# Welcome to ROOT_

ROOT_ is RootNode Academy's path from "I can use a computer" to "I can run and repair real
infrastructure." It's built for anyone roughly high-school age and up — including college
students, career changers, help-desk technicians, junior sysadmins, and working developers who
want to move into DevOps, cloud, or platform engineering. There's no strict age cutoff: what
matters is whether you're ready for the material, not how old you are.

## Where ROOT_ goes

```
ROOT 01  Computing & Linux Foundations
ROOT 02  Linux Administration & Networking
ROOT 03  Git & Collaborative Development
ROOT 04  Containers & Docker
ROOT 05  Kubernetes Foundations
ROOT 06  Kubernetes Application Workloads
ROOT 07  Kubernetes Networking & Configuration
ROOT 09  Kubernetes Security
ROOT 10  Kubernetes Troubleshooting & Observability
ROOT 12  RootNode Real Ops
CAPSTONE Operate and Recover a Production-Like Environment
```

Each course builds on real skill from the one before it — you won't be asked to use a tool or
concept that a previous course didn't already teach you. By the end, you'll have operated a real
Kubernetes cluster, diagnosed and fixed real incidents, and demonstrated it in a hands-on
capstone — not answered multiple-choice questions about it.

## How you'll actually learn

Every module follows the same rhythm:

**Learn → Practice → Lab → Troubleshoot → Validate**

- **Learn** — a short lesson introduces one real concept, plainly, with no unexplained jargon.
- **Practice** — a demonstration or guided exercise lets you see the concept applied before
  you're on your own with it.
- **Lab** — you do the real thing yourself, in your own disposable Lab environment: a real
  Linux shell, real Git, real Docker, and (from ROOT 05 onward) a real Kubernetes cluster.
- **Troubleshoot** — Labs are built to sometimes not go as planned on the first try, on purpose.
  Figuring out why something didn't work is as much the skill as doing it right the first time.
- **Validate** — your Lab checks its own result. You'll know immediately whether you actually
  solved it, not just whether you think you did.

## Self-paced or instructor-led

ROOT_ is built to work either way. If you're going through it on your own, every module gives you
everything you need without a teacher in the room. If you're in an instructor-led class or camp,
your instructor can see your progress, help when you're stuck, and add their own pacing and
discussion on top of the same real curriculum — nothing about the platform changes between the
two, only who else is watching your progress.

## Assessments and the Capstone

A few courses end in a short formal assessment — a handful of real, timed Lab tasks (not a
multiple-choice quiz) that check you can actually do what the course taught, not just recognize
the right answer. The program ends with the **Capstone**: no more new teaching, just a
production-like environment with real incidents to find and fix, the same way you would on the
job.

## Your progress is permanent — your Lab is not

One thing to know before you start: the Lab environment you work in is disposable and can be
recreated at any time. Your academic progress is not. The next module covers exactly what that
means and why it's nothing to worry about.