So, good afternoon everybody, you're very welcome to the Institute of International European Affairs for this very important event. We're very honoured to be joined by the Foreign Minister of Portugal, Minister Augusto Santos, who is going to give a keynote address this afternoon. It's very timely, we are embarked in this country and in this institute on a debate on the future of Europe and of course there are natural affinities and alignments between Ireland and Portugal for very recent history as well as more distant history and current politics in terms of the shape of the government, in terms of our engagement on the debate on the future of Europe. So we're very much looking forward to hearing your comments. Minister, if I can just read out a very short biography of the Minister which I'll do before. I'll just remind all of you to switch your phones to silent and remind you that we are on the record and recording the Minister's speech for our website and the Q&A session afterwards will be off the record. So Augusto Santos Silva has had a distinguished political career spanning two decades. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since November 2015. He previously served as Minister of National Defence from 2009 to 2011 and as Minister of Parliamentary Affairs from 2005 to 2009. He also served as Minister of Culture from 2001 to 2002 and as Minister of Education from 2001. He received his PhD in Sociology in 1992 and his BA in History in 1978 where he later served in the University of Porto as Dean from 1998 to 1998. So a very distinguished career and please could you welcome the Minister, the Foreign Minister of Portugal. Everyone can see me. So thank you very much for this invitation and for your presence. I will focus my intervention in one dimension of the future of Europe and then I propose to consider all the dimensions that you wish in the following key in the period. And the dimension that I would like to focus is sometimes neglected. Too neglected in my view is the dimension of the role Europe has to play in the world. So I would like to focus on issues of European foreign policy and then we can speak about the economic and monetary union, the institutional arrangements that we need and so on. In fact, since at least 1993, it is clear for all of us Europeans that we need a common security and foreign policy and that the external action is one of the most important dimensions of the European Union and one in which we can have really European added value as we right now usually say. I would like to elaborate on this topic of the external action of the European Union. Consider what I see as five main dimensions of our external action. The first dimension relates to topics of security and defense. The second dimension relates to our neighborhood and our neighborhood policy, our policy towards our neighboring regions at south and at least at east. The third dimension concerns relates to cooperation and development policy. The fourth to our participation in multilateral fora and multilateral agenda. And I think that I can finish with a fifth dimension that in some sort somehow summarizes all the previous one. The geopolitical insertion, the geopolitical inscription of Europe nowadays. The awareness of the importance of the area of security and defense is a very important fact of recent years in Europe and it is a very positive fact, the increasing awareness of the importance of defense and security issues for the future of Europe. From the Portuguese perspective, the clear enunciation of a number of principles can help us developing the PESCO, the permanent structure of cooperation in defense and security matters that was launched with the participation both of Ireland and Portugal in the last month of December 2017. The first principle would be to consider PESCO in its terms. That is to say our aim is to increase our cooperation in equipment, in capabilities and in operations. We are independent states. Our national defense and security policy is an issue of our national sovereignty but still we have to cooperate furthermore in terms of equipment, capabilities, operations and missions. For 22 member states of the European Union, not for Ireland but for Portugal that are at the same time members of the European Union and members of NATO PESCO means also to strengthen the European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance. The two organizations, you and NATO, are of course of different nature but still they are complementary and our efforts must be articulated in both organizations not on the basis of divisions that have lost their meaning such as between soft power would be European power and hard power, the power of NATO or by areas of influence but rather for saving means and converging actions. Third principle that seems very important in my view is that the permanent structure cooperation PESCO must be launched on a solid basis particularly in the economic and financial field. One must understand security in the proper and broad sense. Today the safety of critical infrastructures, energy supply, communication networks and large shipping areas are absolutely crucial so we need this modern view of what means security. And finally the so-called Defence Union in Europe cannot exacerbate the existing asymmetries in the technological and industrial capabilities of member states and for that it is indispensable to take into account the projects and potentialities of small and medium enterprises. PESCO also means the reinforcement of the industrial and technological base of defence in Europe and in order that countries like Portugal and Ireland can take all the profits they deserve from PESCO we must allow room for small and medium enterprises to participate in this reinforcement of our industrial base in Europe. It is obvious, second dimension that I would like to refer to. It is obvious the correlation between security issues and neighbourhood issues. Our security border as Europeans lies in the great arch that runs from the African Sahel to Central Asia nowadays even from Central Africa to Central Asia. This is the border of Europe in terms of security nowadays. Any instability in this great arch going from African Sahel to Central Asia has a direct impact on the conditions of European security. Terrorist networks, human and drug trafficking, large organised crime or social upheaval that lead to the collapse of institutions and states but also the systematic denial by governments of the dignity, rights and minimum security requirements of their populations all these constitute direct threats to Europe. I always say that the Portuguese troops that are currently in Mali or Central Africa are also defending the Portuguese national interests in terms of security. It is clear, however, that the neighbourhood is not reduced to safety concerns. It relies more broadly on political and economic relations with regions geographically closest to the Union as well as on possibilities and paths for joint partnerships. There are some of the countries from our neighbourhood that are candidates to the accession to the European Union currently Albania, Fyram, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey and the European Union must treat all these candidates only according to the criteria defined at the Copenhagen Council. That means the democratic nature of the state, the compliance with the rule of law, the existence of a market economy and the ability to integrate the so-called Aki Communautaire. In my view, no other question can be explicitly or implicitly introduced let alone imaginary problems of religious or civilisations' disconfirmity. Europe is plural and not regulated by ethnic, religious or cultural requirements. The Copenhagen criteria criteria are enough to assess the possibility of the candidates to exceed to the European Union and of course we must be intransigent about the Copenhagen criteria. What we call the neighbourhood policy has to do with the relations with the countries of the two regional areas that border the EU. In the east with the countries that have left the former Soviet universe such as Ukraine and Belarus or several Caucasus states to the south with all the North African nations and several of the Middle East including Israel and Palestine. All those countries take part at the European neighbourhood. The role of the EU should not be underestimated. I'll give only three examples. A EU strategic dialogue with Maghreb will be a significant favourable element to the regional integration of the Maghreb countries themselves, which is practically nowadays non-existent. Second example, the combinations of incentives and disincentives is essential for the advancement of the rule of law and the fight against corruption in Eastern and Caucasian Europe. And thirdly, the EU continues to be the clearest voice in favour of the only peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two states coexisting side by side respecting each other's security and having both their capitals in Jerusalem. The Irish government is very engaged also on behalf of all the European Union in trying to get a solution to the PPMU. As we all know, Russia was invited but did not want to be associated with the European neighbourhood policy. This is not to say that Russia is not a neighbour and the closest one to the European Union. In 2014, Russian strategic revisionism violated one of the key principles of the international order which is sovereignty and territorial integrity. In this case, the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Hostile acts ensued and the recent Salisbury incident would have been the last goat that overflowed an already full glass of aggression and suspicion. The firmness of the European response to the Russian Act is justified, but it cannot be questioned. It cannot question the double-track policy that has guided the EU and NATO in its relation to Russia. Steadiness in responding to hostile threats on one side and political dialogue on the other side. Now I would like to move to a third dimension that I think is vital when we conceive the external action of EU besides defence and security and neighborhood issues. This third agenda is development. The European Union is the world's largest donor in development aid. It has an essential partnership with the 79 ACP countries, countries from Africa, the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean countries. And it conducts the most advanced and consistent cooperation programmes on all continents. It is European Union is the entity that most emphatically subscribes to the fundamental principle of