EMST 1 – Living in the IT Era help of ICT.

Through chatting, E- mail,

Chapter 1 voice mail and social networking people
communicate with each other. It is the
Introduction to Information cheapest means of communication.
Communication Technology
ICT allows students to monitor and
Introduction manage their own learning, think critically
and creatively, solve simulated real-world
The quickening pace of evolution in technology problems, work collaboratively, engage in
is very evident in this era. It seems that it is ethical decision-making, and adopt a
progressing faster than ever. From year to year, global perspective towards issues and
the evolution of technology is one of staggering ideas. It also provides students from
promise and opportunity--as well as uncertainty. remote areas access to expert teachers
Basically, technology has been around before, and learning resources, and gives
and as long as there are people, information administrators and policy makers the data
technology will be there also because there and expertise they need to work more
were always ways of communicating through efficiently.
technology available at that point in time. The
future may be unknown, but digital 2. Job Opportunities
advancement continues to reshape our world in
ways that encourage people to form new habits, In the employment sector, ICT enable
find new ways to work together, and become organization to operate more efficiently,
better human beings. And, in most cases, these so employing staff with ICT skills is vital to
changes translate into a range of opportunities the smooth running of any business. Being
and disruptions across every industry. Humans able to use ICT systems effectively allows
have always been quick to adapt technologies employees more time to concentrate on
for better and faster communication. areas of their job role that require soft
skills.
Specific Objectives
For example, many pharmacies use robot
At the end of this lesson, students should be able technology to assist with picking
to: prescribed drugs. This allows highly
trained pharmaceutical staff to focus on
1. Demonstrate a sense of readiness for the jobs requiring human intelligence and
upcoming semester; interaction, such as dispensing and
2. Identify their learning outcomes and checking medication.
expectations for the course;
3. Recognize their capacity to create new Nowadays, employers expect their staff to
understandings from reflecting on the have basic ICT skills. This expectation
course; even applies to job roles where ICT skills
4. Know the role and importance of ICT. may not have been an essential
requirement in the past.
Lesson Proper
History of ICT Nowadays, finding a job is different, you
ICT, or information and communications can just use your smart phone, laptop,
technology (or technologies), is the desktop or any gadgets that is available in
infrastructure and components that enable the comfort of your home.
modern computing.
3. Education
Although there is no single, universal definition of
ICT, the term is generally accepted to Information and Communications
mean all devices, networking components, Technology (ICT) can impact student
applications and systems that combined learning when teachers are digitally
allow people and organizations (i.e., literate and understand how to integrate it
businesses, nonprofit agencies, into curriculum.
governments and criminal enterprises) to
interact in the digital world. Schools use a diverse set of ICT tools to
communicate, create, disseminate, store,
Uses of ICT in Our Daily Lives and manage information.(6) In some
contexts, ICT has also become integral to
1. Communication the teaching-learning interaction, through
such approaches as replacing chalkboards
We all know that ICT take a major role for with interactive digital whiteboards, using
us by means of communicating, way back students’ own smartphones or other
in the past our parents use to make letter devices for learning during class time, and
and send it via post mail. But now with the the “flipped classroom” model where
help of ICT it is easier to communicate students watch lectures at home on the
with our love ones. We can use cellular computer and use classroom time for
phones that design for communicating more interactive exercises.
with other people even they are miles
away far from you. When teachers are digitally literate and
trained to use ICT, these approaches can
Nowadays people are in touch with the lead to higher order thinking skills, provide
 creative and individualized options for exist: digital cameras, photo-editing
students to express their understandings, software and high-quality printers, screen
and leave students better prepared to magnification or screen reading software
deal with ongoing technological change in enables partially sighted or blind people to
society and the workplace. work with ordinary text rather than Braille.
● Communication: Cost savings by using
4. Socializing e.g. VoIP instead of normal telephone,
email / messaging instead of post, video
Social media has changed the world. The conferencing instead of traveling to
rapid and vast adoption of these meetings, e- commerce web sites instead
technologies is changing how we find of sales catalogues. Access to larger, even
partners, how we access information from worldwide, markets.
the news, and how we organize to demand ● Information management: Data mining of
political change. customer information to produce lists for
targeted advertising. Improved stock
The internet and social media provide control, resulting in less wastage, better
young people with a range of benefits, and cash flow, etc.
opportunities to empower themselves in a ● Security: ICT solves or reduces some
variety of ways. Young people can security problems, e.g. Encryption
maintain social connections and support methods can keep data safe from
networks that otherwise wouldn't be unauthorized people, both while it is being
possible and can access more information stored or while it is being sent
than ever before. The communities and electronically.
social interactions young people form ● ICT allows people to participate in a wider,
online can be invaluable for bolstering and even worldwide, society.
developing young people's self- ● Distance learning: students can access
confidence and social skills. teaching materials from all over the world.
● ICT facilitates the ability to perform
As the ICT has become ubiquitous, faster ‘impossible’ experiments’ by using
and increasingly accessible to non- simulations.
technical communities, social networking ● Creation of new more interesting jobs.
and collaborative services have grown Examples would be systems analysts,
rapidly enabling people to communicate programmers and software engineers, as
and share interest in many more ways, well as help desk operators and trainers.
sites like Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn You
tube, Flicker, second life delicious blogs Negative impacts of Information and
wiki’s and many more let people of all Communication Technology
ages rapidly share their interest of the ● Job loss: Manual operations being replaced
