Welcome to "Computers for Poets"

Catalog description

CSC 310 Computers for Poets (4) GE Area F

How computers and computer devices work. Introduction to software systems and applications. How computers connect with various media including images, speech and data. How information is encoded and transmitted across networks. Relationship between the computer and human information processing. 4 lectures. Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of GE Area B.

Instructors - current and recent

Robert Ross (owner of this web page)
Kurt Voelker
Julie Workman

Textbook

Snyder, Fluency with information technology, 3rd edition (Pearson/Addison Wesley, 2008); ISBN-10: 0-321-51239-1; website: http://www.aw.com/snyder/

Course Overview

No, the course isn’t just for poets: The word "poets" is geekspeak for "non-geeks".

The course has three intertwined themes, each of which run though most of the ten weeks of the term, and each of which occupies roughly one third of the course: (1) how computer stuff works; (2) history and social implications; and (3) making a Web page and adding things (including some animation) to it, to provide a bit of experience with computer programming. A bit of low-stress (we hope!) programming is included because having some experience with the details of computer programs is important in understanding how computers work.

In keeping with its role as a course fulfilling Area F of Cal Poly’s General Education requirements, the emphasis in the course will differ somewhat from that of the textbook in spending additional time on the history of computing and on how the technology of computing relates to the science you learned while fulfilling GE Area B.

This is not a course in how to use software such as Excel and PowerPoint. For that you should take CSC 110.

Syllabus - Spring 2009

Instructor's blog

announcements and "what happened in class" summaries for Ross's section, Spring 2009

Blogs (Web logs) from recent times Ross has taught 310:
  Winter 2007   Winter 2008   Spring 2008   Winter 2009

Code examples: HTML and JavaScript

How to

Resources on how to do it

More about

Resources to help you understand it

Course content

detailed textbook readings and a vocabulary list