Use basic applications and programs

Operate A Personal Computer
Use Basic Application and Programs
ICAICT101A Operate a Personal Computer
© 2011 Commonwealth of Australia
Use Basic Applications and Programs
Terminology
The terminology used for computer operations is often similar to those used in other environments
because the activities are similar.
Folders
A folder on a computer is similar to a folder in a filing cabinet. Theycan store any kind of file
including documents, pictures and videos, which can be added, moved, renamed and deleted. You
can organise the files in your folders however you like, but you should try to organise and name
them according to their content.
Saving
Saving a document allows you to name it and store it. Documents are usually saved into folders.
When you create a document you will be prompted to name and save it before you close it. If you
don’t save it there is a chance that all the data you have entered will not be available for future use.
Menus
Just like a menu in a restaurant, a menu on your computer is a list of options which you can choose
from.
To save space on your screen, a menu isn’t open all the time; instead each menu is usually
represented by a button that drops down when clicked on. An example of such a button is shown
below.
When you click on a menu title the menu opens and the available options drop down. You can then
select an option by clicking on it with your mouse’s left button, as shown below.

Windows
A window is a virtual box on the screen which is surrounded by borders. When you open programs,
applications, files and folders, they display the contents and functions available. Because your
computer can perform several functions at the same time, you will often have multiple windows
open at the same time. You can move windows around the screen and change their shape and size
by stretching them at their sides or corners.
This picture shows two windows. One contains a program and the other shows the contents of the
computer. You will see that on window is sitting in front of the other. If you were to click on the
window, you would bring it to the front.
Don’t confuse these windows with Microsoft Windows – the operating system. If you see Windows
written with a capital ‘W’ and the trademark logo (™), then it’s actually referring to the operating
system Microsoft Windowswhich may be running on your computer.
Basic applications and programs
We described some basic applications and programs in the previous section. In this section we will
look at some of them in more detail.

Email
Electronic mail, known universally as email, is the electronic equivalent of sending a letter through
the post to a recipient anywhere in the world. An email commonly consists of three parts, the
address the email is being sent to, a subject line and the text of the email.
The email address of the recipient will look similar toname@internetprovider.com.au.
In addition to text, an email can have files attached to it that will be included with the email
message. Care should be taken when sending large files as attachments due to the time it will take
the recipient to download these files.
Emails can be sent and received from an email client – a program installed on a device providing
various functions relating to sending, receiving and managing your email. Many email providers also
allow access to email via a Web browser.
Email clients
There are many different email clients available, all offering similar functionality.
Each email client will offer slightly different options, but the main features of all of them are the
inbox, new email, reply, forward, delete, outbox, contacts, drafts and folders. The way that these
features are arranged simulates the functions of a physical workstation.This concept is illustrated in
the image below.
The button and menu layout of each email program will be different, but most applications will have
buttons and menus. Two examples of how email software may appear have been included below.

Common email features explained
Send and receive email
All emails currently ready and waiting to be sent (queued) in the outbox
are sent. New incoming email is downloaded into the inbox for reading.
Create new mail
Creates a new email message to send to someone. The new email button
will open a window containing the three following fields.
To The email address of the person you are sending the
message to (e.g. name@internetprovider.com.au).
Subject The title you give to the email message that you are
going to send.
Text The actual text of the message that you are going to

send.
Reply
Creates an email in reply to the currently open email message. The email
address of the person you are replying to will be automatically used as the
To email address. You will notice that the subject of the reply email will
automatically have RE: at the beginning. Attachments to the original email
will not be included automatically in your reply email.
Reply all
Creates a new email in reply to the currently open email message. All the
people that the original email was sent to will automatically be added to
the list of recipients in the To field.
If the original email was sent to only one person, this has the same effect
as selecting the reply button.
Delete message
Deletes the currently selected email message.
Forward message
Forwards the currently selected message to a third party. You will be
prompted to enter the email address and will notice that the subject of the
forwarded email will automatically have FW: at the beginning. Attachments
to the original email will be automatically attached to the forwarded
message.
Inbox Where email is downloaded to for your viewing. You can move email
messages into another folder of your choosing (see below).
Outbox Where all the emails that you have written are stored before they are sent.
Folders You can keep emails in folders with different titles, just like in a filing
cabinet. For example: ‘Family’, ‘Receipts’, ‘Jokes’. This can make it easier
for you to find emails that you have kept.
Drafts Emails that you have started writing but are not yet ready to send.
Trash Emails and drafts that you have deleted. You can retrieve emails that have
been deleted by mistake from here. However, once an email message has

