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Here comes Linux, part 3

Linux, , , ,

Here comes Linux, part 3

2009-12-12

by Richard White

Linux Mint has lots of software included with it: Firefox for browsing, Pidgin for chatting, Thunderbird for email, OpenOffice for working with Microsoft Office documents (Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, etc.)

Chances are, though, that you’ll want to add software on your Linux machine, just as you would on any Windows or Mac machine. I know I did. I wanted to add Skype so that I could videoconferencing capabilities to my nifty little netbook. Other software I’d suggest you consider downloading more or less immediately is DropBox (cross-platform, cloud-based filesharing/syncing between all of your computers) and VLC (cross-platform video playback software).

Let’s look at how you install software on a Linux machine.

There are basically 3 ways, depending on what it is you want to install. In order of increasing complexity, you can:
a) use a “package manager” application that will help you find a install selected programs that have been prepared for your particular distribution;
b) download packages from the Internet and install them yourself;
c) download packages and “compile from source”.

If you’re brand new to Linux, you’ll probably want to stick to the first technique for now–it’s easier for you and safer for the data on your computer. Let’s see how it works.

Installing Skype (using the Linux Mint (Ubuntu) installer):
a. From the Linux Mint logo in the bottom-left corner, select Menu -> System -> Software manager
b. Click in the Search box at the top of the mintInstall window and enter Skype
c. Select Skype when it gets found, then click on the “Install” button.

mintInstall-skype

After the installation process is completed, go ahead and close the windows of the installer. You may need to restart the machine before some applications will work. You can launch the new application by clicking on Menu -> Applications -> Internet (in the case of the Skype application), or Menu -> Applications -> All applications and selecting it from the list there.

If you decide that you’ll be using this application, or any others, more frequently, you can click-drag the application from the Applications window down into the bar at the bottom of the window. Once the icon is down there, you can launch the application by just clicking on that icon.

We’ll talk a little more about the other ways that you can install software at some point in the near future. In the meantime, just because we’ve installed Skype on the Mini 10v, don’t think we’re in the clear yet! If you launch Skype, you may well find that the video works just fine, but the internal microphone on the Mini 10v doesn’t work.

What’s up with that? Investigation is ongoing…. In the meantime, if I need to run Skype, I’m using the Macbook Pro. “It just works.”

Here comes Linux, part 2

Linux, , ,

Here comes Linux, part 2

2009-12-09

by Richard White
Dell Inspiron Mini 10V
The laptop showed up today.

The little Dell Inspiron Mini 10V, pretty much the cheapest little computer that you can get these days, showed up at work in a package quite a bit smaller than I was expecting. I cracked the cardboard open, lifted the lid, and raised my eyebrows. “Wow. That thing is small.”

Kevin the receptionist looked interested, so I pulled it out of the box and handed it to him. “Wow! That is small! You knew it was going to be that small, right?”

I guess I did. I’m not sure I knew it was going to be that small, though. I opened it up to find that the screen was even smaller (still 10-inches diagonally, as expected), but that my hands rested comfortably on the 92%-of-full-size keyboard. The school day was over, but with the arrival of the new machine, I was anticipating that I’d be spending the next few days getting this machine set up.

On this particular evening, though, the task was simple: get Linux Mint installed on the machine.

If you’ve never installed Linux before, there are a number of ways to do it. The easiest by far is to take a CD for a particular distribution (Ubuntu, Knoppix, Linux Mint in my case), boot the machine using that CD, and then install from the CD. I’ve done that before on a number of different machines, and it’s a relatively straightforward process that involves (usually) answering a few questions so that the operating system can be configured to your needs.

For the Dell 10V, the process is somewhat complicated by the fact that it doesn’t have a CD drive. Welcome to the future. Blue-Ray to the contrary, some machines are already losing their optical drives, which allow machines to be small & lighter, or to use valuable space for solid-state drives or batteries. But… how am I going to install the new operating system then?

