July 20, 2008

July 20, 2008 Notes
July 20, 2008 Notes
What a day - Got up at 7:30 to leave for airport at 7:55 to get Brus on the way back to Seattle. Got back home and read Chapter 3 of HODE 2007. I had started to read the 2003 edition HODE and had read the first 11 chapters when the 2007 edition arrived. I decided to read both books a part (section) at a time, Part 1 of the 2003 edition followed by Part 1 of the 2007 version. Both editions have 5 parts in common. The 2007 version has an additional part not in the 2003 edition. I will have a similar problem in 90 days (44 plus 46) when I get ready to start in on the Handbook of Reaearch on Educational Communications and Technology. I just got the 3rd Edition which came out in 2008. This background reading helps me prepare for my projected blog series, Online Learning Today, a review of current research in online learning and teaching.

Then I fired up the MacBook Pro to synch up the iPhone and check for Ed 603 student assignments so I could do the regular Sunday upload of the online gradebook file, when a message popped up saying the 2.0 firmware upgrade for the iPhone was ready to be downloaded. Hurray. This of course took awhile and the old MacBook Pro was busy preparing a netflix movie to be transferred to AppleTV so I opened up the HV20 and started recording John's Tech Vlog in the blue recliner with Chobe sitting in my lap.

The refitted iPhone seemed to be working perfectly so I clicked on the new app button and downloaded a New York Times reader (free) and Super Monkey Ball ($9.99).

It is almost time for supper and I am again sitting in the blue recliner with Chobe in my lap entering text into a Notes document. Time to send it to wassonjbw for inclusion in the iPhoneJournal on blogger.


Sent from my iPhone

July 19, 2008

July 19, 2008 Notes
1:21 PM sitting in the Medford Cinemark with Barbara and Brus waiting for Dark Knight to begin. We got here plenty early so we could be certain of getting seats together. No problem, we had our choice of the house. We were even able to go to Circuit City before the movie started and pick up some miniDV tapes. I am listening to Leo's Tech Guy podcast while waiting for the movie. I had to crank the volume down on my hearing enhancement devices so I could hear the podcast. I have my little controller along so I can adjust the volume in the theater if necessary. I also brought along batteries, the last time I went to a movie one of the devices needed a battery change. Well time to log off and watch the previews (intermixed unfortunately with commercials, which certainly does not enhance theater viewing experience). In fact I was wrong, its not previews that are being shown right now but commercials. At 20 minutes before show time the previews started. Unfortunately, the preview was followed by a commercial. Even the prievies are more commercials than preview or trailers. And the commercials continued. This uninteresting display is called cinema first look. So much for the theater experience.


Sent from my iPhone
John Wasson

July 13, 2008 Notes

July 13, 2008 Notes
Sunday 3:50 P
I am sitting in the blue recliner with Chobe stretched out on the carpet at my feet. She came inside for a snack and relief from the 97 degree F day in the yard. I have spent the day working on a vlog about my computers, my network, and the problems with creating documents on different computers with the same application, and with sharing documents between computers, and reading a chapter by Peters in the HODE.

I just reset the iPhone and can now do all the things I could not do, make a call, access the Internet and send a tweat, and send email. I was just able to send Notes docs to myself, to post on the iPhone blog, for the first time since early June.

However, I sent the messages to wassonjb@mac.com and they showed up in the inbox of the iPhone where I deleted them, but not in mail on the MacBook Pro. Before finding this out I had deleted the original Notes on the iPhone and thus lost all the content. Let's send this Note to wassonjbw@gmail.com which makes sense since blogger, the repository for John's iPhone Journal, is a google enterprise. So let's send this note to wassonjbw and not delete the original note on the iPhone.

Sent from Notes on my iPhone 7-17-08 12:45 PT

June 4, 2008

June 4, 2008 Direct Post from MacBookPro
Greetings and salutations. I have a huge backlog of Notes files on the iPhone which I would normally send by email to the MacBookPro and paste into this blog, the iPhone Journal. However, the iPhone does not work at home. Apparently AT&T no longer services this area in the lee of Roxy Ann Peak in southern Oregon. Barbara is not able to use her AT&T mobile phone either. Chobe the cat does not mind as she refuses to use a cell phone.

