Education and the Information Age

ICT has affected education in a number of ways, whether you are a teacher or student, it has affected both, as years pass more and more changes and upgrades are being made within the ICT sector. The interrogation of ICT within schools today has been purposely done to prepare students for the working environment in the future, when they are old enough to go out and get a job. This has now become necessary because so many jobs today have a computer involved somehow; therefore the employees in any business need to be trained to operate various programmes and software on a computer system. With this in mind it is important that students learn the basic functions of a computer and how to operate them systematically.

Not so long ago this would have been unnecessary knowledge to have but with computerisation being so advanced today, affecting the job market in several ways, the use of computers has to be taken seriously, a student’s ability to operate one has to be decent. If a student today decided to not bother having anything to do with a computer this would no doubt have repercussions later on in life and subsequent employment.

How has computerisation and ICT affected our education today?

Within a classroom there are multiple types of equipment and apparatus having something to do with technology. That today probably has a limited level of importance to most people; this is because it is considered normal to the generation of students in school. However, there are drastic changes from previous years as to how children are taught today, compared to say ten years ago. Years ago people would have to find out all their needed information from books; these would be taken out from a library, whereas today students simply log onto their computer and browse the internet in no time at all.

Smart Boards

The sole purpose of Smart boards is to allow for a teacher to interact with students by using an oversized computer screen through a touch sensitive pad. Resulting in the lesson becoming a truly collaborative experience for the students. All intended information can be conducted and explained using the screen, written notes that are made during lesson, if any, can also be saved just like on an ordinary computer, therefore the notes can be using for future lessons.

Smart Boards are connected to a main projector; this projector is what projects the image on the smart board, the image or information shown is what the computer (that is also connected to the projector) is browsing or the software they are using. This has become increasingly easier for students to interact with their lessons, resulting in a better learning environment. The use of the old whiteboard is considered to be outdated as people consider their standard and quality very low.

PowerPoint

As students work their way up higher in education, confidence is slowly going to build; teachers see a good way of helping students to do this is by setting a presentation on a certain subject. The use of PowerPoint when creating presentations today is extremely useful, each slide revealing information about a certain topic. Teachers find this an ever increasingly easier way to cover topics and retain the attention of students, pictures animations can easily be included, which draws in the audience more. The use of PowerPoint today within education I believe is a crucial factor in delivering a detailed explanation and extensive presentation.

PowerPoint works effectively and is one of the easiest programmes to do so. The use of a smart board and projector is essential when presenting anything, these allowing for display of the on screen work to a wider audience. The smart boards themselves have largely enhanced the learning experience of any student, using a projector allows for all within a class to see clearly the work being explained and the teachings displayed during lessons, this gives off a greater educational knowledge and a better understanding.

Computers

The computer itself is the most important feature that is present within the classroom or learning environment. The log in of each staff member and the data and software the computer hold is vital to every teacher in order to continue with their planned out lessons. This results in an increased teaching experience, and when the teacher plans out lessons and know what they are doing then the attitude of the students is going to be far more concentrated. The software run throughout the computer itself has allowed for teachers to plan, and carry out lessons in a more efficient and interesting manner.

Virtual Learning Environment

The most important piece of software by far throughout schools today allows for the students to track their personal progress and stay in constant contact with their teachers allowing for a more personal learning experience never before seen with teachers and learners.

Computers themselves offer an array of software alone that can be used to increase the learning experience. Word processors are the main type of programme used throughout the school. Microsoft office series have allowed for adaptations and extension of student learning.. The increased ability of this are the array of printing methods, that allow staff to print off the slides within their presentation with lines, in turn allowing students to annotate the slides as the teacher progresses with the presentation on display.

My Own Experience

Personally the use of ICT in school has been extremely useful throughout each year; it makes finding information a lot easier. When I was revising for my exams I used educational programmes such as My Maths and BBC Bitesize. If I did not have the use of a computer then I would have never been able to complete over half of my assigned work, I think having ICT available in schools for students is more than useful, it is now labelled as a necessity.

The use of the Sims system software within several schools was introduced to improve the efficiency within the running of a school. St Gregory’s has access to the Sims system which allows all teachers to see a full list of their students within each of their classes; this is also use as a digital register. Communication with other staff members can all be done via Sims, meaning discussions about only students is available is necessary, this is all done privately and for the students benefits. It is designed for the staff alone, this allowing them to view personal information about any student if needed, this is very important to have today as many children have health problems; therefore it is better if the teacher is aware of these matters.

