OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Okay, so welcome. We're so happy to have you here today on this beautiful Thursday morning. And I hope you enjoy our piloting a high-flex classroom presentation. My name is Patricia Potter Krogan. I have been an ESL supervisor at Santa Clara Adult Education for the past three years, but I've been in education for around 22 years. Good morning, everyone. I am Bijal Varia, and I am an advanced ESL teacher at the Santa Clara Adult Education. And as of now, I celebrate 20 years in the field of education out of the two and a half years at Santa Clara Teaching ESL program.  It takes a dedicated, empowered and a collaborative team for all goals to materialize. And a huge shout out goes out to the D-LAC team members and the leaders for supporting us and guiding us to our journey all the way through to piloting the high-flex program at our school and with the digital leadership. So thank you guys. And not to forget our partner school members, Campbell Community Adult Center and Pittsburgh Adult Center. Thank you guys. Without you, this wouldn't have been possible. So first we're going to think about why did Santa Clara Adult Education apply to the Digital Leadership Academy? As a supervisor at our school, I saw it disconnect from the real world for our students by lack of access and utilization of technology. Many realize that life experiences, as you all know, utilize and are driven by technology such as applying for a job or helping their children with homework. I could see the inequities and disadvantage this caused our student population while integrating into our society. To me, it was such a paradox that our schools located in the heart of Silicon Valley and our students were not having the technical resources, skills and knowledge that this area has to offer. Santa Clara Adult Education staff and students need help in making a successful transition into the technological age in education. Hence, OTAN's Digital Leadership Academy. I was so fortunate to be accepted into this academy during this year, these two years. Little did anyone know the real significance of the program and the team support through these two years, the pandemic hit. We only realized at this moment that these groups in this cohort of the Digital Leadership Academy would be the cutting edge of the change in the education in the technology world. For Santa Clara Adult Education, the pandemic meant going 100% synchronously online during the shutdown. When we just started to feel like we were getting into the groove of things, of online instruction, the next hurdle became how to transition back into the classroom while still meeting student needs. In order to address this inequity and allow Santa Clara Adult Education student population to achieve 21st century goals, we strived for three main goals at our agency for our pilot. One, access to technology. Two, utilization of technology in the classroom and the real world. Three, professional development surrounding our staff. What were the main purpose of these goals? Students' successful integration into the global workforce, higher education, and the community. Once we began to explore all of the resources and expertise in the tech world, we really became increasingly overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge, technology, and that we are now exposed to and how do we sift through that? Bijal and I decided that we needed stability for us in our program. We decided to make our goals sustainable for teachers and students. And by doing this, we chose two models as a guide in our decision-making. And they became more and more important throughout the pandemic. Simplify and solidify, slow and steady. Factors in determining a pilot, there were many factors. Student needs by a survey, equity, and access to hardware and the internet. Students' time, place, space, and pace. Teacher knowledge of best practices in online education. Curriculum compatibility with online learning. And stress factors for the teacher and students as the pandemic was very stressful and always budget. Bijal and I contemplated all of these and had many discussions regarding the issue of online learning continuing forward and transitioning back to campus. For this transitioning back to campus, whatever that meant online, face-to-face or blended learning, we had to keep in our forefront what our purpose was, what the student needs are, and what would be the most effective program to accomplish the most in the shortest period of time. Therefore, we had many decisions in looking at a project for D-LAC. Here are some of the main factors we looked at and decided upon. The duration, we thought we would do a pilot in the school year of 21, 22, starting in August, and continue it as long as feasible considering student needs and the effectiveness of the program. As all programs, Santa Clara Adult Education is always monitoring budget. We wanted to pilot a program, pilot a blended learning class for data purposes for our decision to continue this pilot. It would depend on student need, student learning, and sustainability. We wanted a low-cost or a free trial period and utilize only what we had on hand and to be able to use the data to confirm that this is in the best interest of the student, teacher, and school. We allowed flexibility to ourselves. We utilized what we already had on hand and Beigel got extremely creative with what she had on hand in her classroom. The pilot class consisted of intermediate and high, intermediate, high and advanced students, 24 students, 9 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., four days a week, Monday through Thursday for 17 weeks was the first semester to be continued in the second semester if we felt feasible, August through December. A high-flex model for blended learning was used. Students must attend a minimum of two days in the classroom, face-to-face, and then the other two days online. The equipment used, Beigel figured out how to do a blended learning program with what was available in her room. What was available in her room was a teacher PC, laptop, camera, headphones, projector, and a projector screen. Teachers support and training. Beigel had great support and training through the Digital Leadership Academy. I don't know how her and I could have worked together without this academy in this type of environment. So many stressful changes and switches. And students then received instruction from Beigel on how to navigate the course simultaneously online and face-to-face. Questions that we contemplated. Number one, was this feasible and sustainable to train all teachers to have a blended learning environment? What would be the cost and how would it be sustainable? What about the stress levels with every other stress, all the other stress happening in the world to our students and to our teachers? How would this pan out? Well, we were able to figure out all these answers to these questions. So let's now take a look at the pilot classroom implementing blended learning. So implementation of a blended learning program. Blended learning, also known as hybrid learning is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom methods. The pandemic played an important role in implementing the online learning and eventually transitioning to the blended learning in person once we were back in person. As we are the ESL program, our major goals are teaching workforce-based ESL topics in the classroom. Having said so, blended learning ties into the workforce area as having tech skills is extremely important nowadays. All of our students showed a great deal of interest in learning and establishing these skills. How did we design the blended learning program? Well, we went through multiple factors in designing the blended learning classroom. We first discovered if the venture curriculum was compatible with the high-flex plan. Secondly, we designed the pacing of the syllabus for the blended learning course, determined students' level of interactivity based on their choice of days and flexibility, integrate group collaboration activities, facilitate communication online and face-to-face communication, compile a list of resources to support learning, and then finally, we also created an assessment plan. So, when there's curriculum plan, design the pacing for the blended learning course. Well, we tied these two factors in and then we came up with, I'm sure you guys can see this document. It sums up or something would be great since I'm sharing the screen. Yes, Pedro, you can see that. Wonderful. So we developed a Santa Clara Adult Education Yearly Planning document. This we call it as our long-term planning document. So based on the yearly, the monthly planning, we broke it down into our units, the elements that we were gonna use and incorporating the EL Civics program as well. So that was the first step in implementation. Moving forward, determine the level of interactivity. Since some of our students chose to work from home and study from home, we kind of came up with a plan where how to make the optimum utilization of the technology, which is very usable and applicable in the day-to-day life, bearing in mind that not all the students have an access to a laptop from home. So we came up with the application of WhatsApp, which is very commonly used by all of our students. So we started a WhatsApp group on our phones and from there on, we took it forward to Zoom, tying it in with our LMS and then the in-person classroom. So this is our classroom look. We have students sitting in-person, presenting, and then we have a student online joining from Zoom. Integrate group collaboration activity. This was the hardest one of all because we also wanted to provide equity to all of our students. So what was the best possible way? So we also have projector screens in our classrooms. So the best way to do was, I had two cameras set up in the classroom. One was a webcam set up on the PC, classroom PC. And the other one was my laptop camera that I could easily move around. Our classroom also has 30 laptops that are very accessible by the students for their day-to-day activities. So which meant each and every student present in the classroom had a laptop with their cameras turned on. All the students in the classroom would turn on, would log in to Zoom and the students working from home would also log in to Zoom. Now, why was this needed when I had students working online or working in the class in person? Well, one of the main things was to promote group collaboration no matter where you're studying from. So even if the students were studying from home, they would equally have the opportunity to participate in ongoing classroom activities if the classroom students also logged on to Zoom and then working in group-based activity with the online students. I would then project the whole session on the projector screen so that the students in classrooms can also see the students joining in on Zoom on the big screen. This way we could ease off the communication really easily. Now I have an example from a live high-flex classroom that I'd like to share with you all. It's a video recording of my high-flex classroom and the student is studying on Zoom. These students are doing a group activity in the classroom