How do I open a terminal window in Ubuntu?

The sidebar to the left of the desktop in Ubuntu has lots of Icons, but right at the very top is a Ubuntu button which when clicked opens the 'Dash'.

So go ahead and open the Dash..

You see a place where you can type stuff so type 'terminal' and an icon of the terminal window will present itself with the appropriate label.

Click this icon and a terminal window will open.

But what is a terminal window and why do I need it?
  The terminal window is a way to directly program Ubuntu. For example, using the word 'sudo' gives you root permissions.

Ubuntu has a lot of protection around it and that's why we need permission to alter our own system files! Usually apt-get refers to grabbing something online from a web site.

So if you were to type 'sudo apt-get update' in a terminal window for example, Ubuntu would update itself using what is called 'repositories' which is another word for stuff stored on a computer somewhere that is fresh =]

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