Use of ICT in languages 2

THE ROLE OF THE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY SECTOR IN EXPANDING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY

(Services 2)

The past fifty years have witnessed a “revolution” in global economic growth. Yet not everyone has participated in this revolution. More than 65% of the world population, over four million people, still lives on the equivalent of less than $4 per person per day.

The world’s poor are severely constrained – and often completely lacking- in opportunity to do better for themselves.

When we think about eradicating poverty, we should think broadly about creating economic opportunity.

“Economic opportunity enables people to manage their assets in ways that generate incomes and options”.

Four key strategies companies can use to expand economic opportunity:

The role of ICT Sector in Expanding Economic Opportunity

The Information and Communication Technology sector has been a pioneer and a powerful catalyst in addressing the needs and interests of low-income communities in developing countries.

In the 1980s, “universal access” was a goal, but not the reality of the legacy PTTs (post, telephone and telegraph services).

Today, the sector includes hardware, software, the Internet, telephony and content, application and support service, provided by entities ranging from corporate giants to garage entrepreneurs.

ICT:

• Reduce transaction costs and thereby improve productivity.
• Offer immediate connectivity- voice, data, visual- improving efficiency, transparency and accuracy.
• Substitute for other, more expensive means of communicating and transacting, such as physical travel.
• Increase choice in the market place and provide access to otherwise unavailable goods and services.
• Widen the geographic scope of potential markets.
• Channel knowledge and information of all kinds.

World Bank surveys of approximately 50 developing countries suggest that “firms using ICT see faster sales growth, higher productivity and faster employment growth”.

ICTs help address economic opportunity obstacles

• Geographic isolation
• Lack of competition and high prices for consumers
• Lack of information and low prices for producers
• Legal exclusion
• Political voice
• Social capital

To fulfill their potential, ICTs require clean and consistent power, a robust, accessible and affordable connectivity network, technical literacy, skilled users and support systems, functional markets, and supportive regulatory and policy frameworks.

ICTs among low-income consumers and households will continue to grow:

1. Technological capacity and capabilities continue to expand, and costs continue to fall.
2. ICTs become cheaper and more powerful
3. Economic opportunity expands.

This will generate new demand for software, hardware and services.

Innovation

There are two main mechanisms for this:

1. Low-income customers have very sophisticated requirements in terms of relevance.
2. As ICT ecosystems develop, local equipment manufacturers, software developers, contents and service providers, another -including users themselves- can also be sources of innovation, either adding value to the technologies large companies are offering or informing innovation by those companies themselves.

In addition, ICTs can be expected to facilitate many of the innovations that will “blow back” in other industries from manufacturing to medicine, as well.

Companies are also creating additional economic opportunity by working to bring smaller, local firms into their business ecosystems –for example, as manufacturers, software developers or retailers.

Selling to local markets

We see two essential and interlocking growth strategies in the ICT sector:
Horizontal deepening: is essentially about adding new customers.
Vertical deepening: Modalities seek to grow markets by connecting technology more directly to opportunities and services that increase productivity income and quality of life thus straightening its value proposition to the purchaser.

Cross-cutting considerations:

• Learning about the market
• Designing products and services to meet the market’s specific needs
• Business model innovation
• Collaboration
• Patience

Developing human capital

• Large ICT companies are employing deliberate human capital development strategies aiming to develop employees, business partners, and customers, both present and future.
• The ICT sector requires a certain level of comfort with technology among customers. Most mayor firms have implemented technical literacy programs.

Helping to optimize the “rules of the game”

Large ICT companies are helping to optimize the rules of the game for economic opportunity primarily by advocating for standards, regulations, and policies that support innovation and growth in the sector. A number of issues or dilemmas are of specific importance to the sector in expanding economic opportunity for the poor.

Access and infrastructure: many ICT companies are addressing access and infrastructure issues through business investment and innovation.
Standards-setting: as new technological capabilities emerge, new standards need to be developed so that markets can be imagined, created, and served-expanding economic opportunity for individuals, entrepreneurs, and institutions of all types and sizes.
Intellectual property rights regimes: intellectual property (IP) rights are critical to sustain innovation in the ICT sector, and yet as knowledge becomes privatized, commoditized, and expensive, developing countries risk being priced out of the market for the knowledge they need to advance.
Regulatory harmonization: harmonization between telecommunication and financial regulators will be key to enabling innovation and experimentation with business models that cross traditional industry lines (such as providing financial services via mobile phone or storing health information on data cards).

