ICT Solutions for individuals and society

www.yahoo.com

Sport Attendance Average "Viewing Figures"

71

www.lycos.com

Sport Attendances -American- "TV Viewing Figures"

45

www.google.co.uk

Sport Viewing Figures -Attendance

2,380,000

www.google.co.uk

Sport Attendance AND TV Viewing Figures

427,000

www.yahoo.com

Sport Viewing Figures -Attendance

2,290,000

www.yahoo.com

Sport Attendance AND TV Viewing Figures

203,000

www.lycos.com

Sport Viewing Figures and not Attendance

72

As the table above shows Google gave me the most hits from the criteria I searched. In the phrase and advanced search Yahoo and Lycos did not give me many results, as did Yahoo in the simple search, so from this I have decided to not use Yahoo for the rest of the document. From the three different search engines I have used all three gave me relevant results, whereas Dogpile generally gave me poor results. Although Dogpile did give me a smaller amount of hits each time so I can search through all of them with ease unlike Google and Yahoo which at sometimes gave me literally millions of results, which basically is impossible to look through every one and most of them being irrelevant as well as that. The logical operators did not give me very good results; I think this is down to me not using very good search criteria. The advanced search brought up the best results out of them all, although the phrase search did produce a number of useful hits.

I have decided that I am going to use Google to help me with the question "Has increased TV coverage affected the attendance of live sports events" as it gave me fairly the same amount of relevant hits as Yahoo, but it gave me a lot more hits. Which could be seen as a down point, but that also means that I have a lot more results to search for what I really want. One of the main best hits I received was www.barb.co.uk as I have previously mentioned this website containing a lot of the information that I need.

Task B

For this task, I have to compare how electronic information has had an impact on people in general and in society, which includes people who I would not normally have contact with. As well as the previous I will discuss the effect it has on people who do not have/ do not want access to ICT. This will include how companies have adapted to communicate with each other using electrical advances. When somebody talks about electronic information they automatically think about computers and the Internet, but there is a lot more to electronic information than that, as I will go on to explain. Also there will be certain disadvantages to those who do not have access to these appliances.

ICT systems can affect a number of different people, working or for social reasons. Mainly Internet and Microsoft office, this can be used to improve communications and finding information. Myself for example I use the computer to make my work look more presentable and mostly to use communication devices such as MSN. Using the internet for example is much quicker and easier than searching through a library for the same information, although there is not guarantee that all information found on the internet is true.

ICT has helped many different people in the field of communication, by using certain services such as the popular MSN messenger which allows its users to talk instantly with others and share files and photos, which means people aren't confined to asking people to help in school were they can show them the work, it can just be sent over and helped from there onwards. E-mails can be used for businesses to communicate such as sending invoices out to clients if the person is working at home for one reason or another.

The Internet can also be used for more entertainment based media such as videos and games. Youtube is probably the major website in this area as it has one of the biggest databases of free videos on the internet. Games can be played against people from all over the world depending on the speed of the computer, which has created whole social networks, so this part ties in with the communication part quite well. News updates are fairly easy to find online by using websites such as the BBC so people can follow up on stories when the news is not on TV for example there is a lot of information about the war in Iraq. The BBC also has weather reports which are updated frequently.

The way people buy products has changed a lot since the introduction of cheaper internet sites, as they do not need to employ as many staff as say a big high street chain. One of the biggest sites where you can purchase goods is Amazon as they have many brand new products at discount prices, making it very popular. Also there has been a sudden emergence of auction websites such as eBay, where pretty much anything legal can be sold from one person to another not using a company name or anything. Not only are there just shops, online bookings can be taken, such as buying tickets for a sports match or even tickets to a plane to a full holiday all of which can be booked online.

The internet can be used as a education tool as well as it has many websites full of information that could be used in different contexts. For example I am getting lots of information for this unit off the internet. Wikipedia being probably the biggest website to get information off. Although anyone can type this information in, and therefore it is not always that reliable. Past papers can also be downloaded from the exam board websites, to aid with revision.

The common person can use the Internet for such tools as Internet banking as this is quicker and easier than going into a branch, as well as easier to monitor their accounts, so combating fraud is easier. Nevertheless, you cannot have a face-to-face conversation with an employee, so any problems arising can be hard to overcome. However, it might be more frustrating as older people do not know how to use computers as well as some of the younger generation, as they have not grew. Business can benefit from this as applicants can apply online as well as the business scouting for new employees by using websites such as Monster.

