Information and Communication Technology

This is the age of science and technology. Inventions like the computer, the internet, the digital camera, CCTV (closed-circuit television: cameras that send their pictures only to a few screens, for security), the radio and the television have made our lives easier and simpler. Technology changes fast, and the field of information and communication has changed completely in a few years. Nepal has moved quickly too: with the internet, a computer or a mobile phone, we can talk to relatives inside and outside the country.

ICT is now used widely in teaching and learning. Lessons on the radio and the television, learning videos, e-books and online classes make learning more effective. So everyone needs the skill to use these tools well.

Radios, televisions, newspapers, computers and projectors are all tools of information technology. Between them they create, display, store, transmit (send) and exchange information.

One-way and two-way communication

The tools in Activity 2.1 can be put into two groups:

1. One-way means of communication: radio, television and newspapers. The information comes to you, but you can’t answer back through them, discuss or ask a question.
2. Two-way means of communication: the telephone, the mobile phone and the computer. With these you can receive information and reply, talk and discuss.

What the words mean

• Information is the facts we get about any thing or event. Reading a newspaper, listening to the radio and watching television, we get information about the whole world.
• Communication is the exchange of information between two or more people or groups, by speaking, writing or any other means. In other words, expressing your feelings or experience to others, in speech, in writing or in any other way, is communication.
• Technology is the scientific way of working that is used to do a job or to invent things.
• ICT is the short form of Information and Communication Technology.

The devices used for the different jobs of ICT are called the tools (means) of information and communication technology. Some of them:

The internet has made all these tools far more useful. On a phone or computer with internet access, you can find learning materials online, study them and do many other things.

To search for information on a computer, you need the internet. The internet is a network that joins together billions of computers and other devices all over the world. It is because of the internet that the information stored in computers anywhere in the world can be shared. A computer can join the internet with a wire (a cable) or without a wire (wireless, by Wi-Fi or a mobile network).

Sometimes a computer is connected but the internet still doesn’t work, because of a technical problem. The small network icon near the clock on a computer shows whether it has internet access.

The internet is one of the important needs of today’s world. It connects the tools of ICT to each other. With its help we learn about events anywhere in the world almost at once, read news online, and get knowledge and information from social networks. Because of the internet, the whole world has become like one small village, a global village.

Browser

Having internet access is not enough to look at things online. The computer also needs an app (application) that opens web pages. Such apps are called browsers. Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Microsoft Edge are widely used browsers.

Different computers and phones run different main software (Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS), and the browser may differ with it: an iPhone comes with Safari, an Android phone usually with Chrome.

Website

A website is a collection of information kept on the internet, as text, photos, videos and documents, under one address. Schools, offices, companies and other organizations keep their information on their own websites. Many website addresses begin with www, which stands for World Wide Web.

No two websites in the world can have the same address, so every website has its own exact address, its web address, also called its URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

Search engine

To find something on the internet, we use a search engine: a website that searches millions of web pages for the words you type and lists the pages that match. Google, Bing and Yahoo are search engines. When a browser is installed, one search engine is already chosen as its default (the one it uses unless you change it). You can change the default in the browser’s settings.

For example, in Google Chrome:

1. Open Chrome on your computer or phone.
2. Click the menu, the three dots ⋮ at the top right.
3. Click Settings, and then Search engine in the list on the left.
4. At “Search engine used in the address bar”, choose Google, Bing or Yahoo.
5. Now type any word in the address bar and press Enter: the results come from the search engine you chose.

The Google search engine is used most widely. You don’t need to know a website’s address to find it: type a few key words about what you want in the search engine. But if you do know the address (of a school, a university, a ministry, a government or non-government organization), you can type it straight into the address bar and go to its main page.

E-book

An e-book (electronic book) is a book in digital form. It can be read on a computer, a smartphone or an e-book reader. Many e-books are PDF files (Portable Document Format), which need a PDF reader app, such as Adobe Reader, or a browser, to open. You can find and download e-books on almost any subject with a search engine. An e-book takes up very little space, so one computer, or even one phone, can hold thousands of books.

