Week 11 – Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property
Intellectual property is a term used to describe works of the mind, such as arts,
book, films, formulas, inventions, music, and processes, that are distinct and “owned” or
created by a single person or group.
Copyright law protects authored works such as art, books, films, and music. Patent
laws protects invention’s success. Together, copyright, patent, and trade secret
legislation form a complex body of law that addresses the ownership of intellectual
property.
However, such laws can also present potential ethical problems for IT companies
and users — for example, “some innovators believed that copyrights, patents, and trade
secrets stifle creativity by making it harder to build on the ideas of others”.

Copyrights
Copyright and patent protection specifies that government shall have the power
"to promote the progress science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors
and Inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries”.
A copyright grants the creators of original works of authorship in any tangible
medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be
perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of
machine or device; the exclusive right to. distribute, display, perform, or reproduce the
work, in copies, or to prepare derivative works.

Terms of Protection
1. The copyright in works shall be protected during the life of the author and for fifty (50
years after his death. This rule also applies to posthumous (after death) works.
2. In case of works of joint authorship, the economic rights shall be protected during the
life of the last surviving author and for fifty (50) years after his death.
3. In case of anonymous or pseudonymous works, the copyright shall be protected for
fifty (50) years from the date on which the work was first lawfully published: Provided,
that where, before the expiration of the said period, the author's identity is revealed
or is no longer in doubt, the provisions of above guidelines shall apply, as the case
may be: Provided, further, that such works if not published before shall be protected
for fifty (50) years counted from the making of the work.
4. In case of works of applied art, the protection shall be for a period of twenty-five (25)
years from the date of making.
5. In case of photographic works, the protection shall be for fifty (50) years from
publication of the work and, if unpublished, fifty (50) years from the making.
6. In case of audio-visual works including those produced by process analogous to
photography or any process for making audio-visual recordings, the term shall be fifty
(50) years from date of publication and, if unpublished, from the date of making.

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Protection for Performers, Producers and Broadcasting Organizations
1. The rights granted to performers and producers of sound recordings under this law
shall expire:
a) For performances not incorporated in recordings, fifty (50) years from the end of
the year in which the performance took place; and
b) For sound or image and sound recordings and for performances incorporated
therein, fifty (50) years from the end of the year in which the recording took place.
2. In case of broadcasts, the term shall be twenty (20) years from the date the broadcast
took place. The extended term shall be applied only to old works with subsisting
protection under the prior law.

Software Copyright Protection

• Software copyright protection is a legal mechanism that provides creators of original
software with exclusive rights to their work.
• The use of copyrights to protect computer software raises complicated issues of
interpretation.

Patents
A patent is a grant of a property right to inventors.
A patent permits its owner to exclude the public from making, using, or selling a
protected invention, and it allows legal action against violators. Not only does a patent
prevent copying, it prevents independent creation, unlike a copyright. Even if someone
else invents the same item Independently and with no prior knowledge of the patent
holder's invention, the second inventor is excluded from using the patented device
without permission of the original patent holder.
Prior art is the existing body of knowledge that is available to a person of ordinary
skill in the art (determining the patentability of an invention).

An invention must pass the following four tests to be eligible for a patent:
• It must fall into one of five statutory classes of items that can be patented: processes,
machines, manufactures (such as objects need by humans or machines),
compositions of matter (such as chemical compounds), and new uses in any of the
previous four classes.
• It must be useful.
• It must be novel (new, original).
• It must not be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same field.

Limitations
The Court has ruled that three classes of items cannot patented:
• abstract ideas, • natural phenomena.
• laws of nature, and • Mathematical subject matter

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 Thus, Pythagoras could not have patented his formula for the length of the
hypotenuse of a right triangle (c² = a²+ b²).

Patent Infringement
• It occurs when someone makes unauthorized use of another's patent.
• Unlike copyright infringement, there is no specified limit to the monetary penalty if
patent infringement is found. In fact, if a court determines that the infringement is
intentional, it can award up to three times the amount of the damages claimed by
the patent holder.
• The most common defense against patent infringement is a counterattack on the
claims of infringement and the validity of the patent itself. Even if the patent valid, the
plaintiff must still prove every element of at least one claim and that the infringement
caused some sort of damage.

Software Patents
A software-patent claims as all or substantially all of invention some function, or
embodied instructions are executed on a computer.
Applications software, business software, expert systems, and system software
have been patented, as well as software processes such as compilation routines, editing
and control functions, and operating system techniques. Even electronic font and icons
have been patented.
“Patents protect the idea, while copyright protects the written code.”

Submarine Patents and Patent Farming

A standard is a definition or format that has been approved by a recognized
standards organization or is accepted as a de facto standard by the industry. Standards
exist for programming languages, operating systems, data formats, communications
protocols, and electrical interfaces. Standards are extremely useful because they enable
hardware and software from different manufacturers to work together.
• Submarine Patent – A patent that is hidden within a standard and does not
surface until the standard is broadly adopted - intentionally delayed by the
applicant for a long time.
• Patent Farming – A devious patent holder might influence a standards
organization to make use of its patented item without revealing the existence of
the patent. Then, later, the patent holder might demand royalties from all parties
that use the standard.

Trade Secret Laws

A trade secret was defined as business information that represents something of
economic value, has secret required effort or cost to develop, has some degree of
uniqueness or novelty, is generally unknown to the public, and is kept confidential.

