Computer Literacy for Everybody
Luby Liao & Jack Pope
Math/CS Department
University of San Diego
San Diego, CA 92110
Luby Liao
http://zen.sandiego.edu
liao@sandiego.edu
Jack Pope
http://pope.sandiego.edu
pope@sandiego.edu
Computer literacy compared with Math competency
- Math competency considered fundamental and required for gruduation
- Why is computer literacy considered less fundamental and not as important when our lives are so intimately connected with computers?
What Computer Literacy to teach?
- Empowering and enabling technologies
- Fundamentals
What Computer Literacy do we teach? I
- Empowering and enabling technologies
- Client/Server
- The Internet
- Publish to the web using Dreamweaver, iWeb, editors, FileZilla, ssh ...
- Tabbing and Extensible browser such as Firefox
- Google family of software such as Calendar, Mailgroups, Picasaweb, Blog, Doc & Spreadsheets
- Server-side and social bookmarking with http://del.icio.us
- Telephony/Teleconferencing with Skype
- iTune/iPod/podcasts/audiobooks/NYT/WSJ/TV talk shows
- Software tools
- Microsoft Office Suite & Alternatives
- Mail Merge and Templating
- Spreadsheets: pros and cons; Spreadsheet design
- Open Source and Free software (Putty, Cygwin, Linux, Gimp, ...)
What Computer Literacy do we teach? II
- Fundamentals
- programming
- An addition tutor
- An alarm clock simulator
- A rudimentary Blackjack game
- Best practice
- Don't close applications. Buy more memory.
- Avoid using spaces or funy characters in file names
- Use keyboard shortcuts
- Good attitude and habits
- Schedule backup automatically
- if you can do a job with one key stroke, don't do it in two
- INBOXes should not contain more than a handful of messages
- Life-long learning
What Computer Literacy should not be
- It should not be software training
- It should be education
- Don't train people to use Excel. Instead, educate them about its strength and weakness.
- Don't train people to use Word. Show them that Word is not good for collaboration.
- In many universities, the distinction between training and CS education is unclear.
- It should not be computer appreciation
- It should be useful and empowering
Conclusion
- Computer literacy is critical
- Should be a graduation requirement