Dumb, dame computer (middle school, college, storage)

[Justme2010]

ok, I hope it grabs your attention now. No, I'm not usually one of these who blames computer for what fails me.

The question is, do schools (be it, middle school, high school, public or private) teach kids about the basics/fundamentals of a computer, one hour would do really.

A computer has two essential "parts" to it.
HARDWARE
A) CPU, central process unit, which has mother board, that is comprised of a microchip (brain), memory chips and a hard drive, usually called C drive denoted by C: or C:\ (for data storage).
This component is for PROCESSING
B) Keyboard/mouse/microphone etc. for INPUT (one types stuff into a computer, layman's word!)
C) Display/Monitor for OUTPUT (what's on your screen).

SOFTWARE
A) BIOS (that keeps key hardware info and controls boot process etc.)
B) Operating System (e.g. Windows XP, Vista, Unix (its variants) etc.)
that controls software programs and hardware interactions among others.
an analogue would be like a highway that vehicles can drive on, "vehicles" being various software programs ranging from word processor to web browser and what not.
C) Various software program / utility programs include word processor, web browser, games etc.

Now, let's try to read the above, a computer is useless without software, software is useless without hardware. Land is useless without grass or farm crop, grass/farm crop can't grow out of air (without ground) but this thing could change... science advances day by day... another topic...

Instruction:
go to your computer's hard drive and extract this XYZ file to C:\Program Files folder (strictly speaking, directory). Ya know, what's the percentage of people who fail to do such a simple thing? You'll be amazed, damn computer.

[Erin1264]

I'm not sure about now, but when I was in high school, we only learned (some of) that stuff in keyboarding class. I know CAD is offered in some schools, and they probably learned more advanced stuff.

I didn't learn anything about web design until college, but I'll bet high schools have classes like that now.

(geez, I sound like I'm dating myself!! makes me feel old)

[540_804]

Originally Posted by Erin1264

I'm not sure about now, but when I was in high school, we only learned (some of) that stuff in keyboarding class. I know CAD is offered in some schools, and they probably learned more advanced stuff.

I didn't learn anything about web design until college, but I'll bet high schools have classes like that now.

(geez, I sound like I'm dating myself!! makes me feel old)

Yeah, those types of classes are offered in most high schools now, from basic keyboarding class, to web design to a class I took called "Information Technology in a Global Society" which kinda looked more at ethical implications of an increasingly technologically-dependent society. Those classes would probably have been traditionally college-level classes but you see more of these types of classes in HS now...and even middle school.

[Justme2010]

I think it would be very beneficial for middle school / high school to offer something like "Introduction to Computer", with a computer taken a part, just for a few hours instead of a whole term, and then probably
something about the Internet as well but leave the second one optional. Hence, probably the population (with currently 99% literacy) can reach something like 90% computer literacy as well. It should be fairly easy to obtain.