Each student who attends St Gregory’s today is given a unique user name and password. From here they are able to access all networked computers within the school, giving them access to a large selection programmes such as Microsoft applications, the internet and the schools personal email. Considering all students today have such access to such advanced software and internet, this gives them the opportunity to explore and expand on their own knowledge. However the actions of the student is constantly being monitored, each computer is networked to a main server, this being an ICT technician, who has the ability to view all the work being done by a student, this is purely for the students best interests, making sure they are keeping on task and not misusing what time they are given. Blocking websites or even being blocked from the internet altogether is possible if deemed to be appropriate, the decision will be made by any teacher if needed and will be inflicted by the main ICT technician.

Advantages of using ICT in education today:

·         Expansion upon technology within the classroom has led to learning styles of fashions being catered for.

·         Different uses of technology within the classroom have allowed teachers to provide variations in the way in which they teach, therefore engaging the students through the change.

·         The use of the Sims system is a leap in school organization; it allows for increased communications between staff, therefore ensuing students are always within lessons.

·         The use of Projectors and smart boards has encouraged staff to bring multimedia elements into the classroom, this has allowed educational videos and extra curriculum games to be enjoyed by all students.

Disadvantages of using ICT in education today:

·         Students may sometimes go off topic due to the introduction of multimedia within the classroom.

·         The hardware itself is expensive to replace if damaged, with the projector bulbs only lasting 250 hours, their replacements are expansive £200.

·         People must be employed to maintain the new hardware and software.

Printing

The printer and photocopier within a school are essential tools for both the teacher and student. Having a printer available for everyone within a school is an absolute necessity; teachers need to print out worksheets which can then be photocopied. Whereas students need to print of work to hand into teachers, this may have been work set for homework which required use of the internet. Also students print out worksheets from school drives all the time, this may be done for revision aspects or just they just wanted to increase their knowledge further on a certain topic.

The photocopier allows for documents to be copied multiply times, then being distributed throughout a class for personal use increasing concentration. These two essential pieces of hardware can be found in any school today throughout England and in combination with that of other hardware and software have all had a contributing factor to play in the expansion and extension of a heightened learning environment and experience.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism within all schools today is a problem. As all students now have full access to most documents online at home and during school, this means they can view other peoples work whenever they desire. Making it easy to simply copy and paste either from the internet of from a previous students work. They may think it a good idea at the time but when their work comes round to being moderated and checked, it will soon be discovered that their work has been copied. This can sometimes result is disqualification from you school courses so you have to be careful.

The Effect Computerisation Has On Employment

ICT has radically changed the way in which numerous jobs operate today. Computerisation has advanced across all jobs throughout the United Kingdom; it has allowed processes of all kinds to be carried out and completed in a more efficient process and manor. In addition, computerisation has introduced masses of new jobs globally but in return has also removed them.

Job Opportunities Involving Computing

Over recent years there has been a huge amount of new employment opportunities, this is due to the introduction of computer usage. Technology has become so far advanced today that it is being used everywhere, especially within a work force and company; they are used on a regular basis.

Engineers, programmers, system analysts and skilled technicians are just a few of the jobs available within the job market due to these advances of technology. These jobs have all been provided due to the demand of computerisation throughout major businesses and other areas of employment.

This now means that computerisation has caused multiply types of machinery to now be removed as the need for employment within an individual task is absolute, this could occur in the printing industry for example. So many people today are using there tablets or smartphones or even the TV to keep updated with the news of the world, therefore meaning newspapers and some magazines are becoming less and less popular. However, the application of the new equipment has made new jobs available for the maintenance of the machinery, and various other areas of its application.

How Has the Use Of Computers Changed?

Life today has changed rapidly due to the introduction of computerised software and new equipment. It has altered in a way that any business can now operate it making it more accessible for all to use.

In the past employees of offices and businesses where required to manually sort their files and documents in to cabinets that took up a large amount of space within the office. This took up an astonishing amount of time that they should have been spending doing additional work, it is also easy to mess up where you put your files and accidently misplace them causing this method of handling data to be inefficient.

Today, this system of manually handing data has been replaced by the use of multiple computers being able to access the same data through signing into a programme. However the introduction of computerisation within business has led to numerous job cuts allowing for many large businesses to reduce the amount their employees, cutting costs spent or salaries. This causes higher rates of unemployment and causes many people financial problems.

