Transcription
Hi there, great livings, and welcome to today's video. In which I'm gonna be going through and just revising on the Term One theory modules. Now, for Term One, Grade 11, it was just Module 1.1 and Module 1.2, so nothing too hectic, but let's go through again. We are just breezing through to revise on what we've done so far. All right.
So, Module 1.1, we're dealing with the role and value of ICT, which is what—our Information Communications Technology—right? The role and value of that within the workplace. And they mentioned to us, you know, what is the role that it plays in the workplace? Well, it helps us to work faster and more efficiently. It helps us to work better, make more informed decisions, to be able to store vast quantities of, no, data. So there's a lot of things we can do there, guys. You, you, you really only need to know two or three of these, but you need to be able to take it and put it into a short paragraph where you can explain the role of ICTs in the workplace. This can also be a scenario that can be thrown at you.
Then the Information Age. Know how to explain the Information Age—right? The fact that we've got all this information around us, but we need the skills to be able to seek out and sift what we actually need. And this is why we have the PETs to give you the skill to be able to do that—take that valuable information and then communicate it with others. Well, this is always my, my favorite slide because it's, it's, it's the truth, right? CAT is the most valuable subject. People don't realize that until they have an assignment that they need to do, a project, a presentation, you need to type out a CV. Then they realize that the skills we are building in CAT 10, 11, and 12 are skills that sit with you for the rest of your life. Okay? And this is what makes it the most valuable subject—most underrated, but yeah, the most valuable. We see CAT playing, um, you know, a role in so many different careers out there—from accountants, photographers, engineers, even fashion designers, game, web designers—all these types of people. ICT is in almost every career, so it is unavoidable. We're living in this digital age, um, and this is what makes, makes CAT as a subject so relevant and valuable, right? So, I see very important—this is what I want you to remember—this particular paragraph over here. You can be asked what makes an effective ICT user. It's someone who needs to be able to source and process data and present it as information as quickly and as accurately as possible. So that is a definition. Be able to explain that. Um, taking CAT was the best decision; it still is every year. Okay.
All right, so let's, let's talk about the computer. With the computer, we have the information processing cycle. We usually start with, um, input, where the instructions are given to the PC; processing, where that takes place through your CPU and your RAM; excuse me. You then have your output, where we get in the results of the processing, and then we are storing it, right, to a hard drive, external hard drive, whatever it might be. So that's our information processing cycle. We know that from last year as well. Computers can be classified; we remember this in terms of three things—very important—purpose, powerful, or purpose, power, and size. Okay? Please remember that, even when they give you scenarios, the first thing you always ask is, what is the person going to be doing with this? Are they going to be using the computer for? Then we have our dedicated and general-purpose devices. Now, remember, our dedicated means it does only one specific task; general purpose means that we can have more tasks running; we can have a variety of tasks running on these machines. This is also a good table just to remember, is in terms of, as the devices change, as they change in size, generally they change with regards to the processing power that they have as well, with servers being all the way on top, because these are big machines that have a lot of processing power because of what they need to do.
All right, then they just spoke again about portability. So we know when we talk about portable computers, we are talking about ones that require batteries in order to operate. Okay? So we have laptops, we have netbooks, we have ultrabooks. Please know the difference between those three—right? Your laptop and notebook are more or less the same; the only difference really is the keyboard. Your netbook and ultrabook are the smaller ones, but you can also see between the netbook and ultrabook, the netbook is the cheaper of the two, where the ultrabook is a little bit more expensive, um, because it's a little bit more powerful; it can do more; it has more, um, in terms of features and hardware than the netbook. So if I had to, you know, put them in order, I'd probably put the netbook at the bottom, then the ultrabook, then your notebook, and then your laptop. Still on portability, there's tablets. Please just know what the consumer tablet does; that's why they've given us these, and then the traditional tablet. So just look at the difference—right? We see our traditional tablet is one that has a reversible screen and a normal keyboard. Our consumer tablet is different. On consumer tablets, the one that has the keyboard on the screen itself. Okay? So just know these terms, especially when they ask it in the exams; they say your traditional tablet can work as a notebook tablet as well. Again, smartphones—this is always going to come in—what are the smartphones have? These are all the things, guys; these are things we, we already know. Okay? So no need to really spend a lot of time on that.
