Story by Olivia Starke
The IB program is known for educating students at an enhanced pace. New courses are crucial as they pertain to students that will use the IB benefits to help them reach their college goals that much quicker.
ITGS, or Information Technology in a Global Society, is one of these courses in the IB program that has been used at Lee’s Summit High School to help people find a career in the power of global technology, but next year, possibly, directors hope to take it to Lee’s Summit West.
“The information in technology in a global society is about, like, the collection of information through technology and how you do that, how you go about that… So there’s a technical piece chip, but then there’s also an ethical piece in terms of… what responsibilities do you have with all that information,” said IB coordinator Christy Dabalos.
So the media, new technology, or anything that will get you personal, general, and basic information will be covered in this class. The class will show ways people can find out about his or her’s technical identity. What people should do if they find it.
“You know if you have a Target credit card for instance, then they can track all of your purchases… they know your name, your address, everything, and what do they do with all that information? Do they just house it? Do they sell it? What do you do with that? And that’s a part of what that class is, which I think is pretty important in our society because we definitely, you know, see that aspect quite often,” Mrs. Dabalos gave an example of what typical situation would be considered the basis of this class.
According to the IB official website, the class will be focusing on three main components: the IT developments, the social and ethical significance of those developments, and the applying of specific examples or scenarios… IT standing for informational technologies, like Alexa (the siri in one’s house), Siri herself, basically any new technologies that have the ability to change society.
In this new day, there is a lot of talk on the media, how news is being affected by the media. How technology affects our country as a whole, like with the Hillary Clinton emails, is another aspect this class will be looking at. So as Mrs. Dabalos put it, this class is ‘completely relevant’ especially to this age.
So, the question-of-the-day is, should people learn more about this stuff? Is this class a soon becoming necessity on what people need to know about who is looking at their private information and how the technology that is in their own homes impacts them?
“Everybody should know something about how technology works. Just like a driver should know how a car works. Everyone should know the basic setup of networking. Your future house will be full of networks, and you should be able to troubleshoot on your own for minor issues,” noted Mr. Cook who taught the course at Summit Tech.
New tools are always changing what we do, they always have been. In the late 18-1900’s, cars changed the speed at which people got places, it changed their schedules, how much time they could now spend with their families, how long work trips could now take. In the same viewpoint, these new tools change schedules too, what students do in class, what people’s lives now look like.
“… this course also helps the students to consider unintended consequences and weigh the other side of the story,” Mr. Saur, who teaches this class at Lee Summit High School, answered.
So while this class basically reveals the impact of technology on society, it also explains the intentions of what the creators of any specific technology was and how the end result varied from that. “The job or company you may eventually work for might not even exist yet and even the technology you do for this project might be out of date soon,” Mr. Sauer noted.
All in all, this class shows the quickly-changing technology and how exactly, it is changing society and culture.
