Northampton computing graduates

Video where students (+Aleksandra Dziubek +Vimukthi Mahindaratne )discussed there time on BSc Computing courses, School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton.

BSc and HND Computing Provision (click on the links below for more details of the courses)

• BSc (Hons) Computing (also available part-time)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Computer Systems Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Mobile Computing)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Software Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing - One Year Top-up
• BSc  Computer Games Development
• HNC Computing (part-time)
• HND Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• HND Computing (Computer Systems Engineering)
• HND Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• HND Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• HND Computing (Mobile Computing)
• HND Computing (Software Engineering) 
• HND Computing
• HND Computer Games Development

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)

Greenfoot resources available

Greenfoot resources produced at School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton are now available to download from  The Greenfoot Greenroom


An outline for an AI task: http://greenroom.greenfoot.org/resources/187

A problem-solving task: http://greenroom.greenfoot.org/resources/189

BCS Northampton: Introduction to the world of Crypto

Date: Thursday, 4th October 2012 Title: ’Introduction to the world of Crypto’
Time: Evening session with networking opportunities and light bites/drinks

- Registration: 18:30

- Session 1: 19:00

- Break & Networking session: 19:45

- Session 2: 20:00

- Q&A: 20:45

- End: 21:00

Presenter: Sarith Chandra BEng MSc (Eng.) [Uni. Of Sheffield] MSc [Royal Holloway] Security+ CISSP MBCS ISO 27001 – YPG Professional Representative for BCS Northampton (2010-2012)

Venue: University of Northampton Avenue Campus (The Great Hall), Newton Building, St Georges Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JB

Register here:

- Open to both BCS and non-BCS members, no cost.

- Students and young professionals are encouraged to attend

- To enable us to accurately monitor numbers can we ask that you please register for this event here: https://events.bcs.org/book/159/

Objectives: 
    - Introduce Cryptography for Beginners
    - Refresher of basic Crypto concepts for Practitioners

    - Learn some Best practices

Detail: (May be subject to last minute changes)    - Cryptology
    - Cipher Exercises
    - Cryptography
    - Cryptanalysis
    - Some Best Practices
    - Crypto Challenge (competition)
Pre-requisites:
    - You are only required to have general awareness of IT and Security
    - You must be keen to learn about this field and its concepts

    - Experts please note: The session will not delve into the mathematics of cryptography and is suitable for absolute beginners

update: MSc Computing - School of Science and Technology,

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)

As well as staff teaching on two other MSc courses:

•  MSc Environmental Informatics
• Engineering (MSc)

The dissertation is an important element of the MSc courses. The range and nature of the dissertations on MSc Computing  varies, below are some links to blog postings that I hope give a flavour some of the topics other students have  investigated:

·         IT in developing countries -http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/msc-student-workefficacious-adoption-of.html

·         Augmented reality-http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/development-of-augmented-reality-ar.html

·         Investigation into ‘Comet’ -http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/msc-student-work-use-of-http-push-in.html

·         Combining web-based technologies -http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/msc-student-work-generic-google-maps.html

Examples from the current students include:

·         improving search engine optimisation  techniques;

·         intelligent documents;

·         web technologies for internet TV;

·         rural healthcare software for developing countries.

One ex-student has turned his dissertation into a book.

From the MSc program as a whole,  where successful student end up working varies; but I would say lot work in areas that are internet intensive some examples include becoming a consultant in optimising websites to be more likely to be picked up search engines; another is a lecturer. At least one has gone to further study at Universities such as the University of Oxford.

There is a strong practical element to the courses. The emphasis of the whole MSc Computing programme is on developing both technical and Master’s level academic skills through practicing these skills, but after being taught the necessary underpinning theory.

UKPass details can be found by clicking here.

