Course Description

This course covers the topics to facilitate fluency with Information Technology (IT). The National Research Council (NRC) defines fluency in IT as the ability to acquire a lifelong learning process so as to persistently and continuously adapt to change and obtain more knowledge to make effective use of IT for work and leisure. The relevance of IT and computing in daily life will be emphasized through learning about such topics as image representation, high definition video transmission, MP3, web page development, game development, and mobile applications development. A Graphical and intuitive programming environment from MIT called Scratch will be used to examine coding fundamentals. Development of mobile applications for smart phones will also be covered using the visual programming language App Inventor. Basic web page design concepts will be presented through the use of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. A simple 8-bit assembler simulator will be used to illustrate low level details of how computer systems operate as fetch/execute engines.