A USB flash drive consists of a NAND-type flash memorydata storage device integrated with a USB (universal serial bus) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, much smaller than a floppy disk (1 to 4 inches or 2.5 to 10 cm), and most USB flash drives weigh less than an ounce (28g). Storage capacities typically range from 64 MB to 128 GB with steady improvements in size and price per gigabyte. Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles and have 10-year data retention, connected by USB 1.1 or USB 2.0.
USB flash drives offer potential advantages over other portable storage devices, particularly floppy disks or the COMPACT DISC (CD). They have a more compact shape, operate faster, hold much more data, have a more durable design, and operate more reliably due to their lack of moving parts.
Additionally, it has become increasingly common for computers to be sold without floppy disk drives. USB ports, on the other hand, appear on almost every current[update] mainstream PC and laptop. These types of drives use the USB mass storage standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other Unix-like systems.
Nothing actually moves in a flash drive: the term drive persists because computers read and write flash-drive data using the same system commands as for a mechanical disk drive, with the storage appearing to the computer operating system and user interface as just another drive.
A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberised case, robust enough for carrying with no additional protection—in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. The USB connector is protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not liable to be damaged if exposed. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing plugging into a port on a personal computer.
You can transfer photos from your camera directly to your USB Flash Drive as well.
CREATING A TABLE
There are many ways to insert tables in your Word document. However, the quickest way to create a table from scratch is to use the INSERT TABLE/TABLE toolbar button.
To insert a table using this method, simply click the Insert Table/Table toolbar button when your cursor is positioned at the place in your document where you would like the table to begin.
A grid will pop up allowing you to select how many rows and columns you would like your table to contain. Simply use your mouse to select the number of rows and columns by highlighting the boxes (text at the bottom of the grid will indicate what your selection is). When you have specified the correct number of rows and columns, simply click once, and your table will be inserted.
While this method will create a table with uniform columns and rows, you can still customize your table after it is inserted by right-clicking on the table handle (the double-headed arrow at the top left corner of the table) and using the options on the shortcut menu to make changes.
You can also click VIEW/Toolbars and then click on Tables and Borders to customize the table.
There are numerous solutions for importing digital pictures from your camera to your hard drive. I typically just connect my digital camera to my PC and copy the files over using Windows Scanner and Camera Wizard.
If you prefer to use an external application, Google's Picasa is an excellent solution. So is Photobucket, and Flickr. In addition to being a convenient way to manage your images, Picasa also includes common photo editing functions and assists in uploading images to the Web or creating slideshows on your local system.
One of my favorite features of Picasa is a timeline that shows when images were taken in relation to all your other images (which only works if your digital camera is set to the correct date). Picasa is free for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Linux.
Downloading Your Pictures From Your Digital Camera
After you take pictures with your digital camera, you'll want to copy the pictures from your camera to your computer so you can print them, share them with others, and back them up for safe keeping. Once your pictures are on your computer, you can erase them from your camera, freeing up memory so you can take more pictures. You can also view your pictures on a larger screen and decide which ones are worth keeping.
Some digital cameras come with software that helps you copy pictures from your camera to your computer. You can use this software, but you don't have to.
Windows XP can copy pictures to your computer without requiring additional software.
Here's how to copy your pictures using Windows XP:
Once you've connected your camera to your computer using a USB cable or inserted your memory card into your memory card reader, Windows XP will detect the connection and ask you what you want to do with your pictures. If you connected your camera with a USB cable, click Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard, and then click OK.
If you are using a memory card reader, click Copy pictures to a folder on my computer using Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard, and then click OK.
When the Scanner and Camera Wizard appears, click Next. >On the Other Options page, you can choose to publish your pictures to a Web site or order prints. If you have finished working with your pictures, click Nothing, and then click Next. On the final page of the wizard, click Finish.
SOME MEMORY CARDS:
Windows XP opens a Windows Explorer window showing the pictures you downloaded from your camera. Your camera's memory card is now clean and ready to store new pictures. If you connected your camera to your computer using a USB cable, disconnect your camera. If you used a memory card reader, return the memory card to the camera.
Digital cameras and computers have revolutionized photography. Whether photography is your profession or a hobby, the ability to transfer your pictures from your camera to a flash drive without needing a computer is a bonus. Purchase a few accessible and inexpensive devices, or a full-featured tool, in order to quickly move your images to your flash drive and immediately continue taking pictures.
Transferring Photos from memory card to USB Flash Drive (We don't have a memory card reader in the lab)
Step1
Select a combination memory card reader and USB flash drive. There are various memory sizes available depending on the amount of pictures you need to transfer.
