About the Book
Inspired by the National Research
Council's report Being Fluent with Information Technology this text takes
an adaptive style of learning where readers immediately begin to apply
the text's content into everyday activities and interface with technology
with newfound confidence and understanding. Unlike computer literacy, which
teaches only immediately useful skills, Fluency with Information Technology
adds problem solving, reasoning and complexity management to prepare students
to use computers today and to be effective technology users tomorrow.
Features
Prepares students to adapt to an ever-changing
computing environment through lifelong learning by focusing on three different
types of content: Skills, Concepts, and Capabilities.
-
Skills: refers to proficiency with contemporary
computer applications like email, word processing, Web searching, etc.
Skills make the technology immediately useful to students and ground their
learning of other content in practical experience.
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Concepts: refers to the fundamental knowledge
underpinning IT, such as how computers work, digital representation of
information, assessing information authenticity, etc. Concepts provide
the principles on which students will build new understanding as IT evolves.
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Capabilities: refers to higher-level thinking
processes such as problem-solving, reasoning, complexity management, trouble-shooting,
etc. Capabilities embody modes of thinking that are essential to exploiting
IT, but they apply in many other situations as well. The Capabilities component
is a standard element of all education, and is essential to the effective
use of IT, making it an explicit focus of this book.
Contains both in-chapter and end-of-chapter
features including: FIT: Bytes, Tips, Cautions, Links and Try it (in-chapter
exercises), along with Great FIT Moments and end-of-chapter Multiple Choice
and Short Answer exercises.
Extensive supplements package including
labs and an activities guide for students and an online solutions manual
and computerized test bank for instructors.
Written by the chairman of the National
Research Council's report, “Being Fluent with Information Technology.”
Related Books
Computer Fluency, Literacy & Introduction
to Computer Science (Computer
Science)
Table of Contents
I. BECOMING SKILLED AT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
1. Terms of Endearment: Defining Information
Technology.
Why Know Just the Right Word in Information
Technology?
Where's the Start Button?
Where is the Computer?
How Soft is Software?
The Words for Ideas.
Analytical Thinking.
2. What the Digerati Know: Exploring
the Human-Computer Interface.
Learning about Technology.
Basic Metaphors of Software.
Standard GUI Functionality.
“Clicking Around”.
“Blazing Away”.
“Watching Others”.
A Basic Principle: Form Follows Function.
Searching Text Using Find.
Editing Text Using Substitution.
Thinking about Information Technology
Abstractly.
3. Making the Connection: The Basics
of Networking.
Networked Computers Change Our Lives.
Communication Types: Some Comparisons.
The Medium of the Message.
The World Wide Web.
File Structure.
The Internet and the Web.
4. Marking Up with HTML: A Hypertext
Markup Language Primer.
Marking Up with HTML.
Structuring Documents.
Marking Links with Anchor Tags.
Including Pictures with Image Tags.
Handling Color.
Handling Lists.
Handling Tables.
HTML Wrap-Up.
5. Searching for Truth: Locating Information
on the WWW.
Searching in All the Right Places.
How Is Information Organized?
How Is Web Site Information Organized?
Searching the Web for Information.
Web Information: Truth or Fiction?
The Burmese Mountain Dog Page.
6. Searching for Guinea Pig: Case Study
in Online Research.
Getting Started on Online Research.
Primary Sources.
Chronfile and Everything I Know.
Resolving Questions.
Secondary Sources.
Exploring Side Questions.
Case Study Wrap-Up.
II. ALGORITHMS AND DIGITIZING INFORMATION.
7. To Err Is Human: An Introduction
to Debugging.
Precision: The High Standards of IT.
Exactly How Accurate is “Precise”?
Debugging: What's the Problem?
A Dialog About Debugging.
Debugging Recap.
Butterflies and Bugs: A Case Study.
No Printer Output: A Classic Scenario.
8. Bits and the “Why” of Bytes: Representing
Information Digitally.
Digitizing Discrete Information.
Encoding with Dice.
The Fundamental Representation of
Information.
Hex Explained.
Digitizing Text.
The Oxford English Dictionary.
9. Following Instructions: Principles
of Computer Operation.
Instruction Execution Engines.
The Fetch/Execute Cycle.
Anatomy of a Computer.
The Program Counter: The PC's PC.
Instruction Interpretation.
Cycling the F/E Cycle.
Many, Many Simple Operations.
Integrated Circuits.
How Semiconductor Technology Works.
Combining the Ideas.
10. What's the Plan?: Algorithmic Thinking.
Algorithm: A Familiar Idea.
An Algorithm: Alphabetizing CDs.
Analyzing Alphabetize CD Algorithm.
Abstraction in Algorithmic Thinking.
11. Sound, Lights, Magic: Representing
Multimedia Digitally.
Digitizing Color.
Computing on Representations.
Digitizing Sound.
Digital Images and Video.
Optical Character Recognition.
Virtual Reality: Fooling the Senses. |
