Informatics I101: Introduction to Informatics
  
I101 Informatics Computer Lab 2

Fall Semester, 2006

Copyright 2006, M. Dalkilic and M. Hottell

 

Objectives

  • To have completed Lab 1.
  • To understand file formats 
  • To understand why you have to save a document 
  • To be introduced to Microsoft® Word® (MS Word)
  • To learn how to use some basic elements of MS Word
  • To be able to count to 2010 in binary, octal, decimal, and hexadecimal in a table in MS Word.

Tasks

Deliverables

  • You understand file formats and why it's necessary to save
  • You understand how to do bold, italic, headers, footers, footnotes, and images in Word.
  • You can add page numbers to a document. 
  • You can create tables in MS Word.
  • You can count from 1 to 2010 in binary, octal, decimal, and hexadecimal.

Completion Time

     About 50 minutes.


Introduction

Aside from email, the most prevalent use for computers is word processing.  Word processing is the creating, editing, and publishing of documents.  The type of word processors you have at your disposal in Windows run the gamut from little more than a way to store text (Notepad), to something with a bit more operations (Wordpad), to the most popular word processing application in the world - Microsoft Word.   When you use a word processors, you'll probably want, at some time,  to

  • number the pages
  • put headers on the pages
  • add footnotes
  • change the font face to bold, italic
  • Spell check
  • insert a figure

Of course there are many more things one might think of, but these are a nice place to start.  We'll learn how to do each of these in MS Word today.

Any document that you create--any file--has a format.  A format is how data is layed out and what the data means.  This means that the application you're using might not be able to "understand" how another document is layed out.  For example, MS Word can't understand Adobe's PDF File.  We'll examine just a couple of different formats in this lab.

Suppose you're writing a message using MS Notepad. MS Notepad can generally found from task bar: Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> Notepad. MS Notepad is like a tiny MS Word 2000. It's small, so it loads very quickly, and it's good for small projects. You've typed a portion of a short message, perhaps like in Figure 1.1 below.
Using Notepad to type a short message.
Figure 1.1 Using MS Notepad.
My favorite plant typed in MS Notepad
Figure 1.2 Using MS Notepad.
If you quit MS Notepad (without saving), you'll lose your message. In fact, quitting any application without saving means you'll lose your work. Why? When an application is running (or working), it uses RAM-- computer memory that requires electricity to work. When you quit the application (or turn-off the computer), the electricity that keeps RAM "remembering" is stopped, and so, RAM "forgets" what it was working on: the result is you lose your work.
What you'd like is to make your work persistent, last beyond the life time of your application. You can do this by saving. What does saving do? Saving first looks for room somewhere in secondary memory--the hard drive--that will keep the data. If there's enough room, it lays down a sequence of zeros and ones. Secondary memory doesn't require a source of electricity to remember; so after you've quit the application or even turned off your computer, the data persists.
When you save, you also choose a format.
 
Figure 1.3 What happens when you save a document.

Fig. 1.3 has a lot of information.  The chart on the right in the purple box is called a "flow chart." It shows the flow of events for any kind of process.  In this example, the flow chart shows what happens when you want to save.  You start at the Begin node.  You then follow the arrow to a diamond that has a question.  If the answer to the question is "Yes", you follow the arrow labeled with "Yes".  In this case, it's the left side--the yellow box that says, "Put 0s & 1s on disk" describes what even happens when that path is followed.  The flow chart ends when the arrow reaches the "End."  On the bottom left observe a box with the first four symbols My f ("M", "y", "<space>", and "f").  On the same line to the right is the encoding--or format of the file.  This file uses ASCII (look this word up in an online dictionary!) that says each symbol is composed of eight bits--that is, eight zeros or ones.  "M" for example is represented as 01001101.  When you use Notepad, you're saving documents in ASCII.


Task 1. Starting (and Exiting) MS Word

1.  Start MS Word.  Press Start, Programs, and look for Office XP.  Inside Office, you'll see MS Word.  Your screen should look the one below.

Windows allows you to customize access to your applications and so, how you can start them. Most of the time, you can start MS Word from the taskbar. MS Word opens with a new document as shown in Figure 1.

 
Figure 1. MS Word starts with a new, blank document.