the United Nations, the principle that states that development is the other face of security and peace. Does this mean that no change is necessary in development policy in Europe? I do not believe so. Just think about the discussions we are already having in Brussels in the context of preparing what we call the post-Cotonou agreement. That is the framework for cooperation with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries after 2020. The point is not to break with a line of action that has been fruitful, but rather to adapt it to a new need. It is not enough to cooperate in a logic of aid from developed countries to developing countries. This logic of aid of assistance is not enough for the scale of the challenges faced by countries with a strong population growth, with a large population of children and young people who these countries need to care, to feed, to educate and to employ, countries with insufficient control over their resources and an incipient capacity to transform and trade those resources and still with very fragile institutions. As it was once again repeated by our African friends at the Abidjan Summit between the EU and the African Union, cooperation must be redefined as a partnership between equivalent sovereign entities. Cooperation must strengthen civil societies and must be articulated with the economic relationship. In a nutshell, we need cooperation, trade and investment closes to each other. There is traditionally a divide, a split between trade and investment policy and cooperation as to development. In my view, this division is nowadays both obsolete and it does not help to improve our relationship with Africa and other developing countries. The fourth major area of implementation of the European foreign policy is shaped by multilateralism as the principle and method of addressing international relations, by multilateral organizations as the appropriate framework for building a rules-based order and by multilateral agendas that is the common work programs agreed by the parties. In this respect, the role of the European Union is indeed to lead, to lead multilateralism. We should not be afraid to say it. On the contrary, we must affirm it and undertake the corresponded responsibility to be leaders in multilateralism. The clearest option for multilateralism is today in Europe and in countries which are culturally and institutionally closed to Europe. Now that we have seen an obvious withdrawal of the Anglo-Saxon universe, the United States and although to a much lesser extent the United Kingdom, that clearest option for multilateralism is even more evident. This has an effect both on the participation and the support to the United Nations and on the activity of multilateral organizations linking Europe to North Africa, such as NATO or OSCE, linking Europe to other regional multilateral organizations such as the African Union, the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States, the League of Arab States or the Aegean. There are several multilateral agendas in which European leadership is capital. The Agenda 2030 for the Sustainable Development Goals or the Climate Agenda are well known. So I would like to focus on three other relevant multilateral agendas, the promotion and regulation of international trade, the reception and protection of refugees and the regulation of migrations. Once again, the current American policy increases the overall responsibility of the EU concerning trade. Trade is a powerful growth factor in the world economy, rationalizing the use of resources and the satisfaction of the needs in a systemically positive cost-benefit relation. And we have to remember this, including to our American friends that overall trade is a powerful growth factor in the world's economy. From this growth can benefit all countries and regions in terms of wealth, employment and household income. We must remember to all those who want to engage in obsolete and radically wrong trade wars that trade is a win-win game, can be a win-win game. In addition, trade contributes to the mutual understanding and mutual respect of peoples and to the reciprocal opening of societies. It improves the communication and transfer of knowledge and technology. It facilitates the movement not only of goods and services, but also of people. It is an instrument of development, security and peace. The world has to listen to these kinds of words and these kinds of sentences, and I think it is the responsibility of the EU to tell them. All disadvantages of international trade, however, have one condition, the regulation of international trade. In the sense of making it free, fair and in accordance with the standards required in the field of social protection, labour relations, environment or public health and food safety. In my view, the European Union's trade policy proves that this approach is feasible. In my view, the agreement with Canada, the CETA, is a good example. But the European contribution to the world's trade organisation as the global framework for the regulation of international trade is no less essential. As well as our responsibility to align that contribution to the WTO with those we allocate to other equally relevant international bodies, and namely to the international labour organisation. We cannot have a discourse in the WTO and a completely different discourse in the international labour organisation. It functions the other way around. We cannot have a discourse in international labour organisation and a different discourse in the world trade organisation. This is an area where we may apply one of our favourite slogans in the EU that goes, our interests correspond to our values. We are the most open economy and the largest trading partner in the world. The agreement we have tried to negotiate to the United States, the TTIP, which process is suspended by a U.S. unilateral decision. The ongoing negotiation process with Japan, with Mercosur, with Mexico and so on are very important for the EU. But they are even more important to impede that the world would go back to a wrong and harmful protectionism. In September 2016, the United Nations decided to move forward with two global compacts, one on refugees and the other on migrants. And these represent other multilateral agenda that must be led by Europe. Many European countries are engaged in the ongoing negotiations in New York and Geneva, and in my opinion there can be no doubt or ambiguity about the following points. The first point is the distinction between refugees and migrants. Refugee protection is an obligation, a moral and a legal obligation in accordance with international humanitarian law. It should therefore be discussed on this basis, certainly in relation to the treatment of asylum seekers, and in order to ensure the clear identification of the refugees. And certainly with the purpose of dividing, sharing what we sometimes improperly call the burden of refugee protection and integration. As we know, but often we omit this burden, undoubtedly penalizes more countries neighboring the most critical situations such as Turkey or Lebanon or Jordan than Northern Europe. The second point is that migration is a constant in universal history, and its balance is generally positive for the countries of destination. In other words, population mobility is not only a real fact that cannot be overthrown by mere legal prohibition, it has been over the centuries also a factor of dynamism and progress. The problem is not the identity danger that migrants to the largely represent, nor the risk of miscegenation and cross-cultural intercourse that they allegedly carry. Such danger and such risk do not exist. The problem is disorderly, massive and illegal migration that undermines the very survival and minimal dignity of migrants, that deprives countries of origin of an important part of the most essential human resources to their development, and that severely affects countries of transit and destiny and feeds audible networks of traffic and exploitation. So trafficking has to be fought and illegally and disorderly migration has to be countered. But the alternative is to promote, as the United Nations say, safe, orderly and legal immigration. The alternative is to participate in the programs who want to wish to tackle the root causes of migration, programs of medium and large term effects. The alternative is to assure the protection of our borders, the deterrence of illegal immigration, and the police and judicial combat to the networks of trafficking and exploitation of migrants. And the alternative is to implement regulation migration policies so that people see their rights respected and security guaranteed while host societies can have the necessary conditions for the integration of newcomers in terms of job market, housing conditions, education and compliance with European values, norms and institutions. European leadership is necessary to develop this agenda. And I come to the conclusion of my intervention. I have argued that the areas requiring greater engagement from the European Union's foreign policy are those relating to security and defence, neighbourhood policy, development and the multilateral agendas for sustainable development, climate change, international trade, protection of refugees and regulation of migration. If this argument makes sense, then a conclusion must be drawn identifying a fifth area of our foreign policy, indeed geopolitical, that completes the previous ones. It's a question of answering to this simple but essential question. How does our European Union see itself in the world? What role should play it in it? I think that we have already passed the time when we were not paying attention to this question. The time when we saw ourselves only as a soft power, an island of well-being, a thriving economic space and a great international donor, whose political and strategic weakness was balanced by the protective umbrella of the so-called binning hegemony of the United States. The time of European Union being an economic giant and a political dwarf. It is clear today that the European contribution to the international order cannot be limited to develop made or trade, or being the example in the rule of law, or the apology for human rights, or can be contained in a minimum degree of compliance of our obligations within NATO. The establishment of the common foreign policy in 1993, and above all the changes made by the Treaty of Lisbon, express this new understanding that if this status is not reached, the EU has to move forward consistently with a new conception and practice of its international responsibility. The