Weeknote 20/2020
For people who read these weeknotes on a regular basis (hello mother!) I realise that I discuss things without readers necessarily having any idea what they might look or feel like.
So, despite there still being a number of bugs and errors to fix with MoodleNet, and despite the staging server being full of test content, I thought I’d just record a quick screencast walkthrough.
Five things to bear in mind:
- MoodleNet is federated, meaning that you can search for communities, collections, and resources across instances.
- Communities curate collections of resources, and engage in discussions.
- Resources may be added to collections via link (like a bookmark) or via upload (with a Creative Commons license)
- MoodleNet is integrated with the upcoming v3.9 of Moodle LMS, meaning resources can make their way to courses via a simple workflow.
- Admins are currently the only moderators of each instance, but in future, every community will have at least one moderator.
We’ve obviously got some refactoring and work to be done on the search page, but I’m pleased with the progress.
Ivan, our UX designer, is already working on improvements to the user interface for upcoming versions of MoodleNet. For example, in the screenshot below you can see notifications, community activity, and better previews of collections.
In my three days on MoodleNet each week I’ve always got plenty to do. Mainly it’s prioritisation, as with any team things get pulled in different directions. So I’ve been sorting our OKRs, getting ready to onboard a new part-time team member, and re-organising the next few milestones.
In my We Are Open Co-op work this week, we finished off one piece of work with The Catalyst for Action West London, and then started scoping out some new work for the Social Mobility Commission. All of it at the moment is about helping organisations with an emergency pivot to digital provision.
We also managed to squeeze in a co-op half day, which was mainly focused on the new version of our website, which should be ready soon. I’m pleased that my wife, Hannah, an aspiring UX designer, had a hand in designing it!
I’ve had a chat with a bunch of people this week about my career, and also had a ‘maintenance’ therapy session. Both have given me a lot of clarity about what I should do next.
Also helpful in that regard was the first session of the Homeward Bound course facilitated by Dougald Hine on Thursday evening. That was also the day my wife and I celebrated 20 years of being together, which now constitutes more than 50% of our lives!
For Thought Shrapnel I wrote a post with a quotation from Edward Snowden as its title: Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say. It’s about surveillance culture post-pandemic, and is the fifth in a blogchain I’m writing about how western societies could look after all this ends.
I also put together my usual link roundup, this week entitled Saturday shiftings. There’s a range of links in there, including the new Unreal 5 game engine through to how to host a party in a Google Doc…
Our family went for a long walk on Saturday, which was enjoyable. We discovered a ruined building with a colourful history which I didn’t know existed before this weekend!
I’ve realised that I’m tired because I’m not only trying to keep everything going, but have more work on at the moment. Where I would usually have taken a couple of days holiday in the last couple of months, I’ve just been soldiering on.
It’s not like all of this is going to finish with a bang; it’s going to be more like an extended whimper. So I should probably stop putting off taking holiday as we probably won’t be going anywhere exotic this year!
You’ll never guess where I’ll be next week? Yep, in my fortress of solitude (a.k.a. my home office) working on MoodleNet and co-op stuff. It’s a good job I have a supportive family and interesting work on.
Header image of Chibburn Preceptory taken during our family walk on Saturday.
