TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED THE WAY, WE THINK, WORK & PLAY

Why use technology?

Studies have shown that students with access to the Internet and other technology not only present their projects in more creative ways but also turned in work that was more complete and had better syntheses of different points of view. Numerous other studies show that children in technology-rich learning environments showed more enthusiasm, had higher attendance rates, developed better writing skills and displayed a greater capacity to communicate effectively about complex problems. Technology has given our students the capability to construct their own learning.  It gives them the power to create and problem solve on their own.  We know from research that students learn and retain more information if they are interested in the subject and if they can synthesize and create their learning.  Technology gives them that freedom.  Technology has changed the way that we live and think.  It is not going away. It will only grow and change our lives even more.  It is critical that our students understand this and learn to use technology in their everyday lives.

Technology is changing the way we live.  It has way we communicate with each other, and even the way thinks.  And it has done this in a few short years.  Not long ago, technology was a word that was linked to a huge computer that took up large amounts of office space that only a few people knew how to program.  Today technology is in our pockets and purses in the form of phones and daily planners.  Computers that were once owned exclusively by rich, large companies are now in most homes in America.  With this type of growth it is crucial that we began teaching our future generations why and how to use it. It is estimated that 60% of all jobs in America today require technology skills. Without technology training it will be impossible for our youth to obtain these jobs and be successful.  It is important that our students begin early to learn these needed skills.  In the elementary schools there are many ways for the students to be taught about technology. Group projects can be based around the computer.  Power Point Presentations are a great way for students to present their new  found knowledge.  The internet, when used properly is a great resource of up to the minute information that students can explore. There are many other technology besides the computer that can be used.  The TV, Digital Camera, and E-mail are all ways for our students to communicate to the teacher what they have learned.

Introduction 

Our world today, as viewed by more than five billion people, is vastly different from the one just five years ago or even five minutes ago! We never know what major event is making its way as a story to one of the major event is making its way as a story to one of the major international news stations. Electronic communication has totally changed the way we think, observe, work, worship, negotiate, play, shop, invest, entertain, and live today.

 

Technology in general; and information technology in particular, are growing and changing people’s lives dramatically all over the world. There are both advantages and perils to high-speed global communication. On the one hand, most if not all of us on this planet are being networked together through satellite communication capabilities. For example, the news reported daily makes us all aware of the opportunities available and challenges we face, but at the same time puts considerable pressure on enterprises business and non-business alike to respond to these rapidly changing conditions. Just three years ago, the Internet, World Wide Web and Gopher, sounded sophisticated to even technically knowledgeable people. Today, not only are these words part of our everyday vocabulary, but thousands of companies and individuals are doing business on the internet. It is impossible to keep track of the new users browsing cyberspace every hour. Today, at least 30 million computers are connected to the Internet, and the number is growing by about 30,000 per day!

 

Today there seems to be a strange paradox of cooperation and competitiveness among companies and countries. Because of high-speed information technology, companies can cooperate more easily within their own divisions and subsidiaries and even with their competitors. However, political, legal and intellectual property issues require that a constant competitive edge be maintained.

 

Technology is changing business for everyone

Walk into almost any business, big or small, and you'll quickly see how technology has transformed the way we work. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a bike courier, or a criminal lawyer, one thing is clear: our lives are surrounded by technology that just a handful of years ago would have seemed unfathomable.

How, for example, did we live without the fax machine? The fax machine, which was actually invented by Scottish physicist Alexander Bain in 1842, came onto the scene in the mid-1960s when a court decision allowed non-telephone-company products access to telephone-company lines. In 1986, by which time lower-cost, easier-to-use models had hit the market, 200,000 fax machines were sold. That number soared to 2.2 million in 1991. By the end of 1995, sales of the now-ubiquitous machines are expected to reach a staggering 5 million units.

How has that and other types of technology changed business? The way we do our jobs? We posed those questions to dozens of business owners, technologists, and celebrities. The answers often surprised us, but they did not disappoint. And more often than not, they told us as much about the respondents themselves as they did about the technology that has insinuated itself into their lives.

Technology has made us more responsive, more able to gain access to information over a broader spectrum. It has taken our information and, instead of putting it into little cubbyholes of the company, made it broadly accessible. Technology is basically a slave to the information you give it. But it makes that information much more functional and dynamic.

When technology breaks down, it makes you realize how effective it is when it's working. Its value hits home when there is a piece of information outside your spectrum, and you're so aggravated that you say, "I can't believe I have to go look for this here!" You almost come to assume that everything should be right at your fingertips at the click of a mouse.

People are working harder and are more enslaved to their work than before. People I know are walking around with beepers, with laptops or organizers, with portable phones. They're becoming slaves to high technology. So it's not high-tech, it's kind of high-shackles or high-manacles. There's no escape.

Still greatest companion is a sub-note book. And technology has changed the nature of the manuscripts I'm seeing. I'm getting stuff that's more creative, maybe because the technology is freeing authors from involved with the ideas and can play more with words.

Technology doesn't get enough credit for being the feminists' friend. Technology has killed hierarchy. When you get into companies that have E-mail systems, you don't have to be the loudest man or the biggest braggart. It flattens gender differences.

I am a big fan of technology when it's used to make our lives simpler, and it's done that in the editing room for the past five years. Everything's on computer, so you can change scenes with the push of a button. No longer do you have to take out film and cut it and wait an hour before you can see the same scene again. Now you can see the scene within minutes. It's an enormous boost to anybody in television who's turning over shows weekly. Now, could I explain how the machines work? Not for a second. Do they make my life easier? Do I depend on them? Yes, absolutely.

