These lessons are intended for young people to help you understand the basics of how computers work and how to use them. Like everything else you read, these words should not be taken as the gospel truth, just someone's perceptions, and you can use your own abilities to filter and absorb what helps you, and chuck the rest.
Why is it good to learn how computers work?
Inside this head, and inside many other heads, there are two kinds of knowledge; the memory work kind of knowledge and the logical kind of knowledge. People who have their computer knowledge on the memory work side often have problems installing new programs, using someone else's computer or adapting to new operating systems like Windows Vista and many other computer related difficulties.
Things that should live on the memory work side of the brain are such things as "What is the capital of New York state?" and "Who was the King of England in 1675". There is no way that knowledge on the logical side can help you with these. For instance, logically speaking, New York City, a very major place, just has to be the capital of New York state, however it's not. Albany is. You just have to memorize that. And logic is not going to help you with the king question either, I mean, what's logical about kings anyway?
It is important learn how to figure out things about computers because there are just too many things to be done with them to try to memorize it all. Any ways, as anyone who has studied hard for a test the next day knows, it's always the stuff you didn't memorize that they ask!
So, lets get started on putting your computer knowledge firmly on the 'logical' side of your brain.
Lesson 1
What do the parts do?
You are pretty familiar with your TV, maybe too familiar! The TV is mostly an output machine or device. This means that the stuff, be it information or junk, flows from the TV out to you. It also has some input controls so that you can give it some input. These are the volume control, the on off switch and the channel changer, which lives under the couch.
So output is the flow of information to you and input is the flow from you to the device.
Now computers. Computers have:
- parts to receive input parts to give output parts to do work parts to remember things while the power is on (short term memory)
- parts to remember things when the power is off (long term memory)
What is kind of surprising is how much effort is spent getting input and giving output, and how little is actually spent on doing work! By work I mean heavy duty arithmetic or searching through long lists for a certain item.
The computers main job is to run programs. Programs are instructions in a language that computers and programmers understand. A programmer, or a team of programmers writes a program and saves it on a long term storage device like a a hard disk or a CD-ROM.
Then, when you want to run that program, you chose its name and the computer goes and gets the program off the hard drive, or wherever it is stored, and brings it into its short term storage, called RAM, and runs the program.
We'll look at this in more detail in our class.
Lesson 2 - Files, the Overview
The idea about files and directories is very important and actually if you can get a firm grasp of files, you are then on the downward side of the learning curve. If you understand files, you'll be able to figure out most things, and a lot of the black magic involved in using a computer, and a lot of the fear, will simply disappear. These lessons will spend a lot of time talking about files.
First I'll give a quick overview of files and then we will make comparisons between files and things you already know.
What do I mean by Files?
Files are clumps of computer data stored somewhere in your computer. Each file has a name, a location, and a length, and usually a date of when it was last changed. Files are stored in several places.
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- on hard drives
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- on CD's /DVD's
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- in the computers memory (RAM)
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- in the computers special read only memory (ROM)
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- on tapes of a back-up device.
Any files that are in the memory of the computer are lost when the power is turned off. That is not as scary as it sounds because what you usually have in memory is only a temporary copy of the file, the original stays on the hard drive or floppy or wherever it is usually kept. Pretty well the only time the original is in memory is when you are creating a new file and haven't saved it yet.
What Do Files Do?
Files hold and store information that can be read by the computer. That's all they do.
What Kinds of Files Are There?
All files are basically the same, they all have a name, a location, a date and they all hold information. However, they can hold lots of different kinds of information, so we often think of this as different kinds of files. Actually it is just the type of information that is different.
Here are some of the main types of files you will encounter. They often have certain letters at the end of their names so you can tell from their names what sort of information is inside. Some files you can easily look at the information inside and many others you can't, at least not without a program that is specifically designed to look inside that type of file.
What do you do with files?
What you do with a file depends on the type of information that it holds, but some things can be done with all files.
