Hello, everybody. A big shout out to all of our participants. This is an OER Hangout brought to you by Coral, the folks at Coral, the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. And today we have a, my name is Carl Blythe, I'm the Director of Coral. We have Sarah and Natalie who will also be joining us and working the phones, as they say, not really, but looking at the chat room and helping us with all the technical issues. And before I introduce our speakers today, I want to say that I'm really excited about the talk and the topic because using students in the development of materials has become a big thing. It's big in OER land and the development of OER and it makes a ton of sense. We want our materials to be student friendly in what better way than to have our students actually be members of the developmental team. And so today we have two groups of people from Boise State and from Virginia Commonwealth University talking about their projects. And I don't have a lot more to say because both of them will be discussing that and kind of what they're doing. Kelly Arispe and Amber Hoy from Boise State are going to go first. As I said, they are going to talk about a project that is really about a repository that they've created at their university. The foreign language faculty, as I understand it, are joining together to create them these different objects. And somehow they're incorporating their students and they're going to talk about 10 minutes. And after that, then we'll give it over to the team at Virginia Commonwealth. And Catherine and her colleagues will talk to you also about their project, which incorporates undergraduates at different levels in really interesting ways, kind of playing different roles. Okay, so Kelly and Amber, the floor is yours. Great. Wonderful. Thanks, Carl. Yeah, thank you, Carl. Thank you for your time and joining us today. And so we just want to share with you our presentation for today. So we thought it would be helpful if we can provide some visuals to walk you through this. Our goal is to talk to you a little bit about how we got to this place of creating pathways, repository of open educational resources for foreign language teaching faculty and how we incorporated our students in that process. I'll be talking about the mission and the growth and why we got here. And then Amber's going to talk a little bit more about all the nitty-gritty that logistics. How do you hire students? How do we compensate them? All those kinds of things. Yeah, so we hope that's helpful and certainly please, we will be very dependent upon all of your great questions after. So first and foremost, there's two principal points of departure for us in the context of Boise State University and specifically within our department and the state of Idaho. There's been a large culture shift in our department as you can imagine as Pedagogy has gone much more in the direction of communicative language teaching and we really wanted to have the lab portion of the curriculum specifically at the lower division levels for our undergraduate students. We wanted that to be in line with CLT. And so Amber's going to be talking about how she was able to leverage that in conjunction with our conversation assistance and through a variety of means. So that was the first impetus. And then the second, in my role as program coordinator for our teacher education program with our secondary students in French, German and Spanish, I've been part of the content and teacher enhancement standard revision at the state of Idaho. And in 2015 and 2016, those took major shifts in terms of lining to national standards, which was a very positive turn. But you can imagine that puts a lot of onus on our K through 12 instructors to all of a sudden shift what they've been doing in their practice. And so we thought it was an opportune time to be able to create a space where we could bring lots of people into the fold to create classroom ready materials that could support both of those missions. And so the repository, we call it pathways, is really chock full of 500 plus classroom ready materials. So they are from start to finish, they include a warm up, a cool down, they're innovative. So we like to think that they're aligned to best practices and world language teaching, they promote principally interpersonal speaking activities because we found and certainly through my research, that that is often a pressure point for a lot of our K through 12 instructors, as well as for some of our adjunct faculty, we rely heavily on our adjunct faculty specifically for our lower division courses. And so while it's one thing to provide professional development opportunities, oftentimes the big barrier is in that time, and how can they create activities that are going to leverage those best practices. And so really this is a repository that serves K through 16 world language classrooms. And we also recognize that, you know, the speaking is something that our students desperately need. And so we wanted to really support that. And obviously, we come from a very rural state. So it really matters to us that the language teachers that are especially in rural areas feel that they're supported, but not only from this top ground approach, but they're invited to participate. And so we really espouse an open pedagogy framework. We believe that's missional and social justice mindset of allowing everybody a seat at the table. And everybody has something to offer. And we're going to really focus on that student focus today. But, but we can also get in if there's questions about what that looks like for rural areas too. So it might be helpful to talk a little bit about who is involved in this community. And now I'll explain the role. So I'm the director of our Language Research Center. And PAPA has kind of had its impetus, or it's kind of it's kicking off point in our our Language Research Center like Kelly mentioned. So all of our lower level courses have 30 minute conversation labs. And we were working really hard to make the best out of those 30 minutes and really make them fruitful, make sure that students were having ample time to practice speaking. And what we did is we started to develop these activities like Kelly mentioned, so that they have a warm up, a main activity, they have a cool down. And rather than just keep them to ourselves, we decided why not share these with the faculty at our university, with our community college partners, other universities here in Idaho. But why don't we also share those with our K through 12 partners. So you can see here, we have quite a quite a large variety of different roles in in our community. But I think what Kelly mentioned is really important is that everyone has an equal role, everyone has something to contribute. And especially our students. So I think on the next slide, I can we'll talk a little bit about the breakdown of that. But who are our students? I think this is helpful to know. So we have students from all different backgrounds. But we do have we do have a threshold. So we ask that our students be at the advanced level in terms of their oral proficiency. Many of our students are secondary ed majors. And this is really great experience for them before they get into the classroom. We have many heritage and native speakers who are working with us. Students that are taking language courses or students that are even volunteering. They're