If you're in my class and want to install views on the linux box I already have drush installed so you just need to follow the 6 steps below: (if you're not in my class but just are following along in the book to install views on your local machine skip to after step 6 to the video -- If you're in my class and want to install views on your own machine you can use the video and instructions after step 6 as well).
1.) use putty on a pc or terminal on a mac to login to drupalessentials.babson.edu
2.) cd go to your /var/www/student1/drupal/sites/default (replace student1 witch your student number)
3.) type drush dl views
4.) type drush en views_ui
5.) click "Y" whenever there's a prompt asking if you want to proceed.
6.) Now you can go to the e-book and continue to work in the gui to setup your view.
Here is a video to install views on your local machine if it is not already installed in your Drupal install:
Here are text instructions to install views (this is one method, I find these directions work best when playing around with Drupal on my local machine -- I use drush usually to install modules ):
1.) Go to the admin/modules url of your drupal site (on my local site it's localhost:8082/admin/modules), and make sure the "Update manager" module has a check next to it on this screen, if not click the checkbox next to this module and then hit the "save configuration" button at the bottom of the screen.
2.) Go to http://localhost:8082/admin/modules/install (replace localhost:8082 with your sites url, if on your local machine it might just be localhost, if live it will be your sites full url).
3.) Go to the views project page on Drupal.org at https://drupal.org/project/views
4.) Right click on the .zip or .gz file link next to the Drupal 7 version of the module (see the 2nd screenshot), and then click on "copy link location", or on a mac click on "copy link address".
5.) In the install from a url field on the admin/modules/install page paste in the url you just copied by first clicking on the install from a url field, and then right click and choose paste.
6.) Click the install button on the admin/modules/install page
7.) on the admin/modules page now you can click on the check boxes next to the "views" and "views ui" modules and then click the "save configuration" button at the bottom of the admin/modules page.
Views in Drupal allow you to take your content which is stored in nodes, and you can then present your data (view your data) in many different ways. You could download views slideshow (http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow) and any images placed into each piece of content can be displayed in a slideshow on your site. You can take the same data and display that data in a table format, or a list format ..... you have lots of easy ways to change the presentation of your content with the power of views.