I will be using this blog as; a log of my activity and use of ICT over the time period assigned, a personal audit of all my communications (e-mails, text messages, phone calls, online chatrooms e.g. MSN, Facebook), and as a means of recording my research and investigations into the information age.
Other online services;
Communication;
Communication between friends and family across the world has been made really easy with instant messaging services such as msn messenger, blogs and other services such as bebo where you make an Internet page and share news and pictures with your friends and family.The target audience for these communication services are basically anyone who has an understanding of ICT and wants to communicate with friends and family, also make new friends by meeting people over the internet.The benefits of having these online services are, you can communicate with friends and family easily, and in the case of msn messenger it is free to do so as well. Also you can meet new friends and share photos and thoughts with them.The drawbacks to communication services are that people will just sit at home and chat to their friends over the internet, instead of getting out and talking to them in person, which is much healthier than sitting in front of a pc all day. Another drawback is phone companies such as BT might be loosing customers and/or money, because people are using the online communication services instead of phoning their friends and family on a phone.You don’t have to be too skilled to use services such as msn messenger, but to use services such as Bebo you will need a more in depth understanding of ICT, so that you can create the webpage and upload pictures. A possible enhancement to communication services online is, to have an online service that allows you to use all the services that many other services providers in one package.The non-internet alternatives to online communication are mobile phones and home phones, or letters and things like that.
Real time information;
Now that we are in the information age, where finding out information for almost anything is made really easy and quick via the internet. You can access things such as train time tables and traffic reports on the internet, on specific internet sites. Such as www.cityrail.info, which is a site that is devoted to helping people find out when and where a train is leaving from or going to. The target audience for real time information is the average working person or someone who is travelling to work or school, they may need to know what time the time turns up or if there are going to be any traffic on their route to work/school, so that they can plan a different route and still get there on time.
The benefits of real time information is that you can find out relevant information to your day, and make decisions based around the information you find out. A Possible enhancement for real time information is to have all the information such as train times, weather and traffic reports all on one site, to cut down the time for searching for information.
The non – internet alternatives to find out this information are train time tables, local newspapers, and at bus stations, you can also find out the weather via the T.V. and/or newspapers, also you can find out information about the traffic on the news on T.V. at a specific time in the morning or during the day.People don’t need too much of an understanding of I.C.T to access the information on these sites, because the procedure is so simple, and if they couldn’t access it they could ask someone who has a greater understanding of I.C.T.
E-commerce;
Commerce covers many online services such as shopping, banking and auctions etc. Commerce primarily expresses the fairly abstract notion of buying and selling. There are lots of online shopping services for you to use such as, Argos, Homebase and Wickes which are all DIY stores, there are also clothes stores and shoe stores such as Barrats. Also there are online banking services with banking companies such as Lloyds TSB, HSBC, Halifax and Barclays etc, which provide online services such as online banking, so that you can manage your accounts from the comfort of your own home. There are also many auction sites online, the main one being EBay, which allows members to buy and sell products in an online auction.
The target audience for commerce services are people who are interested in buying and selling online, also people who are quite busy and don’t have the time to go down town to buy the product can use the online services.
The benefits of having all these services available to people online is that it is time saving and makes people feel involved in something when they are buying or selling on auction sites such as Ebay. The drawbacks are it prevents shops that don’t have an online site for people to buy from, from getting as much business. a Possible enhancement for commerce services such as shopping are to make the shopping a 3D experience, where you virtually walk around the shop and buy what you want.
E-government;
e-Government (from electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or in a certain context transformational government) refers to government’s use of I.T to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses, and other areas of government.
e-Government may be applied by the legislature, judiciary, or administration, in order to improve internal efficiency, the delivery of public services, or processes of democratic governance. The most important anticipated benefits of e-government include improved efficiency, convenience, and better accessibility of public services.
