Turn On Your Future @ UWTSD's School of Applied Computing & Electronics

Aisha-brdQ. What was your HE course?

BSc (Hons) Business Information Technology

Q. What is your job title and role?

Multiple business owner: My role is to lead businesses, as an MD Managing Director at Costcutters supermarket and as a Principal at Swansea sixth form College. This involves many different areas including leadership, teacher evaluation, student discipline, staff discipline, accounting and several others.

Q. Could you briefly describe the organization you work for?

Swansea Sixth-form College (SSC) offer a wide range of practical English language courses. SSC offer high quality teaching with flexible study options, in a beautiful environment designed to develop our students confidence and increase motivation. Whether your goal is to improve your job prospects, get a place at university, pass an English language exam, live and work abroad, improve your English for business purposes, adapt to life in the UK or travel and see the world, we have a course to suit you.

Q. Which skills learned at University are helpful to you in your job?

My 3 years at Swansea Met were life changing. The environment excelled my development as a student. The skills that I developed while studying have had a positive influence on my role, personally, my involvement in the community and professionally. Commitment, self-motivation and confidence, all of which are highly valued skills which I gained from my course have helped me in my role as a Principal.

The following two skills which have been vital for my role, which I gained in my course through research, planning and assignments:
1. Knowledge and understanding – Gaining specific knowledge related to a particular subject, for example historical or scientific data
2. Cognitive skills – Thinking skills, such as problem solving, analysis, research.

Q. Do you have a typical day and how would you describe it?

My typical day, as much I would like to say planned and calm, it is as hectic and sometimes unpredictable. There are no two days the same. I still feel I am learning something new everyday. My day can range from staff meetings, student inductions, class monitoring, teaching assessments and auditing. We also take pride in our diverse culture and at the same time our city, and reach out exertions and show off our heritage.

Q. What aspects of your job do you enjoy most?

My job role highly motivates me, I do enjoy all aspects of my job.
It’s a huge responsibility being part of such a successful college and to be responsible for so many different people. I love learning and meeting people.

Q. Do you have any advice for students who would like to start a Career?

Your whole life is a learning curve, the biggest challenge is in within yourself. Always take issues/problems as a challenge, remove all barriers.
Set high goals, you should never be able to accomplish your goal, you should get nearer and nearer each time. If you think you have reached it, then you haven’t set a high enough goal, the sky is the limit.

Commitment, reliability, humbleness and honesty to yourself and your job is your key ingredient for success.

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29dd4d8What was your HE course?
The course that I did was BSc (Hons) Web Development.

What is your job title and role?
My job title is web developer/technical auditor at the Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC). My role varies to include design and development of small SME websites, Mobile Apps, technical auditing, accessibility testing and reporting on larger websites including clients such as Channel 4, Money Advice Service, HMRC, Lloyds, Santander and many more.

Could you briefly describe the organization you work for?
The organisation I work for deals with the accessibility testing of digital products to WCAG 2.0 standards. We have a team of expert testers that have a range of disabilities and use various Assistive technologies to ensure that these products are accessible and inclusive to all.

Which skills learned at University are helpful to you in your job?
The skills that I learnt at University that I have found help me are web design and development skills, report writing, how to research and meet deadlines and the final project that I undertook relating to accessibility and accessibility guidelines.

Do you have a typical day and how would you describe it?
I can be involved in any part or all of the process depending on how many audits are on-going. I could be working with the testers where I analyse code as they find accessibility issues with a website or mobile app in relation to their assistive technologies. I will then find the reason for the problem and offer companies a solution for fixing it.

I will then complete a technical audit and compile a report. This process is then followed up with a conference call with project managers and developers/designers to discuss a way forward for compliance.

I have also been involved in training developers, designers and project managers in creating accessible products, selling the service to clients and presentations.

A colleague and I also developed the Accessibility ‘hub’ for Virgin Media’s website.

What aspects of your job do you enjoy most?
I do enjoy getting out of the office and visiting companies all over the UK and seeing how they work. I have recently been to HMRC offices after being involved in a piece of work for them, along with Channel 4, ITV and Virgin. But the part that I like is the analysing of code, finding the reason why a screen reader for example is not working with the code and finding a way of fixing it. It is also nice to see the fixes that I have suggested being implemented and no longer causing my blind colleagues an issue.

Do you have any advice for students who would like to start a Career?
Yes, work hard and stay focussed, if you’re determined you’ll get there.

jobsites

IT and Business Development jobs in Swansea Caerphilly Cardiff and London:

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There has been very positive news this year regarding job creation in the Technology sector. As the extracts from the Financial Times article ‘UK technology job creation‘ indicate “Rates of job creation at UK technology companies have outpaced the private sector as a whole for the past four years.”

This is likely to do with the natural refresh cycle of the Tech sector that occurs every 5 years, making the Technology sector a lot more resilient to economic downturns, e.g. that occurred between 2008 and 2013.

The article continues “The number of jobs in the sector now exceeds 1m out of a total of 28m employees across all UK sectors, compared with 915,000 out of 27m in 2010, confirming that technology is a significant employer in Britain… Jobs in the tech sector rose 4.3 per cent year on year in the first half of 2013 compared with 0.9 per cent jobs growth for the private sector as a whole… The report finds that business activity growth at UK tech companies is the fastest since May 2010. It says: “The figures show that UK tech company output rebounded strongly after the global financial crisis . . . and has now expanded throughout much of the past four years.”