 

Advantages of using technology within a business:

·        The efficiency that computerisation offers allows for tasks to be carried out at a faster rate as opposed to that of an employee.

·        The costs for maintaining a computerised system is relatively cheap compared to that of paying an employee’s wage.

·        Using ICT within stores eliminates the chances of simple mistakes within areas such as product costs and sales prices.

Disadvantages of using technology within a business:

·        Within widespread computerisation companies can rapidly reduce their employment levels, this can be devastating for the employee, and due to the widespread economic depression unemployment is a key factor that needs to be addressed and corrected. Due to this the negative effect of being replaced by a computerised   system is something companies must take very seriously and can be seen today in widespread self-service  machines in supermarkets and is the reason for many postal strikes seen today.

·        The costs to repair a damaged machine can be catastrophic for small business and massively effect the overall profit for large. Machines maybe cheap to maintain but are notoriously expensive to replace when a fault   occurs.

·        For those who are not familiar with ICT the idea of having to use it may not appeal to some as they consider it daunting and complicated.

·        Simple tasks such as refunding items may require higher supervision this makes the ease of purchase a lot harder and the customers time extended further.

How Will Computerisation Change In the future?

Our current generation as a culture within the UK have grown up knowing of the advances within ICT and have been educated thoroughly to use it. However people of an older generation are not entirely aware of the complexity of a computer and do not know how to operate most of the functions and programmes provided with a computer. But now as the generations go on and computers continue to advance at a rapid speed, the use of computers in the future will become simple to everyone, they will also most likely become out of date. This is because today we now have laptops or IMac’s. Additionally the introduction of tablets has now been made, therefore instead of schools having computers for students to use, tablets will become an easier and more efficient option as technology is advancing all the time.

Teleworking

Teleworking usually means working from home and using ICT to communicate with your workplace.  A computer is essential to every teleworker as they are required to complete and transfer all their work through E-mail to their workplace, consequently meaning the employee requires an E-mail address. They need internet access at all times as thorough research is always a must; this internet access needs to be of a decent speed to get work done efficiently and on time. A fax machine is sometimes needed depending on the type of job the employee has, most of the time documents can be sent using the computer software. Videoconferencing is often used to communicate with people therefore the appropriate equipment such as a microphone, speakers and a video camera is needed, this is also useful to have during any meeting they may need to attend. Videoconferencing means any person can use computers to provide a video-link between two or more people, this allows you to see them as well instead of just talking via the telephone.

The teleworker does not physically have to be based at home, for example; a  journalist or writer could be anywhere in the world and still get their article or photographs prepared in no time at all ready for the next day’s newspapers, this is only possible if they had Internet access to transfer their files.



This is a picture of a typical office today, it is using several types of advanced technology

Online Entertainment

Entertainment Downloads

The most popular form of downloading today is music downloading; it is one of the most popular actions performed on the web. This involves a user purchasing their chosen music files from any music store such as ITunes store or Amazon MP3 and saving it within their own files, it is then possible to transfer these music files on to their IPod or phone. Through these sites, the user can listen to almost any song anywhere for a reasonable price.

Although, this also means that illegal music downloading is an extremely common problem today. To overcome this problem many anti-piracy laws have been introduced; also various illegal sites; such as LimeWire have been shut down permanently.

Movie downloads are also popular with online browsers today, this is similar to music downloading just with films rather than music. Movie download sites allow users to watch nearly any movie requested online. A couple of examples of film browsing websites include Lovefilm and Netflix; these both have increased in popularity along with movie downloading altogether. However, there are also forms of movie piracy, meaning some users are watching illegally downloaded movies instead of paying. As a result from this cinemas are drastically struggling with money issues through loss of customers. Cinema companies have also reacted to the problem of piracy by making short anti-piracy films.

Another form of downloading is game downloading, when a game is downloaded online, the online games will be installed onto a user’s computer. There are now various gaming apps that is available to download onto a Smartphone or tablet; this allows users to choose from many different games that can be played at any time you desire. Unfortunately yet again piracy also affects downloadable games; many gaming companies have lost money from people using the ‘P2P’ piracy network.

BBC IPlayer

BBC IPlayer is part of  bbc.co.uk; it allows you to watch TV at anytime you want.

In order to access you simply go to the BBC IPlayer website and browse for the programmes you want to watch. You can browse using a selection of categories, including; channel or by different genres. There is also a search box to find something specific. A wide range of BBC TV programmes from the past seven days from many television channels are available to watch or even download.

