[Adaptive]

I work at a girls middle school and taught a class called "technology literacy" last year to 6th graders.

I covered what I felt were basics:

* Basic communications tools (email)

* Word processing/Spreadsheets/Presentation software via g suite

* Basic command line usage including bash basics, paths, file creation and edition, sshing

* Basic HTML and "how the internet works" (also with CLI editing of html files in user directories)

* touch typing (typingclub.com)

These girls as seventh graders are coding in Python and nailing it.

[Adaptive]

I should also mention that their "downtime" activity was CLI text adventures. I recommend using these to teach basic "verb object" CLI usage.

[poormansevo]

This sounds impressive. I too would be interested in seeing the teaching materials you are using for your curriculum. As a father of two girls, aged two and five, I enjoy reading about girls getting exposed early to programming. I plan to start introducing my oldest soon once she progresses her reading skills more.

[stevenjohns]

If you'd be willing to publish it, the study guide/course outline/lesson plans for this would be really interesting -- especially as its getting results.

[pnloyd]

Pretty impressive, don't know if I'd consider ssh a basic computer skills though.. the rest seems rather practical.

[Adaptive]

in so far as ssh is just one of dozens of commands that the girls learn on the command line, it's perhaps not.

in so far as it makes them realize that computers are discrete entities that are networked and that this is what the internet actually IS... it's priceless.

The first time we connected to a remote machine in a different state it BLEW THEIR MINDS. One of them asked if it was EVEN LEGAL :)

It's a single command, yes, but it's also the pivot point for a whole unit on remote access, networking, IP addresses, etc.

So consider SSH shorthand for that whole subject.

[mixmastamyk]

Cool, it blew my mind the first time I telneted to the east coast or used CUSeeMe to Australia. Glad to see kids can still be impressed.

[Waterluvian]

I think if ssh is really just "time with a command line" then it's a super valuable exercise. You can remember none of it and still go away with the lesson that the CSI looking thing really ain't that complicated.

[mmjaa]

I've done something similar, but with the boys in my kids' circle, who have all grown up with playstray-tions and whatnot, only we are using retro computers that don't have internet or amazing games or heavy tooling, but rather just Amstrad or Commodore or Spectrum or Oric Basic, a bit of modern disk tech (48k RAM with 8Gigabytes of storage) and some happy game-playing, or so, before getting stuck into what programming is, how different computers work in different ways to accomplish similar things, and so on.

Kind of a hacker experience, really.

(A few have moved on to Linux...)