pendulum of European geopolitical insertion now swings between two extremes. On one side, you would define itself as an integral part of the West, so-called West, as it is expressed in the North Atlantic. After a period of relaxation of the West-East conflict, and of particular attention to emerging economies such as Brazil or India in the late 20th century, the 21st century would have restored the logic that what really matters happens in the North, and there the United States and the European Union are on one side, and the others, including Russia, on the other side. We can listen more and more to this point of view coming from our Eastern partners inside the European Union. This is one of the poles to which our pendulum swings. On the other pole, on the other extreme, no element of this tension between West and East would now have any meaning. The world would be clearly multipolar and the essential factor in international order that would be the fact that the collapse of several states and the spread of transnational terrorist networks would represent a global threat in which we are all potentially targets. It is in its nature that a pendulum oscillates and you external action must adapt to the often unexpected developments of circumstances. However, the greatest danger I see ahead of us is that of the geostrategic irrelevance of Europe as such. Of course, we belong to the Great North Atlantic Alliance. We must never forget it. After Brexit, this will mean that our priority partners outside our Union in political, diplomatic and security and collective defence terms will be the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. But that is not the point of arrival, but rather the starting point. Europe will be nothing if it does not know how to dialogue productively in a framework of reciprocal recognition and respect with China, with India, with Japan, with Russia, with Brazil and Latin America, with North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, with the Middle East, the Central Asia and the Southeast Asia. This is what our consciousness of multipolarity and our advocacy of multilateralism really mean, our capacity to dialogue with regions besides our own. The promotion of international order founded on rules, the fight against terrorism, radicalisation and violent extremism, the virtuous articulation between human rights agenda and sovereignty agenda, the development and practice of international law, all of this that characterises Europeans will only stand if Europe won't isolate itself from the rest of the world, even if this isolation is encapsulated inside a so-called West. If all this that characterises our stance will only stand if Europe won't isolate itself from the rest of the world, if Europe does not have a Euro-centric and Western-centric vision of the world, if Europe does not let geopolitics be reduced to the dangerous, triangular competition between the United States, China and Russia, in a word, if Europe stands as a real and consequent actor on the international stage. And this is where I come to the last stage of my reflection. Countries such as Ireland and Portugal have a contribution to make in all the dimensions that I have identified in European Union's external action, in defence and security, in neighbourhood policy, in development cooperation and in the leadership of several multilateral agendas. First, because all member states do contribute to European agenda, from the smallest to the largest. Secondly, because Ireland and Portugal mobilise specific and diverse skills and traditions which are all necessary. For instance, Ireland does not belong to NATO, being a neutral country, of which NATO, Portugal is a co-founder. Although both Ireland and Portugal do participate in the European Union's permanent structure cooperation. Third, because both our countries have been highlighted as important bridges to link the EU to its external partners. For instance, Portugal towers the south, after the Brexit, Ireland will play a key role in the European relationship with the UK. But it is in the critical area of geopolitics that resides the main added value of our two countries. I mean where we can most help Europe is to understand its place and role in a world that is much larger than Europe and much bigger than Europe. Portugal and Ireland are diaspora countries. Ireland in a much larger dimension than Portugal. I think Ireland estimates its diaspora 60 million people all around the world. Portugal estimates its diaspora 6 million, one tenth all around the world. But both diasporas with significant dimensions, we know then that the world is our home and we know that isolation or arrogance are the shortest route to disaster. Portugal and Ireland are European Atlantic countries. Therefore, we know the risks of pure continentalism and we praise the combination between Europe and America and in Europe. We praise the combination between the continental side and maritime side of Europe. Portugal and Ireland by European standards are medium sized countries. We are therefore well trained in webbing forms of connection between micro and macro which is a fundamental diplomatic art. Portugal and Ireland are open countries by immigration, by geography, but also by economy. We are open countries towards Europe and as a capital point outside Europe, especially to Americas and towards Americans, Americas and Africa. We know then that the future of Europe also relies in a successful interaction with these and other large regional spaces. Portugal and Ireland see themselves not as powers whose strength would rely on economic or military power, but as mediators whose influence is measured by the resources of stabilization and institutional capacity they can offer to situations of conflict and crisis. I do not, I don't want to be misunderstood. I'm not proposing here any kind of exaltation of an imaginary Celtic alliance between at least Ireland and the north of Portugal. It would be such a ridiculous exercise as other self-complacency exercise. I just want to say that without Portugal and without Ireland, the European Union would experience itself and the world in a poorer way and we should be proud of that fact. Thank you.


Hello everyone and welcome to this Moodle Academy webinar What is Moodle LMS? So I'm Mary Cooch, Education Manager here at Moodle HQ, that's the organisation that maintains, develops, promotes, trains in the use of the Moodle LMS. And I have with me today Anna Krasser, who's Education Advisor at Moodle HQ. Anna, if you'd like to say hello. Hello everyone, good to see new faces this time in our webinar. I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion and ideas and thoughts about this event. Welcome. Okay, so just to clarify then, this webinar is basically a webinar about Moodle for people who don't know anything about Moodle. Perhaps you're looking for a learning platform and you've heard the name Moodle. Perhaps your organisation has told you that you're going to have to be using Moodle and you just want to find out more. So the first part of the session will be a short presentation in three parts. And after that, we're happy to answer any of your questions or comments that you raise. So the layout, the overview is like this. First of all, we're going to look at where does Moodle come from? A little bit about the background, its history. And then of course, how you can get Moodle, the different ways that you can have your own Moodle site. And finally, a very important, why you should use Moodle. What makes Moodle special and what can Moodle do for you? You'll notice in the overview that we're not actually talking about how to use Moodle. That's because, first of all, it would take a long time to explain and we just want to do a short presentation and have time for questions. But also because here on Moodle Academy where this webinar is being run, we have free webinars and free courses showing you how to use Moodle as a teacher or as an administrator or manager of a Moodle site. So we don't need to do that. We just want to give you a basic overview of what is Moodle LMS. And so we're going to start, as I said, with where does Moodle come from? Now, in 2023, it is a global learning platform used around the world. But it actually started from just one man in one small area for one small project. And I'd like to tell you the story of Moodle very quickly. And in fact, when we tell a story in English, that's particularly to children, and I'm sure in your native language, you also have a similar phrase. We begin with once upon a time. And this story actually starts once upon a time in the outback. So in the sparsely populated semi arid desert region right in the centre of Australia. And this was in 1969. So a long time ago was born Martin, a little boy who lived in the outback of Australia. In fact, he did have a pet kangaroo as shown on the photograph on the left. And because he lived with his family a thousand kilometres away from the nearest physical school building or village, he, like many other children, had to do his lessons remotely. And so remote learning was happening even over 50 years ago. And in those days, they used to do them with something called the School of the Air. And they used to do them using shortwave radio as the photo on the right. Now, the School of the Air still exists in Australia because there are still people living in the outback remotely. But now, interestingly, many of them, including Martin's own school, use Moodle for their remote learning. Let's fast forward 30 years and see where Martin is. And I expect you've worked out that Martin was the person who began Moodle. It's much more than just Martin now. He is working at the University of Curtin in Western Australia as an internet consultant. These are the early days of the internet and he's very interested both in the technical side of websites and programming, but also in pedagogy, in education. And he decides to do a PhD, a doctorate in scientific education. And he's interested in finding out how using the internet, this new initiative could help the small group of adult learners that he has himself at the university. He's particularly interested in a philosophy or pedagogy called social constructionism where people build their knowledge together. They collaborate together to learn. And so he starts work on designing a website, a program software just to do this, to help his group as part of his thesis, his doctorate. And by 2002, he'd actually got it to a point where he was happy to cut it out on the internet for other people to download it and try it and give him feedback. So