Today was the second meeting. At the first meeting, I introduced a wiki and a blog, but so far they have not been using it a lot. To change that, I will now reward "Geek points" for contributions in the wiki, and on the blog, as well as for other challenges. The topics today were how software is created (quick overview of the priciple of compilation, and mentioning of the need for documentation etc.), and then I continued with Free Software: What's wrong with proprietary software, and why Free Software is better.
I think they got the message, but are not fully convinced yet. It seems that they found my "Hello World" demonstration in Python, Perl, C and Haskell more interesting, and my offer to do a little programming course in the club was well received.
A bit worrying are the questions "Can you hack into this sytem?", "Do you know how to hack through a firewall?" Of course I can't just say "no" (it would be discouraging) or "yes" (then they would want me to show how, which I don't want do do yet). I tried to explain then that to be able to "hack through a firewall", you first need to understand what a firewall is (Knowing that it is something that blocks unauthorized access from the outside is not enough), and then how it works in the details. Basically I tried to tell them that knowledge comes before any hacking (or cracking).
You can have a look at the slides, comments are of course welcome!
Have something to say? You can post a comment by sending an e-Mail to me at <mail@joachim-breitner.de>, and I will include it here.
Photos
As someone who is part of an education free-software non-profit, I too have come accross kids who want to 'hack'. It maybe because it is: dangerous, illegal, outlawish, cool. or perhaps they think it is the only way they can accomplish their goals. It would be good to mention the 'hacker' ethic and the principal of free software and how no one in the 1300 member organizaion of 'leet' programmers that comprise Debian who could do this, would not. Keep up the good work!
Kev