Researching ICT Contexts

For a number of books written by Steve Cushing Click Here

The following internet sites support research on ICT contexts outlined in the OCR ICT
syllabus B GCSE. The links are also useful for GNVQ and Applied GCSEs study.

 

The sites below have been developed to support the books. Just click on one of the headings shown.

 

Please note that internet links change all of the time and whilst every effort is made to update links regularly some links may not work.

Specific Links

Health Service – Medical and Hospital Information Sites

Electronic Commerce – Retail, Company and Banking Sites

Travel Sites – hotels, rail, hotel and other travel related Sites

Entertainment – Virtual Visits to Museums and Gallerie

General Links

Surveillance and Privacy

Environmental Information

Patents

Puppetry and Animation

Intranets and Extranets


OCR Syllabus B themes:

Year	Session	Number	Type	Theme
2002	June	2378	Coursework Unit	Use of ICT in the Entertainment Industry
2003	January	2380	Exam Paper	Use of ICT in the Entertainment Industry
2003	January	2378	Coursework Unit	Use of ICT in Retailing
2003	June	2380	Exam Paper	Use of ICT in the Entertainment Industry
2003	June	2378	Coursework Unit	Use of ICT in Retailing
2004	January	2380	Exam Paper	Use of ICT in Retailing
2004	January	2378	Coursework Unit	The Use of ICT in Banking and Finance
2004	June	2380	Exam Paper	Use of ICT in Retailing
2004	June	2378	Coursework Unit	The Use of ICT in Banking and Finance
2005	January	2380	Exam Paper	The Use of ICT in Banking and Finance
2005	January	2378	Coursework Unit	Use of ICT in the Health Service
2005	June	2380	Exam Paper	The Use of ICT in Banking and Finance
2005	June	2378	Coursework Unit	Use of ICT in the Health Service
2006	January	2380	Exam Paper	Use of ICT in the Health Service
2006	January	2378	Coursework Unit	Using ICT to aid Travel
2006	June	2380	Exam Paper	Use of ICT in the Health Service
2006	June	2378	Coursework Unit	Using ICT to aid Travel
2007	January	2380	Exam Paper	Using ICT to aid Travel
2007	January	2378	Coursework Unit	The Use of ICT in Banking and Finance
2007	June	2380	Exam Paper	Using ICT to aid Travel
2007	June	2378	Coursework Unit	Use of ICT in the Health Service
2008	January	2380	Exam Paper	The Use of ICT in Banking and Finance
2008	January	2378	Coursework	Use of ICT in the Entertainment Industry
2008	June	2380	Exam Paper	The Use of ICT in Banking and Finance
2008	June	2387	Coursework	Use of ICT in the Entertainment Industry

The Best Medical Information on the Web

Searching

Dedicated sites to help you search are available:

 (http://omni.ac.uk/) - OMNI - especially good for UK orientated material.

 (http://www.medmatrix.org/index.asp) - Medical Matrix, lots of US professionally orientated sites.

 (http://www.hon.ch/) - home of the Health on the Net Code of Conduct - see below.

SearchEngineWatch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) - maintains a frequently updated collection 
of material comparing and contrasting all the major search engines - recommended.

Quality

(http://www.bhia.org/public/news/currentdocs/temp_accesshinfo.htm)- 
British Healthcare Internet Association recently published document aimed at 
enabling safer surfing, with rules of thumb for health consumers looking for information.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/ - free access to MEDLINE, the 
largest bibliographic database of the medical journal literature, provided by the 
National Library of Medicine (of the USA).

http://www.vh.org/ - The Virtual Hospital, a huge collection of lecture notes, 
tutorials and other teaching materials, made available by the University of Iowa.

http://www.open.gov.uk/doh/dhhome.htm - UK government information server - 
a key resource for official information and the Department of Health Home page.

http://hiru.mcmaster.ca/cochrane/default.htm - site of the Canadian Cochrane Centre.

http://www.who.org/ - details of all WHO's programmes and publications.

AIDS resources:  

  http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/

  http://www.hopkins-aids.edu/

  http://198.77.70.131/cdcnac/cgi/databases/news/adsdb.htm

British Medical Journal, The Lancet, and other key medical journals:  

  http://www.bmj.com/bmj

  http://www.thelancet.com/

  http://www.nejm.org/

  http://www.nature.com/

Pharmaceutical/ health information on the Web

Three key pharmaceutical and health websites:

(http://www.pharmweb.net)- a structured pharmaceutical information server, 
provides a range of Internet services.

(http://www.pharminfo.com)- an excellent resource for disease centres, 
drug information, medical meeting highlights, clinical trials information, 
and pharmaceutical links.

(http://www.inpharm.com)- more of an industry site, encompasses not 
only the pharmaceutical industry but also its allied services.

