The Allied invasion of Europe began at precisely 15 minutes after midnight on June 6, 1944. At that moment, a few specially chosen men of the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions stepped out of their planes into the Moonlight Night over Normandy. The Allied Airborne armies clearly marked the extreme limits of the Normandy battlefield. Between them, and along the French coastline, lie five invasion beaches, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sore. Through the pre-dawn hours as paratroopers fought in the dark hedgerows of Normandy, the greatest armada the world has ever known began to assemble off those beaches, almost 5,000 ships carrying more than 200,000 soldiers, sailors, and coast guardsmen. Early at 6.30 a.m. and preceded by a massive navel and air bombardment, a few thousand of these men waited ashore in the first wave of the invasion. What follows is not a military history, it's a story of the men of the Allied forces. And this story is told by a man who lived it, who answered the call when his country needed him. After the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, followed by a series of U.S. defeats in the Pacific, left to many Americans feeling demoralized, vulnerable, and afraid. The country wasn't ready to fight in another war in Europe after the severe toll of World War I. After the war began in Europe in 1939, the American people were divided on whether their country should take part or stay out. Most Americans hoped the Allies would win, but they also hoped to keep the United States out of war. The isolationists wanted the country to stay out of the war at almost any cost. Another group, the interventionists, wanted the United States to do all in its power to aid the Allies. America's armed forces consisted largely of citizen soldiers, men and women drawn from civilian life. They came from every state in the nation, an all economic and social strata. There were those who were drafted, but many were volunteers. But Jim Martin, a 22-year-old machinist working in a tool and die manufacturing company in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. This is Jim's story, a young man who wanted to be the best, who, on D-Day, jumped into Normandy with a 101st airborne, secured the small town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and was there at the end, at the Eagles Nest, in Birchesgaden, Germany. In his hometown of Dayton, inside the National Museum of the Air Force, at age 93, Jim Martin recalls the beginning of his journey and how he broke the news to his parents that he joined the Army. When I announced I was going to do that, my dad cried. He had been in the 69th Division of World War I, and he didn't want me to go. My mother, now my dad was French heritage, so I could understand their emotion. My mother is very pragmatic, she's Irish and English, didn't bother her in the least. She wished me well, my dad wished me well, and they want to know if they want to go down to the station with me next morning, see me off, I said no, I don't want that. I'll walk down, I'll walk down to the train station, got on the train, went to Indianapolis, from Indianapolis, then we went to Toquah, Georgia. In July 1942, 5,000 men arrived at a remote training camp five miles outside of Toquah, Georgia at Kurahee Mountain for training as a new type of soldier, a paratrooper. When they started this thing down there in Toquah, it was strictly voluntary, it could not draft you into the paratrooper if you had to ask to be in, 6,500 people signed up. From the middle of July until the 1st of December, we did what Colonel St. the Commander called Airborne Basic, they had never done that before, it was really tough. In that few months that we trained there, by the time we went to jump school on the 1st of December, we had 1,650 left, I mean the discipline was terrible, the food was awful, not much of it, and any infraction is all and you're gone. Unlike basic training at other army camps, training at Toquah included orientation with parachute equipment, exit training from a mocked up C-47 aircraft door, and jumps from a 34 foot tower. At 130 pounds, Jim was the smallest soldier in the entire regiment. He was nicknamed Pee Week, which is still a name he's proud to be called, but despite his small stature, he took whatever they dished out. Jim says from the earliest days of the 506th, he remembers the punishing physical training which was the hallmark of Toquah, and especially one particular workout. Then you had runs, the runs would be anywhere from 5 miles to 25 miles, sometimes with full pack and weapons, sometimes in swimming trunks, then there was the mountain, now the elevation of the bottom of the mountain was at 5,000 feet, then you went up and altitude went up to 6,000 feet in 3 and a half miles. We ran that in formation four and five times a week, that's in 45 to 50 minutes, that took a lot of the people out, it was miserable, people hated that mountain. Colonel Robert Sink commanded the 506th beginning at Toquah and throughout World War II, turning down two promotions during the war to remain with the unit. The 506th soon became the 506th. Colonel Sink's demands on the trainees began to affect morale, and the men began to despise him. We thought he was a devil incarnate, and it got so bad that he had a formation out on the hillside one day, and he walked back and forth, he was a mild mannered guy, he didn't raise his voice ever. He walked back and forth and he said, I understand you people aren't happy in every way, yeah, you don't like the food, yeah, you think I'm too hard on you, yeah, I'm going to tell you, it's going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better. That was it. The attrition rate at Toquah was close to 90% due to the mental and physical demands, so only the very best earned their jump wings. That's what their commander wanted and needed. And once the members of the 506th experienced the rigors of war, they realized what a tremendous commander they had in Colonel Sink. Then when we got to combat, we saw why he did all of this, because every man, due to the fact that we got rid of the people that really weren't passionate about it, every man that you had there was going to be there when you needed him. And he probably was the most loved commander in the whole army after we went to combat.  In September of 1943, the men of the 506th boarded the British ship SS Samaria and headed for England. 5,000 men on a ship that could accommodate 1,000. Jim recalls his first day on board. I was on K.P. It took us down in the hole with this British cook.   