It's magic. It's that quick little solution that creates huge benefits. It's magnificent. It's awesome. It has such creativity because of our people, because of the knowledge that they have. We are inquisitive, steadfast and innovative. The plant materials program has been beneficial and green because you'll have plant resources. We do rely on that base of expertise. The plant materials program, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, shares the agency's rich 70-year history. The program uses plants to solve our nation's most critical resource concerns. Restoring stream banks, wetlands, coastal areas, native prairies, grazing lands and wildlife habitat. Preventing invasive species, using windbreaks to improve air quality. Providing vegetation for conservation reserve program lands. And restoring areas after road building, mining, drought and wildfire. Plants play a very important role in the conservation practices that we utilize. We can solve a lot of our problems with plants which are generally more environmentally friendly, less costly and they've become a major part of our conservation practices. Plant materials centers programed nationwide. I'm very impressed with the technology transfer and the dedication to the people to try and get the information out and help the landowners, help the county governments and help the natural resource to address the concerns that only plants can do. Plants are the basis for most of the restoration projects and it's a long-term objective and we need to build on a basis of good genetic material. Plants are it. Plants are that answer and many times they're the only solution. The program works through a network of 26 plant material centers and associated plant materials specialists serving all 50 states and U.S. territories. The NRCS plant material program really has its roots in the beginnings of the agency, the old soil conservation service. There was a lot of wisdom that went into the architecture of that agency based primarily on soil surveys, snow surveys, plant materials and conservation planning. Plant materials being one of the the basic programs that was originally authorized looked at the fact that if we were going to do conservation in this country we had to try to mirror what the good Lord did when he made this world and that is put a cover on the soil. It's a grassroots type program. We work with private landowners, we work with conservation districts in testing our plant materials and that technology is transferred on to the neighbor. The plant material center started during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and the entire six, seven decades since so they've been involved with developing plant materials to solve conservation problems whether it's soil erosion from wind or water or restoring disturbed lands. We have developed plant materials and plant materials technology for wildlife, for streambank stabilization, conservation of natural resources such as water. The plant materials program collects, selects and releases grasses, legumes, wildflowers, trees and shrubs for conservation use and develops innovative technology to establish those plants on the landscape in cooperation with public private, commercial and tribal partners. In order to find those best plants it takes research, it takes growing those plants, it takes years of study to determine which plant is really going to be the best to meet all those conditions and needs and through this plant materials program we're able to determine that. That's what the plant materials program is about in our agency is to look for superior performing conservation plants that meet the needs of the resource out there. We're providing more diversity trying to make that plant community a native plant community that resembles some relic plant community prior to a disturbance. That's been a real challenge and I think our program has provided those materials. We have a large emphasis to try to find native plants that fit the role whenever possible and to look for specific cultural needs of those plants. How do you collect those plants, how are they propagated, how do you care for the seed and most importantly what is the best way to plant those plants in a fashion that they'll survive and do the job they're intended to do. We do a lot of work on the agronomics of seed production and what kind of irrigation regime, what type of harvesting equipment, what kind of germination do you end up with. That's another whole part of our program is to get that plant ready for commercial production and what kinds of technologies are going to be required for that producer to be successful with the production of that plant. The program's experts provide one-on-one technical assistance to farmers, ranchers and seed growers. They also share new plant technologies with NRCS range management specialists, biologists and agronomists and especially with local field offices. Well, plant materials program tries to provide the field offices information on plant sciences technology. That is what are the bright species to solve a particular conservation problem and how do you establish those species in the most cost-effective way. I try to use the plant material center as a training location for our staff people so they have an actual firm experience base when they're talking to land owner. I think it's extremely important. It's a link that we have to actual on-site experience with research and it's looked at very favorably with the farmers and ranchers. The research that they do there is so valuable to all of us in this area and to all of the people in the agricultural and the urban areas because they have so much expertise in this field. That's what we're turning to the plant material center now more is to help me manage the plant community and that's a very very complex exciting task. Plant material program helped me do my job by taking the guesswork out of what will work out there or not. They provide me the information the tools that basically so when I meet with the land owner I have the confidence that I can share with them that these plants will grow well out there. The technology transfer from the plant materials program goes especially to the private sector all of those people who are outside of us. Nurseries and commercial seed growers rely on the plant materials program to provide conservation plant releases not found anywhere else and the guidance on how to successfully grow them. I'm thrilled that they are there doing that research and doing a lot of the work that that we might have to do otherwise because we want to select the best of the natives so if they've selected them and we can use them and then promote them and get them out to the public that's a perfect situation. Our company specializes in the production and sales of native grasses and wildflowers. They act as filters for our water they create much cleaner water and they also filter the air and it's through the efforts of the plant material centers that we're able to develop these better native grasses. No no question if NRCS plant materials group was not here I probably would not have started into this native business. They had the first organized approach to making plant material available. Vermilion smooth coregrass has proven to be the most effective and the most superior smooth coregrass strain that is available. Vermilion can only be found at this facility that can't get anywhere else. We make it available free of charge to commercial growers. Let me tell you if we didn't have simple information such as california oak grass needs to be cold stratified most farmers would think that there there was a failure and in fact it's not a failure it's just inherent in the species and there's dozens of examples where information from NRCS is provided that little tidbit of information so that we make the proper choice. The plant materials program evaluates conservation plant performance in real-world situations a superfund site in the east a dairy farm in the upper Midwest a native landscaping project in the Rocky Mountains. Each plant materials center finds plant solutions for their region of the country for example the golden meadow plant material center in Louisiana is studying the ongoing disappearance of marshlands along the Gulf Coast. This center was developed a critical need to look at the coastal wetlands plants strictly for coastal wetlands and we're really the only plant materials center nationally that that deals strictly with coastal wetland plants or marshlands. When I was in West Virginia we had a plant material center that had a tremendous amount of mine spoils well in that plant material center they're specializing on plants that will help keep and address runoff and the soil that's moving from these mine spoils out in the west we're looking at native plants that can withstand drought activities. The program's ability to find plant solutions for specific resource concerns has provided private landowners more localized options for protecting their lands through national initiatives like the farm bill. The conservation in the farm bill dealing with all these issues out here in the landscape is so important that we have the tools to do that if we didn't have the plant solutions it couldn't be done. All of these programs have had a very heavy emphasis on ecological restoration and they've also had a very heavy emphasis on native plant uses and native plant communities for that ecological restoration and there's no better place to center that kind of information than the plant material centers. What the plant materials program has produced in the past in individual spaces is the background of what we're doing with the farm bill and so we're really putting it on the ground a big way. From the conservation programs of the farm bill to community responses to natural disasters the plant materials program provides plants and conservation technology to heal the landscape after droughts and floods, hurricanes and wildfire. Roughly a third of our ranch was taken the grazing area was burned off. During the time of the fire you have a sense of helplessness and total devouring of everything in its path is just incredible feeling. After wildfires the program works with private landowners, NRCS specialists and local agencies to inventory the sites, recommend a native plant mix and ensure it's successful planting. To us plant materials are very important because they basically allowed us not to do this as an experiment. Basically they did the work for us and allowed us to go ahead with this project knowing it will do well. It couldn't have come up better. I don't think there was a grain of seed that didn't hatch. It looked lavish, very lavish and it did a big boost to the bottom line. I love this place and I have a bond with the soil. You like to see that vital and healthy the grass seeding and stuff that was done after the fire. It improved the soil, it improved the grazing and it improved the general ambience of the entire operation. In New Mexico the program partnered with the Pueblo D'Cochiti tribe to restore an important stream corridor using tree species released by the plant materials program. We need these trees and all the vegetation to keep the area as pristine as possible to sustain our culture and we've been pretty lucky with the NRCS program. If it wasn't for them these trees would not be available. In the eight years since the planting occurred you can see almost a mature riparian forest community has been developed along this stream. In Montana along the Lewis and Clark Trail the plant materials program is helping to restore native grasses. The expertise that the NRCS has as far as species adaptability and the experience that they've had with native seedings in the past we wanted to bring all of that knowledge into this site to try to simulate what it looked like back in the 1800s so that when the public comes in that they could get a better experience of this as well as another objective which would be habitat enhancement riparian enhancement and watershed improvement. In Oregon the program cooperated with a private landowner the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others to restore a large wetland complex. When we restore wetland we set the stage for a biological or ecological system to begin functioning and it's more complex than we ever guessed and I'm a district conservationist. I happen to be a wildlife biologist background but I'm a gender list and I can't know everything and what the PMC is is my in-house knowledge base. It gives us a cadre of staff who are very knowledgeable on plant propagation and species propagation techniques that we as practitioners in the field oftentimes don't have the time or the patience to develop and also then they can provide that seed source for commercial production which allows us to move these techniques out into the larger landscape. The people that are in the plant materials program from technicians all the way to the managers and the plant material specialists throughout the country that's the greatest asset to the plant materials program. I'm most proud of I guess the privilege and opportunity to work with people being able to take the technologies the research and take them to a landowner and help that landowner solve problems. I think that's the greatest contribution that I could have to society and to the ranching farming community. Planting grasses along the New Jersey coastline, improving grasses for livestock grazing in Georgia and biofuel production in Mississippi, establishing native wildflowers along Iowa Highways, restoring upland bird habitat in Texas, preventing invasive species in Glacier National Park in Montana and in Yosemite National Park in California. All across the landscape you can see the first 70 years of the plant materials program success. What about the next 70 years? It's gonna be a lot of challenges over the next 70 years. It's gonna be a real challenge for us to try to figure out how to establish natives to suppress invasive species in a landscape and we we haven't got there yet. In the future for the plant materials program we need to emphasize on the concerns that are happening now. For example, carbon sequestration, air quality is a big issue. We need to do a good job of recruiting new individuals with new ideas. As an agency we need to continue to promote the plant material centers program because without the ability to take that and let other people know what the program will do, we're not going to maintain the support that we have. We're not going to continue to have the centers out there, the staff out there, the plant material centers program will be up for the challenge for the activities are coming to the future.


