Study Guide

Introduction

You may well have found the opener to this chapter a bit insulting. Most of us are so familiar with
using ICT these days that we do tend to take it for granted. This does give rise to a couple of
problems for students, though. Firstly, not everyone has the same level of knowledge and experience
and it can be very off-putting to feel that you are miles behind everyone else. Secondly, when you find
yourself using technology to produce your assessed assignments, whether this is for the research or
the final production, you may encounter one or two gaps in your knowledge.

Terminology familiarity checklist

Have a look at the following, just to ensure that you know what all of them mean.

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You are probably familiar with all of them; if not, check your own computer to find what is where, talk
to people who know more than you do, and consult ICT staff if you are really worried.

Do not go thinking it is an age thing

Sometimes, if you are a mature student, you have particular worries about ICT. Not that you are
necessarily any less competent, and you may indeed have more experience of application ICT than
some of your school-leaver peers. Sometimes it is the confidence rather than the competence that is
lacking. You just assume that other people will know more than you, and it is often in ICT that this
kind of anxiety surfaces. Whatever your experience with ICT before you started your course,
remember that computers are your friends, not your foes. They are useful in five specific ways.

Word processing

This is simply typing written text, but with the facility to change it, improve it, and make it look more
attractive. If you are working on an essay and you suddenly find that the paragraphs read much
better in a different order, you can simply move them around. If you come across some new material
that you want to add, you can easily slot it in at the appropriate point in the text. You can use your
grammar and spell check, as long as you do not use these as an excuse for bad spelling or poor
grammar.

Presentation software

If you have to give a presentation to others as part of any assignment, you can use presentation
software to help you. This will help you to present material more attractively and more neatly. Just
one word of warning, make sure that there are facilities available to run your presentation: it is more
than infuriating to find you have done with that preparation, only to find yourself confronted with no
more than a white-board and a clapped-out overhead projector. You can use your computer to
prepare good OHP transparencies too.
Spreadsheets, databases, and statistics

Even if you thought you had not opted for a math’s degree, you might be hard pressed to get through
three years without encountering some statistics to interpret, or even wanting to produce some of
your own. While a computer won’t necessarily fill in gaps in your mathematical knowledge, it will make
it much easier for you to draw tables and charts, present financial data, and go through basic
mathematical calculations.

The Internet

This is simply a brilliant research tool, like a giant library, but you have to know how to use it wisely.
There are various search engines (Google is probably the most well-known) that allow you to find links
to key words, names, etc. They give you access to millions of pages. Like any other information
research, you can get far more out of it if you are clear about what you want to know, otherwise you
just find yourself trawling through loads of information. Used well, it can help you with almost any
subject you can think of, providing links to academic information and useful contacts.

Email

Perhaps you have already used email to communicate at work. If not, your use of e-mail has probably
been confined to emailing friends and you would have found out that it is an easy way to keep in
touch. As a student, there are two good reasons why email is useful. Firstly, it is a good way to keep
in touch with tutors and lecturers when you can’t catch up with them in person. Secondly, if you are
doing any research that entails contacting businesses and other organizations, email is an excellent
way of making initial contact and often a highly successful one.

A few tips for email success

Email is instant, this is usually one of its benefits, but there are drawbacks. If you are displeased with
your marks on an assignment and you feel a tutor has been unreasonable, it is easy to fire off a
stroppy email. If you have to go and find them in person or put something on paper, you gain a
valuable cooling off period. Think before you press “send”. More common, and less dramatic, is the
tendency not to write clearly and succinctly. For someone on the receiving end, whether he or she is a
tutor or a work colleague, this can waste their time and yours.

What you should not use your computer for

Apart from illegal activities that do not need an explanation here and the dangers of hasty emails
mentioned above, there is another consideration when you are using ICT. It has made obtaining
already completed assignments easier. This is plagiarizing and cheating, and in the end, it will do
neither your academic nor your working career any good. The fact that it is easier to import
information and incorporate it into your own text does not make it any wiser. Academic staff are
becoming increasingly alert to this problem. Has a look at Chapters 15 and 17 (should chapter
references be included as they aren’t used to organize content in the CWS? Consider rewording) on
essays and dissertations respectively, for further information on this.

Know your keyboard

If you have a good command of the keyboard, it will make all of the above benefits flow that much
more easily, and this is especially true of word processing where you hope to work quickly and
accurately. Not everyone can touch-type, but try to get beyond using two fingers. There are plenty of
online typing tutorials that will really help. You will find that if you can use the keyboard well, you are
faster, you make fewer mistakes, and you probably end up with fewer aches and pains in your hands,
back, and neck.
More about the keyboard

Familiarity with the basic keyboard certainly makes you faster and more efficient. Once you
understand the basics, check that you know how to use keys such as tabs, control, and the arrow
keys. The function keys, F1 to F12, apply different functions according to what packages you are
working with, so do not assume that just because you know what they do when you are working in
“Word”, it would be exactly the same if you are working in “Quark”.

Remember that user manuals and online help for whatever software you are using are most valuable
resources.

What else do you need to know?

