Review of Basic Information and Communication Technology Concepts: Peopleware (Part 3)

Peopleware refers to the human users of computers and information systems. While people may seem to need no discussion, it is actually the peopleware which are the most critical factor for the system to work, precisely because this is the only component which has its own independent thinking.

Computer users may be classified as one of three types:

• End users – This refers to you (probably), me and people whose main role with technology is to use them for our own particular businesses or purpose. These days, with the proliferation of open source software development which sources ideas from the user community, end users play an increasingly important role by communicating their needed features to the developers. 
• Support and Maintenance Technicians – These are the people who are trained to provide support for the end users. These people may have extra knowledge on how to do non-routine functions of your computer or your software (even though the function has always been there), or to troubleshoot and fix the system when it bogs down. For future discussions, let us include in this category people who manage the information systems.
• Technology and Systems Developers – These people write programs, create new hardware and other new technology creation tasks. We have to thank them for their listening ears and creative brains in thinking what we need to make our tasks easier. We also have to curse them for writing viruses, Trojan horses, worms and other malicious software.

Why do we need to identify what type of user you are?

• Communication. If you are an end-user, you usually talk using terms that you are familiar with, and those are basically those that you see on the screen. If you are talking to a support and maintenance technician, chances are that that person will talk to you with lots of highly technical terms, and he probably expects to hear the some terms. (That is why I started with the basic terms in the first few posts). To facilitate communication, I recommend that you talk on that level of techno-lingo. (Of course, this is not saying that technicians have every excuse to use highly technical terms all the time. They themselves must exert effort to make their ideas understandable to the people they are talking with.)
• Asking for help. Using the internet, you can talk to a lot of people and ask them for suggestions if you have a problem. You have to discern who to talk to depending on the issue that you have. If you have a problem with, say, how to do something with your word processor, I don't recommend looking for a technician. I recommend searching for people who use the application. 

In my almost 20 years of using a computer, people think I am a computer science or IT graduate, because I know how to do a lot of things with a computer. I tell people that I know a lot because I use it, not because study about it. There are times that I know more on how to make something happen with a computer application than a computer science graduate, but that does not mean I can create a software.

Review of Basic Information and Communication Technology Concepts: Software (Part 2)

Software refers to the set of instructions that allow the human user to enter data or another instruction (command) to the computer. If we use the human as an analogy to the computing system, the hardware refers to the physical body while the software refers to its consciousness.

Software can be generally classified into two types: Application and Utility.

Application Software

Shortened to applications or "app," this is the type which you are most familiar with and you use consciously. This software type is created to perform specific tasks for end users. An example is the Microsoft Word, Adobe Premiere Pro, or GIMP (graphical image manipulation program). For mobile operating systems like iOS and Android, you have GMail app, Twitter app, or Mozilla Firefox app.

System Software

This type handles instructions specific to technology management and coordinates the interaction of all technology devices. This can be further subdivided into:

• Operating System – Provides an environment for all applications as well as acts as the primary interpreter between the hardware devices and the applications. It also manages the hardware and other resources of the computing system. There are three main families of operating systems in the market today for desktop and server computers: Microsoft Windows (eg, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7), Macintosh (eg 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Snow Leopard) and Linux (eg, Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat Linux). For mobile (including tablets), we currently have iOS, Android (which is a Linux derivative), Firefox OS (also Linux-based), and Windows Phone OS. 
• Utility Software – Provides additional functionality related to management of the computing system. Antivirus software, repair utility software and defragmentation tools are examples of utility software.

Programming Languages

This refers to a special set of software which creates other software. Examples here are C, C++, Visual BASIC, COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), FORTRAN, BASIC, and others.

Programming languages mimic human (high level) language. Once the source code (the human-readable text of computer instructions), the programming language compiles them to become the set of instructions which the computer could understand.

Malicious Software

Shortened to "malware," this encompasses a broad range of software that are basically designed to harm your system, secretly gather data, or assist in a nasty plan. Computer viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, adware, among others, fall within this category.

• Computer virus - A program that requires a command to execute (but of course, the command need not be an obvious command saying that the application is a virus) to replicate itself among the files or boot sector of a computer. Sometimes, it just replicates itself, which consumes storage space and slows down your computer, but others destroy data, or access private data, or use your email to send messages without you knowing it. It is distinctly called a "virus" because it attaches itself to a program or file. That is, if that particular file is removed (and it has not infected others), then the virus itself is removed.
• Computer worm - A program like a virus, with most of the same bad characteristics, but this is a standalone program. It also has a distinct characteristic of infecting applications or data beyond a computer unit, but can replicate itself in a computer network. One of the common uses of a worm is to allow the worm's creator to take control of a computer that the worm has infected. 
• Trojan horse - Named after its namesake from Greek mythology, a Trojan horse acts like a real software which you can install, however, once installed, it will do something else. Usually, Trojan horses create "backdoor," or security holes in an otherwise fairly secure system.
• Spyware - Usually downloaded from websites, spyware, well, spies. Their primary function is to gather data from a host machine, without the system owner's consent. As Wikipedia detailed, "Spyware can collect almost any type of data, including personal information like Internet surfing habits, user logins, and bank or credit account information. Spyware can also interfere with user control of a computer by installing additional software or redirecting Web browsers. Some spyware can change computer settings, which can result in slow Internet connection speeds, unauthorized changes in browser settings, or changes to software settings."
• Adware - More of nuisance than evil, adware basically allows its creator to send your computer advertisements. Of course, when you are working, you don't really like ads disturbing you, so it is still bad. 
• Scareware - This is rather something new for me (like one or two years known to me). What scareware does it is it scares you to do something. The most common form of scareware that you may have seen is an ad in a website saying that your computer is infected by a virus, or your mobile phone is low on storage, and then the website offers you a solution. Commonly, the "solution" is an adware, a spyware, or maybe a valid software that will solve a problem, but the problem is that you did not have that problem in the first place. You were just tricked. 