here to learn English here at Boise State and they want to donate their time. We have a vertically integrated project that I'll talk a little bit more about. But not anyone can can join. We do have a quality quality control in place. And there's there's training that takes place. And there's really kind of an informal interview that takes place before we let someone join the project or the community. Sarah, how are we doing on time? Can you just show me with your fingers how many more minutes we have so we can make sure we're doing okay? Okay. All right. Yeah. So the students who really are working to create many of these activities are conversation assistants. So like we mentioned before, we have these conversation labs each week. And they're they're actually a flipped approach. So the students aren't participating online. They actually come to our lab face to face. We've actually ironically gotten rid of a lot of our computers and we've tried to to turn our conversation lab into more of a gathering space, if you will. So the conversation assistants, not only did they lead these 30 minute conversation labs, but they're actively working to create the activities. And that's really great too, because students when they're when they're creating the activities, they have a better idea than Kelly and myself, for example, of what's going to be interesting to students, what's really going to hook their attention for those 30 minutes. What are some of the cultural antidotes that might be, you know, kind of shocking or interesting or thought provoking. So they work to create the activities with the oversight of myself and then also the language teachers here in our department. This semester, I was also fortunate enough to hire two OER editors. And that's actually very cool, because those students don't necessarily have high degree of language proficiency, but they're able to bring in other skill sets. So one of our OER editors has a background in technical communication, and she's really working to strengthen our instructions for the activities. Another one is interested in psychology and biology. And but again, has a passion for language and it's there to really help with the quality control. So that's something that we're doing this semester to to really bring in an outside perspective. These students haven't necessarily facilitated the activities. So they're really able to bring a critical eye and make sure any teacher who does the activity is really going to be able to understand how to facilitate it in their classroom. Yeah. Yeah. And then do you want me to talk about the verdict? So the Vertically Integrated Project and the OER grant are large projects that are going on here at Boise State. The Vertically Integrated Project is not something that's specific to Boise State, but it definitely is in line with the innovation that is very important at our institution and specifically it's housed within the College of Innovation and Design, but it supports programs like ours that really want to engage students outside of just their major to make interdisciplinary connections and to be able to tell their story about what they're gaining from their language major in terms of skill set so that they can bridge the gap for that career that they hope to attain on the other end of graduation. And at the same, by the same measure, it's a way for them to partner with faculty and research in research projects. And so you can imagine from my perspective as someone who's an applied linguist, I get to partner with these students. I don't just see them for one semester. They continue on with me and Amber as supervisors in this project for multiple semesters. And we can see a project like this OER Pathways repository really come to fruition in a quality way and do some really neat types of projects where undergraduate students are involved in both the research and the creation and the skill set. And then the other thing that's been really great and supportive at Boise State is that our provost office has been very generous in providing OER grant monies to support this. And so we just received a small OER grant and we were able to provide stipends for lead teachers, three of whom are here in our department and teach lower division, German, Japanese and ASL. And then two that come from our community and are secondary teachers teaching Spanish and French. And the goal there is that they would provide language expertise and that they can look at these activities created by students ensure that there is indeed good quality target language use. And then they can also look at the way the activity is built and ensure that it is actually feasible for their classroom and for their classroom environment. And so this is a specific example where thanks to those funds we've been able to really bring more partners to the table and certainly being able to participate in this webinar is a huge support to us in this project. So thank you. I think that that concludes this is just more examples of the products. I think we already kind of went over this but in terms of what you'll find for those of you that are curious after this webinar you can tinker on and look at the repository and all the activities and you're going to find that this is our trajectory. So right now there's an abundance of interpersonal speaking activities but in the coming year there will be a lot more listening and reading activities. There's also on our website peer to peer resources so our students are not only helping us to create activities through the classroom but they're also really interested in this idea of recruitment and retention of language students. So this semester we have students who are working to create products to help support students who are studying abroad really giving them the resources to be successful and then also to help recruit high school seniors and college freshmen as well. And video exemplars are something that are also coming it's part of Kelly's research. But that's another thing that we see is that oftentimes it's one thing to read an activity but if you've never actually seen this activity implemented how does it look like? Where's the classroom management piece of this? How do you make sure that it's successful when you actually do it with your students and so we're really excited to start bringing that to the repository as well. Yeah and so I guess to conclude all of these things both the mission the product the process right is our ultimate goal is that we would provide a community where whereby students are absolutely at the center it's very learner centered. These are topics and interests and it's really driven by what they desire out of a language classroom and in terms of intercultural competence and all that the bread and butter of what we do is language instructors and that they're partnering in the in the ideation and the creation of these activities with the very language experts themselves and the teachers themselves so I think that's it. That's a simple URL that you can use and Amber you said that. Yeah so we have a form right on the front of it and if you'd like to you can put your information there if even if you're disinterested in finding out more what we have to offer if you're interested in getting involved or contributing in activity there's different levels of involvement there but we'd love for you to add your name and email so we can