and like you can see, the student here is participating with this group as she is in close connection with what's going on in the classroom. Wait. Yeah, that's my story. But if you show me this, I know, okay, I believe I'm going to do it. Let's... What is the only difference? Why don't you just stick... Oh, you know what? Just take to speak to your audience. A very simple example of a classroom utilizing the high-flex model, moving forward. B-Jill, just real quick, there is a question about some students holding their cell phones, wondering what they're doing with their cell phones. Oh, so like we also have WhatsApp going on, Margarita would sometimes post things on WhatsApp too for them to write down on the poster post here. So some students would also... So we actually, the way we designed the high-flexes that our students could use their phones to communicate and to share and to make the best possible use of the technology, which is available readily. Did that answer your question? Okay, moving forward. There's one more, sorry. Go ahead. That took me a second to unmute myself. Okay, so did you have help switching between the camera? So the way this model... Sorry. Go ahead. The way this model works is it's pretty easy. I did not need to switch between the cameras at all. Imagine a camera on my PC facing towards me. So that's this part here. All the students can see me. The other camera was facing towards the class, which is my laptop. Now laptop being laptop, we can move laptop around the classroom. So my students would have helped me. If I needed the laptop to move to different places in the classroom. If my student was working with just one group, that one group would hold the laptop close to them and then that's how they would collaborate. So ideally speaking, I did not feel the need of switching between the cameras at all. Again, the projector screen played a huge role because everybody could see the projector screen from the classroom. Sometimes if I'm talking to the students, I'm teaching something, I may not always be looking at the camera. That's when if my student working from home had a question and she would just raise her hand, my students from the classroom would just draw my attention and say, teacher, I think she needs some help. And so it was very collaborative. We all were in this together helping each other. So coming to that point, facilitate communication. So how did we facilitate communication? Again, WhatsApp and email. Sometimes I would send a task via WhatsApp. If it is a video recording task, I always encourage my students to do some video recording for which the phones were very useful. Some of the tasks I would send sometimes via email depends on what the task was. For in-person students, they would follow the instructions and collaborate with students in person and online on Zoom, just like how we saw. Zoom, online, like I call them, works synchronously with the students in person and collaborate with Zoomers in the breakout rooms. So for students, if I had more than one student, then one or two students, then I would also have breakout rooms where they could do their activity in a small group in the breakout room together. And then finally, we also had LMS in place. We started off with Google Classroom, which was a huge success. And then moving on to Canvas, we transitioned to Canvas as that's the need of the average. And I guess my students really took on board with that too. So that transition from Google Classroom to Canvas really helped. So what is High Flex? High Flex is a blended learning model, course format that combines a face-to-face classroom and an online classroom simultaneously. So we just saw how, right? Now, technology scaffolding for levels. How did we come up with what is needed for which level? Since we have so many levels, right? We have five levels in our ESL program. So this is how we actually, we designed the scaffolding tech skills feed, where we have all the levels right from- Right from literacy to advanced level. So this is how we broke it down. So students beginning at zero level or level one, it was important that they knew basic skills of using Zoom, email, just a keyboard, computer, just the basic skills. Websites that we use for all these, this level was Cambridge Ventures, Presentation Plus, and then Learning Resource Websites, YouTube. Moving on to beginning low, they would slightly learn more because now they would be using a lot more technology in their classrooms. So then we would introduce them to hyperlink, tap in the Zoom, moving forward to all the other using, you know, making PowerPoints, presentations, supplying to an email annotation tool on Zoom. So as they moved to the advanced class, my students were now able to create a video. They were able to use a class blog, logging on to Zoom, email, joining Google Classroom with a code, navigating Google Classroom, submitting their homework in form of Google documents. So a great deal of, we use Google Sweets a lot too, all the time to make PowerPoint presentations. And then we also made a list of websites that were useful for our students and our fellow teachers because we believe in sharing best practices. If something worked for the advanced, I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work for the basic levels if we voted it down a little. So that's that. Finally, we created an assessment plan. So this was the assessment that I would do unit by unit. So this is my Canvas page. And on this page, I would upload all the units and then at the same time, I would upload their quizzes. Sometimes the students would take the quiz in person. If the student did not come to class in person, they had the same access to the Canvas from home. So they would synchronously on Zoom, sit for the quiz. If my students could not do either, then they had the option of sitting for the quiz asynchronously, which is using the, you know, giving, sitting for the quiz in their own personal time. Ma'am, Biju, there was a question about what was the ratio of online to face-to-face? So how many online did you have? So like I said, like we mentioned earlier, it was solely based on students' choice. Now here's how the choice factor works. We do not give students a choice saying, you know, out of four days a week, you can come any two days a week in person, any two days stay at home, no. So this was very structured. We asked the students to give us a preference. What were the days that you would wanna work from home? And the other days, you needed to come to school in person because that was the deal breaker. You have to come to school in person for 50% of your time. The other 50%, you choose the days and stick to those days because looking at the pandemic, we have to be very careful at the student participation in person as there was limitations going on at that time. So if my students chose Monday and Tuesday in person and they wanted to work for Thursday and Friday, or Wednesday and Thursday from home, then they stick to that plan for that whole semester unless they wanted to come all in person. The only choice was that either you come in in person 100% or you come in person 50% of the time, but it was never the other way around. Again, this was just for the ESL program. I also teach a speaker program, which is speaker class, which I teach only on Friday. For that class, I have given my students a choice that it's up to you. If you guys want to do 100% from home, you can do that. So I have two students who stick from working from home. So by answering to your question, the ratio was usually, I would say, five or six students working from home and the others in the class. Now, successes and challenges. What were the successes of this? First success, I found it extremely creative to design this program with the resources that were available at camp. So I didn't have to go to the school and say, hey, I want to teach this, can we buy ours? No, we made our own ours.  This semester, I have been lucky enough to get the interactive whiteboard and now I'm very excited to use that as well. One of the major successes was to take, we were able to hit all the learning modalities and cater to different learning styles of our students. So I have students in my class who are tech-deep, they're technologically so advanced, they don't have as much language, but by incorporating high-flex, these students' confidence just boost up and they were so much into helping other students around in the classroom and the language just, it just happened for them, it would flow out of their mouth. Student retention, we didn't have to go through the hurdles of convincing the students to come in person, what you cannot come in person and pandemic had a great role to play in too because it was a serious situation. I guess as a school, we can definitely do this much for our students, you know? You don't wanna come to school in person, no problem. The school will come to you, right? Flexibility for both students and teachers. There was a time where, you know, I also had a choice of doing some meetings from home because I was unwell and I think this really worked out well for everyone. There was a high student engagement because learning tech skills is a very important thing in this time and age and everybody wants to learn it. Having said so, work-based learning, you know, makes a great impact when the students can actually write their resumes, they can go on indeed, find a job, seek out my help for their interview skills, send me videos, practicing their language by recording themselves again and again. So that was a very high student engagement there, helping each other learn different skills, sharing documents, you know, and then using these skills in their real life, even with their children. Teacher training was another great hit. We, once I kind of established this, I shared this with my other fellow teachers. Of course, this is not easy. You really have to get the hang of it because you're teaching as well, right? You're not just gonna sit down and fidget with the cameras all the time. But if you make the placement of the cameras easy and accessible, then this is by far the most reliable and the most possible solution. And I think it's very friendly. This kind of teaching is very friendly. I really enjoyed teaching this. I'll ask Patricia to go over the challenges now. Over to you, Patricia. Oh, great. Yes, you know, there was numerous challenges, not only in the classroom, but also in the world in general. And we always had difficulties with student attendance and protocol for the COVID. But generally, we had to work with the challenges, we're always the equipment and the internet connection for the students. Also learning how to use the equipment for the students and the apps and learning how to do it as second nature. And they're so used to being in face to face at first then all online. Now they're learning of a hybrid, a high flex class. So it was learning another learning environment. With the teachers, professional development, of course was the crunch, but most of this, the challenges for the teachers were about time. And also, I believe they're stress levels. And so we really worked at trying to reduce the stress levels on both student and teacher. The teachers had to learn how