He was crawling with maggots and somebody said, hey, it's got maggots on. He said, it's live meat ain't it, man? Well, I ate one meal there and in ten days I didn't eat any more. Once they arrived, the 506th was stationed in Wiltshire County with units in such villages as Aldborn, Ramsbury, Frocksfield and Chilton Foliac. It was here for the next eight months the soldiers prepared for the coming invasion of occupied Europe. We did some really tough training. It was about 15, 16 hours a day. We got up at four o'clock in the morning and didn't quit. Had night problems, night after night. Of course, drizzly rain all the time and cold. And after about seven or eight months of training and a lot of drive runs, we finally got to the marshaling area. And 11 o'clock in the evening, my group took off at Exeter Airfield at 12.30 in the morning. We went at the 5th of June is when we took off. At 12.30 we made our initial jump into France. Operation Overlord, beginning on D-Day, was the largest combined land, sea and air operation the world had ever seen. And at the tip of the spear was Private Jim Martin, as he and his fellow soldiers from the 101st prepared to board the C-47 Dakotas. The men were loaded down with an enormous amount of equipment. Paratroopers carried an average of 70 pounds of equipment. Officers averaged 90 pounds of gear with the parachute. Jim recalls the journey. There were a few SARS clouds up above. Just enough so she still saw shadows down below and you saw all those ships. It was just unbelievable to see as many ships as there were down there. We got to the coast. It closed in. You couldn't see anything at all. As the C-47's got near the French coastline, the fog, along with the enormous amount of anti-aircraft fire, created a recipe for disaster for the loaded down paratroopers. We had lost most of our equipment because when they scattered and the plaque came they didn't slow down to 90 miles an hour. Most of them jumped us at 150. Most people lost a lot of their equipment. Jim's unit landed behind Utah Beach. He had a safe landing and it was just a few minutes before someone came along. Jim tells us who it was. My sergeant came and all he had on was a knife. He lost everything else. He didn't have another thing on him. He and his sergeant were able to gather other soldiers into a small group but overall the airborne units were scattered all over Normandy. For many the first struggle of combat was to find their units. 1500 soldiers from the division were killed or captured. The soldiers persevered and proceeded with their assigned missions as best they could. By nightfall, soldiers from the 101st had secured the beach exits in their zone and contacted the landing forces of the 4th division. Jim's unit, the 3rd battalion at the 506th, objective was to capture the two bridges over the Dove River to prevent the Germans from reinforcing the beaches. Jim and his unit made it to the bridges but things changed as they tend to do in combat. We had lost all of our communication equipment and division thought we'd been wiped out so they ordered the bridges bombed and here we are right there at the bridges.  We only lost one guy killed fortunately. The mission of Operation Market Garden, a plan designed by British Field Marshal Montgomery, was for the airborne divisions to jump in a daring daylight drop into Holland. The airborne Allied troops were to seize roads, bridges and the key communication cities of Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem thus cutting Holland in half and clearing a corridor for British armored and motorized columns all the way to the German border. The eventual goal was to cross the Rhine River and breach the German West Wall defenses. Jim has a clear memory of what happened on the way to the drop zone. Beautiful day, jumped at a thousand feet. We did hit really heavy flak going in. They said we took another route a long way around to keep from having flak and I said at the time I don't know where the hell that came from. I said this is about a heavier flak we've ever seen and every water tower had a couple of machine guns on top of it. We got hit and our plane was on fire and the co-pilot came back and said you guys want to jump now or you want to try to make the jump field. We said how far is it? He said about 20 minutes. We said we're going to the jump field. We want to go where everybody else is going to be. So our plane did crash on the jump field and of course it went down across the fields, get across some guys. You know everybody's on the ground already. The co-pilot did but the radio man didn't. He jumped and it was too low. He got killed. But a couple sergeants went over and knocked in the windshield and pulled the pilot and co-pilot out. When Jim and the soldiers of the 3rd Battalion reached Dynhoven, they came under direct fire from two German 88s and mortars positioned in the Main Street, effectively stopping all movement. Colonel Sink flanked the guns from the left with the 2nd Battalion. Jim says the Dutch citizens of Dynhoven were so happy to see the American soldiers that it made it taking out the 88s a challenge. And the people in the houses on each side of the street were coming out and giving them milk and wine and fruit and whatever they had and every time one of these guns would shoot, everybody would run back in the house and then right back the guys could hardly fight because of it. Eventually, with the help of the Dutch citizens, the guns were knocked out. However, as the German ground troops left, their aircraft bombed the central part of the city indiscriminately. Eindhoven, a city of 130,000 suffered more than 1,000 civilian casualties that night, including 200 dead. Jim says the Dutch citizens do not fault the Americans for the death and destruction of their homes. But even the people who had family killed today have said that they felt bad about them getting killed but didn't feel bad that we were there causing it to happen because we did free them. In December of 1944, the Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II. It was an unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from the German home territory. Seven main roads in the Ardennes Forest converged on the small town of Bastone. Control of its crossroads was vital to the German attack. Jim and the members of the 101st were in France and were told they were going to the Pacific to invade Japan. That all changed very quickly. Sergeant Command turned lights on and said, get up, get up. There's been a breakthrough. We're going.  We're not going to any place. We don't have any winter clothing. We don't have any ammunition or weapons are turned in. After a long ride in uncovered trucks, the 101st made it to the small town in Belgium. They dumped us out in the field. After a short time, officers put us in position and we made roughly a 20 mile diameter or circumference circle around this little city of Bastone. 