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Archive for the 'Infrastructure' Category

Infrastructure support is an interesting area in the market place right now. As the common market entry point for recent IT graduates, it can present some very frustrating challenges. Typically a candidate is stuck in a catch twenty-two; “I need an entry level position because I don’t have experience, but…all the jobs require at least 6-18 months experience. How can I get experience if no one will give me a chance?” The answer, you need to understand the market.

You have two options to enter the market;

1) Apply to companies that are considered training grounds in the industry

These companies typically have lower requirements than working for the internal IT staff of a large ASX-listed company. In addition to this, they hire year-round and often take people on straight out of TAFE or Uni, with the easiest job to secure being a customer support or call centre type role. The key to making the right career choice here is, choosing a position in companies that are either IT companies themselves or have room for you to move into the IT support side of the business. Working 12 months with one of these companies will give you the experience you need for other opportunities and also give you the right kind of customer service training required for a Service Desk position.

2) Look for a company that is willing to train and mould you to their way of operating

These companies can come in all different shapes, sizes and industries. The key thing they are looking for here is; drive, ambition (but not too much), aptitude, the right attitude, clear and professional communication, proper understanding of what good customer service is and obviously a demonstrated commitment to a career in IT. All of which can be quite difficult to portray in your CV, nevertheless, a poorly constructed or laid out CV can see you overlooked during the application process. Likewise, using language that oversells what you have done in the past can make you come across as arrogant and unwilling to learn/be trained, which goes back to having the right attitude. Read more…

For as long as they have both been around, the Linux versus Windows argument has raged on amongst their respective loyal subjects. On the surface, Windows is more widely adopted, is the standard business environment operating system, is more end-user friendly, and has more commercially developed programs supported than Linux. Linux on the other hand, is being adopted exponentially faster, is free to download, use, distribute and modify as needed, has an open source version (albeit not always up to the same capability) of just about every commercially developed program a windows environment can offer, and because of its design, is not susceptible to viruses or spyware.

Whilst there are literally thousands of Linux distributions (or Distros) available, there are only a few major players, with most others being variations of these, namely; Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, & Debian. In recent years however, one of these has been specifically edging out in front as a contender against its Windows rivals, Canonical’s Ubuntu. With major releases every April & October, the last three years has seen it improve not only in the traditional points, but also one of the primary measures of comparison between OSes, User Friendliness. Some dramatical changes were made to its internal workings with the release of Ubuntu 10.04 (which were further refined in version 10.10), resulting in Ubuntu finally going head to head with Windows 7, not only on speed with its 30 second average boot and 5 second shutdown times, but also usability and design. Read more…

As the years go on and technology continues to improve, more focus is going into implementing different technology devices into the education system. In 2005 Parsad and Jones did a study that showed in the year 2005, 99% of schools with computers had access to the internet versus 35% of schools in 1994.

Over the last 10 years, government officials have started emphasising the importance of creating a technology-rich school environment. Recent studies have shown that children who have learning assistance from technology based tools are receiving higher test scores, making significantly higher academic achievements, and have higher performance scores across all subjects.

The Information and Communication Technology Literacy Group believes that the use of technology improves students’ abilities to communicate, analyse and interpret data, prioritise tasks, understand conceptual modeling, and engage in problem solving.  These are critical areas for a student as well as for people in the work place. Someone who has strong skills in the above areas is much more likely to be successful in a business environment.

The article I recently read suggested that basic computer systems, tools and applications that we take for granted like Microsoft word, Microsoft excel, powerpoint, email, internet etc. are all increasing our communication and analytical skills. If this is the case, are people who are exposed to technology at a younger age predestined to do better in school, develop better communicative and analytical skills, and thus be more successful in their job?

Is it appropriate to attribute the development of these skills purely to technology? If this is the case, will there eventually be a need for teachers, classrooms, and schools or are computers and the internet going to become the global education system?