COMPUTER TERMINOLOGY
The most common words you’re going to hear
when working with computers casually and
professionally.
OKAY BUT WHY?!
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Computers are more than just the boxes with screens
sitting in your home that connect you to the internet,
play games, and let you complete homework
assignments.
The future of basically all of humanity is nested in
how computers control and manage parts of your life.
The amount that you depend on computers is actually
pretty deep.
What do you do when the power goes out?
 How useless do you feel when your phone breaks?
 What do you do to keep yourself from being bored when
your phone battery dies?
 Can you sit through a dinner conversation without looking
at your phone and checking Twitter?
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TECHNOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE
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Computers have become an extension of the human
consciousness.
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When I was a kid, growing up in the 1980s, I had 40 phone
numbers memorized of the people that I called the most.
And I had to run back to the house, use the phone on the
wall or in my parents’ bedroom (which was a rotary phone,
have any of you even seen one of those?!) and hope my
friend was home. Otherwise I rode my bike over to his
house to check since I was always out and about.
Nowadays, I don’t even have my own brother and
sister’s phone numbers memorized, because they’re
stored in my phone. Oh how the mighty have fallen…
How much do I need to learn if I can just Google it?
Good question. How much do you “know” if your
computer/phone is broken, then?
ALL RIGHT, WHAT’S YOUR POINT?
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The reason I’m boring you to death with stories of my
life and basic things you might already know is this:
Computers are everywhere. They record your TV,
they sit in your pocket, they take pictures of you when
you run red lights, they host your twitter pictures,
they hold on to all your contact information, they’re
sold as consoles to play games.
Because they’re everywhere, you rely on them more
and more
You use Google to end an argument in real time
You use Facebook to organize a party
You use Twitter to shame strangers with your misguided
opinions
 You use your phone as a way to express yourself on the
internet, and thus the entire world.
 You use your game console to scream at other people when
they play better than you and make fun of their mothers.
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DON’T WORRYING I’M GETTING TO MY
POINT
With computers everywhere, it’s important to
know how to navigate their use, what common
commands or design elements are out there to
operate and fix them.
 Since computers are running our lives, we ought
to know how to keep them going.
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THE ON/OFF SWITCH, AND POWER
BUTTON
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The one thing that stands between you and most
devices is electricity. Most devices will show you
a button with a symbol like this:
This is the universal symbol for power.
OLD SKOOL SWITCHES
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That silly little symbol has roots in the very
fundamentals of computers. It’s a combination of
the symbols on OLDER power switches, which in
turn are representative of binary language.
BINARY
All electronic devices that you use are
interpreting electricity in the form of binary
language. Binary is all 1’s and 0’s
 Binary language interprets the presence of
electricity as a 1, and the absence as a 0.
 Therefore this makes more sense, doesn’t it?
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ON
(|)
OFF ( O )
CPU
The CPU, or Central Processing Unit, is the main
brain of the computer. All computers have a CPU
of some sort.
 The CPU utilizes all of a computer’s resources
(input) and allows those resources to accomplish
a task (output)
 Input/Output is the basis of all computer
operation.
 Input/Output… I/O for short… doesn’t I/O look
familiar?
Computer people love
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consistency, don’t they?
INPUT/OUTPUT
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Where does the input come from?
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Hard Drives
Operating Systems
RAM
Keyboards (Most common input device)
Mice (Second most common input device)
CD-ROMs
Flash Drives
The internet
External devices (Controllers, webcams…)
INPUT/OUTPUT
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Where does the output go?
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RAM
Hard Drive
Monitor/screen
The Internet
Flash Drive
Other external devices
MOTHERBOARDS
The CPU is the brain, but the brain is pretty
useless without a body.
 The motherboard is the piece of a computer that
everything else connects into. It allows all the
pieces to talk to each other to make things
happen.
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MOTHERBOARDS
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Motherboards, or main boards, are the body of the
system, and in a lot of ways dictates the overall
abilities and speed of a computer.
Motherboards are designed for a specific range of CPUs
 Motherboards are designed with a specific speed range of
RAM in mind
 Motherboards may have older connections on it, limiting
the types of hardware available to connect to it.
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Should you ever accidentally disassemble your phone
in a spectacular act of droppage, you’ll see that even
your phone has a mainboard where these elements all
connect together.
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(It’s easier to show you on almost any Android vs. an
iPhone, obviously)
RAM
RAM, which stands for Random Access Memory,
is the place where the CPU stores data it
frequently accesses.
 RAM makes the world of multi-tasking possible.