11 roads come together there and the Germans had to have that to run their tanks and trucks sure they couldn't go across country. They told us to go and hold it and hold it. They did. But the soldiers were not prepared for one of the coldest winters on record for 10 days. Planes couldn't fly at all. And all we had on was just what you see right here. We had a raincoat. We had everybody had his raincoat. Now the first three days it drizzled rain and then the temperature dropped and the snow came. Then it got down close to zero. Then when the weather broke, they brought started bringing in cereals of planes and dump and supplies. Of course, the first thing they brought you was ammunition. Later, they brought some food. In the first 10 days, whatever you had when you went in is all you had. Some guys might have got three boxes of cave rations, which is a day's feed. Some guys might have had none. But that's all you had when you went in. And that's what you had to exist on. The soldiers held off several enemy attacks during December, including many artillery barrages. But the tide turned for the 101st when Patton made a strategic move. Now you've also heard that Patton saved us. He didn't save us. We didn't need any saving. But he did one of the most magnificent thing that's ever been done in combat. He turned the whole army 90 degrees and brought him 100 miles and broke through. And what that did allow was us to take our wounded and dead out and bring ammunition and supplies in. We did have aerial supply, but we could have survived it. It would have been absolutely miserable, but we could have stayed there forever with only resupply from the air. But by him doing that, then we got adequate supplies. During the last days of the war, the 101st Airborne Division was in Birch's Garden, Adolf Hitler's vacation retreat. The airborne soldiers spent their days hunting members of the Nazi leadership that had gone into hiding. These are photos of Jim and members of the 101st in the Bavarian Alps. After Germany's surrender, Jim says the men were not celebrating. We felt a sense of relief that we made it. And in the last few weeks of the war, people began to get jumpy about it because you knew it was winding down and who wants to be the last guy killed. On August 1st, the 42nd Infantry Division relieved the 101st, which moved back to France to train for a possible airborne assault on Japan. These plans were canceled after the Japanese surrender and the division was deactivated November 30th, 1945 in France. The 101st lost over 2,000 soldiers during the war in Europe and suffered over 9,000 casualties. Jim says he has no regrets over what had to be done. People say it was a sacrifice. It was, to me, it was no sacrifice. I think I've said it often. It was an honor and a privilege to have been a part of history. It'll never happen that way again. The country is never going to be that united and we're not going to fight those kinds of wars. So those of us who went and came back should be very appreciative of what we went through and what we did. And I still feel that way. Jim Martin is one of many of the citizen soldiers who volunteered to put the needs of the nation before themselves. Their sacrifices made it possible for all of us to enjoy the freedom for which they shed their blood and gave their lives.


Good to go. Welcome everybody. This is the last community call for 2020. I think everybody's going to be glad to see 2020 go. We're going to try to keep this, this meeting fairly short. So we'll go ahead and get started. So here's the agenda. We're going to have a few mentee questions for you. We're going to look at, you know, how things were operating and what we did. You know, look at open ed 2020 and then what we're going to be doing for 2021. Some, some general feedback and then what we're going to do for next steps. So we do have a mentee that we're going to set up for you. And so that code if you want to go ahead and sign up for three seven two four one nine. And we'll drop that into the chat here as well. I'm going to go ahead and turn the questions as soon give people a minute to, to log that on and we're going to turn this over to Tiffany to walk us through the mentee questions. So, I don't know how many people are here but I know we saw some, some thumbs ups earlier but to start us off. Some people are already answering. Where are you joining us from putting your US state your Canadian province for your country. Russia, Switzerland, Egypt, we have some, some countries in here I actually was not expecting which is kind of cool. Yeah, thanks for staying up late. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for joining us. Okay, and to settle the debate of open ed 20 how do you like your cheetos crunchy or puffy. I mean I don't I think we need about 20 more answers, answer options for this so we can all just pick which version of cheetos there's so many different kinds but yes the real important questions. So far crunchy is winning. I think crunchy, I think crunchy is going to be the winner. Personally I like hot lime crunchy cheetos. Yeah, coffee is actually the correct answer. Well, I disagree. Okay, and finally what is your this isn't the end of the presentation of course but what is your favorite memory or take away from open ed 20. There's so much going on real collaboration. Yes. The early show. The show was fun. Social justice track. The real open education was the friends you made along the way. Oh, I love that. Opportunities to build community learning connecting the spiral journal activity at the end I don't, I don't even remember that. But it sounds cool so maybe I'll have to go back and look at it. The tea time. Okay. The cheeto debate was a really wonderful way to build community. We agree. Yoga. Lots of connection community. We are resilient disco ed was cool among us. The care equity grid from my husband as plenary. Where is that. They're moving too fast. Progressive stacking to build inclusivity and virtual settings. Advocacy push afterwards. The wine tasting. Keynotes, virtual spaces. I just realized when I read disco ed earlier it was supposed to be discord sorry. It was supposed to be discord. I don't know if I'm going to read it to realize that. Maybe we should think about it disco ed for next year. Yeah. Okay. I, I'm sorry. I don't remember. I'm supposed to pass this to me. Okay. I pass it to Nicole. All right. Okay. Oh, yes, Stacey, the discord joke has. Is perfect and very true. We can stick. Oh, yeah. And anything. So we do want to provide some operational updates just on general conference operations. So I'm going to go through some of the things that we've been doing with the operations that have been supporting the conference and the operations team. Just to quickly wrap up a couple of things for the 2020 conference. We obviously the conference has now come and gone. It happened on November 9th to 13th. All of the recordings from sessions have been posted on YouTube is available to all of you. So I'm going to go through some of the things that we've been doing. For your logged in account. That's associated with your registration. Once we finish resolving a few issues around captioning and. Speakers. We will