Troy Patterson

Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Month: December 2023

MoodleNet Thoughts

December 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I posted on Mastodon about the lack of feedback on Moodle Net. Martin replied asking for feedback. I’ve responded, but I thought that I would flesh out my thoughts a bit here.

I love Moodle and what you can do with it. I love that there isn’t a big money-making, data-sucking, privacy-invasive company running it.

A little background. I’m in the US. Specifically, I’m in K-12 education teaching and learning. Moodle is not super popular. There are certainly a few places, but Moodle is much bigger at the University level than K-12. There is much angst over Moodle. Quite simply, teachers find it “too hard”.

There are reasons that Google Classroom has taken over. It really doesn’t do much (thus, much less to learn for teachers). Google Classroom is essentially handing out worksheets and getting them back (another bonus, teachers understand the worksheet process).

When COVID hit, there was a rush for two things, video conferencing and an LMS. Zoom quickly captured the video conferencing mindshare. So much so, that even now it is pretty much the only game in town. Google Classroom captured the LMS market (note that it not an LMS but that doesn’t matter). It doesn’t even matter that it is not an LMS. The District that I was in at the time evaluated Canvas, Schoology, and Moodle (we had Moodle installed and were known internationally for our work in Moodle – due to Chris Kenniburg). The District chose to go with Schoology. It was “easier”.

MoodleNet

So this is one reason I was (still am) hopeful for MoodleNet. MoodleNet should be a great way to share resources, activities, etc. This means teachers wouldn’t have to create all their own material. This alone would make Moodle “easier”. Teachers could get started.

However, I do not find MoodleNet engaging. I’ve posted some things there, but I don’t get any feedback. There is currently no way to provide feedback. I can’t tell someone that I liked their materials or that I used it with changes. Hence. I reached out to Martin.

I don’t think that this needs to be overly complicated. I thought about ratings, 1-5 stars, adding how it was used, tags, and more. Really though, I think a simple comment box would be the way to go. Let users decide how to use it. Let users make comments. Provide a link back to the profile of the user, what date the comment was made, but otherwise, just free-form comments.

I am hopeful that that would provide a bit of social connections. It would provide the opportunity to provide feedback. It may encourage more people to submit resources.

cartoon books of various sizes.

Ownership, Anti-Ownership, and Deleting “Your” Stuff

December 21, 2023 / / 0 Comments

…or why you “bought” it, but don’t own it.

In the “good old days”, one went to a bookstore and bought a physical copy of the book (this also applied to movies). Once one had read the book, one was free to give that to a friend. Or, you put it on your bookshelf. Or donate it to a library. You also have/had the legal right to sell the book (in order to get money to buy more books – 🙂 ). The ability to sell the book is known as First Sale Doctrine.

In the digital age, that has all changed. Legally, when you “buy” a book (again, same for movies) through an online site, you are really just acquiring permission to access it. That permission to access the “book” (or movie) will have limitations. These resources are for your “personal, non-commercial” use only (i.e. you can’t share it, or in the case of movies, show it to a group).

The landscape has changed, but the expectations of many people haven’t. Yet, this is important to note.

There are a couple of recent posts that highlight this.

The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy

This is a lengthy read that has lots of great information. The article points out that not only do you not have the right to sell the book that you “bought”, but that your behavior can also be tracked while you are reading that book.

The article points out the additional attacks on public libraries as well. Specifically, publishers are fighting online lending.

PlayStation is erasing 1,318 seasons of Discovery shows from customer libraries

This is a pretty easy to understand write up. People bought movies through Playstation. Those that did so will lose access to them. Here is the notification:

As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library.
We sincerely thank you for your continued support.

Discovery would like people to subscribe to MAX or Discovery+.

Between the two articles, it is very clear that the rights to media have changed. If you don’t like this and would like to see different rules, reach out to your Congressperson.

Bright Moon through trees. The moon is bright behind a cloud. A couple of trees, barren of leaves are in the foreground.

Week Note 2023-12

December 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Blog Photos

I usually use Labnol as a great way to leverage Google Photos as a blog post image. However, occasionally, the service just doesn’t work. It’s a free service, so there is no real concern. This was the case with the last blog post.

I try to watch the space that I use with WordPress (a habit developed long ago). I also post several of my pictures to be freely shared (usually CC-SA-NC-BY). I had a picture that I wanted to use as the featured image, so I shared that image on Unsplash.

I also shared the image on PixelFed. PixelFed is a free, no-advertising site for sharing pictures. There are lots of great pictures shared on the site.

So, I have at least a few ways to share images. There are lots of wonderful images out there that can be used. (Please remember to attribute images and thank those who post.)

Dinner with the Family

I had a great dinner with the whole family. It is so wonderful to sit down and eat with my wife and kids.

Clocks

I’ve dropped off a couple of clocks for repair. One is actually a timer. The other is a clock with sentimental value.

The clock repair person was wonderfully typical Mainer. She is passionate about clock repair, and a wonderful person. We had a nice chat about the clocks and life in general.

Target

My wife and I headed out to Target for a bit of shopping. I was pretty gobsmacked by the number of empty shelves. This was on general stuff too.

Dog Showers

Hazel got the “zoomies” and with the rain, her backyard is pretty muddy. Thus, Hazel received a record three baths.

Christmas Lights

I put up Christmas lights right after Thanksgiving. I was thinking that maybe that was a little bit early. Then the temperature hit a high of 12 degrees on the next day that I would’ve been putting up lights. So, yeah, not too early.

Email

My favorite email that I received this week started like this:

“I apologize for the delay in my response as our team has been understaffed, and my time and focus has been limited to the most urgent tasks.”

Subtext, your email wasn’t that important.

Picture of a wooden fence. In the foreground are two small trees covered with snow. In the background are many trees covered with snow. Snow covers all the ground as well.

Week Note 2023-11

December 4, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Snowy Morning

Well, we had our first real snow this morning. That meant a little bit of shoveling this morning. It was really beautiful though.

The drive to work was incredibly beautiful.

However, the power also went out (later found out it was tree-related). Not only the power, but the cable went out as well.

Christmas Decorations

We got the tree up and decorated this weekend. The first task ended up un “pre-lighting” the artificial tree as the lights that are (uh, were) tightly wrapped around the branches failed to actually light up.

Cookies

Rm and D1 had a cookie-making session. Much fun and many good cookies were baked.

A1

We ended up going out to lunch at A1 on Saturday. This meant there was no need for dinner that night (save for a bit of cheese and crackers while decorating).

Flu Shots

I had a nice long call with our insurance as I was trying to get a flu shot. It turns out that our insurance covers Flu shots. However, they cover Flu shots through medical insurance. Most common places to get Flu Shots bill through prescriptions. So, I’ve made an appointment, but it will be a while before I can get my Flu shot.

Clocks

We have a couple of clocks that need to be fixed. I had tried to fix one, but it proved beyond my capabilities. Finally, we have found a clock repair shop. I’ll be taking the clocks this week to get repaired.

Thanks

I take inspiration from Doug Belshaw, whom I’ve met but I’m sure wouldn’t remember me, and Alan Levine for their blogging, sharing, and presence. I appreciate their work and sharing so very much.

Pixel Fed Feed

I’ve finally been able to subscribe through Mastodon to my PixelFed feed. It’s little things like this that end up bringing joy. It also points to the power of open-source and Activity Pub.

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