send you some more information if you're interested. Okay great I'm going to now turn it over to Catherine but this is a good time for me to tell everybody who's listening please as your questions come up type them in the chat room and then we will get to them after Catherine's and her colleague's presentation and while they're gathering their thoughts I just want to say that was a great I the presentation we just heard from Boise State materials become so much more than what we tend to think of them they're no longer just a textbook or than the kind of static content I was writing down then like ideas that community of practice the materials become this nexus or a catalyst for so many different things it's a social network professional network because it's attached to their careers community of practice because you've got all these kids who are doing all these cool things teaching each other so I love it it's great okay so that was the pathways project again from Boise State and just to let you know Boise State dot edu slash world lang slash pathways okay Catherine it's your turn what's going on at Virginia Commonwealth okay well thank you so very much and I'm going to push this back a little bit because I would like to introduce my colleagues who are here with me today and I don't know if you're seeing the whole thing but any rate I'm Catherine Murphy-Judy and my name is Migui Dorelli I'm a natural faculty of French and librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University I'm Laura Middlebrooks coordinator of the Spanish program here at VCU so I'm just going to kind of quickly give you an overview of what we've been working on it's a multi-phasic project where we started five years ago with the problem and the problem was that the faculty didn't like teaching the 202 level which is second year second semester and the students by and large weren't liking it either so we had a problem and one of the major reasons why it's such it's been such a difficult course is because it's the end of a requirement for certain majors and so we have probably two-thirds of the students who this is just a requirement they want to check the box and get on to graduation but we have a third who are going on and this is a linchpin course for them if they're going on for a major or a minor and so it was just a lot going on in the course that made it really hard to teach hard to learn so faculty got together at first it was faculty and we said what can we do that would get students more engaged in this and give them maybe some other skills and content that even if they're not going on for a major or a minor in a language that they would have something that would be super useful coming out of this so we looked at the notion of curations and we started with a curation project where our students go out and curate within themes that are typical for the 202 level but they find what they're interested in in that thematic and then we started using the curations from that we moved on but I'll explain that all in just a second but eventually now we've gotten to e-textbooks and along the way we really started integrating a lot more of the students into helping us find materials produce materials and eventually to produce the e-textbooks that we're doing so given what the the topic is of this hangout the student-faculty collaboration is really what has become the heart and soul and driving force behind this project so as I said we started with curations and this is sort of weird it starts over on the left and then it circles around to the right so it's counterclockwise but it starts with the students in the 202 course who are doing curations they're the 202 students we have them then using the curations in virtual exchanges with native speakers so that they're talking about what they're curating with people who are native speakers and who have an authentic reaction and interpretation of what's going on so there's a lot of really good exchange comes from that we brought in if we keep on moving over to three we brought in upper level students to work with us who help us build OER modules and then from there we've moved into having those same upper level students helping us build the e-textbooks that are then used in the 200 level and it's constantly circulating and sustainable because we're always creating new modules that are then going into the e-textbook which is a modular design so that faculty and students together can decide what it is that they find relevant interesting and of the moment so this and since Miki Durelli's class is up there at 201 I'm going to have me maybe talk really quickly about how she's had her students do curations well basically we I asked them to serve the web and search you know topics that would be of interest to them and then they would you know summarize summarize you know the contents of that site and add keywords and later I would use the same this selection on the curation project to do an expose a lengthier presentation at the end of the semester to tease out more details about their presentation on just the site and we use WordPress to do this curation project we also ask the students to evaluate and rate you know their the choice of their classmates all righty so the curations as you can see is sort of it's it's a big open open site and we use it not only at the 202 level but we have some of the other levels who have decided that they really like the idea of having their students curate and then have this archive where students can go and look at different things that are interesting the virtual exchanges we either have students doing teletandom where we set up between two classrooms and then the students are discussing usually it's like 30 minutes in English 30 minutes in the target language and so they exchange information based on my students are working on what they've curated and the students from the other class we have one one classroom that is from efek which is a Belgian business school and so those students are working on business topics and so the exchange is fine if it works but we also sometimes use talk abroad which is a paid service and when it's talk abroad I set up the topics that the students will be working on but by and large they're getting to talk about what they're curating and about how they're interpreting their curations and the like so then we have taken the curations as me was saying we do a triage of those that have gotten the most student likes or stars and then faculty and upper level students we build scaffolded modules to go with it this is one that was built on a rap song by usufa in french and you can see their learning outcomes their pre readings readings and then post readings and then because those are iframed we can just drag them into the press book which is what we've been creating as our e-text book and I'm going to quickly go on with this the e-text book we set up with students and it for right now it has five units but unit zero doesn't really count I mean it does but it's it's the orientation unit it really helps them learn how to curate it learns it helps them learn how to use lingua folio and I was really excited to see that Kelly and Amber were talking about lingua folio and using can do statements because that's how we frame the work that our students are going to be doing in the each unit so the unit zero they learn how to use lingua folio online which is out of