As we have seen and notice right now technology is expanding all over the world and we can’t deny that almost a hundred percent of the people rely in the technology for sustaining their everyday work of living. Our world today has changed a great deal with the aid of information technology. Things that were once done manually or by hand have now become computerized operating systems, which simply require a single click of a mouse to get a task completed. With the aid of IT we are not only able to stream line our business processes but we are also able to get constant information in 'real time' that is up to the minute and up to date. The significance of IT can be seen from the fact that it has penetrated almost every aspect of our daily lives from business to leisure and even society. Today personal PCs, cell phones, fax machines, pagers, email and internet have all not only become an integral part of our very culture but also play an essential role in our day to day activities. With such a wide scope for the purpose of this article we shall focus on the impact of the internet in information technology.
Technology, in this fast-changing world is very important in our daily existence. The world has never been the same with technology around. Every year, technological advancements are made to make us live with ease. However, technology has its share of adverse effects to humanity as well. With new technology, countries have been destroyed and thousands of lives are lost. Some people take advantage of technology, using it for personal gain. Out of greed, people use high-powered technology to get ahead of others. This should never be the case. Technology was invented to make life easier for all of us, not to destroy us. Advertising and marketing has played a big role in the influence of technology to humanity. Information technology has a great impact in our daily lives, as our environment changes also the technology changes rapidly. People need to adopt those rapid changes and fast innovation of information technology. The role of digital technology in the evolving knowledge society is comparable to that of the railroad during the Industrial Revolution. With the aid of information-technology “tracks”—high-speed computer and telecommunications systems—now inter-connecting so much of the world, reaching into the marketplace, government, and our homes and lives, we often learn about events virtually as soon as they occur and we are able to process the information in a myriad of increasingly useful ways. Changes involving information technology nowadays is really fast. Information technology has been used in all companies and establishments, especially in school. The use of information technology in school is very important so that the students can know what the latest trends in IT are nowadays and also to help the students in sufficing their need.
In the near future, there would be more expansion on technology as what have said that technology nowadays is fast changing. Technology development plays a major role in the society, organizations, process and also in the institutions or shall we say in schools. With the fast- pace of technology, schools should cope with it to equip the students with new technology and to continue improve for the better future. Since, students or youth is the hope of the country, students should endow and expose with these new technologies to have a better education for the young minds. If there are changes most likely to happen within the university probably there would be a great emphasis on the upgrades of hardware and software components, supplementary trainings and empowerment of more IS/IT personnel, the use of technology as a method of instruction, and students’ access to computers and internet in learning.
Since, Information technology means the use of technologies from computing, electronics, and telecommunications to process and distribute information in digital and other forms. Information technology includes two distinct components. These components are the hardware and software components of a computer system. Since, information technology covers two components, improvements in those two areas would see slowly in the next three years to be enacted. In terms of hardware components, it would be a great contribution for the expansion and improvement of the technology offered to the students of the school. There would be improvement not only on the outside appearance of the computer but also in its inner components. Higher capacity and specifications for hardware components will provide a faster processing that will, of course evident if the software component also goes along with its high specification. Moreover, new and sufficient amount of equipments or gadgets for the school instructors, staff and especially to the students should be satisfied.
But of course, with the computer components it should be accompanied in promoting green computing. With the energy shortage that the country is experiencing right now and the abnormal fluctuations of the earth’s temperature, more and more people are already aware of the significance of protecting our environment and conserving energy. Because of this, the university should consider the environmental effects of the hardware components that will be bought in the future.
IT Infrastructure
Next change would be the IT infrastructure. Infrastructure defined by Wikipedia is the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. Having a change on the infrastructure of the university specially the IT infrastructure could also have a big impact on the university services. If there would be changes I hope these would be additions on the facilities that the students would make use of not deduction of this. To wrap it up changes would not mean there would be additions all the time it could sometime mean removing some services. Changes could have positive impact to which it concerns but not all the time it could be for improvement, there are times negative outputs come out of the new implementations or changes that are made. According to (Malone and Crowston, the increasing speed pace of change require more flexible and adaptive organizations. Rockart and Short cites the ballooning need for the interdependence of organizational structure to IT in managing competitive pressures that included globalization, time-based competition, increased market risk, and a greater emphasis on customer service and cost reduction. Bennis states that "the organization's response to the environment will continue to be the crucial determinant for its effectiveness." As organizations use information, effective usage of Information Technology likely results to the organizations development and growth. It is apparent that IT has great impact in the university, and whatever changes in IT has the university as an IT-reliant organization has to go with the changes in order not to be behind. As Keen (1991) noted that IT increasingly and continuously affects the organizations operations as well as its behavior including issues as on how the organization organize, transact business, and contend with other organization.
