Case Study, Tool man

Case Study 1 – Tool Man

How he is;

John is a sales representative selling tools to garden centres and DIY stores. He travels over 1000 miles a week to see new and existing clients. For the past 20 years he has carried round a large diary, address book, large road atlas and numerous A-Z’s, as well as numerous small coins for phones. He prides himself on punctuality, but even so he is occasionally late as struggles to find a new client or is delayed by traffic. He always takes along a calculator, and a bulky sales catalogue with the latest price lists and order forms. He is usually on the road four days a week, six hours a day and spends two further hours a day completing his administration. He spends every Friday in the office ensuring all his administration and sales are handled properly. He has always said he likes the time spent in his car between appointments, as it is his time when he can listen to his CD’s undisturbed.

How he could improve;

When he is late due to traffic and road issue, he could buy a modern sat nav or smart phone. I think this is a good idea as it would direct him exactly where he needs to be, as the smart phone can use Google maps (sat nav option) to take him, and if he is late he could ring his customer in advance. Also, the smart phone has a clock, so he knows when to set off and if he is going to be on time or late. Also, the smart phone has a calculator for working out sums and equations which he needs to carry out. He can use apps on an iPad or iPod to carry out many of the functions he needs to. He can also use the music app to listen to music, or use an iPod or mp3 player, as he will have more access to music.

Jobs in The Information Age

Jobs using The Information Age

Accountant

An accountant will use a computer to search the records when a customer requires a service. This method of searching for records is better than storing everything by paper as it saves room, time, and effort. This is because they can easily browse through the records by a name, age or address to instantly know who they are speaking to. They could also calculate amounts on a program instead of on a calculator, which is less stressful as it sometimes automatically does formulas and equations, instead of having to manually work out numbers.

Shop Assistant

A shop assistant may use something of the information age such as a computer and scanner, so that the item the customer wishes to buy can easily be scanned and the sum of money they need to pay, and the exact item is specified by quickly swiping it under a bar code scanner. They may also order more stock online, which is better than sending paper as they may make mistakes this way, whereas there may be ways to calculate precisely how much stock they need on a computer, and be able to pair this with how much they exactly they have in stock, making no mistakes.

Mechanic

Mechanics may use diagnostic kits to pinpoint the precise problem with a car, whether it is the engine or any faulty component. This is much easier and quicker than manually checking the whole car for faults; doing this could save time and mean they fix the car on time. They also use a computer program to pinpoint exact parts of a car they require, by searching for the Make, Model and Year. This means they make no mistakes and get the precise parts they require for the job.

Teachers

Teachers use registers which upon finishing, are sent to an admin and those who are marked in are established as present. This is much better than using a manual method as it saves making mistakes of judgement, and can also help if a fire occurs, as the school know exactly who is in school. Also, homework can be set for pupils online. This is an efficient method to keeping pupils up to scratch on their work, getting rid of many excuses they may use from using paper. Using this, the teacher can also track of who is doing their work and who is not. Making it clearer.

VLE (The School Portal)

The School Portal, VLE (Virtual Learning Environment)

The school portal is a feature many of the pupils of Armthorpe Academy use daily. I feel that it is not to a high standard, and that it could be easily made much better. The layout is terrible, using badly chosen colours and images. We also see poor quality from where images have been cropped badly, with the white background still around parts of it. The portal is also quite difficult to navigate through, which is not good as it is aimed at years 7-13’s. They could have used a more striking ‘nav bar’ at the top of the page to easily navigate through the different pages, instead of just the text at the side of the site.

The school portal can be useful at times, as it offers many features such as a timetable, your attendance, and a way to access your documents from anywhere.

The school portal could include many more features, such as; a notice board, displaying all events in the school and what is going on around the school. Better weblinks, to UCAS and careers websites, more relevant. More email access, for example, the careers adviser.

Similar to Frog, which supplied the school portal, there is moodle, which does the same.