The Dawg Blawg

Welcome to Computer Applications

2008-08-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to my class blog. I hope that you had a great summer. I know that it was hard to come back but I hope that you are looking forward to your year here at Ereckson. I have a lot of fun things planned for us this year such and creating podcasts, writing blogs, wikis and sharing information you have researched with each other. We will also take apart computers, learn about the internet and create our own webpages. I hope that you are looking forward to this year, I know that I am.

Web Logs

2007-01-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

A Web log or Blog as they are more commonly known are designed for immediate publication for such media events as online journals or diaries. A blog gives you a chance to write your feelings, emotions or opinions over a given topic. A Blog is designed for conversation and comment or feedback back to you. A blog is written to inform and yet at the same time is asking for reader comment into a particular topic. Please remember that a blog can and will be seen by others so that you will want to be careful about what you write. Journal or blog sites such as Myspace have been used by colleges and potential employers to see what type of person you are, and some people have been rejected by colleges due to their blog site and others have been looked over for job employment do to they same problem. More and more people are looking online to find out things about you. Always be careful as to what you put out on the internet, because it can always come back around to hurt you later.

Plagiarism

2006-01-25T05:34:00.000-08:00

Should I be able to cut and paste from the Internet? Many teenagers have only known the world with online references. With these abilities to gain access to many different materials on any given topic it also gives us the ability to copy and paste these materials onto our computer. On the one hand it makes it easier to find reference materials that you need to use for you research, but on the other hand you are taking and using work that you didn't not create, therefore causing you to lose part of your creative thinking, not to mention that it is also cheating. In your journal list for me one pro and one con to copying and pasting work from the Internet into your own work.

Veterans Day

2004-11-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

In 1921, an unknown World War I soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetary. This site, on a hillside overlooking the Potomac River and the city of Washington, became the focal point of reverence for America's veterans.

Similar ceremonies occurred in England and France, where an unknown soldier was buried in each nation's highest place of honor. These memorial gestures all took place on November 11, giving universal recognition to the celebrated ending of World War I fighting at 11 a.m., November 11, 1918 (the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month). The day became known as "Armistice Day."

Armistice Day officially received its name in America in 1926 through a Congressional resolution. It became a national holiday 12 years later by similar Congressional action. If the idealistic hope had been realized that World War I was "the war to end all wars," November 11 might still be called Armistice Day. But only a few years after the holiday was proclaimed, war broke out in Europe. Sixteen and one-half million Americans took part. Four hundred seven thousand of them died in service, more than 292,000 in battle.

To pay tribute to those who had served in this latest, great war came in a proposal made by Rep. Edwin Rees of Kansas: Change the name of Armistice Day to Veterans Day, and make it an occasion to honor those who have served America in all wars. In 1954 President Eisenhower signed a bill proclaiming November 11 as Veterans Day.

Today for your warmup, write and honor someone you know who has served in the military, if you do not know someone who has served in the military then answer this question; how important is it for us to honor the men and women who have served our country in the armed forces?

What is HTML?

2004-11-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

HTML is the computer language that is used to create documents for display on the Web. Many editors exist to create Web Pages--Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Frontpage, Dreamweaver and GoLive are just a few. Nevertheless, each of these software programs performs the exact same task, they all generate HTML language.

The HTML language consists of a series of HTML tags. Learning HTML involves finding out what tags are used to mark the parts of a document and how these tags are used in creating an HTML document.

Tags are instructions that tell your browser what to show on a Web page. They break up your document into basic sections. All tags start with a <>.

The text editor is any program that saves the text characters you type, but does not save additional information about the formatting of the page. If you save the word "Hello" in both Word and Notepad, Word would require 19,000 bytes of storage space to save the word and all of the information about the page formatting, while Notepad would require only 5 bytes of storage space because it saves each character typed into the document.

What are some benefits of using Notepad over using Word or any other software program other than it does not take up much storage space?

Halloween

2004-10-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Halloween is celebrated annually, but how did the holiday start? It started with the Celtics. They believed that On October 31 summer officially ended. They thought that on that night disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. So on October 31 Celts would dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily parade around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess. In the 1840's the custom of Halloween was brought to America by Irish Immigrants. In America we turned it more into a holiday in which we would travel from house to house trick or treating our neighbors for candy and carving pumpkins to make Jack O Lanterns. In your wamup tell me about your favorite halloween, what were you dressed as, did you have more candy than you could eat, or did you go to a really cool haunted house.

