ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the common computer and Internet applications that human service professionals use at work or home. Human service agencies frequently need letters, reports, forms, brochures, and other specialty documents. Today, almost all professionals use a word processing program to collect, store, manage, edit, proofread, format, and print text and images. Software applications operationalize the capacity of information technology hardware. Applications that allow a desktop computer to perform print shop design and layout tasks are known as desktop publishing. Speech processing applications perform speech recognition to execute user commands to the computer, convert dictation into text for word processing, or place user responses into forms. Communication links are to the information society what railroads, canals, and highways are to an industrial society. Thousands of generic software applications exist, as illustrated by advertisements in popular computer magazines. Human service agencies often use these generic applications to perform, for example, inventory management, and appointment scheduling.