Step2
Consider a multi-card reader that accepts different types of memory cards. This will help you organize your pictures or come in handy if you have two types of digital cameras.
Step3
Remove the memory card from your camera and place it in the appropriate slot in the card reader flash drive. Check that you are inserting the memory card correctly to avoid damaging the card or card reader.
Step4
Allow the card reader to transfer the pictures from the memory card onto the flash drive before removing it. Disconnecting it before it is finished transferring will cause you to lose your images or corrupt the memory card.
Step5
Replace the memory card in your digital camera and safely erase the pictures from the card. The flash drive will store your images and you have the ability to take more pictures.
You can transfer photos from your camera directly to your USB Flash Drive as well. Demonstrate. Requires 2 USB ports.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
LESSON THREE
The Internet Browsers
What's a BROWSER?
Definition: A browser is a software program that lets you explore the World Wide Web to find text, graphics, sound, movies, games, chats and more.
Explanation:
A browser helps you link to pages on websites around the world. To find a website, type in a URL (web address) in the address window or click a link or a button in the toolbar.
Bookmarks and Favorites With over 100 million websites and more coming online daily, you will undoubtedly find ones you want to revisit. Bookmarks and Favorites save Web addresses
so you can return to them quickly, without having to retype them. Whether you are using Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator or another browser, the procedure is similar.
To save a web page, go to Bookmarks or Favorites on the menu barand click on Add to... When you open your list, the title of the page you added will appear at the bottom of the list. To access the page, double-click on the title.
TRY THIS... Here's another way to bookmark a web page: click on this page once with your right mouse button and select Add Bookmark or Add to Favorites from the pop-up menu. Put Your Links in Order After a while you'll discover that you've got dozens of bookmarks. It's now time to organize them into folders.
If you use Internet Explorer 7.0, click on Favorites on the menu bar to open the Favorites window. Now select Organize Favorites. Click the New Folder button to create a folder, then name it. We suggest organizing your bookmarks in folders by subjects, such as Sports, Travel, News, Games, etc. Now click on each Favorite once, hold down your left mouse button and drag the Favorite into the appropriate subject folder.
With Firefox 2.0, click on Bookmarks on the menu bar to open the Bookmarks window. Now select Organize Bookmarks. Click the New Folder button to create a folder, name it, click on each Bookmark once, hold down your left mouse button and drag it into the subject folders.
If you use Navigator 7.0, click on Bookmarks on the menu bar, then Manage Bookmarks from the drop-down list. You can now create new folders and drag your existing bookmarks into the appropriate subject folder.
UNDERSTANDING URLs
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is the Web Address of a web page, or some other kind of document, that is available on the Internet. It is the instruction to your browser regarding the exact location on the Internet of the page you want to visit.
For example: http://www.cnn.com OR http://halfstepbeyondbasics.blogspot.com
The way that information is transferred by way of the browser. That is known as the protocol. In this case the browser is to use Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. (http://) The language of web pages is known as HTML, Hypertext Markup Language.
The domain name, or location of the computer on the World Wide Web which hosts the page. Once a domain is registered the information provided by that domain must have a host computer where the files are stored.
That computer is called a server. Some places are huge collections of servers known as “server farms.” Servers which host huge collections of data must organize that data in directories or file folders. Anything following the domain name which is also followed by a slash is the name of a directory. Very large collections of data may require sub-directories, or folders within folders.
Each file in the directory must have a unique name. Some get very complicated. Spaces should not be in file names.
Using URLs
A URL can be typed into the address box on your browser. Type carefully, if one character is wrong you will not get to the page. After typing in the URL press the Enter key to go to the page. Usually you will use a URL by following a link on another web page. After reading these instructions go to http://cnn.com. When you get there put your cursor over the CNN URL, but do not click. Your mouse pointer will change to a hand indicating that the words are a link to another page. Look in the status bar, the gray bar at the bottom of your browser window. You will see the URL of the place those words link to.
404 - File Not Found For a variety of reasons, web pages disappear from the Internet. If the page has been moved to another server most webmasters provide a link redirecting you to the new page. If there is no link to send you to the new location you will get the message above. Try working backward in the URL. One step at a time remove items up to the next slash then press the Enter key. If you continue to get “404 - File not found” each time, give up on the URL and search for another.
Navigating the Internet (IE)
Setting your Home Page
Assuming you are in Internet Explorer, go to the web page you want to make your home page. Lots of people make Google their home page. Click on the HOME (house) icon on the COMMAND BAR that sits just above the IE window on the right and click ADD or CHANGE HOME PAGE.Using the Standard Button toolbar and or the Command Bar.