that in fact, by the way, was the 20th of August 2002. So you can see that Moodle has recently celebrated its 21st birthday as a matter of fact. And that day, when there were the first people downloading the Moodle software to test it, we're also the first forum discussions because Martin was very keen to have people collaborating, discussing, giving opinions on it. So this was the first part of the growth of a Moodle community. If you're interested, we don't usually talk about this. We just say Moodle. But if you're interested, the word Moodle, it is actually a verb and it was a verb when Martin decided to use it for his software, but he actually turned it into an acronym. Now, we don't use the acronym, as I said, we say Moodle. But I'd like to point out that modular object oriented, dynamic learning environments, modular and dynamic are very, very important aspects of that acronym and of Moodle. Moodle is modular in that it is made up of different modules, plugins, activities, add-ons, whatever you want to call them, elements that you can use. You can choose and use for your learning or your training. And you can add on or bring in extra ones, which are contributed by other people or organizations. Also, it's dynamic because you can customize and adapt Moodle to use for your own particular learning purposes or needs, as we'll explore soon. So let's fast forward to today, 2023. And Moodle is actually used all around the world. And the interface, so the wording of Moodle, where you press the buttons or where your instructions for logging in or for going to different areas are translated in over 100 languages. So you can actually be in a country and use Moodle in your own language. And it is available in all the countries of the world, over 242. And yes, I know when we say that, there are always people who say, are there 242 countries in the world? It is political. It depends on your definition of country or state. But believe me, it is everywhere. And there are over 160,000 Moodle sites, sites that use Moodle around the world. That we know of. Because as I'm going to explain, Moodle is entirely free. So no one has to tell us if they use it. There could be millions of Moodle sites around the world that we don't know of. These are the only ones which have registered to tell us. The organization, which we call Moodle HQ, that makes and maintains Moodle, has headquarters in Australia and Spain. So we're in the southern and the northern hemisphere. But in actual fact, although the Spanish headquarters in Barcelona is a physical building, in Australia, since COVID, they realized, as many of us did, that we're happy to work remotely from home. And so the Australian headquarters is an occasional shared office space. And in fact, we have the Moodle HQ team. We work remotely from many parts of the world. You have here a map of the world. I am in England, Anna is Greece, and we have people in 23 countries using Moodle, using the Moodle software. So Moodle is global, but I want to make a few points about Moodle and the use of Moodle. Yes, Moodle is used in large prestigious organizations around the world. The University of Cambridge, La Sorbonne in Paris, UNESCO, and the United Nations also use versions of Moodle. Shell, the petroleum company uses Moodle, and many others. These are just examples. But despite being a global organization, and for example, we have a whole entity, Moodle US, we have Moodle India, we take our responsibility towards educators, teachers, learners. We take it very seriously. And Moodle is what we call a B Corporation, which means that it is a business that runs on ethical lines that is aware of the environment, conscious of the environment, and on equitable learning. And I want to stress the equitable here. Moodle can be used from the largest to the smallest of organizations. You can use Moodle as one individual teacher, as a homeschooler in a small elementary school, all the way up to those large organizations. But we never lose sight of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number four, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. So you see here, there is that word equitable. And how do we do that? How can we ensure inclusive, equitable quality education? And how can we do it for all, for everyone? Well, first of all, I want to clarify and explain that Moodle is entirely free. You can just get Moodle and use it. You don't need to ask permission. You don't need any license. Moodle is also open source. That means that the code that was used to make Moodle originally Martins, but now contributed by many, many other developers, which is PHP mainly, is available for anyone to adapt. If so, if you know how to code, you can just get the code and change the Moodle to use it exactly how you want. Now, additionally, we have a Moodle app. I'm looking for my phone here. We have a Moodle app. So we have an app to your smartphone or your tablet, which is entirely free again. You just go and get it from whichever app store you use, or there's even a link if you're unable to get to an app store. And what is really useful about this, which is mainly for students, is that if you are in an area where internet connection is poor or not stable, for example, some areas of India or Africa or some areas in South America, then if you use the app, you can download your tasks, your assignments, you can do them offline. And then the next time that you can get onto the internet somehow, you can sync your assignments, your other tasks, back onto the Moodle website to continue your learning. And this is a very, very powerful and free feature. But in fact, you don't even need the internet to use Moodle. We have offline Moodle access. There is something called a Moodle box, which you can get. And it is literally a box, a Raspberry Pi is one example. And this can be used within the building to spread out the learning in that particular building. Now, for instance, prisons, there are several prisons, penitentiary institutions that find this very helpful because prisoners have either no access to the internet or very restricted access. And yet we still want them to learn. And so by using Moodle box, you can have offline Moodle within your building, your institution. Also, for example, we have case studies where it is used in small elementary schools in India, in villages in India, for example, to help with their learning. So we go from global to very small and precise. And it is free and very, very possible to use with difficult internet access or no internet access. So I'm just going to stop there because that's basically the background and the philosophy of Moodle. Before we move on and we answer the next questions, is there anything in the chat that we need to cover, Anna? So far, the chat is quiet so we can move on. OK, that's great. I was thinking possibly we might answer many questions as we continue with the presentation, so we'll go on. So now you know where Moodle comes from. You might be thinking, OK, how can I get Moodle? And also, whenever we say that Moodle is entirely free, you don't need permission. You don't need a license. People always ask the question, well, is there a catch? There has to be a catch. OK, well, there is no catch. Moodle is entirely free.  But it is entirely free. And in fact, many universities or larger companies just do exactly that. They get Moodle. They use it for free. We might not even know they're using it. However, to do this, you do need to understand a bit about servers and databases and SQLs and things which I don't understand. So there are other ways which you can get Moodle. And these involve payment at some level. So let's take a look at those because the fact is there is no one-click installation. It's not like an app on your phone. You can't just press a button and get Moodle. And in fact, the Moodle app that you can have on your phone only works when you already have a website, a Moodle website. You can't just get the Moodle app. That is not full Moodle. So how can you get Moodle if you're not particularly technical? Well, Moodle HQ, that's us, the people who make Moodle, we offer what we call Moodle Cloud. And you just need to type into the internet Moodle Cloud. And this is a kind of a one-click installation. You tell them what name you want to give your Moodle Cloud site. And you will then get 45 days of a free trial of Moodle. It's pretty much standard Moodle software with a few limitations, but not many. And if you like it so you can do anything you want with it for 45 days. And if you like it, then you continue with several packages at different prices, depending on how many users you want and what you want to use it for. And this is perfect for smaller or medium-sized organizations, schools, companies, and so on. So that's Moodle Cloud. But as I said, because Moodle is free, anyone can basically use it and set it up. So you can, in theory, you can go and search the internet and find a web hosting company who will set up Moodle for you. In fact, it may be that you are in an organization that uses a particular web hosting company. That's fine. We have no control over them. So we don't know the quality. They could be very good and serve you very well. You could have quite a poor experience if they're not Moodle experts. So what we recommend, if you want more customizations and more options or a larger site, is what we call Moodle certified partners and service providers or Moodle partners for short. And these are web hosts, just like you might find on the internet, but we have actually checked them. We vetted them for the quality of the services they offer for their Moodle hosting or training and so on. And we know that they're experts. And so we then allow them, and this I'm coming into another question now, we then allow them to host Moodle officially certified or verified by us. Okay. Now, this leads me on to another question that people tend to ask, which is, right, if Moodle is free and I don't need to use a hosting company, how do you make your money to continue developing Moodle? All those people around the world, those developers, Mary and Anna, how do you make money? Okay. So first of all, our Moodle certified partners and service providers, they give us 10% of their revenue in return for being able to call themselves Moodle certified partners and service providers. In fact, if you go with one of these, you have an added option. If you're a business and not an academic institution, you have an added option of something we call workplace. This is a special version of Moodle that is better suited to corporate or enterprise learning rather than