Tools for Information Literacy
Welcome to INLS 161-001 Spring 2019
This site houses the course files and syllabus for INLS 161-001, Tools for Information Literacy.
The course runs from January 09 to April 29, 2019.
The class meets Monday-Wednesday (except holidays) at 10:10am-11:25am in Manning Hall, room 117.
The above syllabus link has information concerning course details, readings (There is no book required for this course), lectures, labs, grading, the honor code, and the SILS/UNC diversity statement. The class lectures are listed under the schedule page and in the left sidebar. This site is created so that it can be accessed by mobile phones and various screen sizes.
Minor Startup Items Due Dates:
- Due: 01/14/19. Introductory Blog post and Student intake form.
- Due: 01/23/19. Networking Term to share in the Networking class. I will assign this soon.
Here are the major projects and due dates that you need to keep in mind:
The grade sheet links are not yet finalized. Also, I may make some minor changes to the Web Design and Spreadsheet sections before those start.
- Due: 01/29/19. Networking and basics tasks.
- Due: 02/04/19. Post basic hard-coded webpage. We will work on this in the 01/30 and the 02/04 HTML and CSS classes.
- Due: 02/24/19. Post your finished personal web site.
- Due: 03/05/19. Post your finished Documents Project.
- Due: 03/26/19. Post your finished Spreadsheet Project.
- Due: 04/21/19. Post your finished Database Project.
- Due: 04/29/19. Come to class with your Presentation Project on a USB drive. The only item you need to purchase (or borrow) for class.
Class Blog Posts:
I will demonstrate how to make a blog post on the first day of class. The due dates are flexible. You should make posts throughout the course. You can do one a week and be done before spring break. These should be brief and should not be a cause for any stress.
- Due: 01/28/19. First Blog post. (This is not your introductory blog post.) Recommended due date.
- Due: 02/11/19. Second Blog post. Recommended due date.
- Due: 02/27/19. Third Blog post. Recommended due date.
- Due: 03/18/19. Fourth Blog post. Recommended due date.
- Due: 04/01/19. Fifth Blog post. Recommended due date.
- Due: 04/22/19. Sixth Blog post. Recommended due date.
These need to be done Sometime during the course
- Due: 04/24/19. Starter. Optimally one student will do a starter each class. We have 30 students and 28 classes. Don't wait too long to get this done. If you are comfortable presenting yourself, don't be shy about starting out. You get a 100% just for getting up and getting it done!
- Due: 04/24/19. Comment on peer's blog post. Get this done sooner than later, please.
Below is a graphic that shows some of the various information tools we will study.
In the center are six images that represent the layers of information tools that will form the core of our course. The descriptions start with the black hexagons with the green symbols and continue around the circle clockwise.
1. Basics
is represented by a common command-line icon. Your actual user command-line prompt will most likely be a dollar sign: $
We will learn about clients, servers, and networks in the basics section. There will be a lot of hands-on command-line work. You will learn these commands: pwd, mdir, cd, touch, clear, ls, rm, mv. You will also learn about version control using git.
2. Web Development
is represented by a <br> html tag.
We will learn many more html tags and we will also learn CSS and scripting in this section.
3. Document Markup
Continuing clockwise, we have a paragraph tag to represent our DOCUMENT MARKUP section. We will work with with document generation tools in this section.
4. Spreadsheets
are represented by a fx symbol that represents a SPREADSHEET function. (We will primarily use Microsoft Excel in this section)
5. Databases
are represented by a stack of disks, which is a common icon used to designate DATABASES. (Microsoft Access)
6. Presentations
are represented a "work area" graphic for developing and organizing PRESENTATIONS. (Microsoft Powerpoint, or Prezi or reveal.js)
Many of these concepts apply to multiple areas. For example, reveal.js is a presentation framework and allows you to create slide presentations, but it overlaps with command line tools (basics) and web development.
There are so many information tools largely because there is no silver bullet. No one tool does everything well. Also, in this age of open source colaboration, information tools will continue to grow and change a great deal in a very short span of time. However, the foundational principles are fairly solid, so we will do our best to focus on elemental concepts.