One of the main setbacks in the age of the computer revolution is the security threat the computers face. Virus scanners can be bought but are costly. But cheaper to buy than if the computer was to become infected and had to but another one. McAfee being the most popular make to buy.

Again the main use of ICT in the workplace is for communication methods such as businesses from different countries talking for free. Different forms are able to be sent through e-mail from company to company. Also customers can get a companies details such as address etc of the internet. In companies people can email each other work to help things be done to maximum capacity. These emails allow information to pass to certain individuals so that there is no delay between individuals receiving important information, such as urgent meetings. Emails can also be sent to clients updating them on the business and also containing information about the business, such as new stock in etc, which ties in with the link of advertising online. Advertisements can be a good way of promoting new products and businesses just down to the sheer amount of people who actually use the internet. Some advertisements on the other hand can be very annoying leading to people ignoring them and closes that window. Interactive advertisements are a fairly new idea which helps draw the potential customer into buying the product. Their website can be used to help get more publicity and sell more products to the public. Businesses/schools can use the internet but also intranet, as this gives students information, which is only available to those who have access inside, but nobody can access it externally.

Many shops apart from a few minor individual shops (such as corner shops) places lie Tesco are more likely to use EPOS terminals this can be used to monitor stocks and when to reorder these, some advanced EPOS terminals can even automatically reorder these items if they get below a certain point. They do this by reading the barcode of products.

As the capabilities of the Internet are now growing people are now able to download music and programs among other things off the internet. This has opened a whole new window to businesses, such as channel 4 have just launched their 4OD internet service where customers can pay to watch films over the internet. CD's sales are decreasing as well which is because of the fact you can now buy your music online from websites such as iTunes which again is not helping the smaller independent businesses to survive. The other downside to this is the amount of illegal downloading going on from websites such as Limewire.

People in society will use electronic information in many different ways. Such as people with no jobs can get information on new job advertisements on the Internet from websites such as Monster. The older generation might access the information available for details on days out, e.g. what times places open, which any person in society can do, but the elderly might be more likely to do it as they have more time in retirement.

For those unfortunate enough not to have access to the Internet, (due to not being able to afford it/ do not know how to use it/ do not want it) therefore they do not have access to numerous amounts of information, videos and pictures etc. In addition, they might have to pay more for communicating, as instead of emailing and instant messaging, they will have to use the telephone or text messaging. There are also those people who prefer not to use the Internet, as they do not trust their information being posted around the Internet because of fraud etc...

In conclusion to all the previous findings I have noticed there is a great divide between those who take advantage of these technical advances and those who don't, and the divide shows no sign of stopping, as more technological advances are being made every day. These advantages have made life easier for people, as it can do so much now, this is in normal life as well as in the workplace. This is easier due to communication being easier, faster and most importantly more effective. This has also had a massive impact on my life seeing as I can find pretty much any information I want ranging from the latest sports results to information for coursework, this does have a down side to it though as those without access due to money or not wanting it are being left behind as the gap between technology is ever widening.

Task C

For this task I am going to search through a larger website that I found in task A using the search engine, to find more information on the question I am trying to find the answer to. Websites have many features that allow users to navigate through them fairly easily. These are as follows: Menu's, Hyperlinks, Navigation Bars & A-Z Index's. Also I will use the sites internal search engine to find what I am looking for, often these internal search engines are created and sponsored by larger search engines such as Google. To show the evidence of me using these features I will screen shot them and annotate using speech bubbles.

After searching for sites to do with my assignment using Google the BBC website came up with lots of information on what I am looking for. As well as Wikipedia Therefore, I will therefore use that website for this task.

The home page as you can see contains many links to different parts of the website, which most of which will not be very relevant to what I am looking for so I will search in the internal search engine to find what I am looking for.

Above is the screen shot of the navigation bar which I am going to use to help me find more information on this website.

From this navigation bar I can then move onto looking through the A-Z index, due to a lack of relevant sources on the navigation bar.

This A-Z index is very easy to use, as you just select the letter, which your search begins with, and then go from there.

As I have already found some information from the BBC website I am now moving onto another useful website found in task A named as BARB. Hyperlinks are a piece of text that you can click to take you onto another part of the website or another website all together.

I could not find all the information I needed from just going through the A-Z and the browse part as there was too much information on the TV listings or sports information but not what I was looking for. However, I also noticed that there is a search bar at the top of the page, which I will use to try to find more information.

From this search, I went through some of the hits that were given and found some useful pages as shown below.

There are many more useful sites, which the search came up with, but too many to display on this document, as that would be pointless, but I have instead made a note of the really useful pages, for future reference. However, there was also many, possibly even more hits that were not relevant to the search, but those were discarded. This type of searching if a good website has been found and you want to find certain information inside that website. The information I have found will be used to help me in Task F.

