ITEC 1100 – Introduction to Information Technology

Course Overview

The course that I have just completed is ITEC 1100, or the Intro to Information Technology. It’s a 90-hour course that goes into the basics of what a computer is, how they work and interact with each other, as well as networks, databases, and the internet. The class started with the parts of a computer and how they fit together to create a computer, as well as going into the different types of computers.  It gave a very strong base ground on how computers worked and the different aspects of computers in addition to the types of objects they powered, such as cellphones, different programs, etc.

Overall, the information that was gained from this course was an incredible start down the path of Information Technology and covered nearly everything that is part of the field in one way or another and gives enough information to determine if a particular job in IT is one that someone wants to specialize into.

Course Reflection

When I first came into this class, I was pretty confident that I knew, not a lot, but definitely a good amount about computers and how they worked and that I was interested in a career that dealt with them. This course started off slow enough that it reinforced this idea but come chapter 2 and onward, quickly shattered that illusion. If we want to compare what is included in IT and the information pertinent to it and what I know of it to something, an acceptable example would be the internet. The information that I know could easily be considered the surface web while everything that I don’t know would be the deep web. Because of this I was already learning new things in chapter 2 of the book, as well as on almost every research brief that I created.

Given the volume of new information that I had to learn, it was amazing just how interesting the read was even though in hindsight it was written almost like a college textbook. This provides further evidence that pursuing a career in IT and the education required is a good choice as I have thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the course (even though the 90,000 research briefs did get a bit tedious, I still loved what I learned because of them). While this was just the intro to IT, I already know immensely more about IT and computers than I did before I signed up, however the major difference between then and now is that I also realize just how much I don’t know at the same time.

With this just being the intro to IT, there’s not a lot of direct information that could be applied towards an IT job, but the entirety of it serves as an amazing groundwork for learning more that can be turned into job skills. As they say with building a house, you start with a strong foundation, you do the same with an education and this course did just that and more. Reading through the book gave me a decent insight into how computers worked, while the research briefs broadened my horizons more allowing me to delve slightly into several different aspects of IT and I have taken multiple ideas and recommendations from both and started applying them to how I interact with computers, because good habits do have to start somewhere after all.