Lessons 1 · 1 lessons · B. Boltayev, M. Mahkamov, A. Azamatov, S. Rahmonqulova. Informatics and Information Technologies, Grade 7. Revised and expanded third edition. “O‘zbekiston milliy ensiklopediyasi” State Scientific Publishing House, Tashkent, 2017
1
The idea of information and knowing
Textbook: pp. 4–8
GoalTells information, message and knowledge apart, describes al-Farabi’s view of knowing, and explains what informatics studies and its three parts (hardware, software, brainware).
New words
information: what we learn about things and events through our senses and instruments · axborotmessage: the material form (sound, picture, text) that carries information · xabarinformatics (computer science): the science of working with information using computers · informatikaalgorithm: a rule that gives the order of steps leading to the solution of a task · algoritm
Explanation
The word “information” comes from Latin informatio – “explaining”, “giving a report”; in Uzbek it is axborot. We receive information through sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, so information is the reflection of things and events around us in our mind. The scholar al-Farabi (9th–10th century) wrote that knowing has a sensory and a rational stage and that neither can exist without information. An important difference: a message is the material form of information (a sound, text, picture), while information is the meaning a person forms from that message; two people can get different meanings from one message. The American scientist Claude Shannon saw information as a reduction of uncertainty in our knowledge. Informatics is the science that studies searching, collecting, storing, processing and using information with computers; its basic ideas are information, the information model, the algorithm and the computer. Three directions are distinguished: hardware (the devices), software (the programs) and brainware (the algorithms, i.e. the rules for solving tasks).
Worked examples
A friend texts you “Practice tomorrow at 8:00”. The text is the message; the meaning you take from it is the information. Because it does not say which practice or where, the information is incomplete.
A phone, keyboard and monitor are hardware; Windows and a browser are software; the rule for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers is brainware (an algorithm).
Class activity
“Senses”: the teacher puts an apple, salt, a bell and soft cloth in a bag. Pupils with closed eyes find things by touch, smell and hearing and say which sense gave the information.
Practice
1
Explain the difference between information and a message, with an example.
A message is the material form (e.g. the text of a notice); information is the meaning a person forms from it. Two people may understand one notice differently.
2
According to al-Farabi, how many stages does knowing have and what are they called?
Two stages: sensory knowing and rational knowing; they are connected.
3
Sort into hardware, software or brainware: a mouse, a text editor, a step-by-step rule for sorting names, a printer.
Hardware: mouse, printer; software: text editor; brainware: the rule for sorting names.
4
Why is “we will meet tomorrow” not complete information? How would you complete it?
Because it does not say with whom, where or at what time. Add the place, time and people.