movement without others everywhere. But by automation. E.g. robots replacing
Facebook seems to be the leading areas of people on an assembly line. Job export.
where people communicate and share E.g. Data processing work being sent to
their opinions. What a change! “Nothing is other countries where operating costs are
permanent, but change” (As Heraditus in lower. Multiple workers being replaced by
the 4thcentury BC). Internet can be seen a smaller number who are able to do the
as the international networks of same amount of work. e.g. A worker on a
interconnection of computer networks, the supermarket checkout can serve more
main purpose for the institution of internet customers per hour if a bar-code scanner
are quest for information i.e. browsing, linked to a computerized till is used to
electronic mail, knew groups fill transfer detect goods instead of the worker having
and access and use of other computer. to enter the item and price manually
● Reduced personal interaction: Most people
Socialization can be seen as a process by need some form of social interaction in
which a child adapts a behavior to be an their daily lives and if they do not get the
effective member of the society, which chance to meet and talk with other people
can only be achieved through learning or they may feel isolated and unhappy.
education. ● Reduced physical activity: This can lead to
health problems such as obesity, heart
Impact of ICT in The Society disease, and diabetes.
● Cost: A lot of ICT hardware and software is
Positive impacts of Information and expensive, both to purchase and to
Communication Technology maintain. An ICT system usually requires
● Access to information: Increase in access specialist staff to run it and there is also
to information and services that has the challenge of keeping up with ever-
accompanied the growth of the Internet. changing technology.
Some of the positive aspects of this ● Competition: this is usually thought of as
increased access are better, and often being a good thing, but for some
cheaper, communications, such as VoIP organizations being exposed to greater
phone and Instant Messaging. competition can be a problem. If the
● Improved access to education, e.g. organization is competing
distance learning and online tutorials. New
ways of learning, e.g. interactive multi- for customers, donations, or other means
media and virtual reality. of funding nationally or even
● New tools, new opportunities: ICT gives internationally, they may lose out to other
access to new tools that did not previously organizations that can offer the same
 service for less money large amount of data among various
location.
⮚ Increases productivity by making it easier
Lesson 1: Fundamentals of Information and to share data amongst users.
Communication Technology ⮚ Standards and protocols should be
supported to allow many types of
These days, especially in the business equipment from different vendors to share
environment, every business no matter the network.
how small uses a computer to handle its ⮚ Provides central/ distributed management
daily transaction to enable quick and and allocation of network resources like
accurate recording. Organizations often host processors, transmission facilities etc.
need several people to impute and
process data simultaneously. In order to Classification of Networks
achieve this, the earlier model of a single
computer serving all the organization's When classifying networks, we consider the
computational needs has been replaced transmission technology i.e., whether the
by a model such that a number of network contains switching elements or
separate but interconnected computers do not, we can consider two types of
the job. This model is known as a networks.
computer network.
1. Broadcast networks
By linking individual computers over a 2. Point –to – point or switched network.
network, their productivity has been
increased enormously (NOUN: 2002). A Broadcast networks have a single
stand-alone computer has limited use. The communication channel that is shared by
only way it can exchange information with the entire machine on the network. In this
other computers is by using removable type of network, short messages sent by
storage media like floppy diskettes, flash any machine are received by the entire
drive etc. One may not have much issue machine on the network. The packet
when using a computer at home, but in a contains an address field that specifies for
large establishment, where different whom the packet is sent to. All the
departments are usually sharing a machines, upon receiving the packet
common data source, effective networking check for the address field, if the packet is
is critical. intended for itself, it processes it
otherwise the packet is ignored.
A distinguishing characteristic of a general
computer network is that data can enter Point-to-point or switched network
or leave at any point and can be This kind of network has many
processed at any work station. For connections between individual pairs of
instance, a printer can be controlled from machines. Such that when a packet
any word processor at any computer on travels from source to distinction it may
the network. have to first visit one or more
intermediate machines. It most requires a
Computer Network routing algorithm because multiple routes
of different lengths are available. One
A computer network consists of one or more common example of a switched network is
stand-alone computers that are linked the international dial-up telephone
(connected) together for the purpose of: system.
Cost reduction sharing hardware and
i). Resource sharing (fax machine, printer, files software resources. Reliability by having
etc.) multiple sources of supply to enable back
ii). Allowing electronic communication up.
iii). Share software applications like MS Office Provides an efficient means, of transport
etc. (Andrew. S. Tanenbaum: 1996) for Lange amount of data among various
location Increases productivity by making
Network Protocol: The protocol defines a common it easier to share data amongst users.
set of rules that are used by computers on Standards and protocols should be
the network that communicate between supported to allow many types of
hardware and software entities. equipment from
(Englewood Cliffs: 1989) One very popular
protocol for LANs is Ethernet; another Connection Oriented Service
popular LAN protocol for PCs is the token-
ring network. Connection- oriented services define a
way of transmitting data between a
Network Goals: Before designing any computer sender and a receiver, in which end- to-
network, engineers should ensure that the end connection is established before
designed network fulfils the basic network sending any data. After establishing a
goals. connection, a sequence of packets from
the source to the destination can be sent
⮚ Cost reduction sharing hardware and one after the other.
software resources.
⮚ Reliability by having multiple sources of All packets to the message are sent from
supply to enable back up. the same connection. When all packets of
⮚ Provide an efficient means, of transport for a message have been delivered, the
 connection is terminated. they use to enter data.

