By Lisa, on May 16th, 2013% As I go through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of using Moodle 2, I offer the following tips as I’m developing my summer clases.
The Navigation menu
It doesn’t appear on every page, but it has things you need (reports for activity completion and controls for manual grading, expecially). Turn editing on for the main page first to add the Navigation page where you need it.
I add it to every essay exam page so I can use Manual Grading, which brings up all the answers on one screen (Navigation – Course – Week – Assignment – Results - Manual Grading).
Navigation vs Settings
You now have two administrative menus instead of one. Navigation provides access to all your courses, their activities and reports, in one huge menu. Settings provides contextual settings for whatever page you’re on – an activity, forum, or course for the main page.
Both can be docked in the upper left corner, or shown as a block. In some browsers, docking both makes it hard to select and scroll. I usually leave Settings up there and put Navigation blocks on pages where I need it (again, you need to have editing on for the main page to do that).
Changing an already deployed activity
If you have Activity Completion set, the activity locks as soon as a student does the activity, so you can’t make changes. You need to Unlock. Although it threatens you that unlocking will mess up students who’ve take the activity, it won’t.
Automatic embedding and linking
In many cases, creating a live link will embed the video, and typing in a URL will automatically create a live link. This varies across browsers and systems, but not too much.
If it isn’t happening, go into main course Settings – Filters and enable Convert URLs into links and images.
Turn off the scale ranges in the gradebook
If you use qualitative scales for grading, students get confused by seeing the range of marks in the gradebook. You can now turn this off in Grades Settings (you can also turn off the percentages if you don’t want them to see them).
If the print is small and ugly, try the Arialist theme.
It is cleaner and larger.
To get it to accept your code, use your Profile.
It’s totally bizarre, but if you are trying to enter some embed code and it gets stripped, go to your own Profile (Settings – My Profile Settings) and turn off the editor.
Show more students in the gradebook.
Most of us have classes of 35-40 students. To show them all (instead of the default 25) in the gradebook, change the number of students in Grades – My Preferences.
Override the override on graded items.
If you’ve given a student a grade directly in the gradebook (for example, for a late quiz), and need it to revert to regular grading, check the Edit symbol next to that grade and uncheck the Overridden box.
Change the letter grades.
MiraCosta doesn’t have plus and minus grades, so near the end of the class many of us change the letter grade scale. In 1.9 this was easy, but 2′s programming makes it difficult. If you just change things and save, you’ll get an error. First delete all but the top grade by deleting the letters. Then save and go back to add the B, C, D, F with percentages.
Hope this helps or at least prevents some headaches!
By Lisa, on May 9th, 2013% These are the settings I think need to be changed by administrators to make Moodle 2 a working LMS for teachers.
ADVANCED
Enable outcomes, stats, RSS, completion…
Advanced settings -
“Enable Outcomes” – check for yes
“Enable RSS feeds” – check for yes
“Enable completion tracking” – check for yes
“Enable conditional access” – check for yes
“Enable plagiarism plugins” – check yes if MCC is using them
“Enable statistics” – decide whether server load is worth it
USERS
Remove emails from gradebook
Users–>Permissions–>User policies -> Show User Identity -> uncheck email
GRADES
Enable recovering of previous grades
Grades – General settings – “Recover grades default” – check box
Enable tab navigation in Grades
Grades – General settings – “Navigation method” – tabs
Enable static colum for student names in gradebook
Grade – Report settings – Grader report – enable “Static students column”
Enable quick feedback
Grade – Report settings – Grader report – Quick feedback – check for Yes
Enable quicker grading via AJAX
Grade – Report settings – Grader report – Enable AJAX – check for Yes
LOCATION
Set clock at Pacific Time (or your local time)
Location – Location settings – timezone UTC-7 (for spring-fall, would be UTC-8 for fall-spring)
PLUGINS
