Our congratulations to the following people who have been awarded an Innovation Grant in the second round for 2007.

Development Grants

Chris McDonald - University of Western Australia
Improved management of students' files using FSEvents

The School Computer Science & Software Engineering, at The University of Western Australia, is typical of similar schools in Australian universities. In 2007 we presented courses to 950 students across 4 years of their undergraduate degrees. Our students use a mixture of operating systems - Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows-XP - on which their laboratory and project work is undertaken. All 3 platforms are again used to host the students' home directories and files, with cross-platform access provided by NFS and Samba.

At the end of our 2007 teaching year our students' Linux servers, alone, host 158GB in 2.34 million files. Of these, 1.79 million (75.4%) files occupying 52GB (33.2%) are duplicate files. This is a direct consequence of the shift in our teaching delivery methods, with the common files typically being copies of PDF, KeyNote, and PowerPoint lecture notes and presentations, assignment sheets, sample solutions, and audio and video recordings produced by UWA's widely adopted Lectopia system. It is expected that students' files on our Windows server will exhibit the same patterns.

One clear observation is that, because Lectopia recordings may be quickly downloaded at no cost via UWA's internal network, students frequently download recordings at university, and copy them to their USB keys or laptops. Some students' directories hold complete copies of their units' recordings for the whole semester, and these faithfully reside in incremental- and full- backups, too.

Missing from our teaching infrastructure is a consistent, and convenient, backup mechanism that permits students to retrieve their own files. The features provided by the FSEvents API, introduced in Apple's OS-X v10.5, provide an excellent opportunity to considerably improve file recovery schemes, from a student's perspective. The advantages of FSEvents are clearly seen in Time Machine and, perhaps less obviously, in Spotlight. However, the Time Machine application appears best suited for a single-user desktop machine.

In a shared university environment, such as ours described above, FSEvents offers additional potential. For example, duplicate files need only be copied to a backup system once. Moreover, because the duplicate files
are copied or downloaded at differing times across the academic year, by different students, a candidate file that appears to be a new file for a student, may in fact already reside within the backup system. When backing up this file for this student only a reference to the file's single instance needs be recorded, together with time at which this student created their copy. If a student modifies their copy of this file, then this copy genuinely becomes a new file, and it needs to be individually backed up.

Requiring that fewer files actually be backed up, suggests that backups can be taken more frequently. However, this is in contrast to the approaches taken by Time Machine and FSEvents, in which a log of directory modifications are examined each hour to determine which files should be copied. Our experience suggests that this frequency should actually vary, depending on the importance of documents. Our anecdotal, but frequently observed, experience is that students make many changes to documents and (ironically) are increasingly likely to accidently delete their work, as deadlines approach. In such situations, hourly backups may be insufficient. Instead, a backup regime that is aware of important times would offer great benefit. Apple's FSEvents API provides such an opportunity.

While the motivation for this application draws on the experiences of a typical Australian Computer Science Department, the benefits of the project will just as easily transfer to a wide variety of other University departments. The advantages seen are not specific to Computer Science students, but to any students in a large shared environment where many students access common files such as their teaching materials.

Penny de Byl - University of Southern Queensland
Cross Platform Parallel development for ALIVE

The Advanced Learning and Immersive Virtual Environments (ALIVE) project at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia (http://www.alivex3d.org), aims to reduce educators, fears of emerging online 3D technologies by exemplifying Web3D applications in contexts to individual‚ disciplines through: -dissemination of examples of existing successful Web3D games, simulations and virtual realities in e-Learning technologies along with information about their affordances and constraints;
-provision of training, professional development and mentoring in the basics of creating Web3D applications;
-exploration and development of exemplar teaching models for the use of Web3D applications in educational content; and
- exploration and development of insights into how these approaches can be supported and developed at an organisational level.

Moreover, the ALIVE team is dedicated to the Web 2.0 ethos centering on the idea of a collective intelligence which evolved from hyper-linking, web services, platform-independent software, re-usable and re-mixable content and, above all, user participation. Most importantly, the applications being developed are highly focused on cost-effectiveness, sustainability and scalability which are the keys to their adoption in educational institutions.

The current ALIVEX3D platform (which adheres to the X3D standard; http://www.web3d.org) is being developed under Windows with DirectX and allows, via easy-to-use tools, the development and delivery of multi-user online and offline 3D immersive environments for eLearning games, simulations and social. These environments can be embedded within HTML pages, Word Documents, Powerpoint Slides and delivered on the web or on CDROM (for examples, please visit http://www.alivex3d.org/)

This proposed project aims to develop an ALIVEX3D Mac Player and supported infrastructure for the ALIVEX3D platform for use within the higher education sector. This domain is becoming populated by diverse groups of students who will be increasingly familiar with emerging interactive 3D technologies. ALIVEX3D has the advantage over all other 3D virtual environments in that it operates seamlessly with existing infrastructure for web access commonly used in the home and by universities throughout Australia.

The rationale behind this project is:
-to empower educators to create their own games, simulations and immersive 3D environments through the use of Web3D technologies and enhance student engagement through authentic learning activities within discipline curricula.

Today‚ students are technology savvy or digital natives. Educational materials deemed acceptable in the past now fail to engage students who are more attuned to the high quality 3D entertainment software, e.g. computer games. These students demand more from their educational experiences than flat pages of content, un-interactive videos and text based communication software.

ALIVEX3D makes immersive 3D environment accessible to the students and universities, by seamlessly integrating with freely available web-browsing and word processing software. Immersive 3D environments provide unique, hitherto impossible, opportunities to change the nature of learning and teaching experiences, especially for students removed from campuses, including:

o interactivity with content and processes is enhanced through simulations and role plays;
o students being interactive with individuals or groups of individuals while immersed within another activity
o students being able to build their own activity and experiences, to take control of their own learning.

Professional quality games and simulations are immensely expensive to create. An easy to use, inexpensive system to develop ALIVEX3D environments is essential for this technology to move into mainstream learning and teaching practice in universities.

To this end, the ALIVEX3D platform must be sustainable, scalable and most importantly interoperable between applications and operating systems.

James Lucas - University of Technology, Sydney
Extending Leopard server web services (Wikid)

The web services provided by Leopard server (Wikid) are a strong platform for student or staff collaboration on a project/group level. Apple has chosen to utilise the Python programming language and with that the twisted framework. The twisted framework provides the Twisted Plugin System that allows 3rd party plugins to be loaded into the Apple web services Wikid.

This project would be applicable to any institution looking a deploying Apple Leopard web services who wish to extend the base functionality offered by Apple.

Dan Callaghan - University of New South Wales
Utilising mobile browsing and Apple podcast technology in Omnium Software

Omnium Software is a proven web application, which provides a platform for online creative collaboration with a focus on e-learning. More information regarding the software can be found at http://omnium.net.au/software/ .

Currently Omnium Software is available under the terms of an open source license, however we also offer hosted solutions for an annual or bi-annual fee.

This project would enhance the current software package.

Takatsuka Masahiro - University of Sydney
Service-Oriented Collaboration Framework using Instant Messaging Framework

Due to the marked advances in computing and network technologies, there are many so-called collaboration tools and systems available. Those systems typically provide videconferencing, desktop or application sharing capabilities. While those tools provide significant capabilities, which have a significant impact on how eLearning and eResearch activities, they fall short in providing a true pervasive collaboration environment.

For instance, typical videoconferenceing tools do not scale well to support a large class or team of researchers. Moreover, the current desktop or application sharing only provide a single-user interaction to the original desktop/application.

This project address the issue of enhancing the newly available collaboration capability available in Leopard by integrating an innovative Service-Oriented Collaboration Framework with Instant Messaging framework and Graphics&Imaging framework. The successful outcome of this project would provide capabilities to further enhance eLearning and eResearch environment.

Andrew Brown - University of Queensland
Collaborative Media Production

This project will develop collaborative software based on generative algorithms that will provide easy access to the production of pod/vodcast media production.

The software will be based on generative music and video systems developed using the OS X-based Impromptu environment, that can increase access for making professional sounding media products for novice users such as children and the disabled. The ability for the software to connect over networks allows collaborative creation of media in real time.

At the tertiary level this will be useful for teacher education students in enabling media production for podcasts, vodcasts, music making for I movie and claymation/animation. When used in a collaborative unit/lab the systems have the capacity to connect to digital social networks that facilitate the coordination, sharing and communication around collaborative creative activities. Within this process there are opportunities for application in community contexts, for digital networking enhancements, and for new advancements in creativity support tool design. The system enables children aged from 4 years of age, the disabled, youth and adults with limited media production skills to experience ensemble performance and social meaning. When educational support materials are built into the experience design users can gain media production knowledge.