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Topic A1 - Uses of Digital Devices - Coggle Diagram
Topic A1 - Uses of Digital Devices
Education and Training
Digital devices have had major impacts on the way we learn, both inside and outside of the classroom.
Interactive Whiteboards
Interactive Whiteboards are used by teachers in order to support teaching in front of a class. These interactive whiteboards are multifunctional devices. They display output on the screen but also take input as a teacher can use it as a touchscreen to write notes and input commands.
This is beneficial over using a traditional whiteboard as any notes taken on the board can be saved to a central location that can be accessed by students to use outside of the classroom. You can also more easily & neatly edit the notes taken and bring in content from other software applications.
Visual Learning Environments
Virtual Learning Environments are also used in schools. This is like a website that allows teachers to upload resources to the site, such as presentations & worksheets so that they can share them with students.
This allows students to access their learning at home so they can prepare for lessons and exams. It also allows the students to submit work to their teacher for assessment, instant message teachers for help and take part in discussion forums with fellow students.
Other than uploading work to share with students, teachers can then mark any work submitted by students on the VLE so the students can access their feedback wherever they are.
Online learning
One of the main areas we use digital devices to access education & training is through online learning websites, like KnowItAll Ninja. We can access these sites through the use of personal computers, or through mobile devices. This allows you to access visual content like videos & animation, as well as audio explanations of topics and terms.
A type of digital camera called a webcam is extremely popular in online learning too. Live training events are streamed over the internet using webcams and web conferencing software. An example of this is TED Talks.
Even when not streaming though, traditional digital video cameras capture teachers giving explanations and demonstrations of the skills being learnt, which can then be shared online through sites like YouTube.
Personal
Our personal lives have changed a lot thanks to digital devices. We use them for entertainment, doing our shopping, managing our finances and even to control our home appliances.
Entertainment
We use entertainment systems as well as personal computers and tablets to watch film & TV, listen to music & play video games.
In particular, internet streaming has changed the way we access tv, film & music, as we often no longer store the files on our own computer and instead play them straight off the internet. This has made accessing this media content cheaper and saves us on hard disk space. Digital media players are now often used to access streaming content on our television set.
Video game consoles are also a very popular home entertainment digital device that we use in our personal lives. This allows us to play games online with our friends without needing to be in the same location. We also play video games on mobile devices and personal computers too.
A drawback though is that this growth of digital content has also seen a rise of piracy, where tv, films, music & games are illegally transferred over the internet for free.
Online Shopping and Banking
Another major way we use digital technology is using personal computers & tablets for online shopping & online banking.
Online retail websites, like Amazon, allow us to purchase pretty much anything we can think of, often even being able to have the products delivered the same day. This is so popular that most high street shops also have an online retail website. You can even buy your groceries from the supermarket online.
Online banking allows us to manage our finances, including checking our bank statements and transferring money. We can do all this from our own home without ever needing to visit the bank. Mobile online banking has become so popular that most banks have a dedicated mobile app.
Online shopping and banking save us the time and money involved with travelling to the shops and our bank. It’s also extremely helpful for people who live in remote locations and for people with disabilities who would have difficulty in getting to the high street.
Home Appliances
We now control many of our home appliances through the use of digital devices. Doing this is a major area of what we know as ‘ubiquitous computing’, or the ‘Internet of Things’.
An example of this is controlling our central heating system through the use of our smartphone. This allows us to turn the heating on or off without being at home. We’re also starting to see fridges that know when you’re running low on certain items like milk and can inform you to buy more on your smartphone.
This offers great convenience for us as it can automate many common daily routines, freeing us up to perform other tasks. It can also help to reduce costs and conserve energy, for example, you can turn your heating off when you’re not at home and only turn it on when you need it using a mobile app.
Social
The way we socialise with others is perhaps one of the most obvious and significant ways that digital devices have changed our lives. The massive growth of online tools for communicating with our friends and family, like social networking sites, has made digital devices a fundamental part of keeping in touch with others.