Obviously, I focused more on the malware. This is to help you be aware of these threats to your system. So before you click something, make sure you know what it is, how it will affect your system, and that your system is adequately protected.

Rather than post something myself, I recommend that you read this fairly easy to understand post on how to stay safe when browsing from the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT).

Review of Basic Information and Communication Technology Concepts: Hardware (Part 1)

The Computer System

The computing system is called a system because it is a composed of different elements – that is, types of interrelated devices: hardware, software and peopleware. Each of these types of devices is important for the system to work. The computer system cannot work without any one of these 'wares'.

Besides reviewing what these are, we will discuss how knowing each of these interact with the other elements can help you troubleshoot in case your computer for some reason does not work.

Hardware

Hardware refers to the tangible objects or devices, such as your desktop monitor, the keyboard, or the mouse. Hardware, in the context of computing system, are composed of three types: Input, Output, Processing and Storage.

Input

Input hardware refers to devices you use to enter instructions or data into the computer. Examples of this are the keyboard, the mouse and the scanner. Other non-critical parts of the computer system which are input devices are the laser presenter and optical character recognition (OCR).

Processing

Processing hardware refers to the internal brain of your computer, the one that really “computes” the instructions based on a set of instructions that were preconfigured to it. This refers to your CPU, and the performance of your CPU is based on the speed (measured in gigahertz or GHz).

Storage

A very important part of your computing system is storage of data. There are numerous incarnations of storage devices: USB flash disks, compact discs (CD), digital versatile discs (DVD), memory sticks, secure digital (SD) cards, among others. This is measured in megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB, which is 1,000 MB) and terabytes (TB, which is 1,000GB).

Output

Output devices refer to hardware that get data out of the computer. This may come in the form of monitor, LCD projector and printer.

Looking at a Computer's Features

When you buy a laptop or a computer, you may get a lot of highly technical references, such as “DDRAM” or “2GB RAM”. In this section, we will discuss what those are:

• RAM – random access memory. You could look at this as the space where the computer temporarily writes instruction before it is executed (after which, the data is erased). Generally, the higher the number, the better.
• Processor – Measured in GHz (so far as when this book was written), this refers to the speed of the processor to write and erase information. Generally speaking, the higher the number, the better.
• Optical Drive – This refers to your CD or DVD reader or writer. A DVD writer (DVD-R/W) usually means that it can also read and write CDs. If it only says CD-R, that means it can only read data from CD, and cannot write on it nor read and write DVDs. Another data that you would probably find is “52X,” and this refers to the speed of your optical drive. The higher this is, the better.
• RJ-11 / RJ-45 / LAN Ports – These are ports or entries for networking. RJ-11 refers to the end of your telephone cable, which you would use if you connect via dial-up. RJ-45 refers to the end of a cable or DSL internet connection. RJ-45 may also add up to what rate of data it can handle, measured in mbps (Megabits per second) or gbps (Gigabits per second).
• USB port – Of course, this refers to the number of USB ports the computer has. If it has something like 1.2 or 2.0, this refers to the type of USB capability. Again, the higher the number, the faster the data rate of that USB port.
• Audio and Video Cards – These are cards inside the computer which connect to the motherboard (the board where the CPU is connected to). These cards tell up to what type of applications your computer can accommodate in terms of those functions. For example, if you have a low-end video card, you probably cannot use the computer for games or video editing. Further, higher-end video and audio cards mean faster response time when you tell your computer to do something and it to display what you commanded it to do.
• WiFi / WLAN / 802.11a/b/g/n – Wifi is wireless fidelity. WLAN is wireless local area network (We will discuss this in detail “Networking.”). They are essentially the same. The number refers to the IEEE standard for ethernet connection (Again, we will discuss this in detail in Networking.). The letter “a/b/g/n” refers to the version. “a” is used for your cordless phone, “b” is for wireless routers and has speed of up to 11 mbps and range of 30 feet from the center. “g” has up to 54 mbps. “n” promises to double the speed and triple the range of “g.”
• Hard Disk / Hard Drive / Storage – The amount of data you could store in a computer. A 'hard disk' is not a literal hard disk, but derives its name from the old concept of putting multiple disks on top of one another. A 'hard drive,' which in essence is the same as a hard disk, is used to refer to an alphabetical reference in a drive, or a destination for your computer to store data to or get data from. That is, a disk drive is a letter reference, and a hard drive is a drive which has a hard disk. The higher, the better, but you have to be careful—the higher amount of data you put in a disk, the more data you could lose if the disk drive crashes.
• Floppy Disk / Floppy Drive – A rather old mode of data storage. Mini floppy disks were 5.25” and could hold up to 1.22 megabytes of data while micro floppy disks were 3.5” and could hold up to 1.44 megabytes of data.

