Hey. So this book/tutorial/workshop was originally inspired by a blog post by nina on a personal vision for levelling up tech skills. Then twitter @flexlibris asked me if I wanted to, um, actually flesh out a proper workshop. And then while I was tweeting about the resources I was going to be referring to, @ruthtillman asked me if I wanted to collaborate on actually putting together a proper book/tutorial. And I did!
Thus, we have the "Libtech Level Up" project.
Following the structure laid out in the original post, there will be four modules:
- Introduction to *nix and the CLI
- Working with the CLI and git basics.
- Using the CLI and git together.
- Doing a collaborative project with a group.
The materials for each module/unit/whatever will be in the respective directories.
One of the key points for doing this, in my opinion, is that each of these modules should be done on different days with enough time for assigned practice and such between sessions. If you only have a morning or day, I'd recommend doing just one or two modules (as best befits your audience) rather than trying to cram too much. I really do think 'less is more' when it comes to acquiring practical skills in a finite amount of time.
For instructors, I think the slow-pace and abundance of time is beneficial for allowing you to really take time to deal with the many little problems that arise when you teach a computer type class but everyone is using their own machine. The slow-pace is intended to give you time to actually explain how you are troubleshooting problems, not to just the individual with the problem, but the group as a whole. As people with some experience in tech, we all know just how much time we spend googling errors and reading StackEdit forum threads. This is also a part of the general tech culture that I think it is important to teach.