Uh, portability. Smartphones allow the user to do a number of things. Again, you don't have to know all these things, but these are things you already know because you have a smartphone, right? So just draw on the knowledge that you do have. Then this is important with regards to protecting your information. They dealt with the theft of hardware, because we know when somebody steals our phone, it's not about the phone; it's about what's on the phone. So, and just be able to explain this if they give it to you in a scenario, um, you know, it's information that you don't have a copy of, information that might be private or sensitive, and information stored on portable devices. You might have made a backup to an external hard drive, and you have that external hard drive stolen. Okay? So that's the biggest problem with actually having theft. Some anti-theft strategies are things like cable locks, chaining equipment down to a fairly solid object, using lockable cabinets, using alarm systems, motion detectors, motion centers—all these things. There was a question, I know, in the last theory paper on the specific topic asking what measures would you put in place to make sure that the physical hardware cannot be stolen. Okay? That's how they usually bring it in.
Then protection against power failure. We have a UPS. Please remember your, what the UPS stands for, which is uninterrupted power supply. Know that it's connected to the mains; then your PC connects to the UPS. Now, the minute the power goes off, the PC remains running, why? Because the PC is not running from the mains; it's running from the UPS. Okay? So the PC doesn't know that power's gone off, and so it remains on, but the UPS is only there to keep the PC running for a short period of time—sometimes 15-20 minutes—just so that you can save your work and shut it down properly. You've also got power settings on your devices, and this could be yours to your smartphone, your tablet, your laptop—right? You've got different power settings over there. Desktops, we need to save as much power as possible there as well, and this is why on our laptops we can change the power settings to balance, power saver, or some power saver or high performance, depends on what you're going to be doing with it. But again, the whole idea is to protect against power failure, so we do want to be on a level—probably I would say somewhere between balanced and power saver—that should the power go off, we would have enough time, um, still to be able to work with our devices. With our laptops, we can also set it to sleep or to hibernate. There you can see are some more settings with regards to when the device is on a battery and when it's plugged into power. You can also do things like setting the brightness of the screen to reduce power consumption, um, and choose between, as we saw, a balance of power consumption and performance. Again, guys, it just depends on what you're going to be doing. All right, and that was Module 1.1. 1.2 dealt with specifically input and output.
And input—these are devices that give instructions to the PC—right? So our input can be provided in the running of software with instructions on what to do next, or it can be data that must be processed. Let's remember that some of these things—in fact, most of these things—we, we already know. Image capture—we know that we can capture images with all the different devices—right? Um, so I'm not going to go through all of those. The only thing I'll mention is a point-and-shoot camera is like your little digital camera; you're just switching it on to take a photo, and that's it. Your high-end camera equipment is where you deal with your big DSLR cameras—the ones where you have interchangeable zoom lenses and all these type of things—that's what they referred to over there. We have scanners, and we know with our scanners we can scan an image into the PC. We've also got barcode scanners, you know, and different types of things. So just [Music] just understand what the scanner is; it's not just this flatbed scanner over here; you do get barcode scanners, um, even when you go to the tools at the shop; that's a scanner that's scanning the barcode of the items that you've purchased. Now, with the scanner, they'll always ask you two things; they're going to look at what affects the, the image quality, and there you can see the resolution, and you can see they're talking about dots per inch there. The higher the dots per inch, the better the image quality is going to be. The color depth—it's also the number of different colors that a pixel can represent—so the higher that number, the better the image is going to be. Some advantages—they do mention a couple of advantages; you really only need to know about two, maximum three advantages—they mention some of the disadvantages as well, okay, that you need to know because these are things that are asked regularly, so please do go through that.
Then they start to mention some of the devices—our digital cameras; we know we've got cell phone cameras; we've got digital cameras; and then you've got your top-end DSLR cameras. So they just want us to understand the difference between those three, and then also they do chat a little bit about the, um, the way we were taking photos before. You don't really need to know that, so I'm going to move on with that, and then they just mentioned, you know, how we're taking photos today. Now what is important here, sorry, is the fact that, um, this becomes our advantages and disadvantages. So if you think of your digital camera, yes, you can take a huge amount of pics; you can just switch on and start taking pictures, and you can view it, and you can edit it, and all these things, but you can also lose the device; you can also delete accidentally; um, you can lose the memory card, you know, the, they are disadvantages to this, and we also need to know the specs of the date of the digital camera—things that we look at when buying a digital camera. Okay? You need to know at least three of those to be able to say, well, these are the reasons why I'm, oh, these are the reasons that would make me buy a particular digital camera or not.
