Flexknowlogy – Jared Stein's ARCHIVED blog – update to jaredstein.org

Upon receiving my ASUS EeePC 900 I knew I wanted to run Ubuntu on it over the default Xandros Linux OS. With Marc Hugentobler and John Krutsch both having an EeePC 900 as well, I figured this would be a good chance to compare Ubuntu to Xandros on this small wonder of a notebook.

The really good news is I was able to get Ubuntu up and running in less than an hour by following the ubuntu.com EeePC tutorial, and had it fixed up and tweaked out in another hour–and I am no Linux-head. I had done enough preliminary reading before starting to install the Ubuntu distribution that I felt prepared for the handful of quirks and tweaks I would need to do. I admit I had cold feet Saturday afternoon, second-guessing whether Xandros might be less resource-intensive and faster than Ubuntu, but after the weekend I’m now completely comfortable with my choice.

A few things to know about my installation of Ubuntu:

1. I installed Ubuntu 8.4 off of a USB drive, which I formatted on Windows XP using UNetbootin to prepare the ISO
2. I had to change the BIOS “hard drives” set up to use the USB drive first. This is different than changing the “boot order”
3. There were a number of fixes I had to conduct to set up the EeePC hardware: ethernet/loud fan battery remove, Mad WiFi drivers, and a couple other fixes documented on the EeePC Ubuntu wiki
4. I also ran a few Ubuntu tweaks documented by Many Ayromlou to tighten things up and further increase performance
5. Finally, I installed extra apps like gFTP, and Bluefish, all through the Ubuntu Add/Remove Applications interface

My success was based on the great online resources, wikis, and blogs that are out there–I myself have only minimal knowledge of terminal commands, namely sudo, cd, and chown. The hardest part by far was setting up the wireless LAN with the Mad WiFi drivers, and even that wasn’t too bad, and then discovering some quirks and hunting up fixes.

The office bought ASUS EeePC 900s for Marc Hugentobler, John Krutsch, and me, and this tidy little tool deserves a review.

My review will be a little different from John and Ben Krutsch’s review, as I almost immediately set about wiping the Xandros Linux operating system (OS) and installed Ubuntu Linux, which I am using on several other computers.

Specs of EeePC 900

Review

The ASUS EeePC 900 is a compact, fairly light, surprisingly powerful notebook that will suit the needs of nearly any mobile dekstop computing user, providing they have good manual dexterity and eyesight.

Strengths:

• Small width and depth
• Good resolution for the size (1024 x 600)
• Sufficient USB ports (3) & SD card slot
• VGA video out
• Fairly lightweight
• Fast boot up (< 1min) and application starts
• No moving hard drive to farm
• Bright screen in normal, indoor lighting

Weaknesses:

• Average height
• Small screen requires good vision (disclaimer: my colleague John Krutsch has a visual impairment but did not complain about the readability of the screen size)
• Keyboard is a little awkward and uncomfortable for my hands
• Not as lightweight as I’d expected
• Limited storage space (I’ve set aside the 16gb 2nd memory for my storage space.
• Achromatic chassis may be boring to some
• No Bluetooth or WAN

It’s fair to say I have high expectations for laptops/notebooks. I’ve owned half-a-dozen different brands of laptops (Panasonic, Dell, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Lenovo, Texas Instruments/Acer), and so far my favorites have been Lenovo, Fujitsu, and Dell, in that order. In fact, I now own two Lenovos which I use 90% of the time—a Thinkpad T60 for my “desktop replacement” with a docking station, and a Thinkpad x60s as my writing notebook.

Because the EeePC was predicted to replace my Thinkpad x60s in my workflow I reviewed the EeePC in comparison. It’s important to keep in mind that the EeePC costs three times less than the Thinkpad x60s, and ASUS certainly didn’t intend for it to be a competitor of these higher-end laptops. I run Ubuntu 8.4 on my Thinkpad, and for the basic word processing and Web/Internet apps I used there is very little noticeable advantage to the Thinkpad in terms of speed, which is a strong mark for the EeePC.

