Hardware revision
|
Print out the following on light card ideally and cut them up. Shuffle them and hand them out to students. Each card has a question and an answer, although they don't match. Pick someone to read out their question. Ask who thinks they may have the right answer. Someone reads out their answer. Everyone in the room has to give a thumbs up or down, depending upon whether they think the answer is correct or not. After you have located the right answer, the person with that card reads their question. Continue until all the questions have been read out. Variations include getting students into groups. Each group has their own set of cards and each student has more than one card. You could also make up different packs of cards quite easily and then swap these between groups, and get students to make up their own cards to give to other groups. |
| What does the Central Processing Unit do? | These are examples of storage devices (sometimes called 'secondary' storage devices). |
| What is meant by the FETCH - DECODE - EXECUTE cycle? | Solid state |
| What is meant by an arithmetic calculation? | These are video files. |
| What is meant by a logical calculation? | Headphones |
| What is meant by a 'core'? | A dot matrix printer because you can use two sheets of paper separated by carbon paper. Dot matrix printers are 'impact' printers. |
| What is a 'cache' used for in a CPU and why is it used? | Plotter |
| What is clock speed measured in? | This is any kind of equipment that you can plug into a CPU, usually via a port. E.g. printers, scanners, cameras, keyboards and mice. |
| What is the unit of storage? | They are types of picture files. |
| What is the symbol for an AND gate? | Graphics tablet |
| What is the symbol for an OR gate? | Output devices |
| What is the symbol for an NOT gate? | Input devices |
| What is an example of a truth table? | Visual Display Unit |
| What are other names for RAM? | Software |
| What type of memory stores the programs and files that you are actually using now? | Hardware |
| What piece of hardware stores all the programs and files, whether you are using them now or not? | ROM |
| What type of memory stores the BIOS, needed when you boot-up your computer? | Hard drive |
| What does the word 'volatile' mean when talking about memory? | One |
| You can't usually change the contents of ROM because it is Read Only Memory. However, there is a way you can do it, known as what? | Multi-tasking |
| Sometimes, your RAM is just a bit too small. What kind of memory can be used to extend how much overall memory you have? | This means that when the power is removed from the memory, all the contents disappear. |
| How many progams can a CPU work on at any one moment in time? | Flashing the memory |
| What do we call it when a CPU seems to work on more than one program at the same time (even though we know it can only work on one at a time)? | Virtual memory |
| What is the name we give for pieces of computer equipment you can touch? | RAM |
| What is the name we give for the programs and sets of instructions that control the hardware? | Immediate Access Store, Primary Memory and the Memory Unit. |
| What is the collective name for any piece of hardware that takes information from the world around us and gets it into the computer? |  |
| What is the collective name for any piece of hardware that takes information from a computer and sends it to the outside world for people to use? |  |
| What piece of hardware might a designer use to draw a technical drawing? |  |
| What does VDU stand for? |  |
| What are GIF, JPG and TIF files? | This is the byte. The more bytes you have, the more you can store. |
| What is meant by a 'peripheral'? | It's measured in cycles per second, or Hertz. A processor might typically be rated at 4 Gigahertz, for example. |
| What kind of output device is used to print really large drawings, typically needed in engineering or architecture? | This holds frequently-needed data. It's used because it is much faster than RAM. |
| What kind of printer can be used to print an identical copy of a legal document or a receipt? | A Central Processing Unit typically has more than one processor. for example, a 'quad core CPU' has four processors. A core is simply a processor. |
| What piece of hardware would be really useful to listen to music in a library? | This is a calculation that involves AND, OR and NOT, for example (there are other types you can do). |
| What type of files are MPG, AVI and FLV? | This is a calculation that involves adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, for example (there are other types you can do). |
| What name do we give to hardware that is entirely electronic i.e. with no moving parts? | It means that the CPU gets an instruction from RAM, works out what the instruction is supposed to do and then it carries it out. |
| What general name do we give to SD cards, hard drives and USB pen drives, for example? | This is the brain of the computer, where all the calculations are done. |