Brian R. von Konsky PhD (Curtin) FACS CP
bvonkonsky@gmail.com
bvonkonsky@gmail.com
Brian is a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Technology at the Curtin Business School (CBS), Curtin University, in Perth, Western Australia. Brian is recognised as a Certified Professional by the Australian Computer Society (ACS). He was elected a Fellow of the ACS in recognition of his contribution to computing and software engineering education. He is past Chair of the ACS Accreditation Committee. Until 2011, he was a member of the ACS Professional Standards Board (PSB) where he took a leadership role in defining the ACS Core Body of Knowledge. Previously, he has served as the Head of Department for CBS Flexible Learning, and as the Course Coordinator for Curtin University's degree programs in Software Engineering in the Faculty of Science and Engineering. His research interests include education in Information Communications Technology, with an emphasis on the development of professional skills like leadership, teamwork, and project management. He has extensive experience in the ICT industry. This includes nine years as an employee of Hewlett-Packard, most of which was spent as a systems engineering consultant working with HP clients.
This site contains information and content related to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Professional Practice.
It also contains demonstrations and examples of web technologies used in business and business analytics.
For peer reviewed research investigating the impact of SFIA on curriculum design and management, see:
von Konsky, B.R., Miller, C. and Jones, A (2016). The Skills Framework for the Information Age: Engaging Stakeholders in Curriculum Design. Journal of Information Systems Education, Vol. 27(1) Winter 2016. 27(1): 37-50. Download here.
This video was prepared to facilitate interaction and dialog in conjunction with the 2015 review of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) ICT Profession Body of Knowledge, also known as the Core Body of Knowledge (CBOK). It discusses the use of the CBOK, the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), and Bloom’s Taxonomy in ICT curriculum design and management. Download slides from this presentation.
An updated version of the video is planned to reference SFIA Version 6, and outcomes from the 2015 CBOK review.
Click on a career role node for more information about that role. Drag nodes to change the forced layout configuration.
This network shows the extent to which career roles from the ACS Skills White Paper share skills. The thickness of edges connecting any two nodes indicates the number of skills that those career roles have in common. The size of each node is scaled based on normalised betweenness centrality, which is a measure of the number of shortest paths that the node is on between any other two nodes. This is an indication of the career mobility associated with that role. Nodes are coloured based on the computed modularity class. Career roles in the same modularity class are related based on network structure.
Click on a skill node for more information about that skill. Drag nodes to change the forced layout configuration.
This network shows the SFIA skills that tend to be paired with other skills in the ACS Skills White Paper dataset. Nodes are scaled based on degree, which is the number of other skills with which that skills is paired. Skills with high degree occur frequently in position descriptions, and tend to be paired with a larger number of other skills. The thickness of edges connecting any two nodes indicates the relative number of times that particular skill pairing occurs. Nodes are coloured based on the computed modularity class. Skills in the same modularity class are related based on network structure.
Click on a career role node for more information about that role. Drag nodes to change the forced layout configuration.
This network shows the extent to which career roles from the QCIO ICT Career Streams share skills. The thickness of edges connecting any two nodes indicates the number of skills that those career roles have in common. The size of each node is scaled based on normalised betweenness centrality, which is a measure of the number of shortest paths that the node is on between any other two nodes. This is an indication of the career mobility associated with that role. Nodes are coloured based on the computed modularity class. Career roles in the same modularity class are related based on network structure.
Click on a skill node for more information about that skill. Drag nodes to change the forced layout configuration.
This network shows the SFIA skills that tend to be paired with other skills in the QCIO ICT Career Streams dataset. Nodes are scaled based on degree, which is the number of other skills with which that skills is paired. Skills with high degree occur frequently in position descriptions, and tend to be paired with a larger number of other skills. The thickness of edges connecting any two nodes indicates the relative number of times that particular skill pairing occurs. Nodes are coloured based on the computed modularity class. Skills in the same modularity class are related based on network structure.
This page includes SFIA-based skill sets collected from a variety of sources and disseminated to the Australian higher educations sector as part of a research grant from the Australian Council of Deans of ICT (ACDICT) Learning and Teaching Academy (ALTA) in collaboration with co-investigators Dr Charlynn Miller, Dr Ashley Jones, and other researchers. The Final Report is available on the ACDICT ALTA Web Site.
This page displays today’s Perth fuel prices using data supplied in an RSS feed from the Fuel Watch web site, published daily by the Western Australia Department of Commerce .
