Dr. Laurence BoxerCIS 132 – Spring ’05Page 1 of 34

CIS 132 G

Dr. Laurence Boxer

e-mail:

phone: 286-8447

Web:

Blackboard is an electronic bulletin board system (BBS) available through the World Wide Web at . Thus, you may reach Blackboard either by typing this address into a browser’s Address space, or by clicking a link to it (there’s a Blackboard link on the NU home page). At the Blackboard home page, click the Login button to start the process of “logging in” – unlocking your account on Blackboard. Proceed as follows:

  • Enter your USERNAME. For a Niagara student, your USERNAME takes the form

sXXXXXXXwhere “XXXXXXX” is your 7-digit student number. For example, if your student number is 34567, your USERNAME is s0034567.

  • Enter your PASSWORD. If you’ve never changed your password, it’s of the form

ddssss

where “dd” is your 2-digit day of the month of your birthdate, and “ssss” is the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number. So, for example, if your birthday is Feb. 4 and your SSN ends 7890, then your default password is 047890.

  • Either strike the Enter key or click Login button to arrive at a page with a listing of links to your Blackboard “courses.” At the moment, the link to your CIS 132 course hasn’t been set up.

Some important features of a Blackboard course and how I use them:

  • Course Information: I use this button’s area for a link to a course syllabus.
  • Staff Information – contains my contact points (phone, e-mail, office location & hours, Web site).
  • Assignments – instructions for all homework assignments will be placed here.
  • Communications – among its tools, an e-mail capability.
  • Tools, Personal Information, Edit Personal Information – may be used to change your personal information. For example, if you prefer to receive e-mail at an address other than your campus e-mail address, change the e-mail address accordingly and click Submit.
  • Tools, Personal Information, Change Password – may be used to change your Blackboard password. Your password is analogous to the key to your home – you don’t make it available to strangers. To change your password, enter the new password into both the Password textbox and the Verify Password textbox, then click Submit. Assuming the two entries agree, your password is immediately changed, so the next time you login to Blackboard, you’ll have to do so using the new password.
  • External links – has links to various essays on my Web site meant to help/advise students.

When you’re done using Blackboard, click the Logout button. This locks up your Blackboard account. Depending on the security with which your Web browser has been configured, it may be that clicking the browser’s Back button would take you back into your Blackboard account. To prevent the possibility of this happening (perhaps by another person sitting at the same computer and clicking the Back button), it’s wise to exit the browser.

Basic terminology for this course includes names of computer hardware and software components, such as:

  • Keyboard: Includes the standard typewriter keys used to enter data, as well as a numeric keypad; special keys such as Ctrl (control), Alt (like Shift in that by themselves they don’t do much of anything, but if you hold any of them down while you strike another key, you may find that result of the other key is altered (for example, just as Shift-a produces “A” instead “a”, Ctrl and Alt also alter the usual result of other keys). Other important keys include Esc (escape), typically used to let you change your mind about your previous choice, function keys F1 through F12 (typically used to invoke advanced functions of the program you’re using);arrow keys and Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down – these are typically used for editing and moving the “cursor,” etc.
  • The “screen” or “monitor” or “CRT” (Cathode Ray Tube, although today’s monitor’s generally don’t use CRT technology) gives us a view of a program’s “input” and “output” – the flow of information between the program and the human user.
  • The “box” contains the Central Processing Unit (CPU) – the unit of the computer that processes the data, doing all calculations and cooperating with input and output devices in communications of data; primary or main memory (RAM – random access memory), used to store the programs and their data that are currently active in the computer; secondary memory devices including various disk drives, such as

Floppy disk – today’s technology allows 1.4 megabytes of data to be stored on a floppy disk. Typically, that might be enough for perhaps 25 to 200 pages of word processing data, depending on font size, styles, and your use of other features that may take a lot of memory.

USB stick or “thumb drive” – can be plugged into a computer’s USB port. With a USB stick of 128 megabytes, you can store much more data than on a floppy disk.

Hard drive (typically, the C: drive): Typically not portable, so it’s usually considered part of its computer. A hard drive typically has a lot of memory, and fast save and retrieve operations.

Zip drives: Typically, a Zip disk stores 100 to 250 megabytes. The popularity of USB sticks is resulting in decreasing popularity of zip disks.

CD (compact disk) and DVD (digital video disk) drives. Such disks are usually (not always) used as read-only disks – that is, you retrieve data from these disks, but usually don’t save new data to them.