academic learning schools, colleges and so on. So that's one way because the fact is that how we get our money, well, you are allowed to make donations. You're more than welcome to donate to Moodle and we have links on our sites for donations. But one way is the fact that, oh, incidentally Moodle Cloud, the money comes directly to Moodle HQ. So if you use Moodle Cloud or Moodle certified partners, then that money comes to Moodle HQ because the word Moodle is a trademark. So we can use Moodle to advertise Moodle Cloud because we are Moodle HQ and you can pay us. Our Moodle certified partners and service providers can advertise using Moodle. And as I said in return for that, they give us some of their revenue. There are over 100 Moodle partners around the world. But it does mean that other organizations or businesses are not allowed to say Moodle hosting, Moodle installation, Moodle training in their advertising, which is very useful to be able to name the product that you want to sell. So you have three ways of getting Moodle. If you're not capable of downloading it yourself on a server or you don't want to. And we recommend Moodle Cloud and Moodle certified service providers. I'm going to stop there because hopefully I've explained how you can get Moodle and how it works, even though it's entirely free and open source. Are there any questions before I explain why you should use Moodle and what it can do for you? Yes, actually, we have some interesting pattern discussion in the talk. Well, I can't see the chat, Anna, so I'm relying on you to repeat it. Jonathan asked if we have a satellite office in Philippines. And I explained that we don't have exactly an office there, but we do have a Moodle partner, as you explained. And basically we have Moodle partners, the network of Moodle partners is quite large. And I think they are pretty much everywhere in the world. So look around you, you will probably find. Yes. And I will also share the link to the Moodle partners in a second. Yes. And one of my last slides in the presentation is some useful links, including the link where you can go to find out more about Moodle and find your own Moodle partner in your country. So, yeah, that's great. Thanks, Anna, for that. Anything else? Also, keep in mind that the Moodle partners speak your language, so this is very useful and helpful. And Rika said, ask if the Moodle Cloud is a subscription base, which is indeed the case. You are subscribing to a specific program plan. Yes, package plan. And your needs. Of course, this is after the free 45 days. Yes. And yes, I think that's all for now. We can move on. OK, and as I said, hopefully we have time for more questions after this final section, which is why should I use Moodle? What can Moodle do for me? OK, well, first of all, if we go back to the fact that Moodle is free, open source. You can just download it onto your server. Very important to explain that you own your own data. If you have Moodle in your organization, in your building, then everything on it is yours. You are not tied to somewhere like Microsoft or somewhere like Google. It's yours. And Moodle does have very good GDPR settings, settings, privacy officer role, and so on. We take security very seriously. Security bugs are reported and are dealt with very quickly and everything is very well managed. And in terms of bugs, Moodle, the software, is updated regularly in actual fact. There are bug fixes and other updates every single week. If the Moodle administrator knows how to get them, knows how to download them, there are also what we call minor updates every three months. So there's a smaller, slightly updated version of Moodle every three months. But what we also have is a major update or new version twice a year, every six months. You may remember that the first version of Moodle in August 2002 was called 1.0. In a couple of weeks, we will be having Moodle 4.3, so that's where we're up to. So the software is regularly updated and kept very secure. Also another reason for using Moodle, and this again is tied to the fact that it is open source, that it is free, is that there is a huge Moodle community in different languages, not only in English. That's happy to give you support and some questions and make suggestions for free. And I'm going to share the link to that site, Moodle.org, later on. So one question or one concern people often have when using open source software is, yes, but if it's open source, is it reliable? What's the support? Well, you have two options. So you have better support with Moodle because you have the global community giving you free support. But also you have Moodle partners, as Anna said, many over 100 around the world in your country, in your language who will offer you support as part of your paid package, a particular negotiated support package. So you actually have more than in commercial organizations. Now, in terms of teaching, why should you use Moodle? What can Moodle do for you? Well, pretty much whatever you want. You can teach how you want with Moodle. Now, as I said, when Martin was initially making Moodle, he was very taken with the social constructionist philosophy. And so there are activities or modules in Moodle already for collaborating, for learning together, working with your peers. But you don't have to do that. If you want simply to put on a list of video lectures that you have done and you want your learners just to watch them, you can do that. If you want to just simply put worksheets on, you can do that. So Moodle is dynamic and will customize to whichever way you want to teach or you're required to teach or you want your learners to learn. Likewise, with assessment. So there are different assessment tools that allow you to assess summatively. So you can use assignments or quizzes summatively. Formatively. So you don't have to use the grading system. There's also a very powerful peer assessment tool. And in terms of grading, you can use the traditional academic grades, percentages or letter grades. You can design your own rubrics to grade with. And also if your subject is more practical, vocational, you can use skills-based learning or competences because there's also the option of creating competency-based frameworks or skills-based frameworks and adding them in your Moodle courses. Now Moodle calls the learning spaces courses, but I just wanted to point out that the words in Moodle are all customizable by an admin. So if you're in an organization where you don't want to use the word course because it's informal learning, if you are as I used to help an elementary school, they don't know what a course is, you could change the wording to rooms or learning spaces. So all of those are up to you. And in terms of your courses, rooms, learning spaces, they can either be entirely online. So you could use Moodle with learners or trainees hundreds of kilometers away or you could use it as I used to that during the day, you're teaching in a physical classroom and then learners use Moodle in the evenings and at weekends for extra learning. You can also have rigid start and end dates of courses or not, you could just have it continuous. You can also have deadlines for assignments for quizzes or not. So it's very, very customizable to what you want. And I think the best thing to do is to give you a very quick tour of what a standard Moodle site looks like for a learner and for a teacher. And when I say learner or teacher, you could use the words trainee and manager or tutor or whatever you want to call them. The site that you're going to see is a standard Moodle site that you just get such as a Moodle cloud site or if you downloaded it. But it's important to realize that you can have many different themes or colors or backgrounds, anything to match your own branding of your organization. You can either do it yourself or have a friend do it if they know how to do that. Or you can get free options or a Moodle partner will customize your Moodle site for you. So some people are using Moodle and they have no idea that they're using Moodle because it blends in with their own branding. So what you see here is what you get if you were to go and press the button to get a Moodle cloud site. For example, as a learner, and we're going to follow learner Barbara, I think, she's already been enrolled in some courses. So this isn't her first time on the site. And when she first goes there, she sees what's called a dashboard. And her dashboard shows her a timeline of activities which she needs to complete. So it's very good for keeping herself organized. You can see, for instance, that she has a peer assessment task due. She has an assignment due. And she simply needs to click the button next to it. You workshop summary, add submission, and it will take us straight there so she can meet the deadline. If her courses have deadlines because they don't have to, if the teachers don't want to use them. Something else I like on the dashboard, on the right, the section is called a block draw. And there is a section or a block called recently accessed items. And here is where she can see, where she was studying last on Moodle. And so she can quickly go back to the item or activity that she was looking at the last time she accessed Moodle to continue from where she left off. That also is very helpful, I think. If you can see at the top, as well as dashboard, there's also a link, My Courses. And this is where student Barbara can see all of the courses she is enrolled in. Now, this is a demonstration site, which I'm going to give you access to later. So these courses are on a variety of topics. You obviously possibly would have more specialized or more focused topics here. But for each of these courses that she's enrolled in, you can see percentages, 33% complete, 27% complete. That's because for these courses, the teacher has made certain tasks or activities required. And she needs to complete them in order then to complete the whole course when it will be 100% complete. And perhaps she could get a badge or a certificate even. Those two are options within Moodle. But again, the teacher doesn't have to do that. So you could just have a course that you can access at any time. I also told you about the very useful Moodle app. And so let's just take a look at what this looks like on the app. So here is the app view. This is my Android smartphone. I took these photos last week. So you can see the landscape view and you can see the portrait view of Barbara's Moodle site. And she can do everything as a student on the app that she could do on the main site. And there is a cloud. I hope you can see there is