LESSON 14.The digital age… FIND PRONOUNS IN THIS TEXT. We are now living in what some people call the digital age, meaning that computers have become an essential part of our lives. Young people who have grown up with computers and mobile phones are often called the digital generation. Computers help students to perform mathematical operations, and improve their maths skills. They are used to access the Internet to do basic research and to communicate with other students around the world. Teachers use projectors and interactive whiteboards to give presentations and teach sciences, history or language courses. PCs/laptops are also used for administrative purposes-schools use word processing, to write letter, and databases to keep records of students and teachers. A school website allows teachers to publish exercises for students to complete online. Students can also enroll for courses via the website and parents can download official reports. Mobiles let you make voice calls, send texts, email people and download logos, ringtones or games. With a built-in camera, you can send pictures and make video calls in face-to-face mode. New smartphones combine a telephone with a web access, video a games console, an MP3 player, a personal digital assistant (PDA) and CPS navigation system, all in one. In banks, computers store information about the money held by each customer, enable staff to access large databases and to carry out financial transactions at high speed. They also control the cashpoints, or ATMs(Automatic teller machines), which dispense money to customers by the use of a PIN-protected card. People use a chip and PIN card to pay for goods and services. Instead of using signature to verify payments, customers are asked to enter a four-digit personal identification number (PIN), the same number used at cashpoints; this system makes transaction more secure. With online banking, clients can easily pay bills and transfer money from the comfort of their homes.Airline pilots use computers to help them control the plane. For example, monitors display data about fuel consumption and weather conditions.In airport control towers, computers are used to manage radar system and regulate air traffic. On the ground, airlines are connected to travel agencies by computer. Travel agencies use computers to find out about availability of flights, prices, times, stopovers and many other details.
Task 2. Complete these sentences using the collocations studied during the lesson.
1. Thanks to Wi-Fi, it’s now easy to………………….from cafes, hotels, parks, and many other public places.
2. Online banking lets you……………………………between your accounts easily and securely.
3. Skype is a technology that enables users to…………………..…………over the Internet for free.
4. In many universities, students are encouraged to ………………..using PowerPoint in order to make their talks more visually attractive.
5. The Web has revolutionized the way people ………………-with sites such as Google and Wikipedia, you can find the information you need in seconds.
6. Cookies allow a website to………………on a user’s machine and later retrieve it; when you visit the website again, it remembers your preferences.
7. With the latest mobile phones, you can………………with multimedia attachments – pictures, audio, even video.
LESSON 15.Read this scenario and discuss possible solutions for each problem. A company has these problems:
Information takes up too much space in the office.
It is difficult to find information on paper.
Admin staff spend a lot of time entering data. Surely computers can do this?
They enter the same data into different spreadsheers.
Copying and pasting data from spreadsheets into word processor documents is very slow and doesn’t look very good.