Enter the flash drive. Modern PCs are able to boot from a flash drive, so it’s a “simple” matter of putting Linux Mint onto the flash drive and making that drive bootable, which I’d been smart enough to do a few days before. The excellent instructions at pendrivelinux.com explained how to get Linux Mint 7.0 onto a flash drive, which goes something like this:

  1. Download the Linux Mint 7 ISO.
  2. Burn ISO to a CD
  3. Insert your Linux Mint7 CD into a PC and boot from it. You’ll be running Linux Mint at this point off the CD. You can use the CD to install Linux Mint on the PC if you wish, but what we’re really interested in doing is creating a bootable USB flash drive for the laptop.
  4. Insert the USB flash drive into the computer running Linux Mint.
  5. From the list of Applications, open Terminal and type:
    sudo su
    apt-get install usb-creator
    usb-creator
  6. In USB Creator
    1. Select the USB disk
    2. Click the button “Make Startup Disk”
  7. IMPORTANT: Download a custom Linux Mint 7 syslinux.cfg file from pendrivelinux.com and copy it to the syslinux directory on your flash drive (overwriting the original).
  8. Eject the USB drive with Linux Mint on it.

So then I waited a few days until the Dell Mini showed up, and didn’t even really bother to boot into Windows XP, although I suppose I could have done that. But I’m a working man, and I don’t want to have to mess about with malware, viruses, and such, so I just decided to jump in and install Linux Mint on the entire thing:

  1. Insert the USB drive into the Dell Mini 10V while it’s turned off.
  2. Startup the 10V, and tap the F2 key a few times just as soon as the Dell logo appears in the startup process. This will get you into the BIOS and allow you to choose the USB drive as the startup disk.
  3. Use the right arrow key to select “Boot” in the top menu. Arrow down to select “USB Storage”. Use the F6 key to move “USB Storage” to the top of the boot list. Now, when the computer starts up, it’ll check the flash drive for a bootable device, which will allow your Linux Mint USB drive to start up the computer.
  4. F10 to Save & Exit the BIOS, and the computer should boot up off the flash drive.
  5. Follow the on-screen instructions to install Linux Mint 7 on your Dell Inspiron Mini 10V.

Linux Mint 7 homescreen

Stay tuned for additional information: additional software installs, strategies, etc.

Got your Elevator Talk ready?

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I got an email from a student at my school this evening:

I’m supposed to write an article (300~500 words) on your website (http://learnapphysics.com/) regarding your AP physics question of the day. This article is going on the Paw Print. I’d love to have a small meeting or interview with you so I can gather some quotes and more information about your website.

So I guess it’s about time I brush up my Elevator Talk.

You know what an elevator talk is, right? For your business, your website, your project, it’s convenient to have a a brief, pithy, explanation of the thing, something that you can deliver to a complete stranger in 30-seconds or less (the time it takes to share small talk with someone in an elevator who says, “So tell me, what is it you do?”). The idea isn’t merely to summarize what you do, of course, but to intrigue the listener, to impress them even with what it is you or your project do. It’s personal branding, without the hard sell: you’re just making polite conversation.

Here’s the Personal Statement that I included on my resume a couple of years ago when I was applying for my current position: “I am a creative, high-energy teacher who enjoys working with students to develop their interest in the physical sciences. I am especially interested in the potential of using various forms of technology to encourage students’ educational growth.” Not terribly punchy, I’ll admit, but it was okay, back in the day. And I got the job, so…!

This is obviously NOT just about the elevator, is it? It’s about keeping your administrator informed about what’s been happening in the classroom these last few weeks. It’s about convincing Accounting that you really do need to attend that upcoming conference. It’s about making sure that 9th grader gets the details right when they’re putting together that story for the school newspaper.

So… what sound bites should I use for this little interview? What should I tell the journalist about this site? Any ideas? Leave a comment!

Cellphones are the new Laptops

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IMG_0231
Will Richardson, at Weblogg-ed, has another fascinating post on how technology is transforming learning. This one discusses the incredible potential of the cellphone, based on both its increasing processing power and ubiquitous availability.

My good friend Michael, at Socratica.com, is interested in the same thing. (Disclaimer: I’m involved with this project.) Michael is interested in making learning available world-wide, and while the rest of the technology community struggles with how to distribute broadband networks across Africa, perhaps there’s some sense in using the network that’s already there: mobile phones.

No one is saying (yet) that lessons somehow delivered via a 2″x3″ mobile phone screen are going to replace a teacher and a well-equipped classroom. But we’re still in the early stages of this, and there’s lots of room for exploration here. And as teachers, more than anyone, we especially need to be open to the potential.

True story:

Two years ago I was teaching an introductory lesson on momentum to some 9th graders in a Conceptual Physics class. “One can calculate the momentum of an object by using the formula ‘p=mass times velocity,’ where ‘p’ stands for momentum.”

