Putting together a computer and net training class

[Malice]

Hey all...I am just looking for ideas.

I am going to put together a small class for foster and adoption parents.
This to educate them on the pc as it pertains to the net.
Also, with some of my security training and the like.

I am looking for all the ideas you guys think I should teach them

 

[jaguarr]

What's the overall objective of the course, Malice? Hard to give you ideas when we're not sure what you're setting out to accomplish with these folks.

jag

 

[Malice]

What's the overall objective of the course, Malice? Hard to give you ideas when we're not sure what you're setting out to accomplish with these folks.

jag

Well, I figured the below.
People who are adopting and fostering children (especially children old enough to surf the net) might not know too much about computers.

I wanted to give them something of the below:
Basic Knowledge
1) Give them a very basic history of the net (its nice to know where it came from)
2) Give them a technical (and I dont mean really technical) view of DNS and IP addresses...understanding them a little.
3) Start to teach them what to look for, being simply aware of things they see.

Security
4) Viruses
5) Adware and Malware and Spyware
6) Securing your PC
7) Encrypting Data
8) Securing your Wireless Connection

Oversite
9) Watching what websites are visited
10) Logging keystrokes

Basically, I want to teach them how to operate their internet connection securely and how they can watch what the children access and what to do about it.

That give you some basic info?

 

[Malice]

Here is what I have written so far (please note, this is an outline so there is some details that I will go into, may not be listed)

Spaulding For Children

Computer Education Lesson 1 - History

Basic History of the Internet
- Started as ARPANET as a Military communications network. It was SOMEWHAT designed to run when different nodes are non-functioning (bombed and gone) that the system could communication around the missing nodes.
- ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork)
- Plans were conceived in the early 1960’s and came into reality in 1969
- 1983, the military pulled out to ARPANET and formed MilNet, thus leaving the ARPANET network no longer being a Military project (ownership was handed over to educational and commercial institutions)
- 1990s was becoming a largely International effort with mostly commercial and educational hosts, no longer testing and military.

Growth of the Internet
SOURCE - http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/ops/ds/host-count-history.php
- 1969 – 4 hosts online (when the network first was created)
- 1975 – 57 hosts online
- 1981 – 213 hosts online
- 1985 – 1,961 hosts online
- 1990 – 313,000 hosts online
- 1995 - 6,642,000 hosts online
- 2000 - 93,047,785 hosts online
- 2005 - 353,284,187 hosts online
- 2007 - 489,774,269 hosts online

General Technology History
INTERESTING SOURCE - http://www.computerhope.com/history
- 1940’s – Mainframes, are huge room-sized computers that used vacuum tubes.
- 1960’s – Minicomputers, started using transistors and first generation of integrated circuits
- 1980’s – Microcomputers, used integrated circuits.

Computer Education Lesson 2 – How the Internet Works

TCP\IP – Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
- All machines hooked on the network (Internet) get an address in the format of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx is a number from 1 to 256)
- This formatting grants approximately 4 billion possible addresses
- Internet Protocol, Version 6 (slowly being adopted) – approximately 4 Trillion addresses
- Each computer is given an address, and sent to its gateway router, where its then routed again to another, and so on, till it gets to the destination IP address

DNS – Domain Name Service
- DNS serves basically as a “phone book” to make working in the Internet easier than trying to remember IP addresses of Internet hosts
- EXAMPLE – yahoo.com is easier to remember than 66.94.234.13
- First Top-Level Domains - .org, .net, .com, .gov, .arpa, .mil
- Second Level Domains – yahoo.com, whitehouse.gov, navy.mil
- Hostname Domains – www.yahoo.com, www.whitehouse.gov, www.navy.mil

FTP – File Transfer Protocol
- Used to transfer data from one host to another
- EXAMPLE – ftp://ftp.example.com

HTTP – HyperText Transfer Protocol
- The first version of what we see today as “the web”
- http://www.yahoo.com

Email – Not a protocol
- Email does not really have a protocol associated to it like ftp or http.
- Formatting of email is always username@domain
- Username = This is basically an “account” or a specific user
- @ = This differentiates the text between a user, and the domain its associated to
- Domain = This is where the username is housed, for instance, [email protected], this means the user john, at the mail system, yahoo.com

 

[November Rain]

maybe you should attend one of these courses yourself or read some online information for students

and then re-shape it depending on what you believe your general entry background knowledge of your average course goer will be.

probably break it up into smaller chunks and there ya go...

 

[Malice]

maybe you should attend one of these courses yourself or read some online information for students

and then re-shape it depending on what you believe your general entry background knowledge of your average course goer will be.

probably break it up into smaller chunks and there ya go...

I have taught classes like this before, just been years is all...
Just wanted to see what you guys would see as being important is all.
A second and third point of view is ALWAYS good.

 

[jaguarr]

The best advice I can give you, Malice, is to not get overly technical. Keep everything at a higher level and in laymen's terms so that they get the idea conceptually. They don't necessarily have to learn all the terminology and protocols and such right out of the gate; that might be too overwhelming and intimidating and would probably make good subject matter for a "Level II" class rather than an intro class.

jag

 

[Malice]

The best advice I can give you, Malice, is to not get overly technical. Keep everything at a higher level and in laymen's terms so that they get the idea conceptually. They don't necessarily have to learn all the terminology and protocols and such right out of the gate; that might be too overwhelming and intimidating and would probably make good subject matter for a "Level II" class rather than an intro class.

jag

The info I give them is really high level...so they can have a cursory understanding.
Granted, most people will HAVE to know this for the second part of the class....security.

 

[X-Chick]

IM logging is pretty much essential for parents. Catching websites they go to is important, but nearly every teenager is going to look at porn and that's nothing to get freaked out about. But the online predators, which are scary in their numbers, will try to set up meetings in e-mails and IMs. And with it being foster kids, some could try to plan runaways with online friends. So parents need to know not only what the kids are saying, but what people are saying to their kids.