Search Engines

2004-10-05T16:15:00.000-07:00

A search engine allows us to type in a topic or keyword and then gives us the results of the search usually in a way that the relevant information is given to us first. Other types of search engines use a directory to search for the topic that you are trying to research. You can also use a metasearch engine to search the search engines to find results for the topic of your searches. With exploring some of the different search engines that you like to use, is the data the they give to you in the results important to you; like knowing the number of results, having relevant web pages listed first, or listing the most popular web sites first for you? What else could you add to a search engine that would help aid in searches?

The Internet

2004-09-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

The Internet is very young compared to many of the other technologies that we use daily. It began with the launching of Sputnik and the U.S. becoming paranoid about not having a way to communicate in case of war with the Soviet Union. It then progressed from military use to being used by Universities and Colleges for research. That is why the first supercomputers connected to the Internet were mainly located at universities. The Interenet has also given us new ways to communicate with each other through e-mail, IM, and chat rooms. It is a great discovery and one that we should appreciate very much, but it is not the Internet that allows us to present information with graphics, sounds and video, that is the World Wide Web. What is the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?

Computers Friends or Foes

2004-09-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

Tell me what you think. We all know that technology is a good thing for all of us if we use it, but what are some of the negatives that we could face if we rely on computers and technology too much. Explain.

Computer Assembly Unit

2004-09-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

From time to time I like to know what you think about what we do in class. Concerning the Computer assembly unit, I would like to know how you felt about this lesson. Did we go to fast or slow, could you not see the computer I was working with. Let me know and be honest I am not going to count off on your grade for not liking what we do. Tell what you would have liked to do instead or what would have made this lesson even better.

Computer Parts

2004-09-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

After learning all of the different parts and pieces that it takes to create a computer it is amazing that we can ever get them to work. With all of the circuitry and parts that are sensitive to magnets and dirt, it is amazing that computers ever run. Have you ever taken the case off of your computer and seen all of the dust inside of it? Or just looked at the back of the computer to see all of the dust that has collected around the fan? To see the procedures that chip makers go through go to www.intel.com/education/cleanroom/index.htm . Then answer the following question. How much trouble do the chip makers go through just to have a clean environment to work in and would you like to have to go through this type of enviromental process just to enter your room?

Computer Viruses

2004-08-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

A computer virus is a software program that is written to install, propagate, and cause damage to computer files and data without the knowledge or permission of the user. It works because it is sent by an outside source and then opened on your computer allowing the virus to install itself on the computer. Once it is open, then it follows the instructions in the program and begins its destructive nature. In your warm up compare how a computer virus is spread to how a biological virus is spread.

Telecommunications

2004-08-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

The word Telecommunications is Greek and broken into two words has the meaning "Tele", at a distance, and "communications", the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, signals, writing, or behavior. With that knowledge you now know that telecommunications it communicating at a distance and in this day and age, electronically. So with the technology that we now have we are able to instantaneously send and retrieve data from all over the world. Can you even think about how long it took to send and receive messages in the time of Columbus, or even farther back than that to Ancient Greece. What would life be like today if we did not have the capability to send messages electronically through telecommunicating with one another.? Remember that means no telephones, computer, televisions, and radios.

Networking

2004-08-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

A network is a connection of many lines that allow many computers to be connected to one another. When you think of a network, visualize a spider's web with all of the the strings crossing one another until it reaches an endpoint. With knowing what networks do and how they look, how have they made our usage of computer easier and more beneficial to us?

Copyrights

2004-08-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

Copyrights are used to protect items, (i.e. music, drama, literary works, etc.) from other people taking your work and using it for their own benefit or claiming it as their own work. This gives the creators the rights to any profit that would be due them if their works were used in such a manner as to create income. An example would be a singer/songwriter owning the rights to the song and music that he/she wrote and sang. Knowing what you know of copyrights through our discussions or from copyright.gov, should software companies like Napster and KaZaa be allowed to operate their file swapping programs on the internet. What are your thoughts on this problem?