Our Emerging Technologies (EM-TECH) subject is different from any other subjects that we usually enroll at school. Unlike other subjects, EM-TECH does not engage students in lots of lectures and exams. Although we have some class reportings in this subject, it is still different from our subjects before. Why is it different? Because this subject not only teaches us things on the educational side but also teaches students the values that they need to learn outside the four corners of the classroom. EM-TECH gave us the chance to explore our skills and at the same time explore the world that surrounds us. It helps students to be aware of how people and machines behave in our world today, the world of emerging technologies.
Personally, I gained a lot of knowledge from this subject. Every activity that we do is a challenge for us, and each one of them teaches us some important lessons that we need to learn. For our first activity in this subject, we shared some relevant topics to our fellow classmates through our class reportings. In this activity, we are the first reporting group to share some new and innovative hardware technologies inside the class. Being the first group, we should somehow be the role model of the class, so that the other groups would aim for something good or better than us when their turn comes. Team work is also very important for this activity in order for us to choose a good topic to report on. We worked as a team to produce a good output and at the same time to meet the expectations of the people who listened to us. This activity gave us the chance to share our knowledge on the new technologies, as well as personally gain knowledge through the researches that we made within the group.
Next activity that was required in this course is to conduct a seminar and invite a speaker who will give a talk for the said symposium. This activity may be the most challenging activity for the entire course, because you should invest a lot of time in finding the speaker who is available for the symposium. As we all know, people in the world of business is very busy and not all of them have the time to accommodate students like us. In addition to that, we just offer the speaker a token of appreciation and not all would agree to deliver a speech with being paid. It was hard to find a speaker, but it taught me to have the initiative to do things without being said and do things earlier, because we really can’t look for a good speaker in just one day. It takes time to invite someone who will be willing to participate in our school activity. Moreover, looking for a speaker is not the only problem. After finding one, the group still have to set the venue, date, time, and coordinate with the school before you push through with the activity. This teaches us to be very responsible, because the activity takes a lot of responsibility. Cooperation and team work is also needed, because the group members should divide the tasks properly because it will be very hard if only one member of the team will be doing all of the preparations for the seminar. Every member should be responsible and should take the initiative to do the things needed especially when the assigned member is busy or is not available to do the task.
The seminars that I attended, on the other hand, gave me an overview and added knowledge of the new emerging technologies that are present in our world today. We are I.T. people and being part of the computer world we should be knowledgeable on the new technologies around us. It will be an edge for us to know the latest trends that will also be useful for us in the near future. The first seminar that I attended is entitled “Hello World”. This seminar discusses about mobile contents and applications and how it emerged until today. As youngsters who are commonly users of gadgets like this, we should be aware of how mobile applications began and how it was innovated to make it more user-friendly and appealing to the eyes of the people. The second seminar that I attended is the No SQL seminar. This sounds familiar to us I.T. students, because we use My SQL for our projects, but this topic is another form of database that was used by other companies. It helps us to be aware of something beyond our knowledge which we might encounter next time after we graduate. Cloud Computing is another interesting seminar that I attended. As I wrote in my blog before, I was interested with this topic because I wanted to know why and how it was called in such a way, then I learned that the “cloud” is used as a metaphor for the internet and the cloud drawing is used to represent or show the networks. As internet users, we should be knowledgeable in cloud computing such that our data should be stored in a place where data are secured and less expense is needed for it to be stored properly. The next topic is also very useful for us especially when we plan to make our own businesses after we graduate. It is about the evolution of Business Intelligence. The speaker gave us an overview of how Business Intelligence is connected to information practices. Faster decision making is also a benefit of using this which will greatly affect businesses during our current time. Lastly, I attended the 4G WiMAX-Tribe seminar. This is a wireless broadband internet provider similar to the well known Globe Tattoo. For me, it will be useful for us students and not only for us but also for other businessmen who needs access to the internet for important purposes. Being one of the internet users, we should be aware of the competing internet providers all over the world so that we should know which one would be more effective to use and has greater benefits. To sum it up, these seminars are preparing us for our new world, because sooner or later we will be entering a new chapter of our life. We should at least have some knowledge on these things considering that we are already in our last year in college, and will soon be stepping forward in looking for our future careers.
Another requirement for our EM-TECH class is to have tutorial sessions with the lower batches for our social credits. This activity tested our patience in teaching our fellow students inside the university who is willing to learn some new things from us. I was also hard for me to have tutorial sessions because I’m currently taking up my OJT this term and I’m not going to school every day, so I just do tutorials sessions during Saturdays. The lower batches were not hard to teach because you can see that they are eager to learn and I am also happy that at least I had the chance to share my knowledge to them. These tutorial sessions also gave me the chance to recall all that I know and refresh my mind on the things that I need to teach them. Moreover, it gave me the chance to know new people and also give some advices to them based from personal experiences on the course.
The new programming language that we are required to do for this subject is also another learning that we gained from this subject. We chose to make a Facebook Application using PHP, but we had a hard time integrating the application to Facebook because we haven’t encountered it before. Our group really tried our very best to have the best output that we can come up. Again, the lesson that we got here is to learn to manage your time together with other important things that we need to do.
For me, EM-TECH is a course with lots of requirements, but this is one way to test the students on how responsible they are to meet every requirement that is needed from them. As I’ve said earlier, I’m taking up my OJT together with this course and I find it very hard to manage my time, but still I was able to cope up with all the activities for this course. I can say that this course is very helpful for I.T. students like us and important values were gained from this course. It is also a good example of what people say that lessons should not be spoon-fed by the professors. Students should know how to explore on their own and find out new things on their own, so that they would learn to be independent.
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