Shopping online

4. Supermarket employees (all types such as trolley pushers, toilet cleaners, warehouse staff)

Benefits – Redundancies would be given out. They won’t have to work anymore as there will be less people coming to the supermarket. Trolley pushers won’t have to work as hard any more because more people are choosing the option to do online shopping.

Limitations – They could lose a job which they enjoyed and would be left without a job. Warehouse staff would have to work harder as they will have to make sure that all online customers’ products are delivered correctly and efficiently.

Task 2: Using the Internet

Produce a report for the George family identifying at least 4 different possible uses of the Internet other than grocery shopping. For each identify the advantages and disadvantages.

The report should be identifying and explaining for family and society due to widespread use of Internet.

REPORT

Possible uses of the internet are shown below:

Task 3: Impact of Anita using the laptop computer

Anita has to write a report for her Science lesson how the weather affects pollution where she lives and how ICT can be used to monitor the environment. Her mother has agreed to her using the laptop computer.

Produce a report that describes what information she can find on the Internet about local weather.

Describe:

• How ICT provides better information on local weather and pollution levels, with at least 2 examples of each

ICT helps provide better information for Anita because she doesn’t have to turn on the television to check the weather. She can just log on to her computer and connect to the internet to see the weather forecast. One site which I researched and found on the web was the official BBC website. A print screen is shown below of how to navigate the website if you want to see the weather forecast in your area.

After entering the criteria you have inputted into the search box click on the ‘GO’ tab on the right. The screen will now change and you will see the print screen shown below:

So far there hasn’t been any sign of difficulty to use this website. I clicked on ‘London City’. The page now looks as shown below:

For the local weather ICT helps give an advanced warning and a detailed intelligence for severe weather incidents like hurricanes, flooding, winter storms and wind gusts. And for pollution levels it gives advice on all matters relating to any environmental conservation, protection and pollution control including necessary policies, research, investigations and training. You

• How the environment benefits from the use of ICT for monitoring

You get a very good understanding of the interactions and the dynamic behavior of the whole urban system. Also wastage can be identified such as heating controls which are set too high or any equipment that has been left on overnight. Actions aiming at improving any sort of problem can be detained from the systems. Accurate data on consumption and CO2 emissions are also able to be monitored.

• How the environment could benefit from Anita using ICT resources to prepare her report rather than by hand

Explore the possible issues involved when Anita:

• Uses the laptop computer with Mrs. George’s school information on it

Seeing as floppy disks would be used and other storage mediums, there is a possibility to get viruses onto the laptop. If Anita needs to get rid of any sort of these viruses then she would need to have the most up to date anti-virus software installed on her laptop to prevent her laptop being infected. When connected to the internet she can also get hacked and a virus could very easily get into her laptop. Her laptop could get stolen by someone. This could cause distress to her and her family and could result in them losing out money as laptops are generally pretty expensive. The information on the laptop could get damaged or corrupted if she or someone else dropped her laptop. A TFT screen (flat screen) is very expensive to repair. Anita could find herself in a difficult situation because to repair the screen would be more than the cost of the laptop most likely.

• Uses the material and information found on the internet in her report

If Anita is using the internet, viruses and hackers can get into her laptop. The information found on the internet is always changing and also the data will not be the same all the time. She could find herself getting irrelevant or misleading information off the internet and this could be damaging to her and the people she is planning to show it to. Anita could also find that she would have to ask for permission whether or not she can have all of the information because she has to put it all into her own words. This can result in a very time consuming job.

Task 4: Worries about email and the Internet

Mr. George is unsure about the family using email to contact friends and accessing the Internet. He talks to his wife to discuss his concerns. She decides to use this topic for homework for her students. She divides the class into groups and asks them to prepare reports for a discussion, with one group working on each of:

• The benefits of email:

1. Can write to anyone in the world ( with PC access ) and they should receive the message instantly
2. Can easily send the same message to multiple recipients
3. Can send attachments with your e-mails ( e.g. pictures, video clips, word-processed documents )
4. Available 365 days, 24 hours per day – and wherever you are in the world as long as you have access to the Internet.
5. Cheap: when going online from a dial-up account, calls are charged at local rates and (for conventional email) need only last a few seconds. When using broadband, individual mail transfers are effectively free.

