Information Technology – A Definition:
We use the term information technology or IT to refer to an entire industry. In actuality, information technology is the use of computers and software to manage information. In some companies, this is referred to as Management Information Services (or MIS) or simply as Information Services (or IS). The information technology department of a large company would be responsible for storing information, protecting information, processing the information, transmitting the information as necessary, and later retrieving information as necessary.
Specific Uses of Information Technology
In collaboration with the staff at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia and several other key contributors (Earl Mark, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Paul Schulhof, Caryn Brause and Marjorie Tether, Graduate Research Assistants), various techniques have been explored and utilized in this project. The techniques include the following:
A. Animation for simulation of urban environments and video for assembling and disseminating results of the analysis and design work:
This technology establishes an easy basis for visualizing the effects of urban growth and transformation. Various considerations including topographic conditions, land use patterns, zoning constraints and economic factors exert forces on the formation of communities. Computer technology helps to organize information and variables, thus assisting a community in considering multiple options in their planned (or sometimes unplanned) growth. Animation and simulation are used as tools in the collection and organization of research material and as a medium for the demonstration and involvement by the public in the results of the design and research work.
B. Graphic Information System (GIS) for the study of housing and development patterns:
Current GIS technology can provide valuable imaging for housing development patterns. The process of charting growth and transformation begins to provide specific suggestions about ways that neighborhoods can develop with full recognition of their past conditions, building on the positive attributes that may have once existed. Many of these attractive qualities in the small town setting are currently threatened by "outside" forces and pressures. One of the most notable examples of this concern in Charlottesville is the area surrounding the University of Virginia Medical Center. This neighborhood has a rich tradition dating back to the early nineteenth century, yet its particular identity and attributes have been seriously challenged and threatened by the ever expanding Medical Center. In the more distant past, the Vinegar Hill neighborhood was decimated in the name of "urban renewal", eliminating one of the most important and vibrant residential and commercial areas of Charlottesville's African-American community during the nineteen-sixties. A careful recognition of patterns and particular local conditions provides a much more constructive model for developing and reinforcing individual neighborhoods. GIS technology and the other computer based approaches explored in this project can strongly promote public appreciation for the community's heritage.
C. Computer Aided Design (CAD) for geometric modeling:
Information from GIS is collected and primarily presented in a two-dimensional format. At the same time, three-dimensional modeling is important in demonstrating a more tangible and "real" simulation of familiar urban and topographic conditions. One example of this application involves the demonstration of current and future zoning constraints on building footprints and massing within various neighborhoods. Zoning laws are written documents and they currently require "translation" into three-dimensional terms. The public, politicians and planning departments seldom understand the specific physical and formal implications of the zoning laws that are currently written. Geometric modeling can demonstrate current conditions and new approaches that more convincingly approximate the familiar settings of traditional small town planning.
Geometric modeling also applies to work involving specific housing studies. A computer based approach is patterned on the "Sears Catalog House" from the early part of this century, in which various combinations of standardized assembly elements can be organized by home owners. The computer technology allows individuals to quickly visualize economical possibilities within a graphically defined "kit of parts" of housing options. Rather than relinquishing this process of "product development" and individual participation in the organization of housing options to free-market forces of speculative development, our design study proposes a more sensitive relationship between current affordable housing practice and traditions from the past. This connection between specific affordable options in housing and a relationship to familiar practices in the past reinforces the previously described role of re-uniting a neighborhood's development with patterns of evolution as identified through the GIS and urban design work.
D. Digital image archival systems for compiling data about the built environment:
This aspect of work ties into the Digital Image Center (DIC) in the Fine Arts Library at the University of Virginia. Ongoing work in the DIC supports this research project in several ways. Documenting the urban history of Charlottesville involves digital imaging technology. For example, digitized urban plans of comparable settings within North America have been considered as we explored initial settlement patterns and the changes that occur under the influence of individually identified factors. The DIC promotes more synthetic and perhaps unexpected associations among urban precedents than those that might be identified through traditional graphic, statistical, and representational approaches. In the area of housing, the DIC assists in collecting and cataloguing options and combinations that one can extract from the vernacular architectural history and vernacular traditions of this region.Need and Importance of Information Technology in Education
Need
- Education is a life long process therefore anytime anywhere access to it is the need
- Information explosion is an ever increasing phenomena therefore there is need to get access to this information
- Education should meet the needs of variety of learners and therefore IT is important in meeting this need
- It is a requirement of the society that the individuals should posses technological literacy
- We need to increase access and bring down the cost of education to meet the challenges of illiteracy and poverty-IT is the answer
Importance
- access to variety of learning resources
- immediacy to information
- anytime learning
- anywhere learning
- collaborative learning
- multimedia approach to education
- authentic and up to date information
- access to online libraries
- teaching of different subjects made interesting
- educational data storage
- distance education
- access to the source of information
- multiple communication channels-e-mail,chat,forum,blogs,etc.
