Essential Computer Terms

Software & Hardware

100

A software program that allows you to navigate the internet.

What is a browser? Examples: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Opera

200

Every computer needs this software to run. It recognizes the input from the keyboard, sends output to the screen, keeps track of files and directories and controls all the peripheral devices.

What is the operating system? Examples: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

300

These are called input devices, they are how information enters a computer.

What are the keyboard, mouse, game controller, digital camera, webcam, scanner...?

400

Also known as a universal serial bus, this device can connect computer peripherals such as mice, keyboards, digital cameras, printers, personal media players, flash drives, Network Adapters, and external hard drives.

What is USB?

500

The brains of your computer, sometimes called the microprocessor.

What is the CPU (or central processing unit)?

Microsoft Office

100

A program in which the user can write paragraphs, create bullet points, insert clip art and use double-spacing.

What is Word?

200

A program typically used for presenting information and images to a group of people.

What is PowerPoint?

300

A program used to create formulas, sort data, and format cells.

What is Excel?

400

To perform a spell check, a user must click these two words or phrases.

What are "Tools" and "Spelling & Grammar"

500

These are 3 examples of filetypes that can be created with Microsoft Office. (Like Document.pdf)

.doc, .docx, .rtf, .ppt, .pptx, .xls, .xlsx, .txt, .wps

Internet

100

Google, Ask.com and Bing are examples of these.

What are search engines?

200

The first page that appears when you open your internet browser.

What is the home page?

300

This is the address that gets you to a particular website

What is the URL?

400

These are 3 common extensions (the last part of a web address).

What are: .com, .net, .edu, .gov, .org, .us

500

This is a piece of text stored by a user's web browser. It can be used for authentication, storing site preferences, shopping cart contents, the identifier for a server-based session, or anything else that can be accomplished through storing text data.

What is a cookie

Miscellaneous

100

The keys you must strike to copy and paste information.

What are CTRL+C and CTRL+V (PC) or COMMAND+C and COMMAND+V (Mac)?

200

What PC stands for.

What is personal computer?

300

A small picture or image that opens a program when clicked.

What is an icon?

400

The way you choose to make your document look.

What is the format

500

This is how many bytes there are in a megabyte.

What is 1 million?

Ethics

100

Taking someone else's work and labeling it as your own.

What is plagiarism?

200

Using software or images that you have not paid for is infringement of this law.

What is copyright?

300

Logging into a school computer as another student, visiting Facebook, and writing something mean about a peer would all be violations of this school Policy.

What is the Acceptable Use policy?

400

When downloading an item from the internet, users should always be careful off these.

What are viruses?

500

Breaking into computers in an effort to cause harm.

What is hacking?