Get to Class! -Blogging in IP30

Nice progress on the Wikipedia articles.

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of this activity comes from interactions from other editors. Yesterday, one of you (Basketball5) had his article marked to be deleted by an overenthusiastic 19 year old from India fourteen minutes after the last edit, but it was then rescued by an advertising copywriter from Ontario six minutes later who commented “It’s a place, stupid!”

NOTE: That was probably a bit harsh for a person who is contributing as a volunteer, and usually people are a little more polite about these things). Anyway, four minutes later, the 19 year old sent a welcome message to the Basketball5, the creator of the Birch Hills RM article.

ROBOTS! Some of you may see changes made in your history by robots. Although this was foreseen by one of you, robots have not taken over the world yet. These “bots” are programs designed (by volunteers) to make changes to articles automatically (For example, going to articles and automatically removing images that don’t have copyright information included, finding common spelling mistakes, or removing dead links (links to external websites that don’t work).

Please finish your article before the end of the week, and make sure to compare it to the Craik RM article as the basics required.

Today, we are going to begin to explore the wonderful world of OS…

ASSIGNMENT (Quick, skim this!) Then answer the following questions in a Word document and email it to Mr. Stinson. When you are done, continue with the Wikipedia article and then return to beta-testing the Word and Excel modules.

• What part of the computer does the operating system control?
• What is the operating system on a PC? On a Mac?
• Basically, what is the purpose on an operating system (OS)?
• Why does the computer chip in a washing machine or your watch not have an OS?
• What was the original OS for PCs? How was it used in telling a PC what to do?
• Why is Windows called a GUI?
• Why is it recommended that you update Windows regularly (or have it done automatically) if you are hooked up to the internet?

More advanced, but important. Summarize the following in point form (diagrams may help):

• What are the six core tasks of an operating system?
• How does the OS begin working when you turn on a computer?

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