Technical Support Fundamentals
I started this Corsera course in hopes of getting a certification (and that helping me get a job). I’m going to assume it’s similar to Khan Academy’s courses, but we’ll find out if completing it helps or not after the fact.
What is IT Support?
The people behind the scenes helping Information Technology (IT) run and troubleshoot issues. Digital literacy is the “defining factor” that makes a good IT support technician.
The day-to-day is made up of a varying amalgamation of managing, troubleshooting, maintaining, and configuring various devices and users depending on the day.
Something the gentleman in the video said is using failure as feedback. I love that, I try to tell my students that all the time.
Basically this course is going to teach someone how to understand computers, what users most use, how to troubleshoot common issues with internet configurations, scripting, and some more. Actually somewhat exciting, since the format is a little more engaging than Khan Academy.
Here’s there flow for the five courses:
- Technical Support Fundamentals
- The Bits and Bytes of Computer Networking
- Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User
- System Administration and IT Infrastructure Services
- IT Security: Defense Against the Digital Arts
I have a feeling most of what I did through Khan will be covered so whatever was I’ll try to link to not flood my notes with repetitive content.
Graded Modules
So pretty much right after I typed the above I went ahead to try the graded activities to see the difficulty levels…very easy. Here I’ll just write down information I got wrong on the assignments
Module 2
I got a Megabyte conversion question wrong:
[!question] If you wanted to transfer 2 megabytes of data per second, what transfer speed do you need?
I said 2 Mb/s which is incorrect, since Mb stands for megabits not megabytes. The correct answer would be 16 Mb/s.
I also got a motherboard question wrong:
[!question] Data needs to move quickly between the CPU, RAM, and video card for smooth performance. On a motherboard, which component specifically manages this high-speed data flow?
So for this I had to go look at their video for a refresher on the actual components of the motherboard:
A chipset is the configuration of how the parts on the motherboard are going to communicate with one another. There are two chips, the northbridge and southbridge.
The Northbridge connects the RAM and the video cards, while the Southbridge connects IO controllers.
Most northbridge connections today are built right into the CPU, and the Chipset is the key component of the motherboard.