Brian Benedict – Essay 3

          When Brian Benedict came to see our class, it had a great influence on me.  Brian talked about how he wanted all of the informatics students to have an opportunity to gain work experience in the field of informatics.  He had my attention at the beginning of his speech because he seemed very dedicated to us (the students).  I was encouraged by his speech and realized i needed to be in the information technology field, and soon.  After signing up for an account on informaticscareers.com.  About a week after posting my resume, I went to see Brian who helped me modify it.  A few days later I had my resume posted and could browse through jobs online.  After sending my resume to a few positions I received and email back for and internship and an on-campus job.  After the interviews i received offers for both, and now work on campus at the UITS.  

          Brian’s speech was a great motivation for me and I believe other students feel the same way.  He has a great influence on the informatics program and is doing a great job at getting students to get involved with the IT workforce.

Computer Literate – Essay 2

          Being computer literate in this day of age is a major advantage.  Computers are used everyday and are continuing to grow even more popular and useful.  Everyday new applications are being developed to help computer users accomplish tasks.  Being computer literate will help users make decisions, stay in touch with other people, and can save an enormous amount of time.  

          Computers are very good at analyzing data, which can help make decisions.  Today many applications exist for helping a user gather data and analyze that data.  Computers can perform calculations at great speeds.  This can help many users depending on the task they are trying to accomplish.  For example, Microsoft Excel can be used to enter data and have the computer perform calculations and analyze that data.  It can then create graphs and charts.  The more computer literate the user is the more applications they can find and learn how to use them more effectively.

         Another great asset of being computer literate is staying in touch with people and staying up to date with the news.  Many users use RSS feeds to keep up with the news today.  There are an array of feeds available to all users.  Another useful concept of staying in touch with the world is through email.  Email allows users to constantly send messages relaying information.  This allows for much faster communications between users.  

Another advantage of being computer literate is the ability to save time using varoius methods of computer usage.  As mentioned earlier, computers can process great amounts of data in small amounts of time.  This can be helpful to businesses when computing different values and when performing analysis.  This does not only apply to people in the business world but also to everyday users working on any type of analysis.  Using computers also cuts down the margin of errors since computers calculations are always accurate depending on the users input.

          In todays world computer usage will continue to grow and no one wants to be left behind.  Computers play a major role in the everyday life of almost every business.  This is one area that will never decline and will keep producing new and better applications and ideas.

Email – Essay 1

         Today email is one of the most widely used applications available on the internet.  Not only is email very convienent but also effective.  It can be used for a wide variety of things.  Advantages include the ability to transfer files, it is a quick way of contacting someone, it is a cheap way of sending messages to people, and email is a very convienent way to send a message.

          Sending important documents over the internet is a neccasity that will always be needed.  Using email allows users to send types of files, including time sensitive, important, documents.  Email also ensures that the message will be sent relativley fast.  This is a major benefit for many users, from a simple setting to the corporate setting.  

          Another benefit that email provides is fact that email is free most of the time, unless signing up for certain email accounts with more features.  This also allows for emailing to be a convienent way of sending a message to someone at any distance.  All that is needed is an internet connection.

          Although there are many benefits of email, there are also a few drawbacks including: spam, viruses, privacy, and the possibility of a message being misunderstood.

          One of the biggest drawbacks of email is electronic junk mail, also known as spam.  Spam is everywhere on the internet and is a very big hassle to remove.  They can include annoying advertisments or some kind of phissing scams.  Viruses are also a vulnerability of email.   As mentioned earlier, email is a great way to send attachments.  Email is one of the most common ways to spread computer viruses.  Internet messages are also weak with privacy.  Emails are sent via the internet obviously, and anything that is sent over the internet is vulnerable to being intercepted by somone you wouldn’t want to be reading your email.  Last, is the concept of being misunderstood in an email message.  Email lacks person-to-person social contact and can be written in a form that is clear to one user but not to another.  This can lead to someone misinterpreting what the email is saying or is meant for.  This can effect all types of users in a negative way.

          After going through this advantages and disadvantages, it is clear that email can be a very useful tool when utilized effectively.