Social Networking
We use personal computers and mobile devices all the time to access social networking sites like Facebook in order to socialise with our friends and family.
These sites allow us to create ‘Networks of Friends’ where the important people in our lives are able to see our views, opinions, life events & photos when we share them on these sites. We can even message people directly as most social networking sites have instant messaging features built in.
Social networking sites also allow you to create or join groups to talk to people with similar shared interests, such as a tv programme or a football team.
There are some drawbacks to social networking though. They can be seen as very distracting and time-consuming which can affect productivity in the workplace. Some believe it has reduced the amount of face-to-face interaction we have on a daily basis too.
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging software allows us to hold real-time text-based conversations with others. In many cases, this has replaced the older SMS text messaging we use on phones, with people using instant messaging apps like Whatsapp instead.
This is because these apps make messaging much cheaper as they are normally completely free to use. They also allow us to send group messages, such as holding a conversation with all our family members or a group of friends. Finally, it also allows us to attach files, such images, and hyperlinks to web pages.
Instant messaging is proprietary, meaning you need the person you are messaging with to have the same IM app as you. This can lock you into a type of device if the app isn’t available on other devices. Apple iMessage, for example, can only be used on Apple devices.
VOIP
Voice over Internet Protocol is a type of software that allows you to have a real-time voice and video conversation. Skype is a popular example of this kind of software.
We commonly use a personal computer or mobile device to hold VoIP calls. However, many different entertainment devices, such as smart televisions and games consoles, can also use software like Skype.
This has become more and more popular as an alternative to traditional phone calls in recent years. This is due to its ability to have video along with voice, the ability to hold group conversations and it being much cheaper (most VoIP software is free to use). This makes it a particularly useful tool to keep in touch with family and friends living in other countries.
Retail
Retail has been transformed thanks to digital devices. Inside a traditional shop, data capture and collection systems are used at the till. However, we also see digital devices used in retail for selling online, ordering stock and many other reasons.
EPOS
An Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) is a computerised checkout till. It uses digital devices to record sales as well as to take payment for those sales.
For example, barcode readers are used to add new products to a sale and optical mark readers are used to input lottery tickets. Magnetic ink character readers are used to verify cheques that are used as payment and chip & pin devices are used for taking card payments. We can even make contactless payments using our mobile devices by using NFC. Apple Pay is an example of this.
This has made the sales process much quicker and more efficient. It also reduces errors as staff don’t need to manually record sales and calculate total costs. We now even have self-service EPOS systems so that you don’t even need a sales assistant working at every till. This saves the business a lot of money and saves customers a lot of queuing time.
Stock Management
Personal computers and servers are used by shops for the management of their stock. Database management systems that run on servers will connect to the EPOS systems. When a product is sold this information is sent through to the server and the database will be updated with the new reduced stock level.
Our stock management server can also be connected via the internet to the servers at our warehouses. This allows the system to order new stock automatically so that the new stock will arrive before the old stock runs out.
Stock management systems automate so much of the process of monitoring stock and making orders that we often need much less administrative staff, which saves the business money. This also helps to reduce human error in recording stock levels and ensures that you both don’t run out or order too much stock.
Retail Websites
It’s not just in a brick-and-mortar store that digital devices are used in retail though. Most shops have online retail websites, or e-commerce sites, which they use to sell and advertise their products over the internet.
To run an online website all a business needs is a web server to host the site, as well as a personal computer to develop and maintain the site, such as updating prices and adding/removing items. This is very cheap to do when comparing to setting up a brick-and-mortar store.
Some additional benefits to the business are that they can sell their products to a worldwide audience, rather than just to people who live in the surrounding area. They can also make sales 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Organisational Use
Businesses use digital devices in many areas in order to make themselves more efficient. Whether it is through holding meetings, managing finances or writing reports, digital devices take a very important role.
