Fall 1998 Computers and Society
Tuesdays 6 - 9:40 PM in 113 Rackham: GST 2710, Section 990 and AGS 3360, Section 983
Mondays 5:30 - 9:10 PM at NWAC: GST 2710, Section 984
Course web site: http://www.cll.wayne.edu/isp/drbowen/casf98/
Last updated: 11/28/98
Link back to course Welcome...

Twelfth class: Agenda
NWAC: Monday November 30 / Rackham: Tuesday December 1

  1. Announcements and Reminders:
    1. Sign in on the course web site (every class).
    2. Reminder: I may be late for my office hours in the Rackham lab on Tuesday, December 15. I will not be later than 5 PM.
    3. The Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) evaluations will be done at the beginning of class on Monday, December 7 (NWAC) and Tuesday, December 8 (Rackham). These evaluations are important for improving our courses, and I urge all of you to participate.
    4. New items on course web site:
      1. Make an on-line comment or a course evaluation, anonymously if you like
      2. Submit work electronically (on-line) or email the Instructor
    5. Topics for the Final Exam will be distributed at the next class (#13) and reviewed at the following class (#14). The final exam is the week after that (#15).
    6. There is still a lot of late work out there. I have asked people to start working on it, but not enough have. Therefore:
      On the day of the final, you will be limited to turning in two late assignments. All other late assignments, if they are to count in your regular grade, must be turned in earlier.
    7. Using the Adamany Library computers for this course. First of all, only the Dell computers will work for this course. The Start Bar setup has been changed on these computers. Now, you get to the Office97 applications that we are using here -- Word, Excel and Access -- off of the Applications item when you click on Start. On some of the computers, but not all, one or more of these applications may also have desktop icons. If you have the desktop icons, you can start these applications either from the desktop icons, or from the Start button. NOTE: the above is about the program or executable files. You will find the program files at the other computer labs The data files from Microsoft Office97 Professional / Step by Step, like the Word documents, the Excel spreadsheets, and the Access databases, you will have to take with you on a floppy disk.
    8. The people listed below do not have on-line grade reports enabled. This is not a requirement for the course, but it does give you a good record of how you are doing. If you are on the list below, and want on-line grade reports, leave a note for me, including the password that you want to use to access grade reports.
      1. Rackham (Tuesdays)
        1. James Hobbs
        2. Frazier Kimpson
        3. Pamela Shaw
      2. NWAC (Mondays)
        1. Veronica Hill
        2. Gladys Karlin
        3. Melissa Mobley
    9. The people listed below still need to log on to the computer conference for this class. For instructions, see Agenda 5, VII.A.
      1. Rackham (Tuesdays)
        1. Melanie Brown
        2. Nantambu Kohlbatz
        3. Pamela Shaw
      2. NWAC (Mondays)
        1. Joyceline Blackmon
        2. Jason DeMeyer
        3. Precious Sampson
        4. Jevon Woods
  2. Quiz 6
  3. Handouts, pass backs
  4. Computers and Society -- discussion
  5. Databases -- Tables, Relations, Queries, Forms and Reports
    1. A Table is a set of data, with fields (columns) and records (rows). In industrial-strength databases such as Access, you cannot do calculation in a table. In these databases, a table only contains directly-entered data, not calculated data. A database has to have at least one table, but it can have many more than that.
    2. A Relation is a connection between tables. In the Sweet Lil's database, you can take an order for bonbons, and get the bonbon price from the bonbon table. This is a relation. A relation connects two tables using a common field. Actually, several fields can be used, but we won't go into that any further in this course. Relations save file space in a database. For example, consider a student database. We would need a name and address for each student, along with a student ID. Where do we put grades? We don't know exactly how many courses a student will take before graduation. After all, there are two-credit, three-credit and four-credit courses. It would be wasteful to allow the maximum number of courses that a student could take. Instead, there is a separate table of courses taken, with each record being a course taken by one student. Do we put the student's name and address in each record? That would also waste space, since each student's address would occur once for each course s/he takes. Instead, only the ID number is kept in each record. We can temporarily make a new table joinging the name and address table with the course table, using the common field of the student ID number. We would need to do this, for example, to mail out student grades.
    3. A Query is one or more related questions that you ask about tables. In a query, you can
      1. See a joined or compound table based on a relation
      2. Only look at certain fields in a table
      3. Filter out records that you are not interested in. For example, you might want to look at people 64 or older to see who might retire next year.
      4. Calculate quantities as new fields, based on other fields. This is similar to the calculations you would do in a spreadsheet, but here calculations are much more structured. A calculation applied to one record is applied to all, since each field must be identical in different records.

      Obviously, Queries are very general and can be used for many purposes.

