A mandatory class in the Computer Science program at John Abbott is Introduction to Computer Technology. Which showed potential, but quickly lost it.
It started out simple with an introduction to what computers are, and the history of computers, which was interesting, except that my teacher was refused to accept that Apple popularized the personal computer. The right answer to that question on the test was IBM. Oh well, give the teacher what they want for the grade. Then the basic parts of what made a computer.
The history of computers was followed by a too quick overview the binary and hexadecimal number systems. Which seemed usefull, but was too quick, and was forced to teach myself how to add binary numbers. I still get stuck on hexadecimal problems.
The problem with teenagers, especially those fresh out highschool, they have no attention span. They also know alot about computers. They also think they know everything about computers. The idea for this was to get a fundamental understanding of how computer works, which was lost on most of my classmates. The teacher lost steam about half way through the semster. We never learnt about file systems, nor was there a connection made between binary and hexadecimal numbers, and the internal workings of a computer.
While the above topics were being covered in lectures, the lab for this class was more about learning how use MS Word and Excel. Even here, our assignments were spelled out step by step in our textbook.
The final project was a personal website about anything technology related. Once this project was announced, again another plug (from the department Chair) for MS's Expression Web came about as better alternative to Dreamweaver. Kind of useless to me since I have a Mac at home. A trial copy of Adobe's CS4 downloaded, I discovered the learning curve for Dreamweaver was pretty steep. I quickly switched to Smultron and built my site from scratch. (note: Sadly, Smultron is not being maintained anymore)
And there you have it, Intro to Computer Technology DONE. Mark: 85%.
It started out simple with an introduction to what computers are, and the history of computers, which was interesting, except that my teacher was refused to accept that Apple popularized the personal computer. The right answer to that question on the test was IBM. Oh well, give the teacher what they want for the grade. Then the basic parts of what made a computer.
The history of computers was followed by a too quick overview the binary and hexadecimal number systems. Which seemed usefull, but was too quick, and was forced to teach myself how to add binary numbers. I still get stuck on hexadecimal problems.
The problem with teenagers, especially those fresh out highschool, they have no attention span. They also know alot about computers. They also think they know everything about computers. The idea for this was to get a fundamental understanding of how computer works, which was lost on most of my classmates. The teacher lost steam about half way through the semster. We never learnt about file systems, nor was there a connection made between binary and hexadecimal numbers, and the internal workings of a computer.
While the above topics were being covered in lectures, the lab for this class was more about learning how use MS Word and Excel. Even here, our assignments were spelled out step by step in our textbook.
The final project was a personal website about anything technology related. Once this project was announced, again another plug (from the department Chair) for MS's Expression Web came about as better alternative to Dreamweaver. Kind of useless to me since I have a Mac at home. A trial copy of Adobe's CS4 downloaded, I discovered the learning curve for Dreamweaver was pretty steep. I quickly switched to Smultron and built my site from scratch. (note: Sadly, Smultron is not being maintained anymore)
And there you have it, Intro to Computer Technology DONE. Mark: 85%.
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