Remove requirement for activity description on pages
Plugins – Activity Modules – Page – uncheck “Require activity description”
Continue manual marking of posts as in 1.9
Plugins – Activity Modules – Forums - Manual message read marking – check the box
Timed posts for instructors
Plugins > Activity modules > Forum
Show emoticons
Plugins – Filters – Manage filters – Display emoticons as images (on)
Make available converting URLs into links and images
Plugins – Filters – Manage filters – Convert URLs into links and images (off but available)
Ensure multimedia works
Plugins – Filters – Manage filters – Multimedia plugins – On – apply to content and headings
Set module display to minimize navigation zone, display in all formats, and make popups bigger
Plugins – activity modules – URL
“Frame height” – change to 100
“Available display options” select all,
“Popup width (in pixels) – change to 800, Advanced
“Popup height (in pixels) – change to 600, Advanced
Customize forums
Plugins – Activity modules – Forum -
“Use email address in reply” – check for No
“Read after days” – change to 160
“Maximum attachment size” – change to 2 MB
“Manual message read marking” – check for yes
“Timed posts” – check for yes
SECURITY
Allow object and embed, post changes
Security – Site policies – Allow EMBED and OBJECT tags check box,
Max time to edit posts change to 60 minutes
Prevent text warnings on instructor forum posts
Security – Site policies – Enable Trusted Content
APPEARANCE
Enable html for labels
Appearance – HTML settings – uncheck box to allow html for labels
Add links to view user posts
Appearance – Navigation – check box to add links
Arialist theme for visible new posts
Appearance – Themes – Arialist – CSS box
.forumpost.unread .content {border:2px solid #D88A00;} /*unread post border*/ — change color to #1e00d8
Arialist theme for column size
Appearance – Themes – Arialist – Column width – 250px
Enable AJAX and Javascript
Appearance – AJAX and Javascript – Enable Ajax
Enable course themes
Appearance – Themes – Enable course themes
In addition, teacher roles need to be changed so that teachers may “login as” students, and see the grade link as part of their Activity Report.
By Lisa, on February 26th, 2013%  Working with Moodle 2 (currently 2.3 on my own and MiraCosta College’s server) has caused a lot of the angst you’ve been reading about here on my blog, as the LMS again comes back to bite me. At first, in the early days, it was a good relationship. Moodle wowed me with nested discussion forums, and handled all those pesky household tasks, like adding up grades and helping with communication via pop-up Messages. Now, I can’t even get it to take out the garbage.
When will I learn?
Anyway, here’s a brief guide to the top ten demonic aspects of Moodle 2.
1. Contextual Menus
I’ve blogged about it before and they are no less infernal now. Pay attention to those docked menus (you can dock and undock them – undocked they end up in your narrow column).
Here’s one horrid example. I like the Manual Grading feature, where I can grade everyone’s essay on one screen, or 10 at a time. I just clicked on the assignment -> attempts -> Manual Grading (3 clicks).
In M2, when I go to the assignment, I don’t see anywhere I can do that. I have to go to the main page, and turn Editing on for the whole course first. Then I can go to the assignment, click on the total attempts, and I must add the Navigation block onto that page. Then I must follow the lentils: My home -> My courses -> course name -> particular week dates -> Quiz -> Results -> Manual grading (7 clicks).
Sometimes I get the bends coming back up.
2. Deep sea diving for student records
Twice each semester I have students create a self-evaluation I call the Contribution Assessment. To do it, they (and then I) must be able to see their logs and activity reports. In Moodle 1.9 this was Participants -> Student name and their profile had tabs for all the information at the top. Two clicks back to return to the participants list.
In Moodle 2, you need oxygen tanks.
The Settings menu (left) has settings (which are contextual – they change depending which page you’re on, so you often have to “back out” to the main page).
The Navigation menu (right) has things we would used to think of as settings, or at least items in the Admin menu.
The student information is in the Navigation menu, buried deep. To actually view the chart of activity completion with all students, the path is : Navigation > Courses > My course > Reports > Activity completion.