I can not use Safari (which I have tuned into Twitter) either and can not, as I already mentioned, send email from the iPhone. I thought Safari and email on the iPhone used wifi so apparently my iPhone can no longer connect to my airport extreme network. I also have trouble connecting my Alienware laptop running vista to the wifi network, but can connect via ethernet. Same thing with my Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop running the latest version of Ubuntu. I can get to the local area network with an ethernet cable, but not via wifi.

As long as I am discussing all my problems, I might as well mention AppleTV and its connection to the internet. The AppleTV is connected to the Sony Bravia via HDMI. It was not working a lot of the time so I drilled a hole in the wall to run an ethernet cable to the back of the cabinet in which the Sony Bravia and the AppleTV were housed. This worked quite well.

I am looking forward to the announcement of the new iPhone on June 9 and wonder if I can add that to my current AT&T account which has 12 months to run. At the end of the contract I will probably drop AT&T and replace the iPhone with an iPod Touch. I think the iPod Touch will do everything that I do on the iPhone except make cell phone calls, which I am not interested in anyway. In looking at the iPod Touch screen on apple.com/ipodtouch/ I do not see a mail icon. However, I assume I can do internet mail to my .mac or gmail accounts. I just want to get the new iPhone to run out the AT&T contract and see how it works. Then I will cancel my AT&T account and get an iPod Touch. June 2009, a year from now, sounds like a good time to make the switch.

The other day I spilled coffee on my trusty MacBook Pro. After drying out and letting it set for 24 hours, I found that it still functions reasonably well. What does not work are some keys on the lower left keyboard, the caps lock, shift, fn, ctrl, option, and command keys. The shift and command keys on the right side do work. I can also connect the keyboard and optical mouse from the defunct G4 computer to the MacBook Pro by USB and restore full keyboard functionality. Subsequently, the return key fell off the computer. Since the limping MacBookPro is the only Macintosh computer I currently have, I really do need another MacBook and fortunately Barbara says I should get a new MacBookPro for Father's Day.

Today I was looking at iPhone Aps and saw Readle.com an app that let's you read .doc, pdf, and txt files online with the iPhone. I signed up for an account and then pasted Learning Online Today 03 a pages file into Word and saved it as a .doc file. Then I, hopefully, uploaded the .doc file to my Readdle account and am hoping for the best. What I would really like is an app that would allow me to read the extensive list of eReader books I have (pdb files).

April 20, 2008

April 20,2008 Ubuntu Inspiron 8500
OK, once more into the breech, not really trying anything new but just doing the same old thing again and again.

For today's activity, I dragged the Dell Inspiron 8500 out of storage, a red Lands End backpack, plugged in the powersupply, and booted up ubuntu (version 7.10). I connected to local area network with a ethernet cable, started up Firefox and got on the internet successfully. To check the connection I went to www.johnwasson.net, a free google web site.

I then went to the Applications menu, and selected OpenOffice.org Word Processor in the Office submenu. This opened a new OpenOffice.org Writer document into which I am now entering text.
I will now take the laptop into the family room and see how long I can work without the power supply or the ethernet cable attached. It is 10:12 AM PDT. The document on the screen is a little small for me, so I went to the View -> Zoom menu, selected 150%, and clicked OK. The computer started beeping at me sporadically at 10:25 which I interpreted as a warning that it wanted it's powersupply connected so I attached the AC powercord. I also wanted to reboot the system, to see if this is a dual-boot system, which I did after saving this document.

This is a dual-boot system as I found out on rebooting the system and selecting XP Home Edition from the boot menu. It said I had to verify my installation to run Windows OS, but it could not get on to the internet via the ethernet cable connection in the family room. This ethernet connection is ordinarily connected to the AppleTV unit, which seems unable to connect reliably via a wireless connection to the Airport Extreme basestation. So I can't use Windows XP on this system at the moment. I will try it again later via the ethernet connection in the office.

