PC Basics
Monday October 13th, 2008From Library Instruction Wiki
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PC Basics
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Outline
- What is a computer
- Hardware
- Internal Hardware
- External Hardware
- Software
- Hardware
- Using the computer
- Desktop
- Icons
- Taskbar
- start button
- Menus
- Sub-menus
- Desktop
- Using Word
- What it is
- What it looks like
- How it works
- Copy, Cut, Paste
- Editing
- Saving
- Retrieving
- Minimizing
- Other Exploration
- Cut and paste from a web site
- Maximizing
- Saving Safeguards
- Save As
- Save to a disk or other device
Handouts
- Anatomy of Word
- Cut and Paste
Teaching Guide
WHAT IS A COMPUTER?
What is a computer? A computer is made up of hardware and software.
Hardware is the physical part of the computer. There are two kinds of hardware: Internal hardware, and External Hardware.
Internal Hardware is all the stuff inside the box – memory cards, hard drives, the Central Processing Unit (CPU), Modem, etc.
This is an example of the internal hardware of your computer (HOLD UP COMPUTER GUTS)
External Hardware are all the things that are on the outside of the box – the monitor, mouse, keyboard, printer, scanner, portable memory devices, cameras, etc.
This is important to know, because if you’re angry with your computer and you want to destroy it utterly, smashing the external hardware is much less effective than destroying the internal hardware.
Software is completely different from hardware. Software cannot be seen or touched. Software is information and instructions that your computer uses to perform its functions. Operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS, and UNIX are software, as are Word processors like MS Word.
The hardware attached to the computer is there so that you can communicate with your computer, and make the software do the things that you want. You use the keyboard, mouse, drives and scanner to talk to your computer, and it uses the monitor, printer and speakers to ‘talk’ to you. Inside, it uses the internal hardware and software to try and understand what you’re saying, and then it gives you what it thinks you want.
Quick Review:
A computer is hardware and software. Hardware is the solid stuff you can touch, and software is the programs and information that make the computer work.
USING THE COMPUTER
The Desktop
The desktop is the screen you see after successfully turning on your computer. Usually it consists of a either a picture or a color or a combination of the two, a series of icons, and a task bar.
Icons
Icons are little pictures with a short description underneath them. Icons represent software and files that are on your computer. The icons on your desktop are only a few of the most used programs and files on your computer. Other programs can be located by using the task bar.
In order for you to activate an icon on your desktop, you need to ‘double click’ on it. The desktop is the most likely place where you will need to ‘double click’ something. Once inside a program, or when you are on the internet, most things only require a single click to activate.
Task Bar
The task bar consists of a Start button, several much smaller icons, space to show what programs and files are currently ‘open’ and sometimes a clock. The Start button is the place that shows all the different main programs in your computer, and gives you a way to see the different files that are in your computer.
Click on the Start button once. A menu appears. A menu is a list of options for you to choose from, just like in a restaurant, only these don’t taste very good if you try to eat them. On the menu, you will see items like “Settings” “Documents” and “Programs” as well as icons for individual programs like “Microsoft Word” or “Windows Media Player.” Some of the items on the menu have small black triangles next to them. Now that you have opened the menu with one click, it stays open and you can move your mouse cursor around on the menu. As you move the cursor, it highlights the different things you can click on. The items with the black arrows contain ‘sub-menus.’ Each submenu shows what ‘folders’ and files are held behind that icon. For example, if you place your mouse cursor over ‘Programs’ you will see a menu of various programs available. Some of these have little black arrows next to them as well, which show that there are more submenus to be found. There can be a lot of submenus.
Sometimes there aren’t very many submenus, or the black arrows are absent from a program. You can click on any program to see what it is, open it, or show its contents.
Quick Review: The Desktop is what you see when you finish booting up your computer. There are icons and a Task Bar. Icons represent programs and files that you can access by double-clicking. The Task Bar helps you find other programs inside your computer.
USING WORD
What it is:
‘Word’ is a program created that appears on many PCs. Word is what is called a ‘word processor’ program. Word processors are programs you use to type documents.
What it looks like:
Click on the Start button in the Task Bar. Click on “Microsoft Word” and the word processing program opens up.
At the top of the screen is the title of your current document. Next is a toolbar with various headings, such as File, Edit, etc. The next toolbar has icons such as a blank sheet of paper, a file folder, and a disk. Next is the body of the document. At the bottom are several small icons, and information about where you are in the document.
Each of the headings, File, Edit, etc. has a drop-down menu beneath it, with more commands, and potentially more submenus. Each of the icons is a frequently used command that you can find in the menus, but has been placed on the toolbar to make your life easier. By resting the mouse arrow over any icon, but not clicking on it, you can see a ‘tag’ that tells a little more about that icon. For example, by resting your arrow on the blank sheet of paper icon, you will see the words “New Blank Document.”