3. Things not turned on
Moodle 2 diabolically puts more things under administrative control than before. Student permissions have to be set so you can access them (and often admins won’t allow this). You actually need an admin setting changed to allow students to see their own activity reports. Here’s some of the things I had to request our admin to enable (you can skip this if the back end isn’t your thing):
- Appearance – Themes – Enable course themes
- Appearance – HTML settings – uncheck box to allow html in labels
- Appearance – AJAX and Javascript – Enable Ajax
- Advanced – Enable Outcomes, Stats, RSS feeds, completion tracking, conditional access, plagiarism- Permissions – Course – Log in as other users must be enabled for faculty- Assign roles – override permissions – Manage files – allow
- plugins – activity modules – url -> uncheck Require activity description, Available display options select all, customize popups (800×600), customize frame height (100)
- Plugins – Activity modules – Forum – uncheck “Use email address in reply”, change “Read after days” to 160, “Enable RSS feeds” change to Yes
- Plugins – Activity modules – Page – uncheck “Require activity description”
- Plugins – Filters – Manage filters – turn off everything not using, enable only activity names auto-linking and multimedia plugins applied to content- Plugins – Blcoks – Manage blocks – make invisible what you nevewr use
- Plugins – Message outputs – Email (uses php default in Moodle to send mail, might need to change to SMTP)
- Plugins – Message outputs – Default message outputs – change Personal messages between users – check Online also so comes to your email also even if logged in – may have to turn off a lot of these or students see strange things in their – - Messages about their grade being changed every time an assignment is graded
- Users–>Permissions–>User policies -> Show User Identity -> uncheck email if it’s checked
- Location – Location settings – set these locally
- Grades – General settings – “Recover grades default” – check box
- Grades – General settings – “Navigation method” – tabs
- Courses – Course default settings – “number of week/topics” change to 18, news items = 3 , checkbox to “Show activity reports”, Completion tracking change to Enabled
- Courses – Backups – Active change to Enabled, schedule them
- Security – Site policies – Allow EMBED and OBJECT tags check box, Max time to edit posts change to 60 minutes, Password policy- Security – Site policies – Enable Trusted Content
4. Activity tracking
 This one is only partly evil.
Let’s say you don’t want to go deep sea diving to see how each student is doing on work, graded and ungraded, in the class. You can set each and every item on the main page to be tracked. You add a URL page to Wikipedia – you can set it to mark a student has completed it when they open it. You add a quiz – you can set the quiz to mark it completed only when it’s graded. You add a forum – you can set it to be marked as completed only when the student has posted twice.
BUT (the evil part) you must do it for each and every thing you want tracked one at a time. There’s no way to set everything as Student must view or Student must receive a grade. Each item, each forum, one at a time.
And (more evil), if you change the Scale or any text in a forum after it’s in action, Moodle won’t save it properly until you delete everyone’s activity tracking. Which, of course, it warns you not to do. This isn’t anywhere in any documentation. (See #6, below, on weird tricks.)
5. Bye bye those bits of HTML
Moodle 2, despite its TinyMCE toolbar for everything, doesn’t actually like HTML. It likes CSS. So when I wrote my own professorial post in a forum, I used to indicate it was mine by putting a horizontal orange line at the top and bottom of my post.
<hr size=6 color=orange>
Now I have to use:
<hr style=”border-color: orange; height:6px” />
I speak fluent HTML, but I don’t speak CSS. I have to copy and paste this every time.
6. You need to know weird tricks.
Can’t add your code from somewhere in a post, even with the html turned on? A trick is needed: turn off the editor in your own Profile.
Sick of the huge blank column on the left of everything, making it so you can’t see a full window for the gradebook or page? Go back to the main page and turn off Editing.
Doesn’t seem intuitive? Too bad. Bwaah hah hah.
7. It tries to help, but the result is sometimes odd.
Take having students post images and videos in forums. Moodle now tries to be helpful.
On every post page, you can drag-and-drop files now. This means the big drag-and-drop window has to load every time. What if you don’t want students using that window to upload things, but would rather they link? Then you have to turn the number of attachments to “0″ for each forum. Site admin -> Plugins -> Filters -> Multimedia plugins has an option “Enable auto-embedding of linked images”. So if a student posts the URL of an image and links it, that image will appear as embedded. It also does it with YouTube video. Trouble is, if you try to do what’s right and use the embed code plus a live link, the video will appear twice in the post.
Similarly, Site admin – plugins – filters – manage filters has Multimedia plugins -> Convert URLS into links. If a student posts an (unlinked) URL it will make it linked. This behavior sometimes doesn’t play nice with the auto-embedding behavior.
8. Evil continued from Moodle 1.9: The Gradebook and Messaging (cue scary music)
More bags of tricks needed!
If you know the grades are there but are not appearing in gradebook, lock and unlock gradebook items, including total.
You must change gradebook report preferences to have more students show (the default is only 25).
The one good thing: the course settings in gradebook lets you hide percentages (and scale ranges).