Internet A. KEYING DEVICES

Internet is an acronym for international - Are devices used to enter data into
network, it is a connection of millions of the computer using a set of Keys eg
computer networks together around the Keyboard, key-to- storage and keypad.
world. For the purpose of shearing
computer resources, by means of the 1. THE KEYBOARD
World Wide Web. Using known
communication standard protocols such as Keyboard (similar to a typewriter) is the
TCP/IP (FUO computer lab. Manual). main input device of a computer . It
contains three types of keys--
When the ARPANET and NSFNET were alphanumeric keys, special keys and
interconnected, the number of networks, function keys. Alphanumeric keys are used
machines and users grew exponentially, to type all alphabets, numbers and special
many regional networks joined up and symbols like $, %, @, A etc. Special keys
connections were made across many such as <Shift>, <Ctrl>, <Alt>, <Home>,
countries. <Scroll Lock> etc. are used for special
functions. Function keys such as <Fl>,
The internet is said to have been officially <F2>, <F3> etc. are used to give special
born around 1982 when the different commands depending upon the software
networks used e.g.F5 reloads a page of an internet
browser. The function of each and every
(BITNET, EARN etc), agreed on using the key can be well understood only after
TCP/IP protocol as a standard. (Noun: working on a PC. When any key is pressed,
2002) an electronic signal is produced. This
signal is detected by a keyboard encoder
Lesson 2: Elements of Computer System that sends a binary code corresponding to
and Categories of Computer Peripherals the key pressed to the CPU. There are
many types of keyboards but 101 keys
Computer System keyboard is the most popular one.