“Why ‘p’?” a student asks.

“Good question,” I respond. “I have no idea. You should look that up and report back to us tomorrow.”

A few minutes pass. A student in the back of the room raises his hand.

“Yes, Daniel?”

“Mr. White, I think that the ‘p’ might stand for a Latin word related to motion.”

“Wow, Daniel, I guess that makes some sense. Newton’s Principia was written in Latin, after all. That’s really interesting. And good for you for taking Latin!”

“Oh, I’m not taking Latin, Mr. White,” a slow smile spreading on his face as he brought out his cell. “I looked it up on my iPhone!”

We need more stories like this.

P.S. It turns out that Daniel was wrong about the Latin. The truth is that no one really knows about the “p”…

Here comes Linux, part 1

Linux, ,

Here comes Linux, part 1

by Richard White

2009-11-29

“Are you kidding me???” Dee shouted in disbelief.

I’d just told her that I–a faithful Mac user for the last twenty years–had ordered a Dell Mini 10v.

“Are you KIDDING ME??? she shouted again, thinking perhaps that I hadn’t heard her the first time.

“Yeah, I know…” I went on to explain that I’m not giving up the MacbookPro. And I’m definitely not using Windows (no offense). I’ve been looking for a decent portable on which to install Linux Mint, and after passing on the idea of a Lenovo ThinkPad (high quality, but a little higher-priced especially for a second machine), I fell for the “$100 off, free shipping” email that I’d gotten for the Dell.

This is more than just Black Friday extravagance. I’ve been intrigued by the idea of working with Linux on a laptop for a number of years now, ever since Mark Pilgrim famously made his own switch from the Mac three years ago. His reasons included Apple’s proprietary file-formatting and Digital Rights Management (DRM) lockdowns that make playing by their rules occasionally difficult. The hardware, although of high-quality, is known for being expensive, placing it out-of-reach for many students, and a number of teachers. The question became, is it reasonable for me, as an educational technologist to run most, if not all, of my digital life using Free / Open Source Software?

In addition to other topics being discussed here, I’ll be covering the journey here once the new machine arrives in a couple of weeks. For now, though, I’m anticipating using the following software:

Mac Linux
Operating System OS 10.6.2 Linux Mint 8
Browser Safari, Firefox Firefox (pre-installed w/LinuxMint)
Mail client Apple’s Mail.app Mozilla’s Thunderbird (pre-installed w/LinuxMint)
Chat client iChat, Adium, Skype Pidgin (pre-installed w/LinuxMint)
Web development client Panic’s Coda Quanta Plus?
Calendar program iCal Mozilla’s Lightning?
Text editor emacs, BBEdit emacs (must be installed using apt-get), gedit (pre-installed w/LinuxMint)
Office apps Word, Excel, PowerPoint Open Office? (pre-installed w/LinuxMint)
Music playing iTunes Pick one
Music editing Garage Band, Amadeus, Audacity Audacity
Image Processing iPhoto, Photoshop Elements, Acorn, Graphic Converter GIMP

Any suggestions out there? Let me know!

Playing Well with Others… and Charging for It

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PLAYING WELL WITH OTHERS… AND CHARGING FOR IT

2009-11-24

by Richard White

ch6_cover
We’ve already discussed opening up your classroom content to the world, and what the advantages and risks might be there. There were three events in the last week that reminded me of what an interesting process this has the potential to be.

One of the first was an email that I finally got around to answering, a courteous email from a colleague previously unknown to me in the east.

…I happened upon your most excellent site and was wondering if you’d be will to share your materials with me.

I really like your practice tests and presentations and was wondering if you’d be willing to send the originals to me (it’s hard to use the PDF’s) as well as the answers…

So now I’ve got to put my money PowerPoint slides where my mouth is. I don’t know how much time I’ve got for an open-ended collaboration with someone–I can’t be the only one here who feels like I’m running just to stand still–but it’ll be interesting to see what comes of this.

The second thing that happened makes me wonder if giving “my stuff” away for free just makes me a great big sucker. The New York Times published this article, Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions, reporting on how some teachers are making money on the side selling their lesson plans to other teachers. I was a little surprised by some of the figures in the story–tens of thousands of dollars made selling lessons for one teacher–and I have to admit to more than a little curiosity about the specifics here: What do these lessons actually look like? Don’t teachers have the capability of creating their own lessons? What teacher has the discretionary budget to purchase sight-unseen lesson plans in hopes that they might satisfy some need? And perhaps most significantly, will someone pay me $30k+ for my stuff? Because, you know, I don’t have a problem with that.

