The only easy day was yesterday. HANDS OFF!  Stop trying to hide from the pain. Hands off, eyes open. Welcome to the Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the official Navy Seal podcast. The open water can be both deadly and unforgiving.  I'm Daniel Fletcher. Today we speak with aquatics expert Dan Kish at the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School. We discuss the best practices, tools, and techniques used exclusively by Navy Seal or swick candidates and operators, particularly the combat side stroke. Let's dive in. For starters, thank you for taking the time. Your expertise is super important to be able to share with as many people as possible that are trying to get successfully through this program. For starters, if you can just go ahead and spend a little bit of time talking about your role here at Naval Special Warfare and then we can take it from there. Sounds good. My name is Dan. I am one of the physical training leaders here at Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School. My main point of focus is the aquatic side. It's much more than just swimming. We spend a lot of time on treading, water rescue, pool comp skills. My job is to help make the candidates as comfortable and confident in the water over the eight weeks here and plan and execute all the work out safely to the highest standard that we expect of them. The water aspect of kind of the initial exposure to the standards of the physical standards test is usually where a lot of people, I think, have their weakest. At least most people have not been exposed to the level of swimming that is needed, required to be able to make it in the program or even kind of start training. So I think that your information will be really valuable for a lot of people listening. Maybe just if you could start off with talking just a little bit about your background in aquatics. I'm guessing that you were a swimmer or you were involved in some sort of water sports before you came into the program. So correct. I always loved being in the water. I was that kid. You couldn't get me out of the pool, the lake growing up. I got pretty good at swimming.  So all the staff members are division one swimmers, collegiate swimmers. Did some post-graduate swimming. Was good. Got into coaching, became successful at that. And I've been here since class 297, so just over five years now. And I love it. We get all walks of life from kids that barely seen a pool, barely passed the PST to get in to Olympic gold medalists and everything in between there. So all walks of life come through and kids just want to learn to get better in the water. But water is a majority of time. They're weakest environment to be in. We're humans. We don't belong in the water at all. And a lot of kids come to prep, not prep for what we're about to do here. The focus of this episode is the combat side stroke. And we'll get to that in just a second. You mentioned a couple other areas that your focus is on, whether it's treading water and stuff like that. Are there areas that maybe other than the combat side stroke that people maybe should investigate, in addition to that stroke specifically, to at least kind of get themself familiar with? Absolutely. Besides just swimming combat side stroke, we swim at slick, so without fins on and then with fins on. We also train freestyle almost every day. And we also swim breaststroke here. So they all are a great asset to know and learn. The better you are at all the strokes, the better you'll be at any one. We'll even throw some butterfly just for fun in there as well. Great cardio building tool, great fuel for the water. But they all serve a purpose. We swim a lot of freestyle when we start doing rescues to get to your victim. Great way to increase your lung capacity there. Breaststroke, we want to learn the pull for guiding and siding purposes. The kick to help you with the tread and to learn underwater breaststroke pullouts is more the most efficient way to swim underwater there. So basically, you covered almost all aspects of aquatic sports in terms of swimming styles. I would be hesitant to say maybe it's worth someone's time to really become very, very, very proficient in all of those. Obviously they're going to be using those strokes to train in more of a fitness context and more of a development context. Not necessarily they're going to be specifically quizzed or tested in those areas. But obviously it's helpful to know that. That's not the only thing you're going to be doing in the water, obviously. Correct. The exit test, so in order to leave Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School, you have to do the 1,000 meter swim combat side stroke under 20 minutes, which are average times right around 17 minutes. However, we still want you to become great at all the strokes, all the skills. It's just more tools. You can add your toolbox to help you out further down the pipeline. So obviously we're going to try to unpack a little bit about some of the unique, I guess, challenges or difficulties that people have or maybe not so unique, common difficulties people have with the specific stroke. So if you want to kind of start in really a broad sense, maybe take a 1,000 foot up view of areas that you think are common that people have a misconception or maybe a very, very, very common mistake and maybe the quick fixes for those things just is kind of a real quick touch on that area. So combat side stroke, I swam competitively for over a decade and I didn't even know what combat side stroke was until I got into the military. And then I started realizing what the stroke was, why it was created, and then how to critique and correct it to be as efficient as possible, try and be the fastest as possible and still create that low profile while swimming combat side stroke. So a lot of the time, the first couple of weeks here and what really needed to stress is technically correct swimming. Perfect, pretty combat side stroke. Speed will eventually come but focus on just perfect technique starting off. Trying to be as long and efficient in the water as you can. We see a lot of students or candidates come through that have a little bit bigger and bulkier muscles. Those are not always the best for in the water. Decreasing your range of motion. We want to be as long as possible. Get your stroke count down to help you prepare for those longer open water swims to be taken place. So is it fair to say that you see a lot of people that are maybe even just learning for the first time kind of trying to quote over muscle to kind of push and put too much into it and not focus on taking their time and lengthening their stroke and being efficient? Is that, do you think accurate? Yes, witness that today during a PST just because you're taking more and more strokes. You're swimming more violent and higher turnover rates. Sometimes you feel like you're going faster and you're not going to lie. There's a kid swimming next to him taking half as many strokes and going faster. So I see that man attitude where you want to race and compete and you're taking a ton more strokes but you're just working harder to go the same time or sometimes even slower. It doesn't mean you're getting anywhere faster. Correct. Are there any big areas or maybe what are some of your cues that you say to get people to kind of slow down?  Absolutely. And we see that here over the eight weeks. We do many different workouts from short, fast, you know, high intensity sprints to longer distance and the last couple of weeks here we focus a lot on pacing. We always have the clock facing you.  When you leave, what your splits are. Are you hitting your goal times? Are you making the set? Running and swimming, you're always against the clock. You know, in the weight room, it's weights. In the pool, you have to watch the clock to see how fast you are going. Other than kind of, I would say, excuse me for not using maybe the correct terminology, maybe strokes per minute or whatever the term is. What else do you see in terms of kind of like quote sloppy form? That's a really common thing that you're constantly having to queue people with, you know, not to do. So other things we see in the water, in the pool, a lot of candidates will be swimming uphill, which is quite natural with the body position in the water. Same thing as running uphill. Running uphill, it's a lot more energy. Now when you say swimming uphill, can you give me kind of a, what that means to you? Coaches are yelling at you like your feet are dragging on the bottom of the pool. Your hips are sagging down. You are creating more drag for yourself. So running uphill is very difficult. Running uphill would be the same metaphor for that. To correct that, we want to try and get your legs going a little bit more. So your feet should be near at the surface.  Normally when people are not using their legs as much or thicker candidates in the water, but this will have a direct correlation. Once we start doing buddy toes, you're going to have that same bad body position. Now you have to toe someone and you're just creating a significant, higher amount of drag for yourself, which is stay away from swimming uphill. And is that typically a head position issue that kind of then lead the body follows it or what's usually the culprit there? So correct, head position does play a major role for that. The top of your head will always be pointing in the direction of travel. The majority of candidates, we will see, you can swim really good, showing me the top of your head point forward, but then they go and take a breath and they will lift their head to breathe, which will shoot that body position back uphill, which is incorrect, creating more drag. A lot of our candidates are good until they do take a breath. So A, don't breathe, or B, learn how to control that breath or get back into position. Absolutely, so snap that quick breath in. You will have one eye in the water, one eye out of the water. When your mouth is above the surface, you are inhaling only. We should not be hearing you exhale and inhale when your mouth is above the surface. So dump that air out right before your breath. If you're very negative in the water, keep the air in, but right before your breath, dump that air out. When your mouth is above the surface, inhale only, eyes right back down. And that's for freestyle and for combat side stroke. Same body position. So would you say that is probably the largest deficiency in people's stroke whenever they arrive? Or really the thing you see the most common is body position in terms of swimming uphill like you're speaking about and not being able to breathe very efficiently and get back into the right position. Is that the most common problem that you see? Body position plays a major role. Conditioning and speed will come along, but if you're swimming uphill, you're just burning wasteful energy. Another major issue we see candidates stop, pause or sink at some point in their stroke. We always want to move forward in the water, whether it's combat side stroke, breast stroke, or freestyle. A lot of times we'll see them move forward in the stroke and then take a breath and stop, pause, sink, and then start moving forward again, stop, pause, sink. We want to always move forward in the water, even during your breath. Maintain that body moving forward. Just because you're taking a breath does not mean you need to stop, pause, or sink. What do you think of the culprit? My first instinct is to think that the rhythm there is not comfortable quite in the rhythm of the stroke at an experienced thing or are there other culprits? It's actually difficult to do. They will have a pull, breathe, kick, glide, pretty common pattern for combat side stroke and for breast stroke. You can start with your arms, then get your breath, execute your kick, and hopefully have a long glide. During the breath part of that, don't stop dead in the water. Do not sink and create more drag. Always be moving forward. Once again, back to the breathing. Normally our candidates are good until they do take a breath and stop in the water there. Keep your legs going, especially with freestyle. Always engage your legs. Always keep your legs going behind you. In combat side stroke, during your recovery, try to have the least amount of underwater recovery as possible. When your arms are underneath the water, try to have the least amount of resistance that you can. Active streamlining. You said something about recovery.  