What are hardware, software and Operating Systems?

In KS1 the very basic hardware components of a computer are introduced:
 

• Inputs are any devices that send information into the computer. For example, a mouse has a position on the screen and is able to tell the computer when a button is clicked and which button is clicked. A keyboard is able to send key presses to the computer.
• Outputs are any devices that are able to show information to the user. Good examples of these are the screen, which shows the user text and images, and headphones, which are able to play sounds for the user to listen to.

In KS1 software is described to your child as being a ‘set of instructions run by a computer’.

Your child may understand that programming is linked to software, as when they write basic programs for a turtle robot they are effectively writing software for it. However software is an abstract concept and can be very difficult for a young child to understand, as there is no concrete way to look at it; it doesn’t really exist. Whilst we can write a computer program and print the code onto pieces of paper, this would not be of any use to us, as without running the code on a piece of hardware it doesn’t actually do anything. The code written for software, whilst extremely valuable to whoever wrote it, is completely useless until run on a computer. In other words, software isn't the code it's written in but the result of having that code running on our computer, asking for input and showing output to the screen.

This is an exceedingly difficult concept, so until KS2 children's understanding of software is not developed much further than a description and some examples. Even at KS2, the idea does not go much beyond this, but as long as students are learning about software hand in hand with algorithms and programming, then the foundation knowledge required to understand what software is starts to develop.

Whilst there are no set tasks that can be used to teach students about software, as students start to write more and more code their understanding of software being something they can build and hardware being something that is a physical object will develop naturally and will be reiterated multiple times by teachers throughout their early computing.

An operating system (OS) is generally described as a translator, however it is actually a very large and complicated piece of software. Its main job is to allow communication between the different parts of a computer. 

At KS1 level your child will be introduced to the concept of the OS through reference to the UI (User Interface). The UI is what allows us to communicate with a computer by showing us information and giving us things to click. If we want to go on the Internet then by clicking on the Internet Explorer icon the OS will load the browser for us and show it on screen.

When you click inside the Internet Explorer window the OS tells the program, allowing it to then calculate what it should do next. When the program makes changes it then asks the OS to show these changes on the screen. This is introduced very simply at KS1 level through a series of tasks that will have your child perform basic functions on the computer, such as loading programs and using menus. Discussion will be had regarding what is happening when you click on something on screen and questions will be asked such as “How does the program know where your mouse is?” and “What tells the computer when you have pressed a key on the keyboard?”

At KS2 this learning will be taken further and the concept of the OS being a translator will be introduced more thoroughly.

An example of an OS learning activity at KS2 would be to have students stand up at the front of the class and be given a role. For example, one student could draw a picture, one student could provide pieces of paper, one student could be a communicator and one student could be a middleman for the other three.

• The class teacher will whisper to the communicator what picture they would like drawn; they will write this on a note to pass to the middleman.
• The middleman will look at the request for a picture of, for example, a bird, and decide whether to accept or decline it. When they accept it they will send a note to the paper-provider student requesting a piece of paper and the paper provider will either return a piece of paper or a note saying they don’t have any paper left.
• When the middleman receives the response they will either notify the communicator that they don’t have any paper, or pass the paper to the drawer with a note requesting a picture of a bird.
• When the drawer has finished the picture they will pass it to the middleman who will then give it back to the communicator.

In this example there are a few analogies that we can use:

• The middleman is the Operating System. They communicate with all the other members of the team (components of the computer) and deal with all requests and communication.

• The communicator is our input device. In a computer they could be the mouse, receiving a request to start drawing on the screen.

• The piece of paper is our output. In a computer this could be the screen. When the middleman asks whether there is paper available this could be the OS checking that there is nothing else on screen.

• The drawer is our software. This handles the input from the user and produces an output to the screen.