Lesson 3 Getting Started
Home Computing Lesson 3 (Mac/Apple) Getting Started
All of our devices have an
optional form of protection once switched on. It makes total sense to ‘password
protect’ our devices and therefore, our data but, it can be inconvenient.
Getting past passwords has become harder which is no less than we would expect
but with Apple’s refusal to assist the FBI recently in breaking into a piece of
equipment and with numerous ‘used’ Ipads out there that are locked, I would
advise careful thoughts before electing any action.
Switch on your device; enter
your password and hit Enter – the ‘carriage return’ key we used to use on our
typewriters, located on the right hand side, RHS, of our keyboard.
For the purpose of this lesson,
we are using a Macbook Pro Laptop but this is simply an equivalent of a PC
desktop or laptop although some of the keys on the keyboard are slightly
different.
Located on the bottom LHS, we
find keys such as fn, ctrl, alt and cmd. Some of these are replicated on the
RHS and between them sits the ‘space’ bar. Windows laptops have the Windows
Logo button and I love this button as it is a shortcut to numerous (quick)
screens, e.g., pressing the Windows button and the E button at the same time
opens an ‘Explorer’ window on your monitor/screen and this it the whole filing
cabinet or library contained on your computer and where we simply take control
of all of our files, folders and hard drives - our total content in fact. Not
so much on the Mac.
Pressing the Windows Logo and
the letter D at the same time will take us quickly back to our Desktop, no matter
how many windows or pages are open.
A word about the ubiquitous
Mouse: an extremely clever device that changed how we use computers. When most
of us heard about computers, it was with the onset of Windows 95 Operating
System. Prior to this and from about 1981, IBM’s DOS, Disk Operating System
dominated the computing world. However, the commands used in DOS are the basis
of all commands and equate to things in Unicode, which is unimportant to us as
users.
The Mouse, replicates the commands we type-in using our keyboards and
handily, these typist style commands duplicate or are duplicated, by the Mouse
actions. It follows therefore that an experienced typist with a good memory,
can work more quickly in some instances than a typist in conjunction with a mouse.
?
If the typist knows the key
sequence that the mouse is performing and can type the same commands from the
keyboard, there is no point lifting a hand to engage with the mouse to locate
the cursor to perform an action.
These shortcuts come into ‘their
own’ in word processing.
In any of the word processing
programs, certain actions are choices. Whether we choose to Left Justify (start
our typing from the left hand side -
LHS) of the page or whether we centralise our layout, Right Justify or
Fully Justify our text, is a matter of choice or purpose.
In the menu at the top of the
page (toolbar), (radio) buttons are provided to enable these choices and with a
click of the mouse (depressing the LHS button), you select accordingly.
IF you know the ‘keyboard shortcut’
for the action e.g., Ctrl + L = Left Justify or, Ctrl + E = Centralise Text or,
Ctrl + R = Right Justify, then selecting this option from the keyboard is
simply a breeze.
Numerous other shortcuts exist
and probably one of the best known is Ctrl + P = Print.
Printing doesn’t actually happen
but, a Print dialogue box opens and asks you what exactly you want to print and
how – the user ALWAYS gets choices!
The CMD button on a MAC keyboard
operates as a Ctrl button with Windows. Not all the shortcuts are the same and
you can personally assign key sequences to actions if you so desire.
The Mouse: various models exist
and as we learnt in our previous lesson, multi function mouses have taken over
from the humble two-button original. Two button? The mouse has always had an
under-used function namely, a Context Menu. Replicating some commands from
menus, pressing the right button gives access to some of these actions however,
as with the keyboard, some further actions can be assigned or added to the
context menu.
These actions speed up operators
or users and improve efficiency greatly. Adding more buttons, making wireless
or radio mouses came next and optically operated mouses with trackballs to prevent
mouse physical movements are a boon – if you like or get used to them? They do
attract dirt through movement and require periodical cleaning to keep the
actions smooth but without a doubt, the third addition was the most useful and
took the shape of a wheel which scrolled and that scrolling action was seen in
the screen as a cursor that followed up and down without the need to initiate
the scrolling buttons (Up and Down arrows/pointers on the RHS) on the screen
itself.
On some mouses, two more handy
buttons have been added and by default, these buttons go back one action or forward
one action e.g., when browsing, the back button will take you back a page (if
it has already been viewed) or forward one page from the previous page (again,
if it has been viewed already).
Studying Keyboards and their
respective layouts is mostly, self-explanatory. Some keys do not match the
identifier action depicted. We tend to assume that we are English speaking and
we acknowledge differences between American English and UK English but does it
end there? Of course it doesn’t. There are other variants of English and then
all the other languages of the world; consider being French, Spanish, Portuguese,
Chinese or Russian?
Many keyboard differences become apparent and necessary
but, staying with English keyboard layouts itself presents some difficulty
especially if people emigrate and take their equipment with them. There are a
few common problems that occur regularly and accessing the Keyboard Settings
Menu on your computer allows some changes to be made but some characters no
longer can be found, some are located in the wrong indicated place and some are
there but totally elusive.
I wouldn’t be too concerned
except for a few conundrums such as @, £, €, and #. The @ is so necessary in all
email addresses that it cannot be ignored so finding it is vitally important.
The # known commonly as the ‘hash’ (also hash tag throughout the world), symbol
in the UK and the number or pound symbol in North America is common in use too
and all the characters can be found if you know where to look but, our focus is
not on these assignations at present.