Apply for this course through: https://pgapp.ukpass.ac.uk/ukpasspgapp/login.jsp?institution=N38&course=31469&source=www.ukpass.ac.uk

For more details contact: Scott Turner

15 000 pages views and counting

The blog recently exceeded 15 000 pages views

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Critical Analysis of ECM Applications in the Clouds

Recent paper by Dr James Xue in International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 4, No 3, June 2012

paper can be found at: http://airccse.org/journal/jcsit/0612csit09.pdf

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ECM APPLICATIONS IN THE CLOUDS: A CASE STUDY

James Xue (Department of Computing, University of Northampton, UK james.xue@northampton.ac.uk) 

Amjad Yahya (PricewaterhouseCoopers, Saudi Arabia amjadyahya@yahoo.com)

ABSTRACT
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has become one of the most important strategies in enterprise to manage enterprise contents over their lifecycle. ECM solutions are commonly used in many areas such as document management, web content management, record management, digital asset management, etc. Key features of ECM solutions are capturing, indexing, preserving and retrieving of digital information. In our work, an Electronic Dissertation and Thesis (EDT) application has been chosen as a typical ECM application for the case study and has been developed using state-of-the-art technologies. This paper considers the key characteristics of EDT applications and critically analyses various cloud options for deployment of such an application to maximise availability, scalability and data consistency. This paper also addresses the limitation of some existing cloud services that are related to query documents, and provided a workaround solution for abstract queries and parallel execution of complex queries.

MSc Computing courses - University of Northampton

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)

As well as staff teaching on two other MSc courses:

•  MSc Environmental Informatics
• Engineering (MSc)

The dissertation is an important element of the MSc courses. The range and nature of the dissertations on MSc Computing  varies, below are some links to blog postings that I hope give a flavour some of the topics other students have  investigated:

·         IT in developing countries -http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/msc-student-workefficacious-adoption-of.html

·         Augmented reality-http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/development-of-augmented-reality-ar.html

·         Investigation into ‘Comet’ -http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/msc-student-work-use-of-http-push-in.html

·         Combining web-based technologies -http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/msc-student-work-generic-google-maps.html

Examples from the current students include:

·         improving search engine optimisation  techniques;

·         intelligent documents;

·         web technologies for internet TV;

·         rural healthcare software for developing countries.

One ex-student has turned his dissertation into a book.

From the MSc program as a whole,  where successful student end up working varies; but I would say lot work in areas that are internet intensive some examples include becoming a consultant in optimising websites to be more likely to be picked up search engines; another is a lecturer. At least one has gone to further study at Universities such as the University of Oxford.

There is a strong practical element to the courses. The emphasis of the whole MSc Computing programme is on developing both technical and Master’s level academic skills through practicing these skills, but after being taught the necessary underpinning theory.

For more details contact: Scott Turner

A diagrammatic language to build and share STEM teaching narratives

Dr Tina Wilson, Visiting Fellow with STRiPe (Science and Technology Research in Pedagogy) has recently had a paper published at the STEM Annual Conference 2012 at Imperial College and The Royal Geographical Society London 

Abstract

The general objective of this overall work is to propose a methodology for the creation of language-neutral multimedia materials (without audio or text), which can be directly embedded in STEM courses in any language. The overall design of this project was discussed in [1]

The design was based on four stages: 1) a very explicit design of the course, mainly on the dependence of the concepts, using Compendium, 2) the careful selection of icons for some key concepts, 3) the generation of short interrelated animations, which try to identify a suitable graphic language (with both formal syntax and semantics), 4) the proposal of metadata, some internal to each animation and other external, to interrelate them. The final export of this educational package would consist of animations and their metadata, which would help facilitate re-use, and embedding within other courses.

In this paper we focus on the third stage. In the types of short animations discussed, we detected two complementary vocabularies. The first one labels the intentionality of certain scenes: presentation of a formal definition, presentation of positive examples and negative examples. The 
second marks the dependence of the concepts and their construction process: for example, if one is a specialization of a previous one, or if you are graphically emphasizing the use of a universal or existential quantification at that point in the construction of the concept.

At this stage, as the ultimate goal, we hope to achieve a semi-automatic process of generating animations. From the definition of first order logic of a concept (or other less formal descriptions), through the graphic language that is being investigated. This is a goal to be achieved. But we trust 
that this contributes to the creation and reuse of materials in the STEM area beyond existing language barriers.


[1] J.L. Fernández-Vindel, and T. Wilson (2011). Multilingual media components directly embeddable 
in open educational resources in science and technology. International Conference on Education, 
Research and Innovation - ICERI 2011 14-16th November 2011, Madrid, Spain.



Paper can be found at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/stem-conference/Computing1/Jos%C3%A9-Luis_Fern%C3%A1ndez-Vindel_Tina_Wilson.pdf