The Elements of MS Word

A number of important elements are labeled in Figure 1. The Menu Bar contains "commands" in the form of one or a few words that are initiated when chosen. A letter that is underlined, like File (the first command on the Menu Bar), means the "F" is a hotkey--this means you can press the Alt key and F simultaneously and the File command is executed. Of course, you can simply move the mouse pointer to File and left click to achieve the same action.  At the bottom are the different "Views".  These give you an idea about how the document will look--either on the web, in hard print, etc.  The Status Bar shows information about the "insertion point" or where the mouse is.  This is invaluable when looking for specific places in the document.  The indents to the left are important when you justify the document.  We'll leave indents for another lab--they're kind of tricky at first--but you should know where they are.  Probably one of the most important tools is the "Undo" button.  This let's you gracefully undo mistakes or changes.  It doesn't, however, change file deletes.  It's not related to the back button in a web browser.  There are more tools, so many in fact that they can't all be displayed.  The double chevron >> gives you access to this other tools. 

  • The File command lets you open a new or existing document, close MS Word, print a document, and send a document via email. When you select close, MS Word will ask if you want to save your document before it will close--unless you haven't made any changes to the original document or when it was last saved.
    Exiting MS Word 2000 from the Menu Bar.  Select File from the  Menu Bar, then Close
    Figure 2. Closing MS Word from the Menu Bar.
  • You can also exit MS Word by mouse clicking the close icon at the upper right of the document. It's no different from using the Menu Bar.
  • And if you're a super hero and need to close MS Word, you can always press the Control key Ctrl, the Alt key Alt, and the Delete key Delete simulaneously (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) to bring up the Task Manager as shown in Figure 3. Select the offending task, then click End Task. Be careful-- if you accidently press Shut Down, you're going to shut down the entire computer.

The last resort.  Click the task you  want to close, then End Task.
Figure 3. The Task Manager lists all the tasks on your computer.
Some of the most often used commands are displayed by icons on the Tool Bar below. As you use different commands, the Menu Bar modifies itself providing the most used commands first. When the screen is too small to display all the option in the Tool Bar, you'll see a >> that expands, when clicked, to provide more options.  


Task 2. Typing and Editing Your Document

1. Just begin typing in MS Word.  In the figure below, the famous "Itsy Bitsy Spider" lyrics are being typed.  You don't ever hit return--the word processor will wrap the text automatically.  Hitting return creates a new paragraph.  Paragraphs are important because they are a functional unit on which you can apply operations--like doubling the space between lines or justifying.  The Backspace key moves from right to left--erasing everything it encounters--it also brings along all the text to its right.  The Delete key stays in the same location and removes everything on its right.  The Insert key toggles (switches) back and forth whether text overwrites or pushes the others text.  Press the Insert key type, then press it again and type.  In the status bar you'll see OVR bold or gray depending on whether Insert it active or not.  The insertion point can be changed by either using the mouse or arrow keys.

2. Clear everything you've typed and type the sentences that are below

We will next change this document by adding the elements we described in the Objectives.  The first thing we will do is make a word bold.  The easiest way to make a letter, word, sentence bold is to select it with the mouse.  Suppose we want to make bold the first occurrence of spider.  Click the mouse after the 'r' in spider. While holding the left mouse button, drag the mouse over the entire word.

Then click the B button at the top of the menu.  The word "spider" will be bold.  If you can't find the button, select Format, Font, and under Font Style, select Bold, then OK.  The word will then appear bold

 

3. [bold] Make the first spider bold. 

The exact same technique is used to make letters, words, and sentences italic

4. [italic] Make the first occurrence of water italic.  After highlighting water, goto Format, Fonts,  Font Style and select italic.  Your document should look like this:

Although we only have a single page, it'd be nice to number the pages.  Simply goto Insert, Page Numbers..., and you'll see a screen like this:

This graphically shows you where the page numbers will be, allows you to choose the format, the location, etc.  For now, just press OK to use the default.  To see the page number you must First switch your view to Print View, then scroll down to the end of the document.  On the right hand side you'll see a faint numeral 1. 

5. [numbering] Add page numbers to you document and verify they're there by changing to Print View, scrolling down and observing the number 1 as shown below:

Our next task will be to put a header on this document.  Headers are text attached to the top of the document.  We'll leave the document in Print View so we can easily see our work. 

To add a header, you goto View, then select Header and Footer.  You'll see this:

The dotted box is like a mini-word processor.  The Menu below it has options for you to choose--like including the time.  When you've completed typing, you press Close on the Menu below.