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 A trade secret is an "information, including a formula, pattern, compilation,
program, device, method technique, or process, that:
 Derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being
generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by, persons who can
obtain economic value from its disclosure or use.
 Is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain
its secrecy.
Information is considered trade secret only if companies take steps to protect it.
Trade secret protection begins by identifying all the information that must be
protected from undisclosed patent applications to market research and business plans
and developing comprehensive strategy for keeping the information secure.
Trade secret information should be labeled clearly as confidential and should only
be accessible to a limited number of people. Most organizations have strict policies
regarding nondisclosure of corporate information.
Because organizations can risk losing trade secrets when key employees leave,
they often try to prohibit employees from revealing secrets by adding nondisclosure
clauses to employment contracts.
Another option for preserving trade secrets is to have an experienced member of
the Human Resources Department conduct an exit interview with each departing
employee.
A key step in the interview is to review a checklist that deals with confidentiality
issues. At the end of the interview, the departing employee is asked to sign an
acknowledgment of responsibility not to divulge and trade secrets.
Employees can also use noncompete agreements to protect intellectual property
from being used by competitors when key employees leave. Such agreements require
employees not to work for any competitors for a period of time, perhaps one to two years.

Key Intellectual Property Issues

• Plagiarism
• Reverse Engineering
• Open-Source Code
• Competitive Intelligence
• Cybersquatting

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the theft and passing off of someone’s ideas or words as one’s own.
The explosion of electronic content and the growth of the Internet have made it easy to
cut and paste paragraphs into term papers and documents without proper citation or
quotation marks.
Plagiarism is also common outside academia. Popular literary authors, playwrights,
musicians, journalists, and even software developers have been accused of it.

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Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of taking something apart in order understand
it, build copy of it, or improve it. Reverse engineering was originally applied to computer
hardware, but is now commonly applied to software as well.
Reverse engineering of software involves analyzing it to create a new
representation of the system in a different form or at a higher level of abstraction.
Other reverse engineering issues involve tools called compilers and decompilers.
A compiler Is a language translator that converts computer program statements
expressed in a source language (such as COBOL, Pascal, or C) into machine language
(a series of binary codes of Os and 1s) that the computer can execute.
Decompilers and other reverse engineering techniques can be used to analyze a
competitor's program by examining its coding and operation to develop a new program
that either duplicates the original or that will interface with the program. Thus, reverse
engineering provides a way to gain access to information that another organization may
have copyrighted or classified as a trade secret.
Software license agreements increasingly forbid reverse engineering. Reverse
engineering can also be a useful tool in detecting software bugs and security holes.

Open-Source Code
Open-source code refers to any program whose source code is made available
for use or modification as users or other developers see fit.
The basic premise behind open-source code is that when programmers can read,
redistribute, and modify code, the software improves, can be adapted to meet new
needs, and bugs can be the rapidly identified and fixed.
Open-source code advocates believe that this process produces better softwares
than the traditional closed model. A considerable amount of open-source code is
available, including the Linux operating system; the MySQL AB, Ingres etc.

Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is the gathering of legally obtainable information to help
a company gain an advantage over its rivals.
For example, some companies have employees who monitor the public
announcements of property transfers to detect any plant or store expansions of a
competitor. An effective competitive intelligence operation requires continual gathering,
analysis, and evaluation of data with controlled dissemination of the useful information
to decision makers.
Competitive intelligence is often integrated into a company's strategic plans and
decision making.
Competitive intelligence is not industrial espionage, which employs illegal means
to obtain business information that is not available to the general public. Industrial
espionage is a serious crime that carries heavy penalties.

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Cybersquatting
A trademark is anything that enables a consumer to differentiate one company's
products from another's. A trademark may be a logo, package design, phrase, sound,
or word. Consumers often cannot examine goods or services to determine their quality
or source, so instead they rely on the labels attached to the products.
Trademark law gives the trademark's owner the right to prevent others from using
the same mark or a confusingly similar mark. Trademark protection lasts as long as a mark
is in use.
Companies that want to establish an Internet presence know that the best way to
capitalize on the strength of their brand names is to make the names part of the domain
names for their Web sites.
Cybersquatters registered domain names for famous trademarks company names
to which they had no connection, with the hope that the trademark’s owner would buy
the domain name for a large sum of money.

Summary
• Intellectual property describe works of the mind, that are distinct and "owned" or
created by a single person or group.
• Based on the discussion, Intellectual Property includes complex body of law:
copyright (for artworks), patent (for inventions, and processes), trade secrets/ trade
secret legislation (for information), and each has their own strengths and limitations.
• KEY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES include Plagiarism, Reverse Engineering, Open-
Source Code, Competitive Intelligence, and Cybersquatting
• Competitive intelligence is often integrated into a company's strategic plans and
decision making. It is not industrial espionage, which employs illegal means to obtain
business information that is not available to the general public.

Week 13 – IT Trends and Issues: AI

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science concerned in making
computers behave like humans do.
It was still in the ancient times that they were dreaming to create intelligent
machines that can engage on behaviors that humans consider intelligent. It was only in
the later years that smart machines are becoming in reality.”
“Many researchers now are creating systems that mimic human thought,
understand speech, and beat the best human chess player and countless other feats
never before possible.”

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Application/Terminologies of AI
Game Playing
— refers to programming computers to play games such as chess and checkers
“The most common AI for game playing is chess. IBM had developed a computer
chess player maned Deep Blue which win over the defending world champion Gary
Kasparov in 1997.”

Speech Recognition
— is a technology where computers recognize human language to perform such tasks
“Might replace the use of keyboard because you will just give instructions to the
computer. But human went back to the use of keyboard and mouse because of
convenience in using them.”

Understanding Natural Language

— allows computers to understand natural human languages
— Natural-language processing offers the greatest potential rewards because it would
allow people to interact with computers without needing any specialized knowledge.
You could simply walk up to a computer and talk to it.
— Unfortunately, programming computers to understand natural languages has proved
to be more difficult than originally thought of.

Computer Vision
• makes useful decisions about real physical objects and scenes based on sensed
images. This is to make images and objects as real as it can be.
At present, there are only limited ways of representing three-dimensional
information directly, and they are not as good as what humans evidently use.