to use the equipment, the applications, the online curriculum and then teach it to the students. They had to learn best practices of teaching online and face to face and simultaneously. They had to learn how to juggle all online and face to face activities and all interactions all at once. They had to teach the students how to navigate the physical classroom as well as the online classroom and equipment. For the teachers workload and prep time increased dramatically. Our point was try to reduce some of these stresses and the teachers and students and help socially and emotionally to returning to somewhat of a pre-pandemic state. Although our belief is that it'll never be a pre-pandemic state due to the knowledge of technology now. Patricia, there's several questions coming into the chat here. So I just wanted to- Okay, let me just look. So David Rosen had a question. Can you tell us how much retention improved and did course completion improve? Ryan had a similar question. And do you know of students in the high flex model had better learning outcomes than students in in-person classes? So there were questions about retention. So retention of students. To me, everybody that could be there was there. We're still in a pandemic. So how would this model serve outside of a pandemic? I think you would have a lot more retention. We had a very fluid in all of the classes in and out and COVID protocols being had. If somebody was sick, they had to stay home. But with that being said, they could join if they were well enough or at least listen to the class if they chose. So retention. I'm not sure I can give you a straight answer because right now I don't feel like we're in the real stable world of adult education. Retention. Biju, what do you think? Hi, my take on retention is that I'd like to give you the example of my speaker class. Of course it's a paid class, but having this option of working from home was very intriguing for my students.  Okay, I can juggle with my child's school timing and I can join in five minutes later, but via Zoom. So I think it's really helped my students to have this flexibility of using Zoom. Now, am I a stickler that you did not choose this day so I'm not gonna allow? Well, no, I would definitely bend down a little if my students had a genuine reason and they were consistent in joining the classes as per their contract. So I think this High Flex model is, it definitely worked for us. We did High Flex from August until December and there's a reason why we did it only for that time since we were just piloting. We wanted to troubleshoot every single thing before we kind of made it accessible to all the ESL programs, but I think it's a good model. It definitely is a good model. Maybe what we could do because I think that this last slide may answer a lot of the questions in the chat of the conclusions, and then we can take some more questions if that would be okay with everybody. Yeah, there are several coming in. So yeah, go ahead and do that and then we'll go through the... Sure. And people can unmute and ask, go ahead. So our conclusions, did the High Flex model learning model meet student needs? Definitely, yes. According to a survey that I had sent out in the summer of 2021, many students wanted a blended learning model and it was a perfect fit. We also had, at that time, we had acquired laptops. 100% had Wi-Fi in their homes. So they were very good about having that. Bijal? Yes, exactly. And making it accessible via phone was a big thing because everybody had a phone and they could just come in contact with the students, with the teachers. We also had apps downloaded on phone, for example, Canvas. It was downloaded on their phone. So they could actually see what has been uploaded on the Canvas via phone. And then the second question, did student learning take place? Yes, it did. I checked the Learner Gains Summary Report in TE for this class. Of the 21 pair of accurate scores on CASATES in reading and listening, all 21 students made gains in both the reading skills and listening skills. Now, this is not unusual for our advanced class because we have a super teacher as well. Bijal, that's you. Thank you. So I think opening the world to internet and websites and other online resources, it starts really escalated learning to a different level, to be really honest with you, because students in their own time are able to listen to different podcasts. So I'm a big on TED Talk podcast. So on my WhatsApp group, I also post TED Talk podcasts to different topics going on. I also would take a little snapshot of little grammar snippets and then put them on our WhatsApp group. So when I want my students have a couple of minutes, they would say, okay, when can I use code and when can I use word? Or how are verbs, what are words and how can I use verbs in different sentences and just little snippets of grammar. So I think, yeah, definitely having access in class to online resources has really escalated learning to a different level and that has played a key role in getting the game because students are learning a lot more using their different learning modalities. This is a good model, trust me. Was this type of classroom sustainable? Yes and no. Yes, but it would have to take several modifications to make it less strenuous and work friendly for the teacher and the students and some equipment modification to make it easier. Budget to support this model and teacher professional development and planning into the budget for that. So I would also like to chime in here. Is this type of classroom sustainable? I think it is because we have not invested in a lot of fancy products. It's just something which is very handy and it is available in every classroom almost nowadays. Having said so, I would also say that the students also found it very interesting because they would then suggest the same thing to their child's school teacher and then to this kind of fast dawn to different areas of teaching and learning too. The one thing that Bijal didn't mention is that all of this required technical expertise. So the professional development of all teachers would have to be increased and be specific to what they are using and also specific apps and tools taught to them and give them a limit so they don't get overwhelmed of what they can use. Bijal, was a high flex classroom user friendly for the teacher and student? I would say yes and no. So yes and no is the answer for the teacher. Sometimes I used to get tired. Sometimes I used to be like, you know what? Just turn off everything, I just wanna teach. And there were times when I used to get really excited because my students joining on Zoom would come up with the best possible ideas and I'm like, okay, great, this works. You know what? This is my wife for having the high flex classroom. So yes and no, it can be time consuming because it takes a lot of time to find resources because now you're not just catering to students in person. You're also catering to students online. So a teacher's expertise at using Zoom is very important because Zoom itself has a lot of resources that we could use. Like for example, whiteboards. So when I do the high flex, you know how we divide the learning intention on the whiteboard in the classroom? I used to also write it on the whiteboards on Zoom and then present it on my projector screen. So that used to be my whiteboard for my Zoom students and the students in person. So I would say it is time consuming, but I guess once I got the hang of it and slowly I started working with it more, it kind of, you know, I transitioned to becoming almost a pro at high flex, if I may say. For students, at the very beginning, some of my students were a little hesitant and I will call this hesitant because they know their skills, right? Nowadays with phones, everyone knows to know, you know, almost how to access everything on the phone. However, using Google Sweets, sometimes on the phone could be a bit challenging, for which we had laptops in the classroom. For the students joining from home, I kind of requested them that if they had an iPad, that would have been, you know, more helpful than a phone, but if they didn't, no problem, we'll make things work. Now, one of the questions that I was asked earlier on was, what were the students doing with the phone in the classroom? Let me tell you, for those students who did not have iPads or laptops and they were joining in on Zoom from their phones, they would take snapshots of their work and then post it on my Google classroom or Canvas or even the WhatsApp group. So the phones were also being used for taking snapshots, for recording, for taking pictures within of their work and submitting their homework as well. And so we want to also look at, will Santa Clara adult education continue this model? For now, we have discontinued our pilot as of December. And what was the reasoning behind our decision? Our students wanted to be all face-to-face in the classroom. The blended model didn't meet the needs of those students at that time. And we wanted to release the extra workload and prep on the teacher. We wanted to reduce stress and change during an already stressful time. With that being said, it was the students, whether they're being socially starved because not in pandemic and they needed that collaboration or face-to-face, only the future will let us know. I'm having said so, we have discontinued using the High Flex program for the ESL program, but we have continued using it for the speaker class. So for our speaker class, we still are continuing to use the High Flex program where the students are joining in from home. We still need to go on to the next slide real quick, and so we have some time to answer those questions. Okay. The future of blended learning, online learning as well as blended learning will be driven by student needs. Right now, our students want face-to-face. Here's a question I'm going to pose to you, though. Have our students been socially deprived of social interaction? And is that why they're coming in Groves? And at some time into the future, will this model be more than wanted? Also, this is the ESL program. I know that in other areas such as HSD and HSE, it has been more successful and student wants are not as, they want more online. To Beagle knows, and I know, and Santa Clara adult education knows how to develop and implement a successful program. Would we be hesitant when and if the need arises? Sure, we'd go back in a heartbeat. We would need modifications to the pilot to make it easier for stress on the students and the socio-emotional health of the students and the teacher and maybe being out of the pandemic. Will we continue to monitor the ESL students and staff in the future? Of course, we're going to continue because we aren't out of this pandemic yet and things will still change. What we do know is that we will never go back to what we have before. We don't know what the future holds. However, we feel extremely privileged to be part of this fantastic transformation of education. In this time and day, we are in the process of transitioning to the world technology world in the field of education. Santa Clara adult education is ready for whatever the students may need to integrate into our success, our society successfully.


