Information Systems
As originally conceived, the Information Systems course aimed to give the students an overview of different ways of managing information. This included spreadsheets, databases and the emerging web technology.Currently, Information Systems consists of several parts:
- Introduction This discusses the emergence of software to manage information. Taking a historical view, it describes how spreadsheets, databases, the web, the grid, etc. evolved. It lays emphasis on the speration of content and style, and the importance of integration of different kinds of content.
- Spreadsheets These remain an important information management tool and one which only a fraction of our students have used seriously before. They also provide a good context for discussing number representation.
- Multimedia This is one lecture giving an overview of the different kinds of multimedia. It acts as a basis for the Multimedia elective.
- Web Programming This means static web pages and style sheets. It also covers the role of XML. These lectures act as a basis for the elective Internet Technology course.
- Introduction to Databases This introduces the relational model and shows how it is used in Microsoft Access. It prepares for the students for the database part of the course.