castles and then the next unit is all about the self and identity they they work on that have different can do's that they that the the faculty member gets to choose which and together with the students they choose what the can do's are that they'll be working on and the unit two is about self and other so it's getting into dialogic exchange unit three is the context for communication so it can be their local or local or global and then unit four we have the students take what they're learning in the language and interculturality and push it into their professional futures and this is just a little bit more about how each of the units are set up and what I'd like to do right now is have Laura talk to us because right now she's teaching Spanish 202 which is the fourth semester in our beginning and intermediate sequence and I just like to share with you one anecdote on the first day of the semester I announced to my students of course in the target language that there was no $250 textbook that was required for the course and immediately there was a visceral reaction among my students they sat up in their chairs they looked at one another and leaned forward and became instantly more engaged because they were hearing an instructor saying the faculty understand what it's like to be a student to be struggling with finances and many of our students not only study full-time at bcu they also work part-time and some students work full-time so they are they are juggling a lot and finances are very tight so when students are aware that faculty have made this choice keeping the student needs in mind it changes the entire dynamic of the course part of what we do throughout the work is evaluate what the students are thinking of it because this is all about the students when we're working with the upper level students there's a constant dialogue that's going on but with the 202 students throughout the semester there there are these kind of exchanges going on and I just wanted to share with you this was from the spring semester when I used atelier réel in a french course the students didn't particularly like the introductory unit so we've been working on how to fix that so that the unit zero is something that's a little bit more engaging what they do really like are the texts and videos that show language in use and that's very much a part of each unit as it starts out with something very topical and it the students who are working with us in the upper level students have told us that yes this is engaging so it might be something on hashtag me too it might be something on immigration but it's what students are really talking about right now they also really like the grammatical and lexical scaffolding that we put in there and that scaffolding is to help them as they're working on their curations and we see that they need some additional help perhaps in the plu perfect tense or something that they're just not quite getting we can slide that in have it a part of the unit that they're working on so that they can interpret what they're reading better but also because they're doing so much production we can work with them and say what do you need in order to be able to have interpersonal conversations about this what do you need in order to do presentational oral work on this what do you need in order to have presentational work written work on this so we're able to scaffold them where they need it rather than us starting the unit by saying we're going to work on the subjunctive we work on the subjunctive if they need the subjunctive so at any rate those are at least some of the answers that we had gotten from them and I asked the question did the atelier real materials support the learning goals for each unit and I think it's pretty good to have 80 percent of them who said yes and you know the other 20 percent maybe but there wasn't a single student who said that the materials that we have built together don't support their learning goals they know what their learning goals are thank you thanks in great measure to lingua folio but then they know that the materials are really supporting their learning for their learning needs so this is just a picture these are two of the students who were who have helped us put this together and that was two summers ago as we actually built the four units they were there with us building what the four units would look like they're with us building the modules and the oer units and what I love about the students is they're really honest because we may be geeking out and saying oh this is so cool oh look at this subjunctive oh yeah and the students will go oh no no no no no no no no no and they put a real reality quotient back into our creation and development and the students have pretty much as we're there framing with pedagogical notions and with pragmatics of what needs to be done because we're the content people but they're the ones who are telling us how students are learning now and what they're interested in now so they're really pretty much in charge and have a lot to say about it we do have an article or in a chapter in a book that came out recently their link is there for anyone who'd like to go and read it and it explains a lot more of what we've talked about here today and so those are questions those are and I'm sorry I didn't get Laura's email but it's middlebrooksatvcu.edu so anyway that's ours thank you thank you thank you thank you guys that's really terrific um but so we're going to turn to the questions right now I just want to make a comment that came to my mind um as Natalie and and Sarah are going to help us read through the the questions there but um so it's kind of from these virtual exchanges telecollaboration that gives the input to this triage process that gives the input to the text e-textbook kind of I like how um they're all engaged in different processes but doing different things and what what it made me think of is the idea that I keep talking about and that is that materials are an applied form of scholarship so those of us who do who are into OER or even just materials development um I think that it's really important for our colleagues and other people to understand that these are not just easy things to do there's a process and I think Kelly mentioned earlier on quality control we want to have quality content and it takes time and it takes effort and that was clearly um the the notion of triage some of this stuff doesn't is not going to make it in that's really very important that you got to have some kind of built-in quality control and that comes back to this notion that they're learning a lot so in the digital humanities world they talk about um they talk about generative scholarship scholarship that you could create with your students and so I think that this both of these projects capture that that they're learning a lot well beyond just what we typically think of in a foreign language classroom like um at Boise State the OER editors are adding something they're adding lots of things okay so let's get to some of the question the question about quality control um and she didn't quite understand and frankly I didn't either the notion of quality control and the pathways project what did you mean could you just expand a little expand a little bit on that yeah absolutely when we gave this presentation uh at Calico for the teacher I started with prescriptivism is alive and well for better