No One who needs a Computer should be without a Computer....

....When we can source them for free.  There are computers which have had the Hard Drives removed that go into the land fill everyday.  If you create an OS with Linux you can make these machines usable.  I am sharing a talk on how to build these today during the Nashville Maker Faire at the Adventure Science Center.  We have the Linux Lab set up for you to play with and we will be demoing drive creation and talking about how to find free machines.

Here are some of the directions I will be referencing: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu

and

http://teachersandcompany.blogspot.com/2016_07_01_archive.html

My son and I have published a book on the subject for kids with a gentle approach to the vocabulary and methods to avoid the pit falls we ran into when trying to find this information out in the wilds of the internet.  An update with the Ubuntu directions are coming soon.  Find this book at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Z0TMEBY/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=teachersandco-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00Z0TMEBY&linkId=0c044723688cdb81a0c3a23536ec3387

Many thanks to Make Nashville, the Adventure Science Center, and BencinStudios (video game creation) for making these talks possible.

Eleven-Year-Old Gives You a Free Copy of His Book

My son and I finished a book this month.  Thomas wrote a paper which I helped him turn into an e-book.  The book was released yesterday on Amazon. It's called The Eleven-Year-Old's Guide:To Linux.  Linux is an Operating system like Macintosh or Windows.  Unlike the other two it's less likely to get viruses and there are many free programs that come with it.  Programs you would have to pay extra for with the other systems.  Linux is open source which means it's free.  In honor of the Linux community who created so many wonderful free things we enjoy, we are giving away some free copies of our books.  

We gave free copies away to anyone who attended the National Day of Civic Hacking in Down Town Nashville.  People gave us their email addresses and we had planned to send them a link to get a free download.   I did not realize I can't give out coupon codes to get free books through Amazon.  Instead I am setting up a free day for everyone at the Hack and anyone reading our blog today.  Tomorrow, on June 8th,  you will be able to download a free copy of his e-book by following the link.
Here is the link to Thomas's book: http://amzn.to/1QBWHXo

The book turned out better than I imagined.  It's short and easy to read.  Lee Perry edited it for us.  She did a beautiful job editing for readability and errors. If you need an editor she is not cheap but she is really good. I spent many nights formatting and rewriting with Thomas sitting on the arm of the easy chair beside me.

I have learned if you really want to understand something about Tech you should ask an 11 year old.   They aren't afraid to figure things out and they can teach us things about narrow subjects they are geeking out about.  Because I was able to learn how to publish everyone gets the chance to hear about Linux the way an 11 year old can explain it.  We hope you enjoy our book.

If there are other tech subjects or even non tech subjects you would like to hear a child teach about, ask us.  We might be willing to learn about it and write another guide.  This one was a lot of fun.