been deleted from your trash, it is gone forever.
Contacts Your address book for email addresses.
Sent items Copies of emails that you have sent (you can check that emails were
actually sent by looking in Sent items).
If you use web-based email (webmail) you will be required to open an account. You will need to
come up with a username and password for the account that you can easily remember. The
following learning activity will look at this process in greater detail. Remember that it is important to
choose these wisely and to keep your password private so that other people cannot pretend to be
you online.
What is a username?
A username is a unique name attached to an online account, such as Twitter, YouTube or MSN – it
may be your real name or a nickname.
When you sign up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or webmail service your usernamewill
usually become part of your email address, e.g. username@internetprovider.com.au.
Remember that usernames and email addresses:
● need to be easy to tell someone – so keep them simple to spell
● areusually all lower case
● are usually 6–14 characters
● need to be easy to remember
● ifyou use numbers, avoid revealing your birthday, phone number or house number.
Remember to think about when and where you will be using the email/username. The context of
how you plan to use the username should influence your choice of words and numbers. For
example, if the email account is work or study-related,it’s ok to use part of your name, but you
shouldavoid suggestive or silly words.

Understanding the internet
The internet is a vast collection of millions of computers all over the world that are joined together
by telephone lines, cables or satellite links. The computers may belong to universities, government
agencies, businesses or private individuals but no person, organisation or government actually owns
the internet.
When you connect to the internet you can access news, opinions, discussions, music, video clips and
all kinds of other information that is on the other networks. It’s like having access to a massive
library – much larger than any other library on the world and growing rapidly each day.
The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web, or simply ‘the web’, is part of the internet.The web is a collection of millions
of pages of information, sound files and video files. The web links documents and files to each other
through a series of hyperlinks. These hyperlinks allow users to navigate to other web documents and
files. A hyperlink is a clickable element on a webpage that takes you to another page or file on the
internet. Hyperlinks are most commonly found in text, this is called hypertext. Hypertext is
traditionally blue, so you can see which references will direct you to another page.
The web is one of a number of services which work over the internet. Some of the
others are:
● email
● user network (USENET) newsgroups
● instant messaging (IM)
● file transfer protocol (FTP)
● internet relay chat (IRC).
Each of these services has its own unique language, called a ‘protocol’. For example, the protocol
used by the web is called HTTP (for Hypertext Transfer Protocol).
How does it work?
Information is sent between these computer networks in small ‘packets’ of data using the correct
protocol. If the information being sent is large, like a video file for example, it might be broken up
into many data packets. Those packets may travel through numerous cables and computers in the
global network before they get to their destination and are reassembled into the original file.
What you need
To connect to the internet you need:

● a computer, tablet or internet-capable mobile phone
● a modem, which is a device that connects your computer to the internet
● an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Accessing the web
After you have turned your computer on and established an internet connection you will need to use
a web browser to access the internet.
A web browser is a program on your computer, smartphone or tablet computer that allows you to
visit websites as long as you have an active internet connection. Every web page you visit runs
through your web browser.
There are several popular web browsers including:
● Internet Explorer from Microsoft
● Firefox from Mozilla
● Chrome from Google
● Safari from Apple
● Opera
These browsers look a little different and have slightly different features, but they all work in a
similar way.If you have are running windows on your PC or laptop, it will already have Internet
Explorer installed. If your computer is an Apple it will already have Safari installed.
All the web browsers are free so you can download a different browser and try it out
if you like.
To visit a website you will need to enter the URL or address of the site into the address bar. URL is
the technical term for a web address. It stands for Universal Resource Locator.
The address bar
The address bar is the space at the top of your web browser whichshows the address of the web
page currently displayed and allows you to type in the address of a website that you’d like to visit.
Below is a picture of a web browser, showing the location of the address bar.

Online navigation
Navigating a website is finding your way around it. A website is made up of pages that you can
navigate between, similar to the pages of a book. There will be a series of links that allow you to
navigate around the website.
Whilst there are different web browsers, with different layouts and designs, they all work in a similar
way.
All web browsers have a toolbar, which usually appears above the address bar. The way buttons on
this toolbar will look depends on which browser you are using.
Back Takes you back to a page you have already viewed
Forward
Takes to a page you have already viewed before you clicked the
‘back’ button.
Refresh
Reloads the website, this can be necessary when a page has not
loaded properly or you need to update the website content, for
example if you are on an auction website you can refresh the
page to see the latest bid.

