The End.

Yes, I am done with ITGS! and IB for that matter.
I am very excited, obviously, even though I know I am going to miss some of the things that I enjoyed in this class. I am surely going to miss seeing all my classmates and all the fun we had together, all the times we would find ourselves discussing (debating, fighting about) off-topic issues. I really enjoyed ITGS and I definitely don't regret having taken it.

About the exam:

I really didn't find the exam to be as shocking as the other exams I had taken but it wasn't too easy either. I think every ITGS student should study for the exam, especially paper 1, by studying terms and concepts that we use everyday because most of the terms that I was asked to define were things that I use every day but that I might find difficult to define using techy words... My advice would be to look through the glossary of Tomorrow's Technology.
Then look at past papers and markscheme just to have an idea of what is expected from you. What is the difference between "explain", "evaluate" and "discuss"? How much information you're expected to provide? The ITGS exam's challenge is not about thinking or remembering things that you've memorized, the challenge is being able to use your time well and answering the questions in the right format. So ask the teacher to do some practice and evaluate yourself.
Then, RELAX.
It's very important because if you panick you risk not being able to answer questions that you know well. Relax as you study, relax before the exam and relax as you're taking the exam. Even when you realize you don't have enough time left, don't panick because it doesn't help you.
This basically all I can say about the exam... any questions: leave a comment.

Advice for the next generation (HL students)

ITGS HL is not that hard, it is quite doable, it just requires certain things:

• You would need to be an indenpendent learner. You would make sure that you know what you need to know. You should set up some sort of schedule just to make sure that you will be able to cover everything you need to learn before either the December exams, mock exams and the real IB exams.

• You will need to be proactive! You should not seat down and wait for the teacher to give you back your assignment if you really need it or wait for them to ask you your homework or give you assignments. Sometimes, in fact many times, you will need to remind the teacher of your needs. And it's not just about the teacher but also other fellow ITGS students. If there aren't so many HL students in the class, sometimes SL students tend to chill out and all so you would need to remind them to be serious...

• Take good notes, that is very important. And keep them together. I used a website to take notes because sometimes I would do research online and wouldn't want to print everything or copy it on paper. The website I used for taking notes is www.backpackit.com

• The Case study! Learn e-v-e-r-y tech vocab word that you're not sure you know. Even check for those that you already knew to make sure that you would be able to define them well if you were asked to. Ask the teacher to make up some questions based on the case study for you just practice. Talk to your teacher whenever you have questions because sometimes the teacher might tell you about something that you would have not been able to find otherwise. Ok, when you get your case study, first thing is to underline key words. Second, define them all. Third, research on social/ethical issues. Fourth, further research on issues that may not be directly related to the case study specifically.

• Um, don't worry about the IAs. You can easily do them if you just take your time to understand what exactly is expected from you. The only advice that I would give you on the IAs is to make sure that when you submit the rough draft to your teacher, make sure that it's really good, your best! because the teacher can only make good comments once and for the second time the teacher can't say much.

• Finally, enjoy the class. Honestly, it can be pretty boring at times but if you have the right attitude, you will enjoy it.

Peace. ;)

Case Study Activity 2

I was supposed to buy different items from two grocery stores and compare how the food is processed and checking out.
I am comparing buying MaxMart and Koala where I bought one kilo of jam, raisins, bread, a kitkat chocolate bar and a bottle of juice.
Generally, Koala seems to be a more traditional grocery store compared to MaxMart which is much bigger. Therefore, MaxMart has more checkout points than Koala. Both stores however use barcodes to identify the products. There is not much different to how the checkout process goes because their systems are different.
This is a challenge for me because all the known supermarkets here in Ghana use barcodes and none use RFID system. Therefore I am not able to compare the checkout process and see if RFID system really makes things go faster. I also need to refer to personal experience as a customer when I answer questions on the exam...

Case Study Activity 1

For this assignment, I was supposed to go shopping in one of Accra's supermarket and observe how bar codes work and how the IT systems work different stakeholders.

I went shopping to MaxMart (East Legon) where they use bar codes. I am going to comment on the impact of IT systems according to different stakeholders' perspectives.

Customers' perspectives:

+ The bar codes have the name of the items, the brand and typed price on them so it helps the customers differentiate items and know how much they are going to spend in advance.
+ The use of bar codes really speeds up the check out process. I have been to a local store before where they do not use bar codes and checking out items takes much longer.
+ There is camera surveillance in MaxMart and this is a good thing for customers because there would not be many workers hanging around with suspicious looks on their faces. The customers feel like their shopping in privacy even though they are being watched because it is easy to forget that there are cameras.
- Bar codes at MaxMart are printed on a piece of paper and sticked on the item. However, when items are refrigerated, the piece of paper gets wet so sometimes the ink gets mixed which makes the writings illegible.
- Since also the bar code piece of paper is sticked on the items, it can easily removed and replaced by another one and it would be hard to see the difference.
- When I asked some customers, they said that the IT systems' impact is limited as the IT cannot replace the staff. Therefore, there are still some problems with the staff that the IT system cannot solve.

CeBIT: Supermarket of the future

As an HL student, I get to do Paper 3 which is on a case study just for HL people. This year's case study is about a supermarket that wants to update its way of working for the benefit of both the company and its customers.
Today, I have been honored to find one of the most amazing supermarket technology out now: CeBIT's SAP.
It is basically a technology that allows shoppers to use their phone number as shop lists so that when they enter the supermarket, instead of wandering around looking for the item they want, SAP looks up the items on the server, creates a map with the most efficient route to shop for all your items and shows the available brands and prices. The application is also an on-the-fly checkout system that scans the price of items as they're lifted off the shelves and charges them to an account. The only disadvantage is that it is too costly for the mass retail market since it requires RFID tagging.
This sure an awesome technology but it is yet to be implemented in stores.

Source: Australian IT

Yahoo OpenID Plan Spotlights Privacy Issues

Yahoo is planning on adopting a new log-in system that allows the user to log in only once, on one website, then have all their yahoo accounts logged in on other websites. It works like this: when Yahoo users go to a site using the OpenID protocol, they will either see a special Yahoo log-in field, or they can type "yahoo.com" into an OpenID field to start the log-in process. The Web site will redirect the user to Yahoo to log in, and then Yahoo will forward the user's identifying information back to the Web site. Of course this is a relief for those people who used to waste a lot of time log-in on multiple yahoo websites. But on the other hand, this OpenID system may cause a lot of privacy issues. For instance, if one of the Yahoo websites gets hacked, it means that they'll access your private information autamatically while you could have prevented that from happening if you had had the choice of log-in on that specific website. According to Lane, it's like putting all your eggs in the same basket. Plus, you might not want to share the same log-in info on all the Yahoo websites yuo visit (like Wall Street Journal vs. Nerve.com).
In my opinion, I think it is everybody's choice to use the OpenID thing although I know that if Yahoo finally decides to use it, many people will use it without knowing what it really means and many of them will use it just because it's "new". Sad.

Source: Top Tech News

Would e-voting encourage more people to vote?

In many countries the electoral process is marked by the absence of a significant number of voters which makes the results less democratics because they do not represent the opinion of all the inhabitants of the country. However, many countries, including England, have adopted an electoral process that they think it would encourage people to vote and make elections more democratic. A recent study shows that e-voting encourages people to vote because they do not have to move in order for them to vote. In addition, it takes less time to vote because they can simply send a text-message or online vote and go on with their daily business. The Diaspora also benefits from that because they can send their votes online without having to fly to their country in order to vote. In England, e-voting is one of the voting options that British citizens enjoy.

Source: BBC News