Can you go into a little bit more detail or a least amount of resistance? Is that what you are saying? Correct. For combat side stroke, it was designed to be very low profile. No white water or splashing taking place. It is a very efficient stroke. However, just like breaststroke arms, the underwater recovery part of the stroke is underwater, which is not very efficient because you are pushing yourself backwards when you do that. You want to over exaggerate the underwater recovery and minimize the amount of resistance when you move your hands back out into the streamline position. So you are not fighting yourself, essentially. Don't push yourself backwards at all during your strokes there. Okay. Is this stroke used primarily as a test and fitness mechanism, if you will? Or is this stroke used operationally during mission? Both are correct. The stroke is great to increase your overall fitness levels without banging up your body. Swimming is a great way whether whatever stroke you are doing increase your overall fitness with very low to no impact. You should be able to swim for hours still feel good.  So when you do swim, make sure you are over exaggerating that you feel loose in the water. That plays a cardio fitness role in it. But operationally speaking it was designed to be efficient so you could be able to swim your long distances infiltrate and extract a couple miles and still carry out the mission.  We do a lot of fine tuning getting dialed in here but if you look throughout history swimming has played an important role in the history of mankind and warfare in every century. It goes back in the day but just recently with the UDTs you look at World War II Korea, Vietnam there is many aquatic stories from the greats but if they did not have that maritime aquatic background we would not have heard about these stories at all. How does combat side stroke differ from the regular side stroke? Is there glaring differences very similar? Just maybe give me some detail on that would be great.  Combat side stroke you are going to have a little bit more rotation so we are not going to be swimming flat. And the hips are in the shoulders area. So just like any sport you will have a lot of power come from your hips and your core. Back to those common mistakes that we see from our candidates where people swim flat which we do not want. Swimming is not just your arms up swimming is not just your legs down body engaged. Drive with your hips and your core back on to streamline on your stomach. I see maybe there is no glide phase of the stroke but towards the end of the stroke you are facing the bottom of the pool more than just facing the side of the pool. Correct your belly button will not point to the wall the entire time you will be rotating so your belly button will point at the wall and the bottom throughout every cycle when you take your breath with one eye in the water, one eye out moving at the wall then once you execute your scissor kick so your top leg will start initiating that rotation the top leg will go forward execute your scissor kick and while doing that you are going to drive with your hips back into the streamline position so it should be quite fluid motion during your pull breath powerful kick and glide but we are not swimming flat on one side the entire time you will be rotating with this combat side stroke drive with your hips and your core full body exercise don't swim flat and then don't over rotate either so we see some candidates where they want to take a big breath and they look up to the ceiling and then they have to spend all that time going back into the streamline position on their stomach wasting a lot of time and over rotating onto their backs which is what we don't want the whole face and both ears out of the water you know kind of thing and that plays a role with swimming uphill if you pick your head up to breathe for your breath your hips will drop if you over rotate on your back you are wasting more time which is unnecessary and inefficient so we want to be as efficient as possible while swimming there we are looking at the PST a little bit kind of like a race even if it's just against the clock or yourself it's beneficial to kind of helping the combat side stroke time diminish in terms of kind of water fitness if you will that's probably not the right term absolutely the better you are at all four strokes the better you'll be at any one all those elite swimmers if you see just a butterfly or just a back stroker they swim all four strokes almost every day still whether it's just a little bit a little warm up, cool down, main set you will always train combat side stroke on your good side the entire time like I said we'll do some freestyle almost every day give yourself challenging breathing patterns a wonderful way to build up your lung capacity wow having a little bit of elevated heart rate with freestyle combat side stroke both sides we will train breast stroke the first week here we'll break it down where we have demonstration which drills are just bite size pieces of the stroke broken down so just the kick or just the arms focusing on being as hydrodynamic and focusing on the underwater recovery aspect so we will focus a lot those first week or two here drills are just bite size pieces of stroke to put it all together in the long run so my kind of takeaway so far about kind of developing up your combat side stroke ability general comfort in the water through a variety of strokes and being in there often enough that your body is kind of not necessarily grown used to it but it really has flexibility and strength to the point where you're comfortable enough to get the time that you need it's not that you need to do these crazy static breath holds or put weights on yourself or do this type of really hard plowing work so much as it is getting yourself comfortable enough that you can do the stroke properly and I think putting that before busting your butt on the side stroke that you're not doing right it seems like that kind of stuff comes even more important than your combat side stroke is that true or am I really kind of a little bit off there? That's a good summary of what we're talking about here that focus on part bit by bit and then you'll eventually put it all together work on that perfect technique and then slowly start you know taking the amount of time you spend in the pool then start watching the clock a little bit more you know a little bit more intense workouts and then start watching your times drop hopefully this is a new stroke for I would say the vast majority of people if not everybody you know people have probably barely been exposed to the side stroke the normal side stroke will call it unless they've had swimming instruction right so combat side stroke being totally new people I'm sure will jump on the web or maybe if they're lucky or smart enough to find a swim coach or a team or a group ask them about it what do you see that's common misinformation about this specific portion of the training process?  And so that's something that you see as kind of a maybe piece of common misinformation you know what honestly I think with the term even side stroke it seems like that lead hand is that what you call it the lead hand? Your lead arm is doing a little bit more kind of a tugging crawl it's not doing a full stroke it's kind of they're almost treading water pulling you forward kind of consistently not a full stroke so to speak it's more of a repetitive kind of crawl I guess it's maybe not the right word but correct it's a smaller range of motion out in front of your body which is the sculling motion so keeping your hand you're not going to get a lot of power out of it similar to a breaststroke pull just enough to pick your head up for your breath and shoot back down the streamline. Yeah more of a corkscrew and not a full shoulder you know a stroke all the way to your side I see what you're saying. But that also plays a role once we start introducing buddy toes or water rescues you can do that same exact motion with that lead arm the entire time so it's still you know a drill that we'll do here that will also be used down the pipeline with water rescues so it plays a role and it reduces the amount of time of underwater recovery in the stroke which should make you more efficient less drag increasing speed there so for people for the folks at home it would be great to see this visually you're showing me more of a rotation past the elbow a circular rotation as opposed to a full stroke so it's kind of a constant more of a rotation as opposed to a stroke that does make a lot more sense to be able to keeping you from having more of a cycle in the stroke and keeping you moving forward as opposed to that pause that you're talking about earlier as a problem there's a lot of talk about technique and that's also in the kind of judging standards for the PST whether it's pull ups push ups clean reps is there anything for people testing themselves in this process to be aware of in terms of technique that will get them kind of red flagged or you know this lap doesn't count or anything like that that they need to be aware of yes so when we do our testing here your wrists will always be in the water so the whole point of combat side stroke is to have that low profile where we're not taking you know freestyle strokes with your arms flying all over the place so maintaining that low profile of keeping you know your wrists or hands in the water all time so if we start seeing the hands come out you'll be warned strictly once by an instructor staff member and if it happens again you'll be pulled from the test so that's one of our criteria as well as never touching the bottom of the pool while we swim you know if you take a break you know 500 yard swim operationally speaking it's going to be taking place in the ocean there's no there's no wall or floor to stop and take a break so never touch the bottom of the pool when you're swimming and don't spend time on the walls so when you do practice in the standard 25 yard pool spend as little to no time on the walls as you can when you're tested here what apparatus is used in terms of on person the initial entrance PST you have to swim your 500 yard swim which can be swim, combat side stroke, breaststroke or basic side stroke and that has to take place under 1230 in order to get into our program you'll be wearing trishorts with the traditional UDT shorts so you're talking basically like swim trunks, spandex kind of set up yes not a lot of drag they're not beach board shorts which are good for training actually correct with a standard dive mask on so covering the nose during the exit test you will have the same swim trunks a dive mask but now you'll be having fins and booties on so rubber booties around your feet your fins over that your dive fins over that and you'll be executing a thousand meter combat side stroke under 20 minutes 17 minutes is our average so you should be crushing that you should be able to float you know a 17 minute thousand meter swim no problem before you leave here and that's mask as well there with your mask on ok well great I'll let you kind of um kind of summarize and give us the you know you have 15 seconds to give somebody the important pointers of the combat side stroke and your comfort in general find a pool get in and swim try and join a swim team or a water polo club get with your friends get in the water spend as much time in the water as you can and come to prep with a good base or foundation that we can build on well Dan thank you so much where can people find out more about the specific standards for combat side stroke and any other details they might want to about this topic go to steelswick.com wonderful illustrations pictures and descriptions about how to swim combat side stroke and what to expect here at Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School great Dan thank you so much for your time and all the great information anytime find out more at steelswick.com and join us again for the next NSW podcast


