Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology

	03:03
	December 2005

Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology.
Vol 3, Issue 3 (December 2005).
ISSN 1176-4120.

Editorial

Is Our Research Useful?

Dr Tim Hunt ( tim.hunt@wintec.ac.nz )

As an undergraduate back in 1985 I had the good fortune to start my research career at the research laboratory of Standard Telephone and Cable (STC) in the UK; the lab that invented the fibre optic cable. My project for the year was to improve the performance of high speed transistors. A few years later the department was closed down! …

NZCS Project Report

Fluency in Information Technology - FITNZ: An ICT Curriculum Meta-Framework for New Zealand High Schools

Tony Clear & Graham Bidois ( Tony.Clear@aut.ac.nz ) An ICT Curriculum Meta-Framework is proposed, to operate at the senior secondary school level in New Zealand. The meta-framework arises from FITNZ (Fluency in IT in New Zealand") - a collaborative project between educators, government and industry ...

Articles

A Contextual Information Retrieval Framework

Dilip K. Limbu, Andy Connor & Dr Stephen MacDonell ( dilip.limbu@aut.ac.nz )

The amount of information on the Internet is constantly growing and the challenge now is one of finding relevant information. Contextual information retrieval (CIR) is a critical technology for today's search engines but despite its importance, little progress has been made. Numerous CIR approaches exist today, but none of them offers ...

Exploring Open Office as a Unified DBMS Front-End

Dr Albert van Aardt (avanaardt@northland.ac.nz )

It is not widely known that the OpenOffice.org suite contains a very capable database front-end component that can be used to access a number of Database Management Systems (DBMS's). In this paper the use of OpenOffice Base to access various DBMS's is explained and its use as a teaching tool is explored.

A Taste of Honey: Reducing Spam

Nick Wallingford ( nick.wallingford@boppoly.ac.nz )

In computing terminology, a “honeypot” is a computing software system used to identify or deflect unauthorised use of the system, often using an email address not used for any other purpose. This paper describes efforts and projects which use honeypots to better identify the means by which spammers obtain email addresses.  

Using a Live Site to Teach E-Commerce

David Skelton ( dskelton@eit.ac.nz )

Could a live e-tailing business with student access to the back-end and other live e-commerce data improve the satisfaction and quality of an E-Commerce course? Students often reflect that case examples within courses do not allow full disclosure of commercial and technical details. 

From Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET

Dmitry Gakhovich ( d.gakhovich@witt.ac.nz )

In this paper an attempt has been made to outline some of the new conceptual features of Visual Basic .NET that were not available in the previous version of Visual Basic 6.These features are important for the new generation of programming applications and for mastering programming skills but did not receive sufficient attention ...  

Let’s Get Ready to Moodle

Stephen Corich ( scorich@eit.ac.nz )

This paper investigates Moodle from the viewpoint of an IT lecturer who has published courses on Blackboard for several years and who is facing the distinct possibility of having to migrate to Moodle in the near future. The functionality of the two systems is compared, and various issues are examined.

Increasing Engagement through Artefact Enhanced Learning

Rene Smit, Dale Parsons & Peter Brook ( rsmit@tekotago.ac.nz )

First impressions count. This paper describes an approach where fascinating gadgets are introduced into the classroom, presenting a case study using Artefact Enhanced Learning (AEL). Compared to previous years the percentage of students continuing on to further studies was considerably higher; it appears that AEL is successful as a means ... 

Editorial Board