ICT †The Way I do Things at Home and at School Essay

I use ICT a lot at home and at school and in this report I will show how, where, when and why I use these appliances. At home there are many appliances which use ICT, for example; Microwaves, Mobile Phones etc. But there are also some appliances which I also use at school for example; PCs. And I will also show how I use these things in different ways. I use my mobile phone a lot at home, it is just one of the few ways I keep in touch with people who I don’t often see and live quite a way away. There are only two ways people can contact me on my mobile phone The phone I own is a ‘Samsung A300e’ which also has WAP. WAP is Wireless Application Protocol which is a standard way to connect to the internet using wireless devices; it also allows you to access information like text and images. I can use my mobile phone anywhere in the home except where I can’t get a signal; the only place in the home is usually the basement. With different networks you can different signals for example I am on â€Å"Virgin† which does not have many satellites in space and therefore does not have as much coverage as â€Å"Vodafone† who have many more satellites and can cover a larger amount of land. The good things about having a mobile phone is that if there is no other way to contact friends in an emergency then it is very easy to contact them using a mobile, although there are some downsides to having a mobile phone and there are that people may contact you and you may not want them to, or you could be somewhere important like a meeting and someone could contact you either by ringing you or sending a SMS, I use digital television quite often and it is transmitted through a satellite dish which is placed on the side of the house and transmits in signals which allow more channels to be viewed than normal, the channels range from 101 to 999 but obviously there are not channels on every number some channels are skipped e.g. 666 there is just a message that says channel unavailable. With digital TV you can shop and even play games. There is also lots of information that can be found out like, cinema listings or even the latest live shows. There is always a TV guide available sorted into sections like, comedy, music or sport which is easier if you are looking for something in particular. I use a microwave at home to heat food or defrost something frozen. I use it to heat things because it is a lot more efficient than the stove. It also knocks down the time of defrosting because I can just set it to defrost and put it on for several minutes rather than leaving it out over night. I play a lot of the time on computer consoles because it is a form of entertainment for me. I play many games like football manager games and platform games such as ‘CROC’ which are more like adventure games. I have a playstation 2 which can also play playstation 1 games and use the same joypads. I have many other games like Mind hunters which take hours to complete and when I usually finish them I have usually being playing for about 100 hours all together. I also use an X-BOX which is one of the best consoles of all time in my opinion, although it is slightly expensive therefore I have few games, the pads can range from small to large which I think are a bit big for my liking. I use a PC a lot at school because I do Applied ICT and I also use them to type up course work in many of my lessons e.g. English. I also use them for entertainment I go on the internet quite a lot, after I finished my work. I use sites like, mousebreaker.com and uwizone.com which is my email. When I’m on email I come into contact with people from all around the world like India and the USA. This is an advantage because if there were no PCs I would be required to do all work by hand and probably wouldn’t be doing ICT GCSE. When using the computer I have to abide by several laws like the computer misuse act and the copyright act. The software I use is: Word- to word process Excel- to create spreadsheets Access- to create databases Power Point- to create presentations