I'm going to bring three thought leaders to the stage. And while you all are getting situated, I know folks are moving around in the back. I want you to consider what it means to have money and meaning touch your life in a way in which you have the opportunity to touch other people's lives and what banking has looked like, who banking is for, what that conversation has felt like over the years here in coordinating and producing SoCAP, but in your own personal lives and where you live, in the places that you live. So we have Kat Taylor, who is the co-founder and CEO of Beneficial State Bank who is joining us. You all can clap it up for Kat. When I asked her what makes her come alive and what she's thinking about right now, she just gave me a little bit of a snippet around her thoughts around if we don't deal with and address head on the issues of direct investment in our community, there aren't any systems around philanthropy that can fix that. And so as an innovator in the Bay Area and across the country and throughout the world, her work is at the intersection of culture and social justice and money. And so we welcome you to the stage again this year, Kat. Also Andrea Armini, who is the Executive Director of Transform Finance. Andrea is someone who I met some years ago at the beginning of the conversation and the design of Impact Hub Oakland, his deep thoughtfulness around hope and what it means to dig deeply into the conversation of equity has really shaped my understanding of how the transforming conversation of how we pull the thread on finance and who that conversation is for is deeply important. So please welcome Andrea Armini to the stage as well. Y'all can make some clapping, some hooting, some hollering, all of those things. And then Robin Vargesi, who is the Head of Partner Engagement Lead Investor and Lead Strategist at Open Society Foundation as well. He lives in Brooklyn, so y'all you always have to just represent when you're on the left coast when the Brooklyn people show up for us. I asked him what was giving him hope backstage and he said, you know, I'm really inspired by mass mobilization of people coming to do experiments and getting to their own thing and just bringing the fire to us. And so please welcome Robin to the stage as well. Thank you, Ashara. Thanks everyone for joining us for this quick afternoon chat. We wanna keep it informal because the topic is fairly heavy. The way that we've been looking at this and some of you have heard all of us probably in different ways framing the issue as one of looking at the plumbing and the structural issues around finance that are problematic. So it's not just a matter of the what gets invested in but the how, who gets to make those decisions, who gets to take the residual value that companies create. And more fundamentally really thinking who owns what and what does it mean to own something. This is a somewhat uncomfortable conversation perhaps, right? We are by and large in a position of ownership but if we're really serious about the transformative aspect of the work and reshaping who wins and gets and who loses in society through capital and through economic activity, then we need to take a bit of a harder look at ownership. And ownership traditionally is a set of rights that you have over the value that is being created but also over the decision making that affects us.  Now, we don't really stop and question that by and large. We think, yeah, it's almost a God-given right. And if we think back to the work of Marjorie Kelly in her book, The Divine Right of Capital, it very much started raising that question for all of us. Why is it that it's the investors, that is the owners as it were of a company, the ones that get to make decisions that affect a lot of other groups of stakeholders? Why them? It's in case law in the United States but it's not a law of nature by any stretch. So we have been questioning that and saying if it's the type of paradigm that eventually really needs to change, that is not sufficiently justified. And if it were to be justified, then we would be okay with that, right? If somebody were to say, well, here is why this makes sense. Decisions that are affecting all of us will be made by a small group of us. And as Marjorie was looking at it, she said, well, it is very akin to aristocracy, right? And to the way in which decisions were made in medieval and post-medieval England where a certain number of people would get to vote just because they were the ones that owned the land. And it wasn't questioned until it was. So I start from the standpoint that it is possible to change this and change is coming. The moment is now to have this conversation. Many of you heard Anand this morning, you heard Jed Emerson with the rising wave of populism. This is increasing. And I want to think of it specifically from one angle that is the increased role of the corporation in our life, right? We're no longer talking about something that is fundamentally private. And you say, OK, the ones that started it or put the capital in get to make the decisions. This is something that will affect all of us more broadly, right? If Apple has a trillion-dollar market cap, right? They're way bigger than a lot of countries in the world. And why is it just the owners of the capital, the ones that have invested as shareholders in Apple, get to make those decisions? So we want to explore a little bit the why of the need to reconcile ownership, but also some of the models that have come up, because this is not an abstract question, right? There are ways in which we can start thinking differently about governance, thinking differently about who gets the value, and thinking differently in my particular obsession about the perpetuity of a capital investment, right? That you invest capital at the beginning, and by and large, you keep on reaping the benefits of that in perpetuity, regardless of your not having put any more effort beyond the initial effort or that initial risk. By alternative ownership, what do we mean? All of you are probably familiar with employee ownership, right, as an alternative to just capital, even though that is a shifting of who owns the shares, right? So you're turning the employees into owners of shares, so it's still a similar form of ownership. You've heard of platform co-ops, probably, where the users of a particular platform, like it could be Uber, it could be Twitter, would be the ones that get to make the decisions on it, and get the residual value from that. So looking at some of the models that break down and reconceive, who gets to make the decisions? Who gets the value for how long and why? So that's what we'll explore over the next 20 or so minutes. I'll tell you, I can want to sort of explain how we got to this issue. So the Open Society Foundation is not a development agency. We are not in the business of poverty relief or poverty alleviation. We're not in the business of strict economic development. So it's interesting that we wind up with a program which does work on all of those things. So how do we get here? At some point, we came to the realization, the practical realization, not just the intellectual one, that economic power, like political power, can oppress or liberate. And basically, that the arc of economic power could be bent to social justice or needed to be bent to social justice, especially in context where it's going the other way. So we're a global foundation. We work in over 140 countries and many of those countries in the pursuit of open society, meaning tolerant, pluralistic, open democratic ones. And a lot of the indicators are going the other way. What is the role of development in all of this? And so the role of development in all of this was that basically the institutions, the economic institutions and structures of a society were fostering a kind of politics which were anti-democratic. So how did this lead to the question of ownership itself? And this is where we started to think about, what did the institutions of a just society look like? And here we too started focusing on the intellectual question of what is ownership. And ownership is basically effective power over something, over an asset. It's the ability to use it however you want. It's the ability to claim its value add and its ability to transfer it whichever way you like, regardless of impacts on others. And so concentrations of power and of income and wealth are very good proxies for concentrations of power. And that's at the heart of all of this is a deeply political question, which is if economic power is an input into political power ultimately and social power, how do we address its maldistributions without addressing the maldistributions of economic power? And that led us to this question of ownership. Not simply its distribution, but how it's structured in all its dimensions across multiple parties. And so that's how we wound up with our body of work in this space, which is nascent. But we work in, but we've started to work in a number of issue areas around employee ownership and community ownership, around what should be the structure of these digital platforms, especially in the Global South, or organizing labor markets, especially informal labor markets in very intense and complicated ways. And it's a recent journey for the foundation, but it's kind of an exciting one, which has galvanized much of the foundation's work on democracy. I guess I would say how can we not look at structural change at this point? So we're hurtling towards climate disaster. We have, in those areas where racial caste systems are still determining economic outcomes to the detriment of many, many people, we have a counterbalance on the other side of people who might be coming into the middle class, but have no political self-determination. We have rampant poverty. And poverty, to my way of thinking, is not God-given and not self-generated. It is societally imposed. And it's super expensive. Desperation is bad for all of us. We are threatening social chaos and control states and fascism, not only in many countries of the world, but some of the most powerful. And if you ask me if this economy has been successful, of course, I have to listen, particularly to the financiers who point to how much wealth has been created. But it's been created for very few and taken away from the many. So a dollar invested in 1980 in the stock market is worth $20 now, but a dollar of wages in 1980 is still about a dollar today. One third of workers in the United States work full time and still meet the federal definition of poverty. It should be about one in two by 2020. And half of California's children are growing up in poverty now in the richest state in the world. So that isn't acceptable to any of us. And I think we have to look to the fundamental institutions of society who are responsible for creating those outcomes. And that begins in our case with banking and finance and moves quickly into business and the economy. Capitalism is an agnostic system. The rules are not created by the laws of physics. They're created by human beings. And if we allow concentrations of power, they tend to create the rules of capitalism in favor of further concentration of power. We have adverse natural selection in our corporate leadership. Essentially, whoever's willing to do the absolute worst things to the planet and people gets elevated. And the shareholders benefit from it without actually accepting responsibility for it. So enough of the Debbie Downer stuff. I actually am an optimist and I feel optimistic because I think this kind of darkness is always what happens before the dawn. And that we have the ability to recreate society and business and the economy with structures that are much more favorable to egalitarianism, to self-determination, and to plenty for all and the best place to work and live for all as well. So by day, I'm the CEO of a bank. I'm very lucky in the company that I keep. There were about $1 billion in assets, 250 employees in 17 branch offices. It's called Beneficial State Bank. That was chosen to indicate that we can all be in a beneficial state of mind and body. It's a triple bottom line bank model, serving social justice and environmental well-being at the same time that we're economically sustainable, if not competitive in bank markets. We don't get a break. We still have to compete well and earn a profit. There are three design features of the bank that put it in that new construct of ownership. First and foremost is an ownership model that is a legion to multiple stakeholders. We don't believe that the business of corporations is to maximize profit for the equity shareholder. We absolutely reject that. Absolutely reject that. Our stakeholders include customers, our colleagues, the communities in which we operate, the planet, and the public at large.  