And welcome to Design at Home. I'm Tiffany, an educator at the Cooper Hewitt-Smithsonian Design Museum. Today, I want to tell you about designer Ava Zeisel. Zeisel was born in Budapest in 1906, and she lived to be 105 years old. During her long life and career, she designed everything from furniture to candlesticks to dinnerware. And by using materials like textiles and ceramics in her designs, she really became a pioneer for women in the design field. Her designs are functional, but even more than that, they have this graceful elegance and this playfulness that has captured people's imaginations. Take, for example, these salt and pepper shakers. Zeisel was inspired by the relationship between these two objects to create a set that was inspired by her relationship with her daughter. You can see by just looking at them that they have this sort of emotional bond, by the way that the curves fit just so together, that really does make you think of a mother and child. Some of Zeisel's signature design motifs are test-lating patterns and organic shapes. You can see these occurring throughout the lifespan of her work. What is a test-lating pattern? A test-lating pattern is created when a shape repeats over and over again, covering a surface without any gaps. Another word for this pattern is tiling. Check out these modular sound dampening tiles. Even though these serve a very different function than the salt and pepper shakers that we just saw, you can see very clearly Zeisel's signature motif of repeating patterns and organic shapes. What I think is particularly interesting about these tiles is that you can actually move the separate pieces and mix and match the tessellation so that you can personalize it to your style and taste. If a Zeisel's work has inspired generations of designers, and now we're going to get to work on our very own designs inspired by Zeisel's repeating patterns and organic shapes. Here's what you'll need to get started. A potato, a butter knife, or you could use a spoon, a piece of construction paper, an acrylic paint and a paintbrush, or you could use an ink pad or even washable markers if you have those. Well, let's get started! Step one. Using a butter knife, cut one potato into two halves. If you want to use a sharper knife to do this, ask an adult for help. Step two. On a flat side of the potato, draw a shape that can be used to create a tessellation. Using the knife or a spoon, carve away the parts of the potato on the outside of your design. Step three. Apply your first color of acrylic paint or ink to the raised part of the potato. Holding the round side, press your pattern firmly against the construction paper. Repeat the color application and stamping process across the entire surface of the page. Step four. Using a second color of paint or ink, repeat step three, stamping your shape into the negative spaces that are left in your pattern. Thank you so much for joining me for Design at Home. For more ways to experience Design at Home, check out our website at cooperhewitt.org or head over to our Smithsonian Learning Lab page. Till next time!


Right now we have to know the truth. There's no democracy without freedom of the press. Because the press is the only thing that can hold government accountable. And there's no freedom of the press as long as Assange is being prosecuted. We are, you know, inside the belly of the beast, the empire, and it's violence of the press and no one's telling the truth. It weaponizes your capacity to feel, to have compassion and empathy because if you don't have the full story and if your heart is being manipulated with lies, then we're all lost. How can we have peace in the world if we're just drowning in lies? So I think people in the world understand that, know the value of it, know this is a critical moment. They understand how critical this moment is, that you could have a publisher publish the truth and be tortured. That's a moment of pivot. We should all be very seriously looking at and standing up against. It was Julian himself who said that if wars can be started by lies, then peace can be started by truth. And I think that's been a big part of his motivation, is to create a world that's peaceful, where countries aren't going around, killing thousands. Most every war that the US has been involved in has been the result of lies. We've been lied into war. We cannot allow freedom of the press to be eroded. Man, can you watch? People to be silent. We're just came out of Congress where they can't talk about peace. Shame of yourself. In the face of real courage, this is what you do. Complete disregard for human rights.  Protesting Julian Assange's treatment. He published the truth and so he's been in solitary confinement for four years. It's an abomination and it's a violation of freedom of the press. We ain't got freedom of the press.


A 20-year-old registered sex offender has been charged for allegedly attacking a woman inside the Brainerd High School locker room on Monday. Jared Allen Tristan McCormack of Brainerd is facing three felony charges, including first-degree burglary assault, attempted kidnapping, and attempted fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct through using force. According to the criminal complaint, McCormack was waiting inside the locker room for almost an hour before attacking the 36-year-old Brainerd High School staff member. The woman arrived at the school at 4.40 a.m. to work out with school exercise equipment. She was showered and dressed at 6.20 when a man, she reported a man, came up behind her and placed his arm around her neck and mouth. After a struggle, the man ran off and the woman ran out of the locker room for help. Police were on the scene within minutes and another school employee identified the attacker as McCormack. McCormack was arrested a short time later, not far from the school. He denied being at the school, but authorities say he is seen on surveillance video at the school entering the locker room at 5.25 in the morning and later leaving at 6.45. The woman who was attacked suffered minor injuries, including scrapes on her knees. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


You can make a 3D-printed LED headband inspired by Bo-Katan from Star Wars. This design features engraved details that wrap around the headband and uses an adjustable strap to fit comfortably over your head. The LEDs are powered by a Coinsil breakout hidden inside a 3D-printed battery box on the end of the strap. These miniature LEDs come in a few different colors and they're pre-wired so they're great for prop builders and model makers. The Adafruit Coinsil breakout features an on-and-off switch, header pins, and mounting holes for securing to your projects. Download the free CAD files and 3D-print them in your favorite filaments. The design is open-source so you can customize the headband to fit perfectly over your head. The wired LEDs are threaded through the built-in recesses and hot glued in place to create a DIY diffuser. Once it's cooled down, you can use a hobby knife to trim away the excess and square it up so it looks nice and clean. Solder the blue wires to the ground pins and the red wires to the switch's power pin. Thread the elastic strap through the slits on the side of the headband and add a metal clip to the ends to keep it fitted. The strap can then be threaded through the battery case and the breakout board is secured with machine screws. The CR2023 Coinsil fits into the breakout and should last for several hours. This chunky button actuator press fits into the top cover and gives you much better access to the breakout board's slide switch. Snap fit the cover over the case with the LED wires inserted through the built-in slit on the bottom of the cover. The wires are then hidden behind the elastic strap and sewn in place with just a few stitches. We really like these tiny LEDs because they're easy to work with and we think they're great for making props with embedded lights. We hope this inspires you to add LEDs to your projects and check out our guides on learn.aderfruit.com


Before we introduce our keynote speaker, please allow us to recognize and to thank our colleagues and friends from the embassies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and also to welcome guests from Vietnam and around the U.S. who have traveled long distances to be with us in person. It is an honor to be able to host you in this building. When the shades are up, we overlook the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, and we are very near many landmark U.S. memorials, which I hope if you are a guest here that you are able to visit. We're also very pleased to welcome congressional colleagues who are here today and who continue to sustain America's commitment to peace, prosperity, and security in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Now, my distinct privilege to introduce our distinguished keynote speaker, Secretary Chuck Hagel. Secretary Hagel was the 24th U.S. Secretary of Defense, serving from February 2013 to February 2015. He is the only Vietnam veteran and the first enlisted combat veteran to serve as Secretary of Defense. Secretary Hagel's service to his country is exemplary. He has served two terms in the United States Senate representing Nebraska and was the Co-Chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and the Chairman of the Atlantic Council. Secretary Hagel currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the United States Military Academy, the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation, the Advisory Board of Corsair Capital, as a Centennial Scholar at Georgetown University, as a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, as a Distinguished Statesman at the Atlantic Council, on the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Service, and on the Board of Trustees of the United States Capitol Historical Society. Secretary Hagel is the author of the book, America, our next chapter. At the end of Secretary Hagel's comments, he will be taking questions from the floor. We have microphones here and we encourage colleagues to please take advantage. Mr. Secretary, we are honored to have you with us at USIP today for this important discussion. Thank you, Madame President. It's truly a privilege to be here to share some thoughts with so many people whose lives and professions, applications, vocations have been about making a better world, a better world for all people, not just the United States or Vietnam or any other country. I think if there was ever a time for an emphasis on that and a reality to that, it's today's world. As we all know, we are living in a world of nearly 8 billion global citizens, yes, American citizens, Vietnamese citizens, Laosian citizens, Thai citizens, but we're all global citizens. And a clear understanding of that I don't think has been yet accepted by a lot of countries. And if there is to be a world that's not just prosperous for all people, but a world that's fair, that's honest, that's hopeful, we're going to have to change how we do business. And one of the reasons the US Institute of Peace has been so important since its founding, and I recall when we got the funding, it was Ted Stevens, as Jim Reeser knows, who was the guiding focus light and roadplow that got it done. But it has been symbolic for many reasons, yes, peace, but more than that, because it brings people together in a very important way, like today