Apparently there were a few people who did have a problem with that, in the letters to the editor after the article’s publication. As my tech director points out, however, when teachers tutor students in the evenings, we certainly don’t expect them to have to do that gratis. And if that’s the case, then why would we expect them to give away content that they’ve created for free, particularly when those lessons were created–as they almost always are–on the teacher’s own time, at home?

Finally, a conversation with my school director today wandered into the topic of “students producing original work,” and whether it wasn’t perhaps a bit naive on the part of teachers to expect that student X this year is going to have something new and exciting to relate on, say, “Macbeth,” given all the research and thinking that has already been devoted to its study. This directly led to some consideration of the New York Times article: if we expect original work from students (whatever that may mean), might we not expect something similar from teachers? Don’t we want something more from teachers than someone to stand at the front of the room, clicking through a PowerPoint presentation? And what does it say about your capabilities as a professional educator if you have to rely on someone else’s material for inspiration?

Perhaps you see the straw man here. Educators–indeed, professionals of all types–don’t work in isolation, and aren’t expected to. Opening up discussion of all kinds–sharing of research, discoveries, materials–benefits all concerned, and at its best, has the potential to help teachers improve their craft, and students improve their understanding of the material. Indeed, at most of the schools I’ve worked at, an informal electronic archive of resource materials is kept for some classes, including:

  • PowerPoint presentations
  • videos
  • worksheets
  • labs
  • independent projects
  • rubrics
  • syllabi

So yeah, sharing and collaborating is an important part of professional development, and I don’t see anything wrong with charging what the market will bear, if that’s what you choose to do.

Anyone want to buy a lesson on Circular Motion?! :)

Workflow – Emailing Groups

Workflow

WORKFLOW – Emailing Groups

by Richard White

2009-11-18

Okay, we’ve been going on for a few weeks now… I’ve been waving my hands about, talking about “technology this” and “productivity that,” and so far, all I’ve really done is waste your time reading this silly blog.

Perhaps it’s about time that we get serious and start looking at some specific Hybrid Classroom techniques that you can use. Let’s start with an easy one.

Email is the backbone of electronic communication, and is the single most important way that I communicate with students (when I’m not in the classroom) and parents. One of the best uses for email that I’ve found is simply using it to keep in touch with my students (and occasionally their parents) on a semi-regular basis.

For most teachers, it’s not practical to email an individual message to every single student. But you CAN easily email a single message to everyone, if you have their email addresses in a group. The brief video demonstration showing how to do this was created using a Gmail account, but the same principle applies to any other email program that allows you to create groups of contacts.

Briefly:

  1. Get a list of student email addresses.
    The easiest way is to have them send you an email with a Subject Line like “Conceptual Physics”.
  2. Include those email addresses into a custom group…
    perhaps called “Conceptual Physics”.
  3. When you want to send out an email to those students…
    enter the group name into the To: field of your email program. You should see the addresses of all the students on that list appear.
  4. Compose email…
    being sure to include a good subject line.

It’s up to you what you’ll actually do with your new email prowess. Teachers who see their students more-or-less everyday might choose to reserve the group email for special occasions: giving them a hint on a hard homework problem, last-minute cancellation of a test, etc. Other teachers like to make it a more regular thing, with course schedules for the week, information that didn’t get mentioned in class, etc.

Next time:
The easy way to Email Parents

Zero-Sum

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ZERO-SUM

2009-11-09

by Richard White
roadracer
When I was a young boy of 11, I was a little bit of a geek (go figure), and for a while there, I really wanted to be a mathematician when I grew up. My main inspiration at the time was the Time-Life book of Mathematics, with pictures of a roomful of glowing computers, and a transistor, and logic tables, and logarithmic spirals, and a Klein bottle (not really, of course), and… well, I never did become a mathematician. Kind of like my brief fling with racing motorcycles, it turned out to be one of those things that seemed really cool and do-able at the time, but then later on turned out to be a really bad idea. For me, anyway. (I had one look at Grand Prix roadracer Kenny Roberts dropping a knee on turn 11 at Laguna Seca, turned to my friend Dave, and said, “I am NEVER doing THAT!”