The battery life of my charged EeePC was labeled at approximately 6 hours, though I will update this information tonight after I let it run down.

Obviously the Thinkpad has a larger screen and a full-size keyboard, and so it wins there hands down—by comparison, typing on the EeePC was painful, though the more I type with it the easier it becomes.. What really startled me upon comparison was how insignificant the weight difference was between the EeePC 900 and the Thinkpad x60s—the Thinkpad was a mere 6 oz heavier—not enough to really notice.

So while the EeePC is a compact tool of considerable computing power at an unbeatable price, it’s small size can be weighed as a disadvantage in terms of screen and keyboard usability. For my purposes, it’s not significantly lighter or more convenient than my Thinkpad x60s, and so to facilitate my writing work I will probably stick with the latter. I expect the EeePC to be very convenient, however, to keep in my office as a highly portable, on-demand notebook for toting around campus to meetings and appointments.

Applications for E-Learning

The most prominent application for learning with EeePCs comes from their low pricetag. At ~$400 USD I could imagine these being standard equipment for jr. high or high school students. If my son’s school had an established plan for integrating use of notebook computers into the daily curriculum, I would have no problem shelling out the money for one of these. Presuming that these could be used for at least 2 years, probably 3-4 if any memory expansions become available, the bang-for-the-buck potential is high.

The Xandros and the Ubuntu distributions come with Firefox for the Web, OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, and Ubuntu comes with GIMP for image editing–this open source suite alone provides users with significant opportunities to learn and create right out of the box.

Collaboration or other connected learning opportunities are less apparent, but I think it’s worth considering further, even to the point that ed tech bloggers come up with a “best practices” list of ways to support engaged learning through these and other laptops (something the OLPC focuses on with Sugar).

This article explains an experimental approach to ensuring consistent line-length and font-size for the readability of text on Web pages. This is the first time I’ve posted an article related to Web development, but I hope it to be the first of many.

Though there have been a number of articles proving the usefulness of flexible and elastic layouts in Web design, too many sites still use fixed or fluid layout. I say “too many” because the key problem both fixed and fluid hold for users lies with readability. Usability studies have shown that most users find a line length of 40 – 60 characters to be easiest to consume (though at least one report ranges from 35 – 95 and another a more modest 40 – 80, depending on the font used). This falls in line with print typography guidelines that recommend anywhere from 11-15 words per line. As you can see, there’s no final word on line-length readability, except that it falls somewhere on either side of 50 characters per line (cpl), or 13 words per line (wpl).

Presuming, then, that a Web designer wants to present reading text at around 50cpl, flexible or elastic layouts come in handy, as they measure the width of text column(s) in em space. One can set the width of the column to, say, 45em, depending on the font, and end up with a rough average of 13 words per line. The added benefit is as the user increases or decreases her font size for readability, the width of the text column increases proportionally.

Fixed width designs are often measured in pixels, and a user increasing the font size does not increase the width of the line, resulting in too few cpl. Neither do fluid designs, which are measured in %–these often result in too many cpl. And for most users with ultra-high resolution screens, fonts are often too small and require resizing.

A few years back I tackled this problem from a different angle. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if, rather than changing the size of my window and/or the size of my font for optimal readability, the font size changed automatically proportional to the size of my window? So if I had a high-res screen with my browser maximized, the font would be larger. If I had a low-res screen, the font would be smaller. In either case, the proportion would equal Your Favorite Line Length.

There is no % unit of measurement for font-size in CSS, so I had to turn to JavaScript to calculate my font’s size based on the DOM window size. A few years back, our Web developer Brandon Groff worked with me to write the JavaScript that would do this, and the effect was most elegant: here’s a quite plain example.