Expert Systems
Expert systems refer to programming computers to make decisions in real life
situations such as helping doctors diagnose disease based on symptoms.
In the early 1980s, expert systems were believed to represent the future of artificial
intelligence and of computers in general. To date, however, they have not lived up to
the expectations. Many expert systems help human experts in such fields as medicine
and engineering, but they are very expensive to produce and are helpful only in special
situations.

Heuristic Classification
Heuristic classification is one of the most feasible kinds of expert system given the
present knowledge of AI. This will put some information in one of a fixed set of categories
using several sources of information.
An example is advising whether to accept a proposed credit card purchase.
Information is available about the owner of the credit card, his record of payment and

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the item he is buying and about the establishment from which he is buying it (e.g., about
whether there have been previous credit card frauds at this establishment).
Another Example: choosing between different brands of food items at the grocery
store. With a wide variety of breakfast cereals, many people often simplify the decision
by going with the brand and type of cereal with which they've had the best previous
experience

AI History
Turing’s Test is a test which analyzes or examines whether a computer has a
humanlike intelligence. It was proposed by a British Mathematician. The computer is said
to pass the Turing’s test if the panel believes that the entity possesses humanlike
intelligence. Turing’s test is sometimes referred to as behavioral tests for the presence of
mind, or thought, or intelligence in putatively minded entities.
Later on, Turing proposed a modification of the game. Instead of a man and a
woman as contestants, a human of either gender at one terminal, and/or a computer
at the other terminal will participate.
Now, the judge's responsibility is to decide which of the contestants is human, and
which the machine is. Turing proposed that if, under these conditions, the judge was less
than 50% accurate – that is, if a judge is as likely to pick either human or computer – then
the computer must be a passable simulation of a human being and hence, intelligent.
The game has recently been modified so that there is only one contestant, and
the judge's job is not to choose between two contestants, but simply to decide whether
the single contestant is human or machine.

Internet
Internet refers to a collection and cables forming a communications network, just
like telephones and cables forming the telephone system; intended to carry computer
data, like telephone network which is intended to carry conversations.
It carries various data including email, videoconferences, an instant messages.
The Web page contents are another type of data that are carried over the Internet. In
other words, the Internet is a network of all networks where a user at any computer, with
permission, can access and get information from any other computer.
The Internet was envisioned by the Advances Research Project Agency (ARPA) of
the US Government where they called it as ARPANET then. They aim to create a network
that would allow users of a research computer at one university to be able to “talk to”
research computers at other universities.

Web Browsers
In order to use the Internet, you must have a web browser installed on your
computer to access different web pages and sites.
• A web browser is an application software allowing users to access and view web
pages.

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• A web page is a page consisting of HTML documents stored on a web server.
• Web sites are collections of connected web pages stored on a web server.

HTTP and HTML

HTTP and HTML are the two basic building blocks from which today’s Web-style
hypertext is crafted. You’ll have a better grasp of how the Web works and its potential
for future development if you have some background on these building blocks.
REMEMBER: The two (2) major ingredients that define the Web are HTTP and HTML.
You’ll have a pretty complete list of the basic technologies that make the Web work.

Web Servers
A Web server stores one or more Web pages of a Web site. Each page is saved as
an HTML document. This document may be plain text, or ASCII, document with
embedded HTML tags. Some of these tags indicate how the document is to be displayed
when viewed in a browser. Other tags comprise links to related documents, sound files,
and graphics that are also stored on Web servers. Aside from storing these files, a Web
server runs a Web server software that carries requests for specific Web pages.
Web client software called browser is used to surf the Web (as defined above). If
you type a URL into the browser’s Address box, you are actually requesting an HTML
document of the Web page that you want to view. The browser forms a request for the
specified file using a command provided by the HTTP communications protocol.

Web Technologies
The Web is only one of the services that the Internet offers. They almost changed
our ways of communicating to others, such as through emails, discussion of certain topic,
and the likes. Many times, communications take place completely in writing — without
the parties ever meeting each other.
• Email, short for electronic mail, is the transmission of messages via a computer network.
It is the original service that the Internet offers. Before, only the scientists and
researchers that work for government-sponsored projects to communicate to their
colleagues based on other locations uses this service. Today, email is said to be the
primary source of communication whether for personal or business purposes. Email
programs are used to create, send, received, forward, store, print, and delete
messages. Such programs include Outlook and Outlook Express which are the popular
among other email programs.
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is an Internet service that allows a user to upload and
download files from other computers on the Internet. Uploading refers to the process
of transferring a file to the Internet while downloading refers to the process of
obtaining a file from the Internet. The file refers to documents, graphics, and other
objects from a computer server. An FTP server is a computer that allows you to
upload/download files. An FTP site is a collection of files that reside in an FTP server.

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• Newsgroups and Message Boards is an online area that allows a group of Users to
discuss a particular topic. In such a discussion, one will send a message to a group
then the other group will read and respond to the message. Usenet is what they call
the collection of tens of thousands of newsgroups about multitude topics. Topics may
include news, recreation, society, business, science, and computers.
• Mailing Lists is another online service where email addresses are stored. All email
addresses stored in it receives the message when a user uses it. In essence, a mailing
list is like a distribution list usually used to group certain email addresses.
• Chat Rooms are technologies that consist of online and live communication over the
Internet. It is a location in the Internet server that allows users to have almost like a
real-time communication. Anyone in the chat room can participate in the
conversation which usually is specific to a particular topic. Before you can enter a
chat room, you must be connected to a chat server through a program called chat
client which can also be downloaded from the web.
• Instant messaging is in essence a chat but you can choose certain users that you
want to communicate with. Not like chat rooms that talk about a particular topic, IM
allows you to communicate all the topics that you want. Many users make use of IM
for personal purposes but be sure to always observe “Netiquettes”.
• Internet Telephony, commonly known as Voiceover IP (Internet Protocol), allows the
user to speak to other users over the Internet using computers, mobile computer, or
mobile devices. You will need a high-speed Internet connection, Internet telephone
service, a microphone or a telephone to be able to use this technology and place a
call.