There are a number of things I could be doing, should be doing, instead of sitting here in the blue recliner, entering text into the Inspiron laptop, or looking out the patio doors to the backyard and to Roxy Ann Peak in the background. I could be reading Michael Moore's editorial, Three Types of Interaction, in the volume 3, number 2, 1989 issue of The American Journal of Distance Education, in preparing to record an episode of Online Learning Today. I could be reading Voltaire's Candide, an assignment for the Teaching Companies' online course, The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries. I could continue to read The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which I got interested in while viewing parts of a Russian mini-series on DVDs. I could continue to read Daniel Dennett's 1991 Consciousness Explained, which I have started to read (I am on page 124). I have 4 student assignments for Ed 603 Online which I need to review and respond to, and then post the grades to the Ed 603 online gradebook. I need to write an email to a Barnes and Noble college bookstore in Grand Forks, North Dakota, informing them that all Practical Press orders now need to be submitted through the Practical Press web site, www.practicalpress.net, and paid for by credit card. Finally I could also prepare congratulations cards to send to Amy (passing the bar exam in Minnesota) and Rhys (completing the associate degree of nursing at Craven College).

What I ended up doing was reading the Moore article and then going on to read selections from another book on Moore's theory of transactional analysis which attempts to relate the concepts or variables of dialogue, structure, and learner autonomy in distance education. This in turn led me to explore an article on computer mediated communication, to review the table of contents of three textbooks on educational research (I was trying to get a grip on the role of theory in the formulation of research problems), and ended up looking through Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edition, 1996) and Vygotsky's Mind in Society. I reached no conclusions and ended up entering more text into this document while sitting in the blue recliner with Chobe in my lap and the Inspiron perched on the arm of the recliner. I am trying to come to some kind of a conceptualization of online teaching/learning and research in educational psychology and technology. How about a treatment (maybe a course) on educational research methods based on or emphasizing research in educational psychology and technology broadly and narrowly on online teaching and learning?

Back in the office, the ethernet connection to the internet worked fine and I was able to upload this document to the iPhoneJournal.

April 11, 2008 Notes

Yesterday, I decided to change all shipments of Practical Press books to the Internet by credit card only (with a 30% discount). This was in response to a retroactive chargeback of $110 on shipping costs for four orders dating back to November. The orders involved the B&N Bookstore at Grand Forks ND. Today the Dakota Book Exchange, also at Grand Forks, ND, called to place an order and I told them about the new policy. They said that would be just fine, they would be glad to order over the Internet and pay by credit card.

On April 12 the iPhone quit working. No service at home or downtown Medford. At Paul's suggestion I went to iTunes and reset it to defaults and that took care of the problem. As I enter this text on April 16, 2008, the iPhone is working great.
However a new tragedy, yesterday while sitting on the blue recliner with my cat Chobe in my lap, I reached to the end table next to me and managed to drop the Canon HV 20 to the floor, a fall of about 30 inches. I seem to have injured it. The auto lens cover makes scratching noises when it is opening or closing. In record mode, while recording there are no icons showing on the view finder or view screen except for a single red (recording) light. I will try to do some recording and playback with it to see how it is functioning before sending it in to Canon for repairs.

March 4, 2008

March 4, 2008 iPhoneJournal

I noticed that I made an error in my last post for my gmail account - it should be wassonjbw@gmail.com

Chapter of the day - Selecting A Sample, Chapter 6 in Gall, Gall, & Borg (2003) on CourseSmart.

No new student assignments to take care of but got an email from Dean of Graduate Studies at MSUM asking what to do with all the grades of IP my former students have in online classes.

March 3, 2008

March 3, 2008 Notes

Chapter of the day - Chapter 5. Statistical Techniques from Gall, Gall, & Borg (2003).

The LaCie 250GB Rugged All-Terrain Hard Drive has Firewire 400, 800, and USB 2.0 ports and has a USB power-sharing cable. $259.95 looks like great on the road video storage device. Dimensions 3.5 x 1.0 x 5.7 inches. 5 star reviewer said "The USB should have been left off because you need the additional power adaptor for USB connection whereas the FW400/FW800 don't."