Hey guys, welcome to arch land. We have a new update. This is dropping tomorrow this is from the Korean version of their Facebook page and translations are here so notice of server inspection on February 1 I'm not sure why is it called inspection, but it should be an update to the period is going to be on February 1 Wednesday 9 2 10 30 This is going to be early Philippine time So more or less you guys will be you know on this this is a one hour and a half update and update content is limited collection immortal Knights and Pioneer pioneer of seowa. Yo, well this this is actually a drop Another banner drop will discuss that later. So dog army update So The aisle the dog aisle Content there's an update with forest of static and added alchemy trials reward You for explorers limited packages available bug fix and optimization improving improving localization Let's go to their cafe and let's see more details on this one. So this is a neighbor cafe I'm just gonna be describing to you guys what I can read this page has been translated to English already But apparently we cannot translate some of it. So I guess we'll just have to read between the lines and what has What's going to happen in this update? So we're gonna be having a Banner for a carpet Unfortunately for me, I didn't have carpet, but I'm not sure if I'm going to pull for carpet at this point I'm still having I'm still having Still having second thoughts and getting cap it because I don't Although she she does she does have a buff for Charlotte for the second one second on on her trait But as far as I know my use for her, I don't think I'll be using Cap it but I'll think about it if I'm gonna pull for for carpet and as you can see here The other one is going to be Michael Michael. I did have a review guys. Please check that out If Michael's gonna be soon probably gonna do a demo on Michael On the build as well Because I think you guys are looking for a build for Michael. So I'll do that probably by tomorrow and These are the two new banners coming in The they're gonna be From February 1 up to February 14 on a Valentine's Day. So both of them Most of you guys I think have carpet So I don't think you'll be pulling for carpet, but I think you guys will be pulling for Michael So I'll do a you know Another guide on Michael on the build I have for Michael at this point and see if I could convince you to pull for her banner Okay, do we have another event here, but it has semi. This is not a banner. I can't read this But it says here SSR So this event involves semi. I think Probably more copies over hopefully hopefully so not really reading, you know, all of these And I think these are new packages If I'm right Here are this currency. So these are new packages. I think upgrade and Look and behold guys. This is the new login event. This is what I mentioned in my previous video in terms of Q quality of life improvements. This is what I mean So as you can see here diamonds are they took all took they they took all of the diamonds from this part They transferred it here. They replace it with you know with something they replaced that something with diamonds So we have a lot of diamonds now. This is 30 40 60 and 80 so this is a good start For us and kudos to the developers and for the day 7 14 and 21 that changed it Instead of keys to heaven they added Keys as well and this is let me just Let me just expand this Can't expand it, but this is going to be two two three three So they have enhanced the rewards for log in so again guys This is additional, you know motivation for you guys to log in every day Because this is going if you don't log in every day, you're not going to be joining the 28th day and that is a shame So this is two two three three Okay, so again guys This is your chance to save up for banners that you like with your log in reward So again, I guess that's it the rest I cannot translate anymore can't read Korean So More or less that is those are the small details that I can tell you at this point But I'll see you guys tomorrow. I'll have a build kind of a build guide for For Michael here. I already built Michael and I'm just making I'm just enhancing your kit gear gear traits and Also her what they call this her runes so that is where I am So again guys, this is the update. So I'll see you guys tomorrow. Take care. Stay safe. This is the warden and I'm out here


After six years of hard work from members at VFW Post 3769, a Lockheed T-33 subsonic American jet is now statically displayed at the Veterans Memorial Park in Pikeville, Kentucky. They received the long-awaited jet on Veterans Day after it made its journey from Maryland. The U.S. Navy used the T-33 as a land-based trainer starting in 1949 and had been used for such tasks as drone director and target towing. Since then, these planes have been phased out and replaced by different models. The Hart and Vascular Institute at Pikeville Medical Center. Together, we save lives. After settling the plane down on the cement pad, the post put in long hours of work to clean up and restore the plane. Similar to how military men and women bond together to complete a common goal, Nathan Sesco from VFW Post 3769 says that multiple entities including the city of Pikeville, UMG, Kins Towing and their post members have worked diligently to complete this display in time for Veterans Day. The Pikeville Rotary Club also had a hand in making this display possible as they made a generous donation to help with the cost of the display. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Jeremy Justice.


I have not been ordering a lot of things. I genuinely have just been invested in my work lately. Briar Fest is around the corner, so it has been mayhem trying to plan and prep for that. I did receive a package unexpectedly in the mail and this is an unboxing that I have never done before. I received a piece of fan mail. I received an email from someone that was requesting my address so their daughter could send me a piece of fan mail. That was a long time ago and I was like, as soon as you realize it's going to be $40 to ship me anything, you're probably not. But this piece of mail shot up my doorstep and it's super cute because it's all drawn on. It says DJB Briar. It says I love Todd. Love me some Briar horses. This side, you may already decide to do this but it would mean a lot to me if you opened this on camera. So here we are with the fan mail. So I have no idea what's inside of this and your guess is as good as mine. It's all wrapped. I've contemplated like opening my address for fan mail or like having a PO box that I could open things but it's kind of self-centered to ask for these things. So this is like ultra sweet because I didn't ask for this. This person wanted to do this. Cute says DJB and she drew me a little horse. Said sorry for using two E's in DJB on the letter. Everybody does that. It's a common mistake. I know.  Everybody I've talked to says that they like Cremelos and I don't know how you could like a Cremelo. I don't find them attractive at all. My dad likes them though. Okay so I need to have a talk with your dad. The most Briars I ever got at one time was in 2019. I got a series two box of stable mates. My mom said I tore into them like a rabbit dog. I think that's the definition of every mobile collector. We're just all rabbit dogs. Not entirely true. I don't know. I think it's entirely true. I definitely had rabbit dog moment and I film most of my rabbit dog moments so I can't even say that I didn't because it's on camera. I've been held accountable. Man it made me mad when you opened the box of Huckleberry Bay horses and they were scratched to high heaven. High heaven. I agree. We have three cats. Peaches is a diabetic. The cloud is mentally challenged. Trigger is jumpy. We have three horses and two mules. You have two mules. Okay. Maximus, Tater Tot and Kid Rock are the three horses and John Henry and Gabe are the two mules. That's really cool. I really like mules. I got four stable mate models and made Max, Tater, Kid Rock and John Henry and glued them to a small cedar board and made little pack saddles and painted on little halters with string lead ropes connecting them. I didn't put Gabe on there for two reasons. One, I cannot paint a buckskin for the life of me. Two, he kicked my dad in the side of the face while bending over to pick up his hoof. Don't worry. My dad is okay. Most of the reason in this letter is I wanted to tell you I absolutely love each and every one of your customs, but my three favorites have got to be Ghost, Basilisk and Yorg. That's so awesome. Those are my three favorites too. I'm glad you like Ghost because a lot of people don't like Ghost and I don't know why because I'm obsessed with him. He's one of my favorites. I really love watching your videos. Makes me feel better about myself seeing how you started out and how far you've come. When I told my mom you lived in Canada, she said, well no wonder she's so good. It's just because we have such long winters that we're like so bored that we get good at things and we practice a lot because there's nothing to do outside because you can't go outside. Oh my gosh, she said that. It's so cold up there. She doesn't have anything else to do. That's semi-valid. I mean like eight months of the year, I can't ride my horse or go outside. So I spent a long time painting. Wow, that was really cute. I like knowing like random facts about my fans. So she's like wrapped everything and it's like really cute. What is this? Oh my gosh, halters and leads. It's like a gradient yarn. Very nice, halter leads. Always need halter leads. This one says, I know you don't really collect stable mates and I can't get you a traditional so I hope you like decorators. You're not supposed to be buying these stable mates, friends. That's actually really cool. I love the color, like the turquoise and the purple. Like those are two, like this turquoisey teal color is one of my favorites actually. So I like this a lot. This looks like one of those drip customs that like the fun day tutorial did. I will treasure her forever. That is like so sweet. This says for your briars. What could that possibly mean? I'm gonna cry. This is so good. What? This is like a little hat but for briar. These are obviously Christmas hats because I live in Canada and it's so cold. I can't deal with this. Briars and hats but she's like made all the little like light string and that even has like the little like light like where you would turn it on if it was real. Hole here to open. She wrote my full name wrong. I'm gonna take a picture of this and then I can add the photo into the video. So she spelled my name wrong and then she spilt it right. She got it right and she got my last name right too which that is an accomplishment in itself. She says I hope you find my packaging.  So sorry. Happy customized. This is her mule. This is so terrible. Do not criticize your work. Own it. Own it. She sent me this painting. So cute. It's like actually quite similar to my style. It seems like it's an impression of my my painting. Well that is very special. I will have to put this up in the studio somewhere. How precious has this day been? It's really great. Maybe I should do tutorials on like how to do my my spotter paintings like I do because this is a pretty solid attempt. That was a very nice surprise to my Monday. Alright so this has been DJV. Thanks for watching. That was as surprising for you as it was for me. Those are the best kind of unboxings. Working hard on Briar Fest, there should be an update about that coming soon. I'll do a little video kind of explaining everything that I will be selling Briar Fest weekend. So you don't have to be a part of Briar Fest to join my Briar Fest sales. They will be like publicly listed. It's just a build up to the July weekend which happens 16th to 18th of July 2021. It's Briar Fest weekend. Yeah, I will be launching more information about that soon. Thank you so much for watching and this is really fun. And if you are the center of this package, thank you so much. This is very special. I will treasure these things for a long time.