We don't allow maximization for any one of those stakeholders. In order to ensure that, 100% of the economic rights of the bank are owned by a public charity foundation that's permanently covered in the public interest. This is as close as a bank as we could get to the cooperative model of a credit union, which is member-owned and driven. In this case, we know that our shareholders, our economic shareholders, will pitch us right out if we don't serve the public interest. In addition to that, the most powerful thing about banking is the lending practice. We think of banking as the original and most powerful form of crowdfunding. Not that a specific deposit funds a specific loan, but all deposits fund a lending practice. And those deposits are crowdsourced. They're about $12 trillion in the US economy. They come from everybody. And the crowd is wise. We have to surmise what they want, but we're pretty sure they want us to lend to a new economy that's fully inclusive, racially engendered, just and environmentally restorative. So we're constraining that lending practice to produce 75% of loans that increase what we really need, like affordable housing and renewable energy or borrowers who are also aligned in the public interest and cooperatively governed, and voices that have been left out of the economy to date. Because those who have experienced and survived the material and psychological consequences of extreme oppression have the best insights about how to self-organize. And in this country, having started in slavery, native genocide, less in personhood for half the people and persecution of immigrants and refugees, we have no shortage of brilliant communities who know how we should reorganize society. The last design feature is just radical transparency. We should get to know everything a corporation is doing, and we're no exception. So for instance, we pay 150% of living wage to all employees fully benefited in an industry where one third of bank tellers are on some form of public assistance. So more, I think, the lesson of the bank is that we have to strive for a new ownership model that's as close as we can come to a cooperative, both run by our customers and with input from our colleagues, that some ownership, some things in life need always to be owned by the employees and the participants. And some things should never be owned at all because they're part of the ecological commons. I know we'll talk about that later. I'm really taken by the governance. And a lot of our work is aiming towards forms like cooperatives and trusts and ESOPs, at least democratic ESOPs. But I'm also struck by what's happening in this country. In a previous life, I was a scholar of what used to be called in the 60s and 70s economic democracy. And there were movements in the United States and Western Europe to basically have greater stakeholder voice in the governance of systems. And you still see this in places like Germany, where, at least in large firms and many sectors, workers elect somewhere between a third to 50% minus 1% of supervisory boards and have representation at the operational management level through works councils and things like that. And it really has, there's a zeitgeist in which where the concept is being broken up because one thing that people are feeling that it's not working. But I think we should also think about the question of how do you get the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, many of whom can't be there in these organizations themselves. And so I don't know how many people are familiar with the Mondragon Corporation, which is a large cooperative network in northern Spain. 75,000 workers, about 18 billion euros a year in turnover. So it's not quite Global Fortune 500, organized as a network of cooperatives. But it still has large supply chains across the global south, where everyone doesn't have a voice. And so some mix of where the mission is embedded and the institution itself. So when we think about voice, there are multiple ways of representing voice. And you might need multiple forms of representing voice in order to embed it in an organization, especially embedded in corporations which are very global. It's obviously easier with smaller locally-bound ones where communities and workers can have that kind of voice. And I think in those kinds of experiments we see across many parts of the United States. And you see networks emerging in the Bronx, in Cleveland, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, and also like rural parts like Western North Carolina. We find sort of a feverish series of experiments. That's because something's gone wrong, right? Yeah, and maybe with that, I want to get concrete for a second, because we're not talking about craziness here, right? Both Kat and Robin are actively working on this. And we at Transform Finance sit in a particularly fortunate position, whereas a field builder, we have a mandate from a variety of stakeholders that have said, yeah, we want to look at the work that we do, especially on the investment side, through a different lens, right? What is the engagement of all the relevant stakeholders in the design and the governance and the ownership? How can we make sure that we're creating more value than what is being taken out by the investors? And how do we make sure that the risk is falling adequately and fairly on the various stakeholders, based on how able they are to bear that risk? So they said, OK, we all agree that there is a problem with traditional ownership. We all agree that the way that most mainstream impact investing, even is looking at it, is not even coming close to the issue of wealth inequality, of power inequality. So what is out there? So I wanted to mention quickly three models that I think are interested to look at right now. The first one that will be featured tomorrow, I think, as part of the Alternative Ownership Track is the Trust or Purpose or Steward Ownership Model. It's something that is not new, right? A lot of the new stuff is old. The Bosch Corporation in Germany did this about 100 years ago when it said, no, the corporation will not be owned just for the benefit of the shareholders in that Dodge versus Ford American common law approach. But it will be held in a trust that will vote the shares for the benefit of a variety of stakeholders. And Purpose Capital that is now pioneering this reinvention of the Steward Ownership Model is doing a series of transactions right now to convert existing companies to a Steward-owned model where multi-stakeholders that are relevant to the corporation and that can be its employees, but it can also be its supply chain. It can be the customers, the core customers, all get a vote and all get a part of the economic value that is being created by the company. So that's one of the most concrete examples that we have seen of a new approach to ownership where you're distributing the governance and you're distributing the ownership value. The second one, which is a little bit funkier even, goes to the point of the perpetuity of the capital.  A lot of people have contributed more. The workers have contributed, but once they leave the corporation, they no longer get any value. Why is it that you continue to get it? So the alternative to that is a model that we saw called self-diluting equity, where you would have a company with a fairly traditional equity ownership structure, but every six months, the company issues the equivalent of 50% of its current equity and distributes it according to who has contributed to the well-being of that company over the last six months, right? You can think of Facebook having been set up like that from the beginning, where it said, okay, here's the initial capital. Something good was done with that, but then management contributed to it, the users contributed to it, the advertisers contributed to it, and therefore they all should get an equity share, and the initial capital will still be there, but its percentage will be diluted in correspondence to the fact that they are now contributing less to the ongoing well-being of the company. And the third, which I think is very important for impact investors that think of it in terms of maximizing risk-adjusted returns to meet the market and whatnot, is this idea of the capped returns on equity, which I think is something a cat and a beneficial state bank have been looking at and saying, look, at the starting moment, right, when you start your company, it's worth zero.  What if this thing worked really well? Do I need more than $30 million? Let's say, no, probably most people will be happy with an exit like that. So you set that number and you say, anything beyond that, we can divide into a pool, right? I would be very happy, frankly, personally, if I had a $30 million exit. Now that my company is worth zero, I'm thinking, if that day ever comes, I'm totally happy for the rest to be distributed across everybody that has contributed to this. It could be the workers, it could be the customers, right, in the way that Reddit did with one of its raises for its user, it could be anybody else, but there's no reason why all that value should accrue to me just by virtue of my continued share ownership of it. One of the things that we are doing, also in partnership with Transform Finance, is trying to look at what kind of financial structures we can facilitate the transfer of businesses from their owners to their workers and communities, right? And this has become sort of an important question with lots of policy interest and public interest, because the baby boomers are retiring and exiting from, depending on how you value it, say, 10-ish trillion, 12-ish trillion dollars worth of assets, the small, medium enterprise space. This is an opportunity that many actors, you know, are excited about, because it's basically a win-win, right? I mean, it's sort of, these people want to sell their assets, many of them will have a hard time finding buyers, helping to organize buyers who are people that they know who've been their employees, becomes a viable solution, especially when the other prospect is shutting down the firm altogether and not having it sold a viable asset, orphaned and shut down. And, you know, there's no small design challenge in this, because what's needed is a financing vehicle which has the risk profile of equity, but the control profile of debt, right? And so, and this is sort of a space which, you know, we can, where a different kind of investor or an investor who thinks differently can play. But I think we should be clear about problems which we think have, where we're always in search of win-win solutions, right? Win-win solutions are basically fundamentally technical solutions, right? And there's a limit to how far a technical solution can solve a political problem. If we think that fundamentally that the problem of the concentration of the structure of ownership is a political problem, there's only so far solutions like the ones we're pursuing, you know, admittedly, can take us. And that's something I think we shouldn't lose sight of, right? And at some point, if we think economic inequality has gotten to intolerable levels or levels which are dangerous for democracy, re-addressing that means that some people will not be on the winning side of things necessarily. I'm glad we're getting to what I think is at the root of all this, which is power. I know we talk about money and capital and equity and everything else, but I think it is power and these opportunities to redistribute power depend on us acquiring the power to do it, to begin with. That's the political nature of the problem. So to my view, capital has been beating up on labor for centuries. Capital is inanimate. It doesn't have an inherent value to society, whereas labor, that's