Day 1
Alright, the first day of this wonderful class! I can hardly wait! I take a seat in front of a computer. A computer whose monitor displays the login screen for Windows Vista. Looks like we might be using Vista in this class. A successful operating system to guide us to success! Oh ho ho~
Around 11:00 when the class starts, the professor walks in and introduces himself. I don't remember his name but it's not important for this journal. What is important is that he then does the usual professor thing of spending most of day one making broad statements about what we'll be learning in the class.
He tells us about a device called an i>clicker. Yes, that punctuation is correct. No, it's not an Apple product. Apparently this is going to be his method of taking roll. Kind of weird, but alright? We'll also be using it to respond to quizzes of sorts over what we've learned recently. I guess I could see this being useful in huge classes, but a quick look around tells me there are only about thirty students in here. Oh well.At least there's a bit of light in this darkness - we won't need to buy a textbook for this class, since he'll be posting parts of a "book" online for us to read. That makes sense. A book for a class about surfing the internet should be on the internet, yes? And I'm already buying that i>clicker thing anyway.
He talks a little about operating systems. He asks the class to name an example of an operating system. After about thirty seconds of silence, somebody finally pipes up with an answer. "You mean like word, or powerpoint?" I can only begin to imagine how indicative this response is of the class as a whole. We could be in for a wild ride. After a bit of prodding from the professor, somebody else finally suggests a more correct answer: "Windows". This isn't over yet, though! The professor then mentions that there are other operating systems and asks if anybody can name some. Again, some silence before somebody dares answer. "Windows 2000". BRILLIANT. 
After a bit of "no, that's just another kind of Windows" discussion, eventually the names "OSX" and "Linux" get mentioned. By the professor, of course. I'm posting this page a few days late so I don't remember any of the particulars of what he said about any of this, but whatever! At least this is enough to kind of gauge what the target audience of a class like this is.
He then starts talking about these things called "folders" - apparently it's a way of organizing "files" on the computer! Kind of like a filing cabinet, but virtual and computery! Wow, technology these days! This goes on for a little bit until time runs out and class is dismissed. What a promising start...
On the way home, I drop by the bookstore and purchase an i>clicker. Thirty-five dollars
Day 2
The professor's late today. That can't be a good sign. Eventually he walks in holding some kind of black box. He explains that he's been having technical difficulties and that this black i>clicker box hasn't been working. So we end up not using the i>clickers today, but he does tell us we'll need them Thursday! Here's hoping. He also shows off a bluetooth headset he has and says that he uses it to listen to his iPod wirelessly. That's good to hear, sir!
It's question time. "What is a computer, and what does it do?" We're asked. A minute or so passes and nobody answers. A talkative bunch we are! He eventually starts noting things about it - it has a keyboard and a mouse and you can put floppies or CDs or USB drives in it! 
You can also use programs to alter or create files. He then goes on to talk about peripherals, and displays a diagram of a computer with its various parts labeled. He asks people to name them. As is becoming usual for this class, nothing is said for a while. Eventually people start naming keyboard, speakers, etc. This goes slowly but fairly well.After that, he then starts taking about... computer innards. Motherboard, hard drive, etc. I'm not sure how necessary this knowledge is in a class like this... maybe it's just filler. Maybe half the stuff we learn in this class will be filler. People just kind of stare here. I don't think they all get it.
Computer innards? That isn't even the beginning. He then goes into a full-blown history lesson on how computers came to be, mentioning Archimedes's old mechanical computer and the giant mainframes and the IBM 360 and all kinds of "back in my day"-type stuff. This goes on for the rest of the class period. I struggle to stay awake here. I see lots of people around taking this opportunity to send text messages to their friends. I guess they're talking about all this fun and exciting stuff they learned about computers from decades ago!Eventually he looks at the clock and stops himself. It's over. Hopefully there's more internet in the next session.
Day 3
The professor walks in. He talks a bit, and then he starts to refer to the lesson about computer history from the previous day. The words that came out of his mouth blew my mind.
Wow. Just... wow. If this day wasn't so amazing in other regards, I'd totally just end this piece with that bit of sage wisdom.