be releasing all of those videos publicly at some point in the new year. So stay tuned for that. Part of the whole idea of an open conference is making it. Available to the, to the whole world. So we're going to be releasing all of those videos. So more to come on that very soon. Of course, there was an enormous amount of incredibly valuable content generated through the conference. And there have been a number of conversations among the internal teams around how to keep that, keep that content being. The conversation around that content to continue into the future. So I'm going to go through some of the things that I'm going to talk about. Members of the, the program planning team have stepped up to pilot. Something that's going to be called open ed conversations, which is taking a couple of pieces of content from the conference and watching it together and then having a conversation around the common theme. And the first one of those is going to be actually next week on how to register for that. So that is sort of the wrap for 2020. In terms of operations, we'll talk a little bit more about the, the, the outcomes and just a bit, but I'm going to turn it over to MJ to talk a little bit about 2021. Thanks, Nicole. So hi, everybody. I'm MJ Bishop. I direct the Kerwin center for academic innovation in the university system in Maryland, but we've been leading the Maryland open source textbook initiative out of the Kerwin center. For the last, gosh, now it's almost seven years. And more recently in collaboration with Maryland online, the Maryland decision making program. I'm going to turn it over to MJ to talk a little bit about 2021. So we're currently in collaboration with Maryland online, the Maryland association of community colleges and the Maryland independent colleges and universities. So most is a statewide initiative and we're very excited to, for Nicole to have invited us to consider hosting. However, that looks the 2021 open ed conference. We have decided that next year's conference will continue to be successful. And I think that that decision has made, been made upfront. So it will be a little easier to plan. But I do want to say that, you know, we will remain flexible and, you know, hopefully knock some wood here in my office. If in fact the vaccine proves to be successful and there's some call for doing a few things at least face to face. I'm able to, to work with all 12 of our campuses and frankly also the 16 community colleges in the state to make sure that we're able to do that. So I'm excited to talk about, you know, some venues for some, for some, some face to face activity. If that's in fact, what, what you all decide to do is part of the planning. So we'll call it a, we'll call it a hybrid flexible open to whatever comes our way. But at least for the time being beginning with. Looking at planning this as a virtual event. So I'm excited to be part of the park for this last year. So I have no qualms about, about this being a virtual event in the fall. As the slide says, says dates are to be determined, but you know, obviously we'd still be looking at that October to November timeframe. And the same four partner organizations will be supporting. I don't think Colorado is really going away. I think he's just going to step into the background like I was last year and this year will be Maryland will be much more in the foreground, but of course we'll still have Spark doing the amazing things that they've done to coordinate this and open stacks facilitating and also really importantly, being willing to be the fiscal sponsor of this because you know, I think, I think they're all feeling a lot more confident about next year, but this year of course, the fact that open stacks was willing to take the chance that they did on all of this. And I think it's just, it's just, it's just, it just says an awful lot about that organization and, and you know, huge thanks to them for that work.  Nicole, was there anything else you wanted me to cover? Yeah. So what I wanted to add is that, that we've received a number of questions about just sort of what the committee process is going to look like for next year and opportunities to get involved. And we're going to regroup early next year and get a lot more information out to the community about that. And just in the meantime, you know, you're all, if you're here, you're connected with us in some way. So just, you know, watch the email list and then there's a lot more information out there. So make sure that you're getting any relevant updates here. And Tiffany, we'll be sure to send recipes on those crab cakes. Make sure that you're doing them right. Doing them the Maryland way. I think I wanted to be sure to note just, you know, we feel like we have huge shoes to fill after following Colorado's lead. But I'll say, I think we're also up to the task. So we're looking forward to the role that we can play in supporting this work in the fall. Thanks so much, MJ. And, you know, the, the idea behind our four organizations coming together to support this conference in early 2020 was really coming out of the fact that at the time there, there sort of wasn't going to be an open ed conference. If, if people didn't step up to organize it and, you know, our role in that process was to provide a little bit of stability and certainty over the, the, the 2020 and 2021 years, of course, that was before we knew there was going to be a pandemic. But I think that, you know, I just want to express to, to you MJ and, and, and to our colleagues in Colorado and open stocks, just, you know, how grateful we here at the spark team have been to work together and we're, you know, all certainly committed to making sure that, that next year's conference is successful but equally committed to continuing to work closely with the community to figure out what happens next after 2021 and making sure that this continues to be a conference that is truly foreign by the community. And, you know, our, our sort of mission in all of this is to provide the space for those important conversations to happen. So we're counting on everybody who's here and everybody who's not here to be part of that process going forward. So, so more to come soon. All right. So now I am going to turn it over to Emily to share back a little bit of what we have heard from you all in the, in the open ed 20 feedback form. Great. Well, we're going to step back in time to June, I think. Oh no, here we are. So here we are with some nice responses at the end of the conference, we had a feedback form. One question was where do you reside and we had 89% of respondents in North America, but we were excited. We did have international participation. 