So, we know 7 to 18 servings of soy a day may neutralize some of the beneficial effects of avoiding animal protein.  So is there some magic number of soy food servings we should chew for? So far we know that somewhere between 7 and 18 may not be so good, so more than 18 definitely gets the axe. This two-year study found no effect on IGF levels of adding two servings of soy food daily, whether they were tofu, soy milk, soy nuts, or the concentrated soy isolate found in plant-based meats, protein bars, or protein powder, still fine. Still got a big range here. This study suggested 5 to 10 servings a day was bad, increased IGF. So we're kind of slowly but surely narrowing down the kind of safety window. Same year in Japan, three servings a day cleared the IGF radar, and then that's it. That's all the science we have so far. The bottom line is legumes should be part of everyone's daily diet, which means lentils, peas, and or beans, ideally with each of our meals, of which soy is an excellent choice, but I recommend that we should probably stick to no more than 3 to 5 servings a day.


Elon Musk on war in Ukraine. It is just a question of how many die. The controversial billionaire Elon Musk has expressed his opinion that Ukraine's position is becoming increasingly vulnerable with each passing day. According to him, Ukraine should have made a peace deal with Russia a year ago, according to a new ex-post by Musk. Musk also supports the idea of US ceasing military aid to Ukraine. The businessman commented on a post by American blogger Wall Street Silver, who claimed that Ukraine had already lost the war and should accept Moscow's ultimatums along with the occupation of parts of its territory. Musk supported the idea of ceasefire and the start of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. He expressed the opinion that Ukraine in his view had lost this war and no financial contributions, including $60 billion from the US, would change the situation. The businessman also added that it is just a question of how many die before that reality is accepted. A peace deal should have been done a year ago. Since then, thousands of boys have died for nothing and Ukraine's position grows weaker by the day, the billionaire wrote. Musk said that the Ukraine conflict is a war of lies in terms of how it started, how it's going, and how it will end. This is not the first time Elon Musk has shocked users with his statements. He is constantly in the spotlight of online scandals.


Okay, well hi everyone thanks so much for being here. Welcome to what is our second webinar of the fall 22 semester. This one is entitled open pedagogy as a tool for student empowerment. Like I said it's our second in a series of four webinars for the fall 22 semester. And we'll talk about the other offerings at the end of this webinar. This is hosted by CCC OER actually probably know the community college consortium for open educational resources. And these webinars are put together by the professional development committee. My name is Ryan McKinney, I am director of theater arts and the director of the center for teaching and learning at Keith bro community college in Brooklyn, New York, which is part of the city University of New York. We have the wonderful task of putting together today's webinar and we have three wonderful presentations with over getting too shortly so I'm going to do a quick overview and then get to the information that you often care for. So here's our agenda for today. I'm just going to provide a quick overview of CCC OER. And then we have three great presentations starting with an overview of open pedagogy. And then we'll be talking to one professor's experience with renewable assignments and global art history courses, and then a presentation on a framework for collaborating and a collaborative design of renewable assignments. And then we'll be talking about some of our upcoming events and CCC OER and only global and ways for you to stay in the loop and stay involved with us. The community college consortium, the community college consortium for open educational resources has a mission to expand awareness and access to high quality of open educational resources to support faculty choice and development to foster regional OER and to improve student equity and success. And they do and approach this mission through a lot of offerings that are available to the entire open education community. Personally, I first got involved with CCC OER last year and it's been such an incredible resource for me and my open education journey, and I'm really thankful to the colleagues that I've met here and the way that I've been welcomed into this fold and the way that it has really inspired me to keep thinking about ways that I can bring open to my work as as an educator and as a as a new director of Center for Teacher Innovation. So our membership as of 2022, we have 110 members across 36 states. If you or your institution is not a member and you want to become more involved and want to find out about membership there's a link here, and you can also access that through our website. So here are our excellent presenters for today who I am eternally grateful to for joining us and sharing their experiences with us. The first is Professor Karen Cantalosi who may be a familiar face to some of you, if you've been involved with CCC OER Karen is the program director of our low the regional leaders of open education, a program which I luckily took part in last year and I learned so much from Karen. She's also the network director for open education and open science for reels and a permit professor emeritus and biology and state college. Our next presenter is Christian Cash Professor Christian Cash who's a professor of art history at Montgomery College Tacoma Park Silver Spring in Maryland. This is my city University of New York colleague, Professor Stacy Pats associate professor open resources librarian and stem liaison at the matter library of Lehman College, which is one of the senior colleges. Thank you, if I do not see you at the end of this thank you again for sharing your work with us today. Karen, Karen's going to give us an overview of open pedagogy to help contextualize our work today. And then Kristen's going to talk about some of the renewable assignment design that she has done in her art history courses. And then as we said before Stacy's going to talk about collaborating and a collaborative design approach to a global assignments.  So, so everyone knows we're going to go through the three presentations and then we'll have time for questions and answers at the end. I'll be monitoring the chat and then we'll have time for questions at this time. Karen, thanks so much. Great, thank you. Thanks so much Ryan thanks for the introduction and thank you to everybody who's here today I really appreciate such a big and robust audience so that's really, really wonderful. I'm going to share my screen. Lately I've been having fun using this slide to think about shifting paradigms and there's a lot of different ways that I think about the need for a shift in paradigms within higher education. And one of them is to talk a lot about, and I'm not the only one to say, how can we think more about open educational practices, and a little less about open educational resources and that's, you know, that's not to be, you know, a heretic, what do you mean not we are like, but we are not as the focus the product not as the focus how do we think about people and practices and students and learning how do we shift this paradigm to think about open educational practices as central to what we do as educators and so central to what I think we need to do in terms of thinking about where higher education is going in its future. What is it that we need to really be thinking about as we think towards changes, especially given the state of our world today. So when I was asked to give an overview of open pedagogy it's kind of hard to do it sort of reminds you of people, you know that you meet and they say oh what do you do and then you start babbling about open education and they say well what is that and so you have to kind of explain it in, you know, a minute or less and it's kind of tricky. Um, but I do like I like to think about open pedagogy and I'm so glad I have an audience that already knows about what a pedagogy is right so it's not starting from scratch but, but I do like to define it for myself because not all of us define it the same way. So the way that I think about open pedagogy is sort of like these intersection or intersection of these really primary ideas like the idea for me of collaborating with others connecting with a community connecting outside of the classroom. You can trust your own, your own college your own classroom, and actually creating community within a classroom and outside of the classroom. I put this up first because I think this is really essential. I think sometimes it can get lost when we're thinking just about how do I make a better assignment as to how am I actually creating community and allowing my students to connect with this broader world as an originating frame for thinking about how I work as a teacher. Um, and then of course the idea that we're asking students to create knowledge to share that knowledge with others and to be in the inclusive in this like what does it mean to inclusively create and share knowledge. What are we bringing across a broad and diverse range of ideas and perspectives and thoughts to the so called cannons of work that we do. And how do we help our students understand that just slapping an open license on something and sharing it actually has value and that why would they want to do that I think teaching is why we want to share our work is just as important as teaching them how to do it so I think that's an incredibly important piece for me as well. And students having agency I talk a lot about this as well like what does it need to provide students with agency, not just to create an assignment for your class but to help design the course itself to help write the syllabus with you to go into the first day and say let's create the learning outcomes together for this course, you know what are the policies can you make your own attendance policy and those are some examples and I say especially for marginalized students, students that can feel a lack of control students that haven't had a voice in these educational spaces that we've created for them. How is it that we really help to promote a way of giving students agency. To me this is part of what I think about when I think about open pedagogy, and that the idea of access is not just a free textbooks or stuff, but the ways that in which we need to think about accessibility, broadly, access to food and gas and laptops and captions and safety and along with learning materials and etc because there's so many other kinds of things. And I know that it may be hard to feel like it's your responsibility as an instructor to provide all that. And it's not anyone's sole responsibility but when we collectively think about this as this is part of the job that we have as educators, how do I work with my own educational community to think about these things. It broadens my ideas when I'm creating that assignment and makes me think about what are my students capable of what can they do. And so for me open pedagogy sort of encompasses all four of these things. Sometimes I'm thinking about one of these circles more than I'm thinking about the others but to the extent that this provides kind of an ideal framework for creating open pedagogical practices within your classroom. I think it can be a guidepost and I find it to be a really helpful guidepost for me. I'm just going to give a few little examples because I know we have others that are going to give really great examples today. So I lately like to really think about open pedagogy as public service when students create something, and they openly license it and they put it in a place where others can see it and it's shared with the world, and it has useful