Project 1 – Information about Me and my Computer
This intention of this short note is to provide you with information about me, my educational and career goals, why this course is important, my experience in the information technology field, jobs I have had, my interests, and the computer hardware and software I use. Education never stops and teaching provides the incentive to continue to learn. CIT 120 is a good breadth course that attempts to keep students informed about information technology and since computers seem to be a driving force in today’s economy and society, it is definitely a worthwhile course. Teaching is my second career. After working at a single company for 33 years, I retired and started teaching full time. So between my stint at Lucent and my years here at CLC, I have been in the computer field for 48 years. My interests are varied including sports, grandkids, woodworking and woodcarving, and technology.
One of the goals of a college education is to teach students how to learn throughout their life. Since technology has made change the ever-present drive in the world, it means we will need to continue to learn to stay up with change or get left behind with jobs requiring lower skill and lower pay. When I was industry and because the company I worked for liked to stay at the leading edge of technology, I was forced to continue learning more and more about computers and how they interacted with our company business. Now that I teach, especially in the field of information technology, I need to keep up with changes in the information technology field to provide my students with current and meaningful knowledge about hardware, software, and business. So my educational and career goals combine to drive me to provide an excellent education in information technology for my students.
My current educational goals include improving my teaching techniques and acquiring information about new techniques in programming, system analysis and design, web programming, and networking. The latest craze in education is collaborative learning primarily using Web 2.0 applications. This places the burden of learning on the student and changes the role of the teacher to that of a facilitator rather than a lecturer. As my daughter is a doctor in a small office, I am also interested in how computers have insinuated themselves into just about every aspect of medicine. The medical information systems field will continue to grow for years as health organizations meet federal standards, decrease costs, and improve communication between the different entities involved in providing medical services for patients.
CIT 120 is an excellent course for supporting my educational and career goals. It is a breadth course covering many aspects of computing while attempting to keep up to date with advances in technology. So this course permits me to examine hardware, software, communication, system and program development, and the impact these have on society. I enjoy this course because of this breadth and its incentive to keep learning.
My first career contributed quite a bit of computer knowledge. I have programmed in Assembler, Cobol, Fortran, PL/1, Pascal, Basic, Snobol, Spitbol, Awk, Icon, C, C++, and Visual Basic. I have worked with database management systems since 1969 and was a member of the American National Standards Institute's Database System Study Group. I was the Chairperson for the IEEE Computer Society in Chicago and worked on several national conference committees. My second career has helped expand my knowledge base about computers. The computer field is constantly evolving introducing new programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, C#, and Python. One of the problems with teaching computer courses involves the constant modification to the course content as new languages, database management systems, distributed processing, and layered architectures must be incorporated into the existing material. Of course, it is this constant change that keeps my interest piqued.
I worked at Lucent Technology in my first career. My various positions included programming, system analysis and design, system architecture, project leader, database administrator and internal consultant. Most of the projects I worked on supported telephony systems but several of the projects supported manufacturing, ordering, and warranty. A couple of the projects included where our development team was responsible for every aspect of the information system application while in the other projects our team had only a small portion of the overall information system and we needed to incorporate our application into a much larger information system. The best project I worked on was the Enhanced 911 system. Our team had full responsibility for every aspect of the system except one. It was a small project using about 20 people to develop, implement, document and train. E911 has been sold to another company but my brother-in-law is still involved with the product. Working at Lucent provided a broad understanding of business as I developed systems for engineering, customer ordering and support, manufacturing, field support, and products.
As I was still working at Lucent, I began to think that I would like to teach. To check whether teaching would be a good profession for me, I taught part-time at the College of DuPage. I loved teaching and determined that I would get a full-time position somewhere when I retired from my programming career. I am in my sixteenth year of teaching full-time here and still enjoy the challenge of teaching and the chance to develop new courses. I figure I have about 5 to 10 more years of teaching in me.
My wife complains that I spend too much of my time on teaching but I do have other interests. Besides acquiring new knowledge about the computing fields, I enjoy gardening, photography, woodworking, and woodcarving. I am not an expert in any of these fields but I am continually learning more about them. My kids and their families keep me busy as well. Unfortunately, they have now moved further away from my wife and me so I really do enjoy the time when we are able to get together. My exercise consists of playing volleyball every Wednesday night at the Advanced Power Volleyball class here on campus when they are conducting the class.
I develop most of the course material on my computers at home. My primary computer uses an Intel core i7-4820K processor, a SSD, and a high end video card. My secondary computer uses an Intel core i7-3770K processor. Both processors have been overclocked. I do have four computers in my home office area – my primary and secondary computers described below, my wife’s previous laptop running Win XP Pro, and my wife’s new laptop running Windows 7 Pro. Besides that I have a Windows 8.1 Pro tablet, an Android tablet, and an iPod Touch. You might say I have too much technology.
The sample information below is from two computers in my house, not one of the lab computers. This is done purposely to eliminate students copying the information from the first column below to your document as the information about the lab computer. So please do not copy it and send it in with your submission. You will receive a zero for Project 1.
Hardware and Software Information ListRequested Information / Information about the lab computer done during class / Information about your computer
Type of computer: Desktop, all-in-one, laptop or notebook, netbook, tablet,etc / Desktop / Desktop
OS Name / Windows 7 Professional / Windows 8.1 Enterprise
OS Version / 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601 / 6.3.9600 Build 9600
System Name / JOHN-OC / JOHN4820
Processor - Intel/AMD dual-core/quad-core / Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.50 GHz, 4 cores, 8 logical processors / Intel Core i7-4820K @ 3.70 GHz, 4 cores, 8 logical processors
Total physical memory / 8 GB / 16 GB
Total virtual memory / 15.9 GB / 31.9 GB
Drive letter, type of drive, capacity, free space, filesystem / HD - C: NTFS - 99GB / 29GB, / SSD - C: NTFS - 223 GB / 105 GB
Drive letter, type of drive, capacity, free space, filesystem / HD – D: NTFS – 931 GB / 806 GB / BD-RW/DVD-RW – D:
Drive letter, type of drive, capacity, free space, filesystem / eSATA HD – G: NTFS – 465 GB / 171 GB / SSD – E: NTFS – 232 GB / 165 GB
Drive letter, type of drive, capacity, free space, filesystem / NAS HD – W: NTFS \\NASDRV\My Book / HD – F: NTFS – 298 GB / 221 GB
Drive letter, type of drive, capacity, free space, filesystem / DVD-RW – E: / USB J: NTFS – 698 GB / 394 GB
Drive letter, type of drive, capacity, free space, filesystem / Software: CloneDrive – DVD-RW – F: / NAS HD – W: NTFS \\NASDRV\My Book
Number of connectors and types of connectors on your system box or case / Front – 2 USB3.0, microphone, headset
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Back – 4 USB2.0, 4 USB3.0, 1 PS/2, 1 D-Sub, 1 DVI-D, 1 HDMI,1 RJ-45, 1 S.PDIF Out, 5 audio jacks / Front – 2 USB3.0, 2 USB2.0, microphone, headset
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Back –8USB2.0, 2 USB3.0, 2 eSATA, 1 PS/2, 1 RJ-45, 1 optical S.PDIF Out, 1 coaxial S.PDIF Out, 6 audio jacks
Type of monitor: CRT or flat-panel / 2 LCD / 2 LCD
Size of monitor measured diagonally in inches / 24”
21” / 25”
21.5”
Screen resolution / 1920x1080
1600xx1200 / 2560x1080
1920x1080
Video card or display adapter name / AMD Radeon HD 7700 / AMD Radeon HD 7900
Screen saver used / None / Blank
Energy saving settings for display and drives / Monitor – 45 minutes
Sleep - never / Monitor – 1 hour
Sleep – 3 hours
Type of pointing device / Mouse – shared via MS software: Mouse without Borders / Mouse – shared via MS software: Mouse without Borders
Number of buttons used by pointing device / 2 / 2
Scroll wheel - vertical and/or horizontal scrolling / Vertical / vertical
Wired or wireless mouse connection / Wireless / wireless
Number of keys on keyboard / 104 + 11 / 104 + 11
Straight-across or U-shaped layout / Straight – shared via MS software: Mouse without Borders / Straight – shared via MS software: Mouse without Borders
Wired or wireless keyboard connection / Wireless / wireless
Type of printer: inkjet, laserjet, dot-matrix / Networked Inkjet / Networked Inkjet
Type and number of ink supplies / 4 – Black, cyan, magenta, yellow / 4 – Black, cyan, magenta, yellow
Printer photo capable / No / No
Name of Internet Service Provider / Mediacom / Mediacom
Download speed/upload speed / 19.71 / 2.71 / 24.01 / 2.28
Wired or wireless connection to this computer / Wired / Wired
Home network – wired, wireless, both – or how are all the other computers in your home network connected / 1900AC router – wireless and wired / 1900AC router – wireless and wired
Other devices such as webcam, speakers, hubs, graphic tablets / USB2.0 hub, 2 speakers / USB2.0 hub, Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet, Logitech Webcam, 2 speakers
Version of MS Word / Word 2013 – 15.0.4675.11 / Word 2013 – 15.0.4675.11
Name and version of Virus protection package / Avira Free Antivirus 15.0.17.273 / AVG 2015 Free Edition 2015.0.5577
Preferred web browser and version of this browser / Firefox - 32.0.3 / Chrome – 39.0.2171.95
Name and version of one other application on your computer / Visual Studio Community 2015
Version – 14.0.23107.0 / Visual Studio 2013
Version – 12.0.30501.00 Update 2
John R. North15-14-2016