a cloud. And wherever she sees the cloud, that means she can either download the whole course or she could download a particular activity to do it offline if her internet is poor and then re-sync it the next time she goes online. So that's what I was explaining also about equitable learning for all. I think we're going to go very briefly into one of these Moodle courses. So we'll go into the critical thinking, develop your skills course. We'll see the website view because it allows me to make larger, wider screenshots. Now Barbara is, she likes to be very organized. She likes a tidy page. So when Barbara goes to the course, critical thinking, develop your skills, she's already collapsed all of the information, the learning information in the different topics or this teacher calls them modules, their topics or sections in her course. And then she can decide right today I'm going to study module two. So she would just click the arrow to expand it and look at the learning materials, which we will do in a moment. On the left, if she clicks to expand those dots there, she has what we call a course index. And this allows her to see all of the activities in the course. You can scroll this up and down independently of the central sections. You will see green circles. The green circles next to activities tell Barbara that she's done that activity, who's completed it, she doesn't have to worry about that. There is one at the bottom module two quick check, which is an empty circle. And that is saying that she still needs to complete that. So she should go and do that. If there is no circle, glossary of terms, useful video, that activity is not required. So again, she has several ways of keeping up to date with her work. Optionally, on the right, if Barbara clicks the arrow on the right, if it is available, her teacher might have added, and this is the block draw we call extra blocks just for extra information as part of the learning. For example, there is an activity results block. This is a leaderboard basically. This one shows the highest grades in a particular quick check. It could be any of the graded options. And it's just one example of how you can gamify your course as standard using Moodle standard activities. So gamification is possible. There's also course completion status yet another block showing her where she is in the course to make sure that she's always on target. Now, as I said, Barbara likes to keep her central area very tidy. So let's go into module one, the historical background and click to expand it so we can see what learning materials Barbara has to do there. And if we click, well, there's a video and it's very easy to add videos, YouTube videos and so on to Moodle site. She has different activities in what we call cards. These cards will be slightly narrower in the next version of Moodle so that there will be more space. And you see that some of them say done, done. That's the equivalent of the green filled in circle telling Barbara she's done those activities so she can scroll further down the course page and she has module two quick check. That was one with an empty circle telling her she needed to do it and she needs to receive a grade but it has to be a passing grade to complete that activity. At the bottom, tell us how we did is a survey, it's a feedback form that she needs to complete to tell her teacher how she thought the course went and in order to complete that the to-do box says submit feedback. So again, she's very clear what she needs to do to complete it if the teacher's using that. I think now is a good time to look at the course from the teacher point of view. So we're going to leave student Barbara and we're going to go in as teacher, teacher Jeffrey I think and when we access the course as teacher Jeffrey there's a big orange circle with number one and number two. I made these, these aren't standard Moodle, don't worry but there's a point at two important aspects for a teacher in a course. This is the same course and as a teacher teacher Jeffrey by the number one has an edit mode toggle and when he turns it to on he's then able to edit and delete items on the course. Bulk edit, if he clicks the pencil icon there he can select several tasks as activities together and move them, hide them, delete them. Anywhere there is a pencil icon next to some words he can change the wording, the titles and next to the number two that I made is a plus icon. Now whenever teacher Jeffrey scrolls up and down the course with edit mode on he will see plus appear and he just clicks a plus sign wherever he wants to add a new task or activity resource and this takes him to this, the activity chooser we call it these are all the modules that Moodle has as standard there are many as standard there are also others that your administrator can add or you can if you're administrator for example things you might expect like assignments or choice is Moodle's name for a quick poll big blue button is Moodle's inbuilt video conferencing or virtual classroom so you don't need Zoom you don't need Microsoft Teams you have something already in Moodle. Now whenever our teacher clicks to set up one of these activities for example an assignment let's click to set up an assignment as well as the settings you would expect it's name the instructions there are two optional sections one of them on the left is called activity completion and this is where the teacher can define what a learner needs to do for that activity to be checked as complete it depends on the activity for an assignment it might be receive a grade or a passing grade for a poll which Moodle calls a choice it might be to make a choice if it's a forum it might be to post in a forum and so on or they might allow the student just to mark it as complete manually if they've read it for example equally you can also as a teacher on the right add a restriction so an activity is not available until either a previous activity has been completed or passed or until a certain date maybe you're the teacher you put up your PowerPoints for your presentations but you don't want the learners to see them until they've been to the physical lecture in the physical auditorium you can restrict them by user profile or by group and so on if you want to so you can have very very strict control over your course or not and some of you at this point in the last couple of slides might be thinking I don't want any of that I just want to put my worksheets into a space on a Moodle site well you can what you see in this next screenshot is my desktop it's my laptop where I'm working today and the black band on the right is actually my desktop it's a moonscape that's why it's so black and I've put two documents there's a PDF and a Word document and with edit mode on on the Moodle course I just need to click on them selected and drag it anywhere I want onto my Moodle course page and I'm done I can have materials in my course in minutes so as you can see you can go from the very complex to the very straightforward I'm going to leave it there but what I want to share with you is if you'd like to explore or experiment further then of course we have a site Moodle.org slash demo go to that URL we'll put the URLs in the chat Moodle.org slash demo try Moodle try Mount Orange School this is a demonstration site where I took all of those screenshots go and meet student Barbara teacher Jeffrey log in as them and try all of the activities or you can have a completely empty site called Moodle Sandbox where you can practice as much as you want and the site so reset every hour and of course you can have your own Moodle Cloud site for free for 45 days where you can practice on your own without wondering if anyone else in this webinar is on the site at the same time as you perhaps causing confusion so I want to finish by giving you some useful URLs then we will open it up for any questions Moodle.com is the main site or commercial site that is where you go to find more about Moodle its background the Moodle partners you can find your Moodle partners on Moodle.com look for your country look for the services it will take you it will link you to Moodle Cloud also Moodle Academy which is where we are today this has free webinars and courses so that you can learn to use Moodle for free so there is no charge for learning how to use Moodle get yourself a Moodle Cloud site and come back to Moodle Academy and do some of our free courses and Moodle.org is the site where there is the global community giving you free advice and support and that is in many different languages I think over 30 maybe about 40 different languages so you don't have to ask your questions or make your complaints or suggest your proposals in English you can use your own language as well so bookmark Moodle.com Moodle Academy and Moodle.org and I'm going to stock now and we have at least we have a few minutes left for any questions or comments so I'm going to pass over to Anna now okay and let me also open my camera well we do have some questions I didn't answer them in the chat this time Meredith asked where do I find resources for skills-based resources and I want a little bit to clarify Yes please Ansel shared already in the chat the link to Moodle documentation about the competencies but Meredith I'm not sure what you are looking for Moodle does support competencies and you can add a competence framework inside Moodle and create learning plans but I'm not sure if this is what you are asking for if you want to find a way to develop your skills on using Moodle she's saying that she's working on vocational education using Moodle so perhaps competence might be appropriate yes I think that the link that Ansel Angel has is the right one there are skills-based activity that I'm trying to work out how to do If you go to Moodle.org that's the link I gave to the community forums then in whichever language you want you could ask the question give an example of the activity you're trying to do and people will help you if you're happy with English it's called teaching with Moodle and the people in there I facilitate that would be very helpful would be very happy to help you work that out as well good that you think the link is the right one Anna I can't see any of this so if you want to continue Yes Morgan said it was a very good introduction to Moodle Adriane thanks for the webinar Meredith says there are we read that one and I think that we basically have thank replies I don't see any other question okay Enrico came just came up what is the next generation future for Moodle in the pipeline like chat GPT integration maybe well that's interesting because in