Making ETT more accessible to newbies

First, there was some question about what is our vision, I threw these out, but you may have thoughts (multiple) of your own:

 A vision of working collaborativly to discuss technology use in education, with an emphasis on open source, collaboration, and keeping it real 

 Some agreed actions I heard were:

 

Improve players (DAVE), do an openhouse show (SHOW HOSTS, we will at It's E!), tree the front page (DAVE), have a matching service for newbies (ME this summer), share this network when we do PD ourselves (ALL OF US)

Any other ideas I missed? 

 

Most people are familiar with (and can use) the web as a source of information only. They do not understand what tools exist (or how to use these tools) that make up the foundation of web 2.0. The conversations on edtechtalk (although very informative and useful) are often esoteric which may push some people/educators away. I think this is how some get the feeling that they are not "in the club". I really would like to see a short list of essential tools and ideas that will help "newbies" jump into the conversation. A show (recorded and available on demand) on this topic would be great and could be a starting point for those new to this.

E Michael

I like your idea of making a list of essential tools. I would even go as far as proposing in it as a menu itme on the top bar of home page. These resources would be available on-demand as you mentioned. Getting Started is also a good name for these tools.

Jose Rodriguez It's Elementary

I always recommend newbies start out with KDE and learn the CLI (Command Line Interface) through a Konsole. Try to avoid relying on programs with a GUI for configuration for too long - You are missing the beauty of Linux that way (extreme tweakability and configuration). Learn a CLI text editor domain names , such as vi(m) or emacs. You could also use Pico I guess, but I have no experience with it (I'm a vim user). Don't know what else I can offer. Enjoy Linux - it's a great OS once you really get a feel for it