Dr David Parsons

davidparsons.ac.nz

The ICT skills shortage and why bleating is not enough

IT Education

The ICT skills shortage and why bleating is not enough

Nov 6, 2013 #government policy, #ICT skills shortage, #research funding, #university research goals by daveparsonsnz

The shortage of ICT professionals is not a new phenomenon in New Zealand, nor in many other developed economies. Professional organisations such as NZTech and the NZ Institute of IT Professionals (IITP) are well aware of this issue. New Zealand government ministers have recently expressed their own concerns about this.. but hang on… what are they doing about it? The IITP has recently pointed out to the government that its funding for ICT research over the last few years has been pitiful. ICT is treated as a poor relation to other areas of research and development, leading to low investment and, of course, low returns. Government policy influences university policy, so that my own university research goals sideline ICT, indeed most aspects of technology. The underlying thinking seems to be that ICT is just an infrastructure service, not a ‘real’ discipline. Some might say that the link between ICT research and ICT skills in the marketplace are tenuously linked at best. However, perhaps some investment in, for example, ICT scholarships at both undergraduate  and postgraduate levels might be a sign to potential students that the government does actually care about the ICT skills shortage enough to do something about it rather than just bleating.

IT Education

Too much money chasing not enough IT grads

Oct 13, 2013 #IT skills shortage, #jobs, #salaries by daveparsonsnz

Too much money chasing not enough IT grads

According the the government’s careers web site, taking data from TradeMe, 6 out of the top 10 paying jobs in New Zealand in 2013 were in Information Technology. The top paying job was IT project manager at $225,000. Strangely, this is a bad thing, because it shows the effect of demand outstripping supply. We just don’t have enough students taking IT and other computing degrees to meet the needs of the NZ IT industry. If we can’t find the skills, the potential benefits to the economy of IT enterprises will be lost and we will be back to cows and timber. Everyone, from the MoE to the schools to the universities, is trying to do something about this, but at the end of the day, an IT career somehow needs to be a more popular option for those still in education.

Uncategorized

Still the same old flux capacitor

Aug 30, 2013 #Back to the Future, #Borland, #C++, #David Intersimone, #MOOC, #Robert Lafore, #Waikato by daveparsonsnz

‘Back To The Future’ was recently on TV again. According to the movie, I should now be driving a fusion powered flying car. Oh well. In another example of how things change more slowly than we may think, I just attended a presentation on Embarcadero’s latest version of RAD Studio, presented by David Intersimone (aka David I). Now David I has been around a long time – he (indirectly) taught me C++. Over 20 years ago I learned to program in C++ using one of Robert Lafore’s excellent C++ books, which came with an interactive computer-based tutorial. Along with this I watched a set of Borland videos, ably presented by David I. I also had access to the Borland C++ compiler so could try things out as I went along. So anyway, there I was at the beginning of 1990s having an interactive multimedia self-paced hands-on learning experience. I must admit that I’m finding it hard to see the vast strides we have made since, apart from the fact that we now have the web, which we didn’t back then, in fact I didn’t even have email. So the delivery channels have changed but I wonder what else we’ve achieved? The latest thing in self-study is, of course, the MOOC, and I have recently signed up for Waikato University’s new MOOC on data mining.  If those guys can teach me half as much as David I and Robert Lafore did in the last century then I will very happy.

Mobile Learning

Mobile devices in teaching and learning – Top 20 uses

Aug 9, 2013 #mobile devices by daveparsonsnz

I was recently asked to present some information to a committee about mobile devices in the future of teaching and learning. I made this into a ‘top 20’ list of things that mobile devices can be used for in education, starting with the more obvious and working towards the more interesting.

1. As a mobile web device for access to information

2. As a 24/7 anywhere any time learning device

3. As a support device for organising learning tasks and schedules

4. As a multimedia presentation device

5. As a data capture/ recording device for classroom, homework and field work

6. As a classroom memory (store files, photos of whiteboards, videos of talks etc.)

7. As a sharing device for showing and distributing work

8. As a creative device for capturing, editing and transforming digital material

9. As a host for specific apps for different subject areas

10. As a communications device for collaborative learning (e.g. Twitter, Google Drive)

11. As a feedback device (e.g. live classroom polling)

12. As a support device (task support in situ)

13. As an assessment device (questioning, submitting work, creating assignments)

14. As a tool with sensors (location, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, weather, luminance etc.)

15. As a scanning device (RFID, bar codes)

16. As a guidance device (geocaching, geotagging)

17. As a testing device for student created apps

18. As a contextual device (location and content aware – learning content tailored to place)

19. As an augmentation device (augmented reality)

20. As an appropriated device (ownership, personalisation)

IT Education

Information Systems versus Information Technology – Complementary to a ‘T’?