This type of search is also useful as if there is a page with a lot of information on, and which most of it is irrelevant, then pressing ctrl+f will bring this box up, and then will search for whatever you need to look for. From all this information I have just gathered I will now use it in task D.

Task D

For this next task, I am going to search through local and online databases, to find information relating to the topic I am looking at. The local one was given to me by the teacher. The information I am looking to find is the viewing figures for the sports in each year and also the attendances for the same events. To extract this information in the most efficient way I will use queries to whittle a large amount of information to a smaller amount which I need. This data will then be put into a report to make it look more presentable.

The table contains four different fields which are the year, sport, attendance and viewing figures. But as you can see above is all of the records, and there is too many of them so I will have to narrow it down and make it more specific. Originally the attendance and viewing figures were in two separate files, but I copied and pasted one into the other to make it easier to make comparisons between the two.

Queries

Queries are used to compare certain data from one or more tables, to search through this data however logical operators are needed, which is ok as I have previously used them in searching the internet.

Simple Search

First I will perform a few simple searches to get a broad range of data, such as all the different viewing figures and attendances from one sport. To use a simples search just simply enter the required sport into the field in quotation marks and click run.

Relational Operators

There is another type of search that could be used in databases called relational operators which is where you search for something higher or lower than a set value by using the correct symbols (<,>,<>) If the symbols <> are used then it is excluding that from the search. The relational operators are a good way or sorting data and excluding things from searches.

Logical Operators

As with using logical operators on search engines such as Google they make the search more precise allowing better results to be found. The OR operator basically expands on the simple searches as it looks for two different things instead of the one.

Below is the results to the above query, which has got rid of a lot of irrelevant information so I can directly compare rugby and tennis attendances.

As I have used two different operators in the previous search it is known as a complex search, as it is searching them both. This counts as AND as it is searching for greater than 1999 AND rugby & tennis.

The above query counts as a OR operator as it is searching for Rugby OR >1999, so both of what I search for appeared and they do not interfere with each other.

First off as there are so many years I have decided to take out all years below and including 1999 which I done by using the formula >1999. Also as you can see football has a much higher amount of people, so this will only distort my data when it comes to creating a graph for it. For the same reasons I have taken out Ice Hockey and Swimming as they have minimal amounts of spectators. This was done through using <> which means not and including and between the words so all three are not included. <> is just another way of saying NOT.

The years & sports/events are linked because other wise the results, which I get, are incorrect as it is searching for them in both tables.

Above are the results for my queries in design and report viewing format.

As you can see my results have no became much more manageable as there is less of them to account for. This makes it easier to compare them, as they are both next to each other as well.

Online database

As well as looking at a local database I also need more information from an online database.

Above are details of how many people watched each event of different channels through the use of an online database. I will also have to find the same information into how many people attended the same games; I am predicting that these should be proportional to how many watched them on the TV. But this will not answer my original question as I am only searching through football for this information. Although I have gathered information from other sports previous to this.

Logical operators can be used in internet sites as well databases.

This page is extremely useful as it shows the exact figures to what I need, with how many games they've played and also the maximum they can hold meaning I can then work out a percentage of the ground they fill, so I can analyse them that way as well.

Task E

For this task I have to gather all my data and use a range of different formula to find out different more information about it such as the average and max & min etc. This will also contain absolute and relative cell referencing.

Macros

Macros can be used in many different ways. Basically what they do is shorten lots of steps into one click of a button. On this spreadsheet macros will be used often to link pages to one another.

This is the contents page of the whole document, so when opened this is the first page that will be viewed, as it links in with the other three pages that I have created. This is done through the use of macros.

To record a macro go into the Tools menu bar and selecting the macro sub-menu and the clicking the record new macro option.

After doing the previous it will bring up a new box named Record Macro, from here type in the name of the macro bearing in mind it cannot have spaces, and you can also assign a shortcut to it by adding a letter in the box next to ctrl+, but bear in mind that there is a lot of the keys already used. Click OK when done.

When OK is clicked this is when the macro starts to record, for my one I had to select the appropriate sheet from the bottom of the page. Once that is done click the stop button in the new toolbar which has appeared.

Then after doing all of the previous steps the macro has been completed, now it just has to be applied to the document, selecting the "button" button from the toolbar at the bottom does this. If this toolbar is not there then select the Form toolbar to be viewed. Select the macro you would like to be assigned and press ok.