While e-government is often thought of as "online government" or "Internet-based government," many non-Internet "electronic government" technologies can be used in this context. Some non-internet forms include telephone, fax, PDA, SMS text messaging, MMS, wireless networks and services, Bluetooth, CCTV, tracking systems, road traffic management and regulatory enforcement, identity cards, TV/radio-based delivery of government services, email, newsgroups, online chat, and instant messaging technologies.
Education;
Online education sites such as bitesize helps students to study and learn information they need for their exams, bitesize is a very useful site because it offers many ways of revising the information you need for exams. I would probably rank it as one of the top sites for education on the web.
Also sites such as VLE’s or Virtual Learning Environments, helps students learn a very specific subject to the level they need, such as engineering to a level of distinction. The target audience for online learning sites are mainly students who are studying for qualifications from S.A.T.S to A level and above. I would rank this website 2nd out of all the online education websites i use because it offers such a wide range of information specific to many different subjects.
Another very useful education site is http://johndclare.net/ this is a site designed to help History students do the best they possibly can in their GCSE history classes. It provides nearlly all the information you need to have in your folder for revision, and also gives alot of help for doing coursework and getting a good mark out of it. I have ranked this website 3rd out of my favourite online education sites because it helped me alot during my two years doing History for GCSE.
A more recent website I have used could be http://www.jroscoe.co.uk/ which is a P.E website designed for AS to A-level, this is also a very good education website because it provides the user with all the information needed in each separate part of the course. The information is displayed colourfully and makes it very easy to read and use as revision, therefore earning it's place in my top 5 education websites.
http://www.reviseict.co.uk/as/ this is another very good website for online revision it contains lots of past paper questions and coursework help. This is a website that will become very useful to me further on in my course and I'm glad i have found it now so I can refer to it later.
The benefits of online education is that you can do more work at home and study for exams, online education sites also help you out with homework and coursework.You don’t need to be that good at I.C.T. to be able to use the online education sites, also if you are a student at school or college, you should be able to use the internet effectively enough to find out the information that you need.
A possible enhancement for online education is that you could have a virtual teacher talking to you on the computer, such as the virtual person talking on the search engine “msdewey.com”.There are non-internet alternatives such as study books from edexcel, also private tutors.
Business;
The internet has had a generally positive aid to businesses but we can still divide the ICT involved in business into positive and negative effects; Positive - Speed of communication has increased so information can be processed faster, holding more information can help with decision making,
businesses can reach a wider audience, employees can become more productive, the business can be more competitive, employees can work from home - reducing overheads, computers can do repetitive jobs, and it may be possible to reduce the workforce, therefore saving on costs
Negative; ICT equipment is expensive and needs updating often, not all equipment is compatible,
information may be less secure, people may lose their jobs, and staff will have to be trained to use the equipment.
In conclusion i could say that general ICT has had a very positive effect on business e.g. completely changing ways of communication(e-mail) and how jobs are carried out, you could even say it re-shaped the work force to become IT literate. Therefore showing this is only the start of what will become more developed ICT use in the years approaching the digital age.
Entertainment;
Online entertainment technologies I have used in the last three months;
- Online games
- BBC sport
- Radio
- Youtube
- Peekvid
Because of the internet and online services, entertainment has been made easy to access. Entertainment such as music downloads, movie downloads and games have been made widely available from a number of websites.Games such as “World of War craft” have been a major success, generating millions of pounds from subscribers all over the world.These online entertainment and leisure services have affected our personal lives, because you no longer need to go out and by the music CD from a shop, you can just by the right to download the music from your computer. The same applies for movies as well.
These services may also affect our social lives, because you may have met a friend or you may have gone and had your hair cut on the way down to the shop where you were going to buy the CD from. Online services that provide games for you to play on such as www.addictinggames.com and World of War craft, affect your social life because you could be playing the games with your friends and or family, in that case these online games may have a positive affect on your social life, but if you were stuck indoors playing the game on your own for hours per day, it would have a negative affect on your social life, because you aren’t getting out and meeting new people.
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