and tomorrow. So thank you all for what you're doing, and we all appreciate it very much. Ambassador, nice to see you again, Tim Reeser, Ann Mills Griffith, who is, I won't say old, but a good friend, but Ann and I have been around together a long time and fought in the trenches for veterans, Vietnam veterans, and I admire her very much. And what Tim Reeser has done with Pat Leahy has been remarkable over the years. So thank you all. I'm going to keep my remarks fairly brief, so I don't want to throw off your schedules, because then we'll have more time for questions and talk about whatever you want. But as I was thinking about today, over the last week, what I might contribute to this gathering, and I know it's about lessons learned. It's about all those dynamics of the relationship with Vietnam in the United States. I'd like to just give you a brief, very brief background on my knowledge of Vietnam, and then give you four basic lessons learned that I have thought about over the years when I was in the Senate. Before that, I've always been involved in veterans organizations helping veterans. But I served in Vietnam in 1968, and I think most of you recall that year. It was a bad year. We sent 16,000 dead Americans home in one year. Today America wouldn't stand for that. My brother Tom served with me, I mean physically with me for a year. We were both wounded twice together. That was the year of Tet. Here in this country, what was going on was almost as bad as what was going on in Vietnam. We had two assassinations of King and Kennedy. Cities were burning. This country was about as at a lower point as it had been, I think, in modern times. And it was reflected in Vietnam how we conducted the war, kind of a mindless approach to it all. In 1999, our new ambassador, appointed by President Clinton, who put the two countries back together, and engineered the diplomatic relationship between the United States and Vietnam, selected Congressman Pete Peterson from Florida to be his first ambassador. Peterson was one of the longest held POWs, a tremendous person. But he had an unfair advantage in life. He was from Nebraska. And I readily admit that he had some advantages. He was from Omaha, Nebraska, graduated Benson High School and went to the Naval Academy and spent more than six years as a POW. He asked my brother Tom and me in 1999, and I was in the Senate at the time, to come back to Vietnam and cut the ribbon for the new American consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. All of you know that our consulate in Ho Chi Minh City is on the very spot of where our embassy was during the Vietnam War. Tom and I did that. That's the first time we had been back since we left. I left in December of 1968, and he left in January of 1969. But they also took us, because we spent about five days there. I went to Hanoi first, met the prime minister and a number of the minister, foreign minister, defense minister. And then on end of Ho Chi Minh City, we spent about five days there. And we were struck with the tremendous progress. And that progress wasn't just Vietnamese progress, but it was the product of Vietnam's developing relationships with the United States and with other countries, not just in Asia, but with other countries in the world, and how the Vietnamese had done that. And the cooperation, and we had differences with Vietnam, and still do. But what was unique about this relationship? We concentrated on where we agreed. Yes, we had just fought a brutal war, a 10-year war. That was very unfair in many ways. It cost us 56,000 lives, what the Vietnam Veteran Memorial across the street is all about. But the concentration and the focus on where we agreed, how we could help each other and Asia, Southeast Asia, trade, commerce, education, especially education, and all the facets of a diplomatic relationship that went into it. But this relationship that got renewed in the early 90s, and it was done, as Tim Reeser knows, especially by the Vietnam Veterans in the Senate at the time. I was not there at the time. I came in 96. But John Kerry, Bob Kerry, John McCain, Chuck Robb really guided that. And they had a very receptive president, Bill Clinton. And the rest of the Senate, Pat Leahy, was a huge part of that and made it work. And because they built that relationship back Vietnam, the United States, the way they did over the next years, including today, it's developed into a very important relationship. And I would say mutually important relationship. So that leads me to, as you all know, and much has been written about this relationship. What lessons did we learn? Did we learn enough? History informs.  And we in the United States have done that because we didn't adhere to, listen to, and absorb lessons learned from Vietnam. The four lessons that I think, at least in my opinion, that we must always learn. And it's a direct result of the Vietnam experience. And a lot is connected into each of these. But the first is, military force should never get ahead of diplomatic strategy. Diplomatic strategy must always lead the use of military, and a nation will always run into trouble when that does not happen, and it certainly happened in our 20 year involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had no diplomatic strategy. And some of you know that very well because you were at the table. That's the first lesson. The second lesson is understand the culture, the country, the people, the religion of the other country as best you can. You've got to reverse the optics. The optics can't always be American. We are a small part of the world, 5% of the world's population, 25% of the economy, and we are the dominant nation of the world, and have been since World War II. But even with all that power and prestige, we have failed over the years because we didn't learn some lessons of history. And I think an important part of that is we venture into areas where we don't understand where we're going and why, and as Colin Powell used to say, what's your exit strategy? We didn't learn that in Vietnam. Certainly we didn't learn that in Iraq and with Afghanistan with our disastrous exits. The first lesson learned is when you employ troops in the military, make sure they're for a short time. The longer you keep troops in a country, the more you will defeat yourself. You've got to engage the people. The people are the most important part of any relationship, any foreign relationship. That's got to be number one, not the government, but the people. You work with the government, and if that's not understood, you will be seen as occupiers. As an example, in 2008, it wasn't Barack Obama who was elected president in 2008 who campaigned against the Iraq War. It wasn't Barack Obama who pulled the troops out of Iraq. It was George Bush who signed the deal. And George Bush had to do that because the prime minister of Iraq at the time, Mr. Maliki said, I will not take a status of forces agreement to the parliament to protect your troops because you are seeing as occupiers in our country. I think that shocked the Bush administration. President Bush had to sign an agreement for all of our troops to be out by 2011. That's a very clear example of violating that lesson that should be learned, but it always happens. It happened in Afghanistan. And as I took through these lessons learned, there are a lot of components to each that we could spend almost an afternoon on each of them. The next lesson learned for us, I think, and I was there, involved in all three of those wars in one way or another, is the Congress has to be more involved. The Congress has to be more active. When you think about our Constitution, in Article I of the Constitution, the executive, I mean the legislative, the Congress, not the executive, there are Article II of the President. And only the Congress has the power to declare war. Well, we've been very dishonest over the years where we don't declare war.  The lies as to what led us into Iraq, there were no weapons of mass destruction. And the Congress has been, in my opinion, and again I've been on both sides of this issue, way too docile. And when the Congress, the representatives of the people, House members, Senators, do not stay close to war and foreign policy, no good will come of that. Too much power in the executive, and I think that's a clear lesson learned from Vietnam. It certainly was the result we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq. I recall the special investigator for Afghanistan, and Tim Reager, remember this, who was put in place years ago in Afghanistan to go in and investigate where the U.S. funds, money appropriated for Afghanistan, where did that go? And that special investigator, who reported to the President of the United States, not the Congress, would come give his report and would testify before committees in the Congress. I was on the Foreign Relations Committee as to what was going on in Afghanistan, $30, billion of money that he couldn't find where it went. Well, we know where it went. It was corruption, corruption in the government, it was corruption of different American country, companies, but we didn't pay attention to it. We didn't pay attention to it. And that led to corrupt governments in Afghanistan losing the people, losing the confidence of the people, and then ultimately the United States had to pull out and the people didn't support the government. I would add one additional thing. When you're making peace, and the United States has been in three long wars, 10 years for Vietnam, 20 years for Afghanistan and Iraq, when you're making peace with the other side, you must include the current government of the country that you have been helping. In 1972, we made a peace arrangement with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, what we left out the government of South Vietnam. Same thing in Afghanistan, early 2019, actually, in Qatar, the Trump administration makes a deal with the Taliban, leaves the Ghani government out. Then we go back in and we tell the Ghani government, this is the deal, this is what you're going to live with. Anyway, you're going to release 5,000 prisoners, 5,000 the most dangerous, but Ghani government has no say in any of it, just like the two government had no say in Vietnam in 1972 with that peace agreement. You can take each of those and dissect them in small parts and say, yeah, but, but, and I recognize that, there's no perfect analogies or analysis of anything, differences always. But I'm talking about just general theory, general analysis, general lessons learned. So, I'll end where I started, history informs. And when countries and governments don't adhere to that and don't learn that, they're headed for trouble. And in the kind of world that we're in today, a world that's so interconnected, Putin's war on Ukraine, there's not a country in the world that's not affected by that war, not a country in the world that's not affected by it, whether it's supply chain problems, fuel problems, hunger, politics, diplomacy, we're all affected by it. So, we've got to understand all of this now is like handling nitroglycerin. It's that dangerous. And we've got to come at it that way. And again, I go back to where I started, it's personal relationships. Where can we agree? Don't start with where you disagree. You'll never get to where you can agree if that's where you start. You've got to start the other way. Invert the process so you start where can we agree? If we don't do that, this world is going to be very dangerous, more dangerous than it is now. And this is in addition to what's going on with climate change, COVID. And there'll be more COVIDs. This isn't the end of pandemics. Again, lessons of history. I don't care how sophisticated our medicine is and what's happened just naturally. You've got to factor all of that in. And I will end with this. Listen. People have to listen to each other. They've got to listen with open minds. That's difficult to do. I understand that with past hatreds, with past problems, past issues, injustices. I get all that. I get all that. But today is gone. Tomorrow is gone. It's all about the future. It's all about tomorrow. What can we do to influence tomorrow? And if we don't take that approach in our personal lives, our official lives, then we're doomed. It's all about tomorrow. And how do we make a better world? Okay. What do you want to talk about? Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Hagel. I'm John McAuliffe from the Fund for Reconciliation and Development. We worked for many years for normalization with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. But I want to take you to another part of the world as you have given us a global scope. It was 20 years to end the embargo and to get normal relations with Vietnam. It's been 60 years with Cuba and we still don't have it. And I'm curious what you think might finally dislodge that and get us to the period of mutual respect and reconciliation with Cuba, and whether USIP can play a role in that happening. Thank you. Well, interestingly enough, I've been thinking about that. And the world and reality and the uncertainty of life in our personal lives and the world relationships always somehow affect things. Uncertain, unknown, unpredictable. And in the case of Cuba, we have this terrible hurricane, Mr. Ian, a nasty fellow, decimated much of Cuba, like it did the west coast of Florida, and the Cuban government reaching out to the United States government for assistance. Well, your question about what could be done to start influencing maybe reconciliation in some way, that's an opening right there. Now, I'm not saying that we should send a check at the Cuba, but I think we should explore that opening, that possibility. Again, it's the people. Yes, Cubans have a corrupt government. The people in Cuba have had very little freedom. But this could be an opening. And I actually think climate and weather patterns are going to affect foreign policy of nations and diplomacy far more than anybody has any ideas. Because it's about survival. We do know that as the oceans rise, there will not be a nation that is in any way close to oceans. That's not going to be significantly affected. Well, you think through that, well, could this be an area where we could maybe reach out to countries and work together? Now, I recognize it's not that easy. I recognize all the downsides to that. I recognize corruption. I recognize the people who don't want any reconciliation. But so it has been throughout history. Throughout history, it's not been easy to bring countries together. So I think that we need to find some way, to find some way to open that door to reconciliation in Cuba, for a lot of reasons. It's just in the best interest of everybody. And maybe that request coming from the Cuban government for us, and I've noticed, and I'm Tim Reiser would be far more connected into what's going on with this than me. But I've noticed and I've heard that the Biden administration is considering this, looking at it. I don't know where the Congress is on this. But I do know through all my years in the Senate, that no money deals happen unless Tim Reiser is involved. So talk to Reiser about this. But thank you. Thank you for being here, Secretary Hagel. My name is Zia Nguyen Van Hoot, originally from Vietnam. And now I lead infrastructure investment and development at the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group. My question for you is given the current tensions and concerns for U.S. policy concerning Chinese supply chain issues, including labor issues related to Xinjiang, and very much affecting solar panel supply chains and other supplies of chips, while other components that are very essential for infrastructure development around the world, given that China produces over 95 percent of the solar panels and chips that we need around the world, what is your view of how Vietnam can play a role, a more prominent role given Vietnam's, I'm very proud to say, emerging role or actually very solidified role in manufacturing around the world? What is your view about how Vietnam can play a role in the emerging manufacturing scene going forward? Well, I think Vietnam can play a very critical role. And I say that not just because we have a number of friends from Vietnam here, because, first of all, Vietnam, represented by its people, is as industrious a country as there is in the world. And that's, in my opinion, that's a big compliment. The Vietnamese people know how to get things done. Their pros at manufacturing, agriculture, trade, they get it. They understand, you all understand how it works. And because where you're located, where Vietnam is located, it is a critical geopolitical, strategic, trade, economic, diplomatic, security part of the world, bordering China. And as you all know, the numbers that are reflected, not this workforce, but markets represented in Asia and the kind of progress that's been made over the years in Asia, all of that together, positions, and for all the reasons I mentioned and more, positions Vietnam in a very critical place for manufacturing in particular chips or anything else. Now, I mean, we understand Taiwan's dominance in those areas, but we also understand that that's going to have to change in some ways, that the world cannot just rely on one nation for so much, especially of an important product that relates to so many other important products. I mean, microchips are critical. So there will be other countries that will flourish in the manufacturing of these particularly strategic products. And the U.S. has already started to move in that direction, other countries. And again, where Vietnam is, where it's how it's positioned, where it's positioned, it's people, really give it, I think, a huge leg up in order to do that and to take on these new possibilities, opportunities. And I suspect that that will happen because the Vietnamese, you all take advantage very wisely of these opportunities. Hi. I'm a little vertically challenged. Thank you for being here with us, Secretary Hago. So my name is Sarah Gulabdara. I'm with Legacies of War. We're a nonprofit located right here in Washington, D.C. We advocate for bomb clearance and victim assistance in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. So since I'm a former cornhusker, I'm going to ask you an easy question. You're never a former. I mean, I left, I left. Well, but in your heart, you know, the cornhuskers are mighty. I cheer for them, except one day play my buck, guys. Do they have a team? Hey, now, hey, be nice. I'm going to increase the level of difficulty in my question to you now. And you get this because President Biden won't answer me. So perhaps I get a really good answer from you. Well, you got what you needed, if Biden's answer. So Legacies of War is a proud steering committee member of the U.S. campaign to ban landmine cluster munition coalition. So, you know, the campaign has been in existence since the early 90s, and we've been pushing for our country to exceed to the Mind-Band Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munition, banning these indiscriminate weapons that we as Americans use in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. You talked a lot about lessons learned. And I'm wondering, you know, from your perspective, why is it taking so long for our country to stand on the side of humanity and exceed to these two treaties, along with other members of NATO allies? It just seems to me that our policy on this is more aligned with Vladimir Putin instead of our NATO allies. Thank you. Well, not because only because you're so intimidating, but I agree with you. Tim Reiser knows a lot about this because Pat Leahy has been a champion on all this for many, many years. And no, I think you're right. I know there are variations of, and Pat Leahy and I had had some long conversations about this when I was in the Senate. I know there are variations of all this as to, well, does it help American military or where's our military and so on and so on. But as I've watched it over the years, I don't think we have any interest in this other than to support it. And I recognize that there are nations of the world, and you mentioned one of them, Mr. Putin's Russia, that will never comply with international standards and international law. I mean, he's already, for the last eight months, broken so many of those global, essentially laws, but broken the whole basis of how the world has operated for the last 75 years. A world order that we built with our allies after World War II, a world order of laws and regulations. And the Russians have rarely acknowledged those laws and regulations, and many times, like they are now, flagrantly, mindlessly violated him. So you're always going to find nations that will not exceed what you're talking about. But I think it's time for the United States to take a leadership role in this. And I'm saying that mindful of, you know, for a couple of years I had the responsibility of being the chief person in charge of our national security and listening very closely to our military. And so I say this and give you my position, not just as a former senator, but someone who's had responsibility for the security of this country and working with our military and understanding their concerns and their needs on this issue, as all issues. But I can't look at it any other way than we need to get behind this. Yes? Hello, Senator. Thank you so much for your service in Vietnam. I'm a Philippine Vietnamese-American from Michigan, Granada, Michigan. It is my honor to meet you finally. Thank you so much for your service. And I believe my dad probably served with you in Vietnam in 1968. He didn't make it, but welcome home. Thank you so much. Your father was in Vietnam in 68? Yes, yes. And he was killed there? Yes, in Hue. Yeah. In Hue? Yeah. Oh, well, I'm sorry. Thank you. I know you're proud of your service. Thank you for your service. Thank you. As I started responding in the auditorium that I heard, the U.S. is finally going to help Vietnam to look for the remains of the North Vietnam. I call them Vietnamese, but I don't call them North Vietnam or South Vietnam. I call them Vietnamese because North Vietnam, South Vietnam are Vietnamese. Now, I'm so happy that we have programmed to finally help find those business remains after so many years, right? As you know, Vietnamese-American, I ask myself, what about thousands and thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers that one thought we use side by side, like my father, and including thousands of prisoners who have died in re-education camps. Will we have anything to help them? As Vietnamese-American, we ask that question because we are now not Vietnamese, but American with Vietnamese heritage. Thank you, sir. Well, there are some individuals here at this table that might be able to give you some answers to that. As we have expanded, as you know, our POW, MIA efforts, and Ann Mills Griffith had a lot to do with that when she came to see me one day and raised hell with me in my office as Secretary of Defense. And others here, too, Ambassador Moose knows a lot about this because I think one of the jobs he had as a young early diplomat was in Vietnam. Your question is a relevant question, and I'm not as up to date on things today as I once was, but I would just say that where we can help the Vietnamese, and I get your point, there's no longer a North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, it's Vietnamese. What's past is past, it's over. It's over. And so we have to go forward on that basis. And so we do need to make some adjustments, I think, in that program, and I get your point. Is your mother, is she okay? Wherever you are. I'm sorry. Well, you've done pretty well. You're pretty smart. Again, thank you. It's been a privilege to be with you.