Do a search on HOW TO USE A SEARCH ENGINE. Jot down the first 5 hits you get in the search.
Practice creating a TABLE following the notes given here.
LESSON TWO - March 11
Before we begin to talk about WORD let's go to the CONTROL PANEL and click on AUTOMATIC UPDATES.
Today I will concentrate on Microsoft Word, a word processing program for Windows and the Macintosh from Microsoft. Included in the Microsoft application suite, it is a sophisticated program with rudimentary desktop publishing capabilities that has become the most widely used word processing application on the market. The first versions of Word came out under DOS and provided both graphics-based and text-based interfaces for working with a document.
Bring up Half Step Beyond Basics on your computer.
MICROSOFT WORD
1. First open a Word document . If you have the word icon on your desktop (see it above) double left click it and you'll be taken to Word. If it's in you PROGRAMS, click START,PROGRAMS, MICROSOFT WORD. You should be looking at a NEW document.
2. Above the open document you have various toolbars. A toolbar is a row of icons on a computer screen above the NEW window in Word that activate commands or functions when clicked. The most important ones are
The STANDARD and The FORMATTING TOOLBAR.
Let's go over each button/icon of each toolbar and the MENU BAR.
1. Above the two toolbars is the MENU BAR. Each icon on each toolbar represents an action that you may want to perform while creating a document. Documents can include letters, papers, e-mails, essays, lists, directions, etc.
2. You can CUSTOMIZE (Add or Remove buttons) A TOOLBAR or RESET it.
MOVING TOOLBARS
A toolbar can become a floating toolbar by grabbing the control bar at the far left end of the toolbar. That gives the following window, which can be placed anywhere on the screen.
The toolbar can be restored to its original position by clicking in the blue bar at the top and dragging it back to the top of the screen.
ADDING AND DELETING TOOLBARS
Right-click in toolbar area - check or uncheck toolbar name.
Adding icons or buttons: Click drop-down arrow at the very end of the toolbar.
ENTERING AND EDITING TEXT IN MICROSOFT WORD
Step 1. Open your browser window and minimize it.
Step 2. Enter the following line at the top of the document:
Winter Storms
Do not use all caps anywhere on the page. The eye has difficulty scanning text in an all caps format, even including headlines.
Step 3. Highlight the line of text and perform the following actions using toolbar buttons, menu items:
Format the text to Bold Increase font size to 18 pt.
Center the text
Press Return/Enter two times
Click Bold button to remove Bold Return text size to default
*Note: all of these actions can be performed using the Formatting toolbar.
Step 4. Copy the following paragraph and paste it into your document two lines below the headline:
Sometimes winter storms are accompanied by strong winds creating blizzard conditions with blinding wind-driven snow, severe drifting, and dangerous wind chill. Strong winds with these intense storms and cold fronts can knock down trees, utility poles, and power lines. Storms near the coast can cause coastal flooding and beach erosion as well as sink ships at sea. In the West and Alaska, winds descending off the mountains can gust to 100 mph or more damaging roofs and other structures.
Step 5. Enter a list of trees below in the form of a bulleted list:
1. Select the items one at a time
2. Copy and paste into the Word document.
3. Select the bulleted list button:
Maple
Ash
Cedar
Beech
After all bulleted points have been entered hit the Return/Enter key twice. Cursor returns to the margin.
Step 6.Highlight the five bulleted points. Go to the FORMAT menu, select Bullets and Numbering and change the style of the bullet.
Insert Symbols or Special Characters
Many Word users don't realize how easy it is to insert special characters. There are at least four ways to do it: through the Symbol dialog, using shortcut keys, automatically with AutoCorrect, or by direct keypad entry.
If you choose Symbol… on the INSERT menu, you will bring up the Symbol dialog, shown below. (If you have a slow system and/or one with many fonts installed, you may find that this dialog takes an appreciable time to appear the first time you use it in a Word session, but after that it should pop up instantly.)
In the font list in the Symbol dialog, "(normal text)" means the font you are currently using.
CREATING A TABLE
There are many ways to insert tables in your Word document. However, the quickest way to create a table from scratch is to use the INSERT TABLE/TABLE toolbar button.
To insert a table using this method, simply click the Insert Table/Table toolbar button when your cursor is positioned at the place in your document where you would like the table to begin.
A grid will pop up allowing you to select how many rows and columns you would like your table to contain. Simply use your mouse to select the number of rows and columns by highlighting the boxes (text at the bottom of the grid will indicate what your selection is). When you have specified the correct number of rows and columns, simply click once, and your table will be inserted.