Then they went on to talk about biometric input. This is where we are measuring unique, the unique biological features of a person. This involves using scanners of some—so to really recognize a fingerprint, you all know this when you watch the movies and you see the guy putting his hand on a particular pad, and then it scans his hand or his eye or listens to his voice to recognize that that's a part of our body that's now being used as a security feature—right?—to give, to give us access to something. So very nice, but just understand that as secure as it makes everything, it is very expensive to implement and maintain, and this is what they talk about with the advantages over here and the disadvantages as well. So please know what biometric input is and know an advantage and a disadvantage.
Then another input—our ATMs. The input that we find at an ATM comes from your card reader slot, the pneumatic number pad, the modem or connection, the touch screen, and the money count and even the money deposit slot. Now there are some advantages to ATMs; we know that we can throw money there at any time; we are not limited to our own bank, although they charge us, but the disadvantages are it can be dangerous, especially when you are alone at night. There are those who also use these cards skimmers and card readers to [Music] uh, actually clone your card, but don't let people help you when you're there because they just want to get your details. All right.
Then we also have our POS systems, or our point-of-sale systems. We've got barcodes and RFID tags. So they do talk about this; please go through this stuff, understand it, and just know that your two main goals are faster processing that tools and better stock control—that's why we have these things in place. Then they give us a nice diagram as to what everything looks like. The advantages—again, just one or two advantages that you need to know of the POS system, why people would be using that, and disadvantages as well. Look, it's lovely to have something that's so efficient, but if there's no power, if there's no internet, and if you don't implement the right equipment, which can be expensive, well, you're gonna find yourself in trouble. Okay.
In our touch screens—please remember this is why they're putting it in brackets as input devices—because touch screens are both input and output devices. So they just mentioned to us the touchscreen and the pin tablet computers as well. Again, guys, you are breezing through this; you are going well. I'm just breezing through this, but you know this already. Again, one or two advantages of our touch screen and one or two disadvantages as well. So if you understand what these devices are, coming up with an advantage or disadvantage should be fairly simple. And then we've also got data collection devices, such as meter readers, devices to monitor patients, you know, temperature, heart rate; you've got weather buoys, which actually float in the ocean and collect data with regards to weather conditions as well. So these are just a few examples of data collection devices. Now, why would you have this—right?—because the data is captured automatically using sensors; the data is captured more accurately than human beings and faster than a human being. Again, this is why we use these devices, but remember sensors can fail, and I know there was one [Music] story recently—in fact, it was a documentary on Netflix where they spoke about Boeing—the airline—uh, the airline manufacturer—aircraft manufacturer, sorry—and they had one of these sensors fail on the airplane, and it resulted in the plane crashing because the sensor gave a different reading; the plane tried to do something, you know, to sort of correct what it was picking up, and it resulted in the plane actually crashing. Then only sensor-detectable data can be collected, so nothing else except that.
We know input into smartphones and consumer tablets comes from the touchscreen, the buttons, the camera, the accelerometer. Now that's important because they always ask you what's the accelerometer; it's the feature that when you rotate your phone from portrait to landscape, it's the feature that allows the image or video or whatever you're looking at—in fact, the entire screen—to turn on its side as well. Okay? So just remember that. You've got some alternative keyboards; they've been talking about the virtual keyboards for a while; other types of keyboards as well—wireless keyboards—and then they move on to output. We know that output is there to provide the user with feedback in the interaction with a computer. So we've got things like visual output, sound output, touch output. With a visual—please know the difference between a soft copy and a hard copy—right? The hard copy is what we get out—what we can physically touch. So they mentioned some display devices like our projectors. Again, we need to know the advantages there, so why would I be using something? I guess, well, it allows for better interaction between myself and my audience because it displays things on a large screen; it can be updated quickly. Some disadvantages—the output is not permanent; in other words, it doesn't just stay on one screen; it can sometimes be difficult to share unless you are using a projector, you know, that's going to actually display or share what's on your current screen; can lead to eye strain; work is not private, especially when people stand over your shoulder, which you don't want. All right, and they give us some limitations as well. The quality is related to size; the larger the size, um, it's, it's usually a bit of better quality; doesn't always happen that way, however; the size will limit portability; and then we need to also ask how are these devices being used. Okay? So these are all things I know that you've already gone through. Remember, when it comes to a monitor, what do we look at? We look at the resolution; we look at the aspect ratio; we look at the contrast ratio and the response time. Please know the difference between all or, okay, you need to understand what all of those things do; it all plays at, all, in fact, it all becomes buying factors when I want to buy a monitor; I need to look at the resolution because that's the quality; I need to say, well, do I need an aspect ratio of 16 by nine [Music] do I need a very high contrast ratio? Am I going to be watching a lot of movies on this monitor or screen—right?—is the response time good? In other words, is, is the monitor updating its pixels very quickly or is it not—right? That's going to have a major impact on the image, especially when you're playing games and you need the image to be changing quickly and still maintain the quality. These are things you look at—right?—then obviously that our size is measured diagonally in inches. Okay.