Email

Email (electronic mail) is a way of sending and exchanging messages electronically. It has made sending letters by post much rarer. With email, words, pictures, sound and videos reach another place almost at once. To use email you need a computer or phone, the internet and an email service. Companies offer free email services: Gmail, Outlook (Hotmail), Yahoo Mail and others. With such a service, you can send messages to anyone who has an email address.

Opening an email account

You can open a new email account with any email service: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail and others. You need an email account not only to send email, but also to use many services on an Android smartphone (the app store, for example).

Sending an email and reading one you got

Email can be sent from Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail and other services. Here is how to do it in Gmail:

1. Type www.gmail.com in the address bar and press Enter.
2. Type your email address and password (or your parent’s) and click Sign in. Your mailbox opens.
3. Click Compose (the + sign or the pencil) at the top left.
4. In the To row, type the email address of the person you are writing to. To send the same email to several people, type their addresses one after another. You can also put addresses in Cc and Bcc to send copies.
5. In Subject, write a short title, so the person knows at once what the email is about.
6. Write your message. To send a file, a photo or a video with it, click the attach icon (the paper clip) at the bottom, choose the file, and it is attached.
7. Click Send. The email reaches the other person’s inbox within seconds.

To read the emails you have received, click Inbox. Open an email to read it. If a file is attached, you will see it below the message: click download to save it, and open it whenever you need it.

Advantages and disadvantages of email

Email is used more every day. It is easy, quick and useful for many things, but it can cause serious problems if we are careless.

The password of an email account must be kept secret and changed from time to time. To be able to recover the account if you forget the password, give your mobile number or another email address when you make the account. With care and safety, email is very useful in today’s world.

A spreadsheet is a computer program used mainly for calculating and for making graphs and charts. It can do a large calculation quickly with a single command. People use spreadsheets more and more, for their own accounts, in business and in offices. Microsoft Excel (part of Microsoft Office) is the most common; LibreOffice Calc and Google Sheets are free ones that work the same way.

In a spreadsheet you can:

• enter data;
• arrange data in alphabetical order, or in ascending or descending order;
• add, subtract, multiply and divide;
• present the data as a table or a chart.

Rows, columns and cells

A spreadsheet is a big grid. The columns go up and down and are named by letters: A, B, C… The rows go across and are numbered: 1, 2, 3… Each box where a column and a row meet is a cell, and it is named by its column letter and its row number: its cell address. The cell in column C and row 2 is C2.

Adding numbers in a spreadsheet

Here is a bill for vegetables. Open a blank spreadsheet (search for “Excel” on the computer and open a blank workbook), and type it in like this:

Every number has its own cell. The rate of tomatoes, Rs 70, is in column C and row 2, so its cell is C2. The 0.5 kg of mushrooms is in B7.

1. To add all the quantities: click cell B2 (the 2 kg of tomatoes) and drag down to B7 (the 0.5 kg of mushrooms). To drag means to press, hold and move: all the cells from B2 to B7 are now selected.
2. Click Σ AutoSum (on the Home tab). The total of the quantities, 12.5, appears in the cell just below, B8. AutoSum has written a formula in B8: =SUM(B2:B7), which means “add all the cells from B2 to B7”.
3. To add only some numbers, click the cell where the answer should go and type a formula that begins with =. For example, once the prices are in column D (below), the price of tomatoes (D2, Rs 140) plus the price of mushrooms (D7, Rs 125) is =D2+D7: press Enter and the cell shows 265.
4. In the same way, use − to subtract, * to multiply and / to divide. To take the price of onions from the price of potatoes, type =D3-D4 in the answer cell and press Enter (175 − 50 = 125). To divide the rate of mushrooms by the rate of tomatoes, type =C7/C2 (250 ÷ 70 = about 3.57).

Multiplying in a spreadsheet

The price of the tomatoes is their quantity times their rate.

1. Click cell D2.
2. Type =B2*C2 and press Enter. D2 shows 140 (2 × 70).
3. Now the other vegetables, all at once: click D2 again, put the mouse on the small square at the cell’s bottom right corner (the fill handle), and drag it down to D7. The formula is copied into every cell, and each copy uses its own row: D3 gets =B3*C3, D4 gets =B4*C4, and so on. Each vegetable’s price appears in its row.
4. To find the total cost, select D2 to D7 and click Σ AutoSum, as before: D8 shows 670.
5. The average price per kilogram of all the vegetables is the total price divided by the total quantity: in any empty cell type =D8/B8, which gives 670 ÷ 12.5 = Rs 53.60 per kg.

