Ideas for a new computer based club

[zoasterboy]

At my school me and some friends of mine are going to be starting a computer club.

How the club will basicly run is that we will start the meeting by learning a new word from the jargon file and then moving into the lesson/project.

The lesson/projects will be made by members who have certain computer skills the rest of the club might not be as good at. They will teach, with the help of club leaders and other members who know about that particular topic, the lesson to everyone else.

The lessons can be new languages, hardware hacking on certain devices, and basicly all and anything computer related when it comes to the functioning of the computer.

The projects will be contests and apps we will work on.

This is basicly how it will go. Does anyone have any ideas for the club?

Thanks!

[800XL]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

Some ideas:

- 101 of network sniffing (demonstration of clear text web site login insecurity)
- how to secure your home wireless router
- building your own cantenna then comparing the dbi signal strength etc.

[TheCotMan]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

Find something you like to do on the computer that is repetetive, and find a language to build a mini-app that does that task for you.

Windows? Batch file that clear your cache on shutdown.
Script that starts up a tabbed browser with a specific web page in each "tab" loaded in order.
Use of WinAt or at or cron to schedule a script that does things for you on a periodic basis.

Writing programs sucks for most people until they find a way to build something that makes their life easier, or make something that they like or want.

Disassemble a computer and describe the parts, slots, speeds, metrics for each speed, slots, slot specs, alternate slots, how to identify slot types, peripherals, busses.

A fresh install of Windows, Linux, *BSD, MacOS, more.

Dual OS booting as covered woth LILO, GRUB, Semantic's Boot selector thingy.

Tools to resize partitions and procedures to follow so as to minimize risk for data loss.

Resetting a lost Admin password on various OS when you have physical access. Counter measures that try to stop it. Counter-counter measures to bypass those. counter-counter-counter measures to try to stop those ....

Tour of the library to understand Dewey Decimal (ug) or LC system of card catalog and indexes for books.

Power-google skills. Google show-downs, where two people are given 60 seconds to find a search string that produces a great link as the first hit.

[INIT_6]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

Some things me and my roommate do:

We go out and scan a few places. Get as much info on how things are setup.

We then scale it down. Re-configure are network to match. Lot of the time to help match it we will setup our 3 servers with vmware linux and host like 5 - 7 workstations per box.
match= same type of OS's, pacths, security, open ports, etc...

Then research known flaws in there setup. Then break into our own boxes. To prevent cheating we have someone else do the passwords and such.

It's nice we learn alot doing this. The only real bad thing we do is the scan's.

Things I have learned doing this is how to setup remote key-logging, disabling anti-virus softwre, network sniffing, cracking password hash, how to install tight vnc remotely, etc....

I would suggest to stay away from talks longer then 15min. Most people learn very little from talks in your type if setting. I would say a 15min topic talk basicly explaining what you will be doing hands on.

On the other hand if you want to you can: Pick a topic have everyone research into it. You will all find diffferent info. and then you can debate about it in a open decision. I have setup a couple open tech decisions before they seem successful.


Read up on: ads google search: ads ntfs Here is one site

[astcell]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

Build a Windows 2003 Domain. The software pretty much installs itself, but it is like learning the names of all the bones in a dinosaur.

[zoasterboy]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

Cool, thanks for the ideas!

[DaKahuna]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

Build a Windows 2003 Domain. The software pretty much installs itself, but it is like learning the names of all the bones in a dinosaur.

If I did not know you better, I would think you were being serious :)

[zoasterboy]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

I had to write a constituition for the club, so I thought I might post it and see what you guys think about it. Also, the first meeting went great, and we are going to over some basics first and learn Qbasic before we get into anything else.

Constitution of the Computer Tech Club (CTC)

Created on this 26th of September, 2006


Preamble

We, in order to present the students of Sumner High School with a better opportunity to gain literacy in computer technology, to fortify their current knowledge of computers, and to help them gain the ability to better teach others the said skills, we present, The Computer Tech Cub.

Article 1

Distribution of power in the club:

All decision making and teaching power and responsibilities will rest upon the members. The leaders will simply guide the club onto the right track.

Leaders:

There will be around 3 leaders, more if needed. The leaders will be in charge of starting, keeping the group on schedule, and closing. The leaders will also be in charge of taking suggestions for proposed lessons, projects, contest, games, and any other activities. If the situation arises that members cannot provide decision-making and ideas for lessons and activities, or any other circumstance as decided by the leaders, the leaders may take charge of decision making and planning for as long as needed. Leaders can veto any decision made by members. Leaders can stay in the leader position for up to and no more than 3 years. If they step down from the position, or their term ends, a vote will be needed. The new leader or leaders will be decided through a majority vote with at least 5 members attending and voting in the said meeting. One leader will be the scribe and in charge of money and recording happenings in the club. The leaders will decide the scribe. If an agreement cannot be met on who should be the scribe, the club will have a majority wins vote. Leaders can be impeached for neglecting duties. This will be debated and then decided on a two-thirds majority vote and the advisors approval. Second chances are recommended.