To read the full article please click-here.

jobsites
There are a wide variety of employment websites for specific employment and career sectors. For up-to-date job opportunities in Computing and IT Management checkout:

Prospects.ac.uk is another great site for job opportunities and work experience placements.

Use the above links to search for job opportunities in your area.

Another useful site is IT Jobs Watch, the site provides a map of the UK IT job market, identifying the level of demand for IT skills with a guide to average salaries.

Pics of the MSc Applied Computing and MSc Computer Networks students showcasing their Major Project Posters. Please click-here for more information.

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Two of our Graduates Grant Armstrong and Sion Williams return to the School on Friday to talk about their Careers to date including how they got their first jobs which will be very useful for our current students.

  1. At 11am Grant Armstrong will be talking about his experiences as a software developer working for both Acentic (Hotel TV and hospitality technology) and Aria Networks (Network capacity management software).
  1. At 3pm Sion Williams will be talking about his work as a build and release engineer working at both the Office of National Statistics and Liverpool Victoria.

The talks will include some biographical material about how the students got their first jobs and also included will be information about interesting/upcoming technologies they thing graduates should be aware of and tips for those entering the industry.

If you are interested please feel free to come along to the School of Applied Computing this Friday 28th February at 11am, room MH303, Mount Pleasant Campus, Swansea.

HOMEPAGE1Acentic are global leaders in hotel TV and hospitality technology, operating in more than 40 countries. Acentic is an  integrator of technologies that connect, engage and entertain. Acentic’s range of products include Acentic Smart – future ready Smart TV solution,  Acentic Media advertising, hotel mobile applications, digital interactive television (iTV) and high definition TV platforms (HD TV).

Aria_Networks_company_logoAria’s core technology is called DANI (Distributed Artificial Neural Intelligence) which is a self-learning and evolutionary modelling software suite that can automatically build and execute algorithms on a distributed computing architecture. Aria Networks provides set of solutions to service providers such as capacity planning and management to help service providers achieving the maximum utilisation of their networks.LV_Liverpool_VictoriaLV= Liverpool Victoria serves over five million customers with a wide range of financial services including car, home and life insurance plus investment and retirement products. LV= is also is the UK’s largest friendly society.

Office_for_National_Statistics_logo
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is charged with the collection and publication of statistics related to the economy, population and society of England and Wales at national, regional and local levels.

Gaia_spacecraft

Karlie Yeung from Rhea Systems is giving a talk at the School of Applied Computing this Wednesday February 26th at 2pm in room MH303.

The talk is titled: What do you do if your spacecraft doesn’t respond?

Karlie Yeung works for Rhea Systems supporting the software used to manage communications between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the recently-launched GAIA  spacecraft. She’ll be talking about life working in scientific and research computing as an alternative to working within the commercial sector.

RHEA is an independent Space Engineering Consulting and Software company that offers knowledge-based services and innovative solutions to the space industry. (1)

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, with 20 member states. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, France, ESA has a staff of more than 2,000 with an annual budget of about €4.28 billion / US$5.51 billion (2013). (2)

Gaia is an ambitious mission to chart a three-dimensional map of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, in the process revealing the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. (3)

ESA_LOGO

Karlie has been working at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) for four years on software to support mission operations. This has given Karlie experience working with the satellite flight control teams on all phases of the missions from launch preparation to decommissioning. She currently works on the Manufacturing and Operations Information System (MOIS) software suite used for operations preparation and satellite control automation.

If you would like to join us for Karlie’s fascinating talk please come along to the  School of Applied Computing this Wednesday February 26th at 2pm, room MH303, Mount Pleasant Campus, Swansea.

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Founded by one of our School’s Enterprising Graduates Darren Adams, Swansea-based Games Development Studio Chaos-Trend are proud to announce their new game “Exo Miner” on Steam Greenlight. Exo Miner is a procedurally generated, action based mining, exploration, construction and defence game.

Travel to unexplored sectors of space, claim new sectors for mining, set up defences, buy new ships and drones then customise them to fit your play style. Define patrol routes for protection or attack claimed sectors. Defend your own sectors from rival companies and leave your mark by building the biggest space mining corporation in the galaxy. Can you build a corporation to rival the mighty Europa Mining Company?

Watch this space: They are currently busily developing Exo Miner and some of the content is not yet final. They will be updating this page as often as possible with new info and content. 

Chaos-Trend have also recently released a new game titled ‘Happy Rainbow Bird‘ 🙂

Flap those wings, gain some height and use your skill and judgement to get the highest score you can as you Guide your birdie through the many pillars of doom.

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The Game is available Now on Google Play and iTunes.

Chaos-Trend are a small but well established Games development studio in Swansea, Wales. They have been running for over 5 years and have successfully released many games across many platforms. The core team consists of Graduates from Swansea Metropolitan – University of Wales Trinity Saint David that have obtained degrees in game programming and design. The founder members of ChaosTrend are: Darren Adams, Russell Drodge, John Franklin, and Ian Malsbury. There are now five in the Team, one being a former Creative Assembly programmer who worked on the award winning Total War series. They have written their our own game engine and tools from the ground up, and love to dream-up and create new and exciting games. For more information please click here.