4% of respondents were in Asia, two and a half percent in Africa, 2% in South America. So while it did remain an overwhelmingly North American audience, we do have participants from all over the world, which is very exciting. Let's see. So the next question was how many times have you attended open ed conferences in previous years? And we had a little over 70% of attendees were very first time attendees had never attended the conference before. And another about 10%, this was just their second year. They'd only attended one previous time. So about 80% of our attendees were in their first or second year of attending the conference. And we certainly do think the online format made it possible for many people who had been unable to attend in the past to be able to attend this year. Oh, nice. And so there's an opportunity in the chat to fill out the conference and had not yet had a chance to fill out the feedback. So now we're stepping back in time to June 2020. And we solicited feedback as we were planning the conference. And here were a few of the highlights that we heard. There were some concern around having keynotes. There was a request to avoid or at least clearly mark vendor presentations. We wanted more diverse representation, including black, indigenous and people of color. A call to elevate voices on the margins to focus on accessibility of the conference, the importance of inclusive networking and mentoring opportunities, and as well as a call to help newcomers feel welcome. So that's where we were starting. And so these were goals. We wanted to address all of these areas. And now after we have held the conference, here's some of the positive feedback that we have received. I'm excited about the variety and diversity of programming that we offered. We talked about how there were a lot of people who were able to attend for the first time because of the virtual format. And again, that was pandemic driven. That just happened, but I think there have been benefits to come from that virtual format. Many people said that they were surprised at how much they were able to attend for the organization, the technology, the way you were able to get into sessions, that sessions were recorded, and appreciation for Discord, the opportunity to connect in that other platform. There was also some more negative feedback or areas for growth. People commented about the quantity of programming. It was hard to attend all the sessions. And the scheduling didn't work for everyone. The schedule was too early or too late for some. There was a comment that there wasn't much down time. And so some people were requesting longer breaks. Of course, Zoom fatigue, it's a thing, and we do hear you on that. There were some comments on the frequency of the code of conduct statement. It was read at the beginning of each session. And then a call for more student, international, and black indigenous people of color voices. There's more work for us to do as we continue trying to plan a very inclusive conference. And so this is kind of a summation overall. How much would you like to encourage your colleagues to attend this conference? How likely are you to recommend it? And we're pleased that fewer than 5% scored six or lower. So we really had a very overwhelmingly strong, a lot of tens, right? So that was very encouraging for us. And I'm going to turn this one over to Ethan. Yeah. So one of the questions, you know, that we are super interested in hearing from the community about is the venue and sort of the structure of the conference overall. And so one of the questions we asked in the survey. Was about the, you know, the online versus in-person question and how to navigate that. Sort of post or still mid COVID pandemic. And so I just, I wanted to talk for a second, quickly about the responses to this. Emily was talking about some of the tensions in the feedback that we received, right? For some folks, it was too early. For some folks, it was too late. Some folks said it was too many things. Some folks said they wish there was more programming and, you know, conference planning is very much about threading that needle. And so with a similar question, a similar result with this question in terms of comparing in-person folks who are interested in it being in-person or online. So one thing that really stood out to us is that, you know, over 80%, you know, almost 90% of people wanted a virtual component of the conference. 20% of people said that it should be exclusively virtual. You know, we had about 70% that had some sort of dual, dual existence and a very small number of people who said exclusively in-person. I totally get it. I love the in-person conference, but I'm also somebody that's been privileged enough to work for an organization that has funding and can send me there. And I can go, you know, year after year to build those relationships and connections. So knowing that travel budgets have been, you know, hit really hard as somebody just said in the chat, John said that, you know, we are being super mindful of that and conscious of that obviously with next year's planning. But we will definitely, you know, this is definitely informing how we look at future years as well. Yes. And as Maha says in the chat, nothing should ever be without a virtual option again. Agreed. Thanks, Ethan. Anyone else on the steering committee have things to add before we, about the 2020 feedback before we move on? I think the one thing that, that I was reflecting on looking at the chat is just how a lot of the critiques are in areas of tension where it's not that there's a right answer and a wrong answer for everybody. It's that there are right answers and wrong answers for individual people. So for example, with the schedule, some things that are too early for some are too late for others. And I think that the work of conference organizing is, is sort of all about finding the balance that works for as many people as possible and then working on ways to be inclusive of, of sort of everybody else. So we have a lot to think about in terms of how to strike the best balance and the, I think one of the biggest things that, that, that, you know, certainly I, and I think we have learned through this year is that the best way to do that is by asking people. So, you know, thank you all for continuing to show up at these meetings and, and sharing your input. And the conference is so much better for all of the input that everybody gave. So definitely, definitely intending to continue that for next year. So I think Haley, it's over to you. Cool. So I'm, I'm Haley Bab, I'm a open education coordinator with open ed committee, and I'm a member of the student committee, but I am sort of the liaison for the future of open ed committee who has been working to, well, I guess now that the 2020 conference is over to, I guess really dive into what the longterm planning of the conference is going to look like and, and how this is going to take shape after 2021. So our big focus now is to, I guess design the strategic planning process. It's going to be a very in-depth process. So I imagine, you know, it will take some time, but I'm