Home
The home button takes you to the first page you see when you
open your web browser.
Search engines
If you don’t know the address of the website, or you’d like to search the web for information on a
particular topic, then you need to use a search engine.
There are many search engines, but the most commonly used are Google, Yahoo and Bing. They look
a little different, but they all have a search box where you can type in some words describing what
you are looking for. These are called search terms.
The search engine goes and looks up your search terms in its catalogue, very much like the one in
your library. We call an electronic catalogue a ‘database’.The search engine then displays a list of
links to sites on the Web which match what you’re looking for. These are called ‘search results’.
The search engine may give you several thousand results. The most popular and the best matches
will be at the top of the list, but you may still have to look through a lot of information before you
find what you want.

Search engines are constantly cataloguing the Web, sending out little programs to find and analyse
websites by following links. These programs are sometimes called spiders, crawlers or bots.
Search engines are owned by different companies who are in competition with each other, so they
keep the exact workings of their systems secret.
Tips for better search results
Here are some tips which will save you time by refining your search results. Let’s say you want to
buy books in Adelaide.
● Use more precise words – instead of just typing „books‟, try „bookshops Adelaide‟.
● Use double quotation marks to search for a specific phrase “best bookshop in Adelaide” will give you many people‟s
opinions about where to shop.
● Don‟t use too many words – avoid typing in full questions, as every word will be searched for. Just use the key words
instead.
● Put a minus sign in front of terms you don‟t want to search for. If you want to leave out shops owned by the Shonky
Bookshop Company, you could put „-shonky‟ in your search terms.
● If you‟re only looking for pictures, click on the „Images‟ link at the top or left of the search engine page.
● If you still can‟t find what you want, try to think of another way of putting it. Instead of searching for „footy scores‟, try
„AFL results‟.
Assessing a search
With so much information available, it’s important to think about search results and the quality of
the information in them, and be careful what you read.
Let’s say you want to find out about treatments for back pain and you search for ‘medicine back
pain’. The results may contain articles by doctors, advertisements from pharmacology companies,
personal opinions by sufferers and wild claims about untested miracle cures. How can you tell which
information is useful to you?
An excellent approach is to think about:
● Currency – Is the information up to date?
● Reliability – Is the information mostly opinion? Is it balanced? Are there references and sources for any claims made?
● Authority – Who wrote the information? What are their credentials? Are they reputable? Are there advertisements on the
website?
● Purpose/point of view – Is the information intended as opinion, fact or advertising?

Computer security threats
The internet has many different websites, files and programs that you can view and download onto your computer. In fact, it is
possible for anyone to put just about anything onto the internet for you to view and download. The internet is like a library where
anyone can write a book and place it on the shelves for other people to view.
This is great because it means that we can view a wide range of information on the internet that has been made by a wide range
of people. However, this can also be a risk because some people will write websites, files or programs to cause harm on purpose.
This is why we need to be careful when using the internet.
Computer security
Computer security refers to keeping your computer safe from programs and people that want to use
or change it without your permission. This includes keeping it safe in its physical environment, such
as making sure nobody can steal your computer and making sure nobody can use it without typing in
a password. Security also involves keeping it safe online – most of the threats to your computer
security come from the internet.
There are a few things you can do to increase your computer security. In the following sections we
will list some common threats to computer security and look into some ways that you can protect
yourself from these threats.
There are many possible threats to the security of your computer and yourself on the internet. We will look into some of the more
common ones below.

