We began with a quick slideshow about the main hardware parts of a computer system:
- Input - keyboard, mouse
- Process - processor or CPU (Central Processing Unit) and memory
- Storage - hard disk drive, flash memory device
- Output - monitor or TV screen
Following this the pupils learnt about the parts of the small Raspberry Pi computer we'll be using in these sessions from a labelled diagram like this:
They also learnt a little about the operating system or OS which is a program which controls the computer system and without which it wouldn't even turn on. For the Raspberry Pi, the OS is stored on a SD memory card like those used in cameras. It's called Raspbian and is a version of the open source OS called Linux.
After this the pupils were each given a box of computer hardware parts and were then shown how to assemble a system with them based around a Raspberry Pi. It took a little time to get the computer systems all working, mainly because leads were not pushed in completely or the mains power was not switched on.
The pupils were very pleased when they each got their computer systems to work and displaying the desktop for the first time. The first thing they did was to play a game written in the Python language - hopefully they soon be writing their own programs and maybe even games.
As the session had gone very well, there was some time at the end to have a first look at the Python programming language. After experimenting with t a few commands, most of which didn't work, the pupils were shown how to write the traditional first program in computing circles: Hello World.
In the next session we will have a more detailed look at writing programs in Python but for now the pupils' appetite seemed to have been whetted - some of them even wanted to carry on long after the session had finished. When asked if they'd be coming back to Computer.lab next week the answer was a resounding, "Yeah, definitely!"
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