Quambonecomputerbasics

Editor's Notes

• #4: These are the right terms to use. If you use these terms, no computer repairman or salesperson can ever make you feel like an idiot. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It’s the engineroom of your computer – the brains of the operation (You thought you were the brains, right? Wrong.) It’s sometimes referred to (incorrectly) as the “hard drive”. They call it that because your hard drive is in there, but it’s not the hard drive. The hard drive is only a part of the CPU The monitor is fancy computer speak for the screen. The mouse is one way of communicating with the computer. The keyboard is another way of communicating with the computer. Throwing something at the computer is a way of communicating, but it’s not very effective.
• #5: The CPU is very important. It contains all the information that makes your computer what it is. In order, lets look at the following: The on/off button. Very important, this. Just push it in – they are usually located on the front of the CPU. Your CPU may stand upright or it may be horizontal. There is no difference, it’s just the way they’re made. If you buy one that needs to be upright, please don’t put it on its side. It won’t like it. The floppy disk drive. This is where those little diskettes go. You push them in. To get them out again, you push the button. They are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The CD-Rom drive. CD Rom stands for Compact Disk Read Only Memory. They look just like (surprise, surprise) CDs. Look for the button under the CD drive. Push the one with the upward facing triangle and watch the drawer open. DON’T put your coffee cup in there, or your can of coke. They will break it. Close it by pushing the drawer, or the same button again. The restart button is for when you get into serious problems and the machine has “hung” or jammed. It’s the “last resort” button. You use it to re-boot (restart) the computer by pressing it once and letting it go. Try that now. It’s not actually good for the machine to send those jolts of electricity through it if you don’t need to. Like I said, last resort. The machine you are looking at doesn’t have a 51/4 inch floppy drive. They really are a thing of the past. Very old machines may still have them, but they aren’t used much any more.
• #6: If you have turned your computer on and all you have is a blank screen, chances are the screen is not turned on. Push the button. If that doesn’t work, wiggle the leads at the back. Make sure it’s connected to a power source (that is, plugged in to electricity) andc connected to the back of your CPU.
• #7: Hold it so the “tail” points away from you. Rest your fingers on the two buttons. Move it around the desktop and watch the arrow move around the computer desktop. Lift the mouse up, move it and you’ll notice that the arrow doesn’t move at all. Turn it over and you’ll see it has a “roller ball” underneath that makes it move. This needs to be cleaned out every now and then, as it gets full of gunk. The left button is the one you’ll use the most. The right button is used in conjunction with the left button, but people have existed happily for years without every using the right button, so don’t feel pressured to be ambidextrous right away. To use the mouse to open programs you’ll have to “double click”. That means clicking twice in rapid succession on an icon. One click “selects”. The other click “acts upon” your selection.
• #8: When you press the “on” button, things will whirr, the computer will make noises. This is normal. If nothing happens, check that all your cords are plugged in and that the computer is connected to electricity. A screen will eventually appear that looks like the one in the picture. It will take some time. We call it a desktop, because it’s where you work. There are the pictures on the “desktop”. They are called icons. Each icon is a pointer to a program or file. To save digging through the insides of the computer, you can put the icons of the programs or files you use the most on your desktop, like you keep the files you use the most close by on your real, solid wooden desk. They are (usually) not the real files or programs, they are “shortcuts” – an electronic alias that points to the real program in the depths of your hard drive. By clicking on it, it sends a message to the real file. To open a file you can double click on it, or go to the start button.
• #9: These are the things on the screen you will be using when you operate your computer We’ll look at them one by one.
• #10: The Start button contains a list of all the programs you will have on your computer. It’s where we go to find files or programs, change settings such as the screensaver and most importantly it’s where we turn the computer off. Your most recently used documents can be easily found on there as well. It’s a very important little thing. It contains pop-up menus. So called because they pop right up out of nowhere. And menu because it give you choices. When you roll your mouse over the the right facing triangles, a menu pops up. Not all computers have the toolbar section. You can set them to have it, but most of these aren’t. It’s just a faster way of accessing the programs you use the most. Don’t worry if you can’t see one. The main part of the task bar shows any programs that you have open but minimised (more about that later) The system tray contains important stuff that you should leave alone – except for the volume and clock/calendar. You can change the clock by double clicking it – it will show you a clock and calendar.
• #11: Here you see the Start button activated. The blue colour means you have selected that particular program. If you wanted to open it, you would need to click on it.
• #12: Here we have Word back again. Most programs have some very similar features. They are: Title bars – they are often blue, but are usually a different colour from most other things in the program. They usually have the name of the program in them – in white. You title bar should say Document 1 (or maybe 2 or 3) – Microsoft Word. Also they have the mimimise, restore and close buttons on them. Underneath that should be a Menu bar. – It’s called a menu bar cause you get to make a lot of choices. In order, the Menus are File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Table, Window, Help. Move your arrow over File, click once and let go. It should give you a drop down menu. Drop down menus are like pop-up menus but they drop down instead of popping up. Move your mouse down them and they change colour. Whichever one your mouse is selecting, you can act upon by clicking. It goes away by clicking anywhere but on the menu. Click on the white screen and it will go away. Toolbars – they have lots of tools that we will use when we use the word processor. They also contain shortcuts (remember them?) for commonly used commands such as print and save Scroll bars – we use them because your screens aren’t big enough to show the whole page. By placing our arrow on the scroll bar, we can move the page (the white part) up and down. You need to hold the left button down and drag the scroll bar. Watch the white part of the page move down. You move it up the same way. You can move the page across the same way.