Check on the Heil PR 40 the dynamic microphone Leo uses. He says the best USB mix is the Rode podcastwr. BSW USA sells a podcasting kit.

My most used mail accounts are:
wassonj@teleport.com
wassonjb@mac.com
wassonjb@gmail.com
I have to post them to my blog so I can keep track of them. Same thing with the local URL for the web page on the MacBook Pro.

MacBook URL 10.0.1.195
(users/john/Sites/index.html)

Deitel's Internet & Works Wide Web: How To Program, 4th Edition (2008) on CourseSmart has 28 chapters. My subscription is up in 60 days (June 3, 2008). Gall, Gall, & Borg has 18 chapters. I have completed 5 chapters. At this frenetic pace I will finish GG&B on March 16 and be able to start Deitel on March 17. At one chapter a day, very unlikely, I will finish Deitel April 13, well before the June 3 expiration date.

Sent from my iPhone
John Wasson
wassonjb@mac.com

February 29, 2008 Pages

Chobe is sitting in my lap and the iPhone is charging up in the office, the international headquarters for Practical Press and Practical Press Video Productions (formerly Practical Press Pictures), so I am writing todays log entry in Pages.

Chapter of the day - Chapter 2. Developing A Research Proposal, pages 36-61 in Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2003, on CourseSmart.com.

I should now follow that reading up by reviewing Terry Anderson’s Chapter 9 in the Handbook of Distance Education (Moore & Anderson, 2003), Modes of Interaction in Distance Education: Recent Developments and Research Questions, so that I can get started on an article on Adding Interactivity To Your Online Course. I also want to review Callender and McDaniel’s article, The Benefits of Embedded Question Adjuncts for Low and High Structure Builders, in the Journal of Educational Psychology (May, 2007) for mention in the article and to compare the structure of the article with Gall, Gall, and Borge’s discussion of components of a research proposal, a dissertation, and a published article.

Yesterday I set up a GoogleDoc file for the article, hoping I could then work on the article online with the MacBook Pro or with the iPhone. However, I could get to the article with Safari on the iPhone, and view it in the landscape orientation, which is what I wanted to do, but I could not go into edit mode. The keyboard only came up if I clicked in the URL box of the web page. There must be some kind of an add-on that I can use with the  iPhone to allow me read and edit Word documents. In looking back at an earlier Notes page mentioning an article, The Top 10 iPhone Applications by Ryan Fass,  I see that it says GoogleDocs are read only, but mentions Glide Mobile which allows creation of word processing documents on the iPhone which can be converted to Word, RTF, or PDF on computer and Google Notebook which allows creation of Mobile Notes which can be accessed from any computer through a Google account, and Google Reader. Google Notebook I find is only available through Firefox and Internet Explorer at the present time, so that rules out accessing it from Safari. let’s look at Glide Mobile. Well I set up a free glide account. I tried to create a new document, on the MacBook. Nothing happened. I went to Glide’s help menu and apparently to use Guide on the Mac, I have to be using one of the following browsers. Explorer 6.0+, Firefox 2.0+, or Camino 2.0+. So there you have it. I guess I will go to IE on the Alienware computer and  explore Glide from there.

But first let’s check email to see if I have any student assignment for Ed 603 online that I need to respond to. There was one assignment to respond to, a review of a casual-comparative research article.

Set up a Glide account with IE on the Alienware PC. Wrote and saved a document. The online word processor in Glide works nicely. Went to the iPhone and logged on to the Glide web site with Safari. I could read the document I had set up on the PC but could not edit it or add to it. I started a new Glide document from the iPhone and saved it to the Glide site. Then I went back to the PC and was able to view and edit the file created on the iPhone. The only improvement this has over the Notes and email system is that I can read word processing documents created on the PC with the iPhone.

I created this page with Pages, as I have already mentioned, and then pasted it into a GoogleDocs document. From GoogleDocs I saved it directly to my blog.