The key thing this year is the Internet. It has revolutionized business communications. The Internet is exploding -- I think all the partners here use it actively for E-mail, not only with our existing portfolio companies, but also with potential investors.

Technology has allowed those progressive retailers to offer not only a better price but also quality service. Technology squeezes the inefficiency out of every process in the retail chain, from manufacturing to distribution.

The real technological advances have come in the area of communications. But even in communications, it is not certain that the increases in speed and accuracy outweigh the additional costs. At the risk of being suspected of being a Luddite, I would say that technology in the moving industry has succeeded only in increasing the power bureaucracy can exercise over a cringing business community. Technology is revolutionizing the communications business. Satellites, of course, give us the ability to broadcast live anywhere. People working at every level, from the shop floor to the Oval Office, are heralding the coming of a truly interactive, technologically savvy workforce capable of commuting to and from the workplace via the information superhighway.

 

Technology 

Whether you're a technophobe, a techno-geek, or something in between, you have to be living in total isolation not to be communicating on some level through technology. The phone, mobile, fax, voice mail, E-mail, video and audio conferencing, the net, are all pieces of technology that people use to communicate through in order to reach someone else: the technology is the interface between one real live human being and another some distance away. These are supposed to be technological aids to communication.


Most of the time when people use a piece of technology to communicate with they think that they are received at the other end as though it's them.

It isn't.

It's a representation of themselves.

 
Voices, images, words, get squeezed down an electronic device and comes out the other end as a reasonably accurate facsimile or an inaccurate distortion or any number of possibilities, none of  which are the real person.


When people understand the effect that technology has on their communication they can make a far greater impact by taking charge of the technology and letting it support them, rather than the technology running the show. 
 

Educational technology

 

Many different types of technology can be used to support and enhance learning. Everything from video content and digital moviemaking to laptop computing and handheld technologies are being used in classrooms, and new uses of technology such as pod casting are constantly emerging.

 

Various technologies deliver different kinds of content and serve different purposes in the classroom. For example, word processing and e-mail promote communication skills; database and spreadsheet programs promote organizational skills; and modeling software promotes the understanding of science and math concepts. It is important to consider how these electronic technologies differ and what characteristics make them important as vehicles for education.

 

Technologies available in classrooms today range from simple tool-based applications (such as word processors) to online repositories of scientific data and primary historical documents, to handheld computers, closed-circuit television channels, and two-way distance learning classrooms.

 

Even the cell phones that many students now carry with them can be used to learn. Each technology is likely to play a different role in students' learning. Rather than trying to describe the impact of all technologies as if they were the same, researchers need to think about what kind of technologies are being used in the classroom and for what purposes.

 

Two general distinctions can be made. 

  • Students can learn "from" computers

where technology used essentially as tutors and serves to increase student’s basic skills and knowledge; and

  • Students can learn with computers

where technology is used a tool that can be applied to a variety of goals in the learning process and can serve as a resource to help develop higher order thinking, creativity and research skills.

 
Nano technology

 
Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Encompassing nano-scale science, engineering and technology, nanotechnology involves imaging, measuring, modeling, and manipulating matter at this length scale.

At the nano-scale, the physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials differ in fundamental and valuable ways from the properties of individual atoms and molecules or bulk matter. Nanotechnology is directed toward understanding and creating improved materials, devices, and systems that exploit these new properties.

 

One area of nanotechnology R&D is medicine. Medical researchers work at the micro- and nano-scales to develop new drug delivery methods, therapeutics and pharmaceuticals. For a bit of perspective, the diameter of DNA, our genetic material, is in the 2.5 nanometer range, while red blood cells are approximately 2.5 micrometers.

 

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter; a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick. The Scale of Things for a comparative view of the sizes of commonly known items and nanoscale particles.

 
Speech Recognition

 

Speech recognition technology is different from many technologies that can assist users with disabilities. The driving force behind the growth of speech recognition is not the disability market but how everybody including professionals are embracing the capabilities of speech recognition. Doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and numerous other professionals are trying to find ways to record information using speech. These users want to eliminate the barriers of getting ideas down into an electronic format such as having to use a secretary or having to interpret one's own handwriting.

 

People with disabilities use the technology to overcome barriers, but the advantages of speech recognition are not convenience but out of necessity. Many people with disabilities who use the technology go from complete dependence on others, to having the independence necessary to complete their work hands-free. No longer is it necessary for the user to struggle with slow keyboard commands. The growth of speech recognition as a mainstream technology has both potential benefits and drawbacks for people with disabilities. Depending on the nature of an individual's disability or disabilities and the way the technology is implemented with that user, speech recognition may be the best solution leading to productivity or it could be a frustrating waste of the user's time.

 

Technology at play

 

I was watching Cricket Classics on television a few days back. For the uninitiated, Cricket Classics is a program that shows highlights of old cricket matches. Being a cricket fan since childhood, when I watch those highlights, one thing that strikes me is, how much the live coverage of Cricket has evolved in the last few years: the action replays from multiple angles, the stump vision, the statistical information bytes, the third-umpire, the wagon wheel and other visual aids, frame-by-frame replays, etc. Many of these technologies have enriched the experience of watching the game on television. It is really hard to say how much they have contributed to the popularity of cricket telecasts, but surely, they're one of the factors.
 

Conclusion

Technology has given us yet another screen, first the television then the computer & now the mobile.

 

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