How technology works, from the abacus to AI
Twelve short lessons. Every one tells you what problem the invention solved, who built it, and how it actually works. Each ends with a quiz you can replay.
- 1
What Is a Computer? The Machine That Only Follows Instructions
A computer is fast, not clever. It follows the steps you give it, millions of times every second, and it understands not one of them.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 2
What Is a Laptop? How a Whole Computer Learned to Fold Up
A laptop is not a smaller kind of computer. It is a whole computer, with its screen, keyboard and power folded into one box you can carry.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 3
What Is a Smartphone? The Computer That Fits in Your Pocket
A smartphone is a full computer with a radio inside. Making calls is now one of the smallest jobs it does.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 4
What Is Software? The Invisible Part That Tells the Machine What to Do
If you can drop it on your foot, it is hardware. Everything else is software: the instructions that decide what the hardware actually does.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 5
What Is Coding? Writing Instructions a Machine Can Actually Follow
Coding is giving instructions to something that will do exactly what you said, even when you clearly meant something else.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 6
What Is the Internet? How a Message Crosses the World in One Second
The internet is not a cloud floating in the sky. It is millions of computers joined by real cables, most of them lying on the bottom of the ocean.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 7
What Is a Website? Browsers, Addresses and How Search Really Works
A website is just a set of files sitting on somebody's computer. A browser is the app that fetches those files and paints them into a page.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 8
What Is an App? The Program That Lives on Your Device
An app is one program, installed on your device, built to do one job well. A website you visit. An app you keep.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 9
How Do Pictures and Videos Work? Pixels, Colours and Moving Frames
Every photo on every screen is a grid of tiny coloured squares. Every video is just a lot of those pictures, shown fast enough to fool your eyes.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 10
How Does Online Shopping Work? One Tap, Then a Chain of Real People
Tapping buy feels like nothing at all. It starts a chain of computers, warehouses, vans and real people that ends at your front door.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 11
What Is Artificial Intelligence? A Machine That Guesses From Patterns
Artificial intelligence does not know anything. It has seen millions of examples, found the patterns in them, and makes a very good guess.
🎯 30 quiz questions
- 12
How to Stay Safe Online: The Rules That Actually Matter
Almost everything online is fine. A small amount is not, and the whole skill is knowing when to stop and go and find a grown-up.
🎯 30 quiz questions
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