Accessing the Internet at ANY
stage and typing in a question as basically as needs be, will produce numerous
results to any and (almost) every query in the world. Remembering every detail
has now become unnecessary due to this very reason and, unless there is a
world-wide crash of computers, information and data will be ever-present.
All keyboard questions have been
answered many times and all keyboard shortcuts are readily available for all
operating systems, keyboards and languages.
Additionally, on the Macbook you
can choose to display the keyboard icon on the top of your screen; clicking the
icon opens a keyboard layout depiction and pressing keys with the cursor,
demonstrates the actions as they will be in reality.
There are also dedicated buttons
for accessing the Home page of a website when browsing; volume increase,
decrease and mute; brightness increase and decrease; Play, Pause, Forward and
Rewind along the top row and most importantly, an Escape button.
More useful on a Mac than a
Windows device, the function often facilitates a quick exit from situations
that don’t always bode well; it also has some positive functions as well.
Cursor Up, Down, Left and Right
come in the form of Arrows < > and á â and the Shift function enables Capital letter typing
whilst àI is the Tab key and moves across the page in steps or
jumps open pages in sequence – more on this later.
Keyboard shortcuts quickly take
you to the end or beginning of a line and also, the start and finish points on
a page. There are ways to scroll down or up the page quickly too.
One common thing we have to do
throughout our lives is compose letters for communication purposes. Similar in
construction to the lessons we learned in school, the principles remain the
same but the layout is simple but quite important – an example exists below:
The Principal Mr T Shoobridge
Faraday Higher Education
Authority Park House
Nelson House Silver Street
The Strand Honiton
London Devon
W1T R2D EX14 1QJ
16 September 2018
Dear Sir
Re Employment Vacancy Ref
27345 Science Project Leader
I wish to apply for the vacant
position indicated above, as advertised in the local press and as such, please
find my Curriculum Vitae attached for consideration.
I will be available to attend an
interview at your convenience and my contact details are as indicated above.
Alternatively, I can be contacted by telephone on either of the following two
numbers – xxxxx xxx xxx, xxxxx,xxx,xxx.
Yours faithfully
T Shoobridge
T Shoobridge
As you can easily see, the
format is probably quite familiar to you and the contents, succinct? The
information is minimal but perfectly adequate; to the point and not wasteful in
words or reading time. The contents define the purpose clearly and all the necessary
information is present.
My suggestion is that you ‘play’
with your individual keyboards and computers, learn how and where your keyboard
skills lie and can be developed and simply practise some basic functions and
exercises.
Keep your eyes on the ‘drop-down’
menus (Toolbars) at the top of your monitor screens and simply press buttons to
see what happens. There is virtually nothing you can do that will harm the
computer. Select ‘New’ from the ‘File’ document to open a new document and try
highlighting a section of text by clicking the left button (possibly
double-clicking) at a start point of your choosing and moving your mouse along
a line of text. Unclick the mouse LH button and look for the Cut, Copy and
Paste buttons in the menu at the top of the screen. If you select Cut, you can
move the cursor to a new point and click Paste. This will drop the “cut” text
where you decided to put it.
At any stage, clicking Ctrl or
Cmd + Z will undo your last action (repeatedly).
Ctrl/Cmd + X will also Cut
selected text, Ctrl/Cmd + C will Copy highlighted text or an object and
Ctrl/Cmd + V, will Paste the selected Cut or Copied text.
Fn keys are Function keys and
their action should follow that which is depicted on the keys of your keyboard.
Shift + T will print a capital ‘T’ whereas, pressing T on its own with no Shift
will produce a ‘t.’
Shift will also type the upper
depicted character on the top row (2nd row down) of your keyboard.
Explore all the functions and
actions of a word processing program as the versatility you will gain will be
used in numerous applications including emails. There are simpler programs that
can also be used for word processing but I advise you to use, to the fullest
extent possible, Microsoft Word, Open Office or Libra Office’s equivalent as
quite complex publications can be achieved as well as art, picture, object and
photograph insertion. A word processing program of this nature is the
fundamental program you will need in computing life – the backbone of nearly
every writing program you will encounter.
Tables, charts, flow-charts can
easily be created and numerous templates (patterns) are not only available as a
standard part of the software but can easily be downloaded from the Internet
for specific purposes.
Templates exist for CV construction,
Booklets, Posters, Flyers, Newsletters, Business Cards and many other
publications.
Finally, we need to Save our
work or, discard it. With ‘>’ depicting the ‘next action’ instruction, this
little sequence will illustrate how exactly we Save our work:
(Menu) File > Save As >
(type in the name you wish to call your document) – you will see at the top of
the Save As box, a location e.g. C//: My Documents.
We will go into this in more
detail later but click OK and the document will be saved in that location with
the name you decided. You can now click the Close (X or X) and the document
will disappear from sight.
On a Mac computer, the program
MS Word will remain open until you click on the word, WORD at the top LHS of
the screen and select Quit Word from the
drop-down menu – the program will now close.
Though some of the explanations are in their basic form
here, I’m sure most readers will have some appreciation and experience of these
basic actions and functions?
The author does not wish to stagnate on instructions that
cover the very basics unless the student really has no knowledge of these
explanations and instructions?
Ctrl/Cmd + I will italicise the
highlighted text.
Ctrl/Cmd + B will make the
highlighted text Bold (blacker)
Ctrl/Cmd + U will Underline the
selected/highlighted text
Pressing any of these buttons
again when the text remains highlighted or, is selected again, will reverse the
action of, Ctrl/Cmd + I, B or U.
Thank you for the awesome lesson.
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