  • Mouse – a device for “pointing and clicking.” We can move a pointing symbol, called a “cursor,” around the monitor by moving the mouse. By clicking with (usually the left) mouse button, we can do useful things like moving a data-entry cursor or select from a “menu.” The right mouse button is usually associated with a menu of a program’s advanced features. If you wish to choose from this menu, typically you do so by reverting to the left mouse button.
  • A menu: a list of choices. Typically, a user makes a selection by placing the mouse cursor over the selection and clicking (sometime, double-clicking – clicking twice in rapid succession).
  • Windows: Microsoft’s operating system – a large computer program that manages fundamental operations of the computer such as starting (“booting”) up, shutting down, handling fundamental input and output operations including saving files and retrieving files, and many others. A windowing operating system such as Windows or the Macintosh operating system allows use of multiple “windows” – displays of programs and/or the data a program operates on – simultaneously. For example, we can work on multiple documents within the same program (like Word) in different document windows; we can also work on different application programs in different windows. Note the “taskbar” that is (usually at the bottom of the screen) has a button for each active window. By clicking on these buttons, we can shift our attention among the active windows. The capability for using multiple windows simultaneously is called “multi-tasking.” Notice also the button at the top right corner of a program window. These include the Minimize button (looks like _ or – character) lets you “fold up” the window, whose view can be restored by a click on its button on the taskbar. Note also the Restore Down/Maximize button lets us shrink a window so it doesn’t take up the full screen or, respectively, restore the window to a full-screen view. Note also that a window not in full-screen view can be dragged around the screen by holding down the left mouse button while its cursor is on the window’s top edge region and drag the mouse. We can also resize a non-full-screen window by position the mouse on an edge of the window and holding down the left mouse button while dragging in either a stretching or shrinking direction.

Introduction to Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is an example of a word processing program, designed to improve upon the technology of typewriting as a means of preparing text documents. Before the rise of personal computers, typewriting was the preferred technology (above the level of handwriting) for the preparation of text documents. Word processing has many advantages over typewriting, including:

  • Ease of correction and revision
  • Ease of creating “non-standard” effects such as boldface, italics, underlining, change of font style, change of font color, change of font size, highlighting; including changing our minds about any of the above already introduced into the document.
  • Writing tools such as spelling and grammar checkers, word counters, thesaurus, etc.
  • Shortcuts such as copy-and-paste, cut-and-paste, find-and-replace, etc.
  • Ability to save and retrieve a document.
  • Etc.

A “page header” is data to appear at the top of (often) every page of the document; a “page footer” is data to appear at the bottom of (often) every page. In Word, you may edit page headers and footers as follows:

  • Click View, Header and Footer.
  • An editing area for the page header appears. If we wish to switch between editing the header and editing the footer, click the button on the toolbox that makes this switch (between header and footer).
  • Both the header and footer are divided into Left, Center, and Right areas that may be navigated by using the Tab key or a mouse click.
  • Any appropriate text may be entered into any of these areas.
  • Note the button on the toolbar with the # symbol – if you click it, it results in the page number being displayed.
  • The toolbar with the ++ icon allows you to display the number of pages in the document.
  • Use the Close button to finish editing headers and footers.

Save a document: The easiest way is to click the Save button (looks like a floppy disk). If you haven’t previously saved your file, you must direct your file to the right disk (and possibly the right folder on that disk), give your file a name, and you may have to choose a file type (although, often, the default file type, Word document, will be appropriate); finally, click the Save button on the dialogbox. If this is not the first time the file has been saved and you wish to save as before, just click the Save button; the information described above is assumed, so need not be supplied again.

It’s wise to save your work every few minutes. This is so that in case of catastrophe, only the last few minutes of your work would be unsaved. By contrast, if you have been editing a document for several hours without saving and have a catastrophe, then several hours worth of work are lost to you.

Retrieve a document: This may done in either of the following ways:

  1. On the “desktop,” click the My Computer button. This opens a “menu” of your available disks and network spaces. Select the one that contains your file via a “double-click” of the mouse. This will bring up a menu of files and “folders” (a folder or “directory” is an organized collection of files, and, possibly, subfolders) on the selected disk. If necessary, choose the appropriate folder (double-click). When you reach the desired file, double-click on it.
  2. From within the Word program, click Open (the button with the open folder symbol), and then use the resulting dialogbox in a fashion similar to that described in the previous item. When we find the desired file, we can either double-click on it, or single-click to focus attention on it and then click the dialogbox’ Open button.

