Introduction

Do you interact with technology daily but want to understand it better? Look no further than CS50T: Understanding Technology, a course offered by Harvard University. Taught by the world-best Harvard Professor, David J. Malan, CS50T covers a wide range of topics, from hardware, internet, security, multimedia, programming basics, and web development, plus assignments for each. 🌐🖥️

It consists of 6 lectures (each one of them is around 1 hour) and assignments that are simple questions about the lecture. 🕰️

This course offers the following certificate options:

• Free certificate via Harvard OpenCourseWare 🆓
• Paid verified certificate via edX 💳
• Paid transcript and academic credit via Harvard Extension School 🎓

Week 1 - Hardware

The first lecture focuses on the computer’s hardware.

• What is the binary system?
• Why is it used?
• How computers can do everything by just using two values (0 and 1)?
• What are the computer components, and what is their purpose? 🔍💻

Week 2 - Internet

Have you ever asked yourself how it’s possible to send/receive a message from one country to another in seconds (or less)? This lecture explains:

• How files travel from one computer to another.
• What is an IP address, DNS, DHCP, ports, protocols, etc. 📡🌍

Week 3 - Multimedia

In this lecture, you will learn how computers handle multimedia (i.e., images, videos, music) using only a binary system. You will also learn about different file formats and file compression. 🎨🎥🎶

Week 4 - Security

My favorite lecture. It covers basic cryptography, encryption, cookies, VPNs, and more. 🔐

Weeks 5 and 6 - Web Development and Programming

These two lectures focus mainly on programming. Lecture 5 explains how websites work and how to build one yourself. The last lecture focuses on problem-solving and introduces Scratch - a visual programming language that is a great beginner tool to get into programming without having to learn a lot of complex syntaxes.

Summary

CS50T is awesome and highly recommended if you're not very familiar with computers and how they function. You can complete it in just 2-3 weeks, and it provides a strong foundation. The only drawback is that it's a bit outdated, last updated in 2017 (at the time of writing this post - 2023).

Personally, I'm happy I took it. It reassured me that I know all the basic concepts and I don’t have any gaps, before taking CS50x. 🎓

Feel free to visit my notes(also available on Harvard's official site) for guidance along the way! 📝

This is what the certificate would look like. (I received it on November 28th, 2023)

Thanks for 9546! 🙌