INFORMATION SYSTEMS!!!

Information systems have impacted my life in an incredible way. Not only the in the academia aspect of my life, but my everyday social life as well. I am able to learn at school, able to purchase goods and connect with those who are not around me through it. Information systems have a major effect on our everyday lives, both positively and negatively. Here are some pros and cons I have experienced through information systems:

ADVANTAGES:	DISADVANTAGES:
Through IS I am able to study with my laptop and receive information on school work on programmes such as Ikamva, without me meeting with my tutor or lecturer to give me printed copies.	Jobs are lost when computers substitute workers.
I am able to submit assignment online from anywhere, using my cell phone or laptop. I do not have to go to school to submit work.	The ability to be in possession of a computer and be able to use one may be exacerbating
There are programmes such as turnitin that check for plagiarism and calculate word count etc. so that I and the lecturer do not have to spend time doing that.	Extensive use of computers can raise opportunities of computer abuse. Computers, believe it or not can produce health problems. I for one have had to wear reading glasses. Examples such as computer vision syndrome, RSU and techno stress are amongst the few health problems caused by computers.
I can do online shopping for almost everything from groceries, clothes and shoes to even furniture.	Some students in schools and in university do not know how to use a computer. Especially those who come from schools in the rural areas. The disadvantage is that most content studied in every course is put online; communication between lecturers and students is done online via emails. Assignments are to be typed and submitted online. There is no class or programme to teach students how to use a computer.
I can purchase or use books online without having to carry heavy textbooks around.
Through the Diamond Royalty Hair Couture business, customers that want to purchase hair do so by making payments via EFT into our various bank accounts, when that is done, the send us proof of payment via email or WhatsApp and thereafter their order is sent through via Postnet courier services. When their package has been sent off, we send the clients a picture of their waybill numbers so that they can trace where their packages are and when they will arrive. This business is a success through information systems because we have never met most of our clients.
I can watch DSTV at home including international channels that are not produced here in South Africa. The DSTV account needs to be paid in order to view the channels, without the payment I cannot watch. That is information systems.

Information systems have taught me to be patient. For most of my life, I have been exposed to straight forward content in most of the work I learn and do. However, information systems have taught me to ask questions like why, how and where in order to understand the content much better. It has also taught me how basic systems that I use on a daily basis work. An example would be an ATM, which I use most of the time on campus or at shopping malls. The requests are processed in order for me to receive the money I have requested for, as simple as that sounds, that is information systems. Secondly the scanning of the student cards in my IFS lectures has made life very easy for me. I am able to scan my card for attendance instead of doing it manually. In scanning I am certain that my attendance has been recorded as opposed to writing it down on a piece of paper and risk losing the paper. Sometimes the attendance list does not even get to me and my attendance is not recorded as there are more than 200 students in the lecture. I hope that in the future, the university will be able to have such systems for all our lectures and not just for the information systems class only.  Manual attendance is much better and more controllable in tutorials as there are less than 20 students in.

I have learnt a lot of things I did not know about, specifically computers, what they consist of and how they operate through information systems. It is an honour and great privilege to be studying at a university where I can access facilities such as labs for the benefit of my studies. UWC provides us with various information systems in the form of security, entertainment, education and other forms as well. At school we have sense of security because we use our student cards to access campus, residences as well as some classes and labs. In that way, other students who do not belong to our residences need to be signed in by the person staying at the residence by the signing in with the securities or matrons. To access a university computer, you cannot if your details are not registered as you can only access it with your active student number as part of your log in details.

