What are the advantages of using the ICT technology.
The card is useful because it means I don’t have to carry money around with me and often lots of heavy loose change. Although the money cannot get nicked the card can. However, we can always block the card so it cannot be used. Since losing my card I got it blocked, suspecting that someone may have stolen it. Also, it does make the queues for food shorter because the cards just get put into a machine, a few buttons are pressed, the card is removed and off you go. This reduces crowding in our small dinner hall as it quickly moves people on and through. The cards can also have money added through cheques. Instead of having to bring in say, £20 into school, people can bring in a cheque which cannot be stolen and used. There is an advantage for parents who can check what they’re son/daughter has been buying,by asking for a print-out of their purchases.
What are the disadvantages, if any, of the ICT technology.
There are a few diasdvanatges to using the cards too. The fact that parents can get a print out of our spending is bad too. It is a good thing for parents but not for their kids. A further reason is because the cards rely on machines to work, there have been occasions when the machines have got broken or jammed. This results in huge queues for the one machine still working, or the complete inability to purchase food. Often, the machines which put money onto the cards refuse to accept older notes because they are crumpled. People spend ages attempting to insert notes into the machine only to be rejected again and again, this increases queues to them. Also, because we only have 2 of these machines there are often queues to put money on the card.
I have don’t have a card at the moment. Before, I had lost it many times. Partly because it is so small and was used a lot so is moved from place to place a lot. I tended to keep only small amounts of money on it because I could have had it stolen or lost at any time. So I cannot buy anything from the canteen as it does not accept real money. This is sort of annoying because it means that, should I decide I want to buy something, I would have to use a friends or pay for a new one.
One of the most annoying things about our dinner cards, is if you have been using them a lot you loose track of how much you have got on your card. This occasionally means that you have got less on than you think and cannot buy something. I think your card should be able to go into minus figures so you are in debt. To prevent kids from going into too much debt, there should be a maximum withdrawl of like, -£5. This would enable us not to have to worry about whether we have got enough on our card and could reduce the queues to the machines because you wouldn’t need to check how much you have got on your card.
I also think that another disadvantage is that you cannot take money off your card. You can only reduce your money by buying more things. It would be good if we could take off some money, say if we put too much on the card accidently. Also the cards have no picture of their user on and the dinner ladies are quite used to people using each others cards. This means should someone steal a card and it was not blocked they could carry on using it without detection.
If I didn’t have use of my card when I was in the lower years I would have had to carry loose change around with me, losing it as it fell out of my bag and possibly getting it nicked by one of the older people. Queues would have been even longer than they are now so it would’ve taken even longer to get some food.
Overall I think the dinner card used to have a lot of value to me, however because of changes in the cafeteria and my own health views, I no longer have any use for it.