The following are various types of web sites to choose and search from
• Portals are sites that offers you a variety of Internet services such as search engine/or
subject directory, news, sports and weather, free web publishing services, reference
tools such as yellow pages, stock quotes and maps, shopping malls and auctions,
email and other forms of online communication.
• News web sites provides you newsworthy material including stories and articles
relating to current events, life, money, sports, and weather. Most news that is
uploaded on the Internet is not included in the print because it is the most updated
media. Newspapers, televisions, and radios are the ones that maintain the news web
sites.
• Informational web sites contain factual information. Many government agencies
provide information such as tax codes, loans you can mortgage from SSS. Other
organizations provide information such as public transportation schedules and
published research findings.
• Business/Marketing web sites provide you marketing and business contents that
promotes and sells products and services. Up to date, most business and marketing
companies have their own web sites where you can place your orders online and
simply browse in their products.
• Educational web sites offer you exciting and challenging course in formal and
informal teaching and learning. There exist many educational web sites that allow

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 online training for employees and classes for colleges. Most instructors use these types
of web sites to enhance classroom teaching by publishing course materials, grades,
and other related class information.
• Entertainment web sites offer users an interactive and engaging environment. Popular
entertainment web sites offer music, videos, sports, games, ongoing web episodes,
and the likes. Other complicated web sites tie up with other networks to allow users to
vote in their polls on television shows.
• Advocacy web sites provide contents that describe a cause, opinion, or idea. Its
purpose is to convince the reader of the validity of the cause, opinion, or idea. These
web sites usually present views of a particular group or association.
• Blog, short for web log, is a journal format regularly updated that reflect to the interests,
opinions, and personalities of the author and sometimes the site visitors. These consist
of ideas and collection of thoughts in an informal style of a single individual. Personal
web sites are a private individual’s site usually not associated in any organization. This
is usually about someone’s interest that may contain their own images, favorite music
and videos, and the likes for some personal reasons. Some intend for job hunting and
so they post their resumes. Some simply want to share life experiences with the world.
A search engine is a program that finds web sites and pages. It helps the user find
particular information about certain topics or locate particular web pages for which they
do not know the exact web address. There are thousands of search engines available,
some are general and can perform searches on any topic but some restricts to certain
subjects like finding people, job hunting, or locating real estate.
A search text box is available. It is where you enter a topic, a subject or a keyword
which can be a simple word or phrases that will define the item about which you want
information. Search engines respond with results that include thousands of links to web
pages that answer in little or no bearing on your research.
• Google is the largest search engine in the web whose purpose is to organize the
world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Queries received
by Google reaches several hundred millions each day through its various services. As
of February 2004, Google received 2.5 billion queries.
• Google uses an algorithm called PageRank that ranks web pages which matches a
given search string. The algorithm computes a recursive figure of merit for web pages
based on the weighted sum of the PageRanks of the pages linking to them. Aside
from indexes and HTML that Google caches, there are other 13 file types that it can
search: PDF, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Flash SWF, plain text files, among
others.
• Yahoo! is the first navigational portal to the web created by Jerry Yang and David Filo,
both electrical engineering graduates at Stanford University. They built this portal by
creating and organizing their own favorite web sites in 1994. The next year, Yang and
Filo, together with some fellow students named it Yahoo! and released it to the
Internet community.
• Yahoo! stands for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. What makes Yahoo!
unique than the others is that its staff members build the directory by assuming the
role of a typical web researcher.

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Week 14 – IT Trends and Issues: E-Commerce

IT Trends and Issues: E-Commerce

Electronic commerce (EC) is an emerging model of new selling and
merchandising tools in which buyers are able to participate in all phases of a purchase
decision, while stepping through those processes electronically rather than in a physical
store or by phone (with a physical catalog).
The process in electronic commerce include:
 enabling a customer to access product in formation,
 select items to purchase,
 purchase items securely, and
 have the purchase settled financially.

Kalakota and Whiston (1997) define EC from these perspectives

• From a communication perspective, EC is the delivery of information,
products/services or payment over telephone lines, computer networks, or any other
electronic means.
• From a business perspective, EC is the application of technology toward the
automation of business transactions and work flow.
• From the service perspective, EC is a tool that addresses the desire of firms, consumers,
ang management to cut service costs while improving the quality of goods and
increasing the speed of service delivery.
• From an online perspective, EC provides the capability of buying and selling products
and information in the Internet and other online services.
Electronic commerce applications started in the early 1970’s, with such innovation
as electronic fund transfers (EFT). However, the extent of the applications was limited to
large corporations, financial institutions, and a few daring small businesses.
Then EDI (Electronic data interchange) came, which expanded from financial
transactions to other transaction processing and enlarged the participating companies
from financial institutions to manufacturers, retailers, and services and so on.
Many other applications followed, ranging from stock trading to travel reservation
systems. With the commercialization of the Internet in the early 1990s and its rapid growth
to millions of potential customers, the term electronic commerce was coined and C
applications expanded rapidly.
One reason for the rapid expansion of the technology was the development of
networks, protocols, software, and specifications. The other reason is the increase in
competition and other business pressures.

The advantages of e-commerce are as follows:

• Ubiquity – Internet/Web technology is available everywhere: at work, at home, and
elsewhere via mobile devices, anytime. The marketplace is extended beyond
traditional boundaries and is removed from a temporal and geographic location.