Free internet (Wi-Fi) access
Wi-fi is the name of a popular wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet and network connections. The Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that owns the Wi-Fi (registered trademark) term specifically defines Wi-Fi as any "wireless local areanetwork (WLAN) products that are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11 standards."Initially, Wi-Fi was used in place of only the 2.4GHz 802.11b standard, however the Wi-Fi Alliance has expanded the generic use of the Wi-Fi term to include any type of network or WLAN product based on any of the 802.11 standards, including 802.11b, 802.11a, dual-band, and so on, in an attempt to stop confusion about wireless LAN interoperability.Wi-Fi works with no physical wired connection between sender and receiver by using radio frequency (RF) technology, a frequency within the electromagnetic spectrum associated with radio wave propagation.
Recently, I have been noticing that more and more students are now using portable computers like laptops and notebooks even those students whose courses are not even computer related. This is now quite evident maybe because of the fact that laptops nowadays are more affordable compared to laptops before. How much more in the future? With the increasing population of students that are using laptops, it is a shame that up to now there is still no free wifi access in the university for the students. I can still notice some students with laptops are sneaking near offices and faculty rooms within the university just to have free wifi access. To make it worse, there are security restrictions which prevent the student from accessing the wifi connection. The university admin may say that there is no need for a free wifi access because the university already has a virtual laboratory to suffice the internet needs of the students. This may be true for those students who don’t have personal computers. But what about those students who literally use their laptops as personal notebooks that they even use during classes. And let’s all face it, the computers provided by the computer laboratories are not that satisfactory when it comes to data processing and the computer laboratory cannot accommodate all the students because of the scarcity of computers. The least the university can do is provide a free wifi service in which the students who has laptops can access free internet by just staying inside the campus. I believe that this kind of change will be a “substantial change for the good” because I believe that it will really help the students in particular to stay inside the campus than go outside just to access the internet.
Process Automation
In the next three years, considering the rapid changes including the changes on information technology I can say that almost all of the services that can be adopt into automated system will be innovated into automated one. Using internet services, computers, data storage servers, the student’s knowledge on information technology, and the teacher’s guidance and administration, full service automation can be achieved. Nowadays some services in the university still use a manual system, in the next three years all of those services will be change into an automated one. Through automated services, faster performance and services will be achieve and satisfy the needs of service takers. To cope with the new trend in the technology, automation of the processes should be done. Processes provided by the university to the students and processes that are made by the school. Processes mean many things in regard to the school. School ID system using barcodes, is one of many other processes. As I have observed, most universities in Davao already adapted the technology of using the school id system to facilitate and improve their services. It is unfortunate that up until now, the university hasn’t taken the advantage of using our school ids to improve student services. Three years from now, I can see that there is a significant improvement in the school services through the use of embedded bar codes in our school ids. Through bar codes, student ID cards can act as a "portable database" where we can store digital photographs, signatures, schedule data, emergency contact information and even biometric data in a single code the size of a magnetic stripe - all at virtually no extra cost. Automation also includes library automation, such as borrowing of books would also be possible by using barcodes. As well as, science laboratory automation of equipments for more accurate inventory of available equipments. Class scheduling system would also be among with it and much other automation of processes that can offer great improvement to the school and to its students. Barcode technology is most accurate and least expensive way to identify and get data into the computer. The extent of achievement in the library after introduction of barcode technology is quite high. The following are the benefits of the barcode technology: Improved operational efficiency: Manual charging/ discharging of documents is very cumbersome. Operational efficiency has improved a lot after using the barcode technology as barcodes permit faster recording of information. Accuracy: In the manual system, the writing of accession number and member code may result in charging/discharging a wrong book to a wrong member. But barcode scans accession number and member code at the time of charging/discharging to ensure the accuracy in transactions. It leads to an error free data entry. With the help of barcode issue/return of documents can be done faster, which helps in saving the time of both the user as well as library staff. Barcode helps reducing in cost of preparing duplicate borrowers card.