or worse and so sometimes when we put materials out in an open way right there's instructors and professors who are well-intentioned um and are concerned sometimes to see mistakes that our division even advanced level students will make and that's part of the development process as applied linguists we can certainly speak to that is very normal and yet how do we ensure that if this is branded from a department from a language right a program that we are not inhibiting the process for the learned very learners that are consuming these materials and so um the quality control came from from that concern is how do we ensure that and I think that's where the teachers really can join in because we have so many teachers who may not understand right now how to leverage a communicative interpersonal speaking activity that actually is a big ask for somebody who's been in the field for 20 plus years and has seen their entire discipline do a 180 but they sure know how to take a product and polish it and provide some not only from a grammatical standpoint they can provide lexical variation vocabulary right these these very beautiful expressions that may be in their own language variation they can they can provide an input that's meaningful and so that's how we have tried to engage um engage that we found that the we do opi's um in our in our specifically in our spanish program we have a an opi at the beginning at the end but also in our french and german we have one at the end and so which and then of course our our teacher educators have to do an opi for certification and so that's a measure that we found has been helpful and um and just ensuring that they indeed are at a level where they can use the language fluently and consistently with what we believe is important for those inputs and and to follow up with that I think we've really tried to take a proactive approach so on all the activities everywhere on our website we have kind of a blurb at the top that just says hey these activities are a foundation we need your collaboration we and we welcome them we want that and in order for these activities to really become their polish form they are their proof read there but they're not perfect and so I think that's cool because it really does like Kelly said give every every teacher a role if they're not the one who's actually creating the activity they can still absolutely help us get to that polish form and really contribute um and then also really trying to partner the students up when they're creating the activities is another strategy that I have so everyone on the team has either they have a go-to person to go for proof reading whether that be one of our heritage or native speakers or whether that be one of the the teachers um who are working with us in those little mini grants that we talked about yeah yeah so um I have a question that goes to this notion of open materials which are and kind of what we're talking about right now there is an expectation by teachers that you have a in a commercial perfect it's been vetted it's a lot of money and it's very expensive but the whole point of oar is that we can open it up to community and reduce the costs but that means that essentially that that they're always in the process of becoming right you're going like this yes and so that's a mind shift again because you're talking about that that people have to understand that communication itself is always ongoing in that so the the metaphor the negotiation the meaning is really embedded in these materials absolutely they're not finished products they're always ongoing absolutely my question to you is wow that that's a lot of work because that means that you're constantly editing or updating is that is that what you're doing well that's a great question and i think amber attached on it we realized that we didn't do when we first started this by the way open education oar is constantly a learning experience it's humbling to be on the creating side and trying to supervise that so it does take a little bit of courage to put yourself out there in that way um but i think amber what we learned and something that we needed to do was to get in front of uh anybody consuming our activities to see that this indeed is an iterative process and it is very process centered in the sense that if you see a mistake don't just criticize it correct it we engage you and we invite you to be part of this and it it is we nothing is free right and so if you want if you want to be able to use these materials you're going to then have to to be a little bit yeah you're gonna have to be a little bit either more flexible when you see something that's not as polished as you have and your standard which is fair or you can also engage with us in a different way so it is a mind shift it's a mindset that has to evolve um but it is definitely i feel missional to what we have to do in higher education to meet the needs of our students um and so those are yeah but getting in front of that communication i think um for because now that it's open it's accessible for anyone not just in the state of Idaho we hope that you know people across across the country will want to use these activities they're for educators and so um just letting people know that this is not a textbook that is an editorial you know board that can go in and find every single right it's there's differences there so what about the vcu materials are they also open to the general public that they are um as it stands right now the uh like the atelier real um it is open people can get into it but we don't have it in a form yet where i can hand it off as a template so that others can use it that's what we're supposed to be working on this whole year and um one of the things i wanted to say about this as we've been talking and first i want to thank uh kelly and amber because i've already jumped in on some of their stuff and i'm looking to you know uh embedded into some of the work that we're doing so thank you very much but also one of the things i'm finding with our students at the 202 level i've already had four students leave the 202 level decide to do either a minor or a major in french and work on the project oh they've gotten really excited about it and they want to continue it yeah um two of the students have gone on to become teachers and i'm so excited about that given the the birth of k-12 teachers that we have so you know i think it's stimulating a lot of things um this idea that you know we need to not just criticize but engage the fact that this is always already evolving and a negotiation of meaning um that that's very much the case and you've helped me today in this dialogue to realize i had had a hypothesis uh level that i had put on top of our book it wasn't working for the 202 students but i see now that if i can get that operating then anyone who's using the materials and the template we would be able to have a community of practice and discuss where there are issues you know uh whether it's it's a grammatical error or just a better idea right so what i would say to that is a community of practice we're all about communities of practice that are plural but they take curation so curation is the centerpiece of what you guys are doing you're going to end up not just creating materials but creating the the community of practice so so rachel had a follow-up question to the previous question for for kelly um she