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 “Marketspace” is created; shopping can take place anywhere. Customer
convenience is enhanced and shopping costs are reduced.
• Global Reach – The technology reaches across national boundaries and around the
earth. Commerce is enabled across cultural and national boundaries seamlessly and
without modification. “Marketspace” includes potentially billions of customers and
millions of businesses worldwide.
• Universal Standards – There is one set of technology standards, namely Internet
standards. There is only one set of technical media standards across the globe.
• Richness – Video, audio, and text messages are possible. These are integrated into
single marketing message and consuming experience.
• Interactivity – The technology works through interaction with the user. Consumers are
engaged in a dialog that dynamically adjusts the experience to the individual and
makes the consumer a co- participant in the process of delivering goods to the
market.
• Information Density – The technology reduces information costs and raise quality.
Information processing, storage, and communication costs drop dramatically, while
currency, accuracy, and timeliness improve greatly. Information becomes plentiful,
cheap, and accurate.
• Personalization/Customization – The technology allows personalized messages to be
delivered to individuals as well as groups. Personalization of marketing messages and
customization of products and services are based on individual characteristics.

The benefits of e-commerce to merchants or organizations are as follows:

• Electronic commerce expands the marketplace to national and international
markets. With minimal capital outlay, a company can easily and quickly locate the
best suppliers, the most suitable business partners worldwide, and more customers.
• Ecommerce decreases the cost of creating, processing, distributing, and retrieving
paper-based information. For example, by introducing an electronic procurement
system, companies can cut the administrative purchasing costs.
• Ecommerce reduces the time between the outlay of capital and the receipt of
products and services.
• Other benefits include improved image, improved customer service, simplified
processes, increased productivity, and increased flexibility.

The benefits of e-commerce to consumers are as follows:

• Ecommerce enables customers to shop or do other transactions 24 hours a day, all
year round, from almost any location.
• Ecommerce provides customers with more choices: they can select from many
vendors with a large range of products.
• Ecommerce frequently provides customers with less expensive products and services
by allowing them to shop in many places and conduct quick comparisons.
• Customers can receive relevant and detailed information in seconds, rather than
days or weeks.

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The disadvantages of e-commerce are as follows:
• Cost and justification – The cost of developing EC in-house can be very high and any
mistakes due to lack of experience may result in delays. There are many opportunities
for outsourcing but where and how to do it is not a simple issue.
• Security and Privacy – These issues are especially important in the Business-to-
consumers area, especially security issues which are perceived to be more serious
than they really are when appropriate encryption is used. Privacy measures are
constantly improved. Yet, the customers perceived these issues very important and
the EC industry has a very long and difficult task of convincing customers that online
transactions and privacy, are in fact, very secure.
• Lack of trust and user resistance – Customers do not trust an unknown faceless seller,
paperless transaction, and electronic money. So, switching from physical to virtual
stores may be difficult.
• Other limiting factors – Lack of touch and feel online. Some customers like to touch
items such as clothes and like to know exactly what they are buying.

Major Types of E-Commerce

Business-to-Consumers (B2C) is a type of ecommerce that serves direct
consumers. The important activity here is buying. There are retailing transactions with
individual shoppers. For example, the typical shopper at Amazon.com is a consumer or
customer.

Benefits of B2C to Business

• Lower distribution costs • Opportunity for added value services
• New business opportunities • Better customer support
• More accurate and up-to-date • Lower operating costs
consumer data (potentially anyway)

Benefits of B2C to Consumers

• Convenience • Lower prices, at times but not always
• Information • Personal Service
• Ability to compare and choose
among many offers
Business-to-Business (B2B) is a type of ecommerce that serves businesses. The
important activity of B2B is purchasing. Purchasing is different from buying because
instead of individuals departments are involved, formal processes are followed, high
monetary values may be involved and complex negotiations and contracts may take
place.

Advantages of B2B:
• Lower:  marketing costs
 purchasing costs • Reduced inventory
 sales costs • Efficient logistics

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• Lower cycle time • Better customer support

B2B Electronic Commerce: Areas of Growth

Goods Services
• computing and electronics • financial
• motor vehicles • professional
• petrochemicals (petroleum products) • administration
• utilities (e.g., water, electricity) • travel
• telecom

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) is a type of ecommerce that involves consumers

selling directly to consumers.
Examples are individuals posting classified ads (e.g.; www.buyandsell.com.ph)
and selling residential property, cars, cell phones and so on. Advertising personal services
on the Internet and selling knowledge and expertise is another example of C2C. Several
auction sites are running intranets and other organizational internal networks to advertise
items for sale or services.

Benefits of C2C:
• increased liquidity (products, services, advice)
• reduced search costs
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is a type of ecommerce that links users, enabling them to share
files and common resources without a common server. The challenge in P2P ventures is
developing viable, legal business models. Examples of P2P include Kazaa and Groove
networks.

Additional Info: How Does C2C Differ from P2P?

C2C stands for customer-to-customer; P2P stands for peer-to-peer. Both concepts
involve consumers or individuals dealing with one another. The main difference is that
with C2C, there is a company or other third party in between the buyer and the seller (or
sender and receiver). In a P2P platform, counterparties transact directly with one another
without that intermediary.

Mobile Commerce is a type of ecommerce which uses wireless devices or

transactions like cell phones, and Palms. This has been popularized mainly in Japan and
Europe wherein it takes traditional ecommerce business models and leverages emerging
new wireless technologies. The key technologies used in Mobile commerce are
telephone-based 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. This technology continuously evolves even
though it is a disappointment in the US.