Above is my competed contents page with all the pages linked up, making it much easier to navigate around.

If the macro does not work then the most likely cause is that the macro security is set to high to counter this change go into macro from the tools menu. This will bring up a new box.

To assign a macro first you need the control toolbox menu bar visible.

Click the command button box to get the command box onto the page

after selecting the size from that right click the box and click assign macro.

Choose the correct macro and select it from the list. Press ok to complete.

This simple sum is done just to add the total percentage of the live attendance and viewing figures together. So I do not have to repeat this procedure of typing in the data every time it is easier to drag the formula down, as it will also drag the cells which it is adding down as well.

This does not work if one of the cells in the formula that only stays in one cell. This is overcome by something called absolute cell referencing, this is done by putting $ signs around the letter e.g. if you wanted to keep C4 the same it would look like $C$4. This could be done easier by after selecting the cell you want to stay the same, press the F4 button, as this puts the $ either side of the cell. Examples are shown below.

SUM - This is useful if you have a lot of data rather than adding each up individually you can just type in sum and highlight all the cells you want to be added up.

AVERAGE - This is for if you want to know the average amount of what you are looking for, instead of adding it up and dividing it by the amount of pieces there are you can just type in average and select the cells.

COUNT - If you want to know how many pieces of data you have instead of counting them all individually you can just use the count formula.

DATE - The only use for this really is to put a number into date format, but this can easily be done anyway without using the formula

INT - This rounds up a decimal number to the nearest whole

MAX - Find the highest amount of data you have

MEDIAN - Find the middle of your data, this sometimes is not a actual piece of data it could be half way between two if you have a even amount of sources

MIN - The lowest piece of data the search contains

MODE - This is the most often occurring piece of data, it can sometimes be more than one piece and other times it can be all of them

COUNTIF - Count ifs are used to count a specific amount of data for example if you wanted to know how many pieces of data about tennis there is, this will count them for you.

ABSOLUTE CELL REFERECNING - When a formula gets dragged down all of the named cells change to the cell beneath it, however if you want one of those cells to stay the same you would put $ signs around it or alternatively press F4 which will enter them for you in the correct places.

The other type of cell referencing there is, is called named cell referencing where the data is grouped under a certain name, and when that name is typed into the box in the top right hand corner the data you selected appears.

To make the cells into a percentage so you do not have to keep pressing the percentage button, is by highlighting all the cells you want to contain the percentage and then right click and go into format cells and select the format you want from the left hand menu in this case percentage and then choose the amount of decimal places desired.

V Lookup

The V Lookup searches for the data if somebody types in the data in the box for the years. Then the viewing figures and attendances will appear for rugby, it is possible to also get one for other sports, but for now all I need is data for rugby.

Above shows the V Lookup being used as I have entered the year 2002, the rest of the data had appeared automatically.

The data which the VLOOKUP is using to source the info is B2-B7 which is the drop down list I created. For each VLOOKUP to work I needed to make a named range for each VLOOKUP e.g. year2002 the final part of the formula is the column in which the data is being found from for example percentage of viewing figures is found in column 7.

For the drop down list to work I needed to first make a named range of the drop down. In this case it is the sport. Then from the data validation menu select the list option and enter =Sport (the named range)

After the previous step is then done you can add a input message to tell the person what to do, and also a error alert if they have entered a wrong name into the cell.

If the data entered is wrong, such as somebody has typed the wrong sport in shown above, as football is not one from the list the warning box appears telling the user that they have done something wrong and it needs to be changed for them to continue.

Conditional formatting

Conditional formatting is when you change the font colour of a cell if it is in a certain parameter. This makes the data easier to read off when you have large amounts of it.

Graphs

I have decided to compare the percentage of each set of data because there is such a difference in the values of the attendance and viewing figures it would not be very comparable, the percentages on the other hand are fairly easy to compare.

Cell protection

Cell protection is used to stop people accidentally deleting a formula or cell from a work book, or as a security issue as you could also password it.

Once this selection has been made then the cells cannot be changed in whatever way, until unprotect worksheet has been selected.