value. Like this is an example of Carlos Gallier who is a biology professor at North Carolina State University, and his students that produced a lot of material this is one example one of the things that they did is they ran this podcast in his metagenomics class and so here's the students talking about antimicrobial resistance within the environment. And so other people have the opportunity to learn about that people outside of the classroom people within the community. So not only are these students understanding the molecular and genetic basis of what antimicrobial resistance is, they're taking their knowledge they're making it for the public and they're and they're sharing it in a way that can be copied and revised by others, and serving a community function all at the same time. To me this is the essence of open pedagogy. A students creating and openly licensing OER we believe, all of you can think of examples of student created OER and textbooks, but when students can envision the project to begin with like, we'd like to write a book about this and we're going to write all of these chapters and this is how we're going to arrange it, and we're going to edit it, and we're going to choose the license and the title and everything. And then you might think well Karen what did you do as professor. You're helping to guide students through this process is such a wonderful experience as they're thinking and they have so many questions about it along the way. Students can have this much agency, and they're learning so much as they do this I think is just kind of really a fabulous thing. And the other thing about this project is that it you know expand over three years where students from different classes and different sections and sometimes people create an assignment and they're like oh well that's done but actually it's not right this is that renewable ideas that your students from the next semester can edit all of that writing they can add to the chapters they can. It's kind of a never ending thing. And again for me it's a reminder that it's about the process, not the product. It's not about this book that these students created. It's about the process that each individual that was engaged in this, what they got out of that creation and of collaboration and of sharing and of license decision making all of those pieces is part of what I think is really so fundamental to the value of open pedagogy. And when we think about how open pedagogy in particular is about thinking about our most marginalized students and putting them at the center when we when we give students opportunities to speak for themselves. Now, the idea of the self determination of marginalized people in groups to be able to speak for themselves. There's there's different ways that we can look at examples of this as a student who was in a genetics class, learning about the genetics of skin color, and turning it into thinking about the social construction of race and gender within her whole her own family from Thailand and again just as an example just to give you a hint of like what are things that you might think about could be really valuable for you and your students. And, and there's a lot of different tools and platforms under which you can do this this is talking about domain of one zone but it's certainly not the only place. So, when I think about open pedagogy, and the idea of providing trust and agency and empowerment for students to cooperatively learn that that these kinds of environments actually do a number of things, which is to what maybe messed up my screen share there for a minute is a faculty and staff can actually address student anxiety, isolation, powerlessness and marginalization, like just thinking about the ways in which we designed for care and allow students to have that kind of environment allows us to leverage open to transform educational experiences and and cultivate these opportunities for creation and contribution. And so, when we've done that when we created that environment students then can address political injustices. They can address environmental issues they can share knowledge, they can provide a ways in which we can think about addressing economic environmental social cultural and educational issues. And so open pedagogy in and of itself is part of a way in which we can feel is helping to transform the higher educational system because our students are part of that transformation process and can be quite directly. So for me, these are the kinds of things I think about with open pedagogy. And I'm going to, I'm going to stop there because I don't want to take up too much time I know we have a lot of other speakers that are going to give some really fabulous examples and happy to, you know, we'll take questions at the end of everything probably right Ryan and turn it back over to Ryan thanks. Thanks so much Karen. That's such a great framework for us to sort of situate our conversation. Okay, so now we're going to turn it over to Professor Christine cash from Montgomery College, who's going to talk about some renewable assignments and global art history thanks so much. Thanks Ryan, you'll hear me okay. Good. And thanks Karen for the perfect sort of launch for this conversation. And as always, you put things so so beautifully and succinctly in a way that that directly kind of follows the way that I practice open pedagogy so I do want to to re emphasize that point that really when we talk about open pedagogy we are talking about a practice. And that might be new to a pedagogy or the terminology anyway. I'm here to reassure you you're probably doing a lot of this stuff already and just maybe not not calling it open pedagogy. I know for me. Some of the things I'm going to be showing you and talking to you about our things I've been doing for, you know, so many years, a couple of decades in my, my teaching practice, and only recently realized like there's this whole body of data and sort of ideas behind why we do a pedagogy and really the amazing levels of benefits that it offers for our students and for us as instructors, the renewable and sustainable works, you know, works for us and it works for them so I'll be coming back to a few things that that Karen said. As I show you some examples so what I'd like to do is, I wanted to share three different types of renewable assignments that I use in various courses that I teach I do teach art history. I teach globally. And so I have five or six classes that I teach, and I've used these assignments in specific courses but these are also renewable in the sense that if it's something that's I've developed for a survey course I can kind of pull parts of it out and apply it to it. So I'll also talk about the ways the different ways that we can think about renewable in these assignments. So, and I have Liz driving my slide so let's the next slide please. So, I wanted to start with this one this is really kind of the most basic level. It's kind of the easiest one to do in terms of an open pedagogy practice and this is the open choice discussion or activity. So here's an example that I did in my global modernism class in a section on early, early photography, where students had to learn about the beginnings the origins of photography as a medium, some of the early history, and most importantly, in my classes I focus on the relevance of photography in real life. So it's always about, you know what is the power of images. How are they made, why are they made and how they impact how we see the world around us. And so this assignment comes at the end of the unit it's called photography and me. So right away in the title of signaling that this is this is an opportunity for students to figure out how photography relates to them and their lives and their experience. So really the assignment you have the detailed prompts up there but really all it's asking them to do is choose two photographs one from the early history. I give them some museum collections to go dig through and I'm always just love what they come back with. They're learning some skills and how to how to navigate museums as well, and then they have to choose from their own collection or on from their phone. And then they're employing the foundational skills in art history, which is visual analysis doing some comparison. So basically they're trying to communicate how looking at a historical photo next to one of their own photos, really impacts how they're seeing each of them. Right. So that their experience with an object that's very familiar to them right the one on the top right is actually my students actual dental x-ray. He had just gone to the dentist and was like, you know I was looking at this this photo by the way he glitz and it was, I know it's somebody's neck but it made me think of all the different shapes that I saw in my x-ray and I was like, boom, done right that that is exactly the intention of this kind of assignment is that they're bringing the student is choosing both the historical artifact that they want to look at something that's quote unquote spoke to them. But then they're also bringing in something from their own experience that is very familiar and this is such a great way for them to connect, you know, their lives their experience their ideas and most importantly their voice to these histories and visual histories that are often, you know, seem really far far removed from their lives. So this is the kind of assignment you can do really very easily all it is. It's a scaffolded set of prompts. This one is specific to our historical skills. And then in each step, I am asking the student to bring either the object for discussion, or the majority of the content or the discussion. The only thing I'm providing is the scaffold, the rest is totally up to them. And you can see the variety that that comes out of it the x-ray, the bottom right is my students grandmother. And then on the left is a photograph of my student and a couple of his best friends next to this amazing Lewis Hein photograph from the 1920s. So, yeah, it's always incredible what they come up with and that's the point, I think. Next slide please. Okay, so now I want to show you two different sort of larger scale open pedagogy assignments. First, I'm going to talk about an assignment that came a renewable assignment that came out of a fellowship that I did through Montgomery College which some of you might be familiar with that's expanding to other institutions. This is one of the UN SDG Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship, where as a cohort, I worked with two colleagues from two different community colleges. One was a mathematician, one was a marketing professor, and we had to come up with a multi disciplinary renewable assignment that could apply in all of our courses. So I'm going to talk about this one that I did for my survey of African art class, which is what I would call a scaffolded open choice project. This is the culminating project for a course. And then I'm going to talk about one that is like next next level in terms of open pedagogy, which is this is actually a renewable assignment that was developed by a student. So I acted as the mentor and the facilitator as the student developed an assignment for a, for one of my units in a global art history survey course. Okay, next slide please. So I'm going to walk you through the steps of this first project. So this is the, the sort of scaffolded open pedagogy. It was called portraits of power women leaders in African art. And this was an assignment that extended the entire length of the semester so each slide I show you is going to be a different step on the scaffold. At every point in in this project, the student is the one choosing what to do. And how they present it right sort of that it works both in terms of content, but also the flexibility in terms of format and presentation. Next slide please. So the first step was sort of what are we doing and why are we doing it. And it was quite, you know, again very open. I asked them in three different ways to reflect on sort of the nature of leadership of women