ICT student textbook/What is the nature of ICT

What is this unit about

We saw in the previous chapter about how ICT are part of many things we do; and how they have changed the way we are working, learning and even playing. What is it about ICT that allow such changes to happen?

Let us consider the following pictures. Below each picture write 2-3 words describing what is happening in the picture.

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  Teachers in a video conference

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  Students learning how to shoot with a camera

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  Learning to read with a tablet

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  Students learning animation

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  Students learning with a simulation

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  Woman with a Cellphone

Image credits: Kerala IT@Schools project, Government high school, Mysuru, IT for Change, Wikimedia Commons. All images are licensed under Creative Commons license which allows for free sharing with attribution.

Think and write

Write down below what are the characteristics of ICT that allows the various things above. Discuss these with your friends and teachers.

To do these things, you use many ICT devices such as a mobile phone, a computer, camera. People may tell you about how they communicated or did things in the days before the phone. It may be very hard for you to imagine but ICT (and all other technologies) were not always there - they got developed over time.

Ask your teacher or parent or other older members in your neighbourhood when was the first time they saw a computer or a phone or a TV.

As you studied ICT, you may also have guessed one more thing - they need to be connected. Internet is a set of computers connected with one another. How these help in doing the various things we will see later on in this unit.

In this unit, you will learn about what is ICT, how ICT developed and how we need to work with ICT for all of us to benefit. You can read more about how ICT developed in the chapter on Science, Technology and Society.

Objectives

Interacting with ICT

1. Understanding the nature of ICT - how technology has developed in society, how ICT has developed and how it has changed the way society is organized today
2. Understanding about the ICT environment - various devices and applications
3. Understanding the safe use of ICT
4. Understanding the ethical and legal aspects of ICT

Communicating with ICT

1. Understanding how to use technology for self learning
2. Understanding how to use technology for connecting with each other for learning

Creating with ICT

1. Understanding that you can do various things with ICT (like writing, painting, mapping, singing)
2. Getting familiar with different applications for creating with ICT

ICT have changed the society

Look around you - can you make a list of things that have digital technologies involved in them? Yes, that is right. Starting from the computer in your school, television, movies, videos and other materials for subject learning mobile communication, Aadhar card, land records, bank accounts, pension accounts and so many more things, ICT have become integrated into society in many ways.

1. ICT can help create: ICT can create information in so many different ways - maps, audio, video, text, numeric data. Expressing yourself and creating materials is not limited only to text. This means newer and newer methods of knowledge creation and sharing. You can learn in different ways. How we learn and what is needed to be learnt have become different. For example, we no longer need to learn about a cash withdrawal slip, we need to know how to use the ATM. Your teacher can now take a video of a class in your school and share it. Different devices and applications are appearing as well as merging - a mobile is acquiring many functions of many other devices.

2. ICT can help connect and communicate: The most important thing about ICT today is the internet. The internet has changed the way we think of communicating. Talking to a friend through whatsapp or telegram chats, emailing or making a video call are just some of the ways in which the internet has changed the way we interact with each other in society. With the internet, you can connect to any computer in the world and access information. You can join other friends, form groups to learn about many things. Internet is also allowing new methods of learning through online courses and resource repositories.

The potter was gathering data about the mud, the water, the texture and he was making the pot. Now you have a photo of the pottery making and it is possible to know about the pot by looking a picture and reading about it. Is there any difference between what you know and what the potter knows?

1. What are the ways in which ICT can help the potter create knowledge?
2. What are the ways in which ICT can help connection and communication for the potter?

If so many things are impacted by ICT, it is important to understand how these work, and how they should be used ethically and safely. Technology should be treated like a common resource of society, where everyone can access it, interact with it, benefit from it and contribute to it. More and more people should be able to use ICT in a manner appropriate for their needs, for this, access to ICT should be treated like a public good, like public education or public health.

What is the internet

Key layers of the internet	If you want information about some book available in your library, you can connect to the library's computer from home and get the information that you want. There are many such computers in different organisations giving us different types of information. These computers are connected to one another, their network is called the Internet. The Internet is a physical network of millions of computers across the world, each of which has a unique identifier. Some of these computers act as 'servers', they store data which can be accessed by other computers, hence the internet is like a huge library with information on almost any issue.
World Wide Web	Initially the internet was a set of computers connected by one another and information requests were sent, using specific text commands, and received through networks. But this was difficult to do. In 1989, Sir Timothy Berners Lee developed a system by which the computers can transfer information through a method called Hyper Text Mark-up Language or HTML. He developed the application called the "World Wide Web - www". Yes, the "www" is an application on the internet to access the internet in the form of a web pages, using an application called the Web Browser. There are millions of pages of shared information on the computers in the network, created by many people and organizations, in the form of 'web pages' accessed using a software application called a web browser. This makes connection between computers more accessible to all and it allows different kinds of content to be shared across the internet.
Internet of things	Now can you think of all the places the internet is being used?

How is the unit organized

In this unit, there are three levels of activities. The activities will increase in difficulty - based on the ICT skills needed as well as subject knowledge that you will be building. As you work on the various activities for the different ICT areas in the each level, you will also get experienced with more ICT skills and this would help you with the subsequent level.

You can imagine this somewhat like a spiral staircase where you learn some topic at a basic level, you move along to the next class and you come back to discuss the same topic at a more advanced level.

At each level you will be exploring new things about ICT; you will also be creating your outputs and building what is called a digital portfolio. This portfolio will include your outputs; from these you will be able to know what you have learnt. At the end of the year, your teacher will assess your portfolio.

You will also keep adding and changing your portfolio. How is that possible? When you make a model of clay or thermocol, you cannot change it after you make it. One of the special features of ICT is that you can change (edit) your creation. This means that, in Class 7 you can change what you completed in class 6 or in Class 8 you can change what you completed in class 7. This means you can keep adding to your knowledge and also improve the quality of your output. You will have a cumulative portfolio at the end of class 8.