Course Summary

First, some of the skills used during this course included:

• email
• critical evaluation of the work of others
• importance of self-motivation and self-discipline for students
• introduction to resources (such as tutorial web sites and Internet searches) that can be used to continue life-long learning

Second, the basic skills of a highly demanded computer language were taught. During the course, proper programming techniques were emphasized and the principles of structured programming languages were discussed. Students demonstrated the ability to design, construct, debug and maintain web pages.

Third, an essential part of any learning experience is the teaching of problem-solving skills. Other authors will use different terms for the steps in the problem-solving process. Some use 4 steps and others use 6 or 7. We just call them the 5-D's, they are:

• define the problem
• design a solution
• do it (or develop the solution)
• debug and test
• document and maintain

A fourth objective of this material involves discussion of the effects of technology on society. We emphasized the effect of email on society, the digital divide, computer crime, viruses and other topics.

An interesting phenomena is occurring in technology. As our society exhibits a voracious demand for IT (Information Technology) workers, the demand out strips the supply. Employers are looking to the global labor market to fill its needs. As a result, industry offers certain incentives to those who are interested in IT careers. Instead of earning college degrees, most IT workers earn credentials or certifications. Microsoft, A+, and Novell certifications are in great demand.

An ever present element in a programming course is the technical difficulties that seem to arise at the most inopportune time. The ability to effectively deal with these major irritations is a skill that must be learned by those who will continue in any field that relies on technology.

As we will look toward the future, we ask "Where do you go from here if you want to write web pages?"
First of all, you now have a good understanding of the overall web page design process. One of the next things that you will want to investigate will be HTML editors.

In this course, we used HTML to introduce the concept of computer programming and to teach basic computer programming techniques. As you probably already know, there are easier ways to write web pages. Again, the primary purpose of this course was to teach the concepts of programming and, in the process, we used HTML as the language of choice. Since we have finished the course and some may want to continue writing web pages, then we want to give a list of the HTML editors that you may want to investigate.

We will start with the simplest - which you have already used - and that is NOTEPAD. NOTEPAD is a simple ASCII text editor. You can not get any simpler than that.
A step up from NOTEPAD is a word processing editor such as MS WORD or WordPerfect. Converting a document to HTML is as easy as clicking on FILE in the menu bar and selecting SAVE AS HTML.
In addition, there are many additional tools:
GEOCITIES - as you have noticed, Geocities has several tools that will help you to write a web page
NETSCAPE - if you use Netscape as your browser, then you can use COMPOSER to create web pages. Netscape is freeware, it can be downloaded from many sites.
FRONTPAGE EXPRESS - if you use Internet Explorer as your browser, then FrontPage Express is included with that browser.

In general, these editors are adequate for most design and writing tasks, but they do not include all of the features which are available in commercial editors.

FRONTPAGE - the full version of FrontPage allows the writer/creator to do much more than can be done with the EXPRESS version. Sometimes, these added features are valuable and in other applications, they are not needed.
DREAMWEAVER - this Macromedia product does an excellent job of helping the webmaster to design, create and manage a Web site. Macromedia also makes some additional Web tools which aid in the creation of FLASH programs.

As we conclude this course, we realize that this will be the last computer science course for some of our students; we also realize that it will be one of many courses for other students. However, it doesn't matter which group you are in - for the rest of your life, you will need to be able to work with the Internet. The Internet is composed of Web pages written and stored on millions of Web sites. The knowledge, skills and experiences from this course will help you as you work with (or cope with) this tremendous information source.
In education, the term that is often used is "life-long learning". We hope that this course has helped to prepare you for a life of learning.

Just-in-time learning systems deliver training to workers when and where they need it. Rather than sitting through hours of traditional classroom training, users can tap into online courses, interactive CD-ROMs and other tools to zero in on the specific training that they need to solve problems, perform specific tasks or quickly update their skills.

The most important goals for any course are to:

• teach the terms and concepts relating to the topic being studied
• help develop the problem-solving and critical-thinking skills which are needed in life
• create the desire to continue learning - sometimes called life-long learning

Course Competencies