Basic Computer Science for GIS Users

• Introduction and rationale for this class
• Required for the listed CWU classes

• Computers: definition and uses
• Classes of Computers
• Computer Hardware
• Data storage: bits, bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes.
• ASCII vs binary
• Graphics – pixels, dpi, color depth.
• Printing
• Software: OS, applications, programming.
• Files: definition, naming, extensions, management, drives
• Graphics file formats and file compression.
• Viruses and computer security
• A very brief history of computing
• Very basic statistics
• The core rules of Netiquette. Also, visitt wikipedia's site - which includes links to many other pages.

I also highly suggest you purchase and read the below text. 95%+ of the material in this course is in this book - along with a lot of other good material. Anyone working in IT should be at least familiar with everything in the book.

• Beekman, George, 2005, Computer Confluence: Exploring Tomorrow's Technology. 7th Edition, Prentice Hall. (the earlier versions provide good info too! Certainly the 5th edition or more recent. (update: name change to "Tomorrow's Technology and You" (8th Edition), 2007.)

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