Basic Computer and Internet Terminology
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How Computer's Work and Internet Vocabulary

How Computers Work

Learn about important parts of a computer from Intel's Journey Inside

Learn about binary code, the Language of Machines. After you read about binary code, check out what your name looks like in binary code with this online converter: Binary Converter.

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

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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.

html: hypertext markup language
http: hyptertext protocol

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.

Ready for more: Click Here to learn how web pages work through this HTML tutorial.