For Years 8–10: use a computer by typing commands, as people do on servers, Raspberry Pis and Linux and Mac computers. Move around folders, read and search files, change them, chain commands with pipes, and control who can read what. Everything runs on a pretend computer in the browser; a Raspberry Pi is the real thing.
Each lesson works two ways. Students can work through the online tutorial at their own pace (it checks their answers and saves their progress in their browser), or you can teach it to the whole class from the slides, then send students into the tutorial for the Modify and Make steps.
Every lesson guide has plain-language notes, the answers to every check, a solution for every task, and slides and a worksheet for Waypoints Prepare. These guide pages are not linked from student pages, but they are not secret either: keep printed Teacher editions for answers you do not want students to find.
Whole-course cheat sheet: Open to print (every command, grouped by unit: a handout for the final challenge)
Folders and paths, reading and finding, changing files, pipes, and permissions.
A shell lets you use a computer by typing commands instead of clicking. Every Linux server, Raspberry Pi and Mac has one, and it is how most of the internet's computers are run.
Files live in a tree of folders. A path names a place in the tree: /home/sam/projects starts at the top (/); projects/game starts from where you are; .. means the folder above; ~ means your home folder. pwd says where you are, ls lists what's here (ls -a shows hidden names, which start with a dot), and cd moves you.
cat prints a file; grep word file prints only the lines containing the word. mkdir, cp, mv and rm make, copy, move and delete; rm is for good, with no recycle bin. A pipe (|) sends one command's output into the next, so small commands combine: grep cat pets.txt | wc -l counts matching lines. > saves output into a file.
Every file has an owner and permissions: read, write and run (r, w, x) for the owner and for everyone else. ls -l shows them (-rw-r--r-- is 644: you can read and change it, everyone else can only read it). Only the owner can chmod them, and hiding a file (a dot name) protects nothing.
The board is a pretend computer, the same everywhere. For the real thing, in order of preference: a Raspberry Pi; an in-browser Linux such as WebVM (no install; test it on the school network first); Mac Terminal (zsh: almost the same commands); WSL on Windows or VirtualBox (both need admin rights to install).
ls -a.rm.shell, command, folder, path, home folder, hidden file, pipe, permissions, owner, read, write, run.
Cheat sheet: Open to print (A4, with board pictures) · Markdown