a few weeks October the 9th I think it is we are releasing a new version of Moodle as I said Moodle 4.3 that will allow you for example to link WhatsApp or Telegram or Slack or a matrix element any of those to your Moodle courses so that you're always communicating with learners there are other features as well I think I'm going to suggest that you keep an eye on Moodle and social media because we will be releasing some videos and some social media articles about what's coming we also very very interested in Moodle and AI there are actually already plugins do you remember we said the M stands for modular modules, extra modules that administrators can add to their Moodle sites which are related to AI so in short that is coming that is we're always very conscious of what is happening in the world at the moment chat GTP and other AI tools and also you can start with some basic things on AI taking some courses we have a course we have in the academy Moodle teaching with AI yes very fresh course and of course there will be several presentations in the global Moodle if you if it happens to come by from Barcelona and the global Moodle you will definitely see a lot of discussions there and Jonathan is asking where do we get some training and certification for educators Moodle academy is definitely the place I would say you can get free training you can also get more specialized training and collaboration with partners as well you can find inside the Moodle academy also certifications and programs of courses and of course we have the Moodle educator certificate if you are interested in that one this is of advanced level of certification that covers all the 22 digital competencies for educators at worth definitely take a look inside the Moodle academy you will find many courses that can make you an expert actually in Moodle either you are an educator or a Moodle administrator or even a Moodle developer indeed yes in fact it's a nice way for me to lead on to the next couple of slides where we'd really like you to get involved with Moodle academy so while you're still thinking perhaps of some final questions if there will be any please help us to grow Moodle academy by contributing to it we have a course and there's a link on the front page on the site home called get involved where you can suggest topics which we at academy can cover in future webinars and courses so if you've joined the webinar but you actually know Moodle you could perhaps suggest to present or help us present webinars and help create courses if you're an expert in Moodle and Anna didn't mention this but this is an important part of Moodle academy some courses are translated so you can go to a course in your language and you will be able to see the course in your language even though it was written in English and we're always looking for volunteer translators who are happy to translate courses into the languages and we have a course called translate Moodle academy which you can take and then help us again this is part of our community as I said the global Moodle community also please if you enjoyed the webinar please help spread the word tell your friends and colleagues that you joined this webinar tell them about Moodle academy and the Moodle educator certification when you complete courses individual courses you can get a batch not in this webinar because this isn't a course this is just for webinars if you take the beginner courses for teachers or admins and others also if you complete a program of courses you can purchase a certificate which is well respected by employers and also once you've developed your skills as Anna said as an educator and you have some experience you can get the very prestigious Moodle educator certification and with a quiz are you ready for MEC see if you're ready for that if there's nothing else pressing I can't see there is just one question despite the multiple thank you from everyone I think Meredith asked if we can suggest academic courses that are really counter specific and I think we are always open to any suggestions all the suggestions are equally reviewed absolutely and also they don't have to be in English we've done webinars in Spanish we have some planned in French and German and so it doesn't only have to be in English yep absolutely okay well if that's everything then thank you all for attending it was a very pleasant session and the recording should be available shortly and it's goodbye from me Mary Cooch and me Anna Carse see you around in Moodle Academy definitely thank you


AOC I'm gonna move back a little bit you hold that line up there keep our security pushed out just maintain 360 Because we're still waiting on more enemy to come from their position And yes, there's more people now, but I could have brought my gun truck My CTC used to be over there we got pushed off of it, right? Do you want to do


We all have imagination. It lets us be creative and envision life in a new way. But did you know that there is something called the sociological imagination? In sociology, to understand one's own self, we must understand the relationship between self and society. The concept of the sociological imagination was presented in 1959 by C. Wright Mills in his famous book of the same title, where he states, the sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise. The concept is to understand the distinction between a person's troubles and public issues. At what point does something such as unemployment or trouble finding a job shift from being a personal problem to a public issue? If one person is unemployed, that is a personal problem. If one million out of 10 million people cannot find employment, that is a public issue. According to Mills, there is an intricate relationship between the individual and society. Whatever a person does is not just because it is of their own choice or personal preference. A behavior as simple as exercise can be looked at from multiple perspectives. For example, exercise can provide health benefits, such as lowering blood pressure, maintaining a healthy weight, or sending dolphins to help alleviate stress. It can be a social activity such as taking a walk with a group of friends or playing on a sports team. It can increase productivity at work and benefit the company, and it can inspire communities to take action by building walking, biking, and running trails. So, while exercise benefits the individual, it also has a larger purpose in the social world. A person benefits from being surrounded by a community that encourages exercise and makes it easier for a person to do so, but it can also have the opposite effect if a person is surrounded by a community that does not emphasize exercise. Practically any personal behavior can be looked at with a sociological imagination. Let's take this and apply it to the very public issue of obesity in the United States. Or is it a personal trouble? Tough question. Let's figure it out. From the personal perspective, we all need to eat to live, and there are many reasons other than necessity that we gather around food. Celebrations such as birthdays, weddings, funerals, job promotions, and holidays, or just socializing with friends often involves food.  Or is it? Let's say a person belongs to a family that often gets together for large gatherings. At these gatherings, there are often lots of burgers, chips, cookies, and desserts. Choices are limited for low-fat or healthy options. After eating, the family gathers around a fire, and not much is done in the way of activities such as walking, running, or even a family-friendly game of football. Over time, one realizes that these gatherings are contributing to their growing waistline. Well, we can say that this is a personal trouble. That person is making a conscious choice on what they put into their body and are in control of what they eat. While this may be true to some extent, is it all within a person's control? Our behavior is influenced by others and in cases such as family gatherings, how might the family react if one chooses not to eat what others are eating? Social acceptance is important, even among our family. We also tend to like similar foods of the people around us. So we could say that we all make personal choices and are responsible for our own behavior, but what we eat and how we spend our time does not happen in a vacuum. Now that we blame family for choices, but that choices are influenced by the people around us. Let's take this a step further and ask ourselves what else may influence a person becoming obese, and when does a personal problem turn into a larger social issue? According to the Center for Disease Control, approximately 35 percent of the United States adult population is considered obese. That percentage bumps up to 69 percent when we consider all adults who are also overweight. Social structures that contribute to obesity include food deserts, which are areas of the United States that do not have access to healthy, whole, and fresh foods and can be found in both urban and rural areas. These are places where it is difficult to grow healthy food locally and there is little to no access to local markets that would carry such items. Then there are government subsidies. Research shows that less than one percent of subsidies by the United States government goes towards the production of fresh fruits and vegetables while the majority of the subsidies are given for meat, dairy, and grain production. This means that prices of healthy foods are significantly more expensive than the prices of unhealthy foods. We are also biologically driven to get the biggest energy bang for our buck, so if we have $5 in our pockets and are hungry, we are more likely going to purchase $5 in fast food rather than $5 for a bag of apples. While these are not the only social structures that contribute to obesity as a social problem, they give a clear picture of how society contributes to this. And of course, this creates more social issues. Currently, we spend approximately $147 billion dollars on illnesses and diseases related to obesity. This creates even more issues when the cost of health care and health insurance increases because of obesity-related illness and disease. So we can say that society influences a person's behavior and that person's behavior contributes to a social issue. What is another issue that you have typically described as a personal trouble that also has social factors that contribute to it? How do social structures such as government, economy, education, and religion contribute to social problems? And how does the sociological imagination help us examine human behavior?


