CPSC100: Practical Computer Fluency (W'05)
Class Notes

Lecture notes, handouts, and readings for upcoming classes will be posted here. Lecture notes are usually posted two or three days after class.

Week 14

• Handout: Introduction to Relational Databases and Microsoft Access
• Exercise: Modifying Database Data
• Readings: Access 2000 Tutorial (much more info than you'll need for CPSC100)

Week 13

• Lecture Notes: Mail Merge and Databases
• Exercise: Date Calculations
• Readings: MS Word 2000 Mail Merge Made Easy (uses manually-entered data rather than Excel as the data source); MS Word Mail Merge Tutorial: Mail Merge Using a Spreadsheet;

Week 12

• Handout: More Spreadsheet Tips
• Exercise: Date Calculations

Week 10

• Handout: Charts
• Exercise: Charting

Week 9

• Handout: Common Excel Functions
• Exercise: Spreadsheet Functions

Week 8

• Lecture Notes: Spreadsheets
• Handout: Heading and Page Numbering in Word
• Exercise: Outline and Page Numbering
• Readings: Microsoft Excel 2000 Tutorial

Week 7

• Handout: A Field Guide to Word's Style Screens
• Exercise: Combining Text, Images, Tables, and Charts in Word

Week 6

• Handout: Introduction to Microsoft Word
• Readings: PowerPoint 2000 Tutorial; PowerPoint in the Classroom (a campy talk show-style guide); Microsoft Word 2000 Tutorial

Week 5

• Lecture Notes: The Internet
• Readings: How Internet Infrastructure Works; Wikipedia's entry for Uniform Resource Locator (URL); A Brief History of the Internet (a serious read); History of Internet and WWW (the pop-culture version)

Week 4

• Lecture Notes: Graphics and Multimedia
• Handout: Managing Computer Images
• Handout: HTML Images and Colour
• Table: HTML Web-Safe Colours
• Table: HTML Named Colours
• Readings: How AGP Works (graphics card technology); The Graphics File Formats Page provides links to descriptions of the most common bitmap image formats; Wikipedia's Multimedia definition

Week 3

• Lecture Notes: Internet Privacy
• Handout: An HTML Primer
• Readings: Character Sets and Unicode; Understanding the Windows Clipboard; How Web Pages Work; HTML Tutorial

Week 2

• Lecture Notes: Data Storage, Disks, Filesystems, Files and Folders
• Handout: Computer Data Storage
• Handout: Internet Security and Privacy Techniques
• Readings: How Hard Disks Work; How Computer Memory Works; How Computer Viruses Work; How Firewalls Work; How Encryption Works; Bigger Threats, Better Defense a review of computer security tools

Week 1

• Lecture Notes: Computer Internals and Operating Systems
• Lecture Notes: Computer History
• Overhead: CPU History and Comparison
• Readings: How PCs Work; How Operating Systems Work (just up to the section called Processor Management)