So a spreadsheet can easily add, subtract, multiply, divide and find averages.

Making a graph or chart in a spreadsheet

A spreadsheet can also show data as a graph or a chart: a line graph, a pie chart or a bar (column) diagram. A chart is more attractive than a table of numbers and makes the data easier to understand: one look shows what the numbers are saying.

1. First, type the data into the spreadsheet. As an example, here are the numbers of people who died in road accidents in an area, month by month, from Shrawan to Poush 2077 BS:

2. Select all the data (A1 to B7) and click Insert.
3. Among the kinds of charts shown, choose a suitable one.
4. The chart appears on the spreadsheet page.
5. Click the + sign at the top right of the chart to add things to it: tick (✓) what you want (a chart title, data labels, gridlines), and untick what you don’t.
6. Click Axis Titles to give the x-axis and the y-axis their names (“Month”, “Number of deaths”).

What do you do when you visit a new place? You take photos, of course, to remember it. We take photos at birthdays, weddings, bratabandha and pasni (annaprasan, a baby’s first rice), and many other occasions. A digital photo can be sent from one place to another quickly and easily through the tools of ICT, and photos and messages can be sent and received at once with different apps.

Phones now have good cameras, so taking high-quality photos is easy. Apps on the phone or computer can edit photos to make them more attractive, and make them bigger or smaller.

Copying photos from a phone or camera to a computer

1. Switch on the phone or camera and connect it to the computer with its data cable (USB).
2. A message on the screen (or on the phone) asks what the connected device should do.
3. Choose File transfer, because you want to move photos (files).
4. On the computer, open This PC → Devices and drives. It shows the computer’s drives and the connected phone or camera, by name.
5. Click the phone’s name to go inside.
6. Open the DCIM → Camera folder (or Pictures). The photos are now shown on the computer.
7. Select the photos to copy:
   • i.for one photo, click it, right-click and choose Copy (or press Ctrl + C);
   • ii.for several, click the first, then hold down Ctrl and click each of the others (or hold Shift and click the last, to pick all the photos between them), and copy them all at once;
   • iii.for all the photos in a folder, select the folder itself, or open it and press Ctrl + A to select everything.

8. Go to the folder or drive on the computer where you want them, right-click and choose Paste (or press Ctrl + V). The photos are now copied onto the computer.

Photo editing

Photo tools can make photos more attractive, and can make a digital photo smaller or bigger. Editing is also a useful skill for online applications: when you apply for a job or for admission to a school or college online, a photo or document often has to be of a fixed size, in a fixed file format (JPEG, PDF…). If it isn’t, the form won’t accept the upload. Here are some simple photo tools.

Crop

Sometimes a photo has more in it than you want. Keeping only the part you need and cutting off the rest is called cropping.

To crop a photo with the Photos app in Windows:

1. Open the photo with a suitable photo program.
2. Here we use the Photos app. (Right-click the photo and choose Open with; you can also choose which program opens photos by default.)
3. When the photo is open, click the Crop tool at the top.
4. A bright frame appears around the photo. Drag the frame so that only the part you want to keep is inside it.
5. Dragging a corner of the frame changes two sides at once; to move just one side (left, right, top or bottom), drag the middle of that side.
6. When the frame is right, click Done (or Crop and rotate).
7. Click Save as copy, so that the original photo stays as it was.
8. Choose the folder where the edited photo should be saved.

Light and color

1. Open the photo in the Photos app, as above.
2. Click Edit (or press Ctrl + E).
3. Click Adjustments: options such as light, color, brightness and contrast appear.
4. To make the photo lighter or darker, drag the slider for light (or brightness) left or right until the photo looks best.
5. Adjust the color the same way, and the other adjustments if needed.
6. With Spot fix, click on small spots or marks in the photo, again and again, to remove them.
7. When everything is done, click Save as copy and save the photo on the computer.

So by adjusting the light, color and clarity, and fixing spots, we can make a photo look better.

