ISP 523: Fundamentals of Information Technology

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ISP 523 Fundamentals of Information Technology

• Instructor Stephen Lackey
• August 31, 2005

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The formalities

• The Course
• The Syllabus

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Introduction

• Who are you?
• Why are you here?
• What do you know how to do?
• What do you hope to learn here?
• What do you want to be when you grow up?
  (Growing up is not a requirement)

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This course

• What is computing
• Where does it take place
• How does it shape our lives, our jobs, our social
  interactions

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Core topics

• Your student IT accounts
• Computing architectures
• Internet Technologies
• Data presentation technologies
• Data representation
• Social Computing

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Your student IT accounts

• All students are eligible to receive an email
  account and a UNIX account
• UNIX is the operating system for the school
  mainframe computer
• Use the terminal emulator SSH to connect to your
  account (available in our computer labs or for
  download to install at home).

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Computing architectures
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Computing architectures

• Desktop (a.k.a. standalone or 1-tier) your PC
• Client/server corporations, large organizations
  (often with database systems 2-tier)
• n-tier Most common with internet sites
• Your browser
• The web server
• A database that the web server connects to

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Internet Technologies

• Your computer runs a client a web browser, an
  email reader (outlook, outlook express,
  thunderbird)
• You connect to a server a web server, a mail
  server, a database server, or some other kind of
  application server
• That server typically connects to another kind of
  server to receive data, etc

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Data presentation technologies

• What happens when you connect to a web server?
• What does the web server send to the browser?
• What does the browser do with it?

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Data representation

• How do we store data in a reusable way?
• Comma delimited files
• Databases
• XML

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Social Computing

• How does computing change the way we see the
  world?
• How do we use computing to work together?
• How do we use computing to improve our social
  interactions?
• Role of blogging
• Role of Wiki
• Other Social Computing technologies

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Study groups

• Since this course focuses on social interactions
  with technology, group work is an integral part
  of this
• Each student will be involved in three group
  processes through semester
• Groups will not be the same throughout semester