The pace of change seems to increase relentlessly, especially changes involving information technology. Using your crystal ball, identify and discuss

Technology has come a very long way and it never stopped changing. From the very first computer man has ever built, up to the latest technologies man has never dreamed would ever be built. The world has never been similar with technology around. Change is constant because from time to time, new discoveries and trends are coming out and replaces the old ones. Every year, technological advancements are made and greatly facilitated to make us live with ease. Most of the time people find themselves trying not to get left behind and have latest version and models of laptops and other high technology equipments which become obsolete in the next few months due to fast innovations and upgrades.

School is embracing this technology which performs a wide variety of activities.From class scheduling to homework assignment submission, new technology is changing the way that schools handle most traditional aspects of the educational experience. At the most basic level, more teachers are embracing new tools, whether it’s an e-book lecture for their courses. Even more so, students are using these tools to thrive in their educational environment.
Talking about information technology and its changes, as a student and as part of the university, a change in the information technology affects not only the school but even the students and faculties. Since change is increasing relentlessly, our university is trying their best to cope up with that change. Honestly, in terms of technology, our university is not that competitive and innovative. Still, we don’t have enough computers that would cater more students at the same time. There are some services of the university that not all students can participate. If we look around the university, there are a lot of problems and some of those problems can be solved and lessen through the use of information technology. One thing that triggers the university to successfully adapt the changes is the cost. Though the university aims to be competitive with the other big schools and as the vision of the university, “premier university in the Asian region”, budget is an intruder to that dream. An implementation of new information technology needs a sufficient budget, especially on the hardware to the software that will be used. Resistance to change is one reason why a certain organization doesn’t want to implement a new information technology. Those organizations are left behind in the modern way of business since every process and transactions are manually done. But as I observe on our school, resistance to change is not a big risk. Everyone wants to be updated with the latest information technology but we fail to achieve this because of the cost.

Using my crystal ball, (ahohmmmm……) with regards to our university, USeP (University of Southeastern Philippines), I foresee some changes likely to have a substantial impact to our school services in the next three years. These are:

RFID as Students Identification Card
At first, I thought RFID means “Request for ID”…hehe! But it was a broad term that encompasses the span of technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify people or objects and work with a microchip to store information. RFID simply means Radio frequency identification. We, student in the University of Southeastern Philippines have our own identification card and identification number which is unique. Through this technology, all you have to do is passing within range of the radio frequency acceptor and you are done instead of inserting your card into a card acceptor or scanning it through. It is most common way of storing information is to store a serial number that identifies a person, object, or information on a microchip. The microchip is attached to an antenna and imbedded between the layers of the card. Information can be written, erased, and rewritten, and is stored on the microchip and transmitted by the antenna.
The chip and antenna combination is called an RFID transponder or an RFID tag. The antenna enables the chip to transmit the identification information to a reader. Radio waves reflected from the card (RFID tag) to the reader allow the reader to convert the radio waves reflected back from the RFID tag into digital information that can be processed by the computer.


Enrollment System
For me, with the current state and the situation of the school enrollment process I observed that it is still unorganized. Though there were changes made, still cannot be considered as the best or a strategic way of catering the students, especially the incoming first years. Enrolment process should be one of the most organized processes in the school because it motivates the students’ specifically first year students to enroll and encourage their friends to enroll too in our university. We need a change in a procedure would make an impact to a student for they would have to adjust with it. Automating some of these processes would ease the life of the students. Like UNIISYS that are developed by Information Technology as wells as Computer Science graduating students. This is a collection of systems made by the students from the Institute of Computing of the university which would automate some services of the different offices and organizations of the university. If this project would be implemented hopefully in the future on the university, it would make a big impact on the students and those who are within the university who could make use of this system. This system is an ease to some services offered in the university. UNIISYS is a big system which consists of ten (10) subsystems. Namely: Agila (a Davao Geographical Information System that shows all familiar places here in Davao City), eGayd(the university map in school that helps the students, not only the students but also freshman especially visitors who will be entering the University school and helps them know all the departments in the building where they are located), eBenta (an online bidding system for the university students to engage in E-Commerce activity promoting their competitiveness and experience in entrepreneurship), eDikit (an online publication system which let the students upload and publish their literary works online), uPahibalo(an electronic bulletin board or an organizational information system, which handles the information of organizations and its members), eHatag(the title they give to the one of the subsystem which is for file-sharing system), eSkular(a scholarship renewal system), eTudlo(an online tutorial-seeking system which will be helpful to all the students who find difficulties in their subjects that needs to be guided more and explain more to understanding such kind of problems), eSkedyul(a schedule organizer for faculty and students in which it helps in aiding such conflicts between students and teachers that need to be verified just like for example about their schedule time), and the last but not the least is the Alumnay(a community for USEP graduates). From UNIISYS itself, it gives something really significant especially to the developers that enable them to share what they have learned from their Alma matter. This can give also to the university itself a great work that can be proud of as part of the technology trends.

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.


Automated Library Process
The library is an important body in the university. It is where the students study, do research works and/or simply read books. It offers a whole lot of services for the students such as a virtual library where the students can use computers and surf through the internet. Another service is the audio visual room where the students will be able watch films that are related to their education. Another service that is offered is the OPAC system where the students will be able to search the books they need by using the computer.