A few notes:

1. JavaScript recalculates the desired font-size based on the window size and reloads the page on resize
2. The font’s proportional size is based on a JavaScript variable that can be static or adjustable
3. Changing the value in the text input before resizing alters the font-size’s proportion. A “1″ roughly equates to 100% of the body’s width.
4. At least one known bug: if the user increases or decreases the font size through their browser, the script it breaks.
5. This JavaScript is a bit old, and I hope to evaluate it line by line for currency and efficiency.

There’s some palpable hypocrisy in the response by many educators and administrators to the results of two recent research studies on the 2002 – 2007 efforts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and NCLB’s Reading First program.

Let me preface this by stating that I do not argue one way or another for either Reading First or No Child Left Behind–I have not examined enough information to be competent to make any conclusion, nor am I sure that current research efforts have been appropriately thorough or scientific. Though I have opinions on what is most effective in reading education, and though I am troubled by a report that suggests our brightest students are languishing under NCLB, I haven’t yet bet on a pony.

Not too long ago we received an interim report from the National Center for Education Evaluation covering 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years. While this report showed some positive increases in the amount of time spent on reading education in the classroom, it found no significant statistical increase in reading scores from Reading First programs. Opponents of Reading First leapt on these results as more evidence to condemn the program itself (and NCLB by simple association).

Reading First is a program that we already know to be beleagured by mismanagement and hindered by internal corruption. So to me, an interim report showing no statistically significant increase in student results is insufficient evidence for termination. Yet popular news reports have called the program “ineffective” and opponents accused it of outright “failure”, when the reality is report shows at least Reading First is at least as effective as existing instructional efforts, though not proven to be more effective. And not surprisingly, Congress and Senate education panels have both voted to drop funding for the program.

What irks me is how opponents of NCLB and Reading First were perfectly willing to accept the standardized test-based results of the Reading First report because it supports their position, and yet then turn around and completely discount a new report out today that finds that since the implementation of No Child Left Behind, student test scores have been on the rise by stating that standardized testing is no way to measure student ability, and is in fact contrary to the higher goals and purposes of education in general.

Am I the only one that sniffs and cringes at the hypocrisy here? Or is it merely that the hypocrisy and hyperbole comes mostly from the lowest common denominator of anti-NCLB bloggers and commenters, made pungent for being broadly accessible and visible through Our Connected Web?

Wordle does tag clouds in a way that is almost breathtakingly aesthetic. Here’s mine based on del.icio.us tags:

Continuing from yesterday’s post, 31 Out of 95 E-Learning Ideas Ain’t Bad, here’s the second half of my pick of the strongest e-learning ideas found in Patti Shank’s useful book, The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning.

17. Use electronic flash cards (p 184). (Coincidentally, @KenWoodward and I are working on providing an extremely reusable flash cards app for both desktop Web browsers and handheld devices.)
18. Drag-and-drop activities for self-assessment within a lesson (p 194).
19. Use pre- and post-assessments to demonstrate the value of the e-learning (p 205).
20. Provide flowchart(s) to illustrate processes (p 216). (I’ve found these are easy to create in most spreadsheet programs.)
21. As part of prototyping and design, write a learner scenario to describe possible interactions with e-learning (p 221).
22. Tap into learners’ “emotional brain” with personalized learning models (Concrete experience; Reflective observation; Abstract hypothesis; Active testing) (p 226). (This model is similar to Stevick’s Observe – Span – Do, which I’ve found to be effective in language learning.)
23. Use content templates to rapidly turn out lesson pages with a consistent look and feel (p 228; p 232).
24. Use concept maps and causal loops for navigation as an alternative to linear navigation for complex concepts (p 240). (I do recall some early studies of hypertextual learning suggested that non-linear navigation is risky at best.)
25. Embed hyperlinks to glossary entries within the lesson content (p 249).
26. Provide a printable summary of lesson content as a study aid (p 265).
27. Develop a virtual campus to help wholly distance learners orient themselves and feel connected (p 287).
28. Use visuals to show relationships between course concepts (p 291).
29. Slow down or speed up motion to demonstrate complex physical skills (p 301).
30. Create an interactive, multidimensional timeline for subjects such as history that weave events in places and times (p 308).
31. Use still and interactive graphics for complex or obscure physical concepts (e.g. atoms, cells, galaxies, tidal pools) (p 312; 315; 318; 321; 324).

