Month: May 2018

This week I’ve been:

• Sending out Issue #303 of my Thought Shrapnel newsletter. This one was called ‘Rest your weary head’. Thanks to the 35 patrons who back me via Patreon plus those who are supporters via Gumroad!
• Recording, editing and releasing Episode 102 of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast with my co-host Dai Barnes. We entitled this episode ‘Every silver lining has a cloud’ and discussed email policies, PGP, climbing mountains, MoodleNet, moving to the cloud, teenage behaviour, Computer Science curricula, tolerating uncertainty, and more!
• Going easy on my son as it was his Key Stage 2 SATs week. There’s a phrase from the fantastic film School of Rock that we use a lot in our house: “you’re not hardcore, unless you live hardcore”. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a bit like saying “go hard, or go home”. This week, I eased off a bit to give him a bit more space.
• Curating interesting things I came across on the Thought Shrapnel blog. This week I collected some quotations and commented on the following:
  • The New Octopus: going beyond managerial interventions for internet giants
  • “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” (Stephen Covey)
  • Owners need to invest in employees to have them feel invested in their work
  • On blogging
  • Microcast #021 (Patreon supporters only!)
  • “For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
  • The disappearing computer and the future of AI
  • Trust and the cult of your PLN
  • The role of Lady Luck
• Working on the MoodleNet project:
  • Interviewing candidates for the Technical Architect position. We’ve managed to not only find someone fantastic, but get them contracted in record time (thanks, Holly!) More details on that soon.
  • Preparing for next week’s design sprint. This involved analysing the 175 responses results from the survey we put out, interviewing educators, arranging for user testers, and liaising with Outlandish to make sure we had everything we need.
  • Booking for Mountain Moot 2018 in Montana, USA after my half-day workshop proposal was accepted. It looks like I’m going to be out of the country at least once every month now until February 2019.
• Working with my wife, Hannah, on GDPR-related things for Dynamic Skillset and We Are Open Co-op.
• Reading one of the new Verso books I bought recently, Nightwalking: a nocturnal history of London by Matthew Beaumont. I may have stopped teaching History in 2010, but I’ll always be fascinated by the past.
• Attending the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead on Thursday, during my non-Moodle day. I also took a half-day annual leave to attend a pre-conference workshop on mobile phone privacy/security and the conference dinner.
• Writing:
  • Nothing! (just Thought Shrapnel posts)

Next week, I’ll be in London all working week for the MoodleNet design sprint. I’m very much looking forward to this, as it should provide a fantastic basis for the work we’re starting right afterwards. That being said, I know myself well enough to have booked three days off the following week. After a period of compression, it’s important to then have time to decompress.

• Walking for two days in the Galloway Hills with my wife (Sunday/Monday). It was great, but the lack of a recovery day had a knock-on effect on my whole week. I felt I was playing catch-up with myself and, although I did exercise every day, continued to feel tired until Friday.
• Working on Moodle stuff — and, in particular, the MoodleNet project:
  • Triaging applicants for the Technical Architect position. There have been some great ones and some people who seem to have almost applied accidentally!
  • Talking with applicants that we’ve moved to the ‘phone screen’ stage. Martin Dougiamas, Moodle’s Founder and CEO, has interviewed a couple of people who passed that phase. I’ve more conversations to have with applicants, so if you know someone who would be good for the position, please encourage them to apply!
  • Presenting on Tuesday’s Moodle Users Association (MUA) Town Hall meeting, and answering questions from those present.
  • Preparing for the Design Sprint the week after next. That’s involved putting out a survey (completed by around 100 people so far), interviewing three people via recorded video chat, arranging travel/accommodation, and approaching people in my network potentially available for user testing in London on Thursday 24th.
  • Running May’s community call, with the recording available here.
  • Attending one of the Moodle ‘Culture Champions’ meetings. I volunteered to remix the ‘Rules of Engagement’ that we came up with collaboratively. The result is on this etherpad.
  • Catching up with one of the consultants for the MoodleNet project, Mike Larsson, who’s been advising on custom search indexes and other ways of providing what we need for search in the MVP. His notes can be found here.
• Continuing to read a couple of really interesting books:
  • Stealing history : tomb raiders, smugglers, and the looting of the ancient world by Roger Attwood
  • Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
• Curating interesting things I came across on the Thought Shrapnel blog. This week I collected some quotations and commented on the following:

  • “Idealistic as it may sound, altruism should be the driving force in
    business, not just competition and a desire for wealth.” (Dalai Lama)

  • Work-life balance is actually a circle, according to Jeff Bezos
  • Microcast #020 (supporters only!)
  • “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” (Oscar Wilde)
  • Microcast #019 (supporters only!)
  • The virtue of rest
  • Tolerating uncertainty
• Writing:
  • MoodleNet pre-Design Sprint survey (MoodleNet blog, 11th May 2018)
  • Recording of May 2018 MoodleNet community call now available! (MoodleNet blog, 9th May 2018)
  • Quality Mountain Day 12: Black Craig, Knockower, and Coran of Portmark (Galloway Hills, Scotland) (Open Educational Thinkering, 7th May 2018)
  • Quality Mountain Day 11: Merrick (Galloway Hills, Scotland) (Open Educational Thinkering, 7th May 2018)

Next week I’m working from home on Moodle stuff, and attending the Thinking Digital Conference on Thursday, as well as the pre-conference workshop and dinner on Wednesday afternoon/evening.