homepage.mac.com/vpetrik/CnP/Glossary.htm
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

...a place where...scholarship is leisure, reduced preoccupation with business, interdisciplinary studies, and a community of readers are (found). The university has played an important role in the development of innovative thought and culture and is an agent of creative dialogue, and sociological change.
http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr09/univ1.html

This is NOT a computer course, nor is it training in software. This course IS about critical thinking, questioning, understanding, researching, terminology, history, ethics and philosophy all in English.

If you want to become a good computer science person you will have to learn good English, learn to think critically, learn to work in groups both face to face and in virtual (online) encounters. You will need to learn to intelligently find the tools you need to complete your work, to ask good questions and above all to be critical, to be skeptical of everything you see, hear or read, including the things we do, say and read in this class.

This course is not intended to impress you with how smart I am nor how much I know. It is intended for YOU to find out how much YOU know and even more important, how much you want to know. This is a university, if you want it to be, it can be a playground for learning. You can have fun learning, it just takes practice, don't pretend to learn, really try to learn. This course is not “EduTainment”, (Dr. M.L. O’Neill), I am not a comedian, so please, learn how to find something interesting. To simply say that this or that is "boring" IS boring, don't be so dull that you allow your imagination to disappear.

Unfortunately for you, some of your teachers may try to treat you like children who must be led to information which they believe is valuable for you to know. They may be right or they may be wrong. I will try hard not to do that.

I do not believe that you are children and that if you have not done so before, then it is time for you to take responsibility for your actions; especially as they apply to your education. While you are in this class, when you are preparing for this class and whenever you think of this class I want you to know that, in the end, YOU are the only one responsible for your success or your failure. I believe that, now it is up to you to believe that.

"School" as we know it is an Industrial Age concept. The Industrial Age started in the late 18th century and created factories where people labored for long hours "on the clock" and at the whims and demands of a factory owner or manager. In a factory workers spend a certain number of hours in a building, with time constrained tasks "given" to them by people called supervisors or managers and these workers are then expected to "produce" things. In the case of school, students are the workers and teachers the supervisors and the things you "produce" are the answers you are told are correct by the teachers.

Some people know so little, they don’t know how little they know.
Some people don't know and don't know they don't know.
Some people don't know and don't CARE that they don't know.
Some people know but don't know that they know and of course, some don't CARE that they know.
Some people don't know but DO know they don't know and they CARE that they don't know.
Some people know but they know they don't know nearly enough.

These last two are the wise ones.

Are you confused? Let's work on making it better...