A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows certain data on certain products. Originally, barcodes represented data in the widths (lines) and the spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1D (1 dimensional) barcodes or symbologies. They also come in patterns of squares, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns within images termed 2D (2 dimensional) matrix codes or symbologies. Although 2D systems use symbols other than bars, they are generally referred to as barcodes as well. Barcodes can be read by optical scanners called barcode readers, or scanned from an image by special software. Barcode technology is fast and user-friendly. Barcode will help in stock verification expeditiously and easily. Barcode will help in maintaining duplicate borrowers’ card, which were occupying more space on the issue counter. Issuing of no dues certificate will become easy; it was very cumbersome to verify from a manual system. It will facilitate preparation of reminders and fine lists for overdue books. It provides reliable statistics. It adds to elegance and aesthetics of the front office and its activities.
Benefits
In point-of-sale management, the use of barcodes can provide very detailed up-to-date information on key aspects of the business, enabling decisions to be made much more quickly and with more confidence. For example:
Fast-selling items can be identified quickly and automatically reordered to meet consumer demand, Slow-selling items can be identified, preventing a build-up of unwanted stock, The effects of repositioning a given product within a store can be monitored, allowing fast-moving more profitable items to occupy the best space, Historical data can be used to predict seasonal fluctuations very accurately. Items may be repriced on the shelf to reflect both sale prices and price increases. This technology also enables the profiling of individual consumers, typically through a voluntary registration of discount cards. While pitched as a benefit to the consumer, this practice is considered to be potentially dangerous by privacy advocates.Besides sales and inventory tracking, barcodes are very useful in shipping/receiving/tracking.
When a manufacturer packs a box with any given item, a Unique Identifying Number (UID) can be assigned to the box. A relational database can be created to relate the UID to relevant information about the box; such as order number, items packed, qty packed, final destination, etc. The information can be transmitted through a communication system such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) so the retailer has the information about a shipment before it arrives. Shipments that are sent to a Distribution Center (DC) are tracked before being forwarded to the final destination. When the shipment gets to the final destination, the UID gets scanned, so the store knows where the order came from, what's inside the box, and how much to pay the manufacturer.The reason barcodes are business-friendly is that the scanners are relatively low cost and extremely accurate compared to key-entry, with only about 1 substitution error in 15,000 to 36 trillion characters entered.[14] The exact error rate depends on the type of barcode.
Use
Barcodes—especially the UPC—have slowly become an essential[citation needed] part of modern civilization. Their use is widespread, and the technology behind barcodes is constantly improving. Some modern applications of barcodes include:
Almost every item purchased from a grocery store, department store, and mass merchandiser has a UPC barcode on it. This greatly helps in keeping track of a large number of items in a store and also reduces instances of shoplifting involving price tag swapping, although shoplifters can now print their own barcodes. Since the adoption of barcodes, both consumers and retailers have benefited from the savings generated. Barcodes are widely used in shop floor control applications software where employees can scan work orders and enter the time spent on a job.[10] Retail chain membership cards (issued mostly by grocery stores and specialty "big box" retail stores such as sporting equipment, office supply, or pet stores) use bar codes to uniquely identify a consumer. Retailers benefit by being able to offer customized marketing and greater understanding of individual consumer shopping patterns. Shoppers typically get special offers at the point of sale (coupons, product discounts) or special marketing offers through the address or e-mail address provided at registration.The increasing speed pace of change requires more flexible and adaptive organizations. The ballooning need for the interdependence of organizational structure to IT in managing competitive pressures that included globalization, time-based competition, increased market risk, and a greater emphasis on customer service and cost reduction. The organization's response to the environment will continue to be the crucial determinant for its effectiveness. As organizations use information, effective usage of Information Technology likely results to the organizations development and growth. It is apparent that IT has great impact in the university, and whatever changes in IT has the university as an IT-reliant organization has to go with the changes in order not to be behind. Through the help of information technology, university services will be faster and accurate. As the University adopts the fast changing environment involving information technology, such as the combination of the two changes above, having a full automation (computerize system), and advance and enough technology resources this changes will be achieve. It is noted that IT increasingly and continuously affects the organizations operations as well as its behavior including issues as on how the organization organize, transact business, and contend with other organization.
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