Dr Christo Potgieter
Waikato Institute of Technology, New Zealand
itbcp@wintec.ac.nz

Podgieter, C. (2005, May), ICT: Multiple perspectives.An Editorial. Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology Vol. 3, Issue 1. ISSN 1176-4120. Retrieved from

Every person reading this Bulletin is an eager advocate for the cause of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). We are passionate about the abilities of ICT to serve mankind in business, factories, schools and homes. We just love seeing how computers are used, knowing that we also understand plentiful how it works.

Often we are privileged to know that we actually developed the particular system that is humming away at the moment. We are sometimes even more interested in the tool itself than the crafting that is done with it. We studied for years to enhance programming skills, increase knowledge about operating systems and improve our system development abilities. After all, fluency and effectiveness is required for the true craftsmanship to create ICT systems, regardless of the purpose of the systems.

And then most of our work simply disappears into the boxes, bearing no personal imprints of our personal presence when we created it. We are artists, producing artwork that is visible in public, but our works of art don’t carry our personal signatures. And that is the way we prefer things, namely to remain anonymous. We find satisfaction from the intellectual exercise during the project or task, rather than the glory of applause afterwards.

The works contained in this edition are of high standard as they draw from the science disciplines but are also examples of artwork. We can sense the presence of the researcher and the artist, interacting with material. The authors bring and share their insights about ICT, increasing our understanding of ICT and also the contribution it makes to society. We can feel their excitement as scientific methodologies and results are used to pursue the interaction between man and machine. It adds meaning for our work. We feel inspired!

This edition offers work from the spectrum of ICT, right from the non-technical user perspective to the hard technology of software algorithms. Five of our team of authors are postgraduate students - publishing for the first time.

In "Views", John Hughes outlines the perspectives of academic and industrial research in ICT and identifies challenges and emerging paradigms. In "Articles", authors investigate concrete problems and solutions aligned with the current dimensions of ICT research and practice.

We have two papers exploring user perspectives, specifically the websites of insurance companies and the organizational context of the use of Excel. The behaviour of people when using technology is covered in the papers on internet-based group work and decision outcomes from ICT facilitated study assignments for students. These works illustrate why consideration of the context of the use of IT is so very, very important.

Closer to the technical side of the field we find a paper about the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in a hospital, possibly replacing the use of bar codes. We are also called to participate by rethinking the 3-tier architecture for building web sites and the usee of XML/XSL . If you are more interested in the technology itself. please jump immediately to the study on algorithms for data mining to make that brain work hard. And we should all take note of the study on pair work for programming tasks, because we know that learning to program properly is probably the most challenging for most ICT students.

In the "Reports" section we present a summary report on the state of free computer education in New Zealand; our new "Correspondence " section concludes the issue.

The authors of above work are boundless in their enthusiasm, creating more considerable more work that could be carried in this journal. We thank them for their significant artistic and scientific contributions, as well as their acceptance of our editing to make things fit in the space available. There are clearly more depth in their work that could be portrayed online.

Now, please choose a paper of your choice and be entertained about ICT, teaching ICT and applying ICT. Clearly our ICT artists have done their work well!

Copyright © 2005 Christo Potgieter
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 Copyright © 2005 NACCQ, Krassie Petrova, Michael Verhaart & Christo Potgieter. All rights reserved.
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