Communication Technology and Education

Communication Technology and Education
Chapter 3: ICT in Application Software

Introduction

            Due to the rapid growth of technology advance, computer has become an electronic machine that commonly used by public. In education firm, it helps a lot in processing data, collecting information and others by using computer software. It is commonly used by publics because computer consist a lot of applications software that run instruction and fulfill users’ needs. Today article is to study the used of application software in education firm.

           Application software can be classified as general-purpose, specialist or tailor-made. Both helps user to complete specific task by using some specific programs. The common applications software used in education firm mostly are general-purpose packages. For instance, it can be used as productivity tool, produce graphics and multimedia projects as well as facilitating communications. Moreover, software allows the hardware to do something useful.

What is Applications Software?

            Application software refers to software that helps user accomplish a task by creating content that computer cannot operate on its own. It is different with systems software that it doesn’t control or manage the system. Applications software allow people do their task more easily especially student. It does help in education. For example, sending email, data analysis, making poster and surfing information. It can be classified as general-purpose application software packages and specialist application software packages.

Typical software applications that general-purpose used by students are:

1.      Productivity Software                                    : Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel

2.      Graphics design/Multimedia Software          : Adobe Photoshop

3.      Communications Software                             : Internet Explorer, Google Chrome

Productivity Software

            In productivity software it can be categorized into work processing software application, spreadsheet software application and also presentation graphics software application.

            The most popular productivity software is Microsoft Word which is the word processors application. It used for creating, editing, formatting, saving, and printing documents. It also served as an Eco software which helps to reduce the use of paper and replaced all written paper work (Ross, 2011). In addition, it helps to improve the quality of written work by providing editing capabilities in creative process. For example, user can create their work by inserting text and graphics at the same time. With Microsoft Word, users can change character design, scale, appearance and insert clip art in order to make their document more interesting. In addition, it also helps students to auto-correct grammatical error by using spelling checker and also find and replace text. It works more effectively and efficiently when student are doing large amount of text. Most importantly, it can be saved into a document to revise and correction before the actual printing.

            Besides that, Microsoft Excel which is one of the spreadsheet software provide much internal functions to help user to do formulas by using special character (such as =, +, or @) to handle large amount of data information and records (Kokol, 1989). Data is organized in rows and columns by using labels or values to differentiate them. The common internal function that helps manage database that included in Microsoft Excel are cell references (row and column), cell that contain values (number), cell that contain label (text). Besides that, other common database types including currency, date, memo, hyperlink, and object. Microsoft Excel helps users done calculations and display the result within short period of time (Ennever, 1989).

            Next, the presentation software application is frequently being used in education firm as productivity software. For instance, Microsoft Power Point helps users transform their idea and information into presentations slide to show to others. Also, it provides templates for different presentation such as financial report and marketing plan. The various internal functions can help in presenting the slide to audience such as insert chart, clip gallery to add in the images, video clips and audio clips.

            All these software are suitable for students in home, personal and education use. For students, all these educational application software could help them work more efficiently and most of them are free of charge. In addition, it provides the attachment function that can help them to save document and information by using click link and display related articles.

Graphics Design/ Multimedia Software

            As the word graphic design, it refers to manipulate image or video by users. For instance, the most popular graphics software in image used by student is Adobe Photoshop. It is an image editing software that easily manipulated by users. User also can use graphics manipulation software to change the bitmap and vector images. For example, the rapid expand appear of graphic design application software actually causes huge impact for commercial art. These application provide different capabilities that can learn by users themselves. As a result, some commercial artists loss their job (Makela, 2005).

Communication Software

            Communication software is an application that designed to pass information from one system to another. Also, it allows users to communicate with each other through internet. The best examples of communication software are file transfer protocol (FTP), messaging software and email (Wang, 2005). Besides that, it includes the web browser such as Google Chrome and Internet Explore that can help user to communicate with others. It is an application that specifically designed to let user to search and display content that found from the internet. Then, it uses hyperlink or URL to view the website.

Conclusion

            Educational software today is now designed to help students and educators with organization, productivity, research, presentation and learning. These applications software allows students perform their task more efficiently in education firm. It addition, it is relatively cheap and some of it is even free of charge. Also, it can be installed quickly and easily nowadays. Today’s homework assignment require a computer more than a series of book. Application software offers benefit for students in timesaver and gives a lot of information such as word processing and database management. The communication software that uses "Web 2.0" technology helps student in finding material for assignment and also media-sharing services.

References

Ennever, J. (1989). Software productivity. Information And Software Technology, 31(5), 283. doi: 10.1016/0950-5849(89)90009-8

Kokol, P. (1989). Application of spreadsheet software in software engineering measurement         technology. Information And Software Technology, 31(9), 477-485. doi: 10.1016/0950-5849(89)90146-8

Makela, T. (2005). Multimedia software as culture: towards critical interaction design. IEEE Multimedia, 12(1), 14-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/mmul.2005.8

Ross, D. (2011). Software reviews: Productivity software.  Engineering & Technology, 6(12), 98-99. doi: 10.1049/et.2011.1222

Wang, D. (2005). Detecting Feature Interactions in Next Generation Communication Software. Journal Of Software, 16(7), 1232. doi: 10.1360/jos161232