Once you have chosen what you want to watch, you can either play the programme immediately, this method is known as 'streaming', or instead you can download it to your computer to watch when it’s most convenient for yourself.

If you have a more modern computing device such as the IPad hopefully you can just choose a programme and hit the play button. However, if you have an older computer, you may be asked to download 'Flash Player', this software will allow you to play the programme.

Spotify

Spotify is instant, fun and simple, it is one of the most recent and up to date ways to enjoy music.  It offers you legal and free access to a large library of music. All you are required to do is create an account and start to download our streaming music player. You simply download and install, and straight away you can start downloading music, you are spoiled for choice. You can search anything from the genre, artist or song of your choice.

Spotify aim is to connect millions of people with their favourite songs by creating a programme that people love to use daily.

What are the advantages of using Spotify?

·         There are no restrictions when it comes to what music you wish to play and download.

·         There is no longer the hassle of waiting for files to download, also they don’t fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them.

·         Music has many social aspects, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends.

ITunes

There are many types of entertainment among the web today, one of the main sectors being the music industry, ITunes today is the most popular music download website today and is used by millions on a daily basis.

Tunes are a free media management application software created by Apple, for both the Macintosh and Windows operating systems. You can use it to manage and play both your downloaded audio and video files on your computer. It can automatically download new music, app’s, and book purchases across all your devices and computers that hold an ITunes account. There is a store that has everything available that you need to be entertained, the prices are inexpensive for a great piece of entertainment that you will have in the long term.

In 2005 video support was introduced to iTunes with the release of iTunes 4.8. This allows the user to purchase an ever larger selection of multimedia for their computing device; these include videos such as movies and music videos. Users can drag and drop video clips from the computer into the iTunes Library for organization. They are then available to download on to other MP3 devices so you can watch anytime, even when on the go.

There is also an ‘App’ section on iTunes keeps track of all of the apps the user has downloaded or purchased. It also organizes their apps by genre, such as games and social networking sites; these would both be segregated into their own section. There is an additional tab that allows the user view all of their apps together. It also informs the user quire regularly when they have updates for their apps, these updates are optional.

In 2010, Apple announced the new release of the IPad, along with this a new app for it came too, this is called iBooks. The application performs two functions, the first function being a direct link to the iTunes book store, called iBookstore, which can be accessed on any iOS device and computers. The second reason was for a storage place for downloaded books from the iBookstore; these can be either free or purchased.

You Tube

You Tube is the largest video sharing website today, is becoming a website that some people use on a daily basis. You Tube allows people upload videos of anything that a person has decided to record or produce. These videos are made by people because their interests have influenced them, or of anything they want to aware the public of, but these videos have to abide by the terms and conditions. On You Tube you can listen to new music via Vevo or just videos people have made because they enjoy that song. You can also catch up on some television series or programmes; these are usually uploading in parts E.g. each different scene.

Netflix

Netflix now have more than 30 million streaming members worldwide. Netflix is the leading online subscription service for streaming films and TV episodes over the Internet. People have to option to purchase a free trial to see if they like the website and whether it is worth purchasing fully in the long term, if they decide this is the case it can be downloaded for just £5.99 a month, Netflix members can instantly watch unlimited films & TV episodes streamed to their TVs and computers. However, Netflix does not contain every film or programme, only a wide selection.

E-readers

An E-reader allows you to download books from the internet and save them onto your personal E-reader; this device can hold thousands of books at once. E-readers allows the users to be able to read wherever they want to without having to carry multiple books around, that would take up a lot of space. An E-reader is thin and lightweight which is ideal for everyday use. The most popular E-reader is the Kindle; these have had negative effects on book stores. Book stores have lost out on many sales because people will be downloading E-books instead of purchasing a paperback book from your local store.

Facebook

Facebook now allows each member to play games with your friends and challenge them to battle you, this can be done as a form of socialising or even getting to know other people better as you will contact them about the game. This is a quick and easy method of entertainment that you can play with your friends; this is because a large majority of the population have Facebook as it is, so using a social networking site for gaming is a brilliant idea.

Download Services

Downloading is where a software programme is installed into your hard drive onto your computing device through choice; you are just copying the programme or file from the internet and claiming it as you own. Downloading a file offers many similarities as when you visit a shop and purchase items off the shelves from there, but instead you pick what you want and place it into a shopping cart to buy and download instantly. Whenever you download a file, there is always a small risk that the file will contain a virus or a program that can damage your computer or your information, therefore you have to make sure you computer is fully protected against viruses before downloading anything.

