BASH is the default OS shell for Linux and Mac OS x. BASH can also be used on Windows if cygwin is installed.

Cygwin can be downloaded from: https://cygwin.com/install.html

Students with a windows computer are requested to install cygwin. A minimal installation + nano should be enough for our purposes.

nano is a basic editor, without default syntax highlighting. 
To install syntax highlighting create a file sh.nanorc in the folder /usr/share/nano
Retreive the code from: https://code.google.com/p/nanosyntax/source/browse/trunk/syntax-nanorc/sh.nanorc and paste it into the sh.nanorc file

Save the file and go to your home directory (cd ~)
Create a file called .nanorc containing the text ''include /usr/share/nano/sh.nanorc''

Practices can be found in the BASH Beginners guide by Machtelt Garrels: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/Bash-Beginners-Guide.pdf