Messaging has always been a horror in Moodle. We delight at the pop-up that alerts students they have a Message, which is so much better than Blackboard, where you have to dig deep to check for a Message you may not have. But that’s where the heavenly part ends. Messaging is part of the central system rather than connected to the course. Faculty teaching multiple courses in Moodle can’t tell which course a student is in when they are sent a Message from them. Moode 2 compounds this problem by removing you from the course to answer the Message. There is no link, no breadcrumb, no “Go Back” to get you back to where you were after you’ve read a student Message. You are stuck at system level. It’s enough to make you give up and use email.
9. The font is very small.
And it’s small in most of the themes, some of which can’t handle basic functions. For full functionality one has to use a standard theme. There hasn’t been enough development yet to use something better. Only a few can be adapted in administrative settings – anything else requires running your own installation and a deep knowledge of CSS. I can’t even figure out how to change the font in Arial when I have access to all the files.
10. It’s ugly.
I’m sorry, but the home page is dumb-looking by default (clouds and birds?), and the fonts and spacing are a step down from the clean look of 1.9.
Yes, we have no choice but to stay together if I’m going to use an LMS. Back in 2007 I contemplated LMS divorce because the other options were looking so good. Now I contemplate because the problems are internal – and infernal.
By Lisa, on November 9th, 2012% So I had this great idea that next semester, when students post their primary sources in the forum, they could tag them with a topic. I could provide a list of tags that represent larger areas, the sort of topics they can later work into historical themes: fashion, war, society, medicine, politics, economy, etc. This would work better than search, and allow them to browse the collection they’d created as they thought about their research approach.
But when I went to look at the settings in Moodle (1.9 and 2.2 and 2.3), there was no such thing as tags for a forum post, or even a glossary entry (my other new idea). Moodle only has tags for student “blogs”, which are connected only to each student’s profile and do not work in any interconnected way.
This was a big reminder that Moodle is still an LMS, and that sometimes I simply cannot configure it to do what I need. In WordPress such a thing is a no-brainer, and of course I can set this up in WP, but didn’t I just decide there was no real need for that?
It occurred to me that what I want to do represents an overlap that LMS thinkers don’t understand – the interrelationship between “content” and “activity”. The main Moodle blocks have two drop-down menus when you want to add something, and they clearly indicate the mindset:
A “resource” is supposed to be static, and an “activity” is supposed to be interactive.
A “forum” is considered an activity, a platform for “discussion”. I’m not using it for discussion, but rather for having students create a set of resources (without that nasty confusion a database would bring into play). The students are thus actively creating a “resource” that they need to search and access throughout the class. The lack of acknowledgement of such interplay is what leads designers to think of tags only in terms of blogs.
I am also setting up some secondary historical readings for my Honors class, and there’s no way in Moodle to have students annotate them together.
I just want a static resource, an article, that I’ve introduced, and have students annotate it collaboratively. The only “activity” available in Moodle would be a wiki, and it would not allow in-line commentary. I admit I’m somewhat Talmudic in my idea of what a collaboratively annotated document would look like. So I’ll be trying a circuitous route, uploading a pdf article into Crocodoc, then embedding the resulting doc in a Moodle page to allow for in-place commenting without students needing an account. It’s an awkward solution at best, and one which requires me to wear a Fair Use t-shirt and remove the articles after the semester.
The perpetuation of the division between “content” and “activity” causes harm to learning and prevents some of that innovative methodology everyone says they want. The idea that resources and “discussion” are separate gets passed down to new teachers going online, and they set up their classes that way, limiting their pedagogy.
So, note to LMS designers, including Moodle:
Stop adding internal “features” to your LMS based on webapps you see people using externally (“blogs”, “scholar”), and start rethinking why teachers use those things. Think about the interactivity between “content” (or resource or page or presentation) and “activity” (the stuff that means servers have to talk to each other).
Wrap your head around the concepts, not just the tools, of teaching online.
By Lisa, on October 14th, 2012% Planning my first online History honors course, I immediately assumed I’d be doing something different, more connectivist, more open-ended. I figured it would start, as so many good things do, with a fresh WordPress blog.
But then I thought, the students should each have their own blog. Edublogs and WordPress.com don’t have enough free features, though, and they might get caught in freemium traps. That’s OK – my college now has WordPress. I found out that another instructor had set up blogs for all his students last semester. Except that it was extremely time consuming, involved a separate server, and he used an assistant to do the hands-on setup. I have more students and no assistant – I’ll end up teaching WordPress more than history and dreading sys admin as a massive time suck.