 Run them - if they hold a program.
Look inside them, if they hold graphics information or text.
Listen to them, if they hold audio information.
Copy them - this is one of the main things you will do. When you run a program, what actually happens is that the file, with the program inside, is copied from the long term storage device into the RAM, where its' list of instructions are executed (run). You also copy files from a CD to your hard drive or from one place on your hard drive to another. - Move them - This is like copying except that the original is NOT left behind. It is often safer to copy a file from one place to another and then delete the original, once you are sure the copy went well.
- Delete them. When you no longer need a particular file, you can zap it.
- Create them. When you compose a document in a word processor or any other program such as an editor or spreadsheet, you are creating a new file. Usually saving goes hand in hand with creating.
That is enough for an overview. You probably now are pretty sure what I mean when I talk of a file. Next comes two comparisons of files to things that are familiar and then a sort of history of files. A lot of this information is repeated again and again, so if you don't understand what I mean, don't worry about it, I'll be saying it again later! As I said, getting a firm grasp of handling files is essential to becoming a computer guru. It's almost all you need.
We'll look at this in more detail in our class.
Lesson 3 - Files Are Like LP Records
The Record Comparison
One way of understanding something is to compare it to something that you already know.
LP Records
First of all what basically is a file? One comparison is to records, I mean the record player, 33 RPM vinyl records that have been replaced by CD's and DVD's. If you are too young to remember these, then just think of audio CD's.
If you look at the surface of a record, you can see where each of the 'cuts' or songs is. Each one of these songs represents a file. It is a file of audio information, that can be understood and turned into music by your stereo player. Each song file has a title, a length and a location on the record.
Each computer file has a title, a length and a location. We cannot make use of the contents of a computer file without a computer and a program to understand the file. We can't make use of the song file without a stereo that has been programmed to understand that type of record. Although all song files are essentially the same, we classify them as rock, classic and so on, according to what is inside the file. We do the same with computer files. We call them graphics files, text files and programs, depending on what is inside the file.
We'll look at this in more detail in our class.
Lesson 5 - Organizing Files Is Like Organizing the Fridge
How Do You Keep Track Of All Those Files?
As you know, a file is a collection of information. It has a name, a size and a date. After working with a computer for a while, you can end up with a huge quantity of files. So, 'they' invented directories. Directories were invented to help you organize your files, but, they often seem to confuse people. The people at Apple call directories 'Folders' but that doesn't help much either. One of the reasons it doesn't help is that people are not used to putting folders inside folders inside other folders, however that is exactly what you do with Directories. Think of directories as boxes to put things in. Boxes, with things in them, can be put inside other boxes. We do it all the time. Look inside your kitchen, your kitchen is a big box. Inside that box is a refrigerator box and a lot of cupboard boxes. We don't need to label the kitchen box with a sign that says 'Kitchen' because everyone has learned what the kitchen looks like. However with directories on our hard drive, we can't actually see the boxes so we label (name) them so we can see them, and know which box we are in.
Computer Art. Introductory Basics.
Before you get started with computer graphics, you may want to take a good look at the basics under each and every image. Below is a list is what we will cover here. Here, we will cover;
What is a pixel?
Image size
Resolution
File Size
File Types
What is a Mega Pixel?
What is a pixel?
 All images you see on the internet are made up of pixels. A pixel is defined as, “the smallest picture element.” You can think of a pixel as one of many little squares in your picture.
 Pixels are coded with color. Each color is represented by a number. These are called RGB values. Red, Green and Blue.
Image Size. How Big is the Image?
Most of the time, an image is measured in inches, or pixels. An image may be 5 inches wide by 5 inches tall. Inches are usually used for designers that are working on images for print purposes. If an image is going into a newspaper or magazine, the designer will work in inches.
If a designer is a web site designer, they will set up the image size in pixels. For example, they may make an image 400 pixels wide and 400 pixels high.
Resolution
We'll look at this in more detail in our class.
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