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TM111 Block 1 The Digital World
320 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 7, 2021
This is the textbook of an essential academic course, for the specialist of computer science generally, with its different tracks, on the Open University. The course contains 12 modules, from the beginning of the digital world to the most recent technologies nowadays like the internet of things, and the human-computer interaction. As the textbook is separated into three main blocks:
1. The digital world
2. Creating Solutions
3. Connecting people, places, and things
And as the main aim for this block is to establish a technological and information backgrounds of the nowadays digital world that we live in, in 6 main chapters; Living in a digital world, The evolving computer, Digital media, A world built of data, Weaving the web, Crossing boundaries.
I haven’t found anything new or advanced through the 1st chapter, as it was generally skimming through the impact of the new technology on our daily life, although I’ve found it quite charming when it comes to the part which is related to the advice and the protocols of communicating with someone through the forums, and I’ve also found it interesting that someone has made an analogy between the nowadays advancing technologies, and the industrial revolution, back then on the 70s.
The 2nd chapter of the book was quite lacking in lots of details and wasn’t quite informative about the concepts s of bytes, the CPU, the memory, and the general computer architecture part. Although the timeline maps she provides as a scanning of the evolution of the computer was quite informative.
The rest of the chapters I’ve quickly skimmed through them, as they were generally viewing an application of the digital data, using certain software, which named as Audacity, and as we already used this software back on the days during middle school, I didn’t see the need to overcome it again. Besides the 4th chapter which was mostly talking about data theoretically and its definitions, I also haven’t found it that it added anything new to the topic. The 5th chapter was quite interesting too, for the reason it was covering one of the markup languages on front-end development, and I think it was a great addition to the textbook.
In general, this block has a sense of personal writing, as the main writer of this material is Elaine Thomas, the module team chair of this subject, TM111, on Open University, and so it was quite explainable of the personal tongue through the book in general, I haven’t read the academic slides of this module yet, but reading this textbook was quite entertaining, despite the modernity of the material, or the lack of informative details.
I have also uploaded the textbook on Scribd, in case anyone wants to benefit from the material
https://www.scribd.com/document/48349...
1. The digital world
2. Creating Solutions
3. Connecting people, places, and things
And as the main aim for this block is to establish a technological and information backgrounds of the nowadays digital world that we live in, in 6 main chapters; Living in a digital world, The evolving computer, Digital media, A world built of data, Weaving the web, Crossing boundaries.
I haven’t found anything new or advanced through the 1st chapter, as it was generally skimming through the impact of the new technology on our daily life, although I’ve found it quite charming when it comes to the part which is related to the advice and the protocols of communicating with someone through the forums, and I’ve also found it interesting that someone has made an analogy between the nowadays advancing technologies, and the industrial revolution, back then on the 70s.
The 2nd chapter of the book was quite lacking in lots of details and wasn’t quite informative about the concepts s of bytes, the CPU, the memory, and the general computer architecture part. Although the timeline maps she provides as a scanning of the evolution of the computer was quite informative.
The rest of the chapters I’ve quickly skimmed through them, as they were generally viewing an application of the digital data, using certain software, which named as Audacity, and as we already used this software back on the days during middle school, I didn’t see the need to overcome it again. Besides the 4th chapter which was mostly talking about data theoretically and its definitions, I also haven’t found it that it added anything new to the topic. The 5th chapter was quite interesting too, for the reason it was covering one of the markup languages on front-end development, and I think it was a great addition to the textbook.
In general, this block has a sense of personal writing, as the main writer of this material is Elaine Thomas, the module team chair of this subject, TM111, on Open University, and so it was quite explainable of the personal tongue through the book in general, I haven’t read the academic slides of this module yet, but reading this textbook was quite entertaining, despite the modernity of the material, or the lack of informative details.
I have also uploaded the textbook on Scribd, in case anyone wants to benefit from the material
https://www.scribd.com/document/48349...
January 30, 2025
In line with The Open University's mission to be "open," the first textbook for their compulsory Computing and IT module is very open in its approach. It offers an overview of several topics in computing—such as the history of computing, binary logic, HTML, and design principles—without delving into any of them in significant depth. Since The Open University textbooks are available for purchase by the general public, this might be a suitable resource for someone with less than GCSE-level computing knowledge looking for a primer. However, I’d argue that someone in this position might be better off identifying a specific topic, like HTML, and buying a focused introductory book on that subject.
That said, while I don’t consider myself the target audience for this book, having no formal computing training, it did help consolidate some of the knowledge I already possess and provided additional context. I also found it well-written and didn’t feel bored while reading it. However, if I were paying over £1,500 (at current rates) for this module out of pocket, I’d feel short-changed. I believe this module should be optional for those of us with more than basic computing knowledge, so we could instead focus on something more valuable (for example, an introductory stats module would have been far more beneficial to me). But I’m getting into module-level commentary here, not just the book itself. The book is fine for what it is, but I’m left wondering who the target audience really is.
That said, while I don’t consider myself the target audience for this book, having no formal computing training, it did help consolidate some of the knowledge I already possess and provided additional context. I also found it well-written and didn’t feel bored while reading it. However, if I were paying over £1,500 (at current rates) for this module out of pocket, I’d feel short-changed. I believe this module should be optional for those of us with more than basic computing knowledge, so we could instead focus on something more valuable (for example, an introductory stats module would have been far more beneficial to me). But I’m getting into module-level commentary here, not just the book itself. The book is fine for what it is, but I’m left wondering who the target audience really is.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews