What are the essential tools that every IT person should have in the modern IT world? That is the idea behind a new Kingston University module called IT Toolbox. Over a 12 week semester, first year students will be guided through a series of activities such as blogging, running a server, client and server side scripting, search, social networking and problem solving. Each of those activities will be published here and anyone is welcome to join in.

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Toolbox index

Toolbox Activity 2: Running your own server

This is a fairly straightforward activity but it will need to be spread out over several days so don't leave it till the last minute. We want you to buy and run your own server space and we'll use it... [Oct 8, 2008]

Toolbox Google activity feedback

A big thanks to everyone who completed this activity. My goal is to give you rapid feedback as a group so that you can use your new knowledge in the rest of the module and elsewhere. As a general comment... [Oct 8, 2008]

Activity 1: Exploring Google

Deadline: midnight, Tuesday 6th October 2008 In this first activity you need to spend at least a couple of hours really trying to put Google through its paces. Questions to think about * What makes... [Oct 2, 2008]

Things everyone should know about modern IT (Session 1)

In this first session I will put forward a list of skills that I think every student should have mastered by the end of the module. This sets ambitious goals but with this underpinning, students will... [Oct 1, 2008]

Module Guide: IT Toolbox

Here is all you need to know about this year's Toolbox Module. If you have been paying attention you'll find it is remarkably similar to last year but be warned, some of the activities and the order... [Sep 29, 2008]

Toolbox 1.0: Last year's IT Toolbox Module (2007)

As I am preparing my teaching for the Autumn I thought it would be useful to package up last year's notes into a single document. This document includes all of the activities we did last year as well... [Aug 30, 2008]