• The disadvantages of using email:

1. Email can compromise the security of an organisation because sensitive information can be easily distributed accidentally or deliberately. Email should be entrusted to well trained and trusted staff members.
2. Email can become time consuming for answering complicated questions and misunderstandings can arise because cultural differences in the interpretation of certain words. The telephone is much better for providing detailed answers or if you feel that the question is not absolutely clear.
3. Email can become impersonal or misunderstood.
4. Sending large attachment files could timeout.

• The advantages of the children accessing the Internet:

1. They have got the world encyclopedia at their fingertips.
2. They can get secondary data from the internet
3. The opportunity to communicate with people from all around the world
4. The opportunity to share resources and ideas with people that have the same interests.
5. Shopping around the world without leaving your computer.

• The problems when the children access the Internet:

There are no regulations or controls on the material that is placed on the internet. While there are over 3 million perfectly safe children’s sites on the net, children can unexpectedly come across material of a sexual or violent nature, language that is rude and the advertising of children’s products. Quite innocently they can bring up sites that do not relate to the topic they are looking for, or someone can send those images or messages that are not appropriate. Therefore there are many things on-line that are not suitable for children or that are cause for concern. The main dangers to children are that they may:

• access inappropriate information

• inadvertently form ‘friendships’ with strangers

• be subjected to advertising pressures

• risk their personal health through excessive use

• Endanger their privacy by revealing person details about themselves, such as their name and address.

• Ways to control the use of the internet:

There are many parental control programs or software’s which help parents in controlling the Internet content available to their children.  Most of these Internet control programs or parental control software can help block access to adult sites, rate sites based on adult content (pornography, violence/ profanity, intolerance, militant extremists, gambling, drug culture, etc.), establish time controls for individual users (for example, blocking usage after a particular time at night, or during established homework times) and log surfing activities (allowing parents to see which sites a child has visited). These parental control tools can help block newsgroups and chat areas inappropriate for children. Most of these programs can be configured by the parent to filter out sites that contain nudity, sexual content, hateful or violent material, or that advocate the use of drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. Some can also be configured to prevent children from revealing information about themselves such as their name, address, or telephone number. If you don't have extra parental control software or tools, most browsers today come with in-built security features. Like in Internet explorer 5.0, go to Tools>Internet options and click on the security tab. You can customize security settings or choose from the one's there.

Prepare a list that details all of the main factors that each of the groups must cover.

Task 5: Impact of automation

The factory where Mr. George works is going to introduce a robotic assembly line to produce the motors.

Produce a report that highlights the effects of introducing the new robotic assembly line on the company and its employees. You should include:

• Changes to work patterns
• Changing work skills
• Changes in the method of production
• Social aspects

There is an opportunity for Mr. George to retrain using a Computer Based Learning (CBL) system. Write a report that sets out the benefits and limitations to Mr. George and his employer of using this CBL system.

REPORT

Benefits of CBL to Mr. George:

• Can work at his own pace
• Can work anytime of day or night
• Instant feedback
• Can use CBL to answer any of his questions or problems at any time. CBL shows better understanding by using video clips, sound clips, pictures, notes. The CBL will have the knowledge to answer most of his questions.
• CBL is giving him the opportunity to start learning how to use a PC.

Limitations of CBL to Mr. George:

• Not as good as a “real” teacher in the sense that it can only answer questions based on what has been programmed into it whereas using CBL he will be struggling as he does not know much about computers and therefore will get limited feedback.
• He does not know much about computers and has not used them before. With a real teacher if you don’t understand you can tell them ‘’I can’t understand’’ and they can keep on rephrasing their advice but whereas CBL you won’t get different pieces of advice from them and it will not rephrase anything.
• Any health problems may affect Mr. George in using a pc for example may have a bad back or bad eyesight.

Benefits of CBL to the employer:

• It shows good investment and also will give the company a good reputation as they will be expanding their employees skills and the company cares about what happens to them if they leave
• CBL shows good investment into the business this will give them a good reputation.

Limitations of CBL to the employer:

• May be expensive to set up
• You have to have one PC installed within the actual company to ensure that you have the Computer Based Learning system.
• Need staff maintenance to make sure problems and faults with the CBL are dealt with. This therefore means more costs for the company.

Task 6: Electronic Communication

Mrs George is pleased about having the laptop computer as she can use it to communicate with her school by fax or email. Show in a report the advantages and disadvantages of these two systems for sending an urgent message into school. Compare these electronic methods with using ordinary mail to send documents.