One key goal of my column is to help consumers of news become better judges of fact-based statements. I want to help readers become more discerning about hearing the weasel words and caveats that politicians routinely insert in their statements in order to prevent a more rosy or a more dire picture than the facts would suggest.


The 2022 annual Southeastern Kentucky Chamber Awards night is September 27th. For tickets call<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can also watch live on the free Mountain Top TV app. Floyd County will be holding their 2022 fall cleanup from August 29th to September 3rd. During these days, Floyd County residents can take any garbage from their homes to waste connections free of charge. We want to encourage everyone to please pick up the trash around their homes and take it down there. They can dump it for free. We want to encourage folks to take it to the landfill. We don't want you putting it beside the road and creating unsafe conditions and it's just an eyesore. Due to the recent flooding disaster, there will be no trucks available to assist in transporting garbage to the landfill. In the past, we've always, you know, we've gone out and helped folks pick up appliances and things of that nature. But with the flooding that we have going on, we have our crews working primarily in that area trying to get the mud and the debris picked up over there. So we will not have folks for this particular cleanup. The water that will not be accepted includes tires, batteries, oil, items containing freon and construction debris. Waste connections will be accepting litter Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. For more information, you can contact<PHONE_NUMBER>. For Mountain Top News, I'm Kelsey Dean.


Great, so welcome everybody to a session that we're sharing today with the SHALTAG movement. And we have a presentation from Jisk's Alistair McNaught is joining us as well. And we're going to just start off the session, which is provocatively titled, Promises and Lies, and aims to get us thinking about how inclusive OERs are and how inclusive we are in our digital practice. And challenges us to think about that. And I think we're going to have some really interesting discussions arising from that. So I'm very grateful to Peter and to Alistair for joining us today. My name is Theresa McKinnon. I'm at the University of Warwick and I'm chair of the Open Aid SIG. And today what we're going to do is just start off, first of all, with moving us through the platform just to make sure everybody's familiar. So as I mentioned, we have two presenters joining us. Peter Kilcoin on behalf of SHALTAG from the heart of Worcestershire College. And Alistair McNaught from Jisk who's a subject specialist and a brilliant writer of Haiku, I have to say, as well. So if you haven't yet discovered Alistair on Twitter, you have to because his poetry brightens my life every day. It's excellent. So welcome. You've already run through the tools so you know your way around a little bit.  If not, at the bottom left you can see there's a little Moderators tab. So if you've got any technical problems, just click on the Moderators tab in the chat box and send us a message and we will try and help and make sure that you can hear us and we can deal with any problems. There's just a quick reminder of the chat panel as well. During the session, if you have any questions, what we'd like you to do is to just pop them into the chat. You can press X them with a Q that will help me sign them and pose them to our presenters as well later. So that would be really helpful and do feel free obviously to discuss things as you come across them and to use that chat to exchange perhaps links or ideas. The OpenEd SIG, so OECIG or the OpenEd SIG Special Interest Group, there's a little bit about us there and our remit is very clear. We want to support, develop, sustain and influence policy in open education. And by open education we mean removing or reducing the barriers to access to learning wherever we find them. There are many and we know it's complicated. But we also look as well increasingly as OECIG at joining up the discussions around open in lots of other fields too and there'll be more about that towards the end of the session today. So I'm going to pass over now to Peter to tell you a little bit about SELTAG having spoken briefly about the OpenEd SIG. Okay, thank you Theresa and good afternoon everybody from a very sunny Worcester. I hope you're all hearing me okay. It's my role today as a member of the OLD SELTAG SIG is just to do a brief overview of SELTAG particularly for those of you that aren't from the third education sector. SELTAG stands for the Third Education Learning Technology Action Group and it was a group put together to produce a report for the government in 2013 made up of various great and the good from third education and the learning technology world. And it had a number of work streams, horizon scanning, investment, capital infrastructure, regulation and funding, capacity and capability providers, employers and learners which gave an overview of where the situation was at the time and made a number of recommendations as to how these different things could be moved forward for the sector. If any of you haven't read the report if you just Google SELTAG it's very easy to find and download. Now, what happened with SELTAG has been very interesting. The recommendations were given to the government, the education ministers made replies which many of us felt were very disappointing and didn't really respond to a lot of the recommendations that were made but we're going back now, free government's worth as it were. We're talking about the Liberal Democrat conservative coalition government so clearly that's ancient history now. So at the government level the report kind of died but what's been very interesting about SELTAG is that the sector really took ownership of it and Bob Harrison who was sure many of you are familiar with who is a great proponent of the sector and learning technology and speaks at many learning technology events and is a very vocal tweeter and if you don't follow Bob I couldn't recommend his tweets high enough to follow. He sort of coined this phrase of SELTAG being a movement not a report and Bob often talks about the spirit of SELTAG and I think that is very true but it is something that the sector and supporting organisations like JISC and ALT have really taken ownership of themselves and have driven forward a lot of the ideas that came from SELTAG which have now become mainstreamed in the sector. So it still echoes down the line and this webinar is linked to some of that and Alistair is talking about a number of issues regarding the accessibility of open content and this very much fits in with the capacity and capability providers and the learners agendas. So I'll now pass on to Alistair who will take it from here. Okay, thank you very much. Can I just check in the text chat pane that people can hear? Just a quick yes will be great. That sounds good. Well, a couple of people can hear. Lovely. Okay, The Promise, Digital Diversity. I love the concept of open educational resources and I love the way it can help meet more needs for more learners with less work for staff and this diagram here, I'll just talk you through this diagram. This became very clear to me many years ago back in the late 1990s when we were actively developing an intranet at the college where I taught. I began to realize that different members of staff produced very different kind of content. So for example, my content, I used quite a lot of text, I used a fair few images but mainly to illustrate the points in the text. I didn't have a video camera back in those days. A video camera was a thing you had to go and purchase independently. It wasn't on your phone. So I didn't use much in the way of video or audio. I did do quite a lot of interactivity just using Word documents, drag and drop with text boxes, pop up screen tips and so on. So that was my profile but what I realized was that my colleague, Jan for example her content was very very different to mine. She wasn't a very texty person. She used quite a lot of images and she was very keen on recording audio clips. My colleague Kim on the other hand had a completely different approach at all from that completely. My colleague Steve was somebody who his content was very strongly mind map based. He liked sketching mind maps on pieces of paper. But we could scan that, load it up onto the virtual learning environment or the intranet as our learning platform was at that time. What it meant was because all of us shared all our resources with all our students it meant that a student that was in my class which was a mainly textual class but really benefited from audio could just nib over and see what Jan was doing in her class. On the intranet. So students were going between the different resources. Now of course open educational resources, the whole open educational content movement gives us tremendous opportunities to be able to not just have four or five different rainbows of teaching styles and teaching preferences but potentially millions of resources where I could give students videos from the Khan Academy and I could give student access to academic texts from core.ac.uk. And I can mix and match according to my particular students needs, their particular levels, their preferred medium. We have a rainbow of digital diversity. And for those of you that remember your basic physics I've even tried to get the colour sequence right from the top to the bottom. So what we should be able to do with an open educational movement we ought to be able to allow our students to move freely across these rainbows picking out the kinds of resources that best meet their needs that are best adapted to their assistive technologies. However, there's a difference between theory and practice because I'm going to I think Theresa used the word provocative. I'm going to make some provocative comments because I think the open educational resource movement is plagued by five digital deceptions. These are things that look like they're one thing that are actually something else and they all boil down to a lack of awareness of basic accessibility practice, basic inclusion, good practices. They have impacts for all users not just for disabled users but their impact is particularly marked, particularly noticeable for people with additional support needs. So let's have a look at the