PROFESSIONALISM IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

WEEK 9

In today’s fast paced environment the need to adapt to outside circumstances is ever increasing. Adaptability will help you to create information systems that will get you the information you need to stay competitive. Parallel to the rapid development of Information Technology is uprising of certain ethical and professional issues as well as social implications that raises many professionalism questions of IT people and has made a big impact not only the way people around the globe communicate but also, it opens a wide door to information. Internet gave people the freedom to do, find and share a lot of things and information in the web. It is like going inside a global grocery store where everything you wanted and needed are there, all you have to do is put it inside your cart. Consequently, this freedom became the key for emergence of numerous ethical issues and made different cultures collide. However, IT professionals like any others, need to act in a professional way to avoid these collisions.

An IT practitioner needs to have equity. Equity simply means being fair with others and to act fair is to act ethical. Equity directly relates to the intellectual property rights which according to Justin Hughes, an American law professor is characterized as “nonphysical property that is a product of cognitive processes and whose value is based upon some idea or collection of ideas.” Intellectual Property is legally protected by copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets and design rights. One common violation of this right is the rampant uploading or downloading an electronic files through peer-to-peer sharing (P2P) network and mostly this is without the permission of the original author. Act likes software piracy is also unprofessional.

Second is privacy. Something that intrudes the privacy of others is considered unethical. These include accessing one’s email account, records and personal information such as credit card number, address, etc.



There are companies who practice monitoring of both personal and business emails, as well as internet usage of their employees. A number of office workers are accessing and using personal email account for business and personal reasons. This often times leads to information leakage and expose the company to unstable situations. Some also collect this information and sell to companies who advertise their products through spam mails. They send un necessary emails to our personal emails accounts. Hacking is also another issue that many IT practitioners are doing to hack information about people, companies etc. This is unprofessional behavior.

Lastly, IT professionals need to be honest is honesty which refers to acting with integrity. Generally, everyone knows and can distinguish what is right from wrong. But, not everyone can act honestly at all times. Even with the creation of company conduct code or policy, it cannot stop someone in doing unethical or dishonest habits in the workplace for honesty is something intrinsic. These are common unethical and unprofessional business habits and serves as current challenges of most companies. IT professionals need to be honest when placing software for free download where many put viruses a program that affects the normal functioning of a computer. This virus can damage some important files and lead to vital information loss.

An IT professional should act professionally and never use his IT skills badly or to engage in any unethical act. This will make him have the dignity of being called a professional as well as not being unjust to others. One is encouraged to concentrate more on inventions and innovations that can help people in many ways. Therefore being a professional is not only having the IT skills but also the ability of one to act ethically and professionally.

ADAPTABILITY

The ability to adapt to frequent changes in the IT sector has emerged as a new paradigm for successful IT practitioners and companies operations. An IT professional should have all the required and extra skills in his field to be able to cope up with the adaptability that involves changes in every day to day basis. Every day there is a new software in the market, a new device and new trends. An IT professional should be able to cope up with this change through updating himself with the current trends.

Business change is one of the most outstanding and most pervasive qualities of global economies. There has been some consideration of business change itself, but less emphasis has been on studying the outcomes of this change with regard to information technology (IT) and its interrelation. Organizational change requires the information systems architecture of an organization to adjust too to be able to adapt to changes in the IT sector. The so called digital market which involves intense IT application, needs IT professionals to combat themselves with all the technology in the field to be able to perform accurately and effectively.

IT professionals also need to adapt to the way of handling IT project complexity so as to ensure smooth running of projects. A professional needs to be aware of all the changes occurring in the external markets as well as internally within the organization so as to be able to handle the complexity easily without affecting the business and the field at large. Complexity issues can be societal, organizational, and technological as well as software. Also one important feature is the enterprise architecture of the business that determines how the business operates.

IT professionals also need to be very knowledgeable in their respective fields to enable them to handle IT matters easily. An undergraduate degree is not enough, with the current trends in the knowledge fields where more and more post graduates studies are facilitated, one needs to be able to acquire all the necessary skills and not only theories. In other words there is a need for a CS professional to know more about networking and vice versa. By doing so, it will make practitioners adapt to their respective fields easily and be able to make decisions as well as handle various matters easily.




