It is a pleasure having you in my class and I look forward to getting to know you. Students who have taken this class often say they learned a lot more than they expected to and the class was really helpful.
For the past ten years, I have taught essential computer skills at Trinity. I also taught computer science here in the early 1980s.
My experience with computers began in 1962 when I was a co-op student working for the Navy on IBMs first commercial computer used for business. Our mission was to silence the noise on submarines so they would not be detected in enemy waters. The computer had 8K of memory - that's about 8,000 bytes. It took up a physical space larger than our classroom and was so expensive it could only be leased. My desktop computer has 2 gigabyte of memory - that's about 2,000,000,000 bytes. We've come a long way.
During the Viet Nam War I worked for the National Security Agency as a cryptanalyst. NSA is a sister agency to the CIA. The job was to "read other people's mail" and be sure that no one could read ours. Of course, they didn't have email then and the Internet didn't exist yet. That would happen 30 years later.
My educational background is in mathematics and I've taught both math (mostly calculus) and computer science. There were no computer science classes when I was in school. We had to learn on our own and from each other. We still learn that way. This semester we will be learning Office 2007, Expression Web, Adobe Photoshop Elements 5. Next semester we will be changing to the Vista Operating System. You may already have that. Undoubtedly, there will be new threats to your computer and you will get up-to-date information on how to protect yourself.
Please keep in touch, work hard, and enjoy!
Pat Semmes
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
