Megabits, megabytes, and megahertz... The World Wide Web and Wireless Web... Operating systems and "illegal instructions"... Streaming video... XHTML... Cookies, encryption, and hacking... C++, Java, and JavaScript... XML and XSLT... What is it all about?

Offered to students via the Internet as part of Harvard Extension's distance education program, Computer Science E-1 is a thorough introduction to the very latest in information technology. Through weekly lectures, streamed as videos over the Internet, the course demystifies computers and the Internet, along with their jargon, so that students understand not only what they can do with each, but how and why. Students will leave this course armed with a new vocabulary and empowered for further exploration of computer science. This term's lectures include, but are not limited to, introductions to hardware, the Internet, wireless, software, multimedia, web site development with XHTML, privacy and security, XML and XSLT, and programming with JavaScript. The course is designed both for those with little, if any, computing experience and for those who use a computer every day.

For more information, see http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~cscie1/.