or female leaders in general and then the power of representation. And these were three separate little mini assignments where the students had to think about women and their lives and women leaders in their lives and come up with their list of what are what are the qualities of leadership. Then we did a little research into women leaders in Africa. They had to connect those two what are some of the qualities that we see in these, these very specific women. And then we looked at the power of representation where students had to go find an example of an artwork or video or media product that showed women in a position of leadership and talk about how that visual represent visual representation impacted how they saw them as leaders. Next please. Come up with their own example. So I had this student here who chose Maya Angelou, there was a whole variety they had to explain how they saw them as a leader, and also, you know, examples of their work or their life that communicated those qualities that they believed were an effective leader. Next please. Then this is the artist class, they had to choose a work of contemporary African art and showing you one example here. Again, this is one of the imperfect example of how you need to be flexible with these open pedagogy. This is a course in African art and I had students repeatedly go to the African diaspora, which I was like, great, this is where they want to go, let's go. So here we have an artist who's an Afro Cuban American artist. And the student had to choose a work that they saw they felt in some way connected to this idea of female leadership, and then explain how and why. Next slide please. So in mapping in with the foundational skills in art history they had to do a visual analysis, which was how do we visually see these qualities of leadership in their chosen artwork. And then they had to do some research and get some context, learning a little bit about the artist a little bit about their culture, and explaining how some of those contacts behind the artwork connect to their conception of leadership in this particular work. Next please. So sort of at the very end they had to pull it all together and and I always asked just a very straightforward open question, why did you choose this painting, why this work, how is the support your power to you. And that's where the students sort of brings it all into this personal connection how does this work speak to them, and their understanding of leadership. Next please. Here's a few examples again what I love about these open assignments is just the variety. When asked to, to give an example of female leaderships everything from artists the show Obama came up a lot, and the most beautiful like you know squishy tier inducing part was like mom's all over the place was like my you know the most incredible woman in my life is my mom. And so giving students that opportunity to really really connect, you know what they're learning about art and history to their two people that they love and care about and admire was really the ultimate, you know, ultimate sign of success with this particular assignment. Next please. I just want to share, I think we have time. I do have one short testimonial from a student who did this particular project. He is Barbadian and he chose for his example. The Prime Minister of Barbados, the honorable me of monthly and the artist on the bottom right and I'm just going to have him speak for himself. Are you seeing the video now. Hello, everybody. My name is Jason Small and I'm a current student at the Montgomery College. For my final project in the African art course, which I took at the Montgomery Community College. I completed part of my presentation that discusses the effective female leaders like highlighted Barbados is on Prime Minister, the honorable me of Molly and rock and artist, but all she me as two women who are active female leaders in our world. The focus of my presentation was on machine and how I consider her a leader because she uses art to elevate the voices of everyday African women. The intended outcome of my project was to really hone in on the idea that every day normal African women are leaders in their community. They don't necessarily have to be famous or doing something unique, but they are leaders for all that they do for their families and communities throughout the usual days. If you really think about it, many African women cook to fuel their families and raise children who will become the future of our society. These responsibilities alone are enough to consider them incredible leaders. Ms. Shemi recognizes this idea and incorporates it into her art so that she can help other people see it too. This assignment was really important to me because it helps me articulate and send a message that we as a society should honor and recognize the daily contributions of women everywhere. The artwork that Ms. Shemi does can help change the way we as a society think about women so that we don't take women for granted or disrespect them. It is important for me to help expand on this message, especially of what it means to my mom, my sisters, my little niece, and my wife. It's also the message that I want my 10 month old son Jaden to understand when he grows up in this world. Thank you. So yeah, that kind of says it all in terms of how this thing works and connects with students. And I know I'm bumping up on time. Let me go really quickly through the second one. Next slide please. The second one, like I said, is a sort of a next level where I was working with a student through our decolonizing the curriculum initiative at Montgomery College, where a student and faculty pair work together on a project that would open up the pedagogy and practice to students. This student developed two renewable assignments for my survey level course. Next slide please. The first one was this one called countdown where basically they showed, we would show them as the students a work of art and then they would respond look at it for about 30 seconds and then respond to how they saw what they saw what they smelled what they heard what they tasted, etc. This was an assignment that she came up with through one of her psychology classes that she really found that that doing this kind of sensory connection was a really good way to have students kind of relax and feel grounded and so we thought let's see if this works with art history. And as you can see it kind of works on different levels where you can have students just sort of do that first level with just some sensory responses to it. And then we did I tried a pilot in a more advanced option in one of my classes where the students would choose the artwork, and then they would do this exercise with other students, and it created some more sort of advanced level interactions and responses to the artwork. And then the other one she came up with which I love is the trading cards. This one is more of a sort of culminating project she was like, you know, it'd be kind of fun to do like art history Pokemon. And I was like, yeah, okay, let's do that let's try it right and I think, you know, she came up with that the student came up with everything the templates. The sort of the reasoning the vision, you know, all of the work that went into it this was super fun, all of the student, the work that went into these assignment was developed by the student and I was the one just sort of guiding the way we piloted in the class and we tweaked it based on student response. And, you know, now I use both of these in my classes. And it's fabulous and I'm getting a little, you know, collection of Pokemon cards that I will hopefully at some point, you know, be able to turn into an OER, because they are mostly capturing artists and that the students are interested in not the ones I'm interested in. And that tends to be artists that are more underrepresented. And these histories that can be really hard to get to and are most certainly not in the textbooks. So I'm going to leave it there and hand it over to Stacy for some some tattoos. Thanks. Thank you so much. I'll go ahead once that stops sharing but there we go. See. But yeah, thank you, like Karen and Kristen and you know Kristen it's so nice to hear from your student and Ryan for organizing and Liz for like manning everything I mean there's really like such a village that goes into making this and I'm just so pleased to talk a little bit more about the how to of it. So I'm presenting on a chapter that I co authored with a colleague, really like one of my partners in crime other half of my brain who's not here with us today but my colleague Jennifer Van Allen, who's an education professor. And I have to shout out actually another part of my brain who's in the room also of Shawna who brandl from Kingsborough so just, you know we have like a really rich community of folks at CUNY and it's so nice to be also here with everyone and in the room right now. I just have to say that before I go into everything, but you know that we titled the chapter evolving into the open. And some of that is to emphasize really that this is like open is a verb. I've heard a lot of folks in open say that, and really, it can get overwhelming when you see all these fantastic projects that look like finished products right, but it really is that it's a process and really it's opening a little bit each time and moving towards that idea. So we developed this framework for collaborative design of renewable assignments, and really emphasizing that people aren't alone in this. This isn't just like you have to go sit on your own and come up with how you're going to do this but there are people either librarians and structural designers other faculty who have been part of things who can also like help with the design of this help think about things, because that's really so important to not be alone in this process. So, the other part of it is renewable assignments which exactly like what you've been hearing about already. So this is actually a book chapter that Jennifer and I authored Oh, and Cheryl already put it in the chat I had it like all geared up and you're so good to be on top of that. So it's detailed in the book as well. But you know there's so many good chapters actually in this book about open pedagogy about how to get started. So I highly recommend looking at this book for if you're thinking about open pedagogy. It's a wonderful, wonderful resource. So many good projects in here. Oh, and I didn't mean to click on it sorry about that. But you know, as Karen and Kristen have talked about like open pedagogy is just changing who creates knowledge and giving pathways to empower students to be the creators. So I found this table from David Wiley and john Hilton really helpful when we started thinking about open pedagogy and open practices. You know, to kind of classify like what is it that you're assigning because you're already giving assignments right. Everyone has assignments but is it a disposable assignment where someone creates an artifact and it, you know, lives in the LMS and doesn't go to LMS. Is it authentic where it has some value beyond supporting the creators learning. Is it made, you know, constructionist where it's then made public, or is it renewable where then the artifact is openly licensed so that was kind of how they defined it. And obviously there are other elements that go into it but it's sort of basic. So something that we found that faculty really appreciate and that Jennifer and I appreciate when we found this kind of decision making and classify classification of assignments. Was that so much of this as Kristen said is stuff that you're doing already right like my colleague Jennifer, she's a teacher educator, so it gets very confusing when we talk about it because her students are teachers. So it always gets a little bit weird of who's the student and who's the teacher and what level we're talking at, but she's teaching teachers. And her assignment that she was already giving in her course was really already a constructionist assignment. So in her assignment student her students the teachers were asked to create a lesson plan and incorporate technology into it in her. The language literacy and educational technology was her course. So the artifact, the students were creating artifacts, the artifact had value beyond their own learning. The artifact was made public because they were actually already teaching with it, but the artifact was never openly licensed, because Jennifer didn't know about open licenses at that point. So that was a place where it wasn't renewable but it really was constructionist. You know it was being displayed elsewhere than just in her course, it actually made it into you know the students classroom into their school where she was teaching with it. So we were looking at, well, okay, what, what could she do, you know, how could she also as someone who was teaching an educational technology course Jennifer felt like, Hey, I should be teaching my students about OER and Creative Commons licensing. I mean when you talk in teacher education also like the levels of students that you're impacting really goes all the way down to like our students who are in K to 12 New York City public schools. So there's a lot of levels of teaching happening that then influences the next sort of classroom which is one of my favorite things about working with the Education Department of my college.  