The Open UniversitySkip to content
 
Skip My preferences

My preferences

Skip Learning ToolsSkip Rate and Review

Rate and Review

Unit rating: 4 stars.
Rated by 13 user(s)
Skip Alternative FormatsSkip Tags

Tags

Please log in to tag your favourite units
Skip Share this unit with a friend

Share this unit with a friend

Help with sending a link to this unit (new window)
Permalink to this unit:
 

Topic outline

 

  • Time: 20 hours
    Level: Introductory

 
 

Introduction

  • Introduction Resource
  • Computers are used to find, store, process and share data and information. The World Wide Web is an example of a vast store of information, which can be searched. This material will introduce you to what...
 

1 An introduction to data and information

 

2 Daily life and computers

  • 2.1 The individual: an average day Resource
  • If I take an average day in my life, I find myself surrounded by computers, most of which are invisible to me. This section looks at where computers are found in the course of everyday life. It aims to:...
  • 2.2 The organisation: loyalty cards Resource
  • Many supermarkets and other firms (such as petrol companies and airlines) use loyalty cards: cards that offer a customer some form of incentive, such as a future discount or gift, to continue buying from...
  • 2.3 Summary Resource
  • This section showed that computers pervade our daily lives, but that many of them are invisible to us.
 

3 Sensing data and turning it into something usable

  • 3.1 Making sensation make sense Resource
  • In the previous section you learned something about what data is, where it can be found, and how it can be used. But have you ever thought about how we get data in the first place? As human beings, we...
  • 3.2 Human beings, data, signs and symbols Resource
  • We live in a sea of sensation: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and balance (really a sense of our bodies in three-dimensional space). These sensations, and our ability mentally to process, and then react...
  • 3.3 Data and information Resource
  • This unit is also about information, which in Subsection 2.1 was distinguished from data. Whereas data is a discrete item like a price or the name of a product such as milk, information links two or more...
  • 3.4 What has any of this to do with computers? Resource
  • Human beings invented computers because we have a compelling interest in data. We seek to turn our perceptions of sensations into symbols, and then to store, analyse, process, and turn these symbols into...
  • 3.5 Summary Resource
  • This section examined how human beings obtain data in the first place, by turning sensory data into something that can be communicated and reasoned about.
 

4 Computers as tools for finding

  • 4.1 Where am I and how do I get to … ? Resource
  • Computers can be used to find things and the obvious thing they can find is information. The World Wide Web (WWW or just the web) is just one example of a vast store of information which can be searched...
  • 4.2 Finding information: the web Resource
  • The web is a vast storehouse of ever changing, linked information on subjects as diverse as dog breeding, astronomy, tiddlywinks, and coping with bereavement.
  • 4.3 Computer-based activities Resource
  • This introduces you to search engines. It shows you how to invoke a search engine from your browser and make simple searches for topics of interest.
  • 4.4 Summary Resource
  • This section described how computers can be used in geographical applications (and in doing so it discussed maps and showed how modern maps are composed of layers of different data).
 

5 Computers as tools for working with data

  • 5.1 Genetic databases and disease Resource
  • Section 2 looked at data and information from two different perspectives: that of the individual and that of commercial organisation. The type of data you have will dictate both why you want to process...
  • 5.2 Art and the common computer Resource
  • Art is difficult to define. But all art involves the Exercise of human skill. A natural object, such as a piece of driftwood, a flower, a bird song, can move us to admire it as beautiful or intriguing...
  • 5.3 Summary Resource
  • This section made an interesting contrast between simple data that generates large and complex structures that require large and complex programs to handle them, and complex data which a complex but easy...
 

6 Controlling things; selling things

  • 6.1 Controlling things Resource
  • As you learned in Section 1, computers can collect, process, store and distribute information. This section shows that they can also be used to:
  • 6.2 Selling on the web Resource
  • The web is fast becoming a medium for selling everything from books to clothes, gardening tools to beauty products, investment advice to travel services. Web-based selling seems to be concentrated in three...
  • 6.3 Summary Resource
  • This section examined how computers can be used to control machines. It used the household washing machine as a case study and explored how the microcomputer contained in such a machine is programmed to:...
 

7 Unit summary

 

References and Acknowledgements

Skip Log inSkip Related educational resources