Add interactivity To Your Online Course

I want to write an article on interactivity, that is adding interactivity to your online course. This is part of the series I have been writing for Practical Update on Web Based Instruction. In my usual manner I will discuss the reasons behind what I am doing and the technology I use as much as the content of the article. I am writing this article on Google Docs thus making it available for others to read and respond to as it is being written. I have used Google Docs from an earlier time when it was called writely.com and am impressed with the quality of the online word processing program and the opportunity it provides for collaborative writing. I also would like to explore the possibility of working on the article on the iPhone when I am away from my MacBook Pro. I use Notes on the iPhone but do not find it a good system to work on an article with. Notes only works in the portrait mode and not the wider landscape mode on the iPhone. Notes can not be synched with my computer. The only way I have found to get my iPhone notes into my MacBook Pro is to mail them to myself and then convert them to a Word or Pages document. I could also paste the text into a GoogleDocs file.  I do use the mail-a-Notes-document-to-myself to paste my Notes into my iPhone blog, http://JohnsiPhoneJournal.blogspot.com.

What I now want to do is access this document and read it or add to it from the web browser on my iPhone. The browser on the iPhone has the ability to operate in the landscape mode and thus make it possible to work on the article from the iPhone. So that will entail going to http://docs.google.com logging on to my account and then going to this article. Maybe instead I should go the specific URL for this article once it is published with permissions to anyone to edit it. So let's publish this doc and see where it ends up on the internet. OK, the article is published and it is publicly viewable at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd42z4fj_6czcr25ds

It will probably be easier to go to docs.google.com and try to log in and get to the article from there (on the iPhone that is).

Here is how I would like to proceed with this article.

1. Start out with Terry Anderson's article Modes of Interaction in Distance Education: Recent Developments and Research Questions, chapter 9 in Moore, M. G., & Anderson, W. G. (2003). Handbook of Distance Education, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pages 129-144.

2. On the basis of Anderson's taxonomy, decide what types of interaction I wish to discuss in this article.

3. Start with embedding questions on the web page by looking at a recent article, The Benefits of Embedded Question Adjuncts for Low and High Structure Builders by Aimee A. Callender and Mark A. McDaniel in the Journal of Educational Psychology, May 2007, Volume 99, Number 2, pages 339-348.

4. After finishing this article, another area of online instruction I would like to explore is - Self-Regulated learning and online learning. I got tuned into this topic by an article in the March 2008 issue of American Educational Research Journal, Volume 45, Number 1, pages 166-183, Investigating Self-Regulation and Motivation: Historical Background, Methodological Developments, and Future Prospects by Barry J. Zimmerman. I did an ERIC search on self-regulated learning and online learning and identified 30 articles published from 2000-2008.

So let's get started.

February 25, 2008

February 25, 2008 Notes
Article of the day - Zimmerman, B. J. (2008). Investigating self-regulation and motivation: Historical background, methodological developments, and future prospects. American Educational Research Journal, 45, 166-183.
Keywords: self-regulated learning (SLR), motivation and SLR, event measures of SLR, cyclical analysis of SLR.
Investigate these on ERIC, including self-regulated learning and online learning. (or computer-mediated communication).

Self-regulated learning yielded 501 citations (within keywords search)

Self-regulated learning and online learning yielded 30 citations (from 2000-2008). Saved these results, then exported the citations, descriptors, and abstracts to my computer and printed them out. For 9 of these citations the full text was available from ERIC, so I printed 6 of these. The other 3 did not seem to include online learning.

Checked 4 online course assignments including 1 final project. Responded to all assignments by email; faxed in grade to MSUM for 1 course completion; upgraded online gradebook.

After running a cleaning miniDV cassette on the Sony DCR-TRV9 yesterday, I shot some footage with the built-in mic, with a Sony Dynamic mic, and with a wireless mic. I tried to get the video into Adobe Premier Elements but was unsuccessful. I then ported it into iMovie and into final cut pro. I edited the footage and created a DVD with both versions on it. The Sony camcorder seems to work much better with it's recording/playback heads cleaned.

