The Final Conference - Week 15

The Final Conference

This is the final conference. Here we are suppose to provide an overview of the entire course, what we learned and our experiences in the virtual classroom.

I would like to start by saying that the instructor is very knowledgeable about the subjects that were presented. After every week's conference he provides input just like the student. This was very helpful because although the student inputs were very informative, so subjects were not fully addressed. We only touched the surface in some topics. The instructor, on the other hand, provided more details where needed. All of the conferences were worth saving for future use.

In session one...
We were tasked to create this blog. That meant for some that we had to learn how to use the tools provided. I created my blog and a week later changed the design. The design I chose was to make it more girly, girl. No offense to those who may get offended by that comment. (Remember legally blonde!) We also were asked to respond to one topic out of three and to repond to one other classmates topic.
The topics included: Identify some traditional mgmt culture changes due to IT; We were to chose which structure is better -- the traditional organizational structure or the decentralized form of management and tell why. And the third topic was on how technology impacted globalization. Technology has had a major impact on technology today. So much so that we can now outsource to overseas companies for development and other IT related ventures. We also needed to provide a current event. I liked to pick information that was just recently posted. The majority of my current event topics involved security of some sort. I guess that was because I subscribe to this online security magazine.

In session two...
Mini project - Our mini project included writing a diary entry for the future. The entries were very good. Mine was a bit out of reach in some of the technology.
Group project - We also had to pick three topics for our case study group project. The case studies were found in the textbook and we had to read at least three to make the selection.
Current Events - The subject was about speech recognition software.
Discussions - Best approach for technology; Keeping up with Storage requirements, and do computers improve or reduce productivity. These were all subjects that I felt comfortable discussing because they all hit home. I also learned some things from other students.

In session three...
Mini project - I had thought of the next generation telecom device early on in the week however I did not think that my image was adequate until I looked at some others. Mine was just fine.
Individual Research topics - We were asked to provide three topics we would like to discuss. I chose Information Technology for the Disabled employee. It was approved.
Current events - The new reality for IT security. This was basically information obtained from a conference. The focus was on Cisco and Microsoft
Discussions - E-mail overload; Implementing VoIP; and what is the next big thing for the Internet?

In session four...
Mini project - We had to access Zillow and provide feedback about a website that gave us information about houses and their property value and other related information.
Current events - I forgot to put the title of the article in the title so I got docked for that. Anyway, it was on how the Davis bill will change a few security things.
Discussions - Issues in making data available over the web; Database Security Issues; and RFID data. I enjoyed these subjects just like the others. There were many responses to the topics listed.

The sessions that followed were structured basically the same. Some of the other mini projects included: Identifying a security breach at our location at work, if possible; Transactional processing--discussing a website that does some sort of transactional processing; evaluating epa's EnvioFact/Envirmapper website and discuss some features; Provide an e-business venture that does not already exists; The Wiki site. I'm not sure how I can use it just yet but now I know it exists; Having a chat with Alice or evaluating Fedscope- I chose Fedscope; Identifying a novel enterprise; Websites that impact society; Drawing data flow diagrams; getting back on Wiki to provide a job description for a CIO; and lastly providing some feedback on the article Does it Matter?

I spent a lot of thinking and research for my group's FedEx topic. There was a period were I seemed silent. However, I was doing a lot of thinking at that time. At the end, I made great contribution as to how the data should be presented.

My final words are that there is not enough space to write all the things I learned during this course. However, most of what I did is reflected in the previous posts.