confident that, you know, this team is, is full of, you know, excellent people, experts in the field who will be able to help us do something that's truly inclusive. And serves the needs of the community as best we can. So we will be using, you know, some of the feedback that we collected from 2020 and before that we're certainly going to continue getting community feedback throughout the year, you know, whether that be through these monthly calls or, or whatever else we deem necessary, but, you know, want to recommit that it's incredibly important to us with the communities at the center of this process. So we'll be doing everything we can to make sure that that model is going to be something that's going to be something that's welcoming of everyone and inclusive of everyone in the community. Yeah. So like I said, we'll be reaching out to try and include more voices. The ultimate goal is that after 2021, this will be a completely community governed conference and community. So really looking forward to see what that's going to look like. I think it's a really, really exciting project to be a part of because the possibilities are just endless and we're at such a rare opportunity to be able to shape this in a way that, you know, is good for all of us. So very excited to be a part of this work and looking forward to working more with the community to create something awesome together. Is this me too? Yep. Oh, okay. Cool. Sorry, everyone, we're exhausted. We're just doing the best we can. We're all ready to say goodbye to 2020. Yeah, seriously. Great. Yeah. So this is just, if you could give us some feedback now, we'll start now. So how do you want to be involved in 2021 and not only in 2021, but beyond what does that look like to you and everything away? I can. Oh, I love that. Me too. Yeah, I feel like this is a hard question because, you know, there's so much. And of course, anybody, this isn't going to be linked to your name. So if you would like to sign up for something specific, please, you know, make sure that you communicate that in a different way. But we just want to ask, you know, what, what ways do you want to be involved and maybe ways that we're not, we're not thinking about equitable, hospitable virtual meetings. I like that word hospitable. Clapping and cheering. We're going to need lots of that. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of questions about the needs. Like, I think we'll have more information on that sort of in the new year and more specific roles that we're recruiting for, but still working through 2020 content. Me too. There's so much, so much good stuff. Holding the steering committee accountable to DEI and social justice commitments. Awesome. Yeah. That's exactly what we need. Great. Yeah. So I see there are a couple of questions in the chat. So one is what, what are some of the needs from, from Michael? I think. We have a lot of thinking to do about that. So more, more to come on that, but we also just wanted to ask the question of, of how you want to contribute. So this is the other side of that. And Maya also asked the question about. Is there an opportunity for the community to be able to pose questions and meetings like this and like, yeah, that's a great suggestion. And maybe there's like a form or a structured process for doing that. Thanks. Cool. So yeah, our next question. I really like this question. What's one resolution that you're setting for your open education work in 2021. I think there's been. A very overarching theme of kind of like. You know, reestablishing and publishing. Yeah, that's a good one. And it's, it's an opportunity for all of us, I guess to take inventory of our work and, and be intentional in how we go about it. So this is something that I'm definitely going to be thinking about over the next little while. Self care, conserving energy, advocacy. Ooh, a student union open X policy. Love that. Getting more involved with the conference, more adoption at my institution, more community engagement, student connection. Equity, certainly. Fantastic. Structuring my program and positioning it for accountability. Apologies. I think this was set so you can only submit once. So if you have something else to say, feel free to put it in the chat. The self care. Yeah, especially if. If next year is anything like this year, which hopefully it's not, but you know, I've been a good lesson for me in conserving my energy. That's for sure. Yeah. So to wrap us up, I think we're over to winning. Yes. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Awesome. So we are hosting a holiday party this year. I'm actually so excited for it because I couldn't play among us or trivia at the actual conference. So I'm really excited to play some games with the whole group this conference. So we'll be doing a holiday party on Thursday next week, December 17th from 4pm to 6pm. We will also be doing a treats kind of competition. So you can bring your own homemade treats and show everyone, give a 30 seconds feel and enter in for a chance to win. Some open ed merch and swag. So bring your homemade treats. We'll have lots of games there and breakout rooms. Ethan will be leading among us. Tiffany will be leading just general games. So we have some of those planned as well. And I believe Tina will be leading trivia. So it will be a lot of fun. Oh my gosh. Cheeto bingo. Yes. Cheeto bingo. So please join to register. I'll put the link in the chat. And then I just stuck a link in the chat to the. Participate page on the open education conference website and we'll, we're going to be good about posting upcoming events there. And including information on time zones. And how to register. So in addition to finding this, you can find other information as well. So I think that is all we had for today. I think we just want to remind everybody to connect with us on, on social media. And I think we all can agree saying goodbye to 2020. It was quite a year. And just, you know, I think. Continue to be grateful of how members of the open education field came together to support the convening that happened and to see all of the energy and excitement about what's going forward. I think you can probably tell by how this meeting is gone. We're all ready to go for a holiday break. And just, you know, grateful to all of you for showing up and continuing to be part of this and, and, and please do continue and stay tuned for more next year. So yeah, sleep. So yeah, any Amy Lee, anything else to share in closing? Having trouble finding the unmute key. We, we feel so privileged to be part of this community and the, the conference just underscored all the things that, that I love about being part of this community and really looking forward to a merry break mess. All right. Well, please join me in saying goodbye 2020. We'll see you officially in 2021, but do come to the holiday party and open ed conversations next week. It'll be fun.