In the evening I started to read Emma by Jane Austen on the Zire 71. We are going to watch Emma on Masterpiece Theater Sunday night.

February 19, 2008

February 19, 2008 Pages
Well I am sitting in the blue recliner with the MacBook Pro in my lap watching a lynda.com video on editing audio in FCP. This what I was doing yesterday, only i also was holding a cup of tea, fell asleep, and dumped the cup of tea, on the MacBook, my lap, and the blue recliner. I let the computer dry out overnight and it still seems to be working now. The only casualty seems to be that the left shift key and the caps lock key do not function. If that is the only thing wrong with the computer I think I can continue to use it. I was worried that I would have to buy a new computer.

After the accident, I copied the Ed603GradebookSp08.xlsx file onto a USB flash drive and plugged it into a USB port on the alienware pc and proceeded to work on my student’s Ed 603 assignments on Earthlink Web Mail. I was going to get all caught up on those before I went back to the MacBook but I wanted to finish editing the HV20 Mic Tests Video I am making. So here I am back on the MacBook Pro. My tea cup is setting securely on a side table and not held on my lap while I watch the lynda.com training video.

January 8, 2008

January 8, 2008 Notes
Chobe and I are sitting in the blue recliner reviewing video scoring music from GMP Music we finished AV 328 Ad Shop 10 ASX and started AV 343 Nightfall.
Last night I installed the Apache2 server on the Inspiron which is running Unbutu Version 10.7 (released October 2007), by going to the terminal and entering sudo aptitude -r install apache2
When I tried to edit index.html which was at /var/www/apache2-default/ with vi I got a read only document. When I entered sudo vi html I was able to edit and save the file. I then viewed my handiwork by going to http://localhost/ in Firefox.

Sent from my iPhone
John Wasson
wassonjb@mac.com

December 31, 2007

December 31, 2007 Notes
It's the last day of 2007and time to get ready to shift to 2008. I spent yesterday getting a newer operating system, OS X Version 10.2 Jaguar on Barbara's iBook. It was able to use the installed version of Word on Office:Mac and retained all of Barbara's Word files which is the primary item Barbara uses the iBook for. It uses the Airport Extreme network to access the Internet and print to the networked HP LaserJet 2200 printer.

What is the state of the home network here at the international head quarters of Practical Press and home of Practical Press Video Productions (formerly Practical Press Pictures) on the last day of 2007?

The network starts with a ZyXEL P-600 Series DSL Modem supplied by Earthlink. I used to have a cable modem to Charter Communications but it was so unreliable I cancelled it and switched to Earthlink DSL which is always on. The DSL modem has three connections, power, Ethernet - connected to the Airport Extreme, and DSL - connected to the phone line, The DSL modem has four indicator lights (Power, Ethernet, DSL, and Internet).

The Airport Extreme has 6 connections
Ethernet - OA dual boot computer
Ethernet - Linksys switch
Ethernet - Dell XPR (XP)
WAN - DSL modem
USB -
Power
The airport extreme has 1 indicator light

The Linksys SD208 8-Port 10/100 switch has 9 connctions
Power
1 - Airport Extreme
2 - HP 2200 (10.0.1.199)
3 - HP 4600 (10.0.1.194)
4 - Airport
5 - Gateway (10.0.1.192)
6 - Inspiron Dual Boot
7 -
8 -
The Linksys switch has 8 indicator lights

The Airport has 3 connections
Phone -
Power
Ethernet - Linksys Port 4
The Airport has 3 indicator lights.

These machines can make a wireless connection to the internet through the Airport extreme.
MacBook Pro OS X Version 10.5
iBook OS X Version 10.2
Alienware Windows Vista
Inspiron Windows XP
These machines can reach the Internet through an Ethernet connection
Inspiron Linux
Dell XPR Windows XP
OA computer Windows XP or Linux
Gateway Server Linux
Well that is the state of the network on December 31, 2007. In another iPhone note I will see what computers can access the network printers.

Sent from my iPhone
John Wasson
wassonjb@mac.com
(541-646-1613)