First, make sure students understand what Pratibha does and what APL Limited is. If you have access to the Internet in your classroom, you may want to help students link to www.apl.com to learn more about APL’s history around the world.

Then ask students why they think paperwork is so important to Pratibha in her job. Ask them what kind of paperwork they think she tracks and what each kind of information is important.

Students may answer that Pratibha must track paperwork about:

What is in a particular cargo container. It is important to know this since containers look the same from the outside. Without something to tell the shipper what it is, nobody would know what was inside.

Where a container needs to go. Again, because containers look alike, shippers need information that clearly states where a container is going. This paperwork helps make sure the correct containers are unloaded at the correct places.

When a container needs to get there.

Who is shipping the container and who has purchased it. It’s very important for a shipper to know who’s responsible for a particular shipment. Who will be picking it up? Who must be contacted if something goes wrong?

How the shipment is being paid for. The shipping company must be paid to move the cargo from place to place. And the person buying the cargo must arrange to pay for it from the person who is selling it. Often a great deal of money is involved — many times using different currencies between different countries. So it’s important to have careful records.

Permission for the cargo to be brought into a different country. A shipper moving cargo from one country to another must “clear customs” or receive permission to bring the cargo into the new country. To do that, customs officials in the new country will want to know what the cargo is, how much it is worth, who has purchased it, and where it is going.

Optional: Lead students through a discussion of how tasks such as completing paperwork and getting information around the world might have been accomplished without computers (just a few decades ago!) and how those same tasks are accomplished today.

What do they think would have happened to Pratibha in 1984 if, instead of volunteering to lead the move to computerization, she had resisted it, preferring to do her work the way she had always done it?

What do students think changing technologies will mean in their lives and futures?