Better go with a single blog under my own control, multi-author.
So I made one. Even made a really cool banner.
Then I started thinking some more, as I began downloading the many plugins: Akismet for spam, Comment Form toolbar so they could embed media in comments, Comment Image for a similar thing, comments-like so they could “like” each other’s comments, Custom Meta for better guidance signing in, Email users so I could email them all, iframe Preserver to help the pages with info, nCode Image Resizer to prevent huge images, Simply Exclude to control visible pages, Top Commentators to add a little competition, User Photo, WP Super Cache to prevent overloading the CPU, etc etc etc.
I started to realize what I was doing – trying to make WordPress more like an LMS. Moodle in particular.
What was gained by doing this? A public space, which they may not want anyway. My own control with my own rented server, which I could also have using my own Moodle. A blog format, with more independence and reflection. Did I want that?
I started to think about my students. Yes, it’s an Honors class, with a lower enrollment cap so we can get to know each other better and a tip hats to more individualized instruction. But only some students are from the Honors program – the class is open to anyone. I lost a student in my standard class this semester and encouraged her to enroll for this one. Even a higher number of Honors students doesn’t mean they’ll know anything about blogs. I’ll still be teaching WordPress.
That’s OK, said I, let’s look at pedagogy! To go all connectivist and bloggy, I’d have to give up some things. Textbook? No big deal getting rid of that. Quizzes? I’d love to ditch them. My forums where I have them post a primary source then write about the collection they’ve built, and it all shows on the same page so they can compare their work and revise? Um…..
No. It came down to a pedagogy meets technology decision. For students to post sources each week and form a collection on a blog, they’d need to use tags (for both era and topics) so the sources would post onto a page for that era or be easy to find later. They’d need to search tags to find evidence. I’d need to set up many pages. The format would be sloppy, and as the class advances into using more evidence for writing, things would get very confusing. Blogs are call-and-response systems, not repositories. Tagging is not natural behavior for ordinary mortals on the web – it must be taught.
Perhaps my goals don’t really dovetail with the blog format. It’s not like ds106, where you pick and choose and create and move on – here the work is dependent on that of others, not just referencing that of others. It’s not like a CCK class, where you participate in the sections you’re interested in. Here there is a set curriculum, and a particular method I want to use, a method that has students discovering, interacting, writing extensively, practicing… it sounds blog-like, but it’s done a different way.
I started to argue with myself. Again, what was I gaining from using WordPress? Did I want the shift to reflection implied by the use of ongoing posts? Did I want to recreate something like the POT Cert Class? Did I want to teach the students, not only about WordPress, but about the big web world, the people who might read and comment, the difference between the open web and an LMS, the possible joys and dangers? Sure, I could do all this, but did I want them focusing on that stuff instead of finding great primary sources, observing their colleagues, and creating their own theses based on a slow, modelled, practiced development of their historical thinking? With so little time that they’d be willing and able to dedicate to the class, did I want to use time teaching these (admittedly valuable) things, when they were not central to my objectives?
So I’ve backed away, to my own Moodle install. I feel like a traitor, but it won’t be the first time. I’ve created something, a method I love, a method I want to write about and publish about, and I happened to create it inside a particular LMS where it works well. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work outside it. I can indeed recreate it inside WP or a Ning or somewhere else (though Blackboard would be a nasty challenge). If I combine this method with the convenience of grading posts, having them spend their outside recess time looking for sources, and teaching them about sources and citations and writing and how to use the big web to do history …it will be better for all of us.
Alan Levine made this for me only a short time ago (translated roughly as “I use an LMS only for management”). I wonder whether this is already not true, or whether it’s management in the sense of managing a pedagogical process, or whether it’s just a matter of choosing the best tool for the job. Maybe I’ve never risen above having too many students in each section, and I want that drop-down grading menu. Maybe I’m maturing away from the knee-jerk reaction against an LMS, a reaction which makes no sense anyway given my own ability to twist the suckers into almost anything I want them to be. Maybe it’s all a massive justification to keep a familiar workflow so I can focus on developing a new class.
I confess – I’m really not sure.
Previous posts along similar lines:
By Lisa, on September 18th, 2012% This was one of the worst starts to the semester ever, thanks to the horrors of the Moodle integration with the college’s enrollment system. In getting very little sleep working out complex problems by simply observing the behavior of Moodle, I became not only exhausted but also increasingly uncomfortable with the complexity of the system and my dependence on it.