Pharmaceutical companies:

http://www.cbc.med.umn.edu/~jhan/cp.html - a personal web page, 
but pretty comprehensive - you should be able to find almost any corporate 
company website.

(http://www.inpharm.com/inpharm_links/2.html) - provides a set of links to 
the therapy specific sites, as do most of the corporate pharmaceutical 
websites themselves. 

Pharmaceutical industry trade associations: 

(http://www.abpi.org.uk)-  UK association provides information on the
industry but also links to member websites. 

Official health organisation sites include:

(http://www.nih.gov)- US National Institute of Health

(http://www.cdc.gov)- US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention

(http://www.who.org) - World Health Organisation (WHO)

(http://www.nhsconfed.net)- UK National Health Service (NHS)

Health associations:

http://www.bma.org.uk)- British Medical Association - lots of 
news, events, and other related information.

http://www.ama-assn.org) - AMA (American Medical Association).

Specialist websites for specific diseases like cancer, allergy or
neurology also provide valuable information.

http://www.parkinson.org/texthtms/tindex.htm)-  patient support groups like the 
NFP (National Parkinson Foundation) provide specific patient focused information 
such as local support group addresses, news and information on the disease.

Lists of links to local association websites in other countries: 

(http://www.ifmss.org.uk)- World of Multiple Sclerosis provides links 
to its associations in South Africa, France and Germany, etc.

 Many other sites target general physicians, such as Doctor's Guide (http://www.docguide.com) 

and NetMedicine (http://www.netmedicine.com), which tend to provide more general 
information.

Clinical trial information:

(http://www.centerwatch.com)- extensive US clinical trial information.

(http://www.rxlist.com)- The Internet Drug Index, a prescription
drug database - good basic information about products on the market. 

(http://www.virtualdrugstore.com) - provides access to a drug database and links in relevant 
references.

Regulatory bodies:

(http://www.open.gov.uk/mca/csmhome.htm)-  Committee for the Safety of Medicines

(http://www.open.gov.uk/mca/mcahome.htm) - Medicines Control Agency

Main two European and US equivalent organisations, with web presences:

(http://www2.eudra.org)- European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products.

(http://www.fda.gov)- US Food and Drug Administration

Health Service Sites

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/nlmnews/maraug97.html#Gore - a report of the 
PubMed launch – enabling patients are able to access some of the same sources u
sed by physicians to plan their treatment.

http://www.bhia.org/ - a set of guidelines produced by the British 
Healthcare Internet Association for anyone publishing medical information on the Internet

http://www.hon.ch/ - Health on the Net Foundation’s code of conduct. 

http://www.centreforhiq.demon.co.uk/tb2.htm - bulletin of Centre for Health 
Information Quality, funded by the NHS.

(http://omni.ac.uk/) OMNI is a UK based medical gateway which 
emphasises both high quality and UK information. 

http://www.hebs.org.uk/ - the Health Education Board for Scotland web service.

http://healthpromis.hea.org.uk/ - HealthPromis is the Health Education 
Authority's database of health promotion resources.

http://www.hea.org.uk/ The Health Education Authority web site is the ideal 
place to find information about HEA activities such as special campaigns and 
forthcoming events and initiatives.

http://www.hpw.org.uk/ - Health promotion for people in Wales in 
Welsh and English languages.

http://www.nhs50.nhs.uk/ - NHS  50th Anniversary site - plenty of 
NHS related information for the public, including a Healthy Living section.

http://www.healthfinder.gov/

or http://www.healthfinder.org/ - US site, well designed and bringing 
together information from many US agencies in one place for the consumer.

Data Privacy Web Sites

http://www.privacyexchange.org/tbdi/EU_PDR/sectorsum.html – commentary 
on data privacy web sites.

 http://www.tfpl.com - an outline of data privacy issues.  

 http://www.privacy.org - a balanced global perspective on 
issues from Privacy International, a human rights group set up in 1990.

 http://www.privacylaws.co.uk - an excellent newsletter, 
Privacy Laws and Business International.

The EU legislation

The, is the  DG XV Web site at

http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg15/en/media/dataprot/index.htm - 
primary source of official EU documentation on data privacy, including important 
Working Papers.

(http://www.privacy.it) - site relating to Italy provides much more 
information than the EU site. 

http://www.iccwbo.org/Commissions/Telecom_IT/Model_clauses.htm - 
Model Clauses developed by the International Chamber of Commerce for 
contracts involving transborder data flow.

USA sites

Http://www.privacyexchange.org - lots of good links,
including a comprehensive list of data registrars world wide.