Moving around a document is done in variety of ways, including:

  • As mentioned above, click with the mouse to move the data-entry cursor to the location of the mouse cursor.
  • Small moves can be done using the arrow keys (one character to the left or right using left-arrow and right-arrow keys, respectively, with circular wraparound to the end of the previous line from the start of the current line for left-arrow; to the start of the next line from the end of the previous line for the right-arrow); one line up or down using the up-arrow or down-arrow keys, respectively. You can hold down the Ctrl key while striking any of the arrow keys to move a word left (left-arrow), a word right (right-arrow), a paragraph upwards (up-arrow), or a paragraph downwards (down-arrow). This also illustrates that the Ctrl key is somewhat like the Shift key, in that neither does much by itself, but if held down when you strike another key, will alter the result of the other key. (A similar remark is true of the Alt key.)
  • Intermediate-sized moves: The Home key is used to move the data-entry cursor to the left end of the current line. The End key takes you to the right end of the current line. The Page Up key moves you upwards by about a screen’s worth of data; similarly for Page Down in the downward direction.
  • Large moves: Ctrl-Home moves us to the start of the document; Ctrl-End moves us to the end of the document.
  • You can use a Find operation to move your cursor to the next instance of a specified character string (which may be a word, fragment of a word, or a phrase). This is done as follows: Click Edit, Find. A dialogbox appears. If necessary, click the Find tab to bring it forward. In the textbox labeled “Find what:” enter the character string you wish to find. Click Find Next. The cursor advances to the next occurrence (if one exists in the document) of the specified character string. If this is not in the desired place, you can click Find Next again to advance to the next occurrence of the sought character string. If the character string sought can’t be found in the document, a message to that effect appears.
  • You might also scroll with the scrollbar and click the mouse to move the data-entry cursor to a desired location.

Some special font effects:

All of the effects described below may be selected either in advance of entering the text, or after the text has been entered. Also, all may easily be reversed, if you change your mind about their use.

  • The B button is used for boldfacing. If we click it on before typing, subsequent text is displayed in boldface. Alternately, we can enter the text, then arrange for it to appear in boldface as follows: Hold down the left mouse button while dragging the mouse cursor over the block of text to appear in boldface; then click the B button. To reverse the use of boldfacing, drag the mouse highlight as described above over the boldfaced block and then click the boldface button.
  • The I button is used to introduce or remove the italic effect. As with boldfacing, it may be introduced either before or after the text to which it is to be applied; and it may reversed in a fashion similar to the reversal of boldfacing.
  • The U button is used to introduce underlining. As above, it may be introduced either before or after its text is entered. It may be reversed as described above.
  • There’s also a highlighter effect that can be applied only to text already entered. Note you can choose the highlight color from the menu of colors accessible through the highlight button’s drop-down menu. The None selection of color is used to reverse highlighting. If you use a color printer, your document will print in the colors that appear on your screen. If you a monochrome (black-an-white) printer, your colors will print in shades of gray, according to the darkness of your color selection.
  • The Font button is a combobox – a button with a drop-down arrow that, when clicked, reveals a menu. You can select from a large number of font styles. I’m currently using the Times New Roman; here’s some text in the Albertus style; the Courier New style has the property that all characters have the same width, which can be useful when you’re entering data that you want to align in column. Now back to Times New Roman.
  • The Font Size combobox can be used to change the size of the font. Here’s some 14-point text. Now back to the original font size.
  • Here’s some text in red. The font color can be changed by using the Font Color button. Its drop-down arrow yields a color menu.

Some important writing tools include the following:

  • The Spelling and Grammar checker can be used in a couple of ways. One: notice things that appear with wavy underlines. A red wavy underline indicates a possibly-misspelled word. A green wavy underline indicates a possible error in grammar. Another way to use the spelling and grammar checker is to click the sequence Tools, Spelling and Grammar. Whathappens is the following. The entire document is scanned if no block of text was mouse-highlighted; or we can restrict the checker to a highlighted section of the document. Each questionable instance is called to your attention. You may instruct the tool to ignore the instance (leaving it alone), or you may accept a suggestion and click Change to have the suggestion substituted, or you may edit the error yourself and click Change. Note these tools aren’t perfect. The grammar checker in particular will miss many errors, and will highlight many words or phrases that are not in error. The spelling checker will also make some errors. For example, the word “combobox” is not in the spell-checker’s dictionary, hence is displayed with the red wavy underline. Also, if we enter “I went to there home,” neither the spell-checker nor the grammar-checker has flagged the mistake (should be “their” instead of “there”).
  • Tools, Word Count is a fast way to learn the number of words in your document.
  • There’s a thesaurus available that can supply you with both synonyms and antonyms. Typical use: you have a dull word you’d like to replace with a more appealing word. Block (put under the mouse highlight) the word (or phrase) you wish to replace, then click Tools, Language, Thesaurus. The Research “task pane” appears. We can select a desired synonym (or antonym), click the drop-down arrow, and choose Insert. The substitution is made.

Copy-and-Paste and cut-and-paste are tools that can be used to save time, when you wish to duplicate or move data, respectively. These operations are performed quite similarly, and may be applied within a document or between documents (even if the documents are not from the same application).