Conclusions

• A number of factor distinguish the ICT sector in its potential to expand economic opportunity. First, its products and services enable individuals, firms, governments, and other players to expand their economic opportunities as well as create them for others.
• Second, ICT companies know well this dynamic isn’t automatic, but rather depend on a wide range of other factors and players. This interdependence has led them to take network or ecosystem strategies which often create large numbers of business opportunities for others, smaller firms.
• Third, underlying these ecosystem strategies are a fundamental collaborative capability and culture.

ICT AS A CHANGE AGENT FOR EDUCATION

(Teaching 2)

Information and communication technologies have become commonplace entities in all aspects of life. In the last twenty years the use of ICT has fundamentally changed the practices and procedures of nearly all forms.

Some history:

• Near the end of the 1980s, the term "computers" was replaced by 'IT' (Information Technology) signifying a shift of focus from computing technology to the capacity to store and retrieve information.
• This was followed by the introduction of the term "ICT" around 1992.

• The field of education has been affected by ICTs, which have undoubtedly affected teaching, learning and research.
• Initially computers were used to teach computer programming but the development of the microprocessor in the early 1970s saw the introduction of affordable microcomputers into schools at a rapid rate.
• ICTs have been utilized in education ever since their inception, but they have not always been massively present.
• The 1990s was the decade of computer communication and information access:

1. Internet -based services such as electronic mail and the World Wide Web.
2. CD-ROM became the standar for distributing packagd software (replacing the floppy disk).

Technologies in the educative process has been divided into two broad categories:

• ICTs for Education
• ICTs in Education

ICT enhancing teaching and learning process:

• For many years course have been written around textbooks. Teachers have taught lectures and presentations interspersed with tutorials and learning ctivities designed to consolidate and rehearse the content.
• Contemporary ICTs are able to provide strong support for all these requirements and there are now many outstandg examples of world class setting for competency.

According to Zhao and Cziko (2001) three conditions are necessary for teachers to introduce ICT into their classrooms:

• Teachers should believe in the effectiveness of technology
• Teachers should believe that use of technology will not cause any disturbances.
• Teachers should believe that they have control over technology.

"...when confident teachers are willing to explore new opportunities for changing their classroom practices by using ICT. As a consequence, the use of ICT will not only enhance learning environments but also prepare next generation for future lives and careers".

• More sudents are using computers as infotmation sources and cognitive tools.
• Any use of ICT in learning settings can act to support various aspects of knowledge construction and as more and more students employ ICTs in their learning processes, the more pronounced the impact of this will become.
• Teachers generte meaningful and engaging learning experiences for their students, strategically using ICT to enhance learning.

ICT enhancing the quality and accessibility of education:

• One of the most vital contributions of ICT in the field of education is Easy Access to Learning. With the help of ICT, students can now browse trough e-books, sample examination papers, previous year papers etc. and can also have an easy access to resource persons, mentors, experts, researchers, professionals and peers-all over the world.
• Mobile technologies an seamless communications technologies support 24x7 teaching and learning. Choosing how much time will be used whithin the 24x7 envelope and what periods of time are challenges that will face the educators of the future.
• ICTs can be used to remove commnucation barriers such as that of space and time.
• ICTs also allow for the creation of digital resources like digital libraries where the students, teachers and professionals can access research material an course material from any place at any time.
• Eliminating time barriers in education for learners as well as teacher. It eliminates geographical barriers as learners can log on from any place.
• It can provide speed dissemination of education to target disdvantaged groups.
• Use of ICT in education develops higher order skills such as collaborating accross time and place and solving complex real world problems.
• The literature contains many unsubstantiated claims about the revolutionary potential of ITCs to improve the quality of education.
• Some claims are now deferred to a near future when hardware will be presumably more affordable and software will become at last, an effective learning tool.

ICT enhancing learning environment:

• ICT is changing processes of teching and learning by adding elements of viality to learning environments including virtual environments for the purpose.
• ICT is a potentially powerful tool for offering educational opportunities.
• ICT provides opportnities to access an abundance of information using multiple information resources and viewing information from multiple perspectives.
• ICTs have an important role to play in changing and modernizing educational systems and ways of learning.