Definition: Is a collection of entities How the keys are organized

(hardware, software and liveware) that are
designed to receive, process, manage and The keys on your keyboard can be divided
present information in a meaningful into several groups based on function:
format. Typing (alphanumeric) keys. These keys
include the same letter, number,
COMPONENTS OF COMPUTER SYSTEM punctuation, and symbol keys found on a
Computer hardware - Are physical traditional typewriter.
parts/ intangible parts of a computer. eg Special (Control) keys. These keys are
Input devices, output devices, central used alone or in combination with other
processing unit and storage devices keys to perform certain actions. The most
Computer software - also known as frequently used control keys are CTRL,
programs or applications. They are ALT, the Windows key, and ESC.
classified into two classes namely - system
software and application software Function keys. The function keys are used
Liveware - is the computer user. Also, to perform specific tasks. They are
kwon as org ware or the human ware. The labelled as F1, F2, F3, and so on, up to
user commands the computer system to F12. The functionality of these keys differs
execute on instructions. from program to program. Cursor
Movement (Navigation) keys. These keys
a) COMPUTER HARDWARE are used for moving around in documents
Hardware refers to the physical, tangible or WebPages and editing text. They
computer equipment and devices, which provide include the arrow keys, HOME, END, PAGE
support for major functions such as input, UP, PAGE DOWN, DELETE, and INSERT and
processing (internal storage, computation and ARROW KEYS.
control), output, secondary storage (for data and Numeric keypad. The numeric keypad is
programs), and communication. handy for entering numbers quickly. The
keys are grouped together in a block like a
conventional calculator or adding
HARDWARE CATEGORIES (Functional Parts) machine.
A computer system is a set of integrated devices
that input, output, process, and store data and B. POINTING DEVICES
information. Computer systems are currently built - are devices that enter data and
around at least one digital processing device. instructions into the computer using a
There are five main hardware components in a pointer that appears on the screen. The
computer system: Input, Processing, Storage, items to be entered are selected by either
Output and Communication devices. pointing to or clicking on them.e.g mice,
joystick, touch sensitive screen, trackballs
INPUT DEVICES
-are devices used for entering data or i) THE MOUSE
instructions to the central processing unit. A mouse is a small device used to point to
-are classified according to the method and select items on your computer screen.
Although mice come in many shapes, the To click an item, point to the item on the
typical mouse does look a bit like an screen, and then press and release the
actual mouse. It's small, oblong, and primary button (usually the left button).
connected to the system unit by a long Clicking is most often used to select
wire that resembles a tail and the (mark) an item or open a menu. This is
connector which can either be PS/2 or sometimes called single-clicking or left-
USB. Some newer mice are wireless. clicking.

A mouse usually has two buttons: a Double-clicking

primary button (usually the left button) To double-click an item, point to the item
and a secondary button. Many mice also on the screen, and then click twice
have a wheel between the two buttons, quickly. If the two clicks are spaced too far
which allows you to scroll smoothly apart, they might be interpreted as two
through screens of information. individual clicks rather than as one
double-click.
When you move the mouse with your
hand, a pointer on your screen moves in Double-clicking is most often used to open
the same direction. (The pointer's items on your desktop. For example, you
appearance might change depending on can start a program or open a folder by
where it's positioned on your screen.) double-clicking its icon on the desktop.
When you want to select an item, you
point to the item and then click (press and Right-clicking
release) the primary button. Pointing and To right-click an item, point to the item on
clicking with your mouse is the main way the screen, and then press and release the
to interact with your computer. There are secondary button (usually the right
several types of mice: Mechanical mouse, button).
optical mouse, optical-mechanical mouse Right-clicking an item usually displays a
and laser mouse. list of things you can do with the item. For
example, when you right-click the Recycle
Basic parts Bin on your desktop, Windows displays a
menu allowing you to open it, empty it,
A mouse typically has two buttons: a delete it, or see its properties. If you are
primary button (usually the left button) unsure of what to do with something,
and a secondary button (usually the right right-click it.
button). The primary button is the one you
will use most often. Most mice also include C) SCANNING DEVICES
a scroll wheel between the buttons to help - are devices that capture an object
you scroll through documents and or a document directly from the source.
WebPages more easily. On some mice, the They are classified according to the
scroll wheel can be pressed to act as a technology used to capture data e.g.
third button. Advanced mice might have Scanners and Document readers.
additional buttons that can perform other
functions. i) SCANNERS

