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Activity 1 - READ

If you look very closely at your monitor you will notice that there are tiny dots being used to create the output. This is much easier to spot on a projector screen if you are close to one of those. Each tiny dot is a single colour known as a pixel.

As you know, computers use 1's and 0's to store and process data. Every pixel on your screen has a series of 1's and 0's associated with it.

You can see each pixel in the image below:

Activity 2 - READ

Your monitor or screen will allow for a maximum screen resolution. This is how many pixels horizontally and vertically. You can see the settings on a standard Windows operating system. Look at the screenshot below:

This shows that the monitor is set to display 1280 pixels across and 1024 pixels down. If you change the resolution to 800 x 600 then it will only display 800 pixels across and 600 pixels down. By changing to a lower resolution, the images on your screen appear larger.

Activity 3

Complete a google image search for a picture of your choosing. e.g. computer

Save the picture and zoom in on it until you start to see the pixels

Notice that the larger the pixels, the more distorted the image becomes.

The video below gives an example of this:

Even though every digital image is made up of pixels, you don't notice them until you look really closely. This is because your brain tricks you into seeing the whole image.

1. Visit an electronic store website and investigate different monitor resolutions.
2. Look at digital cameras. Look at the difference in resolution and see how this affects the product price.

A lot of this can be demonstrated by a teacher using the whiteboard and projector. Students should be able to say what a pixel is and identify one. They can then investigate how resolution affects the image quality. The next outcome goes into a lot more detail about this.