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Week 15 – IT Trends and Issues: Education

Trends in Education
1. Online Education
Online education is a notion that can be offered much more easily than ever
before because to the broad adoption and influence of mobile devices. Students with
transportation issues or working adults can still access education without restrictions.
Working adults who want to master new skills and technologies are increasingly interested
in online education. The digital world is slowly being embraced by higher education as
well. Executive management courses, supplementary credentials, professional
education, and online certifications are all growing in popularity. Many working people
choose to enroll in courses that they can easily learn while at work or at home.
In the Philippines, “online education is a new frontier”. This suggests a platform for
offering instruction to students in remote locations via videos and tutorials, where they
may do so for a reasonable price. Numerous schools around the country have chosen
the Dynamic Learning Program (DLP) and Learning Management System (LMS) as
cutting-edge instructional frameworks. These can aid in learning even if students are
unable to attend class. In the Philippine educational system, the following are now the
norm:
 Internet allowed school operations
 teachers meet online with the students to stay connected with them
 school administration meets online to follow-up on tasks
 online classes to ensure that students continue to receive the intervention needed,
and to facilitate skills across different platforms and settings
 instructional materials were prepared in such a way that there would be lesser
online meetings and in consideration of the students who don’t have gadgets and
have limited Internet access

ARTICLE: Printed materials, online classes 'most preferred' for distance learning – DepEd
By Michelle Abad
The Department of Education says the opening of classes on August 24 is pushing
through, despite criticism regarding the government’s readiness for implementing
distance learning.
MANILA, Philippines – The most preferred options students chose for distance
learning are printed modules or online classes for the next school year, according to the
Learner Enrollment and Survey Form (LESF) conducted by the Department of Education
(DepEd).
In a slide presented in a July 1 press briefing, the DepEd found around 2 million
students want to learn online, while 3.8 million students want printed materials as a mode
of instruction (also called the “modular” method).
The LESF is filled out by all parents who enroll their children in school.

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 While there were 16.6 million enrollees at the time of the presentation on July 1, DepEd
planning director Roger Masapol explained there is a "lag" in encoding the answers for
the LESF, and so the total respondents reflected on the survey were 10.9 million.
Masapol also said parents may choose to not answer every question, and those who
did answer could choose more than one answer for their preferred modes.
While the survey reflects the responses of a few million students, they still do not reflect
the answers of all 16.6 million students who enrolled for school year 2020-2021 as of July 1.
So far, this is also just roughly 59% of the turnout of 2019, with 27.7 million enrollees.
The department estimates an enrollment turnout this year of 80%.
The DepEd is shifting to a distance learning approach for the next school year to
comply with President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to postpone face-to-face classes until
there is an available coronavirus vaccine. The school year is set to open on August 24.
Distance learning will be implemented in 3 different ways – online classes, printed
modules, and broadcasted lessons through television or radio.
As of Wednesday, July 1, the DepEd’s units are “busy preparing the self-learning
modules for all subjects and grade levels.” Meanwhile, regional offices are adjusting the
distance learning programs to make them more suitable to the situations on the ground.

2. Integrated Learning Solutions

It is not a practical idea for schools to wait until all learning is digital before
introducing children to it.
The majority of schools now embrace the realities of integrated learning systems.
They want to meet the least amount of demands on the digital infrastructure while still
using conventional textbooks as the foundation.
It is unjust for certain students to continue to be ignorant of the advantages of
digital education due to connectivity and infrastructural problems. Learning results may
be greatly enhanced by using clever solutions, such as a print textbook linked to audio-
visual information for a smartboard and connected to an online evaluation system.

3. Personalized Learning
As students may learn without worrying about device, location, or scheduling
restrictions, this will be a noteworthy trend of the year.
As a result, many students may study without being constrained by their
comprehension level, learning style, or areas of strength or weakness.
For children with exceptional needs, this actually changes the game since they
now have the flexibility or freedom to learn at their own speed and be prepared at the
conclusion of the academic year. For instance, dyslexic students are being helped by
applications like Dragon Speak to study through audiobooks in order to get over the limits
of textbook approaches.

4. Professional Development of Teachers

Instructors are a crucial component of the learning ecology. In order for students
to experience the best of the current technology, it is crucial to acquaint them with the
competences and abilities of the current generation. This only serves to increase the

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demand for professional development courses as they may improve their lateral thinking
skills while also learning new- teaching-learning methodologies. To enable instructors of
all grade levels have an influence on current learning patterns, school officials are taking
steps to arrange these programs and training. Surprisingly, the tendency is now evident
at educational institutions in the public and private sectors.

5. Formative Assessment Solutions

More emphasis will be placed on the value of learning outcomes, which is why
formative assessment strategies are employed. In this digital age, the traditional
evaluation choices, such as simple memory exams at the conclusion of a term, may be
less effective. Learning has an influence through formative assessments because they
gauge student development, evaluate how well the curriculum is being delivered, and
examine personal and social skills. In fact, because these procedures are adaptive,
students will experience the results in a customized way. This is another reason why
institutions increasingly choose formative assessment over traditional cookie-cutter
methods (the same approach or style is always used and not enough attention is paid to
individual differences)

6. Cost Management in Education

Administrations will need in-depth planning as technology advances in the
education sector to guarantee appropriate investment. The control of costs in the
education sector will significantly improve with the right plan. To save operating costs,
educational institutions are anticipated to spend more in cloud technology in the
upcoming years. Due to common services, it will also increase operational efficiency in
the education sector.
With the adoption of blockchain technology in the education industry,
 printing and paper costs will go down.
 Every crucial document, including degrees, certificates, and other legal papers,
will be available online.
 This will also lower the cost of manpower, which is typically needed at institutes to
handle, store, and maintain a large amount of data.
The cost of other sectors will decrease, but the computational component will cost
more money. Now, more and more classes are linked. Therefore, the need for better
computational resources is inevitable. This expense will improve operations. Sending
information, executing transactions, and many other tasks will move to digital formats
and become easier.

