Harvard Extension School's Computer Science E-1: Understanding Computers and the Internet

This course is all about understanding: understanding what's going on inside your computer when you flip on the switch, why tech support has you constantly rebooting your computer, how everything you do on the Internet can be watched by others, and how your computer can become infected with a worm just by being turned on. Designed for students who use computers and the Internet every day but don't fully understand how it all works, this course fills in the gaps. Through lectures on hardware, software, the Internet, multimedia, security, privacy, website development, programming, and more, this course "takes the hood off" of computers and the Internet so that students understand how it all works and why. Through discussions of current events, students are exposed also to the latest technologies. This is OpenCourseWare, licensed by Dan Armendariz and David J. Malan of Harvard University under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Visit http://computerscience1.tv/2010/spring/ for more material, including prior semesters and other courses.