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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 29 September 2003 22:11, Paul M wrote: <snip> I think first of all I would like to thank Paul for an excellent contribution to this thread. <big snip> > One thing that the non-experienced users repeatedly said, is how > grateful they were to come across techies who were approachable as > people - time and again people would say things like how grateful they > were that they felt like they could ask (potentially) stupid questions > and not be condescended to. (the point being that they weren't often if > sure if they were stupid but had been afraid to ask). This is not a new > point, and I'm going to hold up my hands at this point as guilty of > condescension, but it good to hear it straight form the horses mouth as > it were. <big snip> The fear of "sounding stupid" is often greater in younger people, I'm thinking 18 - 20 years, i.e. the typical undergraduate student. More mature people realise more easily that it is something new they want to learn and that "sounding stupid" or "doing something stupid" (their words not mine) is just part of the process. I have to agree that I too sometimes find it difficult to give help to people in the manner that does not embarrass them and actually helps them to learn. This said not as a tutor but as an I.T. support technician. I would just like to make a couple of other points on this thread in general before I call it a day. Having had a quick glance through the ECDL syllabus, it does not seem to make any reference to administrator privileges, tasks which require then and those which do not. This would seem to date the syllabus in MS windows terms to something pre XP. Were the syllabus to be updated to take this into account it could make the translation to Linux a little easier Looking at section 2 in particular it seems to me that there could be at least three different answers to some questions, i.e. how to do it at the console, how to do it with gnome or kde and how to do it with your distributions admin tools. These can even get mixed up, for example, "How to change date and time", in SuSE 8.2 - right click on clock - select 'adjust date and time' - enter root password - make changes in YaST 'clock and time zone Configuration' dialog. Enough for now Cheers Tony -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/eLT2+ZJrkBuz/nkRAjiGAJ90eIQ4M5ba8yuaCPxXm4c6+T9r4QCePnlO wNlkf0S7NzRm9U35CCfwuE0= =OStx -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.