wanted to know if those opi's are conducted by you and if the students need to pay uh or if the students have to pay to have it um conducted by lti yeah i know right now i yeah that that's a common question that we get um no there's three of us that are certified proctors and i would say that a lot of that training has been very very helpful amber's been a part of that too and how we take those can do statements and how we understand what's needed in terms of proficiency and especially ensuring that those activities we have the activities actually labeled in sub levels and so it's not so you're not just getting something that's novice but you're getting something that's novice mid versus novice high versus intermediate low versus so we use that language and that's very alive and well in the in the actual repository but to answer the question we provide that as a service um it is quite a service in terms of workload of the faculty but certainly for those um for our teacher educators in french and german um where our faculty are not certified we um they have to do the ok so they call in and do it yeah and then um we have also a question about um the how how kathryn and your team how you found the native speakers that will interact with the students uh for the teletandom i used um i think it's called uni collaborate it's it's a comes out of germany i believe and it's like a huge site for doing teletandom partnering and that's how i found my belgian partners and otherwise i work with a uh a group in molly molly english practice club and they just want to have um partners who speak english trading english for french with them but we also have a wonderful lab director who's done quite a bit in teletandom throughout the world and i'm going to have um laura maybe talk to that yes uh dr tony brinkworth is the director of the world studies media center and has worked diligently over the past five years in finding partner universities uh with whom our language classrooms can collaborate our biggest partner right now is um uh la universidad uh nacional autonoma de iralgo and uh our mexican our english speaking students are matched up with their mexican students to have uh a real life uh and real-time conversations back and forth again half of the time in english and half the time in spanish in one classroom session are those in audio only or also the audio and visual audio and visual and the platform is skype okay then there was also for the same um process there was a question about the upper level students um how do you involve those is it part of their coursework are they paid we have gotten uh money we've probably managed to pull in around the university uh close to $50,000 in monies to pay students uh so we've had those kind of monies and and also to pay some of the faculty but we also can use federal work study money to to hire the students as research assistants so their research and development assistants and they're paid through the federal work study program through our university and then we also have two different kinds of courses we have uh and uh sort of an intern or experiential learning course that they can take if they'd rather have credit and some students would rather have credit than get paid money yeah and so those students will either take the internship or the independent study and so we've been able to hobble together getting some kind of compensation for the students and one student just does it because she loves it yeah and and this is an example of having enough options to meet the student need which is very individual right this way we're we're engaging different students with different needs with this project yeah i'd like to ask a general question for both of you both of your projects and that is about open copyrights the actual licenses that appear because if you're involving lots of students um they often don't understand the ins and outs of copyright and an OER isn't an OER unless it has an open copyright an open license so can you tell me how you guys handle the whole issue of open licenses? Carl, I would say that most faculty don't know how that I'd be happy to jump in and answer this one so um this has definitely been a learning process and and I I feel like we have reinvented the wheel five times over because we started and we made all these wonderful activities but then we didn't think about copyright so we had these great images and we have like right shows newspaper ads and all kinds of this stuff and then a lot of that unfortunately had to be redone because we didn't think about it so those of you who are listening in to really take this take this to heart because you can save yourself so much time um but what we did is we really went through and we just provided resources for the students and we I'd be happy to share this with anyone it's on our website it's on our repository it's on our repository we have a list of um design resources um but that's what I tried to do is really get in front of it and say okay not not say like this is not what this is not what you can't do this is what you can do these are the sites that you can use um and really it's been so great because it it makes students also be really purposeful when they're looking at images rather than just going to google images um we're really trying to encourage them to find um diverse images to really not to represent all students not just one profile type of student to represent all french-speaking countries for example france so do you train the students to actually look for open content not just do a google search but to look for open images and open yeah okay good great so they they learned about that from the asset part of it so in terms of the photos video audio that we're including in our resources but then they also learn how what licenses to apply to their own work and that's gonna and like um one of our graphic design students she is giving um people permission to use but not to modify and she she made that choice whereas with our activities we're giving the option for people to use and modify but not used for commercial use so yeah we train the students in that but I have lots of resources and I'd be happy to share that with anyone who's interested good this is Amigui Durelli I'm sorry I'm a net junk faculty but also my full-time job is that of a librarian and in our libraries we do have a staff two people so far two librarians totally dedicated to the issue of copyrights to advise our faculty of course we have at the very top a some kind of counselor legal counselor for the whole university but within the library we have two librarians totally dedicated to the question copyrights and the creation of OERs so they and we have really reached they create live guides just for copyright issues and creative comments that's often think of where we think of copyrights thank you thank you for I want to do a shout out to all librarians because the people at listening in thinking how can I possibly do this go and meet your librarians because they understand the ins and outs of OER and open copyright so I mean it used 20 years ago we thought oh the digital is going to kill the libraries not at all the libraries are more active and vital to scholarship than ever but it's all digital and now it's all open so my plans are keys to all these projects yeah having students understand copyrights restrictions and opportunities in and of itself is a