Here’s the latest version of the slide deck we use to explain MoodleNet. You are very welcome to use it to introduce MoodleNet to others, personally or professionally.
We’ve completely restructured this slide deck from the one shared in July. It’s now much more focused on MoodleNet functionality, so we’ve moved the more technical aspects to the end.
Work on MoodleNet continues apace, with the above screenshot no longer being a clickable prototype, but live code on our staging server! Ivan, our talented UX designer and front-end developer, has created a ‘read-only’ version of the new user interface before he heads off on a well-deserved holiday for a couple of weeks.
During that period, James will be finishing off a very necessary refactoring of the core functionality on backend code, Karen is continuing making good progress on federation, and Mayel has submitted a plugin to the Moodle LMS team for their review and (possible) integration into Moodle 3.8.
We’re still on track for a November beta release with everything from the ‘must’ section of our MoSCoW prioritisation grid. However, we’ve had to push back the federation testing until October as we’re a small team working on a complex project, and many things have to come together at the same time!
While anyone is free to use MoodleNet for any purpose (Freedom 0 of the ‘Four Freedoms‘), in order to connect to the HQ ‘mothership’ for reasons of search and discovery, instance administrators must:
Either use the MoodleNet User Agreement as-is, or only add reasonable terms that do not negate any element of the existing agreement.
Agree to be bound by the terms of the MoodleNet Covenant for Instance Administrators.
Contribution, Use, Modification and Distribution Licenses
Disclaimers
Modifications
Instance Rules
The second is a MoodleNet Covenant for Instance Administrators, which also has six points. Those admins running a MoodleNet instance who want to connect to the ‘mothership’ (for search and discoverability) must agree to:
Foster an open and welcoming environment.
Actively moderate their instance
Perform daily backups
Give emergency access to the server infrastructure to at least two people
Give users at least 3 months of advance warning in case of shutting down
Make available the source code of any customisations to your instance, regardless how small
To be as clear and direct as possible, the MoodleNet team is committed to fostering an open and welcoming environment, meaning that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, harassment, defamation, doxxing, sexual depictions of children, and conduct promoting alt-right and fascist ideologies will not be tolerated.
We welcome the community’s feedback on these drafts, either as comments directly on the documents, in comments below this post, or on the MoodleNet forum. If you have particular concerns or comments that you like to make more privately, please email: moodlenet-moderators@moodle.com
In the spirit of working openly, we’d like to share a MoSCoW prioritisation grid for the public beta release of MoodleNet in November 2019. While any project is subject to changing priorities as it progresses, this is where we are in early August.
For those that prefer a more accessible text-based version, please see below.
We regularly update the slide deck used to give an overview of MoodleNet. It not only helps us continue to (hopefully!) get better at explaining what MoodleNet is, but is a useful resource for community members who may want to introduce it to others.
As part of the preparations for a new MoodleNet plugin coming in Moodle 3.8, the current sharing site, moodle.net will be closed and its content archived. This means that from August 2019, it will no longer be possible to share courses on moodle.net.
To see what this means for teachers, and to find out what you need to do as an administrator, please see our guide: Sunsetting moodle.net.
If you have any questions about the current moodle.net site being closed, please post in the Moodle community sites forum.
MoodleNet is a new open social media platform for educators, focused on professional development and open content.
To facilitate the ‘open content’ part of MoodleNet’s mission, we propose that users sharing content via upload may choose from three open licenses, all provided by Creative Commons:
CC BY 4.0 – “Some rights reserved”(i.e. the work is free to use, change, and redistribute so long as the original creator is acknowledged)
CC BY-SA 4.0 – “Some rights reserved”(i.e. the work is free to use, change, and redistribute so long as the original creator is acknowledged AND any derivative works are similarly licensed)
These are Free Culture licenses, defined in the following way:
the freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it
the freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
the freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression
the freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works
There is more detail about this on the Creative Commons website, which goes into much more detail about Free Cultural Works.
By taking this approach to uploading content to MoodleNet we would be following the lead of Wikimedia Commons, who have a comprehensive page on what is and what is not allowed on their platform. We believe that we can take a simpler approach with MoodleNet, with the added advantage that Creative Commons licences are already translated into most major languages.
Here is a (low-fidelity) wireframe example workflow for a user uploading a resource to MoodleNet:
User chooses the option to upload a resource to a collection
User enters title, description, and hashtags
User can change license from collection default
What do you think of this approach? Is this what you were expecting? What else would you like to see (if anything)?
We’ve updated the iterative slide deck that we use to give a non-technical overview of MoodleNet. It should be embedded above. Alternatively, you can access it via our wiki or directly at http://bit.ly/2I5Eebg
Community members have told us that they find this approach useful for a number of reasons, including seeing how the project is progressing, and being able to explain MoodleNet to others. You are, of course, very welcome to use the slides for this purpose. Please let us know if you do so!
We’d like to call your attention to the two slides below in particular. Are they useful? Do they help explain MoodleNet concisely? How would you change them?
Thanks in advance for your feedback, which you can leave in the comments section below!
Over the last few months, the MoodleNet team has been working with Moodle’s Privacy Officer and Data Protection counsel on a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).
This is meant to be a user-focused document that explains in clear language what data we are collecting and how it will be processed. You may find it particularly interesting if you are interested in how we are planning for MoodleNet to work technically!
If you have comments or questions on this version of the DPIA, you may add them underneath this blog post. Alternatively, please follow the suggestions in the ‘Consultation process’ section towards the bottom of the document.
