[SGVLUG] PCC (Pasadena City College) class in Linux

[dmoore]

Are you interested in linux ed? I teach a linux class at Santa Monica 
College (CS41). I'm doing it now for the 3rd time this fall. It took me 
a few years to convince them to offer such linux but we've now got it in 
the curriculum. I'm half-time and the only instructor there who knows 
linux, the other faculty seem (disappointingly) unmotivated to learn 
about it. Not that it doesn't take a certain significant commitment to 
do so, so I don't judge at all.

Every semester it's a question mark whether enough students will sign up 
to avoid canceling classes offered in the published catalog, but so far 
so good CS41 gets about 20 or 25 at the beginning of the semester (they 
cancel below 18) then it dwindles some but mostly as you know there's an 
undercurrent of interest in the computing/IT community and it's 
sustaining this class. I teach a networking class too (CS70) and base it 
totally on linux. Plus, we/they won some grant money from NASA to put 
together new curriculum about, among other things, network security and 
implementing it is my baby. I got some budget for the first time and we 
will introduce 3 new classes next year, 2 being mine (CS78 CS75) and 
being linux-based. We bought a big-memory server (from Clay Claiborne, 
Cosmos Engineering) and I'm going to use VMware to build some virtual 
networks out of virtual PCs in that memory, then interact them (VPNs, 
perimeter networks, subnets, low electric bills). I'm learning from it 
and it's fun.

Linux ed in socal is patchy. Some schools have a good course or two, 
it's really personnel driven-- whether they have the person motivated 
and knowledgeable to teach it. Most don't. Those that do are islands, 
and sometimes the linux instructor leaves and that's the end of their 
curriculum. It's not uniform or consistent. Santa Monica College, apart 
from me happening to be there, is otherwise a Windows place 
thru-and-thru. Dan Kegel maintains some links about linux ed at his 
lalugs.org website.


David Lawyer wrote:
> I once took a Linux class at PCC which didn't have many students and
> was not given again.  It was called "Unix Administration".  I was at
> the PCC bookstore the other day and noticed they have again offered a
> Linux class.  It uses the textbook: Introduction to Unix and Linux.
> The textbook only covers the command line and doesn't have anything
> about email.  I doubt if it has much about networks.  It has a lot of
> step-by-step exercises where it gives you a sequence of commands to
> type so you can see what happens.  Thus it's more elementary than the
> class previously offered.  It's aimed at people that know almost
> nothing about Linux (or computers ??) and comes with a RedHat CD so
> you can install Linux (probably an old version of it) on your PC.
>
> So if someone shows up at SGVLUG who knows almost nothing about Linux
> or commands like cd, ls, etc.  Then this class would teach them the
> basics of the command line interface.  I looked up "chroot" and
> "emacs"in the index and found nothing.  But I did find a lot about the
> vi editor.  Sorry but I didn't have time to check it out more.  The
> class has already started and I don't know if it will be offered
> again.
>
> 			David Lawyer
>
>
>