Members:

Members are in charge of making decisions and providing lessons, contests, and other such activities. The members present ideas for lessons and activities to leaders, who will keep track of them and who created them until they are needed. When there are no lessons or activities on schedule, the club will meet and decide upon what lessons and activities are more important and which should be saved for later or not done at all. For more info on decision-making see the "Running the Club" section in Article 2. Members have the power to veto any decision by the leaders, and can even repeal a leaders veto. This must be done by a two-thirds majority vote and at least 5 members present and voting.

Article 2

Running the Club:

All leaders and members are there to create an environment of synergy and learning. To achieve this the members will be doing most decision making and teaching. The leaders and the members will decide all lessons, activities, and distribution of funds, together. When decided by a majority vote or the club leaders, the club will spend a meeting discussing what lessons and activities will be more important or more enjoyable than others. These activities will be ones that were presented to the leader over the time since the last discussion meeting. Members and leaders will also be able to contribute new ideas during this time. Every member and leader will be given the opportunity to voice an opinion or state an idea. They will also decide during this time where club money is spent and if needed a vote on new leaders. The scribe will make a schedule, and the next meeting the top lesson or activity on the list will be used.

During the first club meeting after the decision making, the person who presented the idea at the top of the list, should have prepared some sort of lesson or activity for the club that is based on the idea they gave. This person can be helped by any number of other members and the leaders.

There will be a lesson time of about 30 minutes or less, and then the knowledge learned will used in individual or co experimentation with the said knowledge, such as writing a program with a new programming language.

[VAX_to_PBX]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

I was hoping you where going to form a club where people meet up at local mall's dressed up as Aunt Bee, and go window shopping, but seriously...good luck with this project.

[Snowblind]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

Zoasterboy,

A man after my own heart! I started a "Computer Hardware and Security" club at my high school. With some signatures, "initial members," and a short plan of what you will be doing, anything is possible.

Here are some of the curriculum items I found to be most popular:

-Opening up a computer to show vitals (RAM, HD, BIOS chip, etc.)
-Theory behind password security (one-way hashes, Birthday Paradox)
-Remote access (Netcat was the tool here)

Also, here is just a friendly tip: DO NOT use the school's hardware to do anything. Try not to use their routers for networking or their computers for storage of your tools(legal liability, general paranoia, the list goes on). Instead, make it a community thing - ask members to donate/lend electronics to the club for specific activities.

Best of luck! I had a wonderful time with my Comp. Club and I hope you will too.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

DO NOT use the school's hardware to do anything.

related to that note is the fact that it never would hurt to ask your school's sysadmin if there are any old boxes that are taking up space in a tech storage room somewhere. i'd wager half the time, the school is sitting on a dozen or so pentium I or II boxes with AT motherboards that are still outstanding x86 boxes for play purposes, but aren't capable of being used effectively out on the main network. i know that at the school where i do most of my work i have a whole shelf in my office which is nothing but old machines... they all work well and therefore i feel bad about recycling them (after all, it can be a pain scraping together proper RAM, processors, etc. for old boxes... but if they're all together it's easy to get them running again) but could never deploy them for any teachers or in any lab. i often give away anything below 300 MHz to the techy kids who want to deploy linux or play with a firewall machine. long as they do it out of my way and don't spew ridiculous packets all over the network i don't give a shit what they do with the old gear.

[zoasterboy]

Re: Ideas for a new computer based club

but seriously...good luck with this project.

Best of luck!

Thanks people,

anyways, I'm sure we will have enough comps. A local colledge donated a bunch of pentium II's for the computer classes that we can use. They are packed in the shelves and laying on the teachers desk and strewn about the room. Sort of messy.

I am positively absolutely sure we will not use the school computers or the school network. It’s so utterly brain-damaged that it makes me sick just to think about it. You can’t right click or anything natural. It takes time to even be able to save things to the HD. They try to run XP on 633 MHZ Celerons. Otherwise they have these weird Gateways. In the library they have Macs. Now I'm not too down on Macs because OS 10 was nice, and I like the fact that they added UNIX. But these ones run Mac OS 9x, and you cant use a USB drive or do anything except for research on the net. Sorry I went on a little rant there. Just makes me angry.