within the IB program (being international and all it only seemed right). If your project turns out as good as I think it will, maybe we can work together next summer to port it over for the Middle Years Program (or even the Diploma Program) for all the International Baccalaureate schools in the world! How sweet would it be to have kids all over the globe learning ubuntu on this kind of level? Just a thought. Cheers! -joe

We have taken a very small initiative using P3 computers without internet connectivity. Can u guide me what else can be included in curriculum for kids (first to eighth standard). We have included gcompris, childsplay, celestia, tuxpaint, openoffice.

Thanks. Pls. visit http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...19#post5486519
for details.