Are you ready for the digital age?

1. 

   Digital technology is changing our lives. Very few of us can avoid using a digital device during a normal day. When you use your mobile phone, look at TV or look at your watch you have interacted with a digital device. And its not just here in Birmingham, it's all over the world. We need to be careful! digital technology can't make our lives any better if we don't know how to use it efficiently.

   The task for us now and in the future, is to learn how to use digital technology to its greatest potential. Once we have done that, we can make our daily lives more friendly, productive, and more meaningful. This section aims to help you do just that.

   On the following pages try the Digital Challenge and read Why Digital?

    

2. Try the Digital Challenge

   	The Digital Curve is a fun online activity, to help you find out about your IT skills and use. By answering a few simple questions about your use of digital devices it will reveal just where you are on the Digital Curve. Whether you are a Digital Dinosaur or a Digital Superstar, it provides advice on how you can develop your skills in order to move you further along the digital curve.

    

3. Why Digital?

   Digital is now the 'in' word. What does it mean? What is happening is that analogue is being replaced by digital in they way information is sent from one place to another.

   What do we mean by analogue and digital? Analogue information means continuous information. Look at a biro. It is continuous, as you go from the top to the bottom there is no break. Now look at the biro digitally, it can initially be split into ten bits, and each of those can be split into another ten bits. So instead of sending the whole image of the biro down the cable we send thousand of bits of the image which are recombined at the end to form our continuous image. This stops distortion and allows more images to be sent down the same cable...because we have gaps in the way the digital image is sent.