7. The Changing Role of a Teacher

The 21st century has changed the concept of a teacher too.
More than a data feeder, the teacher has become someone who nurtures the
learners adequately. This trend has become the crux of the student-centered approach
to learning.
The teacher has become a person who guides his/her class through activities and
sharing the wonder of discovery. Though involved in the activities, a teacher should keep

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an eye on monitoring the personal progress of individuals and helping the ones who need
special attention and help.

Issues Regarding the Educational System

The colonial history of the Philippines, encompassing the Spanish, American, and
Japanese periods of authority and occupation, has had a significant impact on the
country's educational system. The most significant and enduring contributions to the
country's educational system, though they were made by all of its conquerors, emerged
during the American occupation (1898); it was at this aforementioned time that:
1. English became the default language of instruction, and
2. First, a public education system was developed, one that was explicitly modeled
after the American educational system and was further managed by the recently
created Department of Instruction. The Philippines has a vast and widely
comprehensive educational system including elements like higher education,
much like the United States of America.
The current educational system in the Philippines firstly consists of six years of
obligatory schooling (from grades 1 to 6), which are loosely separated into two levels,
each consisting of three years. The Primary Level is the first level, while the Intermediate
Level is the second level.
Although the Philippine educational system has long served as a model for other
Southeast Asian nations, this has changed in recent years, and the system has
deteriorated. This is particularly evident and true in the nation's more remote and
impoverished regions.
The Philippines’ educational systems is plagued by a number of problems on a
national level.

Quality of Education
The results of the National Achievement Test (NAT) and the National Career
Assessment Examination (NCAE) for the year 2014 reveal a drop in the standard of
elementary and secondary education in the Philippines. Both the NAT and NCAE results
from 2014 showed that student performance fell well short of the desired mean score.
The comparison of graduation rates between the highly urbanized city of Metro
Manila, which also happens to be not only the country's capital but also the largest
metropolitan area in the Philippines, and other regions of the country like Mindanao and
Eastern Visayas reveals the poor quality of the Philippine educational system. While
Eastern Visayas and Mindanao, two regions of the country, have primary school
completion rates of about 30% or even lower than Manila, which can boast a primary
school completion rate of almost 100%. This type of data comes as no surprise to the
Philippine education system because children from metropolitan regions in the country
have the financial means to finish at the very least their elementary school education.

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Budget for Education
The money for education is the second problem the Philippine educational system
is dealing with. The Philippines still maintains one of the lowest budget allocations to
education among ASEAN nations, despite the Constitution of the Philippines mandating
that the government devote the largest share of its budget to education.

Affordability of Education
Philippine educational system consistently faces is the cost of education (or the
lack thereof). There is a significant accomplishment gap between various social classes
in terms of schooling. Students from low- and high-income, impoverished households who
are socioeconomically disadvantaged have much higher dropout rates in primary
school. Additionally, the majority of tertiary level freshman students come from quite
wealthy backgrounds.

Drop-Out Rate (Out-Of-School Youth)

“The worrisome rate of out-of-school youngsters in the nation”, according to
France Castro, secretary of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT).
According to UNESCO data, there are 1.4 million youngsters who are not enrolled
in school nationwide. The Philippines is also the only ASEAN nation to rank in the top 5
nations with the greatest proportion of young people who are not enrolled in school.
According to data from the Department of Education: “Primary school dropout rates in
2012 were 6.38% and secondary school dropout rates were 7.82%.”
According to Castro, "the rising cost of oil, electricity, rice, water, and other basic
commodities is further driving the poor into dire poverty and contributing to the growing
number of children who are not in school." Therefore, when more families experience
poverty, there are therefore more pupils enrolled in public schools, particularly at the high
school level. According to the Department of Education's 2013 estimate, there are 7,470
high schools and 38, 503 primary schools.

Mismatch
The gap between educational preparation and employment opportunities is
considerable. This has the potential to be a significant problem at the tertiary level and is
also the root of the continued high rates of educated but jobless or underemployed
persons. A Cornell-educated congressman from the 1-Ang Edukasyon Party-list, Dean
Salvador Belaro Jr., claims that there are around 600,000 educated unemployed people
in the United States each year. The "education gap" is the term he uses to describe the
problem.

Brain Drain
Due to the current phenomena of globalization, brain drain is a chronic issue that
is seen in the Philippine educational system. It is projected that 2.3 million Overseas Filipino
Workers (OFWs) worked overseas at any given time between April and September 2014.
This continuous mass departure has severe economic repercussions as well as an
unprecedented brain drain. Furthermore, the Philippine society has historically paid for

20
the education of millions of people who go on to spend their most productive years
overseas. As a result, the Philippines' already subpar educational system indirectly funds
the rich economies that host the OFWs.

Social Divide
There is a troublesome and obvious socioeconomic divide in the nation with
relation to educational prospects. An equalizing influence on education has been
observed in the majority of modern cultures. Due to this gap in the social structure,
education is now a part of the institutional framework that separates the affluent (wealthy)
from the poor.

Lack of Facilities and Teacher Shortage in Public School

“Numerous infrastructures, including classrooms, teachers, desks and chairs,
textbooks, and audio-visual resources, are in limited supply in Philippine public schools.”
- 2003 Department of Education data.
According to Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz, there are over 17 million students
enrolled in public schools in the Philippines, and with a 2.3% annual population growth
rate, there are roughly 1.7 million births each year. In conclusion, there are too many
pupils and not enough funding.
Despite the government's assertions that it is expanding the budgetary support for
education, the public school system frequently struggles with shortages. Public colleges
and universities steadily raise tuition in order to earn money for infrastructure, making
postsecondary education difficult to attain or, more frequently than not, unavailable to
the poor.
However, it is important to recognize what the Aquino administration has
accomplished with regard to classroom construction during its five years in office – the
number of classrooms created from 2005 to the first half of 2010 has quadrupled.
Additionally, it was reported that 86,478 classrooms were erected between the years of
2010 and February 2015, a figure that was much higher than the 17,305 classrooms that
were constructed between 2005 and 2010 and sufficient to make up for the 66, 800
classroom shortfall in the previous year. President Aquino discussed the government's
achievement of a zero backlog in classroom supplies, desks and chairs, and textbooks in
his fourth state of the nation address (SONA), noting that 56,085 new teachers were hired
in 2013 to fill the gap left by the shortage of teaching materials.
However, according to information gathered by the Department of Education,
there were 19, 579, 60 million textbook shortages, 2.5 million chair shortages, and 80, 937
shortages of water and sanitation facilities during the start of classes (June 2013).
Additionally, it was determined that 770 schools in Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao were
overcrowded. The Department of Education also made statistics available indicating
that 5,425 appointments, or 91% of the 61,510 teacher vacancies, had been filled.