Making a photo bigger or smaller

A digital photo is made of tiny colored squares called pixels (short for “picture elements”), arranged in rows and columns like the cells of a spreadsheet. A photo 4272 × 2848 pixels has 4272 pixels across and 2848 down: more than 12 million pixels. The more pixels, the more detail, and the bigger the file.

To change the size of a photo in MS Paint:

1. Open MS Paint.
2. Click File → Open at the top left and choose the photo (or press Ctrl + O).
3. Zoom in or out so you can see the whole photo on the screen.
4. Click Resize.
5. Below the photo, Paint shows its size in pixels and its file size. In our example, the photo is 4272 × 2848 pixels and 3.3 MB.
6. In the Resize box, choose Pixels. With Maintain aspect ratio ticked, changing the horizontal pixels changes the vertical ones by itself, so the photo isn’t stretched.
7. To set both numbers yourself, untick Maintain aspect ratio (but the photo may then look squashed or stretched).
8. To make the photo smaller, make the pixels fewer; to make it bigger, make them more.
9. Click OK (or press Enter).
10. In our example, making the photo 3000 × 2000 pixels brought its file size down to only 973 KB.
11. Save the resized photo (Ctrl + S).
12. Save it in an image format (such as JPEG), on the desktop or in a folder.

Note: with internet access, you can also resize photos on websites that come up when you search for “online image resize”.

PowerPoint presentation

To explain something so that others understand it easily, we make a PowerPoint presentation: a set of slides shown on a screen. Photos make a presentation attractive, so they must be fitted well onto the slides; they can be edited first, or right inside PowerPoint.

Cropping a photo in PowerPoint

1. Save the photo on the desktop.
2. Open PowerPoint and click Insert → Pictures → This Device, and choose the photo: it goes onto the slide.
3. On the Home tab, click Layout and choose Blank, so the slide’s empty text boxes behind the photo go away.
4. Click the photo, then the Picture Format tab (Picture Tools).
5. Click Crop.
6. Black handles appear at the four corners and the middle of each side of the photo.
7. Drag the handles until they surround only the part you want.
8. The part that stays looks brighter than the part to be cut. Click Crop again (or click outside the photo).
9. Only the part you wanted is left on the slide.

Brightness, contrast, sharpness

1. Click the photo on the slide, then Picture Format → Corrections.
2. Point the mouse at the small pictures under Sharpen/Soften and Brightness/Contrast: the photo shows how each would look. Click the one that looks clearest.
3. For more control, click Picture Corrections Options and set the values you need.
4. You can make other changes too, with the buttons for color and artistic effects next to Corrections.
5. To write a caption under a photo, add a text box (Insert → Text Box) and type in it.
6. You can put more than one photo on a slide. So that the photos and their captions don’t shift apart when you move them, group them.
7. To group: press Ctrl + A to select everything on the slide, or click one photo and hold Shift while clicking the others.
8. With them selected, right-click on the edge of one of them.
9. From the menu, choose Group.
10. Now the photo and the caption under it move together as one picture. That is why a picture and its caption should always be grouped.

A computer virus is a kind of computer program that gets into a computer, often without the user knowing, and harms how it works. It can close programs, show the same message again and again, or even shut the computer down by itself. Like a virus that makes people ill, it spreads from one computer to another.

You may suspect a virus if:

• problems keep coming back while you work, or the computer switches itself on or off;
• files get damaged and won’t open, or can’t be deleted;
• strange new folders appear on the computer or on a pen drive or memory card;
• the same unwanted message keeps popping up while you do something else;
• the computer becomes very slow, or programs stop working properly.

A virus damages files and programs and gives the computer wrong instructions.

How viruses spread

• The internet is the main way. If a file on a website, or a file attached to an email, carries a virus, it can get straight into the computer that opens it (the host computer).
• Storage devices: pen drives, memory cards, CDs, hard disks (and, on old computers, floppy disks). Files copied from a computer that has a virus carry it to the next computer.
• Installing programs: some viruses install themselves through autorun when a program or a device is opened, and some are installed by users without their knowing, hidden inside a program they wanted.