ICT enhancing learning motivation:

• ICTs are also transformational tools which, when used appropriately, can promote the shift to a learner centered environment.
• ICTs especially computers and Internet technologies, enable new ways of teaching and learning rather than simply allow teachers and students to do what they have done before in a better way.
• Along with a shift of curricula from "content-centered" to "competence-based", the mode of curricula delivery has now shifted from "teacher centered" forms of delivery to "student-centered".
• The teachers could make their lecture more attractive and livel by using multi-media and on the other hand, the students were able to capture the lessons taught to them easily. As they found the class very interesting, the teachings also retained in their mind for a longer time which supported them during the time of examination.

ICT enhancing the scholastic performance:

• ICTs are are said to help expand access to education, strenghten the relevance of education ti the increasingly digital workplace and raise educational quality.
• The direct link between ICT use and students' academic performance has been the focus of extensive literture during the last two decades.
• The students also learned more in less time and liked their classes more when ICT-based instruction was included.
• ICT can help deepen students' content knowledge, engage them in constructing their own knowledge and support the development of complex thinking skills.

Conclusions

• ICTs will increase flexibility so that learnrs can access the education regardless of time and geographical barriers.
• Similarly, wider availability of best practices and best course material in education, which can be shared by meand of ICT, can foster better teaching and improved academic achievement of students.

ICT AND TRANSLATION COMPETENCE

(Translation 2)

Translation Competence is something that distinguishes a bilingual person from a professional translator.

The competence needed to translate has evolved due to different factors, mainly technological factor. In order to be a competent translator, it is necessary to be computer literate and to keep one's information technologies skills updated.

Some definitions of Translation Competence:

• Bell (1991: 43): translation competence is the knowledge and skills the translator must possess in order to carry out a translation.
• Hurtado Albir (1996: 48): translation competence is the ability of knowing how to translate.
• Wilss (1982: 58): translation competence is an interlingul supercompetence based on a comprehensive knowledge of the respective SL and TL, including the text-pragmatic dimension, and consists of the ability to integrate the two monolingual competences on a higher level.
• Process of the Acquisition of Translation Competence and Evaluation (2000, 2003, 2005): Translation competence is the ability to carry out the transfer process from the comprehension of the source text to the reexpresion of the target text, taking into account the purpose of the translation and the characteristics of the target-text readers,

Translation Competence Model (PACTE)

• The bilingual sub-competence: consists of the underlying systems of knowledge and skills that are needed for linguistic communication to take place in two languages.
• The extra-linguistic sub-competence: it is made up of encyclopedic, thematic and bicultural knowledge.
• The translation knowledge sub-competence is knowledge of the priciples guiding translation, such as processes, methods, procedures, and so forth.
• The instrumental sub-competence comprises the knowledge required to work as a professional translator, such as the use of sources of documentation and information technologies applied to translation.
• The strategic sub-competence integrates all the others and is the most  important, since it allows problems to be solved and ensures the efficiency of the process.
• The psycho-physiological components are cognitive and behavioral and psychomotor mechanisms.

Sub-competences proposed by Kelly (2005)

• Textual and communicative competence.
• Cultural and intercultural competence.
• Competence about the knowledge of the theme of the translation.
• Professional and instrumental competence.
• Interpersonal competence.
• Competence related with the aptitudes necessary for a good composition and production of texts.

General ICTs for translators

The internet

• One of the most important tools offered by the Internet arethe search and location information engines.
• They allow to access in a few seconds to an enormous quantity of interrelated information. Further, the usefulness of these tools in our work as medical translator will be explained.

The use of corpus linguistics

It is divided in two types:

• The monolingual corpora (for example: Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) of the Royal Spanish Academy.
• Bilingual corpora, it is divided in parallel corpus and comparable corpus.

Concordance generator programs

• They can find all the times that a certain term appears in a text or in several texts written in electronic format.

Specific ICTs for translators

Machine Translation (MT)
Machine Translation is a procedure whereby a computer program analyzes a source text and produces a target text without further human intervation.

Computer-assisted Translation (CAT)

• It is a form of translation wherein a human translator creates a target text with the assistance of a computer program. The machine supports a human translator.
• Effective use of translation technnology starts from the translator's point of view.

Phases of Translation

Reception Phase: It is about to fully understand the content of the source text. (Internet)

Transfer Phase: The adaptation of the source text information to context of the target text culture is uniquely traditional.

Formulation Phase: Confronts the translator with challenges regarding the production of the target language text. (Dictionaries and Terminology Databases).

Conclusions

• The new Information and Communication Technologies are very useful for the professional translator.
• In order to be a competent translator in our days it is necessary to make use of the new ICTs mainly the general ICT tools.

