Re: SEUL: Re: Are teachers really so unwilling to learn?

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

Bob Techentin wrote:
> 
> Can anyone recommend resources for how you teach about computer
> technology?  I guess I'm thinking about course outlines, perhaps a long
> list of analogies, or other guidelines that could help me organize
> material to present to teachers.
> 
It's not quite what you're looking for, but here are some of the
analogies I've used in the past.  
All information used by a computer is stored as "bits."  A bit can be
either a 1 or a 0, nothing else.  That doesn't give us much capacity for
gradations of meaning, so bits are usually combined into groups of
eight, termed a "byte" (for reasons I don't know).  Eight combinations
of 1s and 0s can give 256 variations, which allows us to start
representing useful information.  For example, one combination might
represent a capital A, while another combination might represent a
question mark.  We have enough variations to be able to have separate
combinations for all the capital letters, all the lowercase letters, the
numerals from 0-9, all the punctuation marks, and various other useful
meanings like carriage return, new page, etc.  And we still have
combinations left for other uses like special instructions to the
computer itself.

A typewritten page of text, in 10 point Courier type, double-spaced, has
about 1700 characters.  Since there's always some overhead for one
reason or another, let's say that such a page will usually take about
2000 bytes in the computer.  A common shorthand for 1000 is "kilo."  In
computer circles kilo is used to represent 1024, 2 to the 10th power
(since almost all computer arithmetic is done in base 2, where the only
numerals are 0 and 1, this seemed reasonable).  So 2048 bytes is
commonly called 2 kilobytes, or KB.  That's close enough for an
approximation, so let's say one typewritten page takes up about 2 KB in
the computer.  You can use this rule of thumb to get a rough idea of how
much information is in a particular document or file of some other type.

Another common shorthand is "mega," for million.  Of course, in computer
circles this becomes 1024 x 1024.  You will often hear of both a
computer's random access memory (RAM), its "short term memory,"
and its hard drive storage, its "long term memory" being measured in
megabytes (MB).  This represents how much information can be placed in
each location.  The RAM is similar to a person's short term memory, or
to the top of your desk, in that what's there is what's immediately
available to work with.  The hard drive storage is similar to a person's
long term memory, or to a filing cabinet, in that much more information
can be stored there but some time and effort is required to bring it out
to where it can be worked with.

I find I'm wearing out at this point, so I'll stop here.  As I can think
of more and have the time and energy to write them up, I'll send them
along.

-- 
Doug Loss                 The difference between the right word and
Data Network Coordinator  the almost right word is the difference
Bloomsburg University     between lightning and a lightning bug.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain