Computer Clues (2 page)

The Pee Wees sat up straight to listen. They loved new badges. And they wanted to know what they had to do to get this one. Molly didn’t care how hard she had to work. It was worth it. She loved collecting bright, colorful badges. And for every badge she earned, she had learned something new.

“First of all,” said Mrs. Peters, “we’ll talk about some of the things that computers
can do to help you. I’ll also show you some basic steps so you can use computers yourselves. Then you’ll have to do three things to earn your badge. The first is to write a short report, using information you find on the Internet. The second is to contact your friends via E-mail. And finally, to celebrate our new badge, we’ll have a treasure hunt. All of the clues will be given to you by E-mail.”

“What if we want to use a book to do research for our report?” asked Tracy.

“No books,” said their leader. “Books are wonderful, but this project is all about computers. This is not a book badge. This is a computer badge. You’ll find all your information on the computer, and you’ll do all your writing on the computer.”

Hands were waving. “Is Internet like a fishnet?” shouted Tim.

“I already know how to use a computer, Mrs. Peters,” said Mary Beth.

“What kind of report?” Sonny asked.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” said Mrs. Peters. “And I’ll introduce you to the machine.”

“Hello, Mr. Machine,” said Roger, putting his arm out as if to shake hands with the computer. “My name is Roger.”

The Pee Wees giggled and Mrs. Peters frowned.

“Next week,” she said, “we’ll pick papers out of a hat. Each paper will have the subject for a report written on it. Each subject will be different. Your reports will be on items found at the fairgrounds here in town. That’s where we’ll have our treasure hunt. The subjects will be things like local birds or buildings or trees.”

“I don’t like birds, Mrs. Peters,” said Tracy. “I’m allergic to feathers.”

Molly could think of a million questions. How do you find something on the computer if you don’t know how to spell the word? And how can you write on the computer without a pencil? How can everyone read it? Molly started to get the same scared feeling in her stomach that she got when she was in school and she didn’t understand the directions for a test.

But why should she worry? Mary Beth was her best friend. And Mary Beth knew about computers!

“How do you write on a computer?” she whispered to Mary Beth.

“You need software,” Mary Beth whispered back. “A program.”

Programs. Software. That was no help at all. Those words didn’t tell her anything!

“Mrs. Peters will explain it to us,” added Mary Beth.

Of course! Mrs. Peters said she would help them! Why was Molly so impatient?

“Now let’s not jump the gun,” said their leader. “First things first.”

Was
jump the gun
a computer term too? wondered Molly. And what did guns have to do with computers? Her mother didn’t like guns. She would not be pleased if Molly had to use guns on a computer.

Most of the Pee Wees were frowning. Mrs. Peters pointed to the computer on the desk. It had a screen like a TV and a metal box. There was also something that looked like part of a typewriter. Mrs. Peters wasn’t wasting any time. She pressed two buttons and the machine began to hum and lights began to flash.

“What program are you using?” asked Rachel. “We are getting a new computer that will have four different word processing programs. One of them has an entire
dictionary on it. There’s so much storage on the hard drive that it can hold jillions and jillions of words.”

Word processing
. Molly had heard about processed cheese. But how do you process words?

“Right now,” said Mrs. Peters, “I just want to show everyone how to turn the computer on and off.” She explained the two buttons. One for the screen. One for the hard drive.

“I can’t drive, even if it’s easy drive!” cried Tim. “I’m not old enough to drive!”

“
Hard drive
does not refer to driving a car,” said Mrs. Peters kindly. “It means the part of the computer that stores information.”

Molly was glad that there was someone who knew less than she did. Even she, Molly, knew they would not be driving a car!

M
rs. Peters showed the Pee Wees the little pictures on the screen. Then she held up a small plastic thing and said, “This is called a mouse.”

The mouse was connected to the computer by a wire that looked like a long tail. But otherwise, it didn’t look much like a mouse. For all Molly knew,
mouse
was one of those words that could be spelled two different ways. Like
moose
, the animal, and
mousse
, her mother’s chocolate dessert.

“If you want to use the Internet, you take this little mouse and move it until the arrow on the screen is on this picture of a phone line,” Mrs. Peters said. “Then you click the mouse twice. The Internet is full of information about all kinds of things. You will find information for your report on the Internet under www.exploreminnesota.com. Just like you would in a book about Minnesota.”

Molly wanted to ask, Why not use a book, then? but she didn’t.

“When you’re ready to write your report, you put the arrow on this picture of a blank sheet of paper. Then you click the mouse. A blank screen will appear for you to write on. It looks just like a piece of paper.” She clicked and showed them. Things whirred and buzzed. Something came on the screen, but it didn’t look like a piece of paper to Molly.

Then Mrs. Peters showed them how to press buttons on the keyboard to make letters appear on the screen. It was like magic! You didn’t even need a pencil. Mrs. Peters put letters together to make words. She wrote their names. Then she wrote, “The Pee Wee Scouts are all here today to learn about computers.”

It was fun! Even Tim, who sometimes had trouble with his letters, could read it.

“How do you get your words onto a piece of paper?” asked Lisa Ronning.

“When you are finished writing, you turn on the printer, and put the arrow on ‘print.’ Then you click the mouse,” said Mrs. Peters.

Mrs. Peters let everyone take a turn writing their name on the screen, along with a few sentences. Then she printed them out on real paper.

“This is easy!” said Lisa.

Molly couldn’t believe it was so simple. Was it possible she had been worried for nothing?

But when it was her turn to write, Molly’s mind was as blank as the screen!

Jody had written, “I like to work on computers.”

Tim wrote, “Eous fun and jumpe.”

Rachel wrote, “Our new computer is exciting.”

When it was Molly’s turn, she wrote, “I am sevenal years old.”

That was wrong! She did not remember pressing the
a
and the
l
, but there they were! Now Molly’s words would be printed wrong, too! They would look as silly as the words Tim had written.

“Now, boys and girls, this is a perfect time for me to show you how to correct a mistake on the screen,” said Mrs. Peters.

A perfect time, the wrong Pee Wee,
thought Molly. Why hadn’t Mrs. Peters corrected Tim’s sentence?

Mrs. Peters pressed a button that moved the little flashing line, which was called the cursor. It went back to the word
seven
. She put the cursor on the
a
and the
l
and pressed a button labeled
DELETE
. The letters were gone! More magic!

“
Delete
means erase,” Mrs. Peters explained. Then she printed out Molly’s corrected sentence.

“And now I think that’s enough work for one day. It’s time for our cupcakes, our good deeds, and our song. Then we’ll call it a day.”

Molly put her printed message in her pocket to show her parents. It looked good, after all. No one could tell there had ever been a mistake! It was even easier and cleaner than using the pink eraser in her desk at home. She was on the way to a
new computer badge! Rat’s knees, she could quit worrying. At least for now.

On the way home, Mary Beth said, “I hope I get a good project when we choose our subjects next Tuesday.”

“Maybe we can trade,” said Molly. “I mean, if we get something we don’t like.”

“I don’t think so,” said Tracy. “Mrs. Peters doesn’t like trading.”

Tracy was right. Molly remembered that from other badges. Their leader didn’t want the Pee Wees to trade pen pals or hobbies or even library books.

When Molly got home, she showed her paper to her mom and dad.

“Wonderful!” said Mr. Duff proudly. “Our little Molly is on the information superhighway!”

“Next week we’re going to be assigned a project to get our badge,” said Molly.
“We have to write a report on the computer.”

“I have an idea,” said her dad. “Tomorrow I’ll bring home my laptop so you can practice. By next week, you’ll know your way around cyberspace very well!”

Laptop? Cyberspace?
Molly was confused. Her dad didn’t need to bring his laptop home. His laptop was right there when he sat down. The top of his legs, where Molly sat when he read her a story, that was his laptop. And it was always right there!

When she looked puzzled, her dad explained that his computer was called a laptop because it was so small it could fit on your lap instead of on a table. It could be moved anywhere. But when he used it at home, he could connect it to a telephone line and a printer, just like a big computer.

The next afternoon the laptop computer was waiting for Molly. “All my words won’t fit on that!” she said.

“Thousands of words fit on this,” laughed her dad.

“Where?” asked Molly. “Where are they all?”

“They are on a teeny tiny chip inside,” said her dad. “The hard drive holds just as much data as the ones in bigger models, maybe more.” When Molly looked puzzled, her mother said, “Maybe you don’t know what
data
means. It means the information the computer stores, or remembers. Just like you remember things.”

Cyberspace was not easy to understand. But then neither was the TV. There were really no people inside that box in her living room, and yet you could see them and hear them when you turned it on.

And what about her grandma’s voice on
the telephone when she called them from France? How did her voice travel all the way across the ocean on that skinny wire?

Molly sighed. She decided she couldn’t figure these things out. She would just have to trust her dad. And Mrs. Peters. They were reliable, and they always told the truth. If her dad said that millions of words could live on a tiny chip (like a chocolate chip?) inside this little box, it must be so.

Molly used the little mouse control to move the arrow to the top of the screen. Then she wrote her name, pressing the letters on the keyboard. She wrote a few sentences. When she made a mistake, she pressed the
DELETE
button.

“This is almost the same as Mrs. Peters’s computer,” she said. “Except it’s smaller and the letters are green.”

Molly had so much fun, she couldn’t stop writing things on the screen. It took her a while to find the letters she needed. Her dad even showed her how to press a button that made all the misspelled words jump up and scramble themselves into the right order! Cyberspace was definitely magic! This should really be good for Tim, who had so much trouble spelling.