Services Blogs

Big Ideas for Small Business

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Editor: Barbara Weltman

It has a lot of material related to legal issues that every entrepreneur should have in mind in order to avoid trouble with the law! Every begginer could have this kind of problems very easily because of the lack of information. The great thing about this blog is that all the entries are easy to understand and new entrepreneurs can apply the info in real life.

New Venture Weltman

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Editor: Cate Costa

Every entry of this blog is about an interesting specific topic related to enterprises. The editor give us helpful tips to keep our enterprise on track when we are getting started in business world. Something I really like about it is that every topic has its own video with the same explanation as the text, so if some people prefer to watch rather than read, they will be able to do it!

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Editor: Stephanie Burns

Something I loved about this blog is that it talks about how to keep a balance between professional life and personal life. I think this blog will be more useful for women that are interested in start a enterprise because the entries are written from the point of view of a woman. The writer recommends some apps to keep our life organized and that is really important to have a succesful enterprise.

Use of ICT in languages

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AND DEVELOPMENT

(Services 1)

ICT has an increasing role to play. This because during 1995 to 2002 the US had an impressive overall growth... one third of this growth was attributable to ICT.

Experts have sought a means for ICTs to find a way to help developing countries. The problem that they found was:

An estimated one-third of the world has never made a phone call and only one tenth have used the internet!

Continual march of ICTs

In 1965, Gordon Moore (of Intel) predicted that computing power would double every 18 months... Dramatically bringing down the costs: We need just to wait to make ICT affordable.

ICT Challenges

Access --> Information ---> Knowledge <---> Opportunity

Access is a several bottleneck for increased ICT use... but we all know that telecommunication's costs are the largest challenge.

• Hardware, software and connectivity costs: affordability is a prime factor in the digital divide.
• Content: much of the content today is not in local languages, or directly useful for most people.
• Security: it is a concern even for uninformed or unaware end-users. It places an implicit cost on all transactions.
• Internet control, architecture and addressing: internet governance is closed linked to what we want the internet to do.
  Some changes may be required to make it more inclusive, reliable and responsive to users' needs.
• Regulation and Policy; government policies drive technology adoption, innovation and investments.
  Countries with fewer restrictions often find higher levels of ICT adoption.
• Wireless: wireless access technologies hold great promise for developing regions given low usage densities and limites legacy (wireline) deployment.
• Energy and Power: Availability of electricity is a critical pre-requisite for ICT; the alternative of standalone solutions are very expensive.

Economic models, markets and role of ICT

• Market driven models alone will not push ICT into developing regions.
• Leapfrogging into advanced technologies offers strong potential for cost-effective deployment.
• Developing regions are a large but untapped market... but their needs are not necessarily the same as in developed regions.

FACTORS AFFECTING TEACHERS' USE OF ICT

(Teaching 1)

Information and Communication Technologies: can change, simulate, gather, transmit.

Teacher: should become effective agent to be able to make use of technology in the classroom.

Training program: technology should be used as a tool to support the eduacational objectives.

Use's factors of ICT

Objectives:

As object of study: learning about ICT for daily life.

As aspect of a discipline: the development of ICT skills for professional purposes.

As medium for teaching and learning: focuses on the use.

Factors:

Manipulative: attitudes of teachers

Non manipulative: factors that can not be influenced directly by the school such as age and teaching experience.

Personal Characteristics of Teachers

• They are an important influence on how easily they take up an innovation.
• There are two groups of adopters: earlier adopters and later adopters.
  Earlier adopters: differ from later ones in tending to show greater emphaty, less dogmatism, ability to deal with abstractions, greater rationality, less fatalism and higher aspirations.
• Later adopters: more realistic, steadiers in their judgements, less willing to take unnecessary chances, having preference for being guided by experience and whitin a more realistic appreciation of possibilities than earlier adopters.

Parent and community support

• Instead of taking innovative ICT-based learning to the student, the students are taken to the innovative learning.
• When parents are encouraged to participate in and contribute to change management activities within a school's ICT master plan, change occurs more quickly.
• Morale is generally high in the schools with innovative ICT, while teachers, students and parents are excited about the level of innovation in the school and quite anxious to share the experiences with others.

Manipulative School and Teacher Factors

Availability of Vision and Plan about the Contribution of ICT to Education

• "A vision gives us a place to start, a goal to reach for, as well as a guidepost along the way" (Ertmer, 1999)
• Users of technology must have a fundamental belief in the value of innovation or the innovation is dommed to failure.
• It is crucial to involve those who hace a take in the outcomes, including teachers, parents, students and the community and allow them to positive attitudes.
• Once the vision has been successfully created and accepted, the next step is to articulate an ICT integration plan, spelling out how the teachers are expected to integrate technology in their lessons.