people, and we aren't just labor. We also, we create value through our work, through our voting, through where we shop and what we shop for, through the families that we care for. So we're much more in terms of value creation than just our work implies. So I would rather favor a situation where people are rewarded for all those constructive activities than continuing to reward capital that's inanimate. And if you look at what's happening in this year alone, we just, the Tax Relief Act just gave a huge tax benefit to corporations in which capital is concentrated. Even Opportunity Zones, which I know you just heard about, are a hierarchical model of imposing capital on communities that are designated in a deficit way and without lacking any sort of mechanism so far for community input, much less control. So you can imagine that capital doing something good, like creating affordable housing, job creation, small business formation, et cetera. But that likely takes constraints by the community in which the capital lands. And remember, that capital is coming off a long-term capital gains. Those who have long-term capital gains tend to be financial first and only investors. It's not likely that they're going to constrain the return that they're seeking based on community input, community benefit, and a multi-stakeholder ownership model. So we have to be really careful about that, that it doesn't create luxury housing that displaces fracking other polluting industries, private prisons, you name it. I think we have a unique opportunity right now to steal power back because the world globally connected but lacking local accountability has produced massive network effects, not just the telephone and the internet. And you all know that a network effect is created when the participation of each additional member increases the value for all members. So social platforms like Facebook, even shopping platforms like Amazon, the banking system itself, electoral politics, civilization is a form of network effect. So how can we use our power of creation through participation and defection to get to some of these goals of either self-limiting equity, self-liquidating equity or trust models? And so I would argue that we have a unique chance to impose after the fact some of those limitations on capital because we can threaten to leave. Facebook right now is facing that threat quite specifically because of the use of personal information. You saw that they bought Instagram and WhatsApp, that's likely because they're worried that if all of us defect from one social platform, they need to hold another one to which we might go. But that's the kind of market cap that could go away overnight and everyone's aware of that. The same for a run on the banks. That's why we have FDIC insurance to prevent that. So how can we use that power not to use it literally but to exact some of these concessions for community-based control and ownership? I think in our world, we're looking at more and more possibilities for worker cooperatives and preferentially according finance to those worker co-ops. We would consider ourselves becoming a worker co-op or some sort of employee-controlled bank. I think about in agriculture, soils are actually a collective asset. They shouldn't be owned, they should only be stewarded. So how can we redesign agriculture away from an industrial system to one that's cooperatively managed? That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


What are we doing? What do I look like? You don't want me to answer. Da-dim-dim-da, da-dim-dim-da, da-dim-dim-da, din-dim-dah-dee-dee-dee-dina, dee-dee-dee-dee-dina, do-na-ka-ta-dee-dee-dee-dee-dina, din-dim-dim-da-dee-dee-dee-dee-da, do-na-ka-tim-da-dee-dee-dee-da. The f**k.  I am not. He pulls an Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, or GBC content. Do some Instagram.  I'm trying to canceling some script she's on. Yes, we have personal YouTube channels. You should go over there if you want to watch Corbin cook his child, I mean, Corbin cook with his wife and child, and watch Ashley, Alexis, and Mike, and I react to international content. Check it out. Today, we are doing a, I believe, a live song. We are doing a live song. Yeah, I wasn't even very... By Chetra, who is the female, I do believe, who's SPB, right? Yeah. And the live one, we just did it for him a few days ago. Right, the female that was with him, singing that sounded so much like letter, right. But obviously in the comments, we got to know she is a legend. Just what a surprise, basically, as Letta, I think she does more South Indian, I forget what language she does. But this is a song of hers, I believe, live. Cool, called Kanalei. And so if there's more from her that we should react to, right now, just go ahead and put in the comments and I'll vote it so I can see it. That's how me and the team gets to see what you want us to see. Yeah, if it's by YRF or T-Series, it's probably not gonna happen, though. It's going Patreon. Here we go. We got part of the new one, who can be J? VJ. Goom Simma, goom Simma, goop Pichip. Goom Simma, goop Pichip. Goom Simma, goom Simma, goop Pichip. Goom Simma, goop Pichip. Psy, psy, psy, psy, psy, psy. Kikka, momma, nanda, sambevi, lana. Manusila, vachikka. Kanalei. I was singing, but that seems different from any culture in the little world. It's not so talking when we don't speak it, sadly, yet. But, tell me if I'm right, I believe, to, in one breath, go from here to here, back to here, back to here, back to here, it's difficult. Yeah, I knew it's not an easy task, and it's deceptively, if you're just listening, you can hear the main melody and think, okay, that's very pretty, and it doesn't seem that complex, but if you're really listening to what she's doing, you know what it's like? Again, using a sport analogy. Like, if we can watch football. American football. American football, NFL football, right? Again, it's what we call the Hannibal. And you can watch a receiver and a quarterback are really on fire, connecting each other during the game, and they know where each other's gonna be, and the play breaks up, and they show it, and they actually know where, instinctually after the play breaks up, how did he get open, how did he know he was gonna be open? Those instinctual things that, if you know the game you can pick up on, that is exactly what that is, when you can, like you might watch a broken play, if you don't know the sport, you could watch it and go, wow, that looked crazy. So you know something crazy happened? I promise people who know like Indian classical singing and it's just really, really hard what she just did live. Yeah, and it was a beautiful song. It seemed familiar. I wonder if we've, have we heard this? Cause that's happened before. Like we've heard it a lot. Like, yeah, you've reacted to her to go now. Six times, actually. But it could have just been the melody that was familiar. And even though she's like in the same range as Letta, there is a, There's a difference. Yeah, Letta's voice is more, and I don't mean this as a negative, it's just a descriptive thing. It's more slender. The sound of her voice is a bit more slender where hers has got a bit more rounded weight to it. Does that make sense? So I think if I was hearing the two singing, initially I might think like we did when we first heard her, wow, she sounds like Letta, but the more we would hear her, we'd be like, no, no, no, no, there's a heaviness. That's the same notes, same range of voice, but hers is a bit more of a heavy rounded sound and Letta's is a bit higher, thinner. I wonder if we've heard any of hers before. I'm sure we have. In the past almost two years, I am sure we have, it's going to be one of those. Oh yeah, we did. Oh yeah, we did. Oh yeah, and she was in that. Trying to say, how many songs has she, cause obviously, SBB did 40,000. But like most studio singers, playback singers, who've been around for decades, this says 25,000 songs. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. That seems like a lot. Like it is. I don't think Billie Eilish is saying that many songs. Oh no, I don't think Frank Sinatra's saying that many songs. I don't think people like, I know it's different cause obviously in the cinema, these people are the singers. And so that makes sense. Well, yeah, every movie like has some songs in it. In America, obviously our films are not made that way. Right. And usually it's the actor a lot of times. If it's a musical. But other than that, we'll have musical interludes, but not with a vocalist. Yeah, it'd be a band. Right. Or a song that's already established. But even if there's no musical number per se, no like standard musical breakaway number, there's going to be like a little montage that's going to have a song in it. And there's also the ads that they do. There's the TV programs and the commercials and different things. I wonder what the closest American or Western singer is to any Indian. You know what would probably be comparable? Voice over actors. Oh yeah. Do characters on shows and then do narration of trailers and then they're just constantly, they go into the studio and they do like 25 things that day and then they leave. How long two day? Cause probably up there. Yeah, probably. That man has done so much. You know, yeah, another person with just his constant voice work is Seth and Farland. Yeah. You know, he's constantly doing, but I don't, cause they go in and they'll do like nine, 10, 11 songs a day. Yeah. That's insane. It is. But let us know more from her if there's a song from her films or if she has more live stuff. Let us know what other songs of hers we should react to. And other singers. Down.


Coming up on news 15 today and we'll show you what happens when I take a lie detector test that starts right now Focused on family and the community news 15 today starts now Good morning. You're watching news 15 today. I'm Carter Seminoe, and I'm Alex for sale. Thanks so much for joining us They say that's the eyes are the window to the soul But can your eyes tell someone if you total eye Carter after the break our guests will tell us about a new Technology that uses the eyes to find the truth. Don't go away Welcome back guys. Well joining us now in studio. We have Todd Nicholson He's the CEO of Converis, and he's here to talk to us about some new technology, and it's not just any Technology it has to do with lie detection involving the eye. Is that correct? That's correct awesome Okay, so tell me a little bit about it So this is the product. It's called eye detect and it is a next-generation lie detector Wow, as you mentioned Alex. It uses the eyes to determine if you're lying This bar that you see here on the bottom is a high definition infrared camera that captures minute changes in your eyes Questions that are presented to you on the computer It does that at up to 60 times per second. Wow So just a simple like eye change and it's it's able to detect whether not you're lying Yeah, so it's based on the fact that it takes more mental effort to tell a lie Mm-hmm to tell the truth right and when you exert more mental effort your eyes dilate up to a tenth of a millimeter That's that dilation that we're monitoring during the course of the exam. Okay. Well, how is this new technology? Being used to help government law enforcement Yeah, so it's being used in a variety of areas. One of the areas is law enforcement pre-employment screening so Law enforcement organizations that want to know if someone has an issue in the past that would disqualify them from coming To work for the agency can verify if they're Being untruthful about what they've done for example if they've used illegal drugs in a certain period of time in the past Okay, that would that would disqualify them or if they've committed a serious crime or if they have unreported Discipline that perhaps occurred at a different agency Okay, and you know what are some of the benefits of The eye detect the newer technology as opposed to just your standard lie detector test Yeah, so a standard lie detector test is called a polygraph. It measures emotional response such as heart rate blood pressure Respiration, okay, we're measuring cognitive low. So this idea of exerting more mental effort to tell the lie than to tell the truth and That's exhibited through