Teaching Information Systems Development with SMS

1
Teaching Information Systems Development withSMS

• Chris Wallace
• Information Systems School
• University of the West of England, Bristol

2

• Motivation
• SMS in practice
• An example of SMS in teaching
• Pedagogic benefits
• Issues
• Questions

3
Motivation

• Information Systems Degrees balance over
• Form
• Information Technology and Computing
• (Re)use of forms and form-making techniques
• Context
• Providing and requiring human activity systems
• (Re)use of knowledge of Personal, Organisation
  and Social systems
• Content
• Semantics and data quality
• (Re)use of information

4
Entrepreneurship

• Encouraging innovative use of technology
• Design as a conversion with the materials
• Donald Schon in Winograd, T. (ed) Bringing Design
  to Software Addison-Wesley, 1996
• Exposure to a wide range of communicative
  materials

5
SMS Short Message Service
Some 2.4bn text messages were sent and received
in the UK in December, according to new figures
release by the Mobile Data Association the
country's highest monthly total ever. Pieter de
Villiers , CEO at Clickatell

• Very high proportion of messages are
  person-2-person
• Server-based uses include
• product alerts to customers
• news and sports alerts
• reminders and cancellations to clients
• collaboration
• polling
• quizzes
• shared notice display
• a mixture of S-gtM, M-gtS and M-gtS-gtM
  communication protocols

6
Infrastructure

• Windows 2000 in labs
• Windows Text Editor (PFE32)
• Unix file space and web space and web home
• Samba mapping Unix filespace into a Windows drive
• Two UNIX servers
• one running MySQL
• the other Apache PHP with full error settings
• QSEE ERM generates SQL for database
• PHPMyAdmin for accessing the MySQL server they
  have one database with access from the PHP server
  only.
• Clickatell 2-way account
• 50 setup
• 17/month rental
• 0.01 incoming
• 0.045 outgoing

7
Currency Converter

• Scenario
• Wandering around a French town, you see a
  car/house/computer/ on offer at 64,000 euros. You
  wonder what that would be in pounds sterling at
  the current market rate. You text
• CUR EUR 64000 GBP
• to your universities SMS service
• In 5 seconds, the answer comes back
• 64000 EUR 44244.73 GBP

8
(No Transcript)
9
See, design, install, improve, reflect

• See a fully documented case study in practical
  use to be used, read and discussed
• Design group exploration of issues in the
  design
• Install a just-functional implementation
• Improve make minor improvements
• Reflect review lessons learnt

10
SMS exercise

• See Bus timetable enquiry times of next 2
  buses on a route leaving the campus
• Design design the messages, the database and
  the database what to use for currency codes,
  what rates, what data quality issues arise, how
  does a new user bootstrap into use..
• Install starting with the tutors basic
  solution, students implement this in their own
  database / web space and get running
• Improve - then make a few minor improvements
  case invariant, help, alternative message
  structures, background update to rates, memory of
  users past interactions
• Competition for the best implementation
  judged by tutor (or peers)

11
Starting Code

• Database
• PHP code

12
Pedagogic Opportunities

• Simple text user interface
• 160 characters
• Simple application interface
• in HTTP get out key value
• ease of test-driven development
• Varied communication patterns
• S-gtM, S-gtM, M-gtS, M-gtS-gtM, M-gtS-gtM
• Simple stateful implementation
• using the caller id and database
• Challenging user context
• walk-in users, loosely-constrained setting
• Leads into service integration
• PHP NuSOAP provides simple implementation

13
Concerns

• Security
• of garnered phone numbers
• of access by students to S-gtM channel
• Costs
• Need for a simulator and a sponser
• Acceptance as an organisational messaging medium
  amongst students and staff
• SMS overtaken by MMS, WAP and smart phones?

14
Questions?

• ? What are your policies on use of numbers for
  (unsolicited) texting ( e.g. reminder about first
  destination statistics, notice of class
  cancellation) to mobile numbers obtained at
  registration
• ? SOAP as an introduction to objects
• ? PHP or Java