The following handouts can be used with this unit to enhance learning. Each handout is briefly described below. To see the actual handout, click the link "handout."
Computers
This handout encourages students to think about the ways people and computers are alike in what they can do and how they are different. Students fill in a chart with examples of things people and computers can do, only people can do, and only computers can do. They fill out a similar chart comparing computers with calculators.
An Information-Processing Machine
This handout teaches students the four components of a computer—input, storage, information processing, and output. Special attention is given to explaining the difference between microprocessors and the embedded processors in such devices as VCRs and remote controls. Students can fill in a chart comparing where input, storage, information processing, and output take place in a computer and for a person.
Libraries
This handout helps students understand how computers are becoming a valuable information storage and retrieval system. Students compare computers to libraries and are asked to imagine what it might be like to access all the information in a library in the form of a CD-ROM.
Historical Perspectives
This handout examines the first working computer to be made without mechanical components—the ENIAC. Students can create an ad for the ENIAC, write a press release for a computer today using the original press release for the ENIAC as a model, and make some discoveries about how people use computers in their jobs today.