These 31 ideas are the choicest out of Shank’s 95+ picks. Note that I’ve written 95+; Shank explains at the end that there are more than 95 ideas in this book, despite the title. She suggests that the element of surprise can help learning along, yet at the same time she notes that she herself wouldn’t have noticed, and the book doesn’t even number the ideas so that you could know there were more than 95. Really, who’s going to be keeping count in their head?

Length and those minor complaints aside, I recommend this book to instructional designers or technology-minded teachers, if only to see the screen-shots illustrating the most useful and innovative ideas.

Patti Shank has put together The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning, an annotated collection of 95+ examples of e-learning tools, scenarios, or applications. Her book delivers best-practices in e-learning in a format that is both accessible and well-illustrated. And while I am glad she put this book together as it will be especially useful to those just getting into the field of e-learning, my general reaction to the book was that it is too long, being packed with a number of examples that are either redundant or simply common sense.

I might correct myself on that last point to include “common sense” ideas that are of significant value; yet even so, I think I could edit Shank’s book down to simply 31 useful and noteworthy ideas for technology-enhanced teaching. My version would include just the following.

1. Provide a detailed, weekly study schedule (p 16).
2. Embed performance tips to direct study and discipline toward learner success (p 20).
3. Anonymous weekly surveys to collect formative feedback (p 31).
4. Have contingency plans in place for learning in the case of technology failure (p 39).
5. Explain discussion message protocols to keep students focused and comfortable in forums (p 78).
6. Let learners evaluate their own contributions to the course through online quizzes or surveys (p 82).
7. Use tables as graphical organizers to illustrate relationships between information or concepts (p 94).
8. Ask students to enter their answer and compare it to an expert’s response (p 101).
9. You mouse rollovers to show ancillary info, allowing students to learn more about topics or passages (p 105), or use collapsible layers for text or illustrations (p 244).
10. Share bookmarks to web sites online (p 112). (Surprisingly, del.icio.us or other online tools were not mentioned.)
11. Show an expert’s view of a question or issue surrounding a topic (p 118).
12. Use a table, or Word’s track changes for easy peer editing (p 132).
13. Moderate student chat rooms (p 142). (They recommend a “knowledgeable assistant”, but I say that’s the teacher’s job!)
14. Use word games, such as 5 summative words that start with the same vowel to reinforce concepts (p 161). (I like acrostics, such as are found in the Nintendo DS game, Brain Age 2.)
15. In synchronous lectures, let learners determine the order in which topics are presented (Gordon MacKenzie-style) (p 163).
16. Use games and puzzles to review (e.g. crosswords, fill-in-the-blank (p 180). (I recommend our GameGarten, aka The Play Station hosted by John Krutsch.)

I’ll stop at number 16 to give you the information in two manageable chunks. Chunking is one idea that I think is pretty useful in e-learning, though it is overlooked in The Online Learning Book. I’ll post the last 15 strong ideas on this blog tomorrow.

Today I am presenting at the SFo MoodleMoot on how Moodle can be used to deliver Open Educational Resources, especially through our modification of Moodle, the Open Meta Mod.

Presentation slides are now available and you are welcome to participate in the backchannel through the chat window provided below.

Presentation Slides

openmod.ppt

Web Sites Referenced

• OpenCourseWare Consortium
• Open Educational Resources Commons
• David Wiley’s OpenContent Wiki
• David Wiley’s OpenContent blog
• Utah Open High School
• Creative Commons licenses
• MIT’s “Making the Case for OCW”
• Why a Reputation Economy?
• UK’s Open University LearningSpace
• OpenContentDIY
• Leigh Blackall’s slide on Another Way

P.S. After my presentation was over, I came back to my hotel to find this bus in the parking lot. It’s nothing less than a sign for a questioning open education convert.