digital deceptions. Now remember we're starting with the rainbow of diversity that looks like this. As we work through the next 20 minutes our rainbow is going to be decidedly monochrome. So the first digital deception is text that isn't. Text that pretends to be text, I can see a PDF document on the screen and yet it's not text, it's just an images text. So my tools simply won't work with it. My text speech tool that I might need won't work with it. Somebody that wants to magnify the text but not have to scroll left and right off the screen to see it won't be able to do that because there's no way a picture of text can reflow. So what we see here is her content, her text content that I thought was a great supplement to mine isn't. His content, again, scanned images with no OCR, no optical character recognition taking place, that isn't. So that first deception text that is just an image of text has lost me some of my digital diversity and it doesn't end there. But let's just have a look at why this might matter. I've talked briefly there about a couple of issues but I want you to spend a few minutes thinking about scanned documents on your virtual learning environment, scanned documents in an e-book platform that you subscribe to, scanned documents in a repository of information that you use that you thought was an open educational repository but you find lots of scanned documents. Okay, now there are these benefits for all kinds of users, disabled users, non-disabled users. Can we see? So we've got the first thing. Theresa said screen readers can't use them. Yeah, excellent. Joe saying can't cut and paste into something. Of course, really significant thing. You can't cut out a quote. You have to type it manually. Screen readers can't read again. We've got the whole thing about screen readers and of course not just screen readers because screen reader users are a very small proportion of the demographic. You'd have to be completely blind to be a screen reader user but people who benefit from text to speech that's a much bigger demographic. So for example people with dyslexia that's roughly speaking we reckon about 10% of the population. People who perhaps English is the second or third language and they're used to reading a script that goes from right to left instead of left to right for them listening to text is very often the much, much more effective way of consuming information than it is to read it off the screen because listening to it is something that they've done for years listening to English language, TVs, films, audio, pop songs and so on. So background color and contrast, excellent one. Yes, you can't change the background color and contrast. If it was a PDF document that had actual words on an actual background you can change those colors. Difficult to resize the text. Image quality of course. Once you get to maybe 100% magnification maybe you're getting really fuzzy fonts whereas if it was real text the fonts would be vector based and they would improve. Time to load that could be an issue and image is much bigger as well. You can get your tablet to read PDF aloud. Well you may be able to if it's a PDF that isn't just an image scan. And the other thing to bear in mind Joe is that sometimes again it will depend on the nature of the PDF but you can get a PDF which is an image scan and this happens on Google quite a lot on the Google scholar sites. It's an image scan but underneath it for screen reader users they have almost like a hidden text layer that only screen readers can get to but that's very much the exception rather than the rule. So we've got loads of really good things there even the potential problems of books on scanners losing parts of the page of the physical impact of scanning texts. The key thing here is that what is really important for you to think about and really important for us to try to influence upstream through any ways you have of influencing open educational practice in your organization is make sure that open educational practice adheres to basic good practice in accessibility because if it doesn't it's a deception. You're not really providing the quality and range of material that you could be providing. You're putting barriers there that needn't be there. Now the second deception is what I call structure that isn't and this is the sort of thing where you look at a document and it looks fantastic in terms of how well structured and laid out it is. So you can see the main heading. You can see the chapter heading. You can then see a section heading and then you can see subsections underneath that and even subsections under the subsections and you look at it on screen on the print and it looks brilliant. You think that is so easy to navigate. It's so clear to see where I am on the screen on the page. The problem is of course most documents are not the single screen on a page. Most documents might go a book for example might be 600 pages long. Now depending on how you create your document if you create your document by selecting a heading and then clicking the style headings, heading one, heading two, heading three then that document will be not only fantastic to look at on the page but it will be fantastic to access digitally. So a Word document has been well structured maybe 400 pages long. I remember working with a friend's PhD thesis. He had 400 pages of Word document and he had headings all over it but he hadn't used the inbuilt styles. Consequently, when you try to look at the navigation pane or the outline view there was absolutely nothing to see and he was spending hours and hours trying to move sections around when he realized that a section might fit better in a new section he's just written and moving them around trying to work out what was where and what page. We went through it and in a very short time because he had been consistent in the types of headings he'd used very quickly we'd been able to assign heading one, heading two, heading three, heading four, heading five. Instantly we could then see the whole interactive telescopic structure in the navigation pane. There are simple tools, plugins for web pages that will do exactly the same. Headings map for Google Chrome is an excellent example. If you've got a really long web page just click on headings map for Google Chrome and it will show you main headings for subheadings. It works fantastically if the author has created the document using those heading styles. If they haven't, if they've just selected the text and said bold 20 point underlined then there will be no way you can get that valuable navigational information. So what that's done in this example here so I've lost some more content because it might be that it's my content for example whilst I've got loads of text content if I didn't know about those headings for structural headings and nobody told me that that was the way I should do it and nobody told me that the reason why I should do it that way is because of the fantastic navigation it gives to every single user which is particularly important to users with print impairments then maybe I didn't use heading styles at all. So suddenly we find not only has her content and his content proved to be a deception but my content proved to be a deception as well. So what I've just asked for a few minutes now is do you routinely use heading styles to structure your documents? Yes or no? If you do just tell me why is it because of this or is it because somebody told you too or is it because you saw it there it seemed a good idea at the time. If you don't maybe why not? So let's see. So Therese has just recently begun to use them the accessibility aspect is phenomenally important Therese so well done for starting to use them but if you look at a well structured document and you click on view zoom document map what a difference that makes for somebody trying to read through. Word styles needed to generate APA tables content do you have a good point? So this is a wonderful kind of honesty thing some people say I do it a bit but I do it sometimes. The other big advantage if you do it a lot of people create Therese in Word and then export to HTML or PDF if you use the inbuilt styles they export to whatever else you export to so do it once, use it many times. Elizabeth's making the point there about it looks good and Joe's making the point that it looks ugly. The thing that joins those two together is that if you've been consistent in your use of styles you can make the style look however you want so you can just use the default style as there and when you finish the document or even before you finish the document click on over heading one for example right click over it and you can change it to look exactly as you want. I've got two documents one is out to the one that you see on the screen background to hair I've got a version of that a tutor and then I've got a second version I made the tutor hadn't known about using styles so she had used just the normal bold, italic font size etc I created something that looked absolutely identical on print you can't tell the difference I put two copies in front of you you cannot tell the difference as soon as you go online with them you look at her as you click on the navigation pane and there is nothing you've got a seven page document no way of navigating through it quickly you look on my version of it which is identical when printed out and my version shows you all the heading ones all the heading twos you can skip in three clicks you can skip to any part of the document so ah, Scrivener I won't comment on Scrivener Jeff I did try Scrivener and I got so confused and lost so much work that I gave up I don't think that was a Scrivener problem I think that was a user problem but the key thing is wherever you can use them use them they're really important and they generally will translate well, I know a few of you are saying there are some problems but what's interesting I noticed Leo saying that you can go between Word and Google Docs as well alright so thank you very much for that there's only five so we're doing fine for time you might even get an extra dinner and here I've provocatively called this rich media that impoverish so it's media and interaction so it could be an interactivity or it could be video, it could be audio but something that is designed to make students engaged something that's designed to make students think great I have so much better way of learning than trying to read from this dry dusty textbook and yet when they get there there are significant problems because the thing about audio and video is that they can be in some ways for some students they can be easier to access information for but what about if you've got an hour long lecture and I'm wanting to revise my hour long lecture and the thing I want to revise is I want to know what it was that Vygotsky said about social constructivism or something now I've got two problems if I'm trying to do this entirely from a video recording I'm thinking to myself there's this guy called Vygotsky the problem is I want to quote him and I have no idea how you spell his name because it doesn't tell me in the video there's just a tutor to talk to you about Vygotsky so I can't search for keywords neither can I search for key dates so a tutor says about something that happened in 1915 and I'm not quite sure if they said 1950 or 1915 to be able to just skim some text for that would be really helpful and to be able to look at an hour