Week 11 Module

Welcome to Week 10 Module.


In this module, we will cover Chapter 3 of the textbook, which covers basic computer concepts, like basic input devices and output devices. We will also review what we have learned so far when it comes to computers. There are different kinds of computers in today's world. The largest and most expensive computers are super computers. They usually take up whole rooms. They are capable of calculating "millions upon millions" of calculations per second. ( Pearson, 2017). These are used by huge corporations and organizations to manage their information needs Super computers do very complex work, such a forecasting the weather or creating detailed models of nuclear reactions (Pearson, 2017).

Next on the line of powerful computers are mainframe computers. They are used by governmental agencies and organizations, where information needs to be stored in a "centralized location (Pearson, 2017). Other lesser powerful computers log on to the mainframe that is probably stored in a company's headquarters. Next in line are servers.

A server can have a "network of computers" connected to it (Pearson, 2017). The server provides the programs and a database of information to end users. This is usually through the company's website. The client computer is the computer that is trying to connect to the server through a set of instructions. We call this set of instructions hypertext protocol, which is essentially the organization's website. The host is the server then transfers information in the form of text, images, videos, or sound to the client computer.

Notes for the Quiz on November 1, 2022

Computers process information through a series of steps called algorithms. Algorithms are a series of steps that computers follow in order to process information. An example of this would be first do this, then do that, and finally do this. Algorithms can be compared to a recipe for baking a cake, in which a series of steps have to be followed for the cake to come out good.

As previously mentioned in other lessons, the CPU is the brain of a computer. Computers communicate through binary code, which is 0's and 1's. An example of a byte would be 00001111. People who create the set of instructions for a computer program are called software developers. They use source code, which is a computer language that is more user friendly for software developers. The source code is then converted to binary code by a program called a compiler, which turns source code into binary code, since computers only understand binary code.


References: Weixel, S. (2017). Principles of Information Technology: Preparing for IC³ certification. Pearson.

Interesting Fact:

In 1992, Terminator 2 was released to the movie theaters. It took a super computer the size of a basketball court to produce the special effects in the movie. In the movie, Skynet was the super computer that controlled all of the robots.

Example of a super computer.


The Central Processing Unit is the brains of the computer

The Computer's Motherboard houses the CPU, RAM, Power Supply, and USB ports to name a few components.

Random Access Memory gets the information that the CPU needs from the hard disk. The more RAM a computer has, the quicker it is able to send information from the hard disk to the CPU for processing.

Binary Code, the language of computers.

Example of an algorithm. You can see the series of steps a program takes. The rhombus shape indicates that a decision must be made. If all conditions have been met, the next step is performed. If not, then the algorithm loops back to the previous step.


Source code is designed to be a more user friendly computer language. The source code is then converted t into binary code by program called a compiler. This happens because computers can only communicate in 0's and 1's.


Basic_Input_Devices.pdf