- access to open courseware
- better accesses to children with disabilities
- reduces time on many routine tasks
Information Technology in Education
Significance of IT in education
Access to variety of learning resources
In the era of technology. IT aids plenty of resources to
enhance the teaching skills and learning ability. With the help of IT
now it is easy to provide audio visual education. The learning
resources are being widens and widen. Now with this vivid and vast
technique as part of the IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to
regard computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies.
In particular, they need to make use of the new multimedia technologies
to communicate ideas, describe projects, and order information in their
work.
Immediacy to information
IT has provided immediacy to education. Now in the year of
computers and web networks the pace of imparting knowledge is very very
fast and one can be educated anywhere at any time. New IT has often
been introduced into well-established patterns of working and living
without radically altering them. For example, the traditional office,
with secretaries working at keyboards and notes being written on paper
and manually exchanged, has remained remarkably stable, even if
personal computers have replaced typewriters.
Any time learning
Now in the year of computers and web networks the pace of
imparting knowledge is very very fast and one can be educated .One can
study whenever he wills irrespective of whether it is day or night and
irrespective of being in India or in US because of the boom in IT.
Collaborative learning
Now IT has made it easy to study as well as teach in groups
or in clusters. With online we can be unite together to do the desired
task. Efficient postal systems, the telephone (fixed and mobile), and
various recording and playback systems based on computer technology all
have a part to play in educational broadcasting in the new millennium.
The Internet and its Web sites are now familiar to many children in
developed countries and among educational elites elsewhere, but it
remains of little significance to very many more, who lack the most
basic means for subsistence.
Multimedia approach to education
Audio-Visual Education, planning, preparation, and use of devices and materials that involve sight, sound, or both, for educational purposes. Among the devices used are still and motion pictures, filmstrips, television, transparencies, audiotapes, records, teaching machines, computers, and videodiscs. The growth of audio-visual education has reflected developments in both technology and learning theory.
Studies in the psychology of learning suggest that the use of audio-visuals in education has several advantages. All learning is based on perception, the process by which the senses gain information from the environment. The higher processes of memory and concept formation cannot occur without prior perception. People can attend to only a limited amount of information at a time; their selection and perception of information is influenced by past experiences. Researchers have found that, other conditions being equal, more information is taken in if it is received simultaneously in two modalities (vision and hearing, for example) rather than in a single modality. Furthermore, learning is enhanced when material is organized and that organization is evident to the student.
These findings suggest the value of audio-visuals in the educational process. They can facilitate perception of the most important features, can be carefully organized, and can require the student to use more than one modality.
Authentic and up to date information
The information and data which are available on the net is purely correct and up to date.
Internet, a collection of computer networks that operate to common standards and enable the computers and the programs they run to communicate directly provides true and correct information.
Online library
Internets support thousands of different kinds of
operational and experimental services one of which is online library.
We can get plenty of data on this online library.
As part of the IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to regard computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies. In particular, they need to make use of the new multimedia technologies to communicate ideas, describe projects, and order information in their work. This requires them to select the medium best suited to conveying their message, to structure information in a hierarchical manner, and to link together information to produce a multidimensional document.
Distance learning
Distance Learning, method of learning at a distance rather
than in a classroom. Late 20th-century communications technologies, in
their most recent phases multimedia and interactive, open up new
possibilities, both individual and institutional, for an unprecedented
expansion of home-based learning, much of it part-time. The term
distance learning was coined within the context of a continuing
communications revolution, largely replacing a hitherto confusing mixed
nomenclature—home study, independent study, external study, and, most
common, though restricted in pedagogic means, correspondence study. The
convergence of increased demand for access to educational facilities
and innovative communications technology has been increasingly
exploited in face of criticisms that distance learning is an inadequate
substitute for learning alongside others in formal institutions. A
powerful incentive has been reduced costs per student. At the same
time, students studying at home themselves save on travel time and
other costs.