Since one of the important goals of algebra is to be able to solve all types of equations, then every time we get introduced to a new type of expression, we have a new type of equation. So remember that a rational expression is a quotient of two polynomials, like this, this, or this. Hey, wait a minute. That's not a rational expression. Get out of here! Now, the important thing is that since we can't divide by zero, every rational expression could have forbidden values. A rational equation is an equation involving a rational expression. And whenever you have rational expressions, the important thing to remember is to always identify values that make the expression undefined. So here's a nice rational equation. Let's begin by identifying any forbidden values. Since no denominator can be zero, anything that makes a denominator zero is forbidden. So let's see what we have to avoid by setting each denominator equal to zero. So if x plus two equals zero, then x is... If x plus four is zero, then x is... In order for the product x plus two times x plus four to be zero, one of them must be zero. So either x plus two is zero, well, we've already solved that. Or x plus four is zero, and we've already solved that. So it's important to keep track of the logic. x equals negative two, x equals negative four make a denominator zero, and that is forbidden. And so we have to require x not be negative two, and x not be negative four. So we can simplify rational equations by using two useful ideas. First, we can multiply all terms of an equation by the same thing and still have an equation. And second, when we multiply a fraction by its denominator, we eliminate the denominator. And what this means is that we can use this approach to rewrite any rational equation as a polynomial equation which we can solve. However, the new equation may have solutions equal to the forbidden values. And the thing to remember is that a forbidden value is never a solution. So if our new equation does have some solutions equal to the forbidden values, these are extraneous solutions and should be omitted. So let's start off with this rational equation. And the first thing we do is identify any forbidden values, and so we require x not be equal to negative two or negative four. The first denominator is x plus two, so if we multiply all terms by x plus two, and now, because all of our fractions are product over product, we can begin cancellation. And since we've done something, we've obviously solved the problem. Or maybe not. Don't be a politician. Always ask, what else can we do? And we still have a denominator of x plus four, so if we multiply all of our terms by x plus four. And now we have a series of fractions, so we can cancel out the common factors. And now we have an equation where there are no fractions. So now we'll solve the equation. Over on the left we have a mess of arithmetic operations, so we'll expand. And after the dust settles, we see that we have a quadratic equation. So we'll pick our favorite method of solving quadratic equations. How about the quadratic formula? And we get solutions of x equals three and x equals negative four. And we can circle these as our answers, but remember that a forbidden value is never a solution. And we've required that x was not equal to negative two and not equal to negative four. And so that means this solution, x equals negative four, is extraneous and should not be included in our final answer. Or let's take a look at this equation. So first we'll find the forbidden values, those that make the denominator equal to zero. That would be x equal to negative three and x equal to two. We'll multiply through by our denominators x plus three and then x minus two. Now we have a whole mess of arithmetic, so we'll expand everything out and collect like terms. And after all the dust settles, we end up with a quadratic equation. And let's go straight to using the quadratic formula. And again, we have two solutions to the new equation. We have to make sure that these aren't any of the forbidden values. And so here the easy thing to recognize is that both of these are irrational numbers. So neither of them can be equal to two or negative three. So they are both solutions.