Issues Regarding the K-12

• The results of the National Achievement Test (NAT) and the National Career
Assessment Examination (NCAE) for the year 2014 reveal a drop in the standard of

21
 elementary and secondary education in the Philippines; showed that student
performance fell well short of the desired mean score.
• The money for education is the second problem the Philippine educational system is
dealing with. “The Philippines still maintains one of the lowest budget allocations to
education among ASEAN nations, despite the Constitution of the Philippines
mandating that the government devote the largest share of its budget to education.”
• The third significant problem that the Philippine educational system consistently faces
is the cost of education
• Last but not least, there is a significant amount of mismatch, when there is a significant
amount of mismatch between training and real occupations. This has the potential to
be a significant problem at the tertiary level and is also the root of the continued high
rates of educated but jobless or underemployed persons.

Week 16 – IT Trends and Issues: Healthcare

AI in Healthcare
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is defined as a branch of computer science that aims to enable
computer systems to perform various tasks with intelligence similar to humans.
In Healthcare, AI is:
 used to analyze the treatment techniques of various diseases and to prevent them.
 used in various areas of healthcare such as diagnosis processes, drug research
sector, medicine, patient monitoring care center, etc.
 helps to gather past data through electronic health records for disease prevention
and diagnosis.

AI Technologies Used in Healthcare

• Machine Learning (Neural Network and Deep Learning): the main use of machine
learning technology is precision medicine, which means to predict the best treatment
protocols that are likely to be successful on a patient based on different patient
characteristics and treatment context.
• Natural Language Processing: includes creating, understanding, and classifying
clinical documents and published research. It also helps in analyzing unstructured
clinical notes on patients and preparing reports.
• Robotics: physical robots are enabled with AI to perform different tasks in the
healthcare sector. Nowadays, surgical robots are being used to provide help to
surgeons for improving their ability to see, stitch wounds, and so on. Some surgical
procedures that use robotic surgery are gynaecologic surgery, prostate surgery and
head and neck surgery.
• Rule-based expert System: collection of it-then rules and is most widely used in the
commercial sector. It is also used in Electronic Health Care (EHR) with some set of rules
in their system. First, a set of rules is created by human experts and knowledge
engineers, and then they implement an easy-to-understand rule-based expert system.

22
 This rule is directly proportional to the knowledge domain means if the knowledge is
changing, then the rule can be complex and time taking.
• Robotic process automation (RPA): used to perform repetitive tasks such as updating
patient records or billing. It can also be used to extracting data when combined with
other technologies.

IT Trends in Healthcare
• Radiology: Because of technology such as Computerized Tomography (CT) and
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), AI in radiology will cut down on the interaction
time and allow doctors to see more patients at the same time.
• Screening: AI is also most widely used in the screening field for the healthcare
department. Example is an AI algorithm named Google DeepMind is also used to
detect breast cancer at a very early stage than human experts, so it can be
prevented from reaching a severe stage. Further, AI algorithm also helps to detect
prostate cancer with more accuracy than human experts.
• Psychiatry: AI applications are used to study anxiety and depression and are still in a
phase of proof-of-concept. These raised various professional, ethical and regulatory
questions for the professionals of the healthcare industry.
• Primary Care: Primary care is one of the key development areas for AI technologies
such as predictive modelling, business analytics, supportive decision making, etc.
• Decease Diagnosis: Artificial Intelligence (AI) uses Medical Learning Classifiers (MLC's)
to substantially aid doctors in patient diagnosis with the help of mass Electronic Health
Records.
• Dermatology: Dermatology is an ample imaging technique that is also more
enhanced with the use of Deep Learning in Image Processing, that makes it more
efficient and easier as compare to other traditional ways. Also, through the use of AI
in image processing, keratinocytes skin cancer has been possible to be detected by
face photography.
• Drug Interaction: AI algorithm to identify the drug-drug interaction can be improved
with the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Drug interaction increases the
number of medications being taken by a human who takes multiple medicines for
their disease. Through Machine Learning, medical science has developed some
techniques to extract the drug-drug interaction and their possible effects and causes.
Further, Drug-drug interaction can also be identifying through the use of Deep
Learning.
• Manufacturing of Drugs: With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a molecule of a
drug for OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), treatment becomes easier, which is
not feasible in approx. Five years through traditional approaches.
• Electronic Health Records (EHR)
— the main key factor to develop and digitalize the healthcare sector
— Artificial Intelligence helps to interpret the records and provide updated
information about the diseases, differentiate same deceases that mostly medical

23
 specialist treats similar like heart attack and myocardial infarction and helps to
prepare relevant prescription notes for other patients in future.
— EHR can be modified to predict the risk of a decease based on prior data of a
patient and their family. The machine also predicts and takes decisions, collects a
large number of data and creates a new rule set based on observations, then
concludes the diagnosis. This approach helps to collect patient data and find
outstanding issues and saves time as compared to other traditional alternatives.
Some studies said, predictive modelling of EHR can achieve up to 75% accurate
data, and this results in the number of online health records double every five years.

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