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Our Blogs Open Sauce LCA 2009: man behind the conferences within a conference
Our Blogs Open Sauce LCA 2009: man behind the conferences within a conference | LCA 2009: man behind the conferences within a conference |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 05 December 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 3 Hesketh may be just 20 but he has done some interesting development work in the eight years that he has been messing around with software and is currently working with the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Qualifications Authority to assist research and development of computer-based exams using Linux. Featured Whitepaper
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A trial run was conducted last year. "It was actually quite interesting going into the project," he says. "The manager at the University had already decided on Linux and he was determined that it was the right solution. I took a step back and analysed what they really needed and it soon became apparent that Linux was a no-brainer." He says the project was to allow students to do their exams on computers in a fair environment. "It also had to be very practical for the University to use and deploy with minimal to no fuss on exam day. And, most importantly, it had to be similar to, or on par with, traditional exams. "Adding up all the factors it just made sense to use Linux. We could create live CDs that meant no installing software on machines and no configuring complex networks just to stop students from accessing the web or asking each other for help. "Thanks to the flexibility of Linux we were able to lock down the computers the students were using and have a simple focus on the document they were working on. This also meant that the live CDs could be used in any computer lab in the school, on laptops in the examination hall or even on the student's own laptop, all without complicated config files, tricky proxy setups or software installation." Hesketh says the experiment received a bit of publicity "but we haven't really been pushing it. The Tasmanian Qualifications Authority and a few other education sectors have signified interest but nothing further has developed as yet." This isn't the extent of what Hesketh has done. "When I was in school I developed NitroTech, a simple and fast PHP content management system," he says. "It was very basic and never flourished into a CMS with an extensive feature list, but it was a great learning experience. The project was hosted on sourceforge.net where a number of people volunteered to help out - which made it lots of fun. The project has been discontinued for some time now and is pretty rough, but the engine itself is quite nice and I still use it in projects today." Hesketh is proficient in several web technologies. However, he avoids FrontPage for numerous reasons. "I tried it once back in school where we 'had' to learn it, but it was easier to write web pages in HTML. I don't know if FrontPage has gotten any better in the last few years, but when I did try it wasn't for me. "FrontPage, and WYSIWYG programs in general, are really only good at, and designed for, static, simple web pages. I'm a programmer so I like to be able to make dynamic applications and software. However, the main reason I would steer clear of any graphical web page designing software these days is because they have trouble sticking to W3C standards and have very hard to navigate output." As someone who hails from Tasmania, he feels that one reason the state is regarded as some kind of oddity by the rest of Australia is jealousy. "I'd like to think it's just jealousy, but then I may be biased... Maybe it's the awesome shape our island is in. I mean, who doesn't want to live on an island with two animals named after it and is in the shape of a Tasmanian Devil?" he asks. |
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