FLOSS Program Layout
FLOSS Desktops Camp at Siena
- Class size: 12 students (Middle School - High School age)
- 1 Teacher, 6 Mentors
- One week, from 9 A.M. - 1 P.M.
Preparation
- Tested all of the computers and monitors
- Took inventory of computers, hard drives, RAM, motherboards, video cards, disk drives, power cables, mice, keyboards, and video cables
- Made a list of sabotages for each computer
- Burned disks for DBAN and Ubuntu installation
Day 1
The students started out with a pre-assessment and once they were finished, moved on to the MAKE worksheets. Students worked MAKE 1 through MAKE 3 and were then given the computers. Working in groups of three, with one mentor per group, each student followed the MAKE 4 page to troubleshoot what was preventing their computers from running. After the computers were completely working, students moved on to MAKE 5 to explore the computer's BIOs and play with boot order. Once the boot order was set, students could then load up Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) CDs into their computers to wipe the hard drives, following the instructions on MAKE 6. The students left the computers to wipe the hard drives overnight, since the process takes a while.
Day 2
When the students came in, they removed the DBAN disks and restarted their computers. They were then given the Ubuntu installation disk and booted the computer to the disk to install the Ubuntu Operating System. Students completed MAKE 8 while installing the OS. After Ubuntu was installed, students followed MAKEs 9 to 11, exploring Linux and open source software. At the end of class, students were allowed to look for more applications that could be used with Ubuntu.