Http://www.epic.org -  Electronic Privacy Information Centre - 

lists of privacy organisations in the USA, good list of international 
sites, and uniquely a list of newsgroups.

http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/ - the main US Government site, run by 
the Federal Trade Commission.

http://www.senate.gov/~burns/private.htm - current draft of new act drafted 
for Senate  consideration, the Online Privacy Protection Act. 

http://cptech.org -  well-designed web site set up by Ralph Nader 
with good links, including a reference to the Lexis-Nexis P-Trak 
controversy that hit the headlines a couple of years ago.

http://www.eff.org - a site with more of a civil liberties feel to it. 

http://www.privacyrights.org - Privacy Rights Clearing House

http://www.techlawjournal.com - legal issues about data privacy, mainly in 
the USA but also with quite good international coverage.

http://www.dmnews.com -  site of DM News - some very balanced articles 
on the subject of misuse of direct marketing.

http://www.privacyalliance.com - site of newest privacy organisation,
the Online Privacy Alliance, sponsored by over 60 major US companies. 

http://www.osu.edu/units/law/swire1/noyb.htm - an interim report on
the USA/EU issue prepared by Peter Swire with Robert Litton for the Brookings Institution.

(http://www.brookings.edu) - the book that he subsequently wrote entitled 
None of Your Business, published by the Brookings Institution Press  in 1998.

Some other useful sites

The following references are to specific documents, rather than the entire site.

Http://www.ibm.com/ibm/publicaffairs/protect/privacy will give you a 
very readable short introduction to the subject.

Http://www3.ncr.com/press_release/pr100598.html gives the NCR response 
to the problems that companies will have implementing data mining
technology as regards personal data.

Http://www.smithlyons.ca/it/welcome.htm is a gem of a Canadian site run by a law firm. 

Http://www.etno.be is the WWW site of the European Telecommunications
Network Operators association.

Http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/dp/97_3ust/ustaran.htm - probably the best concise summary 
of the current (1997) situation from a lawyer. 

Also (http://www.paisner.co.uk/liveissues/index.htm - go to e-commerce - 
online privacy in the dropdown menu. 

http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/1996/issue2/kosten2 - almost as good, though a little dated.

http://www.qlinks.net - an interesting personal collection of oddities.

Electronic Commerce

http://www.kpmg.co.uk/kpmg/uk/index.cfm - the Electronic Commerce 
Research Report 1998 from KPMG.

http://www.ecommerce.gov - the US Department of Commerce report, The Emerging Digital Economy.

http://www.oecd.org - papers from the OECD 1998 Ottawa conference.

http://www.ispo.cec.be/ecommerce - a background source on European developments, 
Accelerating Electronic Commerce in Europe, published by the European Commission.

http://www.ispo/cec.be/ecommerce - electronic commerce section of ISPO, 
the Information Society Project Office, sponsored by the European Commission.

http://www.eito.com - details only of the Electronic Commerce chapter 
of the European Information Technology Observatory 1999, which is full of excellent statistics on European 
and world trends.

http://www.w3.org/ECommerce - site of the W3C Electronic Commerce Interest Group.

Portals

Sites that seem to be vying with each other for the number of links listed; 
updating is not always reliable:

http://www.ec-europe.org

http://www.electronicmarkets.org

http://www.cf.ac.uk/uwcc/mastes/ecic/

US-based sites that provide reliable lists of links, but with a
high level of duplication between sites:

http://www.webreference.com/ecommerce/collections.html

http://www.harbinger.net/resource/links.shtml

http://www.brint.com/Elecomm.htm

http://china.si.umich.edu/telecom/net-commerce.html

http://www.ecresources.com/information/quicklinks.html

http://ecnow.com/resources.htm

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/index.html - Roger Clarke's 
Electronic Commerce Pages, where quality takes precedence over quantity.

Magazine portals and news services:

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/bcenter/bcenter_289.html

http://www.cio.com/forums/ec/

Other news services include

http://www.allec.com

http://www.webreference.com/ecommerce/mm/

http://www.commerce.net

http://www.commercenet.org.uk

http://corp2.unisys.com/execmag//framesets/resources.htm - Executive Briefing from Unisys.

Or try:

http://www.unysis.com/ and look for Executive Briefing on the home page.

Companies

http://www.mbs-program.com - addresses and background information for the USA – 
E-commerce North America, which is actually based in Toronto.

http://www.revolution.haynet.com - for the UK this web site of Revolution magazine is a good source.

US profiling e-commerce companies, and a range of good feature articles and columns: 

http://www.redherring.com

http://www.business2.com

http://www.fortune.com

http://www.newsdesk.com - press releases from most of the major IT companies.

Three of the leading IT companies:

http://www.ibm.com/iac/about.html

http://www.ibm.com/e-business/

http://www.geis.com/

http://www.hp.com/e-services/ - Hewlett Packard site, not good.

Government and national association sites

For the USA go to the Federal Trade Commission and Information

Technology Association of America sites:

http://www.ecommerce.gov

http://www.itaa.org

http://ec.fed.gov - Federal Electronic Commerce Program Office - this 
site has not been updated since 26 October 1998.