Whatever the reasoning, distance learning widens access for
students unable for whatever reason (course availability, geographical
remoteness, family circumstances, individual disability) to study
alongside others. At the same time, it appeals to students who prefer
learning at home. In addition, it appeals to organizers of professional
and business education, providing an incentive to rethink the most
effective way of communicating vital information.
Better accesses to children with disabilities
Information technology has brought drastic changes in the life
of disabled children. IT provides various software and technique to
educate these poor peoples. Unless provided early with special
training, people profoundly deaf from birth are incapable of learning
to speak. Deafness from birth causes severe sensory deprivation, which
can seriously affect a person's intellectual capacity or ability to
learn. A child who sustains a hearing loss early in life may lack the
language stimulation experienced by children who can hear. The critical
period for neurological plasticity is up to age seven. Failure of
acoustic sensory input during this period results in failure of
formation of synaptic connections and, possibly, an irremediable
situation for the child. A delay in learning language may cause a deaf
child's academic progress to be slower than that of hearing children.
The academic lag tends to be cumulative, so that a deaf adolescent may
be four or more academic years behind his or her hearing peers. Deaf
children who receive early language stimulation through sign language,
however, generally achieve academically alongside their hearing peers.
Some Advantages And Disadvantages Of Information Technology
...the advantages and disadvantages of information technology, it is essential that we know what information technology is exactly, and why it has it come to play such a important role in our daily lives. Today information technology involves more than just computer literacy; it also takes into account how computers work and how these computers can further be used not just for information processing but also for communications and problem solving tasks as well.Our world today has changed a great deal with the aid of information technology. Things that were once done manually or by hand have now become computerized operating systems, which simply require a single click of a mouse to get a task completed. With the aid of IT we are not only able to stream line our business processes but we are also able to get constant information in real time' that is up to the minute and up to date.
The significance of IT can be seen from the fact that it has penetrated almost every aspect of our daily lives from business to leisure and even society. Today personal PCs, cell phones, fax machines, pagers, email and internet have all not only become an integral part of our very culture but also play an essential role in our day to day activities. With such a wide scope for the purpose of this article we shall focus on the impact of the internet in information technology.
Some of the advantages of information technology include:
Globalization IT has not only brought the world closer together, but it has allowed the world's economy to become a single interdependent system. This means that we can not only share information quickly and efficiently, but we can also bring down barriers of linguistic and geographic boundaries. The world has developed into a global village due to the help of information technology allowing...
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND IT’ S STRATEGIC USES
The success or failure of an organization in today’s highly competitive and technological business world depends on how they manage to streamline the flow of information between their departments and outside world. This is where IT comes into action. It deals with the application of technology to automate the flow of information in an organization’s information system. The strategic opportunities framework enables executives to identify opportunities for strategic use of IT.
The main areas to be considered to study the effects of IT are:
1. DEVELOPING AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY
Issues like Critical Success Factors, IT planning and manpower are considered. Manpower is very important as it can decide on the Strategy being successful or not.
2. STRATEGIC USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
This is a broad area where a lot of core issues come up. Questions like
a. Is IT necessary?
b. What impact has IT on the business world?
c. What opportunities have IT brought into the business areas of the Company?
d. Is IT of any worth to business are studied here?
The spotless blend of IT Strategy with Corporate Strategy has to be achieved through the principles of SUIT
3. QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Methods of Quality Control, Audits, different strategies used in TQM are dealt with in this area. As Quality cannot easily be defined, the study of Quality Control and its upkeep deserve our keen involvement and interest.
IT can be used to develop new products or processes or to improve existing products and processes so as to achieve a competitive edge in the market or to effect significant improvements in internal operations. The natural potential importance of IT for an organization depends upon the information intensity of processes and the information content of the products. The strategic use of IT in an organization is necessary for the bending of the IT strategy into the corporate strategy.
Cinoy Ravindran is a Computing Engineer, specializing in solution/ concept selling in Information Technology, Wealth Management, as well as Stress Management