Malware Malware is short for malicious software. This is the term used to describe any website,
file or program that is designed to cause harm to your computer or yourself. They are
each designed for different purposes, ranging from simple pranks to larger criminal
activity, such as identity fraud. A common effect of malware is slowing down your
computer or your internet connection.
Different types of malware include computer viruses, spyware and adware.
Security flaws Malware can be installed on your computer through your web browser. These malicious
programs often take advantage of security flaws in the more popular web browsers such
as Internet Explorer.
Security flaws are weaknesses in programs that can be exploited to cause harm. Older
versions of browsers are more at risk because they have security flaws that are well
known, but haven‟t been fixed.
Scripts Malicious programs are often written as scripts. Scripts are programs that are run on
websites. Types of scripts include ActiveX, Java and JavaScript. Most scripts are
legitimate and do useful things, so a lot of web browsers are set up so they automatically
run any scripts that are on the website that you are visiting, without asking you first.
This means that scripts that are malware might be able to automatically run on your
computer without you knowing.
Pop ups Pop ups are additional web browser windows, usually containing advertisements, that
appear on your screen when you visit certain websites. Many pop ups are not legitimate
and will contain malware or be an attempt at phishing.
Cookies Cookies are small files that are saved to your computer by websites. It is how websites
„remember‟ information you have given them, such as your username. Like scripts, most
cookies are legitimate and do useful things, so a lot of web browsers are set up so they
automatically save cookies on your computer, without asking you first.
Cookies by themselves are not harmful. However, the information that they hold about
you might be used by people trying to steal your personal details. Each cookie might only
store a little bit of information, but together they can tell someone a lot about the
websites you have been visiting.

Email
attachments
Malware can be installed on your computer through email attachments. Email
attachments are the files that are sent with emails that you can open and save onto your
computer. Like scripts and cookies, most email attachments are legitimate and do useful
things, only some are malware.
Often, when malware sent through email is opened, it will replicate itself and send itself
onto the people that are in your address book. This means that they can spread to a lot
of people very quickly.
Spam Spam is basically junk email. It is unsolicited bulk mail from senders that you do not
know, usually trying to sell a product.
Spam by itself is not much of a threat, but it may contain threats such as malware or be
an attempt at phishing.
Phishing Phishing is a play on the word „fishing‟. Phishing refers to any online communication
made by a scammer that tries to trick you into giving up your personal details such as
your password or credit card details. They are then usually used for criminal activities
such as identity fraud.
Phishing is often done through fake websites or emails. The websites and emails are set
up so they look like a legitimate business or person that will at some point ask you to
enter your personal details.
Hackers A hacker is a person who uses or makes changes to your computer without your
permission. Hackers often use tools such as malware and methods such as phishing to
conduct their activities.
Hackers do this for different purposes, ranging from simple pranks to larger criminal
activity such as identity fraud.
Identity fraud Identity fraud is when another person uses your personal information without your
permission for their own personal gain or to cause harm.
Tools such as malware and methods such as phishing are often used to steal personal
information for this purpose.
Now that we have covered some of the common threats to your computer security, we
will look into some ways that you can protect yourself from these threats.
Managing computer security
Just as hackers can use a range of tools and methods to create threats to your computer security,
you can use a range of tools and methods to protect your computer and yourself from these threats.

Firewalls
A firewall is a program that can be installed on your computer that helps to make sure that hackers
cannot access your computer and helps to make sure that only safe internet content is allowed onto
your computer.
You should always have a firewall running while you are on the internet so you are always protected.
Antivirus programs
An antivirus program is used to protect against malware. It does this in two main ways – by
preventing it from being downloaded onto your computer and by removing it from your computer if
it was already present.
You should check any files that you have downloaded with an antivirus program before you open it
and you should run the antivirus program over the whole computer at least once a week.
Software updates
You should keep your web browser and operating system up to date by installing updates whenever
they are made available. Updates will often fix known security flaws in your web browser or
operating system, so this is an effective method to help prevent malware from running.
You should also ensure that you have the most recent version of the web browser that is available.
You can find out what the most recent version of your preferred web browser is by going to its
website.
What else can I do?
You should always be careful when giving anyone your personal information or entering it into any
website, especially very sensitive information such as your password or credit card details.
Remember that the website that you are visiting or the email you are replying to may be a phishing
scam or otherwise harmful, so check carefully that it is legitimate before entering your details.
Now that you know some of the common threats to your computer security and some ways in which
you can protect yourself from these threats you can apply these to your everyday internet usage to
have a safer experience.
Use a generic and non identifying email address. Using your name in your email address may give
online ‘friends and ‘contacts’ access to more information about you than you want.
Keep your passwords private. If you share your password others can pretend to be you online. Make
your password hard to guess – use a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols.
To help you identify if a website or email is legitimate check the web address or the email address. A
fake website may have:
● suspicious looking web address

● misspelt business names e.g. Fcaebook or Faceboook.
If an email contains a link to a website you can check the link before you click by holding the cursor
over the link the web address of the website will be displayed. Check that it is a proper looking web
address.

Use basic applications and programs

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