Australian Vocational Education and Training/Using a computer operating system

ICAU2231A

From the official document:

"This unit defines the competency required to configure, use and optimise a computer operating system"

That means that once you've learned and practiced the relevant tasks for this unit, you'll be able to demonstrate all the basic skills you need to use a computer operating system! You'll be able to load the operating system, log in, change a few basic things that you may need to, optimize some parameters to improve performance, and set up devices such as digital cameras and USB drives.

Some of the more advanced things include: use the command line interface to perform some basic tasks such as deleting files, and changing operating system variables. For more details about what you'll be able to demonstrate, you can read the official ICAU2231A Use computer operating systems document online).

You can read more about this unit on the National Training Information Systems Official document for ICAU2231A.

This unit is a pre-requisite for the following qualifications:

• Cert IV Websites Qualification in Australia

How this unit will help you

After learning and applying the skills required by this unit you'll be able to demonstrate your skills in:

ELEMENT	PERFORMANCE CRITERIA
1. Configuring an operating system	Configure operating system to the working environment, including but not limited to setting variables
2. Using an operating system	Install, upgrade and uninstall application software to suit the working environment Use both the graphical user interface and the command line interface to perform basic tasks
3. Optimising an operating system	Use operating system and third-party utilities Customise the graphical user interface Use techniques unique to the command line interface
4. Supportng input and output devices	Set up input and output devices and check functionality Install drivers as appropriate and check functionality

Ideas for learning the required skills

Your class facilitator will provide plenty of activities and class challenges to help you learn the skills required for this unit.

There are also plenty of textbooks that go through the basics of operating a computer – such as the Client Support Essentials form the Tertiary Press Information Technology series. If you'd like a free reference to print, have a go at printing the free book: Basic Computing using Windows (or ask someone to print it for you).

Ideas for demonstrating this unit

The easiest way for you to demonstrate the required skills for this unit is to sit down with your facilitator and work through a number of scenarios that require you to do the required skills for your assessor to see! Your facilitator may also have tests and/or assignments that you can use to demonstrate your skills for this unit, but you will always be required to demonstrate that it is your work and that you can demonstrate the skills not just once, but on an on-going basis. For this reason, your facilitator will collect evidence (whether it is you demonstrating your skills, or a test or assignment) over a period of time.