I. Title of Module:

• Computer Science 101: An Introduction to How Computers and the Internet Work

II. Author:

• Michael Chessler

III. Grade Level:

• High School 9-12

IV. Students:

• Urban Minority

V. Purposes/Overview

• This 8-day class will explore how computers work and the fundamentals of computer science. The course will begin with a brief history of computers and the Internet to insure that the students are conversant in the language of technology and have a basic perspective on where these innovations have come from. We will then use the New York Times on-line and other computer related web pages to explore these fundamentals in more detail. The students will be responsible for reading and summarizing articles each day and reporting their findings to the class. We will try to have each student, or each team if that is deemed more suitable to our purpose, concentrate on one particular area. One of the sources for these articles will be the website www.howstuffworks.com, which explains in detailed, but comprehensible language, how these items work. The specific articles may be seen in the syllabus below. After these, the course will then use Schaum’s Introduction to Computer Science as a guide and text to explore the basic concepts of programming such as bus structure, operations, data in memory, binary, octal and hexadecimal systems, algorithms, flow charts, and basic programming languages. The exercises in this text (which all students will receive a copy of) will give the students a chance to check their knowledge and comprehension.
  
  It is hoped that this experience will direct many of the students to think seriously about careers in this field.

Module – Computer Science 101: An Introduction to How Computers and the Internet Work - Lesson 1/ Day 1

• Computer lab rules
• Introduction to Computers: Hardware, Software, Terms and Acronyms (e.g. PARC, GUI, DOS, URL, Browser, ISP, Search Engine, Root server, DNS, Host, HTTP, HTML, Java, etc. )
• Assessment of skills and computer knowledge
• History of the Internet and the World Wide Web-
• Its Structure and Conventions
• Sample Browsing and exploring different types of web pages

Module - Computer Science 101: An Introduction to How Computers and the Internet Work - Lessons 2-4/ Days 2-4

• Six lessons, two each day, selected from the list of articles below to supply background, the appropriate critical skills, and aid the students in understanding the following module

The following articles from www.howstuffworks.com were used:

1. How Computers Work
2. How the Internet Works
3. How Operating Systems Work
4. How Microprocessors Work/How Computer Memory Works
5. How BIOS Work
6. How Bits and Bytes Work

Module - Computer Science 101: An Introduction to How Computers and the Internet Work - Lessons 5-8/ Days 5-8

• Divided into 8 units (two per session), the students will explore the following topics, with demonstrations in class and exercises to confirm comprehension

1. Computer Structures: the Memory Unit, CPU, I/O Unit

2. Bus Structure

3. Operands

4. Data in Memory, Number Systems and Codes

5. Binary, Octal and Hexadecimal Systems

6. Representing Numbers in a Computer

7. Program Planning and Design: Problem Solving and Algorithms; Pseudocode and Flowcharting

8. Program Coding and Simple Input/Output: Compilers, Interpreters and ASCII

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Last Updated July 27, 2004 by Roz Krakowsky
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