long video and not think I think the Vygotsky bit was somewhere in the middle to be able to go to something that's text and just search in social constructivism incidentally I would find that's how you spell Vygotsky I found it and you'd instantly find the reference you wanted now what I'm not saying is that every video you do and every audio you do should have a full transcript or subtitling now you may feel that that is a surprising thing for accessibility advocates to be saying that you don't have to produce the full transcript all the time and the reason I'm saying that is because rich media is better than just no media at all so if I've got a choice between a member of staff who only uploads text and a member of staff who use a text and audio and video the one that's going to be most inclusive is the one that uses the bigger variety of media however what I'm also not saying is that if I'm going to encourage people to start using media I cannot afford to put them off by saying every little bit of video you create has to have subtitling on it and that's going to take you an extra hour I'm not going to say that to members of staff who are busy teaching I will say that to the e-learning developer whose full-time job it is to work with video software and to be competent and confident and fast at doing subtitling but I'm not going to say it to a teacher what I'll say to a teacher is as a minimum give me the key teaching points that are in that video that might be the name it might be Vygotsky and it might be a date and it might be the name of a theory it might be a couple of other people equally it might be a transcript if you've it's a video of yourself or if you've done your own podcast then it makes perfect sense if you're doing a podcast you do a script to get you going anyway the script can be the transcript the point is what I want is some text alternative that will give me what the key teaching objectives are and that will not just benefit dyslexic students or print-impaired students or deaf students it will benefit everybody so let's have a look now let's get you doing some work I looked for an approximate development exactly that is exactly the point it's about taking people where they are and moving them to the next point not moving them asking them to move so far beyond that they're just not going to engage at all so what about you, what are you going to do here that you're interested in is the guidance in your organization for the accessible use of multimedia and interactivity is it something that people have even thought about have you got a draconian regime where something has to be checked by three people and if it hasn't got seen description and subtitling you can't load it even though it's something that took you five minutes to create maybe a little lab experiment takes place, five minutes to create and then five hours to do subtitling and scene description that doesn't sound to me like an effective way of encouraging people to get online but tell me your experiences that's what I'd like to know what are your experiences to raise open standards slightly different you keep typing things in I'll just go back I think I've missed something there the YouTube subtitles that's a really good system to use Anne-Catherine and I completely agree with you they will always need some editing but if you only have 20% editing to do instead of 100% editing that's taken you a lot further so Boatback's got some light touch guidance and I think that's the right kind of guidance to have to have light touch guidance for it to become something that almost a quality mark something that people do because it's good practice because having that summary of what the teaching points are actually makes you think about why you did it in the first place what value added you've got by putting it there Daniel no particular guidance there I think it's something where it's worth having guidance and remember what I said about guidance needs to be appropriate to the people you're guiding so I don't think I'm definitely not talking about a get out of jail card free for e-learning developers so they can just throw stuff up online without thinking about whether or not subtitling is important whether or not full transcripts are important generally speaking you should go for as high an accessibility as you can but that has to be proportionate to the skills that that person is expected to have you've got the link there thanks Leo that's great that's a really important point I think the flipped classroom is great there are all kinds of benefits with it but if it's not done with a recognition of accessibility then you end up flipping the classroom making a better experience for quite a lot of people and then actually a worse experience for other people and I think one of the key things here is that if you take the argument about subtitling key point summaries transcripts etc if you take the argument that it's only about deaf people or only about blind people then a lot of teachers say well I haven't got any deaf students I haven't got any blind students so I'll not bother the really important thing is to show like that Vygotsky example earlier to show that this adds significant value for everyone there are many times I've watched a video especially one of those talking head videos where you have a lecturer talking about something there are many times I've watched something and at the end of it I thought there was a lot in there but I'm not exactly sure what the key points were and I would love to have been able to look at the transcript and just read through it again or I would have loved even more perhaps for there to be a summary the key takeaways from this are X, Y and Z and Joe that's a really important point as well I also hate watching videos I have to do regular training because I'm a home based worker I can't do the normal office fire drill manual handling etc so they send me online ones and they're all video and I switch off the video every single slide because it's 10 times faster from me and I get it so some people really love watching videos some people like me and Joe hate watching videos and it's important that we recognize that diversity we're supposed to be adding value for all not adding it for someone taking it away from others Daniel that's a really interesting one there's plenty of things to discuss in this and I think the big issue about this is the lack of practical choices so always including audio is not always sensible especially if the content that you're looking at is accessible to text-to-speech tools there are free plugins there's Google Reader which works brilliantly in Chrome select the text on the browser page and it will read to you so I don't need somebody to produce audio necessarily but at the same time I've needed to blush today and we've got Future Learn Code didn't watch the videos but read the transcripts it's exactly the same point isn't it interesting those careers point about listening to video in the background while I do other things and again I'm a real fan of radio real fan of podcasts because I can do other things as well and so it's horses for courses and sometimes in terms of revision for example if I didn't have access to audio if I didn't have access to some of the things that I download and listen to I simply wouldn't get to them because I wouldn't have enough time but if I'm taking the dog a walk or I'm going on a long journey it's a perfect opportunity so it's being able to add value wherever possible and minimize the reduction of value to other people so we're onto the last two now and I'm going to do two of these together and then leave a final couple of slides for discussion what you notice however is that our beautiful rainbow of diversity is decidedly less colorful than it was it is sad isn't it Theresa so here we've got non-reusable content this really annoys me sometimes it used to be a big problem with some of the kind of well-known repositories so you would have you would go to Joram when Joram existed and you would find in there some really nice examples of an interactive thing it was maybe created on Flash or maybe it was Articulate Storyline or something and it looks great but the only thing is you look at slide 5 and slide 5 they use terms that we don't use that are just not relevant to how I would use that I used to teach a science I think I might have mentioned that we do a lot of statistics in geography a lot of statistics in ecosystems biogeography and so on if I found a fantastic economics statistics package I would love to use it but what I would want to do is just go in there and slide 5 and slide 6 I would want to change that and make that relevant to what my students are doing that's what an open educational resource should allow you to do but so often I found that I couldn't do it because either I needed a very expensive proprietary bit of software or I found that the assets in that software weren't available separately it would have been kind of okay it would have been available in one place or a separate text file a separate image file that's a really big argument for where possible making sure that the tools you use allow disaggregation so that somebody could just take that graph out right click over the graph and save it that they can take the text, copy it and paste it somewhere else so often I've used educational resources open educational resources that are really annoying using open source tools solves the problems to a certain extent so anything that you create in Zerti for example you can give somebody that whole bundle of content and it will run as a Zerti object but equally if I just wanted to look at the images in there in the bundle result file I've had I've got all the images I've got all the audio I've got everything that I need in the media folder equally if I have my own installation straight away edit it change the pages I might or might not have so that was one of the issues the non-reusable content it looks open but because I can't reuse it it's not really as open and useful as it could be and the last one that I want to look at is when you just don't know you've got some content out there that you found and you just cannot find any information about its copyright status so this is deception 5 I don't know I think it's open I'm not quite sure and so the last you notice if I go back to that last slide we just had a couple of things a bit of audio a bit of interactivity a couple of images that were left and maybe a little bit of content over there but when I finally get to those materials that I can use with any student I have I then get to those resources and I look at them and there's no statement there's no kind of creative commons there's no this resource can be reused under these licensing conditions and so I think ah, I'm not sure actually I'll be completely true as a teacher I completely ignored that anyway and I was using all kinds of material because teachers do that we are inclined to treat, copy, write more likely than we should but the reality is if you're being a being a good responsible teacher tutor if you're a quality assurance manager you're sure you know exactly what you can do so here we are final questions then reclaiming the opportunities what can we do to reclaim those promises we said there are five digital deceptions that undermine those promises of digital diversity so it might be to do with specifying good practice it might be saying look