Jul 28, 2013 #ACM curriculum, #Information Systems, #Information Technology by daveparsonsnz

Recently, a colleague from the College of Business and I (in the College of Sciences) have been attempting to play football in the nomansland between the Information Technology and Information Systems disciplines, in an attempt to repair the damage of past turf wars played out within our institution. Central to our discussions are the ACM/IEEE curricula. The most recent ACM IS curriculum dates from 2012 and has 7 authors, while the IT curriculum has 9 authors (none in common with IS) and dates from 2008. The IS curriculum talks about careers and broad courses. The IT curriculum talks about foundations, pillars and capstones. Beneath the differing approaches, however, a common theme emerges. Where the IS curriculum talks about data and information management, the IT curriculum talks about databases. Where the IS curriculum talks about IT infrastructure, the IT curriculum talks about networking. This pattern is repeated in pretty much every area of the two curricula. Together these approaches from a kind of ‘T’ shape in each of the core topic areas. The IS curriculum provides a broad horizontal view of Systems while the IT curriculum provides a vertical dive into supporting Technology. By merging these curricula into a comprehensive programme of IT and IS majors, we can hopefully provide both the breadth and depth of systems knowledge and skills essential to our future graduates.

Software Testing

Testing mobile apps with geolocation and i18n

Jul 9, 2013 #geolocation, #Google Maps, #i18n, #Mobile app, #testing by daveparsonsnz

Testing mobile apps can be tricky, particularly if they use geolocation. Sometimes there’s no substitute for manual testing with a mobile device in situ. For the last couple of years we have been developing a mobile learning game that uses Google Maps to locate geotagged learning tasks. Late last year I was testing it at the University of York in the UK. Instead of the elegant new campus at Heslington East, all Google Maps could show me was a muddy building site from several years previously. I have just returned from a few weeks working at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea. This time it was the zoom level available in Google maps that was the problem – the satellite pictures of Seoul on Google maps don’t have a suitable level of detail. A further complication in Korea was the task of translating all the game’s text resources into Korean. It was useful to prove to myself that UTF-8 really does work for i18n (internationalization)! However many of the tools on my laptop could not cope with the character set, so kudos to Microsoft Word, with its handy viewer that shows you what your document will look like using different encodings before you load it, and to oXygen’s excellent XML editor that picked up my markup errors. I was also reminded, after some painful debugging, that sometimes the only bulletproof way to render an ampersand (&) in XML is ampersand hash 038 semicolon (no matter how else I tried to write that it rendered it as an ampersand – foolproof!)

Finally, if you’re thinking I could test all that in an emulator from the comfort of my office, we simultaneously tested the app with three similar Samsung phones (after all we were in Korea!)  All three exhibited different behaviour, in particular in their response to the GPS signal. As I said, sometimes there’s no substitute for manual testing with a mobile device in situ.

Uncategorized
IT Education

Outstanding exam answers

Jun 23, 2013 #exam answers by daveparsonsnz

Exam marking time again. Always a joy to record some of the more esoteric exam answers from students. Here are some of my past favourites from our first year paper:

Question: Briefly explain the term ‘wiki’.
Answer: A wiki is a pedia.

Question Is exporting e-waste ethical?
Answer 1. E-waste is not ethical because e-waste affects web page speed.
Answer 2. Yes.  As the renewing speed is growing quickly.

Question: Describe some advantages and disadvantages of using computers
Answer 1: A disadvantage of using computers is that lightning might strike your computer in bad weather.

Answer 2: If the computer crush, it will damage people, for example, if the airport crush by computer problem, the airship may accidented.
Actually, that last answer is correct, just expressed in rather idiosyncratic language. Looking forward to this year’s crop!
Uncategorized
Uncategorized

Great new IT systems (not) Part 2

May 4, 2013 by daveparsonsnz

As editor of an international journal I have to manage submitted papers, authors, reviewers, reviews, editorial decisions, final materials and publication schedules. Doing this manually is very tedious so I was pleased when the publisher announced a new on-line submission system to help with these tasks. Unfortunately, it is a very poor system. As a reflection on the process of project management, and what can go wrong, I believe the following issues are the most problematic:

1. Not involving the appropriate stakeholders early in the project.

2. Not making it clear on deployment if the system was intended as a beta test version or a full release.

3. Not providing a clear process or contact person for reporting bugs.

4. Not responding to bug reports

5. Creating a system around a rigid business process as seen from the management perspective (from some theory about how journals work rather than actual experience)

6. Not testing that outputs are correct (for example an old version of a paper appears as the current version in some cases)

7. Sending messages from the system using a generic source address so messages sent from the system disappear into spam folders and are never seen again.

Like many systems, this one works partially, and can be used with a few workarounds that bypass its more bizarre features, but it is a shame that a system that could have been so useful is more often than not a  source of frustration.