 We all know I am not a fan of the LMS, and yet I use one because I have so many students whose work must be monitored. This semester it’s 220+ students, in six class sections. My preferred pedagogy demands that I be personally involved in presentation, interaction and assessment, so it is a lot of involvement per student – this is not MOOC land. Moodle has served me well, despite the fact that it is a closed silo or walled garden (choose your metaphor), except…
Except that as time has gone on Moodle, like every LMS, has increased in complexity. Features multiply, usability issues become new features instead of being repaired in the previous format, and more layers are added (such as the contextual menus). The college is in Moodle 1.9, but I piloted 2.0 with my summer class on my own server, and am currently piloting 2.2 with my fall on-site class on the college’s contract with Mooderooms. The forced integration of the enrollment system with Moodle 1.9 added another layer of complexity.
Rewind to 1998, when I began teaching online. There was no LMS. What we had were standard HTML web pages for presentation (syllabus, lectures, readings), and a little program called Webboard for discussion. Most exams and papers were submitted via email, and we would create folders in our own email system for each student or class. When the LMS arrived (and actually we had three of them to choose from then), it seemed ridiculously cumbersome and old-fashioned to use email for assignments or Webboard for interaction, so we switched over.
Well, now it is the LMS that has become ridiculously cumbersome. The sheer number of Moodle operations that were affected by the integration of the enrollment system was appalling: it impacted everything from faculty being able to control the short name of their course to whether a particular student could be added to a group. And as the complexity of these systems increases, “security” issues cause administrators to block more and more permissions for faculty, including the ability to change a student’s password. This forces faculty further and further from the heart of the system.
The obvious thing to do is leave the LMS and go forward, into the land of social media or WordPress. With 240 students, no funding, the inappropriateness of ad-based websites for education, the number of good sites (like Ning) that have gone premium or want you to advertise for them, and the fact that I don’t code, the options would be limited. I always think of WordPress, but given what happened this summer with my provider, I’m not so sure.
So what if we left the LMS to go backward instead of forward?
Presentation would again be via web page. That’s no problem. HTML5 may not be ready for prime time, but hyperlinks still exist, and javascript makes popups and mini-quizzes function in all browsers. All that code I stole way back when still works. The only thing that’s really changed is CSS. No biggie – I disagree with separating form from content, but I can follow a CSS book the same as I can follow HMTL directions.
If you think about it, Google Sites is basically going back to this “make a web page” idea. So is Weebly and other sites that help you make a web page. And embedding media is easy now that so many sites give you embed code (I damn near memorized the tome “QuickTime for the Web” during the early 21st century- such feats are no longer necessary).
Interaction spaces abound. Assuming that the issue of privacy and being treated like a commodity can be resolved, absorbed, accepted, or otherwise set aside, social spaces are available. Wikis, though not yet as user-friendly as they should be, work as spaces. For the squeamish, good old bulletin board scripts still exist (although I haven’t found one yet that accepts embedded media and nests the posts).
 For record-keeping and gradebooks and quizzes, Engrade is still there and getting bigger. Or, even more basic, a private spreadsheet kept on your hard drive isn’t a bad idea. One could use Dropbox to access it and grade anywhere. Emailed essays would be even easier to categorize and process now than they used to be, with email programs allowing tagging and automatic folder placement.
The technologies used in the “old days” are highly reliable. HTML is a standard. Old embed codes work almost everywhere. Simple gradebooks and quiz programs are just databases. Less complexity, fewer parts, fewer things to break.
If we went all the way back, we could teach faculty much of what we were taught back in 1998. Somewhere between then and now we stopped creating things and began plugging “content” into other people’s systems. Building our own spaces might have made us more creative. It could have made us less tolerant of software controlling us instead of the other way around, in the same way that learning to garden or cook makes you less tolerant of mass-produced food. If we revived these skills, learning the old ways of DIY HTML could even change the attitudes that stifle pedagogical creativity.
And it would get us out of the LMS and back to a simpler world. Less convenient, perhaps (not as many 7-11s on the corners, no home delivery) but less complex and easier to understand, manage, and fix.
We could call it the Back to the Web movement. As with Back to the Land, we’d learn less about how to conform to things that aren’t sustainable, and spend our mental energies on things that are.
|
|
Recent Comments