While this method will create a table with uniform columns and rows, you can still customize your table after it is inserted by right-clicking on the table handle (the double-headed arrow at the top left corner of the table) and using the options on the shortcut menu to make changes.
You can also click VIEW/Toolbars and then click on Tables and Borders to customize the table.
INSERTING AND EDITING IMAGES IN MICROSOFT WORD
Step 1. Let’s go to the Internet and find winter storm pictures. We can go from within the Word document or minimize the Word document and work in a browser.
Step 2. In the Google search box type a keyword(s). Hit return or click the big G.
Step 3. Google will return a list of links of winter storms. Click on link IMAGES at the top of the page.
Step 4. Pick a picture (thumbnail) under 100 kb. Click on the thumbnail then right click on the original image. Click SAVE IMAGE AS
Step 5. The name of the image will appear in the SAVE IMAGE window. Make sure you are saving to the DESKTOP.
Step 6. In WORD go to the INSERT menu, select PICTURE then FROM FILE... Find the picture you downloaded and highlight it. Then Click INSERT. The picture should appear in your document.
Step 7. With the picture selected, go to the FORMAT menu and select FORMAT PICTURE. There are several things that you can do with this picture.
Step 8. Resize the image by clicking and dragging. Click once on the image and it will be surrounded by eight boxes; one at each corner, and one in the middle of each line.
If you click on a box in the middle of a line and drag outward from the center of the image you will change only the width or height of the picture, causing distortion.
If you click on a corner box, hold the shift key down, and drag outward from the picture you will change width and height proportionally. If the aspect ratio is locked, Word automatically does this without your having to hold down the shift key.
Step 9. Move the image by clicking and dragging. Click once on the image and it will be surrounded by eight boxes; one at each corner, and one in the middle of each line.
Move your cursor over the image and it becomes a pointer with a four headed arrow attached to it. Click anywhere in the picture and drag it to the desired location.
HEADERS AND FOOTERS
To add a Header and/or a Footer to a Word document, choose VIEW/Header and Footer. A space on the document pops up and the toolbar appears.
Let's take a look at the Header and Footer toolbar:
Type in the necessary information in the box on the document and align the text.
If you need to insert information into the footer area, you can click in the footer area and start typing. However, whenever you are within the header/footer area of a document, the Header/Footer toolbar appears.
Monday, February 9, 2009
*What Do You Need Help with? Handouts
LESSON ONE- February 25
Each time we get together we will first turn on the computer and open your browser window. Always keep the browser window open while we work.
MANAGING WINDOWS
Minimize/Maximize/Restore Resize corner
Move Window – Place mouse on Title Bar, hold left button and move.
Start Menu – go over icons briefly
Find/Search – for files/photos you’ve downloaded.
TASK BAR—task bar allows you to bring the window back when you are ready for it. The task bar is the blue bar that runs along the bottom of your screen. The Start menu is in the far left corner and the time is in the far right corner. Each button will include the application icon, and a part of the name of the document. If you have a large number of windows open you may see only the application icon. System Tray – area to far right on Taskbar WHERE’S THE DESKTOP?
Right click in the taskbar and clickSHOW THE DESKTOP. The desktop is right behind the first window you’ve opened.
QUICK LAUNCH BAR
SHUTTING DOWN
How to shut down if you freeze -- Control-Alt-Delete 2x (Windows 98) Windows XP – Wait a bit – Control-Alt-Delete – Task Manager—Shut Down
THE DESKTOP
The icons on the Desktop are usually shortcuts
Desktop: Right-click New folder on desktop
Arrange
Properties
Delete Desktop icon
Changing the DesktopChanging the Wallpaper Open Control Panel – click Display – click Desktop – Browse – pick a photo from wherever you save photo: My Pictures or Photos Folder on Desktop.
Changing fonts and colors
Save to Desktop: you can download anything and save it to your desktop for later retrieval. Tools – Options – Main – Save files/photos to Desktop (Browse) Firefox
Saving an Image
(1) Find an image somewhere on the Internet. We will need one so you can practice saving an image. Have you found one yet? Good, now let’s go to step two. (2) Right-click the image. A menu will pop up. (3) Click on SAVE IMAGE AS (4) Give a name to the image or keep name. (5) Save in DESKTOP or My Documents/My Pictures
This course is offered at Queensborough Community College, Department of Continuing Education, Bayside, N.Y.
Familiarity with the following terms will make you more savvy in the Web environment. As you click on each of the items, make sure you understand its current and potential use on your computer.