these changes in the eyes. So the benefit is it's a computer With a sensor that's capturing those changes and then a computer algorithm that calculates a score telling us Whether or not the person is deceptive or credible and have you found that you found it to be pretty accurate it is It's it's 86 to 90 percent. Wow in comparison to a traditional polygraph a polygraph on average is between 75 and 85 percent accurate because you have a human being that's Creating the test asking the questions and interpreting the data Alrighty well, we are gonna see just how accurate it is coming up after the break stay with us guys You don't want to miss it Welcome back guys. Well, we have Todd Mickelson from Converis joining us and a little bit before the break We talked about this new technology in terms of a lie detector test that uses your eyes, correct? That's correct, and I believe we tested the Accuracy of this eye detect on mr. Carter Siminoe me. Yes, I find out if you I'm a good liar or not. Well, I could have told you that I'm just kidding if you could kind of For viewers that that missed what we talked about previously. How does this all work? So this is a next-generation lie detector that measures minute changes in your eyes, okay? Using this infrared high-definition camera while you answer a set of questions that are presented to you on the computer screen When we lie it takes more mental effort to lie than to tell the truth and that increase in mental effort causes our eyes to dial Okay, so shall we take a look at Carter's? Yeah, there I there I am so how explain the premise of the test real quick Yes, what we did is we had Carter write down a number between one and ten We asked him to lie about having written down a number But we then ask him about the numbers one through ten and we measured what his eyes were doing on each of those questions as he was answering And then in the end we feed that into an algorithm that calculates what number he wrote down and in this case He wrote down the number five interesting and it identified it based on his eyes changing when he lied about Having written down that number. Yeah, and how Show the the numerical results of my lying if you can Because you mentioned you mentioned something about how I was aggressively off the norm Yeah So let's come in here and look at his report Here's his report you can see a Diagram here of of where his eyes reacted the most on the number five and if we scroll down we can see what his average pupil diameter was Wow on on each of the numbers, so we asked him about each number Did you write down the number one? Did you write down the number two and so forth up to the number ten and then back down again? And we took those results and aggregated them together and his pupils on average were three point eight millimeters on The questions dealing with the number five whereas on all the other questions. They were three point six millimeters or less Wow And that's a it's a significant difference yet Typically if we get a tenth of a millimeter difference then then it's so a cadena. You'll be happy to know that you can trust me I'm not a liar if I am you can tell what I'm lying At least this machine can or I can or ask anybody my mother or my girlfriend everyone knows what I'm lying All right guys well listen. Thank you so much for being here and sharing this new technology with us super cool Stick around guys after the break. We've got more news and weather coming up You're watching KADM Fox 15 news 15


Hey, I'm Andrew Connell this video is an overview of one of the chapters in my course mastering the SharePoint framework that's available for purchase on my site boytannos.io. This overview video is going to give you an idea of everything that the chapter covers. You can learn more by checking out the description in the notes below the video. If you got any questions about this chapter or about the course in general just make sure you drop a comment below in the below the video and I'll be sure to get back to you. So with that let me get out of the way enjoy the overview to this chapter. Hi, welcome to my course on extending and creating customizations for SharePoint using the SharePoint framework. Now I want to take a minute to first just welcome you to my course explain what this course is and then we'll dive into what you're going to find within this course. My goal in this course is to teach you what you'll need to know not only to be productive at your job but to master the SharePoint framework. Now in this first chapter I'm going to introduce you to the course so you know what you can expect. So let's start with who this course is for. You may be wondering who I built this course for and the student that I have in mind when building this course are two different kinds of web developers. This includes developers with lots to a little bit of traditional SharePoint development experience. The types of developers who built farm solutions, sandbox solutions, SharePoint hosted add-ins, provider hosted add-ins or developers who have used tools like SharePoint Designer to write client side solutions. I'm also thinking about developers with experience building client side solutions using JavaScript. Now you may not have experience developing for SharePoint in the past and that's okay. The SharePoint framework involves creating client side components for SharePoint using the technologies that you're familiar with like JavaScript and CSS. It'll help to know some stuff about SharePoint but I'm getting ahead of myself because let's just start by explaining what this chapter is all about. In this chapter I'm going to start by introducing you to the different variants of this course. Now I've packaged this course into three different bundles. Right now you're watching the free starter bundle that includes the first few chapters and there are two more bundles that I'll cover in another lesson in this chapter. They cover the different aspects of the SharePoint framework. Now of course you also might want to get an idea of everything that's in the course. So before we wrap this chapter up make sure you stop by this lesson so that you can see what topics are covered in the course. Now I'll go chapter by chapter and explain what you'll get out of each one of these different chapters. Next I want to explain how you can get the most out of this course in all the associated resources that I offer like office hours, mastermind groups for discussions and how to ask questions throughout the time of your taking this course. And before I wrap this introductory lesson up let's talk about what you need to be successful in this course. Now of course nothing is required. You could just sit back and watch these videos but if you want to repeat any of the things that I show you in the course you'll need to have a few things on your side of the screen. You're going to need to have a SharePoint environment in order to fully test and build components that you're going to be working on. And I suggest you have a Microsoft 365 developer tenant in a local developer environment. We'll get to that later. Now sure SharePoint framework is supported on some on-premises SharePoint deployments but well we're going to get more to that in a little bit later. The other two chapters in the free startup mumble you're currently watching cover what environments support the SharePoint framework and what you need to develop for each one of them in a lot more detail. In addition to a SharePoint environment while it's not required it would help if you had some understanding of some of the core concepts in SharePoint.  It will help quite a bit if you know what these things are but it's not exactly required. Now I'm not going to cover these in the course as they're well covered throughout the SharePoint documentation or if you just take a minute into a simple Google search. Now as I said earlier you're also going to need a developer environment. Now any relatively modern desktop or laptop that you use to build web apps is going to work. All you're doing is JavaScript based development with a text editor and running some tools. You don't need a much to really accomplish these different tasks. Don't worry about setting it up right now. I've got a whole chapter that's dedicated to that topic later in this free starter mumble so just sit tight. Last but certainly not least you really should have some sort of a web developer background. Ideally you've got some experience with JavaScript, TypeScript or building client-side web applications and if not don't worry. I want this course to also speak to those traditional SharePoint developers who I know spend more time server-side than they do client-side so I've got you guys covered as well. Now that's it. You don't need much to work with the SharePoint framework and this lesson is really served as an introductory or overview for this entire chapter. I told you what you expect in this chapter explain who the target audience is for this course and also shared a couple I guess we can call them prerequisites. Okay now that's going to wrap up my brief introduction to the course.


Boom What's up money geeks? Mr. V here welcome to another video guys. So into this video we are going to talk about Tesla I know a lot of you guys don't really care about Tesla here on the channel But definitely there's some big news that I want us to cover regarding Tesla. It has been a huge price movement I know some of you guys are interested in Tesla Some people don't really care because you got Neil and you got Lucid But again Tesla as the leader in this space right now So when Tesla moves we expect to see some movement with the other guys So we definitely have to cover Tesla. So that's what we're gonna be talking about in today's video But before we get started guys, we are new to the channel We took about how to earn money how to save money how to invest and build wealth So that's something that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button and your notification bell So you don't miss out on new content So when it comes to Tesla guys, I don't need to explain anything to you electric vehicles Battery packs. They're doing all sort of other things in between But we know for sure that Tesla has set the standard as far as electric vehicles So any other person is like hey, I have to beat Tesla So it's not hey if you're trying to be like Tesla you as a company You failed already because the goal at this point is to beat Tesla That's how you can distinguish yourself because if you're trying to be like Tesla unless you are like Tesla Your price is really really cheap. I don't think people want to use you people are not gonna buy your product So that's why I enjoy companies like Lucy. That's not trying to be like Tesla. It's trying to be better Than Tesla, but that's beside the point the reason I want to talk about Tesla today is because they just have these massive deals We jump in here and take a look again. You can see here just Tesla products of vehicles and stuff like that but The news that I want to really bring up to you guys is the fact that Tesla signed kind of like a deal with With Hertz or if you guys know what hurts it is it's like a renter Vehicle company. So they are they are sign it a deal to buy 100,000 electric vehicles I don't know the specifics as to the breakdown, but this is insane 100,000 Tesla just came off of their earnings, which they reported excellent earnings and then on top of that now Hertz is actually ordering 100,000 electric vehicles and you probably thinking like why didn't they go to like GM? Why didn't they go to like Ford go to these established players? Tesla has established himself as prestige as the next level car manufacturer So that's why I'm saying that if you are trying to be like Tesla you've already failed because that's what companies like Ford Like General Motors are trying to do they're trying to be like Tesla, but Tesla is already gone. Tesla's left them in the win already So from that perspective, I don't see how they can really get I compete with Tesla in that space But just to get this kind of order from one You know from one renter car company, you know how this is like monkey see monkey do you're gonna see that The rest of the other car companies are gonna want to go electric now They're gonna be loading