Despite the services that the library offers, still, some students are not satisfied with the type of service they offer. The internet service is slow, some audio visual equipments are defective and the OPAC is not accurate. However, the University Library is now planning to outsource a system that will be able to allow the users search the necessary books, journals and important documents accurately. Through this, the library staff and users will no longer have difficulty in looking for books and documents. The automation in the library will be able to provide fast library services such as book borrowing to returning of books that were borrowed, updated and accurate Online Public Access Catalog, a database of books and documents for faster search and retrieval of records by the library staff and a faster internet services and computer units for the University Virtual Library users. Aside from an accurate record of books, the library also plans to integrate all the learning and resource centers in the university for easy an easy access of the documents and books. In this way, if the library clients and/or staff will search for certain document or book, they will know whether that particular book or document is located in a learning and resource center. The library automation is a major investment which must not be taken for granted.

OTHER CHANGES:
Scheduling System
The other change in USEP’s information technology which I found substantial impact on student services is having a Scheduling System. For years, the colleges continue to have conflicts and unofficial changes in the schedules of the subjects. Normally, it would take days, even weeks just to make the necessary schedules. There are times that the person assigned to make the semester schedules might overlook some classrooms, subjects or teachers. Every enrollment, the schedules of subjects are posted and will be taken by the students. However, at the beginning of the semester, they get confused due to some conflicts and unofficial changes.

The scheduling system will act like a decision support system that will automatically generate the semester schedules. It will be capable of assigning subjects to the teachers based on the number of their teaching load, skills and preferred time to teach the subjects. The system will also be able to designate rooms to the subjects depending on its needs like laboratories. The system can also divide the maximum number of lecture hours per week based on the subject’s credit units and the teacher’s preferred time. Moreover, it will be able to minimize the unofficial changes and conflicts in the generated schedules. Through this kind of system, the faculty members and the students will be given assurance that the schedules posted in every enrolment are final and official. Furthermore, the person assigned to create the semester schedules will not have to spend days or weeks just to come up with the said schedules.
Computer Room with Free WiFi Zone
The university can put up a station or computer rooms, not exactly a laboratory, where they can stay, surf through the internet, make their projects and even charge their laptop computers. A venue for us, students to gain access to the internet that greatly helps us especially to those who don’t have a computer at home, and those who have a computer at home but don’t have an internet connection. All students in our university are really in need of the internet particularly us, IT students. Virtual library is an option but it cannot cater all the students at the same time. Another thing is the time allotted for each student plus the internet connection is too slow. Thus, you must wait for your turn.
Having your own laptops is an advantage. All you have to do is find a seat in a corner and open your laptop and detect a WiFi range in your area. A Wi-Fi enabled device such as a personal computer, video game console, mobile phone, MP3 player or personal digital assistant can connect to the Internet when within range of a wireless network connected to the Internet. The coverage of one or more interconnected access points — called a hotspot — can comprise an area as small as a few rooms or as large as many square miles covered by a group of access points with overlapping coverage. Wi-Fi technology has been used in wireless mesh networks, for example, in London. In addition to private use in homes and offices, Wi-Fi can provide public access at Wi-Fi hotspots provided either free of charge or to subscribers to various commercial services. Organizations and businesses such as airports, hotels and restaurants often provide free hotspots to attract or assist clients.
Since the school recently have Wi-Fi spots but there are some area are exclusive for personnel only. But I do believe that this coming 3 years, the University has a Wi-fi connection. This is very helpful to the students and visitor also to access the net even they are in school.
Many public buses and other forms of transportation are testing public Wi-Fi, with the Vail School District now testing Wi-Fi on school buses. Unfortunately, wireless connection in school was secured and we are not advice to charge our laptops anywhere.

Virtual Library

What is a virtual library? The term has been defined by many different people in many different ways. It is a library in which the holdings are found in electronic stacks. It is a library that exists, without any regard to a physical space or location. It is a technological way to bring together the resources of various libraries and information services, both internal and external, all in one place, so users can find what they need quickly and easily.

Sounds great, right? Well, the virtual library also has its drawbacks and limitations. Michael Schuyler makes this point very clearly with his definition of the virtual library. He likens the virtual library to a popsicle, stating that "…[i]f the electricity goes off, the cold goes away - and so does the popsicle, leaving a soggy smear on the shelf where something substantial once resided. The virtual library suffers the same vulnerability and the same precarious existence." 2

However, when they work, virtual libraries can be very useful and very diverse in what they contain. The options for what they can include are virtually endless, and become more and more boundless as technology advances. Some of the content of a virtual library may include, but certainly is not limited to, CD-ROM, Internet subscriptions, lists of annotated web links, internal work products (such as brief banks), proprietary databases (such as LexisNexis or Westlaw) and even web spiders or push technology that deliver targeted research to the user.

So, what does the future hold? What will the law library of the future look like? Or will it even exist at all? The simple answer is yes, it will exist. It will most likely still be similar to what it is today - a carefully thought out mix of electronic and paper resources. Over time, products will find their own niche, or more precisely, librarians will figure out what products are better in print and what products are better electronically, striking the appropriate balance between the two. So, the future doesn't look too much different from the present. And, surely, we are not moving any closer to the “paperless society" that everyone was talking about. In fact, I think we're moving farther in the opposite direction every day.

What will the role of the librarian be in all of this? Will librarians even exist at all? The simple answer, again, is yes, definitely. Librarians will continue to be able to do and provide more for users than ever before with the advantages provided by virtual libraries. We will continue to work towards providing users with seamless, organized access to virtual library resources. Perhaps we will even start to push the envelope and become innovators in the use of nontraditional training and reference services. Who knows? As long as librarians continue to share with one another, both informally and on Internet discussion lists, and at conferences, the opportunities and possibilities are ours for the taking.
As I continue looking at my crystal ball, I happened to foresee that if these changes will be implemented, our university will surely to be proud of. Aside from having competitive students, we can be proud to have a best teachings and good services facilities to offer for aspiring enrollees.