Most students already use at least four ICT tools before reaching school. One feature decides whether a technology counts as ICT at all: connectivity, the ability to send and receive.
ICT is the technology that stores, retrieves, transmits, and manipulates information.
TERMDEF: ICT (Information and Communication Technology) — technologies used to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate information. Role in daily life: access to information, entertainment, banking, healthcare, communication. Role at the workplace: record-keeping, communication with clients, data management, remote working. ICT tools: mobile phones, tablets, radio, television, email, internet, computers.
Picture a filing cabinet packed with years of paper records. It stores perfectly — but so does a mobile phone. Does that make the cabinet an ICT tool too? The answer is no.
Storage alone is not enough — connectivity is the line that decides. A filing cabinet cannot transmit a record; a printed book cannot receive one. A phone, a radio, and the internet can do both — that is what makes them ICT tools, and a cabinet just a container.
At work, that link is the real value ICT adds — not merely the computing it does.
Ask a student to name an ICT tool, and computer is nearly always the first word out. Say ICT just means computers — it sounds true. It is not.
Test it against three devices. A radio station broadcasts a farming tip to a village — no computer chip needed, yet it sends and receives, and counts as ICT. A TV does the same for the news; a mobile phone, rarely thought of as a computer, sends and receives constantly. None needed the word computer to qualify.
The computer is one ICT tool among many, not the whole group. Radio, TV, mobile phones, and the internet all qualify the same way — by sending and receiving.
Open up a computer case: five kinds of part. The motherboard is the one part that ties every other part together.
TERMDEF: Computer system components: CPU (Central Processing Unit) — processes instructions; Memory — RAM (Random Access Memory, temporary working store) and ROM (Read-Only Memory, permanent start-up instructions); Motherboard — connects all components; Storage devices — hard disk, USB drive, CD/DVD (long-term data store). Hardware: physical components you can touch. Software: programs and operating system that run on the hardware. Primary operations: input → process → storage → output → communication.
Step back and look at the computer as one whole system, then zoom in. The figure beside this paragraph lists the parts flat — CPU, internal parts, peripheral devices. The finished version, still to come, will place them spatially with connecting arrows; the margin note calls that finished version the labelled diagram — read that as what's coming, not what this list shows yet.
Every instruction passes through the CPU — nothing else in the system works without it. For the Unit 3 practical task, draw and label the full spatial diagram yourself: CPU at the centre, arrows to every other part, in the same order the figure reveals — internal parts first, peripherals second, the five operations last.
A broken keyboard and a crashing program are two different kinds of trouble. One is a physical part failing — hardware; the other is bad instructions — software. Knowing which one you face tells you what to check or replace.
Many students assume RAM holds data permanently, the same way a hard disk does — both sit inside the same machine. It's a reasonable-sounding guess. It's also wrong.
RAM is temporary — it clears the moment the power goes off. The hard disk or a USB drive is what actually keeps data permanently. ROM is permanent too, but holds only start-up instructions, never your own work. Lose power before you save, and RAM is exactly what you lose.
Five operations, in order: input, process, storage, output, communication. Skip one, the chain breaks.
Most stop at four. The chain has five steps, not four — communication is the one everyone forgets. Leaving it out is the most common way this question loses marks.
Everything inside the case is only half the system. Peripheral devices are the external parts that extend what the computer can do.
TERMDEF: Peripheral devices — external devices that connect to the computer to extend its input/output capability. Input peripherals: keyboard (text and commands), mouse (pointing and clicking), scanner (converts paper documents to digital), webcam (video capture). Output peripherals: monitor (visual display), printer (paper output), speakers (audio output). Input/output peripherals: touchscreen, external hard drive (read and write).
The figure beside this page adds one more example: a microphone — it sends sound data in, the same way a webcam sends video. Not an exception, simply one more input device.
Before you use a peripheral device, classify it. Ask one question: does this task need data to enter the computer, leave it, or both?
A scanner only ever brings data in — always input. A printer only ever sends data out — always output. A touchscreen does both at once: output on its screen while taking touch input at the same moment.
Getting this classification right is what lets you pick the correct tool for a task. The touchscreen is where most students slip — call it output only, and you have missed half of what it does.
Put the classification skill to work. Take these ten devices: keyboard, monitor, webcam, scanner, printer, mouse, speakers, external hard drive, touchscreen, microphone. Sort each into input, output, or both.
Then check which of the ten your school computer lab actually has. For each device you find there, write one real workplace task it enables — a scanner, for instance, turns paper records into digital files. Build your answer as one table: device, classification, workplace task.
Close the chapter and test yourself, cold — no flipping back. Seven questions cover this unit: what ICT is, what is inside the system, how to classify a peripheral device. The figure beside this page carries all seven, worked in full — here are the two traps worth a second look first.
Read every question twice — the trap is almost always hiding in one exact word. Picking CPU instead of Motherboard as the part that connects everything is the first trap: CPU processes instructions, motherboard connects them — the question asks for the connector, not the processor. Blaming the hard disk when unsaved work vanishes on a power cut is the second; the real answer there is RAM.