 

Therefore download services is where you purchase any type of service off the internet such as audio files like music or films; this are available from sites such as ITunes. The popularity of people using download services today has dramatically increased over many years, it is almost normal for the people of today’s generation to be using download services instead of shopping elsewhere. There are many other types of download services available, these will be discussed in detail below.

What is streaming?

Streaming means listening to music or watching video in ‘real time’, instead of physically downloading a file to your computer and saving it to watch whenever desired.

With internet videos and webcasts of live events, there is no file to download as it is happening at that exact moment, just a continuous stream of data.

The reason why people and most broadcasters prefer streaming is because it’s hard for most users to save the content and distribute it illegally.

Why do people illegally download music?

 

The music industry is facing a crisis because of the high amount of young people downloading music. This problem has now grown so big that the numbers of young people who download music from illegal file-sharing websites sucj as LimeWire (which has now been shut down) outnumber those using legal services such as ITunes.

 

Thousands of people download music illegally because they don't realize the harm it does and the risk they are enhances on their computer, these people are only thinking about themselves. When you illegally download music you are taking well earned money from the artist who rightfully earned it. Although some people only illegally download music is if they cannot find it on for sale on ITunes; however, this does still not make it right to do so. Most people today download music illegally because they may no money to purchase certain items.

Downloading Audio

Audio downloads being made through the internet offers a huge advantage to people today, they no longer have to leave the comfort of their own home in order to buy and receive their favourite forms of entertainment; such as films. There are now many websites in which you can download and sync audio to your own personal PC on the internet. This is done by the company who runs the websites because they know that this method of buying entertainment offers much higher rates of convenience to a customer and therefore the profits are significantly higher.

The four main types of audio downloading today are music, films, games and e-books. People today mainly tend to shop online as it is a much easier and quicker option, now there is no need to worry about having to go out and buy luxuries as almost all types of entertainment is available to purchase online. Also having e-books available to students online saves them the worry of having to go out and buy study and revision guides and text books as they can now be downloading straight from the internet as well.

Books, Newspapers, Magazines    

The option of downloading newspapers and magazines via the internet has been rising in popularity over the past few years. This is because people are always wondering what is happening in the world today and its common affairs, the public like to be up to date with what happening. In order to do this, if there was not the option to browse the recent news and stories online then people would have to go out on a regular basis to buy the most recent paper based newspapers and magazines. This is highly inconvenient for most people as they are always busy doing various things such as working. In addition, there are also people who do not have the option to go out and buy things for themselves whether they would like to or not, such as elderly or disabled people. Therefore, making it possible for anyone to browse the news online has been introduced mainly for the least fortunate members of the public, and it has become more and more popular as technology has become much more advanced as years go by.

Producing newspapers books and magazines come at a very high price today; they are all made with paper, therefore, the advantage being the highly significant savings made from having them available to browse online.

The Kindle

A kindle is an electronic book with a screen that is hand held by a reader. You first purchase the kindle hardware from Amazon; you are then open to the option of purchasing thousands of downloadable books. The main advantage of a Kindle is the fact that it can hold a considerable amount of books and takes up next to no space at all, and is a lot easier to carry around than a pile of hardback books. The Amazon Kindle enable users to shop for and download many different genre books, browse and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media types. But in order to do so you have to be connected to a nearby wireless network.

Maps & Manuals

Having maps available online saves people at lot of problems. If someone who is travelling somewhere that there are not too well known with a map is always useful. Therefore if that person owns a smart phone or tablet with internet access they can get a map up of anywhere in the world they desire at that exact moment in time. This is a great advantage to people if they are lost and don’t own a paper map, it is not always possible for people to go out and  buy an actual paper map before going on an unknown journey, especially if the journey was an unexpected, spur or the moment thing.

However, not everyone has internet access on their phone, which means an online map is most defiantly going to be an option for them, this being a disadvantage for the people who requires directions.

Having manuals available to us online is always useful. When anyone purchases a new product or item that is reasonably complex; they do not always think to keep the instruction manuals. This later on resulting in confusion of how to operate something, for example, if it falls apart. So companies now think to advertise manuals online just in case this happens to someone, this saves a lot of time for companies as they won’t get customers calling up for help or visiting the shop to complain.