You can actually adapt or remix an OER resource or create. So it gave students more options because you know Jennifer knew from her own practice as a teacher. Oftentimes she wasn't coming with a lesson plan from scratch education is about sharing. So she would have a lesson plan from someone else, or she would have something that she had worked on previously. So she now gave students that ability, her teachers the ability to say, Oh, you know what actually, I can take something that you know from elsewhere from OER Commons, and I can remix it. And I can think about lesson planning differently than I have before. And then they were required to either upload it to the shared resource collection, or to share it on OER Commons. I'll talk a little bit more about that. So when we thought about our process, we kind of came up with this framework, thinking back on how did we get from like, where she was to where she wanted to be. So in the first step we went back to that Wiley and Hilton sort of criteria and we analyzed and classified her assignment. Her assignment was actually living in that space of constructionist. So then the next step was to consider what would be a meaningful OER contribution within her field and you could see there are different ways that could happen.  So that was a meaningful OER contribution that can really vary depending on the discipline.  So I don't want to, you know, go into it too much. But then we thought about what tools and repositories do we have available to us. So at CUNY we had things like, we just have press books now but we had access to manifold, but that didn't seem like the right space for this assignment. We had the CUNY Academic Commons which is like a WordPress instance, but that didn't also feel like the right place for it. But OER Commons and teaching how to use an OER repository that teachers could then continue to use in their practice felt like the really a good place for these teachers to deposit what they were creating and to get them familiar with searching in that and using it. And then the idea of student agency. So how are we designing and negotiating for openness was really important to us that students didn't have to share it openly outside of the class because we said so that they had choice in that. You know, and Catherine Cronin talks a lot about this, you know, letting students making those decisions of like, will I share openly, who will I share with, who will I share as, and will I share this. And, you know, Jennifer and I did research on this assignment as well. And students didn't necessarily share outside of the class at first we only had a few students who chose to share an OER Commons, even though they all shared within the class. And then our later research where we interviewed students, which was finally just accepted for publication so they'll be coming soon, you know pandemic research is slow to come out. But they felt like this was their professional identity so they wanted to run the lesson first. And they wanted to make sure it was really good before they shared it outside the class context, but many of them once they shared it, once they ran the thing ran the assignment with their students. They were like, oh yeah I do want to share this actually openly and that's important to me but it was their kind of professional reputation also. So some of the examples of the teacher candidate or we are that you can see. This is a basic based learning unit these this was one that was shared on OER Commons. Another student created this first grade mathematics workbook for the parents, which Jennifer had never seen. Like a student create something for their parents before the teacher wanted to, you know, help the parents understand the mathematical concepts. She created, which was a really interesting take on this assignment. Another example that also Jennifer did because she's my like, you know, person leading this at Lehman. And she's just really doing amazing work. She taught a Lehman scholars course and had students evaluate OER for social justice, where students like evaluated created a rubric for OER for social justice and then evaluated a different OER and that's all in this book so feel free to check that out on press books I've got the link over there and I can put links in the chat as well. But you know that these students actually shared very openly and yeah I think that's interesting about like their professional reputation and public contribution absolutely Karen it's, you know, it was something a little bit new to them and they didn't feel like they could share necessarily but then once it went well they felt like they could. But yeah I think that also yeah is very interesting as a process of how they think about it, and what they think is worthwhile and what you know what their confidence is I mean some of the recommendations that we have is also like Jennifer's course candidate course was is one of the last courses they take. That's the first time they heard about Creative Commons licensing and in our quality of interviews all of them were like, how is this the first time I'm hearing about Creative Commons licensing and we are like how have I not heard about this yet. Yes, and there weren't any there wasn't implementation of peer review in that iteration of it. This is something that you know we're iterating the project as well so that's something that we're talking about putting in to it as part of the process. You know sometimes that that timing the first time you run an assignment, you don't know how much time everything's going to take so I think that'll be in the future that was also a recommendation we had. But yeah teaching students also about. Creative Commons licensing earlier in their sequence, especially because these are these are actual New York City teachers they're getting a degree in literacy, literacy education literacy studies. So these are people who are working teachers and they had never heard of it had no idea what Creative Commons licensing or we are were before this course. Some of the research and related resources that you can take a look at. We have an article on this on the actual assignment and open practice. We presented at OE global on some of our studies study findings, and then also just a really good starter kit workbook that I'm partial to with with Abby elder that we worked on if you're looking to get started with all these things. Thanks and Marie, I actually do also curate a list of OER publications at CUNY, which I can put that link in the chat because I mean I think that's one of the things of the community of OER folks are so generous that this really should be collaborative work this doesn't have to be something that people do in silos, because so many of us are working on this and happy to think it through. I think that some of it is also like, you know, Karen what you're saying about like, how do we get students to like, take that risk sort of in their in their professional lives. Like we also have to think about how we're taking risks as faculty and how we're putting ourselves out there and modeling that kind of like, hey I'm going to try this and it may not work. But you know, I'm taking that little step and I'm trying something out and getting messy a little bit. So and then there's some of the references if you want to check out any of these resources as well. But you know I think probably there are questions so I should stop talking so we can get to those, and I'll share some more links in the chat as well. Thank you Stacy. Thank you so much. And again, Karen, Kristen, Stacy, thank you so much for these these wonderful and like very like my brain is just sort of like going 1000 miles of a minute trying to think about ways that I can incorporate all this great stuff into my own courses. I'm going to share my screen. I totally forgot to plug my presentation and I totally forgot so while you're getting ready to share I'll just say, I do have a presentation on and a journal, special issue that's coming up that I forgot to mention, which is not about renewable exactly but it's on the intersections of open educational practices and equity pedagogy. And if you're going to open ed, we have a panel on Wednesday at 430. Luna is going to be on it I think it's okay to tease that. We've got the open for anti racism, and some of the publications for the journal are starting to get posted in the early site as well so on the journal website you can check those out so please join us to hear from really the authors who wrote these public articles, and talking about really how we infuse equity within these open educational practices because it's not a given that it would be there, even though you would hope that it's something we have to intentionally design for it. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Like when I said in the chat, the slides and the recording will be made available so if you want any of the resources that were in the presentations will be available through the slides later on. But, you know, we have a few minutes left I'd love to open it to questions that we can either unmute yourself or if you want to just place them into the chat will probably have time for a couple of them. Before we have to wrap up because I want to be conscious of everyone's time. Any questions. Kristen there was one question earlier, and then Michelle I'm going to come to you. In the chat of if you can speak to how you see your assignments as being renewable in terms of how they might not be disposable or how they sort of feedback into the class or maybe public facing or available to students in future semesters, any, any way that you see the with the work in your assignments. Yeah, I think I saw that in the chat and it's actually the next step that I'm working on, because one of the things I started to realize as I was being more intentional about incorporating the renewable side of things into my assignments in my field in art history there just aren't any resources in in the vast majority of kind of global history of art and so I've really been struggling with honestly with how to how to best do that. And I, my hope is is basically what I've been an emcee for three years. I've been doing these assignments for about two. And so I now have a really nice collection of artworks artists and sources that are all student generated. And so I'm definitely looking into you know press books kind of oh we are more classic kind of way, but I'm also thinking about how how I might make these assignments and the work that the students are students are doing more public, especially in teacher training. I think teacher training is such an important area that that this work can really reach out into. And I, in particular my area, we