A History of Computing

• Describe the machine, designed over a hundred years ago, considered to be the first computer
• Discuss historical currents that led to the development of modern computers
• Describe the explosive growth of computers during the last three decades
• Provide you with an opportunity to develop your surfing skills using a browser program and the World Wide Web

Local Applications

• Describe four common "microworlds" and their realizations as modern software applications
• Briefly inventory computer applications in business, technology, the professions, and entertainment
• Develop (or demonstrate) your skills with a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a graphics processor, and some other more specialized programs.

Global Applications

• Explore the historical background and technology of the Internet
• Extend your notion of a computer application to global, connected, multi-user applications common to the WWW
• Discuss some of the important applications of the Internet, including electronic mail, news groups, and the WWW
• Encourage you to use these applications in conventional ways
• Consider consequences and implicationis of the ever-more pervasive uses of the WWW

Designing For Use

• Examine the evolution of the user interface
• Discuss the desirable features of a user interface
• Explore the composition of a WWW page as an example of an interface.
• Illustrate how completed systems are constructed by using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to design some sample pages
• Use the techniques illustrated in our sample pages to develop your own home page

Cordon Bleu Programming

• Examine how HTML links, forms, and image maps support interactive interfaces
• Illustrate the structure of JavaScript programs, and show how they are described in an HTML document
• Review the JavaScript code that implements a simple adventure game to see the range of statements and data types that can be represented in JavaScript
• Show you how to write, test, and debug JavaScript functions of your own
• Describe the programming process in general, life cycle terms

Program Translation

• Introduce the binary representation of information used by modern computers
• Show how program statements can be translated into machine language using parse trees
• Introduce several contemporary high-level languages, concentrating on how they make the programming process more efficient
• Take a brief look at the problems involved in translating high-level languages into executable instructions

Hardware

• Explain why computers only understand binary languages
• Show how the circuits of a computer are constructed
• Discuss the hierarchical complexity of computer hardware
• See how simple circuits, combined in complex ways, can implement a model computer
• Explore the design of a small but complete microprocessor

Theory of Computation

• Concentrate on the view of a program as an abstract machine
• Consider two ways of looking at abstract machines
• Investigate and experiment with a variety of Turing Machines
• Describe the expressive power and the limitations of Turing Machines

Artificial Intelligence

• Discuss intelligence embodied in a machine, and consider Alan Turing's operational test for machine intelligence
• Look at some major directions in Artificial Intelligence research
• Experiment with two programs that perform human tasks
• Compare the output of some AI programs to human behavior.

Computers and Society

• Predict future trends in computer use, and rank these trends in order of their likelihood
• Discuss possible implications of these trends in social, economic, and political terms
• Consider the WWW as both a tool and a medium for participating in new social structures

Copyright Notice
© 1998 PWS Publishing Company, All Rights Reserved.