Basic Computer and Internet Terminology
Study Guide
Terms to Know

How Computers Work:
Four components of computer processing:
input, output, processing, storage

input device: hardware that is used to pass information into the computer.

output device: hardware that can displays, prints, or play information coming from the computer.

CPU: Central Processing Unit: the brains of the computer.

hard drive: a fixed, large-capacity magnetic storage device for computer data.

hard copy: a printed copy of computer output.
monitor: the computer display device.

hardware: the physical components of the computer system. Mice, keyboards, and monitors are all examples of hardware.

software: programs or instructions that tell the computer what to do. Safari, Word, Excel, Garage Band are all software programs.

icon: a small picture or symbol that represents a computer hardware or software function or component.

ROM: Read-only memory: the permanent memory built into the computer.

RAM: Random-access memory: the computer’s working memory.

binary code: the language of 0s and 1s the computer uses

Using the Internet:
web page: a page of text and images that can be visited on the internet.

web site: a collection of web pages together under one domain name.

browser: software that provides a way to navigate the Internet. Examples: Safari, Internet Explorer, Netscape.

Domain Name: The main address of a site. Example: www.elephants.com. The extension of the domain name is they type of address. The type tells you about the website. Type examples.

.gov indicates a government website
.com commercial
.edu educational
.net network
.mil military
.org non-profit organization

URL: A web page’s complete address. The URL of a page includes the domain name plus any additional folder or file names that locate a particular page or image on a website. Stands for: Uniform Resource Locator. Example: www.elephants.com/tarra/tarrastart.htm

WWW: World Wide Web - a global system of Internet servers.

search engine: a website that allows users to use keywords or topics to search the Internet for specific information. Examples: Google, Yahoo, Dogpile.

email: electronic mail used to send messages to other computer users via a communications network.

Database:
Databases are made of up records, fields and layouts.

Record: data is organized around a common theme or record you choose. For example books or cars or toys. If you have a book database, each record would be a different book.

Field: Every record is made of of fields. The fields let you enter descriptions about the record. For example if every record in a book database is a book, than good fields would be title, author, number of pages. So that in your book database you could search for all the books by a certain author. If a car dealership had a car database, good fields could be color, model, year, how many passengers. Then you could search the car database for all red cars.

Layouts: the way you choose to display the fields for each record is called the layout. The database can have different layouts.

Extra credit:
html: hypertext markup language
http: hyptertext protocol