there's a threshold requirement here you can upload stuff into the repository or you can put a license on it provided it meets these requirements maybe it's to do with metadata maybe it's to do with what I call hierarchy preferred formats where you say really the best format is Word structured Word document or maybe the best format is EPUB or maybe the best format is HTML because it's nice and non proprietary and you start specifying things like that but I don't know but I'm asking the question so can we see what you think in the text champagne I'll have a read of the other things that have been going on I'm sure Theresa will help me as there's particular questions I've missed yes there's lots of very lively contributions which is great to see I'll start it's really well appreciated session and Katherine makes a really interesting point there about people taking out of context I think that could potentially be used though in terms of the Creative Commons copywriting you could say no derivatives I guess and then make that distinction between things that you do that you are happy for people to reuse and things that you aren't happy but I do take the point that's a very fair point EPUB just like EPUB EPUB's particularly good on tablet devices and mobile phones and the like I think increasingly we're going to see EPUB as a form out of choice because the EPUB standard has got accessibility in its heart that doesn't necessarily guarantee it will be used well but it means that you have to work quite hard to create bad content particularly with EPUB 3 EPUB 3 is really accessible yes increasing that understanding of Creative Commons licensing as well isn't that important and I'm not sure how many institutions actually run support sessions to give people the opportunity to discuss things like Creative Commons licensing but we do have to be much more aware as professionals these days of the whole business of ownership and creation online yes it's a tricky one I think making people aware helping to educate people is clearly something that has a lot of benefit because if they understand how to attribute their own resources then it helps them understand how they could use others and certainly for me it's been personally been really helpful for me to begin to get my head around that but I do appreciate it's not something that you know that's high priority of any teachers I was looking at the point that Geoffrey's making about looking for open resources to support mentoring but not found very many I must admit there's been a number of occasions where I've been looking for open resources and sometimes I almost have to set myself a time limit where I say I'm going to look for educational resources for an hour for other people's resources for an hour if after that time I haven't found any I'm going to make it because otherwise I could spend I could end up spending more time looking for something that doesn't quite do the job than creating it from scratch so I think sometimes there's a pragmatic balance to come in there Joe I'm sure your materials are really great but I do take the point that quite often you find that the people that are less confident about their materials are the ones who really know what they're doing with very good materials because often the better somebody is the more exacting they are in their standards and therefore the more critical they are of their own work whereas somebody else would be less critical because they maybe have lower standards who actually owns the material that's a really interesting one I do strongly encourage people wherever they can to make things creative commons because it means that if nothing else you can reuse it yourself if you then move to another job but I do know that universities may have a slightly different perception however I think universities have an awful lot to gain by by taking an open educational resources culture I think in terms of time unless there's any specific questions that we haven't covered that you want to look at and perhaps specific to accessibility rather than necessarily creative commons or licensing I think it might be time to hand over now I think it's Teresa that I think is doing the final bit final wrap up but I may be wrong I can't remember No you're right Thank you for a really exciting and interesting we've really had a lot of conversation and discussion going on and I've got the feeling as often we do get with OpenEd SIG webinars that these conversations will continue so I'm really glad that people have found each other on Twitter as well to continue them because actually within the room we've got a lot of very experienced people in OpenEd we've got OpenScience and just looking down this list we've got an international group of people as well so that sort of feeds into the discussions around copyright and licensing and the various problems we have there and it's a good time to actually facilitate these sorts of discussions and it's also been a very contributory discussion that's going on so lots of sharing as well so that's great to see and Leo with an offer thank you for that Leo as well who's interested in collecting parties around this topic so yes let's see if we can as an OpenEd SIG continue to facilitate that and to move it on. I just prepared a little sort of just a few bullet points really from an OpenEd SIG perspective on the basis of the sorts of things you were talking about Alistair and this was really sort of multiple and I don't have any particular answers to this but it's really perhaps a way of continuing that conversation. The first is around how you've made it very clear through your wonderfully pailing rainbow as you went through your presentation just how important these pretty fundamental digital skills really are in helping access and inclusivity. I happen to be doing a future learn course which I put in the text chat earlier at the moment around inclusive practice which has provided me with some really interesting and useful information actually but it needs to be part of professionalism as teachers our digital capability is important so it's been a really timely way of reminding us of that and how important those skills and capacity building are. The second point really is from an earlier webinar that the OpenEd SIG facilitated and I'll just share a link to that and that was an event where we talked about the idea of open guilds this was an idea that was proposed by the co-chair of the OpenEd SIG at the time Terry Lone. What we were looking at there and if you do get a chance I really recommend you have a look at that webinar was how yes we understand there are kind of needles in haystacks and it's wonderful when you find them but sometimes it can be very time consuming finding them in the first place but if we have communities of practice around our disciplines or around our areas and we collaborate across sectors inside or outside of formal education context as well we have ways of bringing things together thanks to the social media tools that we have these days so the beauty of actually collecting and valuing the sharing and the conversation around open educational resources I think Humbox which was University of Southampton and it's a smaller little sister as well, language's box as a methodology for collecting OERs was really helpful in fostering that idea of community because it had that social aspect as well as just the resource so I think there are examples of good practice there and the proposal for guilds was a little bit like an apprenticeship model within perhaps a craft where you recognize each other's skills and you learn from each other so I think it might be worth revisiting that and talking about whether this is an idea that has legs the third point is one of the things we're trying to do at the moment in the coming year of the Open Eds League is to try and draw together the many strands of open because we've actually got sort of separate open communities and we started a little project together just earlier on this week actually trying to visualize the various communities that exist around the word open we started this little padlet that I'll share here and I think it just shows you just how many different communities with slightly different emphases that there are out there but they share a value system which is about inclusivity very largely it's a values driven set of priorities so you've got there the idea of open standards and the importance of not allowing people to get locked into certain hardware the open source movement and just how useful that is to help support inclusivity it's not I'm very aware that we tend to sort of bang on sometimes about open source as Alistair I think sort of alluded to it doesn't answer all of our problems but it is actually built on a model of collaboration and learning from each other so one of the things we're trying to do is just to help facilitate that discussion and in a future open ed sick webinar we're going to be inviting people from these various communities to see what we can do to actually identify and perhaps communicate more effectively to policy makers that value set that we take so seriously and that anybody who cares about accessibility and openness takes very seriously and then finally and perhaps a bit too philosophically but one of the things that's quite dear to my heart is that you know we're all very busy people we have things on our list that we have to achieve and and that sort of drives us into kind of a mentality that is fairly closed I have to teach these people this stuff by this time open practice actually challenges that and makes us think about you know what's going to come out of what's the outcomes of this lesson that actually could be enhanced by being more open more visible so I'm encouraging some way of encouraging people to have that open mindset more often and I think we tend to see it in sectors as well we tend to think you know why would somebody in HEB interested in something that's come from SE and vice versa well actually you know there are conversations there and we can improve and enhance what we do by understanding other people's approaches so we have in our midst one of Alts Learning Technologists of the Year Daniel Scott here and I know from sort of doing some work with him on his blog post just how much I learned from his from his practices and you know I think there's so much we can learn from each other and certainly we've learned a great deal from you today Alistair and I'm really really grateful for your contribution and so the session that you facilitated here that really has had people thinking and will continue I'm sure to think along these lines and will continue I hope to engage with yourself and with Bob on Twitter and cross some of these borders in order to find a fairer way of delivering education Thank you very much, thank you to everybody for coming on such a glorious day and I shall think of you all when I'm out on the water in an hour's time Beautiful, I'll have a lovely time and I shall look out for the subsequent high queue and yes I'm sure that will be excellent and thank you all for coming Yes, thanks everybody for coming, thanks Joe as well I can see that's really really good to have you there and I know a lot of you who have been engaging in the open-ed sig just male discussions we're having at the moment. Thanks all very much This has been the open-ed sig and cell tag and I'm going to switch the recording off now.