Test #

Testing Element

Method and data

Expected Results

Actual results

Y/N

Average

The average of data is worked out from a selection

Calculate the average of the selection and compare it to the formula

Both calculator and computer gave the same answer

Y

2

All macros are linked from home page

Create macros that link to relevant pages

When the macro button is pressed you are taken to the correct page

The page changes to the correct one

Y

3

Countif statement

Use Countif to check how many years I have data for rugby

Count the amount of years I have rugby for and check it against the Countif statement

There is six years and the Countif also tells me there is six pieces of data

Y

4

Conditional formatting

Use the conditional formatting tool to make the false turn red and true turn green

The data should turn the correct colour as listed in the previous column

False turns red and true turns green as expected

Y

4

Drop down list contains all it should

Use a named range to create the data, and select it from the data validation tool

The cell will contain the drop down list with all the sports necessary

Each sport is listed there as it should do

Y

5

Vlookup's are working correctly

Entering relevant data into cell B2

Cells C2 to H2 will have the correct data

The VLookup is fine as all the data is the same as on the other page where it was initially typed out

Y

Testing

Task F

To some up all the data I have found in the previous tasks I will produce a presentation on all the data I have found.

Task G

Task A

For task A I had to use search engines to find out information and websites for later tasks.

What went well?

Using the logical operators as I already knew how to use them as I use websites such as Google quite a lot. This includes the advanced features of the search engines.

What did not go quite so well?

Many of the search engines I searched did not produce many relevant results, this could be down to one of two things: the search criteria I entered needs changing either more specific or less specific, or there is not much information on the internet for what I was looking for. Also on the Lycos website it did not contain an advanced search criteria box.

How initial methods were refined to meet the purpose of the investigation more closely

I initially used a different search engine to Lycos but when I realised I was getting no relevant results at all I decided to use Lycos instead. Also I changed some of the search criteria to get more relevant results.

How I can improve the task if I was to do it again

If I were to do this task, again I would search for other criteria to see if I was able to gain results that are more relevant

Task B

Task B was all about writing up how electronic information has a impact on individuals and society. I needed to produce different reports from different points of view. One from my own, another from other people I know, and another from society as a group.

What went well?

I was able to do the first part of the task well as I already had the information ready for me as it is how I use electronic information and how it has impacted me.

What did not go so well?

Writing up the third part was fairly difficult as I do not really know how different people in society use electronic information and how it has impacted them so I had to find that out.

How initial methods were refined to meet the purpose of the investigation more closely

I initially based my information on how people use different electrical services such as the internet and mobile phones etc. So I had to re-do a lot of the work.

How I can improve the task if I was to do it again

If I had more time to do this task I would run a questionnaire or survey to find out how electronic information has had a impact on them so the second and third part of my report could be more accurate.

Task C

Task C was all about finding information off a larger website and using all the different features of them, to find more information on the later task G

What went well?

The easiest part of this task was finding the website I was initially going to use, which was the BBC one, also navigating the website was fairly easy as I navigate that website all the time so I know how to get around it with no problems.

What did not go so well?

There was a distinct lack of information on the website, so although I was able to navigate through it fine and everything, finding anything worthwhile on it was not as easy.

How initial methods were refined to meet the purpose of the investigation more closely

I originally didn't annotate any of the screenshots, which lost me quite a few marks, so I went back and annotated what I had done on each screenshot.

How I can improve the task if I was to do it again

I would look through more than one website to find this information out, so then when it came to making the presentation I will have more data to analyse, but due to deadline constraints I could not do this.

Task D

Task D involved searching through online and local databases sourcing information I need, by using a whole range of logical operators etc.

What went well?

Using the online database as I already knew what I was doing on it from other units of this course, and also in the local database, I found putting the results into reports easy as all it required was general formatting skills.

What did not go so well?

As I have not really used Microsoft Access too often in the past I found some of the queries hard to run, one of the main problems with this was I did not realise you had to put the criteria you are searching for in speech marks. I also had a lot of trouble with the Relational Operators as I did not know how to do them properly.

How initial methods were refined to meet the purpose of the investigation more closely

At first I only did simple queries such as excluding certain data, and only searching from one table. But as my skills with Access grew I started linking the tables together and using searches with <,> & =.

How I can improve the task if I was to do it again

I would create more queries and possibly find data to update the tables as they only go up to 2005, but this is not too much of a worry as I have more than enough data as it is.

Task E

What went well?

Using all the different formula went particularly hassle free as I use spreadsheets all the time and know all about the different sorts of formula. This means I saved time because I did not have to learn how to do them all.

What did not go so well?

As I have not used macros before so it took a while for me to get them working correctly, but after I learnt how to create these they were easy from then on to get them to work.

How initial methods were refined to meet the purpose of the investigation more closely

My VLookup was very basic and not very informative, so I redone that to make it more complex and so it could give the user a lot more information.

How I can improve the task if I was to do it again

I would change the layout of the data around so that it could be easy to read, as at the moment it is fairly difficult to read off the data as they could be mixed up with one another, but it is acceptable for now.

Task F

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