How it works:
Copy, Cut and Paste
Type the phrase “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.” Press Enter twice, to give yourself some room. Now, we are going to copy, cut and paste what we just typed. To copy something in a document, move the mouse until the arrow is at the start of what you would like to copy – a word, phrase, image, or block of text. “Left-Click” and hold the button down, then move the arrow sideways across the area you want to copy. Alternately, if you want to copy a large piece of text, you can move downward to ‘highlight’ the area you want to copy. Once you have highlighted the area, let go of the button. The area remains highlighted. Move the arrow to the toolbar at the top, and find the series of icons – scissors, two pieces of paper, and a clipboard with a paper in front of it. Click on the two pieces of paper icon, which is the Copy icon. You have just copied the highlighted text. Next, move the mouse arrow down below your lovely phrase, and click on the line you would like your cursor to appear on, to put your blinking cursor in the proper place. Finally, using the mouse arrow, go back up to the icons, and click on the clipboard and sheet of paper icon, which is the Paste icon. The text you copied should appear on the page. Now you should have two identical phrases.
Editing
Of course we now realize that this phrase is out of date. It is meant to help us remember the nine planets in the solar system, but recently it was decided that Pluto is not a planet, so we need to fix the phrase. Let’s delete the words ‘Nine Pizzas’ and replace them with the word ‘Nachos.’ There are two ways to accomplish this. One way is to place the blinking cursor at the end of the word, and press the “Backspace” key repeatedly until the offending words have been consumed by oblivion. Now that they are gone, you can type the word Nachos in their place. The second way, which works well when you have a lot of text to get rid of, is to highlight the words, just as we did when we were copying. Now that they are highlighted, press the Delete key, or Backspace.
Saving
Well, now that we’ve got all that work done, we need to save what we’ve accomplished. On the toolbar, locate the icon of the computer disk. This is the Save icon. Click it once. A small ‘sub-screen’ will appear. This is the Save As screen. The first time you save a document, you will be asked to give it a name. In the space provided for the document name, type “Planets.” Alternately, you could type anything else you wanted, but remember that the document name will be the way you find the document again later.
Now you have saved the document. Now for the ultimate test. In the top right corner of the screen, locate the red X button, and click it. The document will disappear, and you will be back at the desktop.
Retrieving Documents
To retrieve a previously saved document, you have several choices. If you have a “My Documents” icon on your desktop, double-click that. Alternately, click the Start button, locate “My Documents,” and click that, or, thirdly, click on Microsoft Word, and open a blank document. In the first two cases, you will be shown a list of your documents. Locate “Planets” and double-click on it to open it. In the third case, from a blank document, click the opening folder icon. This is the Open icon. You will be given a list of documents. Double-click “Planets,” and we’re there!
Now it’s time to get a little crazy. Next to that big red X you clicked earlier, there are two other buttons. The left-most button, which looks like a little line, is the Minimize button. Click once on this, and Microsoft Word, as well as your document, will be minimized to the Task Bar at the bottom of the screen. See it down there? Any time you want this back, just click on it, and it will reappear for you.
Quick Review: Microsoft Word is a word processor, which you use to type up your own documents on. There are many different icons, headings, and menus that you can use to work with your document. Some of the main icons are Copy, Cut, Paste, and Save.
OTHER EXPLORATION
Let’s go online for a little more exploration. We’re almost done, and then we can do some experiments. Locate the Internet Explorer icon on the desktop. This is a blue ‘e’ with a ring around it. Double-click on it. Because our computers are always hooked up to the internet, we go directly to our home page. If you have a dial-up connection, you will be prompted with several windows asking you if you want to go online, etc. depending on which Internet service provider you have.
Here we are on our library’s home page! At the top, you can see the title bar has the title of the web page we are looking at right now. There is the familiar toolbar with headings, and below that is a new toolbar with some different icons. In the middle of the page is the web site itself, and at the bottom is the task bar, where we can still see ‘Planets.’
Let’s do a little more cutting and pasting, to show how it works between two documents. Locate the “About Us” on the left, in the middle of that column of headings. Click on it once. Now, let’s highlight a block of text. Start at the top of the first paragraph, click and hold the mouse button down, and move the arrow downward, highlighting the paragraph. Stop when you get to the bottom. If you go to far, you can move back up and un-highlight’ things, as long as you keep that button pressed. When you have the paragraph highlighted, let go of the button. Now, click the Copy icon.
Minimize the website, and we’re back at our desktop. Click on the Planets document, and it returns to the screen. Put your cursor where you want it, and click the Paste icon.
You are now a super star.
Let’s get out of here – click on the red X. Huh? Oh, right. We forgot to save it first. Lucky for us, the computer program has reminded us that we should do that before we get out of anything we’ve been working on. Click “yes” you want to save the document before closing it.
Some other things. You can save your documents on disks and flash drives. You can do this in several ways. First, if you are saving a document for the first time, and you want to save it on a disk or flash drive, make sure your disk or drive is inserted properly into the computer. Second, when prompted to name your file, select the ‘drive’ you want to save it in at the top of the window. For disks, choose and “3 ½ Inch Floppy A:” drive. Notice your other options, for saving to CD or DVD. If you have a flash drive inserted, it will appear here as well as an option. If you have already saved the file once on your computer, and want to save it again somewhere else, click on File, and select “Save As.” This will take you to the now familiar “Save As” screen, and you know the rest.
Quick Review: You can cut and paste between different documents, even if one of them is a web page. Your computer will warn you if you are about to exit a document without saving it. You can save your file to a disk by choosing the Save As option, and selecting which ‘Drive’ to save to.