work with visual literacy and media literacy. And so, you know what I'm very honest with with students about these assignments and saying, you know, you are helping to generate resources that do not exist. And so the next step for me is to figure out exactly what to do with that with all of this information that I'm gathering. But yeah, next next step, stay tuned. They are renewable in the sense that I, I really like they are used in different courses, and then I actually also have some of these are on something like padlet, where students are creating kind of an ongoing metastasizing virtual gallery, for example, where they can see what they've done and one of the rules is you can't choose a work that another student has chosen. So that's one way that that I'm already practicing to kind of have students see what other students are doing. Yeah. That's great. And in theater we have, we have many of the same challenges that you just articulated questions so that really resonates with me. Michelle, did you still have a question. Quickly, I know. I know on the conversations, I know with the University of system of Maryland we've been talking about OER and such there, there gets to be a point also where students have to be given that honesty of saying okay we are using we are but there's also this this recognition that a student is building, you know, building this area of producing knowledge. And when we're doing that with other students there, there still is this conversation going back and forth that what point is this student feeling that they're being taken advantage of you know what I'm saying. And I haven't heard a really clear answer I know we're using OER and it's open resources, but we're also talking about a student at that level, moving into some high level production of knowledge. And there's almost this, this this feeling of taking advantage of that students information to go in there and, and like I said I haven't really heard answers to that yet we're starting those conversations and I just didn't know if any of the panelists had a thought I know our time is very close so I certainly understand and can take it off online. Thanks for that really, really important question Michelle. Karen, I'm going to try and maybe put you on the spot a little bit because I feel like that was a big thing of what we talked about in our last winter. In terms of sort of, you know, how do we bring students in and how do we credit them accordingly for their contributions to the knowledge comments. Absolutely, there's there's so many pieces going on here and, and just to say that referencing back to the point that I was making in the chat with Stacy is talking which is fascinating I can't wait to read your study like students were hesitant to share which makes sense, given the structures that we have and the ways in which we as faculty feel hesitant to share like the whole system is set up to be very competitive and so you know how is it that we get students to feel comfortable putting licenses on and sharing the work. You know there's no easy answer to that you know when you're talking about how do we shift the entire structure and the world how do we make students feel comfortable how you know I think that the tiny things that we do to begin with is creating, you know, a comfortable environment within our classrooms which I think all of these folks that were today talking about right Kristen and Stacy, certainly doing that and talking about that. But, but what can one educator do in a school where they know you're going to send you know you're going to send your students out into this competitive world and you don't want them to not look good right so it's, it's super challenging I don't, I don't have the answers to that I feel like the more that we can value the collaboration over the competition the more that we can create ways to do that the more we can stop the sort of get towards this and I'm not sure if I'm answering the question Ryan. But I think that's kind of what's been on my mind a lot when I think about shifting structures like the systemic competitive atmosphere that we're in which makes it really really difficult to do the kind of contributory work that we talk about. And I think what you're, you know, I think what you're highlighting is sort of all of the multiple considerations in this question. And that they're, you know, one of the reasons I think Michelle is raising it is, is there isn't a tidy answer right maybe we haven't found that yet. You're marking this mentally for us to sort of think about maybe a session just on this for the spring for the spring webinars because I think it is certainly worthy of an hour of time and we could certainly talk about it for that amount of time. But we are at four o'clock I wanted to make a couple of announcements before we all go on with our days. Daisy, Kristen and Karen, thank you once again, thank you to Luna and Liz for their leadership in our organization, as well as our VP of professional development into Hernandez who has been such a great resource for me as I have joined the professional development committee. So these are our webinars for our remaining webinars right today, we have open pedagogy as a tool for student empowerment, November 9, we have open ed as a neighbor for anti racism and social justice, and then December 7, measuring the impact of open education. And those will all be sent out on the listserv and information on them on our website as well. Please stay in the loop. There's some upcoming open education conferences that are listed on our website under the get involved menu. Please join our community email it's very active. It is such a great resource so please join if you haven't already, and read our API blog posts and student or impact stories on CCC or. And then lastly, please, if you get a chance and you see our slides please fill out our survey it helps us know, you know, how helpful this webinar was if you want to hear more about this topic and you know what we can do to continue to serve our membership so thank you so much. It was a real pleasure to hear about these assignments and the way that we are all trying to bring open pedagogy to our work and everyone have a great day and a great semester see you all soon.


Dmitry Medvedev threatened Western countries again. Russia will not let anyone impose any rules that run counter to its traditions and values. Leader of Russia's ruling United Russia Party, Dmitry Medvedev said, We will let no one impose alien ideas on us. Dictate rules that run counter to our traditions and values. Support, xenophobia and extremism. Conduct destructive activities sponsored by our enemies. He said at the party's congress. He recalled that since the beginning of the special military operation, the party has been helping soldiers and their families. Hundreds of thousands of people are involved in such activities, he said. These are volunteers who are fighting on the front line, demonstrating heroism and courage. Our volunteers, who are working in hospitals, helping refugees, he noted. United Russia members are sparing no effort to bring closer our common victory, he said. Thank you very much for that, he added. Medvedev said that Russian President Vladimir Putin's victory at the upcoming presidential election in 2024 will make it possible to completely defeat all forces threatening the country. We must create all conditions so that the future generations of citizens of our country could look in the future with confidence and optimism. I have no doubt we will, he stressed.


All you need to know when teaching multilevel ESL classes. While you learn about teaching multilevel classrooms when you take a TESOL or TEFL certification course, the reality often looks a little different. It's true that multilevel ESL classrooms have many benefits for English learners. For example, they have the chance to communicate with each other and learn how to use English through practice and negotiating meaning. For the instructor, teaching multilevel classes can be quite a challenge. It requires more prep time and also involves a high level of classroom management. That's why we've written this post to reveal all you need to know when teaching multilevel ESL classes. Assessing student needs. It's not unusual to have a new student with lower language abilities join a class with students of a higher level. Obviously, the student with little or no English skills has different needs than a student who has already studied English for a while. One of the first things here to consider should be a leveled test to determine the student's level of English in all four categories, listening, reading, writing and speaking. While these tests offer good results, they are often not enough to truly pinpoint a student's real abilities. Therefore, other methods such as interviews, group discussions or just plain student observation are very helpful to get a better sense of their English level. What's also important to understand is that the student's needs assessment should be ongoing. Students get wrongly placed into low levels far too often when they would actually do better in a higher level, and vice versa. Also, don't underestimate the learning power of young learners. Children pick up language like a sponge, so even the lowest level student will soon chatter away with his or her fellow peers in class and fit right in. Lesson planning. When planning your lessons, you can also keep in mind your multilevel classes and plan accordingly. This means you'll create different versions of activities and exercises for the different levels of the learners. When planning for a reading lesson, for example, you can anticipate for the beginners to be able to listen to the story with pauses and questions to check for understanding. They should then be able to retell the timeline of the events in the story. Higher level students should also be able to describe the characters using descriptive words. If you plan this way and anticipate the results of the different levels of students, you'll have a much more manageable classroom and give all students the feeling of accomplishment. Grouping your students. One of the best benefits of working with a multilevel class is that you can pair weaker students with those with higher language skills. Doing that will give the weaker student the opportunity to learn from their higher level partner, while the partner will be able to improve by teaching the lower level student. You can not only group your students according to level, but also look at their interests, or personality, for instance. Creating projects or themes. Having your lessons revolve around a common theme, or having the students work on projects is another great way to unite multilevel classes. You have the chance to use a variety of grouping settings, expose lower level students to vocabulary and language patterns they may not be familiar with, and give the higher level students the chance to take charge, and have them act as peer tutors. Creating a variety of materials. Make sure you have materials available for students who can work independently, such as a designated corner with worksheets, reading material or even laptops or tablets they can use to read news articles and complete writing tasks. Giving your students this freedom is a great way to promote independent learning and you'll be surprised how much fun your students will have. Plus, having the independent students work by themselves gives you more time to focus on students who need some help with reading, writing or other language issues. Are you ready to teach English abroad? The tips above should have covered all you need to know when teaching multilevel ESL classes. By using these tips you should have no problem navigating your way through these types of classes. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT the leading provider for TEFL and TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking that button down here, and click on any of the videos here on the left, for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.