Meaningful Topics I Learned in CISB 11

My experience in this class has been bittersweet. Many of the topics that were on the syllabus seemed like a piece of cake, and I believed I already knew most of what was to be thought. Now I bite my tongue because 90% of this course was new information to me and has been a great help, not only now but will be in the future. A major topic for me that I learned about was all the different ways a computer stores information. I already knew basics like there are hard drives and RAM but I didn’t completely understand how those systems worked. Before this class all I knew about RAM was that the more Ram the better, even though I had no clue why. I learned that RAM is much more important than I once believed. It can be also called main memory since it is used to store the essential parts of the operating system while a computer is running. Ram is made up of chips just like the CPU and are arranged into circuit boards. On top of all this information, I learned that there isn’t just one type of RAM; however the most common are SDRAM like DDR and DDR2. The newest is DDR3 which is twice as fast while using the same power. So next time I go to look for a new computer I’ll know what to look for instead of just guessing. This will definitely help me out in the long run, since I want to become an ATC. All we do is work with computers, so I need to know what to look for and how to keep up with technology.

Another important topic covered by CISB 11 was how different display technologies work. For example, I now know that LCD stands for liquid crystal displays and use charged liquid crystals between two sheets of clear material to light up the pixels and form an image. While LED stands for light emitting diode and OLED is organic light emitting diode. This technology has been around for a while and are beginning to be used to backlight LCD panels, digital cameras, Christmas lights, television sets, car headlights and even clothes. LED’s do not produce light while OLED’s emit visible light and do not use backlighting. FOLEDs are a flexible form of OLEDs and can be used to create flexible displays on plastic or another type of flexible material, while TOLEDs are a form of OLEDs that are used to make transparent displays. All this information on how different forms of displays work and what they are used for can come in handy in everyday life for me. I now know how technology I use works and what it is called, instead of just calling everything screens and not knowing how they work or how to fix them if broken. This is another example of just one of the many topics I have learned about during this course.

Before attending this class, I didn’t even really know that there were operating systems besides Windows and Mac. Linux is an operating systems designed by Linus Torvalds in 1991. It was released to the public as open source software and can be modified to improve it or to customize a particular application. Most recent versions use a graphical user interface and almost all of the versions of Linux are available as free downloads on the internet. Some of the most popular distributions are Red Hat and Novell. One reason users switch to Linux is because of cost, typically it is free for users and you can have all the same software as Microsoft. Linux can even be used on mobile phones. Microsoft plans to work with Novell in order to increase document compatibility between Microsoft office and OpenOffice.Org− the open source productivity suite bundled with many Linux distributions. This doesn’t really affect me now all that much since I am happy with my Microsoft products, but if I even decided to change to a new system I now have more choices other than Mac.

Lastly, I have learned how to create my own webpage through this course. It is something I have always wanted to learn how to do but was never quite sure how to start. This class gave me the tools I need to create a basic yet working webpage to display information. We were taught what format to save documents in, in order to upload them to the website without problems. As well as how to create navigation links to other pages that I have uploaded to my site. I now have the knowledge I need to succeed in creating web pages thanks to this class. I didn’t think that I would leave with much new information, but as it turns out I barely even had skimmed the surface of all the technologies that are available to me. However thanks to this class I’m leaving with a better understanding of computers and how to execute it into my everyday life.