We've got interactive whiteboards; many of you know about this, um, again, these are things you can just go and read through; advantages as well, um, the disadvantages, guys—one tip for me when you have long lists like this—just memorize two advantages and two disadvantages, but the whole thing is just understand what the device actually does. Okay? So the interactive whiteboard; it makes a whiteboard interactive. Now what does that mean? It means that I can now actually go and interact with what I'm seeing on the screen. So when, let's say a PowerPoint presentation is put up on the, on the interactive whiteboard, I can go and click on that; I can actually go and make notes on that PowerPoint, and it can save it, uh, onto my PC—right? Then when it comes to printers, please, you're just looking at your laser and inkjet printers; understand what the two do, and then what are things you're going to look at before buying one? You need to look at the speed; again, what are you going to be doing with the printer? Once you've answered, then, then you'll need to ask, well, what sort of quality do I need? What sort of speed do I need? Do I need color? Do I need black and white? Am I printing with a certain kind of paper or not? What kind of connection do I want to the printer—wired, wireless—you know, those sort of things; those are the questions you ask before you buy devices. There also our wireless technologies—our Wi-Fi—again, we know this; with Wi-Fi, we can do wireless printing; we use Bluetooth technology to connect to, um, you know, wireless speakers, and we can even do wireless video and images these days. Okay? So there's a lot of use for wireless; you can see this when, when a house is really tech-savvy, um, you can see what, uh, can really, really be done in some of these high-tech houses. So what makes it all work? One of the big things also that they ask you on a regular basis is plug and play. What is plug and play? This is actually a feature of Windows that allows us to plug in a device; Windows picks it up and allows us to work with it. Okay? That's the main thing behind plug and play. Then also drivers—what is this? It's a piece of software—right?—piece of software controls the device. Now every operating system has a large amount of drivers that's installed with it by default, and the driver basically tells Windows how to work with the piece of hardware that's connected. So when you plug a new printer in, this driver, well, Windows will look for a driver, and when it finds one, that driver interacts between the printer and Windows to tell it how it works, what features it has. Now best to utilize that. And this is one that causes a lot of problems because we don't listen to what has been said and we don't read the question correctly. We're talking about input and output for physically challenged users. So again, I, I say this over and over again—devices for the disabled—is a difference between being visually impaired and blind. Visually impaired is not blind; blind is blind. Okay? So please look through those devices; you'll see Braille is going to be for people who are blind; magnification devices—in other words, making the screen or what I see on the screen bigger—that's for somebody that's visually impaired. Okay? So know which strategies will work for what type of disability—yet impaired and deaf. Obviously, if the person can't hear, they are not blind; they can still see, so you can use on-screen notices, vibration devices, etc. If they have a lack of motor control, that's something completely different, and that's why you'll find a lot more has been done and can be done to the computer for the person to be able to still use the PC effectively. Okay? So know at least three of those, um, devices that can be used, and then when it comes to input and output and health issues, we know we don't want to sit at the computer for hours on end, um, you want to learn keyboard shortcuts; you want to do appropriate exercises; you, you want to, you want to get up from the PC from time to time; um, you want to use headphones that don't drown out all the sound around you, and you want to adjust the brightness on your monitor as well—right? So that's it. Create levels; that is Module 1.1 and Module 1.2. This is your revision for Term One; this is your theory modules only. Thanks so much for joining me, guys, and I'll see you in our next video where we look at the practical modules, um, covered in the Grade 11 syllabus for Term number one.