Fwd: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Pondering SD U3O2

[Kevork Krozian]

  Hi Robert and Adrian and Claudia and Mark and everyone else,

 I echo Mark's sentiments in firstly congratulating the steering group for 
writing a great study design.

  I do wish to take up the discussion however just to understand what is meant 
by modelling a solution for a mobile device but not running it.

   [ Recall the early days of web authoring . Okay kids, we're setting up a web 
site for your SAC, but it will never be seen on the web and it doesn't have 
to work either , just designed or modelled.... !! ]
   
   I am not sure if I am a little naive here , but what is so special about 
"modelling" a program to run on a mobile device ?
What skill set is required to model this task apart from understanding that 
the mobile device has a smaller screen area ?
What other constraints can a programmer learn/implement/master - if they 
don't have to make the program run -  apart from smaller font size ?

  Yes, if you run Visual Studio.NET 2005 you can create a point and click mobile application.
So, without demeaning the students effort what are we assessing ? That they know to select 
mobile application instead of a standard application on the wizard ?

Let's look at a mobile phone. It runs a web page as a wml ( a relative of 
html ) file. It can load a html page but buttons for example will not work. 
Once upon a time images had to be wbmp ( wireless bitmap ) and now most 
mobile phones will load jpg and other standard image types. Therefore, if a 
student is not required to run the program or web page on a mobile device, 
what skill set will he or she demonstrate to be assessed in this outcome ? 
That his fonts have to be smaller and fit a screen 3 cm x 4 cm ?  .... 
anything else ? colour constraints don't need to be considered. Any data 
that can be entered by a keyboard can be entered by the mobile device, 
security is not something a programmer has to worry about when writing the 
application as it is encrypted at a different layer eg. running a web page over https:// as opposed to http:// where
port 443 is used to provide encryption. This happens at many layers ( layer 4 ) below the application.

 So, if a programmer does not have to run or even write the program, presumably so he/she 
can avoid the depth of technical knowledge required to make it work, how can 
they design a solution in a meaningful way ? Where is testing to occur ? Are we avoiding more than half of the stages of the 
PDLC ?

  I am the first to resist torturing teachers for the sake of looking like we're doing something current, 
innovative and reflecting current trends in technology and society.
However, to have something that does not have to work and even not have to be written will cause 
more stress than having some concrete guidelines and examples ( working preferably ) of what is acceptable.

Best wishes

Kevork Krozian
Mailing List Creator and Administrator
kevork at edulists.com.au 
www.edulists.com.au 
Tel: 0419 356 034
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Timmer-Arends" <timmer at melbpc.org.au>
To: "Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List" 
<sofdev at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 6:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Pondering SD U3O2


> Hello Mark
>
> I think Adrain and Claudia have the right interpretation. The constraint 
> of producing a software module suitable for implementation on a portable 
> computing device is intended as a constraint on the user interface (and 
> perhaps other bits as listed by Claudia and Adrian) NOT on the type of 
> program to be written or on the programming language used. And it is this 
> latter point that I think Adrian is trying to make when he writes "The 
> program does not have to be implemented - just modeled."  - students might 
> be required to write a game program that can be used on, say, a Palm 
> Pilot. Instead of trying to come to grips with something like C as well as 
> adapting it to PalmOS, they might write the program using VB; it 
> would/should have the 'look and feel' of the Palm version but under the 
> covers its just plain old VB - hence it is a 'model'.
>
> Possibly a little dated, 
> http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~winikoff/palm/dev.html contains a list of 
> PalmPilot SDKs (Software Development Kits) and some discussion which could 
> be of interest.
>
> Regards
> Robert T-A
> Brighton SC
>
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