6. [Header and Footer] Add a Header to this document.  Type, "Book Report I Fall 2001 " then press the little clock to insert the time.  Your header will look like this (except the time)

 

Observe the header at the top.  The next element we'll add is footnote.  Adding a footnote is exactly like a Header and Footer.  First, find the word you want to footnote.  In this example, we'll footnote rain.  You put click the mouse immediately after the word rain.  Then click Insert, Footnote and you'll get this screen:

Like the Header and Footer, there are some nifty options you can explore later.  For now, click the OK and you'll have this screen:

You're inserting at the bottom.  When you're down, you select close.  Notice already there's a number by rain.  When you've selected close you'll see this:

Notice--the view has been switched to Print View and the scroll is at the bottom.

7. [Footnote] Add a footnote to this document.  After rain enter the footnote  "A pluvial down pour." then press close.  Check for the footnote by viewing the document in Print View.

8. [Figures] Now we'll insert a figure.  Put your mouse over the monkey below and right mouse click and choose Save Picture as. 

You'll see something like this:

Make sure you put your monkey on the desktop as done above.  Once this is done, go back to your MS Word document and click after the last word in the paragraph.  This is where the monkey will appear.  Then goto Insert, Picture, From File, then navigate up to the desktop.  If you don't see the monkey file, you'll need to select Files of Type All Files

You should have something like this:

You can see the top of his head.  You should make the picture smaller.  Click the mouse on top of the monkey in MS Word and you'll see handles. 

Drag the handles to make the monkey about an inch.  And you'll have something like this:

We can make the picture nicer by changing the formatting of the picture.  Right mouse click on the monkey and select Format Picture. You'll see this:

Select Layout then tight.  This makes the text flow very near and around the monkey. 

Your document should look something like this:

 

We have only two tasks left.  The first is easy since you've done it before.   You should put your Name and Email address as a Footer. 

9. [Footer] Goto View, then select Header and Footer. Your document should look something like this:

Press the button that the red arrow is pointing to--that switches to the footer.

Type your name and email address.  Then press close.  If you see a red squiggly line--ignore it.  It's saying there's a misspelling somewhere. 

10. [Spelling]  Goto Tools and select Spelling and Grammer.  If you have any possible errors, you'll see this:

The word at the top is the word in your document that's probably misspelled.  The words below are suggestions.  To take a suggestion, just mouse click it.  If this word is okay this single time, select Ignore.  If it's always okay in this document, select Ignore All.  There are other options here too.  The grammar checker is bogus--but it's fun to use.

11. Once you've finished this section, save this document as zoo.txt on your desktop and then continue on with the rest of the lab. 


Task 3. Working with number bases using a table

We will be using MS Word as the standard document format for turning in assignments in I101. Sometimes you might have to create tables in order to display data properly. In this section we are going to create a table in MS Word that shows that we know how to count from 0 to 2010 in binary (base 2), octal (base 8), decimal (base 10), and hexadecimal (base 16).

First, we need to create a table in our zoo.doc Word document. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest is simply to click on the Table menu at the top of the page, then click on Insert, and then Table like this:

Inserting a table in Word

The following dialog should pop up. Since we need 20 rows for the counting and one row for the headers, we want to put 21 in the slot for number of rows. Since we have 4 different number bases we will be using, we want to put a 4 in the box for number of rows like this:

Insert table dialog

Click OK and you should have something like the following table inserted into your page:

The first thing we want to do is insert our table headings. Modify your table by adding the following text, making each entry bold and centered:

If you mouse over the table you will see little crosshairs appear in the top left corner of the table. By clicking and drgging these crosshairs you can adjust the position of the table. In the lower right corner of the table an empty box will appear. Clicking and dragging on it will allow you to modify the size of the table. Adjust your table and make it a little narrower.

Next, lets make alternating columns have a slightly different color to make viewing the table a little easier.Hold your mouse above the column with the heading "Binary" until the pointer turns into an arrow pointing down. Left-click while the arrow is showing and the whole column will be selected. Click on Format, then Borders and Shading like this:

The following dialog will show up - make sure you click on the Shading tab if what you see does not match.. Click on one of the light colors of gray and click ok .

Repeat this process with the column for "Decimal". Your table should now look like this:

Now all that is left is to fill in all of the rows with the right number. Fill in all 4 rows and 20 columns by counting in the specified number base. Think of this as practice for the first exam! I'll give you the first 3 rows, which should look like the following image. Make sure to center your numbers in the column.:

When you've finished counting from 1 to 2010 in binary, octal, decimal, and hexadecimal and saved the resulting document, you're done with this lab.

Upload the following items to the Lab 2 assignment page on Oncourse by Wednesday, September 13th at 11:45pm:

  • Your lab document named zoo.doc with both the text and monkey picture as well as the number base table completed
  • Your completion form from the link below.


CLICK HERE WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WITH LAB 2