Both Academic Computing Services and Administrative Information Services will once again offer a number of their respective short courses during the Spring 2001 semester.
All of the courses listed below, which are open to the Rensselaer community and given free of charge, and will be held from 4:00pm to 6:00pm in JEC 3207. Also please remember that you must register for each course you wish to attend.
This course, which is taught on the Rensselaer Computing System, provides an introduction to the UNIX operating system, but most of the material also applies to Linux. The course also introduces several common UNIX commands, some of which have to do with managing and printing files. Course participants will also learn about output redirection, pipes, and file name wildcards. Finally, the course will explain UNIX directory structure and path names, including some commands for manipulating directories and for controlling directory permissions. Participants will also have time to use brief exercises as hands-on practice between discussion topics.
This course introduces the vi text editor, a file editor available on all UNIX systems. On RCS workstations, vi is a full-screen editor that starts up quickly and has adequate functionality for many text editing tasks, such as composing source code and mail messages. vi uses no menus; you must use keystrokes to enter commands.
Prerequisites: Familiarity with RCS and UNIX
This course introduces the emacs text editor, a standard file editor on RCS and many other UNIX systems. On the RCS workstations, emacs provides a graphical interface with menus. This editor is slower to start up, but has more functionality than vi, including special features to simplify writing source code in several programming languages, including C and TeX/LaTeX.
Prerequisites: Familiarity with RCS and UNIX
This course provides an introduction to LaTeX, a document preparation system based on the TeX language, which was designed especially for formatting mathematical and scientific text. LaTeX is not a WYSIWYG program like Microsoft Word; rather, it uses text markup tags which are similar to those used in HTML. This short course can only get you started, but should provide you with a foundation on which you can continue building your knowledge of LaTeX. And because LaTeX is used worldwide on a variety of computer systems, and the language is the same on all platforms, what you learn in this course will apply on whatever computing system you use.
Prerequisites: Working knowledge of a UNIX text editor, such as vi or emacs
This short course provides users with an introduction to using shell scripts, which are programs written using UNIX commands and shell programming constructs and which can be used to automate repetitive command sequences and to perform actions on multiple files.
This short course covers the following topics, illustrated by simple Bourne shell examples:
Course participants will have time to try several hands-on exercises in order to practice applying what they've learned.
Prerequisites: Working knowledge of UNIX and a UNIX text editor such as vi or emacs. Also please note that this course is not a substitute for Introduction to UNIX. If you lack the necessary UNIX prerequisites, you should wait until they are offered again and take them first.
ACS Course Registration
Enrollment for ACS short courses is limited to 30 students, so please be sure to sign up early.
If you would like to register for any of these courses, select the Computing short courses link from the ACS homepage. (You may also obtain complete course descriptions from this page by clicking on the appropriate course link. You should also check to make sure that you have the necessary course prerequisites.)
If a course needs to be cancelled or rescheduled, you will receive notification via e-mail.
Administrative Information Services has announced that the CompTutor training vendor will offer the following courses to Rensselaer faculty and staff in the training room (room 5202) of the J Building during the remainder of the fall semester. All courses are held from 9:00am to 5:00pm, with an hour break for lunch, and cost $71.00 per person.
Since the training room has limited space, AIS requests that you please sign up for any courses as soon as possible; availability is on a first-come, first-served basis. If you do sign up for a class and then need to cancel, you may do so up to one week prior to the class, by noon that day; after that, AIS will take no exceptions, and you will be billed for holding a spot in the class, whether or not you attend. (CompTutor now bills each department directly.)
If you have any questions about the classes, or if you wish to enroll, please contact Lori Winslow by calling ext. 6278/6279 or by directing electronic mail to winsll@rpi.edu. If you register via e-mail, please include your telephone and fax numbers, as well as the department to which the class should be charged.
Access February 7, March 14, April 3
Excel January 12, February 6, March 13, April 4
Front Page January 25, February 28, March 19, April 24
Outlook ** Available upon request **
PowerPoint February 22, March 29, April 25
Windows January 24, February 16, March 15, April 5
Word February 8, March 16, April 2
Access February 14, March 21, April 10
Excel February 13, March 20, April 11
Windows February 23, March 22, April 12
Word February 15, March 23, April 9
Access February 21, March 28, April 17
Excel January 26, February 20, March 27, April 18
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