auDA Foundation: 2007 Grant Recipients

For sufferers of Parkinson’s their families and carers - the establishment of an information portal containing a database of services and support information that will enable Parkinson’s Victoria to help sufferers better manage their condition and provide timely and accurate information to their families, carers and allied health professionals.

Australian Council for Children and Youth Organisations

For the protection of children who are in care - to be part of the collaborative network of organisations that have undertaken training with the Australian Council for Children and Youth Organisations to maintain their interest in child protection and the awareness of current issues. The information portal aims to increase the number of organisations that are vigilant about the prevention of child abuse by providing a consistent and national approach to child protection.

Learning Links

For children with learning disabilities - to establish a standardised online assessment tool that collects individualised diagnostic assessment data that tests numeracy levels used for Learning Links Counting for Life online program. Essential to a learning program is that testing be done at regular intervals to ensure progress is being made and to measure the program’s success and an information portal will provide the means to assess, collect and store such information.

Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Learning Innovation

For assisting year 7-9 science students - to support teachers in expanding the methods used to encourage student interest in science and to enhance scientific literacy by creating an online community that can be shared across schools. This project undertaken by the Centre for Learning Innovation will support teachers in expanding the methods used to teach and provide them with an insight into student engagement with digital resources.

Queensland University of Technology (School of Law)

For the provision of a doctoral degree scholarship - to research and provide a comparison of both restrictive and unrestrictive systems of domain name allocation and examination of the advantages and disadvantages and how efficient they are. Analysis and description of the selected models and their regulatory approach will also be examined.

The University of Queensland’s School of Education

For research into the digital literacy practices in schools - to study the digital literacy work done in schools in both low and middle income areas in order to explore the differences and similarities between teachers’ practices and the impact of socioeconomic status on any differences identified.

City of Casey

For community groups and residents in Cranbourne - the establishment of a web-based portal that provides information and a communications system for all tiers of the community. This project will enable Council to better communicate with residents, manage and identify community assets, allow community groups to promote activities and services and subsequently build a more informed community.

AUSMUSIC SA

For the South Australian music industry - to implement an online survey of the music industry in South Australia to allow them to identify, develop and expand online content and resources that support the local music industry, artists and practitioners.

Curtin University of Technology’s eLearning Projects in the School of Information Systems

To conduct research on the relationship between people and technology - to research and combine the unique learning experiences of the mature age Silent Generation with the technological literacy of the current Generation Y youth. This research will determine how intergenerational interaction can be enhanced by online learning technologies and Next G technologies.

Playgroup WA

To assist parents of children 0-5 years - to develop online modules to assist play leaders, parents and caregivers primarily in rural and remote communities in Western Australia to successfully run play groups and to enhance the play opportunities within their playgroup. This online project educates parents about the importance of learning and development through play.

Griffith University’s Research Centre for Clinical and Community Practice Innovation

To capture the life narratives of disabled people - to establish a website where 1000 life narratives from disabled people are catalogued and displayed. A high profile project such as this will help the Centre to firmly establish its place in the international disability research field.

University of South Australia’s Institute for Telecommunications Research

To improve internet performance - to conduct an experimental study of Loss Synchronisation between concurrent TCP Flows (Satcom Part). The Institute for Telecommunications Research specialises in research and technology development for satellite communications, wireless communications fundamentals and telecoms networks. Australia relies heavily on its telecommunications infrastructure due to its geographic dispersion and longer network paths to the rest of the world. This emphasises that Australia must participate in the research to improve the performance of the internet.

Community Connections (Vic)

For assisting volunteers in rural Victoria - the delivery of a program to assist volunteering organisations and volunteers in rural and regional communities. Volunteerism is critical to the future of rural and regional communities and the development of a user moderated forum will provide access to just in time advice and support to volunteers.

Curtin University’s Cisco Academy for the Vision Impaired and School of Information Systems

For the provision of scholarships to assist vision impaired students - to provide one scholarship to a student from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and one to a student from the School of Information Systems both within the Curtin Business School to develop an effective eLearning portal and content delivery system tailored for use by blind and vision impaired students.

Swinburne University of Technology’s Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures

For the development of software - to develop an open source tool that will aid in the detection of pre-infection network scans that frequently precede the creation of spammer botnets and zombie farms.

Vicnet a Division of the State Library of Victoria

For humanitarian visa holders - to develop resources for the Sudanese and Myanmar people who have gained access to Australia through the Federal Government’s Citizenship humanitarian settlement program. This project is to develop web services and tools that can deliver solutions for these communities whose languages are not supported or poorly supported by mainstream technologies. It will also be used for promoting mother language literacy among adults and teaching aids for children of those communities.