Mary Jablonski, an architectural paint researcher based here in New York City. Architectural paint is used on just about every building in the world. It's probably, I would say, 99% of our buildings have got architectural paint on them. And what's interesting is it is this paint that actually helps tell the story of not only how the building was used, but also by the people who used it. So it's very much in many ways a cultural history that you find. So paint is far more important than just saying, oh, look what the first color of the building was. But it's interesting to see how tastes change. Paint protects the material, but it's also about decoration. And the human beings that inhabited these buildings, used these buildings were just as interested in decoration as they were in the protection of the finishes. So as you go into a building, it's interesting to try and determine how those buildings were used by reading what the types of finishes used were. For instance, if you're looking at an office building, or if you're looking at a bank, or any other court building, they often, particularly the end of 19th century and early 20th century, had wood-grainning. And the wood-grainning was different depending on the hierarchy of the use of spaces. For the people that were at the top of the echelon, you might have a burled door panel or a quarter saw-note panel. But if you were lowered down, you were going to be in a room probably with a door with straight-grainning. Also, in a sense, you can read how rooms were used in a house. Again, you might find wood-grainning on certain doors of bedrooms, but the servant's doors would probably not have wood-grainning on. They would probably be more plainly painted. And rooms in a house always did have a hierarchy of space. You had public and you had private. And your public spaces, you were going to put your best finishes there. Architectural paint actually was changed drastically in the mid-19th century. Before that, it was basically artisans only that would be applying paint. You certainly as a homeowner or certainly as a business person would not be applying paint. It took too much skill and training to be able to do any work with paint. It was only when the commercialization of paint occurred in the mid-19th century that we actually start getting probably a loss of skill of how to make paint going on because you could now buy it either in boxes for water-based paint or in cans for an oil-based paint. Now, I'm going to simplify things drastically by saying there are two basic types of paints. There's a lot more to it, but it's easier to understand, I think, a little bit of what happened if you think about paint as either being water-based or being oil-based. Oil-based paint would have been mainly linseed oil until about the 20th century and they would have had a binder in a vehicle. The binder was often lead white and the vehicle was often linseed oil. Water-based paints, on the other hand, were easier probably to apply and far less toxic. The vehicle was water, so they didn't have a solvent which you would often find in the oil-based paints. They looked very, very different as well, but in the mid-20th century what happened is with commercialization of the paint industry, you started to get them into these containers and at the same time they were being sold to the painters and to the homeowners through brochures. And it is interesting in these brochures, unlike any other sort of brochure of this period, they actually had paint samples. And what it does is it allows us to actually have a peek into what these finishes look like. They look drastically different than any of this modern late 20th, early 21st century paint looks. Why don't we take a look at the water-based paint first? You will notice that these are the very velvety, very pastel colors. You do not get pastel oil-based paints in this period, so when you see those Victorian painted ladies, those are not accurate colors over the period, but you do find these wonderful pastel, very velvety looking paints that are called calcimines for the most part. We have these little snippets from history of what these finishes look like. Now these paints that you are looking at right here are basically a mix of whiteing, glue, and some water with pigment added to it. So you have basically a binder, which is your whiteing, and a vehicle which is water and the glue that helps hold that together. This is what are two examples of what you would find in a store if you went to go select an oil-based paint. Now they have also brochures, but they thought these were a little bit larger and a little bit easier to use. And you will notice that these are not flat paints. They were applied with a brush, and you could actually see the brush strokes in this paint. It was a firm called Walman and Martinez, and you would find these little boards hung up in the store and you could go and select what kind of paint you wanted to paint for your house. Now these were for the body of the house, and if you look here, you can see the color. This is number six, and this is number 73, but they also tell you what are the colors you could paint the trim and the windows and your shutters on your house. So these were guides to help people determine how they wanted to paint the building of the style they were interested in. So how do we go about doing the study of architectural paint? Most of it is going to be relatively low tech. We're going to do what we call cross-sectional analysis of the paint. In other words, we're going to look at an under a microscope in cross-section. The most important thing to start with is you must be very careful about how and where you take your sample. What we get are very small samples like this, as you can see in this bag, and we take part of our sample and we embed it in resin and polish it and we'll look this small. It is. It's very, very small, but it gives us quite a bit of information. When doing architectural paint research, it's really key that you have a good microscope and then a microscope that's pertinent to what you're looking at. What we have here is a stereo zoom microscope. It goes from a power of 7.5 to 40. You often do go up to sort of 70, which is quite useful, but it's very important to record the magnification of what you're doing, but also it's important to have the light source, and the light source we have here has got a daylight filter, which is basically what the paint should look like in daylight. As you can see here, there's an image on the screen that essentially you can see the number of layers. You can see the dirt layers. In this case, we don't have any elaborate paints. It's a very old house that you can see the multiple layers of paint that have been built up over the years. This is from a vernacular house, so it's not going to be multiple layers of primers. They basically just put finished coatings one right after the other. Now, one of the other things that when you are doing paint analysis, it's absolutely key is you really need to have your photomicrographs. You need to show people what it is that you were looking at under the microscope. What we're doing when we're looking through the microscope and we're doing any kind of examination of these layers is we are collecting data. We're not analyzing it at that time. We're actually just collecting data. But once you collect your data, your data should be separate from the analysis. It's absolutely key. Sometimes colors fade. Sometimes colors change. Some rooms have different painted finishes on one section of the wall versus another section of the wall. The whole thing is making sure that when you do your work, you record everything carefully and you make sure that you have these photographs so that other people can take a look at what you saw and see the same things that you did. I was a graduate out of the Columbia Historic Preservation Program. I came in thinking I was going to do more urban planning and we discovered the world of architectural conservation. In fact, I fell in love with it at the Diamond House, which is farther up in Manhattan, as it was one of the study houses in a conservation workshop. And of course, one of the things I looked at there was this architectural paint. So I have been working in this field since 1990, but I've had my own firm since 1995. Architectural paint research is actually not something new at Columbia. It's been going on a long time. And in fact, Columbia has been host to two of the major important architectural paint research conferences, one of them in 2008 and one of them in 2017. And both of the proceedings of that have been published. So when we look at architectural paint, we don't just look at the color. We take a look at all of the ingredients of the paint. We take a look at this whole series of colors. And in many instances, what we do is paint archaeology. And the interesting part about this paint is it helps tell the story of the building. We can look at the exterior of the building, but it doesn't really give us any sense of how that building has been used. If you start taking a look at the finishes in the building, and this includes paint, you really start to get an understanding of who it was and how this building was used. So paint just tells this wonderful story of what is going on in the buildings that we try and preserve.