CS class was really interesting this week. We learned quite a bit.
To start with, Mr. Pete had us do a presentation to introduce a certain part of a modern computer. For our group, we had to introduce the different accessories of the storage group. This includes a wide variety of different devices: CD drives, DVD drives, USBs, hard drives, etc. We used Zoho to create a presentation together. Zoho is a website that allows multiple people to work on the same project simultaneously and help correct each other, so it is incredibly efficient for group projects where we have to create a single, comprehensive document together. Then, everyone brought their group presentations to class. We did peer assessment, which is where students review the projects of other students. It’s a great way to make sure that students are not only paying attention to other people’s projects, but it also allows us to evaluate what makes a presentation great and learn from it and incorporate it into our future presentations later on. I think our group did fairly well. We were pretty comprehensive in terms of information and I felt that we communicated the ideas from the presentation pretty well.
Mr. Pete also had us do an interactive project together to help better understand how the CPU (aka central processing unit) works. The CPU is basically the brain of the computer. It receives information, processes it and then sends it along. The CPU is composed of different parts, such as transporter who transports info within the CPU, and the ALU （Arithmetic Logical Unit), which is what actually processes information. Anyways, he had different people in a group act the part of different parts from the CPU. We found out that is was quite difficult, because we don’t know if the other people did their job correctly.
Overall, I learned a lot. We were able to learn through activity how a CPU works. Also, we practiced our presentation skills and were able to try out Zoho.
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