To be able to have multiple programs running
and switch between them, the majority of the
programs’ code will have been loaded into the
RAM.
 RAM allows the CPU to hold critical and or
commonly repeated information on hand instead
of having to load it again from the hard drive,
which takes much longer.
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ROM
ROM stands for Read Only Memory. Unlike
RAM, ROM is a device with information on it
that does not change. It literally can only be read,
hence the name Read Only Memory.
 CD’s, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs are all ROM
devices.
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There are writable and re-writable versions of these,
yes, but when in use, they are not changeable.
It in uncommon nowadays to see the ROM part
attached to their descriptions, but that music CD,
that movie, or that PlayStation3 game you own
are CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, and BD-ROMs,
respectively.
HARD DRIVES / STORAGE
Hard Drives are devices inside computers where
all data is held for use by the computer.
 Hard Drives are called so because once upon a
time, like a billion years ago (the late 70’s and
80’s) there were no hard drives, only these:
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HARD DRIVES / STORAGE
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This, my friends, is a relic of a time long past, but
this is the original floppy disk. And before hard
drives existed, computers would have two floppy
disk drives
One to run the
program, and
 One to save data to.
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INTERESTING TO NOTE
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There are now entire generations of people who
know that this means “Save File”
And yet it’s very likely none of them have ever
seen a 3.5” floppy disk in their lives.
HARD DRIVES / STORAGE
Floppy disks were named as such because, well,
they were bendy.
 When permanent storage solutions became
available without costing a fortune, they were
named as the opposite of the accepted standard
at the time, which was a floppy disk. So the hard
disk got its name, but also coincidentally was
made of pretty stiff stuff so it was in fact hard
and inflexible as its name suggests.
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FUN FACT
My dad used to work for a company who had one
of the first “hard drives” before they were able to
fit inside of a computer.
 Think about your phone. It sits in your pocket
and sports anywhere from 8GB to 64GB of
storage space.
 My dad’s office had a 500MB hard drive from
something like 1976. Not even sure how old it
was, but it was OLD.
 It was larger than a refrigerator. For 500MB!
 It’s hard to imagine, but think of how far we’ve
come. 64GB in your pocket, vs. 500MB in a fridge
40 years ago.
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Class Demo – Tomorrow! Or today! Depends on
how far along we are in this demonstration!
CLASS DEMONSTRATION – HOW A
COMPUTER WORKS
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In this demonstration, we’re going to need a few
students.
One to play the role of the CPU
 One to be the RAM
 One to be the Hard Drive
 One to be the Program
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This little demonstration should assist in
understanding, basically, how information moves
in and out of a computer
THE ROLE OF CPU
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You are the CPU, and you have all the answers!
…Well, you WANT all the answers. To tomorrow’s
math homework. As the CPU, you respond to the
user’s requests. Mr. Buck is the user.
You are attempting to access the problems from your
hard drive, run them through a program, and return
the answers to the hard drive.
You will ask the hard drive to supply the questions,
and transport them to you via the RAM. You then
give them to the Program. The RAM will then take
the answers back to the Hard Drive.
THE ROLE OF THE HARD DRIVE
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The Hard Drive will have a sheet of math
problems that need to get to the CPU.
The Hard Drive will supply the question(s) to the
RAM, who will copy them down onto their own
piece of paper, and deliver it to the CPU.
The CPU will pass the paper to the program,
then back to the RAM to deliver the answers to
the hard drive. The hard drive will update its file.
THE ROLE OF THE PROGRAM
The Program will answer the question(s) and
give them back to the CPU.
 It’s a pretty easy job.
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THE ROLE OF THE RAM
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The RAM’s job is to transfer data between the
Hard Drive and the CPU.
This means you will have to copy the data from
the hard drive, and transport it personally to the
CPU, wait for the answer, and transport it back.
SOUNDS EASY. WHAT’S THE CATCH?
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Sometimes you’re going to have to play by
different rules.
There are rules for each component, which I want
to surprise you with. But each role will be
“modified” in some way to simulate things like:
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Slow CPU
Small amount of RAM
Large amount of RAM
RAM speed
Slow program
Hard drive failure
REVIEW QUESTIONS
What is the universal Power Symbol made from?
 The CPU takes a computer’s ______ and turns it
into output
 What are the two most common input devices?
 Where does a computer store information
temporarily during operation?
 Where does a computer store information long
term?
 What is an example of Read-Only Memory?
(ROM)
 The universal symbol for saving a file is a little
icon of this old-school storage device – it’s
“bendy”.
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