skill right yeah digital literacy yeah yeah um there is a comment from Bridget Mariano uh from I guess the Virginia Department of Education I guess um is about to launch the go open Virginia repository for pk through 12 districts in Virginia and they want to they would like to reach out to both of your teams and potentially fold your work into the state level repository the repository may act as a great bridge between you and the secondary students who might ultimately attend VCU and participate in your 202 courses which is exactly some of what's been happening we have a couple of teachers who've seen us present at the foreign language association of Virginia and they've started doing curating and so they connect into our curations with their students and we've been going out into the high schools and talking to students about how to be a good language learner and what what they need to do to prepare to continue their language learning at the college level whether they come to VCU or go somewhere else and so we show them some of the curations and they will they will already start participating before they even come that's great um I think previously there was a question about the um if if the introduction the unit zero was in the target language or in the l1 it's in both when in the book itself it's in target language because that's where we're starting um but I have it in translation in an appendix so if there are students whose skills are maybe not up to quite understanding that topic or all of the different topics that we cover which include copyright um that they can then go and at least get some scaffolding through the the English and then come back to the target language yeah she was wondering if they were able to use uh to manage learning to use ICT in the target language yeah okay um Natalie I see we're coming up on the hours yes um I guess I want to try to wrap things up but then bring in kind of last concluding comments from both of our teams um I've been doing talking about OER at Coral now for 10 years and more than that but anyhow I've noticed that there is a shift going on when we started this um many people didn't hadn't heard about open education but more than that they were they were surprised when we were talking to their teachers in particular about developing their own materials and often I would get the remark well I'm a teacher I'm not a textbook author as though those two things were completely divorced from each other and I would say well you create all kinds of materials you do quizzes and you do activities and you do still abide um but more and more I find that people are much more open to creating materials and um maybe not to the extent that the two of that that your two teams have taken on because that it is it is a big uh it takes it's very time consuming but um what I guess to both of you what would you tell people who are thinking about what kind of tips or ideas can you give to people who are contemplating jumping into the wonderful world of OER making their own materials so Kelly and Amber how about you guys? I would say start small I think that's the advice that Kelly and I have often gave when we we love to work with integrating educational technology into the classroom and we always have overachievers we always have instructors who are like I'm going to redesign my whole course or I'm going to do I'm going to incorporate 10 apps into my classroom this this um academic year and I think that even if you just think of is there one activity that you have that's maybe special something different maybe start with that one activity and see if you can find a place on OER Commons on one of these existing repositories to share your work and get feedback there's you don't have to host your own website that's what's so cool about a lot of these repositories since there's plenty of places for you to share your work get feedback and maybe even collaborate with people and and see if they can adapt your work for different audiences or even different languages but I think just starting small um and and being iterative getting feedback and making changes um uh throughout the semester or throughout throughout the year it's going to help you to be much more successful um versus if you try to if you try to bite off too much you're gonna you're gonna be pressured and you're not and you you you might not complete the goal that you set out to to do yeah and then I would um just say really quickly for me as a professor here it's been really social justice issue I think it really matters to me about extending what we think about diversity and inclusion and intercultural competence even and bringing those student voices into the mix it provides a different perspective that's been missing often from the very textbooks from which we use things like images word choice um media interests all of this students have a role they have a place and when we engage with them not just in this these traditional teacher-student relationships we miss out on the true meaning of why we're educators which is to impact lives and to really bring uh language into a heart issue right and so that impacts people and their humanity and those relationships by co-constructing really I think it's such a point of departure to know your students and to engage them in in the learning process from a place of agency and to empower them in that process so that for me I think is what continues the drive went on the day when I feel a little bit overwhelmed maybe from the process and from curating and um that that mission is really deep uh to near and dear to my heart so great thanks what about uh vcu well I think ours has been about a community of practice and I think good teaching and learning is good sharing and we get so excited when somebody brings in something that they've created um and we look at it and then we start figuring out how we're going to turn that into something we use in in our class our particular language and it's just an excitement we're always talking about stealing each other's ideas but in the sense that you know it's it's not stealing it's sharing it's caring and uh and we really we really have a great community and I think that's been I think it's given all of us you know as times get hard and there are always difficulties at universities we share the the really good stuff and we share the pain as well so we're very supportive and it's all about community so that's kind of the circle back to what that's perfect to end on because it's true this is about community building and so if there are those people listening in thinking maybe should I do if you're contemplating it you should jump in and talk to members of the community and they will help you so go small start small but also realize that there are people there to help you so I want to just mention here the last slide we have an entire course here at Coral for OER to teach people about OER including those licenses Sarah has really developed an incredible curriculum that has activities and you can test your competency about about your knowledge of OER so take a look at that we also have our own learn community which are open educators who are developing materials in different ways will give you badges for different kinds of participation in our community and your students can get badges too that's right that's right now that they are actually OER developers they can get badges and finally since all of this is funded by taxpayer money you're paid for this we we need to give back to the federal government let them know what you got out of this so would you just take it takes literally five minutes to click on these buttons but we have the the OER hangout survey you see the URL there so if you don't mind writing it down or typing it in I I also paste it in the chat and all the links are pasted in the chat and just simply click on it and that will take you to our online survey so thanks again to both teams um Boise State and VCU you guys are doing really cool things and let's just stay in touch because that's what we're doing is trying to build build a larger OER okay so thank you guys thank you so much thank you


