A Meeting of the Minds – The Presentation

We’re jigsawing the important points in Chapter 8 of Marketing Essentials, which has such great wisdom about how to listen and read for meaning.

Now, we’ll each do a PowerPoint slide on our assigned sections or terms, but we’ll be careful to use only main headings and key points on the slides. Using the “Click here to add notes” section below the slide area, add notes or compose a narrative that you’ll use during your presentation of the slide(s).

In this way, our communication skills studies will also help us learn good presentation techniques, which of course are part of good communication skills, as well.

While we’re working on our slides, I’ll pull some of you off of the task periodically so we can keep working on computers. This quarter’s focus is on learning how to install and configure operating systems, specifically Windows 2000, Windows XP, and maybe Windows Vista!

A Meeting of the Minds – Our communication project

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to have a conversation about the central role of communication in our lives. Can we develop communication skills? If so, can we identify which ones are the most important? Can communication skills be studied and learned just like geometry or science?

In the first step, we’re going to talk about communication, what it means to different people. Can we as a class improve them here? If we can, will we be able to apply those skills in other areas of life?

First organizing question: How have we learned the communication skills we already have?

Get on the Computer Bus!: Final Instructions

In teams, make a PowerPoint presentation that explains how the computer bus and all connected buses and sub-buses work.

Remember: We’re talking about buses in use in the typical PC, not remote telecommunications buses we sometimes unknowingly use or are connected to.

A good hint is: If I’ve talked about it in our off-blog conversations, it’s probably part of the computer bus we’re studying. And don’t hesitate to bring me your questions.

What are the top ten most important computer buses?

Post your answers as a comment, by teams, not individuals, please.

Once you’ve all posted, we’ll discuss and then use the answers to help organize your “Get on the Computer Bus” project.

Get on the Computer Bus!: We’ve got teams, let’s go

The computer bus, also know as system bus, or local bus, or internal bus, not only contains other buses within it but also is related and connected to other buses, such as the external (expansion) bus and its sub-buses, such as PCI bus, USB bus, etc.

Phew!

If we can understand how electricity and data flow around the circuits of the motherboard and beyond, we will know more about how computers work and why we choose the processors, memory and motherboards that we do.

In the teams that we’ve got, work together (leaders: assign roles, rotate roles, etc.) to create a dynamic, complete presentation of the computer bus in all its glory. At the end, we will know almost everything we need about how devices work together, talk together and interact along the circuits of our computers.

Let’s be done in a week, ready to present. Okay?

The evolution of bus speeds

My first computer was an 8088, and my current computer is a Pentium D dual-core 2.8GHz. Along with the growth in processor speed, the bus speed of the internal bus (especially the front-side bus between the processor and the main memory) has grown and grown. This has brought amazing improvements in computer speeds.

Here’s your challenge: Find the bus speeds from the early 8086 or 8088 to today’s fastest buses. Give me as complete a list as possible. Post the answers as comments to this entry.

Remember: I want a historical list of Bus speeds, not processor speeds.

New Project: Get on the Computer Bus!

Nothing is bigger and harder to understand, perhaps, than the computer bus. It’s a circuit or a data pathway rather than a vehicle, just for starters. Also, there are many interconnected and interelated buses, all either on or connected to the motherboard.

1. How many buses can you name?
2. Please define the following terms and explain how they’re related to which bus:
   1. Interrupt request (IRQ)
   2. Memory address

Submit as a comment (copy and paste from your Word research doc).

Microprocessor facts

Please submit using the Comments – and with your full name – a list of 5 facts you learned by reading “How Microprocessors Work” at howstuffworks.com.

Find the facts and type them into a Microsoft Word doc and then copy and paste them into the Comments box. Please submit only once.