It was somewhere in that Time-Life Book of Mathematics that I learned a little game theory, and probably there that I first heard of a zero-sum game. The general idea is that–in games, economics, and in daily life–many things are zero-sum: wins and losses balance out and add to zero. Not ALL situations are like this, of course, but some things–playing chess, or betting in poker–are. If White is checkmated, Black has won. If I lose $5 in a hand, my opponent wins $5. Those things are zero-sum.

And the workday is zero-sum as well, of course. The hours, minutes, and seconds add up to a day worth 24 hours and change, and time I spend sleeping is time that I don’t get to spend reading. Time I spend working is time I don’t get to spend playing (usually). We all make choices about where we devote our time and energy. To quote a former district superintendent of mine (who I didn’t like very much, but she was right about this one thing): “You can have anything you want. But you can’t have EVERYTHING you want.”

So a few years ago, anytime someone at work suggested I start doing something new, I decided it was time for me to acknowledge the zero-sum day. “That’s fine, I’ll start doing XYZ, just as soon as you tell me what I DON’T have to do anymore. I’ve got a limited amount of time here, so…what do you want me to STOP doing, so that I can do your new thing?”

This isn’t just brash impertinence or a snotty case of “you can’t make me.” It’s an honest question, with increasingly important consequences. You want me to email parents regularly? That’s fine, as long as I can give up calling them. I’ll take on Facebook, and give up MySpace. I’ll start blogging for friends, if I can use the blog to replace writing the majority of my personal letters. But in a world that makes increasing demands on my time, it’s increasingly important that I take an active stand in not parceling out my life to the detriment of my family, my friends, my health…

The one exception I’ll make for this rule is this: I’ll consider investing time upfront, with the understanding that I’ll have a good chance of reducing time/energy expended on the back end. I few years ago, I decided to transition from using a whiteboard in class to using PowerPoint-based presentations, and I knew that moving three 3-inch-thick ring binders worth of material into electronic form would require some time. The payoff came the following year: lesson preparation was a simple matter of tweaking a few slides that I wasn’t happy with, and I was now in a position to be able to distribute copies of discussion materials in-class or online, as desired.

Here’s an interesting exercise. Assuming that you ARE going to have to incorporate some new activity, process, or technology into your life in the next few days… what would you give up? What are you ready to let go of in your workflow? What previous commitment are you ready to say “goodbye” to?

P.S. Just a quick follow-up to this post: Will Richardson over at Weblogg-ed laments that many teachers have difficulty in being “selfish”: taking time from the day to learn something new for themselves, rather than always focusing on delivering in the classroom. He wonders if it’s “just not in our DNA?”

I think that’s about right, at least metaphorically speaking. Teachers do tend to be caring, giving, nurturing people–those that aren’t get out of the profession fast; it doesn’t pay well enough! If I’ve got 30 minutes in the evening, I might:
a. Spend it with my family / friends,
b. Grade those papers, or
c. Spend that time reflecting on my practice and thoughtfully reading blogs from my Personal Learning Network (PLN).

In the Zero-Sum day, it’s not hard to see which of these tends to get neglected.

Gedanken Me This: Why not open up your classroom content?

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GEDANKEN ME THIS: Why not open up your classroom content?

2009-11-01

by Richard White

Richard teaching at Berkeley High School
Richard teaching at Berkeley High School

In the process of slowly putting aspects of my face-to-face teaching up onto the Web, I’ve been asked this single question more than any other:

“Can I get a copy of your PowerPoint slides?”

The presentation slides that I use to structure my classroom discussions contain just about what you’d expect from a carefully considered deck. I’ve got graphics and diagrams, important definitions, sample problems that I want to go over with the students, and an impressive lack of the dreaded “bullet points.” I’m a faithful acolyte of Garr Reynolds (Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery is amazing) and Nancy Duarte (buy slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
NOW), and I have enough experience to know that the slides are not my presentation–I’m the presentation; the slides are just a tool that make it easier for me to present to a larger number of people.

One of the main reasons I began using presentation software (which can include Microsoft’s PowerPoint, Apple’s Keynote, OpenOffice’s Impress, Google’s Docs, etc.) was to make my “lecture notes,” graphics, and material covered in class available to students who had been absent, or for those who just wanted copies to review with. I made PDF printouts of the slides available for download on the course website, but was reluctant to share the actual slides themselves. Because… well, those are MY slides.