There are a few things that are information systems related that I think the university can change here and there. One of the ways is the security access. I have noticed that some students lend their peers their student cards so they can access residences they do not stay in. Some lend their cards to their friends who have cars to access the university at night. This leads to students not being safe. There have been a number of incidences where female students were raped; both male and female students have been robbed of their possessions on campus. Recently there have been incidents where students have been abducted on campus; as a result, students suspect that there are human traffickers who have access to campus somehow. I am a victim of one of these incidents. In my first year, I was almost raped in my room by a member of the central housing committee that was in charge then.  I could not report the matter to the university or the police, as he threatened that he would take my room away and I would have no place to stay. The university should implement a system where we now access residences using our finger prints. In this way, there will be no excuses of losing student cards or giving entry to a number of students at the same time by continuously swiping the same student card. The finger print system should be at all security gates, all main gates leading to access on campus as well as all residences.

 In this past week, there has been a terrible incident at the Nelson Mandela University where a female student was raped on campus inside one of the labs and the other stabbed both their possessions and the university’s possessions were stolen. This was due to lack of security as well as the university’s management negligence towards the security system in all their campuses. Besides the fact that he was able to access their campus freely when he is not a student, he was able to access a lab which students are supposed to be safe in as it is open for the whole day and night for studying purposes. A similar incident has happened to the university, where last year they cleaned out the whole Cassinga lab and possibly other facilities on campus as well.

Printing credits are a major concern at UWC, not only to me but to other students as well. The fact that you have to pay, you need to have hard core cash in order to be able to print. I know of a girl I had to help out earlier on this year. She had to print out two of her assignments which ended up being more than 20 pages; she had no money to purchase printing credits and when I lent her the money that she would pay back at the end of the month, the section at the library where it is the only place to purchase credits from was closed. This is a problem because we as students work at night and in the early hours of the morning, we need printing credits at most times. I think a solution that would benefit everyone is if we can purchase printing credits and have the amount added to our student accounts it can benefit those who need credits but do not have money at that time. A solution I have would be to have other places where we can purchase printing credits on campus or in our residences after hours, or create an app that we can download on our phones and purchase credits online. Having a system on iKamva, where printing credits can be purchased on it would benefit both students and lecturers, because then there would be no excuses of not having printing credits on time. A solution I have would be to have other places where we can purchase printing credits on campus or in our residences after hours, or create an app that we can download on our phones and purchase credits online. Having a system on iKamva, where printing credits can be purchased on it would benefit both students and lecturers, because then there would be no excuses of not having printing credits on time.

At home and in the communities that we live in, information systems has already made a difference immensely. Most people in South Africa have access to smart phones, which nowadays range from R250 to possibly the most expensive being R20 000. The ability to use a phone to research about information, we no longer need to travel a distance to go to internet cafes, which do not exist in some communities. We use cell phones to purchase goods online. I have my own foundation, which has a website and social media pages. This is how we interact with our target market in the communities we work in. If we are having an event soon, we post it on these platforms including venues, times etc. so that all the information that is needed is there. This spreads the foundation to a wider range and not only to the community in which we exist in. Although there are a number of positive things information systems has changed our lifestyles at home in our communities, there are a number of things that can be done to improve them.  Ways in which information systems can enhance our communities is if the government has programs whereby school children who attend very underprivileged schools with no computer facilities, as well as older people who cannot make use of a computer. 

By having such programs, it will increase the learning ability and skills of learners and their parents. It could possibly create jobs in the future, as well as give them access to research things that they can do to create jobs for themselves. Government can create programs where pupils in rural areas as well as in schools in the locations can have e-learning. As not a lot of our communities have neighbourhood watches roaming around for safety at night, I think a way in which we can be safer using information systems as a way of protection is having panic buttons on street lights. As you know, one needs to have airtime to call the cops, and sometimes we do not carry our phones everywhere.  A safety measure the government can take is have panic buttons that alert cops when you have been or suspect you will robbed, raped or attacked in and around your community. This will help to arrest these criminals better and for police to take statistics and stay alert of which are the most dangerous communities according to the number of times the panic buttons have gone off in the different communities. In that way, they will be able to establish a system where officers could roam around the communities from certain times of the day to certain times of the night, and those times should change frequently as criminals will later know that they can do such horrible things after particular times because then the police would be off duty.