• #13: Now we have this program in front of us, let’s close it. We do that by clicking on the X in a box in the blue bar across the top of the monitor. Look on the left and you will see three grey boxes. They are the minimise box, the restore box and the close box. If you move you mouse arrow over them without clicking, they will show you their names. Click on the “close” box.
• #14: We will use this program tonight. It’s a word processing program. It’s very powerful and useful. All computers nowdays seem to come with some sort of word processing program bundled with the computer. They all look and behave very similarly.
• #15: Once you have typed something, you’ll want to save it. That’s vitally important. There are two ways to save – both easy, but one easier than the other. To save, move your arrow over the toolbar. That’s right under the Menu Bar. As you move your arrow slowly over the pictures (icons) words will appear. Find the one that says “save” and click it once. A dialogue box appears. Give your file a name and press on save. OR: Move your arrow over the file menu and click once on the word. A drop-down menu should appear. It will have words in it like Open, Save, Close. Move your arrow down to Save and click once. Voila – same dialogue box. Give it a name. The name is typed where it says “File Name”. When text is blue (highlighted) you can type straight over the top of it without having to delete it. Now…where is it getting saved to?? You need to not only save it, but be able to find it again. You can save it *anywhere* on your computer, often to the My Documents folder. Make sure you save your files some place sensible. Look at the top of the Save dialogue box. There is a section that says “Save In:”. This is where you choose where to put it. Click once on the downward facing triangle at the right of the white section. Another drop-down menu appears. That is where you select where you are going to save your file to. The computer lets you save it just about anywhere. Once you have saved, the file is safely stored on your hard drive, and you can have as many blackouts as you like and it won’t get lost.
• #16: We make our changes with the toolbar. Firstly, select your text. You need to select anything you want to change so the computer knows what it has to work on. You select text by putting your arrow at the beginning of the text you want to select, holding down the left mouse button and dragging to the end of the line (or text you want to choose) The text should be highlighted black on white. It’s safe to let go of the mouse button. The font (type face) we have normally is Times New Roman. That’s called the default font. Up on the tool bar is a white section that will show you the different fonts the computer is able to use as a drop down menu. You can use the scroll bar to look at the different ones. You select one by moving your mouse over it and activate your selection by clicking on it. It will change your font. Once you have changed your file you must save the changes. Or they will be lost. Why doesn’t the dialogue box appear the second time? Because you have already saved it once, you are now only saving the changes you have made, to the same place and with the same name. You can change the size. The number in the white box shows the size of the font. The smaller the number, the smaller the size. Use the scroll bar and click on the number you want. Then save again, by using the toolbar. Save, and often. Golden rule to computing. You can change the colour. Make sure the text is highlighted still. Sometimes Word tries to be helpful by only putting the commands you use a lot on the toolbar. It hides the others. And the colour command may be hidden. But it’s easy to find. Look for two right-facing arrows and a downward triangle underneath it. When you move the mouse over it slowly it should say “more buttons”. Click on it to see a drop down menu. There will be a capital A with a coloured line underneath. Click on the downward facing arrow next to it. It will bring up a heap of different colours. Choose the one you like by clicking it with the mouse. You text will change to the colour you have chosen. Now save.
• #17: There are other formatting commands you can use On the toolbar, there are some buttons that show horizontal lines. They change how the text is aligned on your page. You can make all your text go to the left, or to the right, or in the middle of your page. You can justify it, which is what they do in newspapers. Click on the buttons and see how it changes the way your text looks. You can change how the letters look – their style. B, I and U mean Bold (dark and heavy), Italic (on a lean) and Underline. Select the text and click on B. Now I for Italic and finally U for underline. You can “unselect” by clicking on the boxes again. There are two ways to print too. You can use the File menu or the shortcut on the toolbar. Try File first. File > Print > will bring up a dialogue box. The computer want to know where it has to print to and how many pages to print. Press the “print” button and wait. The computer send the info to the printer, which reads it and prints your story.
• #18: When you save, try to always save y our documents to the right place. A good place (and often your computer’s default location) is the My Documents folder. All children here have their own folder and are encouraged to save into it. If you can’t remember where you saved something, use the “Find” command in the Start Menu. Click on the Start button and select Find. This gives you a dialogue box where you can type the name of the file you are looking for. Type in your name, and see what the computer can find. Hopefully it will find your file. To open the file, you only have to click on it.
• #19: The most used button in the classroom is the Undo button, or command. It can undo once, or more than once. It is found in the Edit menu. If you have made a mistake, try the Magic Undo Button before you go ANY FURTHER.