Effect of IT industry on Literacy - Essay Example

Effect of IT industry on literacy Information technology is defined precisely as the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer based information systems.(Information Technology, Wikipedia) It is a relatively new field in contrast to most other academic disciplines like electronics and it has become one of the fastest developing fields providing numerous opportunities. Every year more number of software companies are being established and a number of new softwares are being developed which are specific for specific applications. In general all the manual work done is now being automated using software. This had made work easier and much faster than before. For example a manual may require at least a week with a man power of ten to fifteen people whereas when it comes to an automation the same work can be finished off within a day with an employee of one o two who knows how to operate it. A number of examples can be cited where Information Technology has played a considerable role. We can take the banks before they were automated. There used to be a lot of difficulty and lot of time consumption for performing transactions. Cashing a check involved a lot of time as the balance had to be calculated manually. But Information Technology has revolutionized banking sectors. Any kind of transaction can be performed within seconds from creating an account to withdrawing cash. And the introduction of ATMs(Automated Teller machines) has made the work even much more simpler in which the user can take money whenever he or she likes and need nor carry the exact amount of money. The IT industry has created a lot of opportunities as well in terms of employment and also with special incentives and packages which no other fields are offering. And also IT sector had a lot of influence of the education sector. Computer education is being provided from early years of education itself. This helps children to cope up with the coming years since they would have firm foundation in computers. Also special emphasis is being given in terms of application programming and also to games. Games help children to improve creativity and also form a kind of entertainment and refreshment. Similarly exposure to internet has also helped since internet is considered to be the largest storage of knowledge and the child can get any sort of information on whatever topic or subject he or she is interested in. It also makes learning easy and interesting. Information technology provides for students to develop and exercise their critical thinking abilities. Information conveyed through advanced information technology such as computers and the World Wide Web can appear more convincing than the same information conveyed through a conversation with a stranger or the newspaper, despite the fact that it may have equivalent accuracy and validity. Students must evaluate all information critically. Their ability to present information using information technology can aid in developing an ability to separate form from content in all information, and in assessing its accuracy and validity. The result is a more critical evaluation of all information. Such critical ability helps individuals to evaluate information technology-mediated claims for alternative medicines, advertisements for energy-efficient homes, and homework advice from peers. Hence it can be observed that the IT industry has many positive aspects on literacy and education. One of the reasons is that IT has been made to reach even the remote places these days. In the past computers were only subjected to large offices and sectors. Even the internet was limitedly available. But slowly due to advancement in technology an attempt has been made to reach technology to every one and everywhere. This had been dome mainly due to the benefits which this particular field has got. These are the advantages of the IT field. But there are many negative aspects of IT sector as well. IT has definitely promoted literacy. But it has also had other impacts on children. For example lets take introduction of computer games. Though games act as a medim of refreshment, they do have negative effects on the minds of children. Children spend most of the times engrossed in the interesting games even during their exams forgetting their studies. This leads to poor grading and intellectual destruction. Similiary games mostly portray violence which is very harmful to the tender minds of children. This may even change the mind sets of children and may even in turn violent themselves. Similarly when it comes to e-learning or learning thorough internet, it has many negative aspects as well. Internet is considered as a storages house of vast amount knowledge but it also depends upom how much knowledge is extracted which is really useful. There are numerous sites which are harmful to especially youngsters especially sites related to pornography and other such offensive contents. Also one of the most negative aspects is that students sometimes due to lack of time tend to copy material directly form the internet rather than changing the contents. This makes students often timid and they done take pain to do the work themselves. This had indeed an adverse effect on literacy since in one way there is a decrease in the actual learning. People mostly tend to copy the work done by others or find easier ways of writing causing loss in originality. Also one of the best examples is the usage of spell checkers while writing documents.. In computing terms, a spell checker or spelling checker is a design feature or a software program designed to verify the spelling of words in a document, query, or other context, helping a user to ensure correct spelling. A spell checker may be implemented as a stand-alone application capable of operating on a block of text. Spelling checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary or search engine. An ordinary spelling checker will find little or no fault with this poem. This is because spelling checkers can only check if words are spelled correctly, not if the sentence makes sense. Simple spelling checkers operate at the word level, by comparing each word in a given input against a vocabulary (often erroneously referred to as a dictionary). If the word is not found within the vocabulary, it is designated erroneous, and algorithms may be run to detect which word the user most likely meant to type. One simple such algorithm is listing words from the dictionary with a small Levenshtein distance from the typed word. Many spelling checkers can operate in more than one language. There are many cases in which a user may intentionally type a word which is not within the vocabulary of the language in which the spelling checker is operating; proper nouns and acronyms are two common examples. To solve this problem, most spelling checkers allow the user to add custom words to the spelling checker's vocabulary. Usually the user also has the option to ignore specific errors. The first spelling checkers were "verifiers" instead of "correctors." They offered no suggestions for incorrectly spelled words. This was helpful for typos but it was not so helpful for logical or phonetic errors. The challenge the developers faced was the difficulty in offering useful suggestions for misspelled words. This requires reducing words to a skeletal form and applying pattern-matching algorithms. The obvious advantage of spell checkers is once a document is written is written it can be checked for spellings and cab be corrected easily. Hence the document can be made error free very easily. Therefore it is not essential to have a keen observation while writing a document. Some errors which have been inadvertently crept in can be corrected by just entering into the spell check mode. Similiary there are softwares for grammar checkers. In computing terms, a grammar checker is a design feature or a software program designed to verify the grammatical correctness or lack of it in a written text. A grammar checker may be implemented in a similar fashion as a spelling checker, such as a stand-alone application capable of operating on a block of text. Grammar checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger application, such as a word processor. Currently, there are no known instances of a grammar checker in an email client, electronic dictionary or search engine. Unlike spelling checkers, which work by comparing each word in a document with a list of correctly spelled words, true grammar checking requires more complex analysis. Full-blown grammar checkers use natural language processing, a branch of artificial intelligence. The earliest writing style programs checked for wordy, trite, clichd or misused phrases in a text. This process was based on simple pattern matching. The heart of the program was a list of many hundreds or thousands for phrases that are considered as poor writing by many experts. The list of suspect phrases included alternate wording for each phrase. The checking program would simply break a text into sentences, check for any matches in the phrase dictionary, and flag suspect phrases and show an alternative. Hence both spell checkers and grammar checkers have advantages. But the main disadvantage is the users would start relying heavily on these software and wont concentrate on their own spellings and grammars because of the notion that the software would any how detect the errors and correct them. Hence when the same document is required to be presented manually definitely the person might not be able to present in a perfect way. Hence the manual skills of the person would be effected. Hence it can be observed that usage of such software has negative effects as well. Hence it can be concluded that Information Technology has a profound influence in the growth of literacy. It has become almost compulsory to have a basic knowledge of computers these days. Also computers have become available to all the sects of the society and especially to the common man. People are able to utilise computers for making their businesses more efficient. But IT has its own disadvantages well. The growth in literacy has been there but there has become a loss in the actual learning and everything has started to become virtual. Studies have become virtual and there is a possibility of people to forget the way of manual work when everything is getting automated. Hence people appear to be literates in terms of computer knowledge but may tend to lose their knowledge of manual work. Bibliography: Information Technology, Wikipedia-the free online encyclopedia Information Technology, Encarta encyclopedia Information Technology, Encyclopedia Britannica Spell checker, Wikipedia-the free online encyclopedia Computer Networks, Andrew S. Tanenebau Webster, Frank, and Robins, Kevin. (1986). Information Technology-A Luddite Analysis. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems World wide web consortium, http://www.w3.org/ Blogging IT and EDucation, http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/ Read More