Entertainment and Leisure

There are many ways that technology has changed the way we are entainment and areas of leisure on our lives. It allows more personal creativity and choice and it's simple and relatively inexpensive to product music, video, sound and radio, even books, magazines and artwork, digitally. These types of media are often stored on technology and even transmitted digitally to other people to view.

For example: it's become so much easier to make and record music now, using new technology to aid musicians such as midi input devices, sequences, mixers and sound cards which allow people to even record music at home. Some software can create sophisticated backing tracks just by choosing a musical style whilst computerised drum machines provide a solid rhythmic backing, plus any mistakes can be edited out and even voices can be corrected. This allows tons of variety on the Internet and a lot of new artists to come through and allowing people to grow and progress with their work as they create more.

Technology That Sawtry Uses

- Interactive Whiteboard
- TVs
- Computers
- Laptops
- Touchscreen Netbooks
- Netbooks
- Cameras
- Video camera
- Microphones
- Amplifiers
- Mixers
- Lighting
- Projectors
- Phones
- Intercom
- Electronic Doors
- Wall speakers
- Ammetres
- Electronic Scales
- Finger print machines
- Tills
- The coolers
- Servers
- Phone wires
- Internet
- Wireless Internet

Education

It is usually thought that you should attend school from 4 years to 18 years old, then going into a career that would last for the rest of your working life. However, it is now expected that a lot of students who finish school will in fact have a few careers in their lifetime; even in the same job, due to demands which have changed because of new technologies and ways of working. This can force people to change their career path and create many problems and challenges for society and individuals as jobs are receding everyday.
Education is now relying on technology a lot more to deliever better lessons at times and places that suit the person learning. It is said that llecturers dream of having their lecture recorded or live-streamed so that pupils across the country and globe can watch them at the same time or even at different times to their convenience. The UK now can deliver this 'wired up education' so now every school in the country should have access to the Internet and most should also have high speed connections to enable fast browsing in order to complete work. Some schools even have the potential for students being able to pick and mix 'learning objects' so they can create a personalised curriculum that they can learn from, suiting their needs and what they want to focus on. This allows them to also focus more on topics they may struggle with and work that they find fun and interesting instead of focusing on work they have little interest in. However this is more relevant for adult lifelong learner than school-age students. The teacher can have control over what they learn and what resources to create the ideal learning plan suited for an individual.

There are many drawbacks using of the Internet though:
- students are prone to copy large amounts of text to get work completed or to a standard they think is good enough for their teacher. This offers charges of plagiarism if caught by programs which can spot chunks of text which have been copied and even match it to the websites that it originated from.
- the Internet is one of the main places people can express themselves: it's so much easier to create websites and blogs where people can voice their opinions and then state facts which may or may not be true. Students cannot tell the difference between a fact which has been made up or actually found as may websites don't cite where they got their information from. Therefore many students can copy incorrect information or even biased material which may cause problems
- the Internet now is being used as a money-maker it would seem to many newspaper and magazine companies as they now can charge for you to read articles by them; encyclopedia's have also starting doing the same and this means students may still be denied access to correct information.

How I can communicate:

- Email
- Facebook
- Tumblr
- Blogger
- Twitter
- Texting / SMS
- BBM
- Phone call
- Instant Messaging
- Skype
- Forums
- Youtube (if you are a member of the site)
- Photo Sharing Websites
- Communicating IN PERSON
- Letters
- Pigeon mail

Flexible Working / Work Life Balance

Working is now a lot more versatile than what it used to be; it's not essential to be in an office working with a team of people. In fact a lot has changed for people working in this modern age:

• The times at which they work are more flexible
• The places at which people work are more flexible
• The contracts they work under are more flexible

Using technology such as laptops, wireless Internet, mobile phones, spreadsheets, etc. have allowed many people to be able to achieve more out of their working hours than they used to. It can give more freedom and self-reliance to staff: people now can carry out work on the train home or take an assignment home and complete it in the comfort of their home on their own hours. Video conferencing allows people to communicate instantly, despite being in different places, even in different parts of the world. It breaks a lot of boundaries that a lack of technology created: advanced software allows a lot of people in jobs to carry out tasks in quicker time and o a better quality. This can be said for graphic designers who now use specified graphic packages, or teacher s who can display their work on interactive whiteboards, or accountants who can work out problems with their computers than than paper, pencils and calculators.

However there are demerits for working in such a way: now as less people are employed to  particular area of work, the responsibility of this work is given to a singular person. This amount of work that they need to do can be quite overwhelming meaning they do not complete it, or finish it to a bad standard, which does not help the company. Work now involves less teamwork, and is now more of an individual job, cut off from other workers so there is now less socialising in the work place. Despite being given the leisure to do work in your own time and in various different places, it can be seen that work now has stopped purely being at the workplace and has invaded our own personal time, away from a person's job where they can live their everyday life. It can be said work slowly is taking over our lives. Another disadvantage to some workers, is that as we live our 24/7, 25 lifestyle relying on shops to do the same, we also rely on the workers to do the same, meaning a lot of workers are forced to work in hours they might feel to be their own time, such as birthdays and Christmas.

I find that flexible working is a high benefit to our jobs. It means that we can now get work done in a more efficient and professional manner, not to mention quicker and easier. I think that the future prospects of flexible working will probably include dding more software for people to use whilst at their jobs, to help make more and more people's job and workload easier to manage, just like a lot of people are finding now. Some jobs may address the issues above of being over-worked and not having a healthy balance of work to personal time, so that workers are not being constantly swamped with work.

Online Services work