Preventing computer viruses

Just as for an illness, prevention is better than cure. Some ways to keep viruses out:

1. Files downloaded from the internet can bring viruses, so don’t visit unnecessary or unknown websites, and download only from websites you trust.
2. Don’t open emails from unknown addresses (spam), or the files attached to them, without checking who sent them and why.
3. Keep the computer’s firewall switched on all the time.
4. Don’t use easy passwords that others can guess. A strong password mixes letters (a–z, A–Z), numbers (0–9) and special characters (!, @, #, $).
5. Don’t download programs from unknown websites, especially “free” copies of programs that are normally paid for (“cracked” software): they very often hide viruses. Get software from its maker’s own website or the official app store.
6. Install good antivirus software, which protects the computer from viruses.
7. Keep the antivirus updated, and scan the drives, folders and portable media (pen drives, memory cards, hard disks) from time to time.

Removing a computer virus

Even with care, a virus sometimes gets in. If the computer becomes much slower than usual, or its programs don’t work properly, it may have a virus. To find and delete it, you need antivirus software:

1. Install a suitable antivirus program on the computer.
2. Update it (its database update), so it knows the newest viruses.
3. From its Scan options, choose Full scan (the whole computer, slow) or Quick scan (the places viruses usually hide, fast).
4. When the scan ends, it shows a notification listing any viruses or other problems found.
5. Choose Delete (or Quarantine, which locks the file away) from the action options next to each item in the list.
6. If the scan causes problems because of a wrong setting, change the setting as the antivirus program’s instructions say.

An instruction, or set of instructions, that tells a computer how to do a job is a program (programme). A set of programs is called software. Software gives the computer its directions: it controls the computer and solves the user’s problems. Without software, a computer is a box of parts that can do nothing. The physical parts you can touch (the screen, the keyboard, the processor) are the hardware.

Many kinds of software are available: older ones such as MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) and Windows XP, and the newer Windows 11, Paint, Excel, Word and many more. Some software is free: it can be downloaded from the internet and installed easily (some free software is also open, its instructions open for anyone to read and improve). Other software must be bought before it can be used.

Software is sorted into three kinds.

System software

System software runs and controls the computer system itself. It is made to run the computer’s hardware, and it is the most important software of a computer: nothing else can run without it. The main system software is the operating system (OS). Windows, macOS, Android and Linux are operating systems.

Application software

Application software is software made for the jobs a user wants to do. It is designed for the user’s needs: writing, calculating, drawing, browsing, playing. MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Photoshop and PDF readers are application software. On a phone, application software is called an app.

Utility software

Utility software helps the software and the hardware work well together, so the computer runs fast, reliably and properly. Antivirus programs, disk cleaners and disk defragmenters are utility software.

Computers have made many jobs easy, and the internet lets us share information instantly. But if we don’t know how to use them properly, we can get into trouble. On social media we may make virtual friends, people we know only online, trust them, and share private information that can cause big problems in our lives, and even loss of money. News of digital theft and cheating comes up often. So we must know the precautions to take.

The rules to follow when using computers and the internet are called the code of conduct (terms and conditions, or internet ethics) for computer and internet use. Some of them:

1. Don’t give your personal details (full name, date of birth, age, mobile number, address, school) to people you don’t know.
2. Don’t give anyone’s personal details to others without their permission. If you must, with permission, make sure they won’t be misused.
3. Never share your password.
4. Don’t let a computer save your password automatically if others use it too, as in a school or an office.
5. Don’t share anyone’s photo, or a group photo, without the permission of the people in it.
6. Never make a social media account in someone else’s name.
7. If your account is stolen or hacked, or someone you don’t know threatens you or causes you trouble, report it to the Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police, or to another proper authority.
8. If a stranger online tries to get close to you, asks to meet, or keeps sending unwanted messages, tell your parents or teacher at once.
9. Don’t open an email without knowing who sent it. If it is from a stranger, open it only after making sure it is for a proper purpose.
10. Don’t open or reply to unwanted spam emails, and don’t forward them to others.
11. Hackers send emails and social media messages saying you have won a prize or a great chance, to steal your personal details. Don’t be tempted by them.
12. Don’t post photos that show where you are while you are traveling or away from home where strangers can see them. Someone could use that information to steal from your home, or harm you.

1. Fill in the blanks

Use these words: software, browser, connect, ICT, program.

2. Write ✓ for a correct statement and ✗ for an incorrect one

3. Choose the correct option

4. Differentiate between

5. Answer the following questions

6. Use a spreadsheet