The second exam is Wednesday, February 17. It will be closed-book, closed-notes. It is worth 75 points, or 15% of your course grade. You will have the entire class period to take the exam. The exam will be a combination of multiple choice, matching and short answer questions.

Note: I hand out two versions of the exam. They differ only in the order of questions. Classmates on your left and right will have the other version.

Resources

• A complete set of lecture notes is available on the web at
  http://faculty.otterbein.edu/PSanderson/COMP100/schedule.html. We did not cover every single topic, but you should start by reviewing these. My exam topics are drawn mainly from the notes.
• Read the textbook. Read the posted lecture notes for a chapter first, then re-read/review that chapter. There are topics in the book that are not covered in the notes, and there will be few if any questions over those.
• Questions at the end of each chapter: Multiple Choice and True-False. Work through these questions. You will see some questions like them on the exam.
• Your journal comments, available at http://faculty.otterbein.edu/PSanderson/COMP100/journals.html. These are my guide to what resonates with you and I may draw questions from them.

Things you should know, by category, in the order we covered them:

Ethical Issues (Technology In Focus between chapters 3 and 4)

• digital divide : what it is and its causes
• online medical information : benefits and risks
• boundaries of the Internet : each nation has its own laws and constitution; do they apply to an Internet without national boundaries?

Software Applications (chap 4)

• what the stored program concept is (program is stored in memory with data)
• the distinctions between application and system software, with examples
• basic knowledge of various application categories: productivity, media, entertainment, business
• what cloud computing is
• difference between commercial software, shareware, and freeware
• software ownership and licensing

Spreadsheet Application (chaps 9, 10, 11)

• what a spreadsheet is
• significance of spreadsheet software in the history of the PC
• spreadsheet terminology (workbook, worksheet, cell, row, column, etc)
• what cells can contain (text labels, numeric values, formulas)
• what formulas are and what causes them to be recalculated
• what a function is and how to use one
• how to reference a different cell or a range of cells
• how to reference a different worksheet
• what happens to cell references when you copy/paste a formula
• distinction between relative and absolute cell references
• basic charting concepts and guidelines

System Software (chap 5)

• what system software is and does (operating system)
• single-task and multi-tasking operating sytems, and how multiple tasks share the CPU
• the basic booting process
• textual (DOS, Linux) versus graphical (Mac, Windows) styles of operating system user interface
• the basic duties of an operating system
• processor (CPU) management and multi-tasking through time-slicing,
• memory (RAM) management and multi-tasking through space-slicing
• disk management for file and folder storage
• device management through drivers, which are external to the OS and provided by device manufacturer

Assessing Hardware (chap 6)

• Components of a computer, their acronyms, and what they do
• The machine (instruction) cycle: fetch, decode, execute, store
• Characteristics of various storage devices: RAM, disk, CD/DVD
• RAM is volatile. Disk, flash, CD, DVD are not
• RAM is a million times faster than hard drives
• RAM and flash are solid state - no moving parts
• Hard drives, floppies and tape are magnetic
• CDs and DVDs are optical
• Basic organization of a hard drive: tracks, sectors, blocks. rotational and seek delay

Study hard and good luck!