References:


Andresen, K., Gronau, N., Schmid, S. (2005): Ableitung von IT-Strategien durch Bestimmung der
notwendigen Wandlungsfähigkeit von Informationssystemarchitekturen.

http://www3.gartner.com/Init,

FUTURE TRENDS IN E-LEARNING

WEEK 8

 

With advancement in information technology, there is no doubt that the future of E-learning would be enhanced. E-learning depends largely on IT to function effectively, therefore with new developments in IT

 E-learning shall be more effective:

·         Learning/training content can be accessed easily

·         The highest quality

·         Tailored to individual needs

·         Cost effective

·         Anywhere and anytime

·         Technological Advances

·         Pressure from industry

·         Global competition

New way of learning/training

• Systematical approach to learning and training which shall involve
• Needs assessment/analysis
• Content development
• Instructional Design & Technology
• Training Methods 

Trainees / Students shall be:

• Center of the whole process shall be well developed
• Learning content for the right skills for the right job delivered in the right place at the right time by the right
• method

Training Professionals will be:

•  More mission critical
• Needs assessment
• Content development
• Instructional Design & Technology

Instructional contents will be produced:

• Faster
• Existing contents (digital repository)
• Authoring utility

Semi-automatic assembly

• Higher quality
• Advances in learning theory
• High quality Video, Audio

I think, in the future the above trends shall be implemented in E-learning and shall replace classrooms and one can access it anywhere at any time. There shall be no need to sit in a lecture theater or classroom for hours listening to a lecturer instead, you can access the lectures at home,work, at the beach or anywhere as well as downloading the notes. E-learning shall be more more popular and maybe will replace classes forever. On the other hand, it shall bring health problems like overweight. This is because people will be sitting in front of the PCs for a long time listening to lectures and would lack exercises. Most probably, they will eat a lot of snacks and fast foods and  this might lead t obesity. Too much exposure to light would also affect their vision as well as their health  conditions in general. As we all know that, a teacher is more than a guardian to his/her students!This part of the phenomenon shall be lost because there would  be no contact between a teacher and students anymore. Education shall also be very expensive compared to now and would rely on technology more than anything else and this might be a limitation to some people especially those from poor and underdeveloped countries. Cases of fraud in exams shall be most common due to lack of personal supervision as exams shall be done online without anyone supervising the candidates. Therefore education shall not have a greater value and quality than what it mean today!






References:

http://www.knowledgenet.com/

http://www.kineo.com/e-learning-trends/future-of-e-learning-in-universities.html

http://techchange.org/index.php?/Blog/latest.html&gclid=CLjMyqjL9rUCFQub6wodQTYA-Q

GLOBAL MARKETS…

WEEK 7

Information technology has altered the way in which the world operates. The barriers that once hindered our ability to communicate and interact with people across the world have diminished. Over the past few decades advancements in information technology has now become a key component of a corporation’s global business strategy. Many business have moved from traditional and local operations to advanced global operations. Business have moved from traditional means of operating and now have become global digital firms. Advancement in information technology has enabled many business to expand their line of production to worldwide branches.

Trough information technology, countries have been linked to each other internationally and globally such that one factor of production in one country is affected by another factor in its global markets. Business are operating on international standards and are therefore opening up more and more branches overseas. Communication has been made easier and faster globally through the use of internet making it easy to transfer message from one part of the globe to another within a blink of an eye. Global marketing has also been influenced by the development of global advertising and marketing strategy. This has opened up new global markets for various products worldwide, for instance the apple company, Nokia, Samsung and many others.

Sales have moved from the traditional offices with employed salesmen to online sales facilitated by various sale agencies. This has been made possible by the use of internet. Inventory supply chains which are found globally. It has enabled business to acquire flexible sales as well as enhance business strategies to meet market demands. It has also enhanced management of customer relations attracting more and more customers. Worldwide door step delivery for instance, has enabled customers to get supplied with products to their convenient places. For example the automobile industries which has shifted from local to global markets. It is very easier and faster to buy any car from any part of the world online and it will be delivered to your door step after following the right procedures. This has led to many automobile companies to gain global markets. Example: Toyota, Isuzu, Benz, KIA motors, Ford, and many others.

Business have also expanded their production through overseas production in many parts globally. It has enabled some business to set up branches in other countries and operating. For example the MC Donald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut,  food courts which started as a local brand have now become a global brand with branches in Europe, Asia, Africa and others places all over the world.

Many business which started as local set ups are now operating on global basis. Chain stores and global supermarkets, the Unilever Company, inventory and supply, logistics companies, and even educational organizations are now on a global perspective and are operating globally. Therefore, business have moved from traditional means of operating to global markets due to advancement in information technology.