For more than 150 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has been charting America's coastal and inland waters for the seafaring type. Starting April 13 of next year, NOAA will stop printing paper nautical charts due to their low demand, federal budget constraints and the increase of digital and electronic charting use. Sailors, boaters and fishermen can still use private on-demand printing and versions of electronic charting systems. NOAA's electronic navigational charts are available for free from the Coast Survey website and are updated weekly. Additionally, NOAA provides free digital charts in PDF format. Check out the NOAA website to see them. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Brandi Wills.


The D is developmental, I is individual differences, and R is relationship-based. It's really the foundational framework of understanding human development and how each person perceives and interacts with the world around them differently. The D-R-4 time is the application of the D-R-4 into practice. So it's used to help children, young adults, and even adults with a wide range of developments and challenges, which include sensory, motor, emotional, and development challenges, learning and development challenges. It really uses the power of relationship and human connection to help develop and promote the capacities for shared social problem solving, communication, and self-regulation, along with reflective, creative thinking and reasoning. And that's mainly used to help support those with autism spectrum disorder. The main way we promote D-R-4 time is through our training program, where we teach courses for professionals and parents who want to learn more about what we do in D-R-4. We offer short courses from 3-hour to 12-hour courses that normally talk about a wide range of topics like diversity and ethics. Some of them are Be Sure, which is understanding and supporting parents' expectations. Let's talk about race and ethical considerations in autism-related services. And the other side of that is we have our D-R-4 time training program curriculum for professionals that want to be floor time practitioners. And if they go through all of the courses, they can also teach D-R-4 and D-R-4 time to others. On the other side of ICDL, we have the International Institute where we provide services to parents and professionals. We bring top D-R experts from around the world to provide these services. Our main service for our institute is the D-R-4 home program, which is a virtual parent coaching program for parents that want to use D-R-4 time at home with their children. So that being said, Moodle is kind of the heart of our operations. It's where we have all the classes. We have an online international conference every year. It's actually happening next month. It's a hub for all of our members, and it's where we provide all the resources for any of the on-site courses that we do, because almost all of our courses are exclusively online. Occasionally, we do do on-site courses mainly for organizations. So bouncing off of that, I want to talk a little bit of our mission. And it's impossible to talk about our mission without first touching on what neurodiversity is. And it's a newer concept. It's defined by Oxford languages as the range of differences in individual brain function and behavior traits, regarded as a normal variation in the human population. And that's usually used especially in the context of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. And what ICDL wants to see is a world where we embrace neurodiversity and individual differences, so we can help promote those individuals to live happy healthy lives and achieve their fullest potential. There's too much prejudice in the world against those who are neurodiverse and those who are individually different. So we believe that we can help people by promoting and championing a developmental and relationship-based approach. So now that you know about what we do in our mission, I want to talk about our operation strategy and how Moodle plays a key organizational role in that. First is we leverage open source and low-cost platforms like Moodle. We're an international not-for-profit. We're small but growing. And we don't have the resources to spend a ton of money on expensive programs, and it's really been vital in our ability to grow as an organization by leveraging these open source and low-cost platforms. It's really allowed us to focus on our mission and not have to worry about the cost of keeping these operations running. Second is we want to increase our efficiency as much as possible. The time spent operating our organization is time spent, time not spent on achieving our vision, going after our mission, and it's really important for us to just get everything running as efficiently as possible so we can have the human resources for our mission. And the third is we want to continue to learn. It's very vital as soon as it becomes stagnant in operations. That's when things become less efficient. You're missing out on anything like new updates that come out. I'm excited to see what AI can do for our organization. So it's really important to continue to learn. And keeping the operation strategy in mind. I want to talk about how we utilize Moodle. Like I said, Moodle is really the heart of our training program, and it's really the heart of our operations as a whole as an organization. And we follow a few methods that are simple, but they really help us to become consistent and provide a good service to our participants. And as well offers consistency to our training leaders who can depend on the resources that we provide. So first, which is very basic is just standard format for all of our course pages and across Moodle. This seems pretty basic, but you'd be surprised at how many organizations don't have this. If you don't have it, it makes it unwelcoming. It makes it harder to use just the platform as a whole. So having a standard format across everything makes the usability of the platform way better for the participants as well as the training leaders. And second is we create templates for every single one of our courses, and we create templates in all of the languages that we provide those courses in. Each template has all the resources needed for the training leaders. Obviously each training leader kind of teaches differently, but they have a consistent platform that they can look upon and know where the resources are and they can rely on it. And this makes everything super easy for us as an organization because all we have to do is copy the template, add the pertinent information like date, time, instructors, and then upload it or and then add a course code that connects it to a registration page. And that way when we upload users into Moodle, they automatically get added to the course page. And this really takes time. Limits the time we have to spend on the Moodle platform, which is great. And then going along that, the templates really help with avoiding human error, but we do have processes in place to double check to make sure all the participants are correct and all the pertinent information is all correct. It seems basic, but just making sure everything is always correct and consistent is very important just looking professional and providing a good resource that the training leaders can depend on and the students. And last, we always continue to find ways to make everything easier for everyone. So we do this mostly by looking at participant feedback and training leader feedback. We have surveys on all of our courses and we're always looking for the areas we lack in so we can constantly improve. And then also any updates that may be available so we can make sure everything's running efficiently as possible and we provide a consistent, well thought out platform. So we do all of this. We have tens of thousands of users and up to 50 plus classes at a time and we really only have two Moodle administrators, neither of which, I am one of them, but neither of which is primary job is to be a Moodle administrator. It's a secondary job that we really don't have to spend that much time on. We're able to just, Moodle is our main platform. It's the heart of our operations and we really don't have to spend any time keeping up and running. Everything's pretty much automated and the only times really spent on the platform is if we're adding new languages or doing the fast routine tasks. So, and that being said, we also have one volunteer IT consultant who handles all the back ends of Moodle, but he really, once everything's all set up, once Moodle was set up the first time, we really do everything else. The only time we contact him is if we want to add a plug-in or any issues happen, but this really occurs. So, we really don't have to spend any of our human resources on Moodle and it's our main platform, which is amazing. It looks like the four men got messed up when they uploaded, so sorry about that. But I want to put in perspective how we built our international community. In 2012, we started using Moodle and that time we were getting about 700 new users each year for our courses and we were teaching courses in three languages. And in 2021, we gained approximately 7,000 new users. We taught courses in 19 different languages and we have users in 148 different languages. And the fact that a small, albeit growing, not-for-profit is able to reach such a broad range, like that's three-fourths of the entire world that we have users in. And it's in an area that a lot of cultures don't necessarily accept as much, so it's amazing that we can promote neurodiversity and inclusion all across the world with ease, basically, through our system and our methods of using our platform. And we can really spend time focusing on our mission and building a global audience and promoting neurodiversity and inclusion. So I want to thank everyone for listening. I appreciate your time and I hope you have a good day. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you. We've got time for one question. I think Ryan, if you can just wait for the microphone. Do you have any method for providing micro-credentials for people that have completed your DIR floor time course where they can take that expertise into a new job or into a new location? Yes. So we do have a credential service. We use a credible. So whenever you take a course, you do it and pass it, of course. You do get a credential. It's in kind of conjunction with the professionals that provide DIR floor time practice. They're already credentialed to do the practice that they do. So like a speech therapist will be a credentialed speech therapist, but then they can also use, they can go through our courses and become a DIR floor time practitioner for SLPs. And we have a wide range of different occupations that we that take our courses, mostly occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, yeah, there's a lot.


Water blocking workers coming in by boat. We've got these good people here watching this game. So that means that this facility is safe.