Anyway, the time has come for us to give those i>clickers a try! He messed around with some buttons on the computer and eventually a screen came up. I'm glad there's a picture of it on the internet, because I would have been hard-pressed to really describe this thing.
It looks weird but when you see it in action it's pretty easy to figure out. Also, having the instructions plainly written on it is a big plus! The list of names slowly scrolls down and you press the buttons on your i>clicker to register it.Of course, no silly class is complete without silly shenanigans, and this registration process was crazy! People must have been pressing buttons at random or something. There was an "ID, First Name, Last Name" row that was imported from the text file with the student list in it. Somebody registered with that row. Somewhere in this class, there is a student named First Name Last Name. He had to restart this at least two or three times and it was just as messed up every time.
A full thirty minutes have passed since the class began, and finally he just gives up for today. Next time, Gadget! Next time!
He then puts up a very simplistic diagram of a motherboard and spends the last twenty minutes of class talking about it. This is going to be on the test! Oh mannn!!
Day 4
The fourth day of this class is, well, the least funny day so far. Lots and lots of hardware talk. He explains crazy terms like "BIOS" and "boot" and shows us the BIOS menu. It's all stuff I've seen before. My notes for this class session are largely incomplete as I fell asleep during it, but rest assured that you guys didn't really miss anything.
You can use the down arrow to move downward in the BIOS menu.
Day 5
It's a new day, and what's this? Fan favorite i>clicker makes its return! He spends a bit of time getting up the registration screen and then we're off! Two attempts later, everybody is registered correctly. There are also apparently some people in the class who haven't bought their i>clickers yet. Sucks to be them, haha! Those people aside, registration is complete. Time to move on to the other i>clicker-related thing... quizzes!He asks a question and uses an i>clicker poll to get our responses. We press the button corresponding to our answers and after some time passes he ends the quiz and shows us the results. The first question goes fine. The number of responses matches the number of people in the room holding i>clickers. However, I'm sure you see where I was going with that! The second question brought rather different results. The number of submissions was more than twice the number of people in the class! After some pondering, the professor discovered the solution: a classroom down the hall was also using i>clickers to take a quiz, and both classes had theirs on the same frequency. Oops! After this mix-up got sorted out, we carried on with the next three questions just fine.
Then the class ended because we ran out of time! Oh no!
And onward
Around this point, it became apparent that the class was going to just get less and less interesting. So I stopped paying attention, and eventually stopped going to class every day. Here are some highlights from the rest of the semester:
- The tests were super easy. 50 questions on scantrons. Usually one or two of the choices were silly things that nobody would ever choose. From the sounds of things, people still had a hard time with this class. I think he curved our final grades by like 10 points or something.
- He taught us a bit of basic HTML. According to him, you don't need to close line break or paragraph tags. I guess this guy hasn't heard of web standards, lol!
- We learned to make webpages in Microsoft Publisher. God, that thing is frustrating. Never use Publisher to make webpages. The rendered pages look imperfect in IE and absolutely terrible in Firefox (and I would assume any other non-IE browser).
- We used the i>clickers, like, twice more the entire semester. Maybe it was used a bit on the days, I don't know. From the sounds of what I heard others say, though, it wasn't. To make it feel even worse, the bookstore does not buy back gently-used i>clickers. This thing sucks. I'll be sticking it in the package I'm sending to Rick later this year.
- There is a section in our online textbook about internet forums. It's actually quite well-written. It mentions such fun things as trolls and flame wars! I guess it might be notable that there's a bit about tripcodes listed under "common features". I wonder if this guy visits 4chan or something, lol...
- "Surfing the Internet for Success"
- Seriously. On the course evaluation, when it asks us to give our thoughtful analysis of the course or whatever it says, that's all I wrote. "Surfing the Internet for Success". With the quotes. Because that is really what I think of the class.
I'm not hating on this class. There's a lot more to it than I thought there would be based on the name of the class. I'm sure it's genuinely useful to people whose computer experience is limited to using Facebook. Maybe they should come up with a less silly name for it? Well, if any of you out there need a few extra credits and need a simple class to fill in the hole, maybe give this a look? I dunno.