 

Downloading Software

 

Instead of having to go out to you local computing shop to by software, you can now purchase it online. This is good because if your software runs out or you realise you need a new type of software in order to do something important, being able to buy software online is highly convenient and saves a lot of time.

Downloading Pictures/photos

Today it is now possible to download photos that have been taken by a company and print out the selection you want and like yourself. This saves time and everything is being controlled by you once your photos have been uploading and are available to you via the internet. You can save these photos to your own PC and change the size and edit them if you desire with no extra costs from the company.

 

Downloadable tickets

The online ticket brings the ticket counter to you at home. You can now purchase your tickets online and print them out yourself. People today can be quite impatient, so rather than waiting for tickets to come through the post they prefer to download them straight from their PC and print. Therefore, as this has become the preferred option of retrieving tickets today, the idea of printing them has become popular and more websites now have the option to do so. An advantage of doing this is there is a lot of time and effort saved. You don’t have to sit around pondering about when your tickets are going to arrive; also the postage cost for both you and the company is saved.

The main reason this is preferred today is because, rather than having the worry that your tickets may turn up late or not turn up at all, if you can print them yourself; you have the guarantee of receiving you tickets on time. After purchasing from any ticket shop or website, you will be provided with the online ticket on the Internet as a PDF file to download.

Copyright

Copyright is a form of protection that must always be provided to the authors of any original work belonging to them, this could include work such things as literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intelligent creations. These creations can be both published and unpublished, it doesn’t matter, and if they are copied it is still illegal. Copyright does not protect ideas of any sort; it only protects the specific and original idea.

Copyright within the music industry

Copyright protects every artist involved in the music industry. This could involve aspiring artists who have only recently become involved with the music industry or a successful best selling, award winning artist. Copyright supports both local independent recording companies to the large multinational producer. In addition, copyright ensures that all the parties that have had any part in creating the music are guaranteed to be rewarded for their hard work.

Copyright has the right and responsibility to protect the true value behind the sale of any musical recording. These rights represent and reward the creativity and hard work of those who create and sell music.

Tablets

A tablet computer is an operating system such as the extremely popular IPad. The IPad consists of a thin, touch-screen operated system, it has become the weapon of choice for many computer users as they offer a great experience when browsing the web or using  one of the thousands of apps available. Apps include everything from games to specialized word processors, search engines and social networking sites. Apps make use of a tablet's touch screen; this delivers an experience that a user could not retrieve from a typical computer.

 

There are many advantages to having a tablet; such as forward and rear-facing cameras which can be taken and used anywhere, these photos are also extremely high quality. 

However, there are also disadvantages to owning a tablet, they are considerably bigger than the average Smartphone which makes it harder to carry around place, this equal high inconvenient. There is a huge risk of breaking a tablet as they are reasonable heavy and are much more delicate as they have a large touch screen, this could easily crack under too much pressure. Tablets have the ability to do nothing more than the average Smartphone yet so many people today feel the need to have one as well as a Smartphone, this just equals having to pay out more for near enough the same experience.

E-readers

Electronic devices today are made purely for our entertainment needs; the people of today are starting to depend on technology such as e-readers. It will be no shock when the way to read books in the future is through the use of an e-reader. Reading books now is unnecessary, you can now hold you own portable reading device within in the palm of your hand with these new and clever technological gadgets. People love to use their e-reader rather then read an actual book, considering an e-reader can store more than one book in one tiny device. They hold a variety of features that make the overall experience of reading rather enjoyable.

There are two main sellers of e-readers today, these being the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. Each of these highly advanced items of new technology offers a variety of features which include the ability to hook up to a computer to back up your information, also all reading files can then be downloaded and transferred. Most e-reader devices hold up to 200 books, memory cards are available to purchase for your device if you need more storage space.

What are the advantages of an E-reader?

E-readers have a wide range of options compared to ordinary reading e-books; it is possible to get online versions of your favorite magazine or newspaper that you like to read on a regular basis. Additionally there is a magnification tool to enhance and enlarge the text you are reading. Although, there is a variety of different other tools available for you to try out and use, e-readers hold the ability to bookmark pages, turn pages back and forth and highlight parts of the text. But the main advantage being all of the above is inclusive within one small compact, convenient and comfortable portable device.

The contribution to a greener environment is offered by the use of e-readers, people are encouraged to purchase their materials digitally. This reduces the amount of trees, ink and manufacturing that goes into making hard copies of books. These savings are forwarded onto the consumer; they will then pay far less for digital books than they will for printed versions.