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.