1. Syllabus – what will we cover?
IT skills: none
IT concepts: computing eras, evolution of our course, the current contents of our course
In this presentation, I’m going to give you an overview of our course.
Each of our presentations will begin with a slide like this one, letting you know which skills and concepts are covered.
This one doesn’t cover any skills, and the only concept it covers is the scope or outline of the course.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

2. Digital literacy in the Internet era
We’ll be covering IT literacy for the Internet era, but there were three previous computing eras.
Each of these images represents one of them.
The bottom image represents our current era, the Internet era.
What eras do the top three illustrate?
Which era does each image depict?

3. Three previous eras
Batch processing
Time sharing
Personal computer
We’ll be covering IT literacy for the Internet era.
Computing began in the era of batch processing – jobs were run through large computers in batches.
Next came time sharing, in which users at terminals interacted directly with a shared computer.
Then came the personal computer – each user had his or her own computer.
Computers of all types – desktop, laptop, tablet, phones and computers embedded in devices are now linked on the Internet.
This is the Internet era.
Internet
Which era does each image depict?

4. The first ever digital literacy course
John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz offered the first ever IT literacy class at Dartmouth College in the early 1960s.
They believed that every liberally educated undergraduate needed knowledge of computers and information technology, regardless of their major.
The US National Science Foundation agreed, and funded their work.
John Kemeny
Thomas Kurtz

5. The first student computer lab
Since theirs was the first digital literacy course, Kemeney and Kurtz had to program their own time sharing system.
They wanted to include a taste of programming in their course, so they invented a simple, teaching-oriented programming language, BASIC.
They also constructed the student lab shown here.
Students sat at Teletype terminals.
A Teletype had a keyboard for input to the time-shared computer and a printer with a continuous roll of paper for output.
(Picture from

6. What will we cover?
We will cover skills and concepts needed for success as a student and after graduation as a professional and a citizen.
Our class will be split between skills and concepts.

7. Internet concepts Applications Technology Implications
Let’s start with a look at Internet era IT concepts, then we’ll move on to skills.
I’ve organized the concepts into three groups – those having to do with IT applications, implications and technology.
Applications are the things people do with computers and the Internet – the things they use them for.
Implications are the ways information technology changes our individual lives, our organizations and society.
Just think of the ways you use computers and the Internet. How do they affect your life, organizations like your school and workplace and society as a whole?
We’ll also present technology concepts. As the graph on the right show, all forms of information technology -- storage, communication and memory and processing – are improving rapidly.
This rapid technology change will lead us to think about future applications and implications as well as those we see today.
Implications
Give two examples of applications before continuing.

8. A sample Internet application -- education
This six-minute TED talk on a MOOC (massive, open, online class) that Peter Norvig and a colleague taught at Stanford.
He describes the course and some of the principles that guided its design.
Over 100,000 students enrolled in the class, though many fewer finished.
Norvig has co-founded Udacity, a private company that will develop MOOCs commercially.
Watch the video (6 minutes)
What are the implications of this application for individuals, organizations and society?

9. What will we cover?
We will cover the skills and concepts needed for success as a student and after graduation as a professional and a citizen.
Have we been talking about skills or concepts up to this point?
Don’t go on until you answer this question.
How did you answer it – by going back to look the answer up or using common sense?
Have we been talking about skills or concepts up to this point?

10. Application development
Skill areas
Application development
Content creation
These are the three types of skill we will cover.
You will learn to develop Internet applications like a blog, wiki or Web site and see that it is much easier to develop Internet applications than it was to develop applications on earlier platforms.
You no longer have to be a programming expert.
We will cover content creation and editing for four data types: text, images, audio, and video.
We will also pick up some Internet skills – tips on using existing Internet services like Google search.
User skills

11. Summary Internet concepts Applications Implications Technology
Internet skills
Application development
Content creation
User skills
This is our course outline, which you’ll also see at the start of every presentation.
I’ll use it to show where the presentation falls within the class.

12. Self-study questions
Peter Norvig taught a course at Stanford, but he is a part time teacher. What is his full-time job?
How many students enrolled in Norvig’s MOOC on artificial intelligence? How many students enrolled?
Why does Norvig think that a student’s peers make better tutors than professors?
Peter Norvig is co-author of a textbook, what is it’s title?
What might be the implications of MOOCs for the California State University system?
Our class will cover information technology ___ and ___.
We will cover three general types of skill ___, ___ and ___.
The two professors who offered the first digital literacy course in the early 1960s were ___ and ___.

13. Resources
Peter Norvig, The 100,000-student classroom. This is a six-minute TED talk describing the MOOC Norvig and a colleague taught at Stanford along with some of the principles that guided the course design.
Posts on our class blog regarding MOOCs:
Transcript of talk by Peter Norvig:
History of the Dartmouth time sharing system:
Kemeney and Kurtz article on their course and time sharing system:
A longer description of the content of our course:
A short paper on the evolution and content of the digital literacy course: