SURFING'S NOT AN ELECTIVE; COMPUTER LITERACY A MUST AT TODAY'S WIRED UNIVERSITIES.Byline: David Bloom David Bloom (May 22, 1963 – April 6, 2003) was an NBC journalist (co-anchor of Weekend Today and reporter) until his sudden death in 2003 at the age of 39. Early life Daily News Staff Writer As a UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX freshman in 1994, Anna McDivit arrived on campus thinking a computer wasn't that vital for her pre-med studies. An uncle's ancient Apple II was enough to pound out term papers but little else. Now, four years later and a quarter away from graduation, the Brentwood student thinks differently. On her Toshiba laptop, she runs spreadsheets on biology experiments, databases for contact lists, a Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. for research online and e-mail to keep in touch with friends, family and teachers. ``(The campus has) definitely become more computer literate computer literacy n. The ability to operate a computer and to understand the language used in working with a specific system or systems. computer literate adj. ,'' McDivit said. ``It's a good way to educate you on the importance of computers, and it makes information way more readily accessible. It's made a big difference.'' Her personal revolution matches that of UCLA, the Internet's birthplace and now site of a far-reaching effort to transform education with technology. UCLA ranked 23rd among the ``100 Most Wired Campuses'' in the country and second in the area only to seventh-ranked California Institute of Technology California Institute of Technology, at Pasadena, Calif.; originally for men, became coeducational in 1970; founded 1891 as Throop Polytechnic Institute; called Throop College of Technology, 1913–20. in a recent study by the magazine Yahoo! Internet Life Yahoo! Internet Life was a monthly magazine published by Ziff-Davis, which licensed the name from Yahoo!, a well known search engine website. It was created and launched by Barry Golson, the former executive editor of Playboy and TV guide. . All 3,000 of UCLA's classes now have World Wide Web sites, each with at least a syllabus and general reference links, said Brian Copenhaver, provost of UCLA's College of Letters and Science. The most sophisticated sites have far more: class readings, book lists, links to educational software, additional assignments and even discussion areas, Copenhaver said. A Web of scholars Each student gets a lengthy personal Web site with that quarter's course schedule and areas devoted to add/drop requests and status, scheduling for academic counseling and exams, links to many basic reference sites and campus organizations, online subscriptions to publications such as the Daily Bruin The Daily Bruin (also known as The Bruin) is the student newspaper at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. When classes are in session, it publishes Monday through Friday during the school year and once a week on Mondays in the summer quarter. and much more, Copenhaver said. ``Digital technology, Web-based communications, are very important for us to understand as a very powerful supplement to the core educational experience,'' Copenhaver said. ``It can in many, many ways improve what we're doing.'' UCLA may be one of the most ambitious but is far from the only area college diving into Information Age technology for education, spurred by the Internet explosion The period of tremendous growth of the Internet in the latter half of the 1990s. In the 1994-1996 time frame, it changed from a scientific and governmental research network to a commercial and consumer marketplace. of the past few years, said Kenneth Green of the Campus Computing Project, which surveys computerization com·put·er·ize tr.v. com·put·er·ized, com·put·er·iz·ing, com·put·er·iz·es 1. To furnish with a computer or computer system. 2. To enter, process, or store (information) in a computer or system of computers. by about 650 colleges. ``Students have access to rich content on the Web,'' said Green. ``It's making for some very striking and even significant changes in education.'' Increasingly, college officials report, their students are arriving on campus with a computer in hand, or at least the skills to use the machines most schools make available in labs, libraries and student unions. Green said nationwide about half of all students now come to campus owning a computer. And for those without machines, schools are putting millions of dollars into outfitting computer labs for campus have-nots. ``Students are expecting these things "These Things" is an EP by She Wants Revenge, released in 2005 by Perfect Kiss, a subsidiary of Geffen Records. Music Video The music video stars Shirley Manson, lead singer of the band Garbage. Track Listing 1. "These Things [Radio Edit]" - 3:17 2. now,'' Green said. ``They're coming to campuses not just to learn about technology but to learn with it. You don't have to be a geek A technically oriented person. It has typically implied a "nerdy" or "weird" personality, someone with limited social skills who likes to tinker with scientific or high-tech projects. The origin of the term dates back to the late 1800s. to use it anymore.'' Most schools give students an e-mail account e-mail account n → cuenta de correo , allowing them to swap messages with professors (many of whom hold online office hours office hours, n.pl See business hours. ), each other and the outside world. And most provide some sort of access to campus library collections and the Internet. In some places, the schools are forcing computer skills on students. At Woodbury University The creator of this article, or someone who has substantially contributed to it, may have a conflict of interest regarding its subject matter. