First Week in ICT Class...A new experience

Ice-Breaking Session
1st Session

When i entered into my class room, i met other group members and a new lady. What do you think who was she? She is our new lecturer for the course FCC 113. She introduced herself with the name Ms. Nisa. Soon afterwards we started our class with Ice-breaking Session. It was so funny. Everybody was introducing himself/herself and often there created a serial of jokes with the pronunciation of student's name. It was great that she was so free and soon got mixed with us. Then she talked about the overview of the course outline. Everything about tests and assignments. But we weren't nervous. This is all about 1st Session on last Tuesday (20th October, 2011).

Basic Concept on Computers and The Computer Components
2nd Session
 
So what happened on the 2nd session? We were asked about the basic of a computer. I saw some of us were advanced and some of us were backwards. But our lecturer made everything easy for us. The 1st question was what is a computer. We said, it's a machine that can do mathematical operations and can do information processing. Next Point was about Computer Operations which include
1) Input
2) Processing
3) Output and Storage that a computer can perform.
In the next slide we learned about the difference between data and information. And also we learned about the basic concept of Hardware and Software. Normally we say, Hardware is the physical parts of a computer and Software is the programs or set of instructions used by the user. These are called Computer Components.

Hardware includes: 1. input devices 2. Output devices 3. System Unit 4. Storage devices 5. Communication devices. Software includes 1. System Software and 2. Application Software

Then we learned about Computer Characteristics and those are - Speed, Reliability, Consistency, Storage, Communication and so on.  

Computer Components (Hardware)

Then we were given a class-in activity to do individually and to submit to the lecturer. It was about the basic concept of a computer that what we know and some examples of our thinking.

Number System...An Exciting Concept 
3rd Session

Now about the Session 3. It was on Thursday (22th October, 2011). The class was waiting for a new topic to learn about. And it was numbering system. We got to know that there are four types of numbering system.
1. Decimal
2. Binary
3. Octal
4. Hexadecimal

Number System Conversion Table

Computer can only read the binary numbering system. It's base is 2 and includes numerals 0 and 1.
The decimal numbering system has a base of 10 and includes numerals of 0-9.
The octal numbering system has a base of 9 and  includes numerals of 0-7.
The hexadecimal system is a bit different and includes letters and numerals as well. It has a base of 16 and  includes numerals of 0-9 and A-F.

Later we learned how to convert from Decimal to Binary, Octal and Hexadecimal and from other numbering system to Decimal. for some of us it was totally a new topic.

And there was an in-class activity which motivated us in learning how to convert decimal, binary, octal and hexadecimal within one another.


Reflections Finally

After the 1st week finished we learned basic concepts about computer. We learned -

1. Computer is a programmable machine which can not only does computation but also does a lot of things including entertainment, knowledge sharing, information storage and so on.

2. There are two types of computer components: Hardware and Software

3. We learned about the classification of Hardware and Software.

4. We also got to know about Different Numbering Systems and how to convert them from one to another.

5. Finally we also understood this number system helps human's instructions to convert to computer's understandable language.