up on Tesla or they're gonna be loading up on Lucy if they're doing luxury vehicles So I mean like it's out there. It's all in the open. It's anybody's so let's take a look at Tesla and what happened to the stat So before this Tesla's just been squeezing up So I think last week this was their 22nd sounds last week Friday. If you can see your Tesla was sitting somewhere about 900 and some change 950 and it's just go to squeeze and then if you can see today It's just went crazy 930 market opens the news came out Tesla squeezed all the way to a high of a thousand dollars and 45 cents just for Transparency guys. I am a Tesla stock holder. I have Tesla my portfolio So this is not just a hey pump and now I have Tesla I bought a while back and I'm still hanging on to it But again, you guys know that I have I have a huge amount of love for Lucid So that's beside the point, but look at that squeeze. So Just for those that are not in Tesla I know it's gonna be painful because watching this thing move the way it moves if you guys remember when Tesla went through that there Stock split this time drop down to close about 350 dollars a share which was crazy If you had loaded at 350 this thing is up to a thousand dollars right now So that would be for each the stock that you bought Tesla You would have been up 600 and something dollars, which is ridiculous and this is probably not even the end because I This is just the news just came out today And this is just one company imagine that you have a second company comes out and say hey Yeah, we're trying to use Tesla. We're gonna order even more vehicles from Tesla It's thing it can easily go back to 2,500 I won't sit back here and be surprised if it did because that's the power that Tesla had So I wanted to bring this news to you guys because you probably see Tesla jump the good news is that that Happened and all the other EV stocks are benefiting from that move if you look at Lucid is up Which we're gonna talk about that in a separate video Neil was up Again, all the other EV stocks are benefiting from that move because Tesla is like the pace center as a Tesla move Most EVs would move so Anticipate to see even more movement in the coming weeks like I said Piggy bagging from their good earnings and now these massive order Man Sometimes you see the sky is the limit in this case like I think the limit is the sky for for Tesla So we'll see how things go Begin just if you are in Tesla's good for you Enjoy the ride if you're not in Tesla don't Get FOMO kids right now usually after every squeeze like is a little pullback before squeeze again So unless you are ready to get in and they average your way down if you have the money because I Averaging your way down with Tesla. That's no big deal because if a Tesla goes from a thousand dollars to seven hundred You're three hundred dollars in the hole by the time you buy another share At seven hundred if you do that, so that would be about seventeen hundred divided by two So again, you're not gonna be sitting pretty good. It's that's the race with Tesla because The volatility is insane And the way the price moves it doesn't move in like, you know, 50 cents It moves in two hundred three hundred in record amount of time so again Just for people who are in Tesla I just want to make sure that we we enjoy this moment and have fun for those are not in Tesla Don't feel bad find something. I've talked about other companies that have this kind of potential like Lucy Neo we've covered those here in the channel.  So again, let me know In the comment section what you guys think about is again Tesla I don't know what vehicles they're gonna get probably a little bit of everything, you know So model s some model wise Some model threes some model X Who knows just probably get a little bit of everything in my personal opinion because if you want the fleet That's how you can cover is to make sure people that one Some something like this they can they can get it people that one more of a little coupe like these they can get it So that's Tesla in a nutshell So that's why I wanted to make sure that we cover that here on the channel Again, I know a lot of you guys probably won't care about this video But I had to put it out there just because it's Tesla and Tesla Really set the pace when Tesla moves all the other companies do move as well Let me know in the comment section what you think about is are you currently invested in Tesla? If yes, what's your game plan again? Let me know in the comment section if you're not invested in Tesla What are you doing to make sure that you don't miss out on the next opportunity? Are you currently researching and investing in other up-and-coming EV stocks like Lucid like NIO? Are you investing in recycling of lithium? Are you invested in battery stocks like quantum escape again? Just examples I want you to do your own research before you invest in other stocks because you can sit there and complain Cry about missing out on Tesla, but once you take action I bet you in two years or in three years You're gonna sit there and complain about missing out on Lucid when he was trading under 30 dollars You saw it and did nothing because you were scared if you're investing long-term Pull the trigger average down and keep buying as it dips keep buying as it dips If you're investing just like trading then that's where it could be a little bit cautious You just want to trade momentum and get out but for the most part it's up to you to make that decision How you want to invest if you if you want to be a guy that regrets and cry every time or somebody that Take a chance and buy at a lower price and then hopefully ride it for five ten years and make good money It's up to you if you're new here guys We took a bar how to earn money how to save money how to invest and build wealth That's something that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button and a notification belt So you don't miss out on your content also guys if you're looking to get some of investing Webo has a promotion right now if you deposit five dollars just sign up and deposit five dollars You get free crypto free shiba and also you get free stocks at no cost to you I'll put those links in the description below when you sign up You deposit that money you get free stocks. I get free stocks and that's how it helps me to continue to make content here on the channel And as always guys, do you do diligence? Don't be greedy savage. Stay motivated


are reviewed in North Africa. A part of the force hurled against the Nazis in Tunisia. Commander-in-Chief Eisenhower, promotion for General Clark, his second in command. General Clark's secret pre-invasion mission to Africa helped smooth the way for the United Nations. General Eisenhower boarding a plane for the front. Erica's famous General Doolittle, the man who led the raids on Tokyo, is here commanding the Air Force. Third bastion of the desert is now under American guard. The stars and stripes flying over North Africa. Connorses are here, too. In battle dress, these sisters of mercy are serving with American armed forces on all fronts. French colonial legions mobilize, reinforcements for the United Nations. The typical Senegalese warrior seems only too happy that days of collaboration with the Nazis are over. Dramatic scenes of the renewal of active Franco-American friendship. United States troops form a guard of honor to salute their new brothers-in-arms. Again, take their rightful place in war upon the axis. At a Washington, D.C. airport, a giant transport brings evidence of the new Franco-American understanding. A French military commission headed by General Émile Bétoire comes to seek supplies for French forces fighting in North Africa. Jacques de Baville is General Giro's civilian representative. General Bétoire, veteran of two wars, will advise the United States Army on the types of equipment French troops are trained to use. General McNair need deputy to the United States Chief of Staff personally escorts the distinguished military party to the capital. A new day dawns for the fighting French and fighting France. For that's what the Air Force calls these powerful new fighter planes, lightnings. P-38s reported to be the fastest high-altitude fighters in the world. Told to hangars for final assembly and a check-up before going into service. Motors are tuned and tested by expert American mechanics trained at the factories. Details of their powerful armament is a military secret. Ways in the jungle country, they're off to battle the Japs over the South Pacific. Lightning to strike the enemy, Benghazi. For the third time in British hands, falls before Montgomery's ever-rolling Eighth Army. The swastika gives way to the Union Jack. The natives welcome signs of a lied victory. Axis supply ships blasted by the RAF still smoking in the harbor. The port, one of the finest on the North African coast, was abandoned by Rommel without a fight. Now wrecked ships are all that's left of what once was one of Rommel's biggest bases. The harbor of Benghazi, symbol of the fall of the fascist empire in Africa. South Pacific, a United States battle force steams upon its mission. Destroyers and giant warships forming a protective screen around the aircraft carrier as the squadron makes contact with the Japanese fleet. Abort the carrier, pilots and crews assemble on the flight deck. All is in readiness. Jet planes come roaring in.


A female Brainerd High School staff member was attacked from behind in the girl's locker room at the school this morning. The woman suffered minor injuries in the attack and a suspect is in custody. Anthony Scott has more details on the story. Before most of the students arrived at Brainerd High School this morning, a 36-year-old female Brainerd staff member was doing her job in the locker room when suddenly she was grabbed from behind. The original description was that he was wearing all black or dark clothing. The staff member fought back against her attacker freeing herself and started yelling for help. We're really fortunate that she fought off this person and that she wasn't hurt worse than she is. Once the intruder no longer had control of the situation, he started fleeing the scene and a witness recognized the alleged attacker as 20-year-old Jared Allen Tristan McCormick. The Brainerd Police Department was contacted at 6.48 this morning and McCormick was under arrest about 15 minutes later. Authorities apprehended him as he was walking down the street about three-quarters of a mile away from the school. McCormick is believed to be a former student at Brainerd High School, but it is unknown if he had any relationship with the victim. I'm standing in front of the Brainerd High School main entrance, which is the only door that is unlocked during the school day. However, in between the time when custodians arrive, until school starts, most doors in the building are open. We have many people that come in and use the weight room, many people that come in and use a swimming pool. There's all kinds of activities that are being offered along with the sports practices. Brainerd schools have already had a meeting and some security changes are being made before the school day starts. We made a few changes starting immediately and that is that the locker rooms are going to be locked until a certified person that can be there to supervise has access to those lockers and also we're asking everyone that if they do come in to work out in the weight room or in the swimming pool to always have a partner to use the buddy system. Superintendent Larson also said the school is doing their own investigation to prevent this from happening in the future and the school is just happy that the victim is okay. We're just so thankful that our staff member is okay and we're going to do everything that we can to support her and to increase the safety and security for all of our students and our staff. One of the things that we really pride ourselves in is that we're a family here and that we take care of each other and when one of our family members is hurt, it's very hard on everyone. Reporting from Brainerd, Anthony Scott, Lakeland News. This suspect in the case, Jared McCormick, is currently being held at the Corwin County Jail pending formal charges. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.