Holding and moving the mouse Used to capture a source document and
Place your mouse beside your keyboard converts it into an electronic form.
on a clean, smooth surface, such as a Example are - FlatBed and HandHeld
mouse pad. Hold the mouse gently with scanners.
your index finger resting on the primary
button and you thumb resting on the side. ii) DOCUMENT READERS
To move the mouse, slide it slowly in any Are documents that reads data directly
direction. Don't twist it—keep the front of from source document and convey them
the mouse aimed away from you. As you as input in the form of electronic signal.
move the mouse, a pointer (see picture)
on your screen moves in the same Types of Document Readers
direction. If you run out of room to move 1. ) Optical Mar Reader (OMR)
your mouse on your desk or mouse pad, 2. ) Barcode readers
just pick up the mouse and bring it 3. Optical Character Readers
back closer to you. a) Magnetic Readers
Reads data using magnetic ink, uses
Pointing to an object often reveals a principle of magnetism to sense data
descriptive message about it. The pointer which have been written using
can change depending on what you're magnetised ink.
pointing at. For example, when you point
to a link in your web browser, the pointer
changes from an arrow to a hand with a
pointing finger.
Most mouse actions combine pointing with THE CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT (C P U)
pressing one of the mouse buttons. There
are four basic ways to use your mouse It is the brain or the heart of a computer.
buttons: clicking, double-clicking, right- Is also known as processor and consist of
clicking, and dragging. three units namely -
i) Control Unit (C U)
Clicking (single-clicking) ii) Arithmetic logic Unit (A L U)
 iii) Main Memory unit (M M U)

The system unit is the core of a computer

system. Usually it's a rectangular box
placed on or underneath your desk. Inside
this box are many electronic components
that process data. The most important of
these components is the central
processing unit (CPU), or microprocessor,
which acts as the "brain" of your
computer. Another component is random
access memory (RAM), which temporarily
stores information that the CPU uses while
the computer is on. The information stored
in RAM is erased when the computer is
turned off.

Almost every other part of your computer

connects to the system unit using cables.
The cables plug into specific ports
(openings), typically on the back of the
system unit. Hardware that is not part of
the system unit is sometimes called a
peripheral device. Peripheral devices can
be external such as a mouse, keyboard,
printer, monitor, external Zip drive or
scanner or internal, such as a CD-ROM
drive, CD-R drive or internal modem.
Internal peripheral devices are often
referred to as integrated peripherals.
There are two types according to shape:
tower and desktop.

Tower System Unit Desktop System Unit

A motherboard (mainboard, system board, planar
board or logic board) is the main printed circuit
board found in computers and other expandable
systems. It holds many of the crucial electronic
components of the system, such as the central
processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides
connectors for other peripherals.

Motherboard

TYPES OF PROCESSORS
I) Complex Instruction Set Computers
(CISC)
ii) Reduced Instruction Set Computers
(RISC)

FUNCTIONS OF CENTRAL PROCESSING

UNIT
- Process data
- Control sequence of operations
within the computers
- It gives command to all parts of a
computer
- It control the use of the main
memory in storing of data and instructions
- It provides temporary storage
(RAM) and permanent storage (ROM) of
data

THE CONTROL UNIT

Is the center of operations for the
computer system, it directs the activities
of the computer system.
Functions of Control Unit