Finding is quite a challenge. If you want to take it start at

http://www.dti.gov.uk - e-commerce information on the UK 
Department of Trade and Industry site – not easy to find.

http://www.eca.org.uk - site of E-Centre UK (Electronic Commerce 
Association merged with Article Number Association), still under construction

Intranets and Extranets

US sites

Two regular electronic journals: 

http://idm.internet.com 

http://www.intranetjournal.com. 

Lsts of other sites: 

http://www.brint.com/Intranets.htm 

http://www.cio.com/forums/intranet. 

http://www.intragenics.com - the Complete Intranet Resource guide.

http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-34.html - good list of readings and resources 
on intranets, but seems not to have been updated since mid-1998.

Some sites which offer more in the way of substantive guidance on intranet design: 

http://www.mitre.org/support/papers - a detailed account of the way that 
Mitre reengineered its own intranet.

http://home.netscape.com/comprod/columns/intranet/index.html - archive of Netscape 
Intranet Executive briefing column.

http://home.netscape.com/columns/neteconomy/index.html - Net Economy column.

http://www.iorg.com/intranetorg - book by Dr Steve Tellen, Intranet

Organisation.

http://www.manual3.com - site produced by Manual 3 Inc..

http://www.gausa.com/CustomerSat.com/intranet.html - a sample intranet 
user satisfaction survey.

http://www.gooddocuments.com - Dan Tricklin's site on how to write 
good documents for an intranet.

http://www.mcq.com - site developed by Howard McQueen, of McQueen 
Consulting , publisher of Intranet Professional.

UK sites

http://www.intranet-cafe.co.uk -  the Intranet Cafe from EPIC.

http://www.corporate-intranet.com - a site only for members of the Corporate Intranet Forum. 

http://www.momentus.com/TheIntranetGroup/pages/homemain.html - site of the 
Intranet Group, organised and administered by Momentus.

http://www.intranet-communicator.com - site of Intranet Communicator.

http://www.intranetfocus.com - a new site that will develop as a source of 
information and advice on intranets, extranets and e-business.

Conferences

http://www.intranets99.com - papers from  Intranets 99 conference in San Francisco.

http://www.intranets2000.com - details of the Intranets 2000 conference in San Jose.

http://www.infonortics.com/intranet/index.html - details of Intranets 
International 2000 staged on 5-7 June 2000 in the Hague by Infonortics.

Extranets

http://pw2.netcom.com/~bakerpub/extranet/tools.html - site of the Extranet 
Resource Centre - many of the links are broken. 

http://www.netg.se/~kerfor/extranet.htm - a good site that is the work of Kerstin 
Forsberg in Sweden.

http://www.extranet-strategist.com/index.html -  a very good site sponsored by 
Aventail, a US software and services company. 

http://www.cio.com/forums/intranet/extranet_sites.html - CIO Magazine’s extranet page.

http://www.itworks.be - a promising Belgian site, but only some of the information is in English.         

The Common Web Cold - "4" Errors

http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html - excellent "Internet Resources Newsletter" 
at Herriot Watt University.

RBA Information Services

enquiries@rba.co.uk - http://www.rba.co.uk/ - contact RBA for publications 
and training on how to use the Internet more effectively.

Travel related Websites

Air Travel

Airlines offering online booking facilities for transatlantic flights: 

<http://www.virgin-atlantic.com> - Virgin 

<http://www.twa.com> - TWA

<http://www.ual.com> - United Airlines 

<http://www.delta-air.com> - Delta

<http://www.continental.com> - Continental

Online flight shops:

<http://www.ebookers.com> - ebookers

<http://www.deckchair.com> - deckchair 

<http://www.cheapflights.co.uk> - cheapflights

<http://www.airtickets.co.uk>- Airtickets Direct

For budget European flights: Go

<http://www.go-fly.com>,

<http://www.ryanair.com> - Ryanair 

<http://www.easyjet.co.uk> - Easyjet 

<http://www.buzzaway.com> - Buzz 

All offer good deals and cover an ever-expanding range of destinations.

Hotels

Web-based hotel-booking agents: 

<http://www.globe-market.com> - The France Hotel Guide - an excellent site for French hotels.

<http://www.hotel-denmark.com> - Hotel Denmark, is another good site with 
links to hotels in other Scandinavian countries. 

<http://www.bhrc.co.uk> - British Hotel Reservation Centre - many London 
hotels but none in the rest of the UK despite claims to the contrary.  

Companies such as Hotel Hotel and 123 Go have online enquiry forms: submit 
the city you wish to stay in and they

will respond with suitable hotels:

<http://www.hotelhotel.co.uk> 

<http://www.123-go.org> 

<http://www.room-service.co.uk> - Room Service - has small, family run hotels in Western Europe.