I’ve been working on MY slides for YEARS now, refining them a little almost every time I use them. I feel suprisingly attached to those slides, and protective, and I’m not alone in this. At least two of my colleagues–one where I currently teach, and one at a former school–feel exactly the same way. The colleague in Northern California is about as hybrid as it gets: this guy–my best friend Aaron, and partner in edtech crime–actually records video of his lectures every day, and posts it on the Internet for his students to see.

But you can’t get him to share his slides with you to save your life. It’s funny.

So here’s your Gedanken for the day. Why NOT share your slides?

Seriously. Why not? Why not share your slides, and your handouts, and just about everything else that you use in your class? What do you think is going to happen if you do?

In software development, this idea of opening up your source code for the world to see (and for others to potentially collaborate on) is called “open sourcing,” and we teachers have been doing this for years. “Steal from the best” is the advice my mentor teacher gave to me, inviting me to watch and learn from others, and freely incorporate whatever ideas I thought would assist my own development as an educator. We do this informally (“Hey, how are YOU teaching “Macbeth” this year?”), formally (“We need to sit down to plan this next unit together…”), and institutionally (“Richard, how’d you like to work with a student teacher this semester?”). And frankly, all this sharing? I love that about our profession. So I don’t know why I’m so protective of my course materials.

In discussing this, my friends and I came up with lots of great pretend-excuses.

  1. “I worked hard on these slides–I’m not just going to give them away.”
  2. “What if someone uses my slides… ‘incorrectly’?”
  3. “It’s the responsibility of every teacher to create their own presentations.”
  4. “I want students to have to copy down the information by hand–that way, they’ll learn better.”

I’m not convinced that any of these points stands up to much scrutiny, though. In the end, making slides available to students and colleagues enhances your ability to communicate with them, and does absolutely no harm to you or your teaching that I can think of.

Ask yourself this question: if you were to die tomorrow, would you prefer that your slides pass into the afterlife with you, or would you like them to be available for the potential benefit of others?

I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea yet myself, but… I’m opening up my class. Not EVERYTHING, of course. I can’t post online materials that I AM allowed to use in class under Fair Use doctrines of U.S. copyright law. I’m not going to publicly post students’ grades, or other materials to which I don’t think students should have free access (next week’s test comes to mind here).

But my syllabus? Of course! My grading policies? Sure? The handout and grading rubric for next week’s Independent Project. Yup. The schedule for the next unit? That only makes sense…

And my PowerPoint slides? Well… okay. I’m in.

You convinced me. (Download Chapter 4 PowerPoint deck, 1.7MB)

Digital Transition on a Sunday Morning

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Digital Transition on a Sunday Morning

Richard White

2009-10-25

True Story:

A few years ago, my good friend Brian travelled to spend the weekend with some friends of his in San Diego. He had an online business at the time, so he took his laptop with him, knowing that there would almost certainly be some spare time on the trip in which he could get a little work done.

He had a great time on Friday and Saturday, as one does when visiting friends. On Sunday morning, the three of them were slowly waking up at the breakfast table, sipping coffee, chatting. It occurred to Brian that he’d like to quickly check his email, but he didn’t want to be rude, so he left his laptop in its case.

Until…

espresso_maker_and_mug

One of his hosts piped up. “Say, you guys wanna hear something funny? There was this great op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday…” The guy pulled out his laptop, cracked it open, clicked through to the website, and read the op-ed piece aloud as the others sipped their coffees and listened.

Now it was the second host’s turn. “Yeah, but there was a response to that in that guy’s blog. What was his name? I forget. Hang on…” A second laptop is produced, and Google is searched for the appropriate reference.

“Well, hell, if you guys are going online, you won’t mind if I check my email real quickly, do you?” The hosts just laugh, and soon, Brian has dealt with his email, and is on to flipping through his own online newspapers.

And that’s how it went. Three guys, three laptops. Coffee cups are refilled, and they chat merrily late into the morning, reading to each other from their respective “newspapers”–online newspapers, of course–and enjoying each other’s lazy Sunday morning company.

It’s a true story. Technology growth and networking change the media with which we interact, but they don’t change the fundamental nature of that interaction. The kid with the string-and-tin-cans became the kid sharing his parents’ phone line, who became the kid with his own fixed line, who became the kid with a cellphone, who became the kid who can send a text message like he can breathe. But they’re all just kids, trying to hang out with their friends. And there really isn’t anything surprising about that, is there?

Say it with me: “We’re going to continue to transition technologically, and we’re all going to be okay!”