The mouse and the screen are the other two pieces of hardware with which you must become familiar.
Find out how to control your mouse, so that you can click and drag things easily. Work out which
button does what. Never work out any of this in the middle of a really crucial piece of work. Keep your
mouse clean, otherwise it becomes jerky and inefficient. Battery-powered radio mice are brilliant, but
they are expensive. Understanding the screen is rather like the keyboard, get familiar with where to
find things, how to move things and how to use menus and toolbars.

Your access to computers

Of course it is very annoying to read all this about what to do with your computer and the wonderful
advantages of using your computer to help your academic career, but what if you do not have one?
While ICT provision is not identical at all universities and colleges, you will usually find very good ICT
learning resources available to you. In the first few days of your course, you are likely to be offered a
tour of and introduction to whatever facilities your institution offers. Note opening times and that at
least you have the advantage of help on hand.

Some pitfalls

No ICT will sort out any weaknesses you have in your working style. It is, after all, only a tool. Having
a kitchen cupboard full of cleaning materials does not mean you always have a clean kitchen or that
you know exactly what is in that cupboard. Having good ICT skills and facilities does not always mean
you use them to their best advantage. Three common problems are collecting too much information,
failing to be tidy and organised with all the work material you have on your PC, and not making back-
up copies of material to cope the occasional technological disaster.

Too much information

It is great to use the Internet as a research tool for any academic assignment you are working on. It
can genuinely save you hours and hours of research on paper and you do not have the problem of the
book being out of the library. There is a danger though; you can do too much research. Every link
leads to another link and if you are either a perfectionist or a hoarder, you just keep on looking for
more and more material and more and more explanations. You are not helped by that finite, concrete
feeling you get from finishing a chapter or closing a book.

It is not called a desktop for nothing

It can be stressful, sitting at your desk and looking at the piles of paper heaped up on the desk, the
floor, the window sill, etc., making yet one more resolution to keep it tidy. The same applies with your
PC. If you do not get into the habit of storing things properly in clearly marked electronic files and
folders, you can waste just as much time as you would be sifting through piles of paper. It is really
easy to think it is obvious what a file means to you, but that seemingly “obvious” can soon drift into
the utterly “obscure” as weeks and months go by.

Lost forever

If you throw something in the bin, it may end up in a landfill site: irretrievable forever. If you are
careless about saving your work in progress, the same thing can happen. Use the save function often
when you are working: it only takes a power cut or some other technical glitch for hours of patient
research to vanish forever. Be careful when you delete something; make sure you really do not want it
any more before you get rid of it. Make back-up copies on disk of important material so that if the
worst happens, you can stay calm and relaxed.

True, it is not a pet, but look after it well

If you take good care of your computer and the material on it, you will get better returns. Apart from
the obvious like not spilling coffee or wine all over the keyboard or not allowing your cat to run off
with your radio-controlled mouse, there is not too much you need to do. There is one very important
thing: install proper virus protection and update it. When your budget is tight, it is easy to be tempted
to cut corners, but do not; if a virus ruins your work or a hacker gets into your system, it will cost you
far more than the protective software.

ICT and your job search

If you are applying for a specific ICT job, network engineer, systems designer, applications,
programmer, etc., then you will have to produce specific evidence that you possess the appropriate
skills. For other jobs, the requirements are likely to be less specific. Many adverts and job
specifications will simply say “a grasp of basic ICT skills”. Others will fall somewhere between the two
and ask for a reasonable understanding of word processing and working with spreadsheets or
databases. You do need to be truthful in your application (as always, of course), because your ICT
skills can easily be tested as part of the selection process.

Not what you know, but what you could know

What is of real interest to most employers is whether you have the capability to learn about and
become competent in using ICT applications. In other words, if they give you appropriate training and
support, are they spending their time and their money wisely? Keeping this in mind, it is worth
emphasising how quickly you learn new things or how much you enjoy learning something new, if it is
clear that you will have to develop new ICT skills in any job you apply for. These might be learning to
use a customer database, an engineering control system, desktop publishing, and much, much more.

Informal learner or informal teacher

One of the good things about working with information and communications technology is that it is
one of those areas where you find there are things you learn quite a lot about that other people find
difficult and conversely, other people become expert with problems that baffle you. Because everyone
goes into the job market with different levels of knowledge and experience, you often find you are
called on to help out a colleague and if you become the office ICT guru you can become very popular.
It is an excellent way to develop your teaching and training skills and add these to your CV.

A changing world

If you ask many people in a broad selection of professions what major changes they would predict for
their industry or business, a common reply is that they expect the impact of technology to be very
significant. This could be anything from speeding up a legal transaction to performing a medical
procedure or monitoring energy consumption. It encompasses financial management to waste
management. What new entrants to any career need to have are an open-minded attitude, a
willingness to learn, and an acceptance of change. It is for these reasons that employers are not
always too concerned about exactly what skills you have to date.

A world of opportunity

Because technology is changing quickly and because employment patterns are such that you may find
yourself changing jobs several times throughout your career, learning new ICT skills is almost bound
to become part of your working life. Many companies provide excellent in-house training, especially
when new systems are introduced. You will also find that ICT training is offered widely, through local
adult education institutes and private colleges. You will have ample opportunities to keep on
developing if you want to. If you understand computers, you know when you are just being fobbed off
with an excuse that something went wrong with the computer.