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. in Burbank, all freshmen must lease from the school laptop computers, Internet access and a package of basic software, said academic vice president Zelda Gilbert. Older students don't face the same requirements but will be forced onto computers to get more and more class information and assignments, Gilbert said. At the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission , about three-fourths of students have their own computers, said Phil Reese, executive director of the school's information infrastructure. Despite that, the school's computer labs are busier than ever, as students pop in to check e-mail, write or use the computers' fast modems and phone lines to do quick research. ``Students are much more wired than we think they are,'' Reese said. This year, USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. bought a campus-wide document system based on Lotus Notes software that is designed to ease professors' efforts to put their information online, Reese said. The computerization efforts aren't quite as far along at smaller or poorer schools such as Pepperdine University and California State University, Northridge CSUN offers a variety of programs leading to bachelor's degrees in 61 fields and master's degrees in 42 fields. The university has over 150,000 alumni. It's also home to a summer musical theater/theater program known as TADW (TeenAge Drama Workshop) that leads teenagers through an . Nonetheless, even those schools report big investments and decent progress. At CSUN CSUN California State University Northridge , just-hired chief information officer David Liu is surveying what computer resources the school has, so he can decide where to further invest precious dollars, he said. ``Compared to what UCLA has, we're not there,'' Liu said. ``We want to be there, but it's a matter of time and energy.'' The school is focusing on classroom and lab computer access, because so many of its students live off campus, Liu said. Pepperdine is wiring dorms and outfitting computer labs but wants to better connect students at its satellite campuses, said Danita Leese, director of educational technology for the university. ``What it does is expand the learning hours beyond the classroom,'' Leese said. WHO`S PLUGGED IN? The magazine Yahoo! Internet Life ranked the top 100 most wired schools in the country again this year on its Internet site. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the schools in the top 10 are smaller and are famous for their engineering and technology programs. CalTech in Pasadena is the only California school in the Top 10, which include: 1. Dartmouth College 2. New Jersey Institute of Technology 3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at Cambridge; coeducational; chartered 1861, opened 1865 in Boston, moved 1916. It has long been recognized as an outstanding technological institute and its Sloan School of Management has notable programs in business, 4. Rensselaer Polytechnic University 5. University of Illinois University of Illinois may refer to:
6. Carnegie-Mellon University 7. California Institute of Technology 8. University of Indiana, Bloomington 9. University of Oregon The University of Oregon is a public university located in Eugene, Oregon. The university was founded in 1876, graduating its first class two years later. The University of Oregon is one of 60 members of the Association of American Universities. 10. Worcester Polytechnic University UCLA, at 23, was the next-highest-rated local school on the list, followed by USC at 43, three of the Claremont Colleges (Pomona at 70, Claremont McKenna at 79 and Harvey Mudd at 80) and Occidental College at 81. For the entire list and other information, go to Yahoo! Internet Life's www.zdnet.com/yil/content/college on the Web. Basic packages meet most needs So you're finally ready to shop for a computer. You've figured out where your student's living, what he or she needs for networking, whether it will be a desktop or laptop machine. Now it's time to go into the store. Thankfully, the computer business is going through a vicious cost-cutting cycle, with terrific, very capable machines available for less than $1,000. In many cases, those inexpensive machines are more than enough for most young students' needs. Beware what you buy, however, because some cheap machines offer more than others. You need to get a machine that minimally has: A Pentium processor for PCs, or a PowerPC chip for Macintoshes. In the PC world, Intel competitors such as AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, www.amd.com) A major manufacturer of semiconductor devices including x86-compatible CPUs, embedded processors, flash memories, programmable logic devices and networking chips. and Cyrix have created inexpensive alternatives to Pentiums that work quite well, with few or no compatibility problems. AMD's K6 chip, for instance, is found in many less-expensive machines and is a capable alternative to Intel's low-end Celeron or Pentium chips. RAM, or random-access memory (storage) random-access memory - (RAM) (Previously "direct-access memory"). A data storage device for which the order of access to different locations does not affect the speed of access. , of 32 megabytes. Given the low prices for memory, the bloat of many software programs and the huge improvement in usability you get from extra memory, go ahead and get more if you can. It's the single biggest improvement per dollar that you can make to a simple system. A minimum 2-gigabyte hard drive for storage of all the research, term papers, spreadsheets, Web pages and Quake scenarios your little student will be pumping out. Larger is better. A 15-inch monitor, with at least a .28mm dot pitch. The dot pitch measures the screen's clarity, and smaller dot pitch means a sharper screen. A 56K bps, V.90 modem or a good-quality Ethernet card. If your student is living off-campus, or has a dorm room that's not directly wired to the campus network, a fast modem will allow them to dial in and surf the Internet, contact their teacher, even write you an e-mail asking for more money. Faster is better when it comes to speed, and prices for modems are dirt cheap. Here more than anywhere, speed makes a difference. A basic software package, such as ClarisWorks (called AppleWorks in a bundle with Apple's new iMac) for the Macintosh, or Microsoft Office (more expensive, but featuring more fully functional programs for Macs and PCs), will cover the basic needs of most students. These packages come with a solid word processor and spreadsheet, database and presentation capabilities. They also come with programs that allow a student to dial into a campus' mainframe computers. Internet access programs, such as a World Wide Web browser like Netscape's Communicator or Microsoft's Explorer, typically come free with every machine. - David Bloom CAPTION(S): 3 Photos, 2 Boxes PHOTO (1--Cover--Color) HEADS OF THE CLASS The wired generation goes back to school. Page 3. Photo illustration by Myung J. Chun and Bradfor Mar/Daily News (2) UCLA student Anna McDivit can access class schedules and Web pages, use the campus library and even register using her laptop computer. John Lazar/Daily News (3) Zelda Gilbert, academic vice president at Woodbury University, and Victor Nasol, assistant supervisor of the computer lab, talk about the new Dell laptops the school acquired for its students. John Lazar/Daily News BOX: (1) WHO`S PLUGGED IN? (see text) (2) Basic packages meet most needs (see text) |
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