    4. Data can be entered directly into tables, using the table view. But often it is preferable to use Forms instead. A form is like a paper form, with words to describe what gets entered. Unlike paper forms, forms can check that data makes sense. For example, do zip codes have five numerical digits? Do telephone numbers have the area code in them? Forms can also be used to view a table. You used forms for both purposes in Lab 9 (Part 5, Lesson 1).
    5. Reports are used to list and summarize tables and queries. Results can be printed out and formatted. Summary data can be added, such as the total dollars outstanding, from a table where each record is an order, and some have not been paid yet.
  6. Paper and Pencil Computer. See handouts.
  7. Comments on Chapter 11. Personal computers have progressed again, beyond what was described in Chapter 11.
    1. Pentium microprocessors are up to 450 MHz, not the 200 and 300 MHz mentioned on Pg 11-7.
    2. It is hard to buy a computer with as little as the 16 MB RAM (primary memory) mentioned on Pg 11-8. 32 MB, 64MB and 96 MB are common amounts. The newest web browser from Netscape, called Communicator, wants 24 MB itself, if you install everything. Since Windows will use some of the hard drive as virtual memory, Navigator will run in 16 MB or even 8 MB RAM, but the less RAM, the more slowly it runs. This is because it must use the hard drive for virtual memory, and that is much slower than RAM.
    3. The hard drive sizes are now at a minimum of 1 GB, with 2 GB and 4 GB being more common, instead of the 500 MB mentioned on Pg 11-8. Personally, I think 2 GB is a nice, generous amount, but as the book says, a larger hard drive costs only a small amount extra.
    4. Buying a 28.8 Kb modem, as mentioned on Pg 11-10, is difficult today. Speeds of 33.6 and 55.6 Kb are much more common, and very affordable.
    5. A CD-ROM is really a necessity today, since most major programs come on CD-ROM, with floppy diskettes costing more, because there are so many of them. The last software installation I did from a floppy was Microsoft Office for Windows 3.1, two versions back, in 1996, and that took 35 floppy diskettes.
    6. The book is still right, I think, about the way to choose a computer. First, what do you want to do? Second, what software will you need to do this? Then, what hardware will you need to support that software? If you are buying a package deal, then you can do the last two steps together.
  8. Lab 11
    1. Email
      1. When the diskette "email addresses" comes by, start Microsoft Word, open the file a:\emailf98.doc, and follow the directions in the file to add your email address to the list. Save the file back to the diskette (Save, not Save As).
      2. Activate your WSU email account. This is a new step. You will not be able to actually use your WSU email until a couple of days after you activate it. Instructions for activating your WSU email account are given below.
        1. Start Telnet and log in to the Pine email client.
          1. In Rackham, this is done using the Macintosh system.
            • Click on the Telnet button in the Launcher widnow.
            • Click on the File menu item.
              NOTE: on the Macintosh, you may have to hold the mouse button down in order to keep the menu visible.
            • With the File menu items visible, and holding the mouse button down, pull the mouse down to the Open Connection item and release the mouse button.
            • In the New Connection dialog, type in the Domain Name of the WSU email client, mail.wayne.edu and click OK.
            • If your connection is successful, you will see the login screen of the WSU email system. You have successfully connected to the right system if the top line of the login screen reads (more or less)

              UNIX(r) System V Release 4.0 (mail2.wayne.edu)

              Go to setp b below.
          2. In NWAC, starting Telnet and logging in to the Pine email client is pretty much automatic. Use the Mail icon (or the closest equivalent) You should see a screen with the top line as shown above.
        2. Login using your AccessID and Password from your postcard or from the C&IT form.
        3. When you are logged in, choose option i to activate your WSU email account.

          If you have not previously activated your WSU email account, this is as far as you will be able to get until your account is actually activated in the next two or three days. Go on to the next part of the Lab. If you have already activated your WSU email account, then you can continue with step 3 below.
      3. A few days after you have activated your WSU email account, you can complete the following email tasks. This is an on-going assignment.
        1. Send an email message to the Instructor, aa2012@wayne.edu
        2. Send an email address to another student in the class, with a cc to the Instructor.
        3. Forward an email message from someone else to the Instructor.
    2. Access. We are skipping over Part 5, Lesson 2 and moving on to Part 5 (Access) Lesson 3 on Pp 493 through 503. This lab does not include "One Step Further." Next week you will be creating tables and entering data into a table. This week you will sort and filter data, make a report, and make mailing labels from a table. Copy the database to your floppy diskette before you start. You will almost certainly need a new floppy diskette in order to do this. At each point listed below, print out and turn in the following results from this Lesson:
      1. Bottom of Page 497. Add a header with your name and the lab number.
      2. Report on Page 500, for the dates 26-Nov-96 through 30-Nov-96
      3. Page 1 only of the maling labels on Page 503.

 

Assignment 12