Markers designating petrol stations are displayed on a map. Green markers designate relatively good prices. Red markers designate fuel that is relatively more expensive. Clicking on a marker gives the unleaded fuel price for that petrol station.
The distribution of today’s prices is also displayed, together with the minimum, maximum, and mean prices.
A Google Map is used to display the location of petrol stations. Google Map infowindows give specific information about each petrol station and the price of unleaded petrol at that station when the user clicks on a marker.
HTML 5 Canvas elements are used to display markers, each rendered in a colour, linearly calculated to be between green and red to visually communicate the relative price for each station.
A Google Chart is used to display the distribution of prices.
A proxy server downloads the RSS feed from the fuel watch web site and builds the corresponding XML Document Object Model (DOM) . The XML DOM is traversed to get information about each petrol station, place markers, and calculate the fuel price distribution.
This demonstration is used as an example in the unit Business Web Technologies (ISYS3004) from Curtin University.
SFIA skills that contribute to building web pages like this include the Information Authoring (INCA) skill. This skill generally requires an ICT Professional, such as a Web Programmer, to liaise with clients to understand user requirements, and an understanding of key concepts sufficient to select appropriate technologies, tools, and methods.
Developing such page also requires an understanding of how technologies like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) contribute to the presentation, look and feel of a web site, and hence the intended user experience. Designing a user experience is detailed in the User Experience Design (HCEV) SFIA skill.
This page was implemented in the JavaScript programming language and required knowledge of HTML 5. An ICT professional implementing such a page demonstrates the Programming/software development (PROG) skill.
As is true of all SFIA skills, each of these skills can be practiced at various levels of autonomy and responsibility. Refer to the SFIA standard for specific descriptors of each skill at their defined levels.
Click on a marker to see today’s fuel price at that location.
Data courtesy of Fuel Watch
On this page, users enter joint angles to animate a 3 segment robot. The goal is to position the robot hand so that it can pick up the package and then move the package to the other side of the virtual room where it is released.
Caution must be exerted when specify angles to prevent those robot configurations in which any joint or the package collides with the floor.
This page makes extensive use of HTML 5 Canvas. Standard JavaScript contexts and methods are used to draw into the HTML canvas element. This technology is well suited for web applications characterised by simple computation driven simulations and games.
An alternative web technology to consider when doing graphics on a web page is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). In SVG, all graphical elements are part of the HTML Document Object Model (DOM) hierarchy. Animation can be achieved using SVG HTML animation transformation elements that are all part of the SVG standard.
Canvas and SVG are similar is some respects. Understanding the differences, however, and having a solid grasp of the underlying concepts can be important for those selecting web technologies and interested in doing serious graphics programming.
This demonstration is used as an example in the unit Business Web Technologies (ISYS3004) from Curtin University.
This web application is written in JavaScript and demonstrates the Programming/software development (PROG) SFIA skill.
HTML 5 Canvas has methods for combining rotation, scale, and translation values that are used in this program to animate the robot as it moves between joint configurations and position robot segments. An in-depth understanding of computer graphics and the underlying mathematical concepts can be necessary to be an efficient graphics programmer. As such, career positions requiring sophisticated graphics programming can require Technical Specialism (TECH) skills in this area.
Note that the robot example on this page uses trigonometric methods from the JavaScript Math object to calculate joint positions needed to detect collisions between robot joints and the ground, and to calculate parameters used in graphical transformations.
As is true of all SFIA skills, each of these skills can be practiced at various levels of autonomy and responsibility. Refer to the SFIA standard for specific descriptors of each skill at their defined levels.
The program code is available at https://jsfiddle.net/bvonkonsky/Lh1ag5dt/.
The value of beta is the rate at which Susceptible (S) individuals become infected. Move the beta scrollbar to the left to flatten the curve and see the impact when the community practices social distancing. The gamma value is the rate at which Infected (I) individuals are Removed (R), either because they have died or have recovered and become immune to further infection. Gamma is related to the number of days that individuals tend to remain infectious and are shedding virus.
You can try varying SIR parameters by changing values in the scrollbars. After you’ve had a chance to explore this, consider the following questions from a personal point of view:
Tom Rocks Maths (2020) Oxford Mathematician explains SIR disease model for COVID-19 (Coronavirus). Tom Rocks Maths. Accessed 10 April 2020. https://www.youtube.com/embed/NKMHhm2Zbkw