Disclaimer: Please feel free to send your corrections in the comments section.

What this blog is all about

(Note: Apologies for the third introduction post. I hope to post the first content next week.)

The aim of this blog is to introduce you to technologies available to enhance your students' learning experience. I intended for this book to give you as practical and useful information as my experience as an information officer in UP Manila, and as a trainer before that, would allow. Because of this, I thought I would like to give you particular steps as much as possible, but creativity and application can be as varied as there are unique situations.

It also aims to introduce to you issues and trends related to the use of technology for teaching, research and extra-curricular activities. It is my hope that knowledge of these issues and trends would allow you to use technology for teaching while being aware of critical behavioral and social issues related to it.

This blog assumes you have working knowledge on desktop and Internet applications. If you need basic training on these applications, such as how to use word processors or spreadsheet software, I suggest you consult other websites that specialize on said subjects.

It is not the intent of this blog to promote any particular brand or software, but applications will be mentioned based on my experience in using these programs. Most applications have unique ways of doing the same thing, so I only have limited examples.

eLearning, blended learning (Blearning) and the like, are not technologies. These are approaches to learning. So, this book, while it supports these approaches, is not the approach. Effectiveness of use of these technologies is based on a systematic study of your lesson, your style of teaching, style of learning of your students, and learning outcomes, among others. Nonetheless, I hope to discuss this topic in the future, as well as how to administer elearning solutions or use elearning as your approach to teaching.

Like information—or like any new technology, for that matter—educational technology is void of many social and ethical issues, so I personally hope that your use of these technologies is within the bounds of social norms.

Why teach technology for teaching?

As an information officer at the College of Arts and Sciences, UP Manila, I have seen how difficult it is for teachers (even of this University) to adapt to the changing technological environment. While changing to technological fads is definitely not a good reason to change your teaching style, not taking opportunity of available (and free!) applications may limit your effectiveness as a learning facilitator or make you inefficient in carrying out your various tasks.

In my two years as an information officer at the College of Arts and Sciences, UP Manila, I have seen how difficult it is for teachers (even of this University) to adapt to the changing technological environment. While changing to technological fads is definitely not a good reason to change your teaching style, not taking opportunity of available (and free!) applications may limit your effectiveness as a learning facilitator or make you inefficient in carrying out your various tasks.

I have heard of numerous reasons why many of them do not try to learn, some I have read in letters:

1. It requires a steep learning curve. I don't have the time.
2. It's too technical.
3. I'm not required to use that technology.
4. Some of those systems are not compatible with mine.
5. There are some features of my software that are not present in that system.
6. I don't want to rely on technology.

Of course, the last is probably the worst reason, because one way or another, everyone is using technology. It's just a question of what level or what function.

I have difficulty accepting the reason of not having the time because the same teachers who say this will say in their Twitter (Yes! They use Twitter!) that they are watching boys and are frustrated with them not being looked at.

My experience as a senior trainer in language, communication and customer relations services and my desire to share what I know with my fellow trainers. Yes. This book is years late. I originally had plans of having this book printed in time for the UP Centennial.

I had trainees (Excuse me, my previous company calls them as such. Of course, I call them learners.) who were actually teachers and they are surprised with words that I use when it comes to technology for communication.

My talk with undergraduate students of information technology and business administration degree programs and my conversation with graduate students in my Masters of Management class reveals that money and level of education are not any indicator of knowledge of more appropriate technology for teaching and learning.

The week-long delay of opening of classes brought by Influenza A(H1N1) and the week-long vacation given by Ondoy demanded a way for the learning experience to be sustained.

An accounts issue disconnected the University of the Philippines Manila from the whole world. This was less than two months after the Information System Strategic Planning (ISSP) workshop, and an hour after the CAS Online Journal committee meeting.

Some are issues to teaching administration, some are related to technology. In any case, if the teacher seeks to create a holistic learning experience for the learners, then the learning facilitator has to be equipped with what is available.

So, I hope that this blog will be of use to you. I tried to organize it in what I think is according to levels of critical need. My first posts would be on basic knowledge about technology and critical issues that were previously ignored but now has taken more recognition, such as ethics, security and open source software.

I also took into consideration the fears and reasons of those who do not want to learn technology for teaching. For this  reason, I tried my best to make this as less technical and short as possible. Of course, no one is required to learn any new technology (unless it is for your institution), but the assumption is that new knowledge can make the learning experience more effective and the learner can own the experience.

I hope you find this useful. If you have any feedback on how to improve it, please feel free to email me using the contact information here. I would definitely appreciate it.

Note: I wrote this on my second year as Information Officer of the College of Arts and Sciences, UP Manila. That was in 2009.