Accessibility

• Computer access has often been one of the most important obstacles to technology adoption and integration worldwide.
• The lack of funds to obtain the necessary hardware and software is one of the reasons teachers do not use technology in their classes. (Mumtaz, 2000)
• Teachers who had computers were more likely to use them in instruction than teachers who did not; more than 50% of teachers who had computers used them for research and activities related to lesson preparation.

Available Support & Computer Attributes

• Teachers did not want to use computers because they were not sure where to turn for help when something went wrong while using computers.
• Regarding to the role of technical support staff, they recommended that schools should work to convince technology staff that reliability is very important, especially concerning technology in classroom technologies; new classroom technology setups should be tested by faculty before they are installed; indentify attitudes and behaviors that ate seen as poor or inadequare support and work within technology staff to reduce these.
• Appointing an ICT coordinator or head of the ICT departmenting each school helps to assure administrative and pedagogical support for the teachers.
• Lack of on-site support is one of the reasons that teachers do not use technology in their classes.
• Rogers (1995) stated that characteristics of an innovation as perceived by individual in a social system affect on the rate of adoption.
• Also, he identified five innovation attributes that may contribute to the adoption or acceptance of an innovation: relative advantage, compatibility complexity, observability and trialibility.
• If teachers perceive ICT as a beneficial tool, compatible with their current activities, easy to use and have observable outcomes, they will demostrate positive attitudes toward ICT.

School Culture

• The basic assumptions, norms and values and cultural artifacts that are shared by school members.
• One of the major challenges facing developing countries is to make technology an essential part of the culture of people.
• A new technology in a society depends on how well the proposed innovation fits the existing culture.
• If the technology is not receiver well by teachers, they must be a mismatch of values between the culture of schools and the technology.

ICT ON TRANSLATION

(Translation 1)

There is a problem related to this topic: It exists a global shortage of qualified linguists and if the situation is not addressed, international organizations will be unable to perform their vital tasks.

In european institutions, in the next ten years between 40% and 50% of the current Directorate General for Interpreting staff are due to retire.

Also, 49% of employers are disappointed in graduates' language skills!

This lack of language skills represents an average loss per 325,000 euros per business.

Training provisions

Bridge the gap between the theoretical learning in the form of the instruction of the classroom and the real-life application of the knowledge in the work environment.

What is the role of ICT?

A critical analysis of the way ICT are used in translation and interpreting courses at Heriot-Watt University.

The computer can provide an alternative to real-life setting, and this technology can be used without sacrificing the authentic context which is a critical element of the model.

An example:

Perez and Wilson, Scottish Executive (2006) worked with the Scotish Police Training College, they designed videos with experts from the Police Services. These interpreter-mediated police video interviews are used as part of the Public Service Interpreting course.

Authentic ---> Easy transferable ---> Accesible

Virtual Learning Environmental Platform:

• Audio-visual resources online
• It facilitates a continuum in the learning process
• Awareness of professional resources: links to terminology data-bases
• Purpose-made media-library accessible at all times and from anywhere

Empowering students and fostering team-work and professional skills

A wiki is a website which allows collaborative modification of its content and structure directly from the web browser.

1. Groups are created on the VLE.
2. They are assigned a page on the wiki, where they exchange and annotate their joint translation. 
3. Having a virtual common work-page enables each type of learner to intervene at the stage which corresponds to their learning process.

This exercise promotes exchanges and cooperation; the work-space is not limited in time or space, so each learner has more flexibility to work in his own way.

Enabling a reflexive and critical learning experience

For the learning process to be complete, it is important that the observation and practice of the tasks be followed by an analytical process and an evaluation.

ICT can contribute to this process too: as explained, the wiki tool of a VLE facilitates an analytical reading of the translations through the editing/proof-reading taks.

Access to professional booths is limited during the training and after, but graduates need to keep those skills up. So as part of the course, students are taught to use ICT as a continuous professional development tool.

Pedagogical Tools (ICT)

• Production of authentic materials.
• Valuable situated learning materials.
• Offer flexibility.
• Foster collaborative work.
• Allow the assimilation of a critial attitude which empowers then and enables them to become independent professionals.
• Support learners in a constructive way throughout the acquisition of techniques and skills.