Administration
Spreadsheets and accounting software can be used by organisations to manage their finances. This could be tracking sales and expenditure and calculating tax for example.
Most businesses will also make heavy use of personal computers in order to use software like word processors, desktop publishing, and presentation software in order to produce documents they require for their business operation. This might be producing a sales report for senior management, a presentation to give to investors or brochures to advertise products.
Businesses will also use digital devices for the internal and external dissemination of this information. Thanks to communication devices and servers, for example, we can share information through email or over a local area network and using mobile devices we can access this information on the go.
This helps to make the business much more productive. Less time is spent correcting human error as so much is done by the computer and sharing information can be done so much quicker using email and cloud storage.
Video Conferencing
There are a number of software packages that are designed to allow you to hold meetings over the internet, as opposed to face to face. A popular example of this software would be Citrix GoToMeeting.
These video conferencing software packages allow you to have voice and video conversation like with VoIP. However, they are designed to have multiple people take part in the meeting and have added features, like being able to display a presentation and share documents with those in the meeting.
This saves a business a lot of time and money as employees will not have to travel to the same location in order to take part in the meeting. This also helps to support employees with working from home.
Design and Manufacturing
The manufacturing and construction industry makes use of digital devices heavily for their business operations.
Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software is used to produce technical drawings. This is used in the construction industry to create architectural drawings and the manufacturing industry to design products or parts.
We can then use Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) controlled machinery to produce the objects we designed with the CAD software. This might be designing an action figure in CAD software and then a 3D printer to actually produce it.
This has made businesses much more efficient. Designs produced in CAD software can easily be modified if changes are required and final designs can be quickly sent to clients via email. When manufacturing the objects this is done with machinery which doesn’t require breaks and can work 24/7.
It also helps to reduce human error as CAM controlled machinery will always perform the same task to the exact same standard, never making mistakes. So you can be confident every component produced will work as expected.
Creative tasks
The creative industry has benefited a lot from the growth of digital devices. Digital devices are now used to perform most tasks within these industries, almost completely replacing the older tools once used.
3D Graphics
The video game and film industry make heavy use of personal computers for the creation of 3D graphics.
In the film industry, so-called ‘CG effects’ have heavily replaced older fashioned physical effects. You see 3D models produced using digital devices in almost every movie released nowadays. This is due to it often being quicker, and also because it is more flexible as changes can be easily made to a 3D model.
Similarly, the majority of high-end video games use 3D graphics for the game characters and environments. This has added a new level of realism to video games and we’re even using Virtual Reality headsets to experience the graphics in 3 dimensions.
Photo/Video Editing
When we take photos and videos using digital cameras, one of the biggest benefits is that we can load them onto a personal computer for editing.
Professional photographers now heavily use both digital cameras and personal computers for this purpose. This might be fixing the lighting of a picture of a house that an estate agent is selling, or even removing certain objects from the picture, such as a bin. It could also be removed blemishes, such as spots or red-eye from a photo of a person.
However, photo editing has been subject to some controversy. We commonly see people in magazines that are heavily edited which people say sets an unrealistic expectation of beauty, particularly with young people.
In addition, the movie industry is very reliant on these digital devices. Most films are shot on digital cameras and are then edited in video editing software on personal computers. These tools allow us to edit our videos with much greater simplicity and speed. We can also easily make multiple copies to ensure mistakes are recoverable.
Graphic Design
Logos, leaflets, brochures, magazines, books, comics. All of these and a wide variety of other graphics and documents are created through the use of personal computers running graphics editing and desktop publishing software.
Graphic designers used to do the majority of their work by hand. Books, for example, were typeset manually, positioning individual characters on a printing press. However, now we use desktop publishing software for designing the layout and typesetting things like books and magazines.
This is much more efficient than manually typesetting a book which would be a painstaking task, positioning the individual characters. We can also send the data off to printers quickly, such as by email, to produce the final book, magazine, etc.