Andrew C. Samuels, Information Technology Specialist Trainer c/o Ministry of Education Mona High School, Kingston, Jamaica 1 Unit 1 Module 1 Specific Objective: Describe the relationship between Information Technology and other disciplines in computing. Content: Computing, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Information Systems; commonalities and differences;

Establish a definition for Information Technology Information technology (IT) is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology The Study of IT is more concerned with how computing technologies are used to influence, improve and sustain business, personal and recreational lifestyles.

Computing disciplines Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating algorithmic processes - e.g. through computers. Computing includes designing, developing and building hardware and software systems; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific research on and with computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; and creating and using communications and entertainment media. The field of computing includes computer engineering, software engineering, computer science, information systems, and information technology. Computer science spans a range of topics from theoretical studies of algorithms and the limits of computation to the practical issues of implementing computing systems in hardware and software. Software engineering is the study and application of engineering to the design, development, and maintenance of software. Read up on the Waterfall Model, Rapid Application Development, Joint Application Development, Agile Methods, etc. Computer engineering is a discipline that integrates several fields of electrical engineering and computer science required to develop computer hardware and software. Information systems is used for the academic study of the field, in other words for the study of complementary networks of hardware and software that people and organizations use to collect, filter, process, create and distribute data.