Pinch yourself if you've heard this one before. The Nintendo Switch 2 is trending online. Might as well call it the Nintendo Switch Pro is trending online. If you wanna talk about the just total trends of some new Nintendo hardware over the last handful of years, let's just say it's been trending since 2017 and really since 2019, it seems to trend at least once a week. And normally when it's trending today, at this point in 2022, it's because of two things. Either one, there was some update to an old rumor or report by Takahashi Machazuki or something from the rumor mill about new hardware or developers with new hardware or about games like Call of Duty or whatever with that 10-year contract with Microsoft coming over. There is oftentimes conversations around that that lead to Switch Pro and Switch 2 trending. Or the conversation is because of a new game that recently came out on Switch that isn't running well such as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and people being like this is why we need new hardware. So those are usually the two reasons that we see Nintendo Switch 2 or Pro trending. Well, this time around, that wasn't why it was trending and as I read through thousands and thousands of tweets and comments, it seems to me that it all stemmed from a single tweet from Spawn Wave that doesn't even say Switch 2, but a lot of the quote tweets from it do. So what did John have to say? The guy who runs Spawn Wave? He said, I'm generally curious how long people want the current Switch to last. It seems whenever it's brought up that the Switch is showing its age heading into its seventh year, many seem to push back on the idea. Now there's a number of responses to this we will read, but before we do, I want to remind you about today's sponsor. All right, so first up, we'll get to some of the just literal responses that don't involve quote tweets because the quote tweets are huge, but let's get into the literal response to be a Super Mental Day 64, one of the friends of the channel saying the funny thing is that people think the Switch will automatically die as soon as the Switch 2 is out. That's not happening. Releasing a Switch 2 in 2023 would be similar to how the Switch OG came out and the 3DS was still supported years more by Nintendo after 2017. It's just time. Then you have player essence coming out saying people are just tired of the fake outs. The whole Switch Pro is coming every year since 2020 rumors didn't help either. Somebody noted it's actually been since 2017. You have Stealth, another friend of the channel coming out saying the Switch is getting so many good games so that's not making me be in a particular rush, but I'm sure Nintendo is working on a successor. They always are. RGT just says good luck and many, many, many others. So what's interesting, of course, are the quote tweets, which I think is what made it trend because after all, Spawnwave never said Switch 2 in his tweet. So Arrow, as an example, a really big content creator quote tweeted to him and said, it's mainly just people being tired and hearing this is the year of the new Switch system since like 2019 and not getting it. I do agree it's time for a Switch 2 or Pro though, even though some Nintendo's own big games don't run the best anymore. This topic will be my first bit of 2023 and there's 158 likes of that with other retweets and quote tweets of that one as well. And honestly, we see a lot of quote tweets bringing up Switch 2 and getting a number of likes. The thing about this conversation and I admit I'm a little tired of it. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I haven't been talking about a new Switch system since 2017. We do cover rumors and so I know the rumors have existed since before the Nintendo Switch even came out that the Switch wasn't supposed to be the final hardware but due to the Wii U flopping, they went with that. It was gonna use a different architecture and launch a year or two later. But look, we've all heard those reports and those rumors are old at this point and we all know in 2019 it seemed to really come to a head where it felt like dev units were out there. Takahashi Matsuzuki claimed that at least 11 different developers had dev units and here we are in 2022 and nothing's happened with that fact. So let's say they do have dev units. Well, it's been three years and nothing's happened. So what's the deal with that? And if they're sitting on dev units for three years, how old is the hardware that they're using in here? And you know what, maybe it is time for a Switch 2. There's also obviously people thinking Switch 2 might come with Tears of the Kingdom. That's maybe another reason you can see Switch 2 trend except we don't have any news on Tears of the Kingdom, at least major news. I know we had a smidgen news over the weekend but not something that would make you think about Switch 2. So I just find this fascinating because I truly believe that there's two camps to this Switch Pro, Switch 2 stuff. The one camp is they just want it to happen no matter what they're tired of the current Switch. They see it's entering year seven. They're ready to have Tears of the Kingdom and other third party and future Nintendo games running at higher resolutions and better frame rates. And frankly, they just want the system to exist. So any morsel of possibility out there, whether it's a game running poorly, whether it's an update on an old rumor, whatever it is, they bring the conversation to the forefront because they just really want it to happen. But then that other side of the coin, I think player essence sort of hit the nail on the head and that was people are just tired of talking about it. So in Spawn Wave mentions, you know, he's curious how long people think the current Switch can last because there's pushback anytime a new system's mentioned. The pushback I don't think is that people aren't willing to accept a new system. I think the pushback is that people don't want to talk about it anymore because it just gets kind of old to keep hoping for something that we just don't have any more or new evidence of it existing. And I get that that could be really frustrating, especially as people are saving money and maybe trying to make purchasing decisions. I heard one argument about the chip shortage maybe being like, oh, we can't see a new system in 2023. Chip shortage, chip shortage, except quietly the chip shortage is sort of going away all the recent reports are that we're gonna have a chip surplus in 2023 because demand has gone way down across the entire industry. Well, probably because half the world's sitting in a recession right now. So people really aren't spending a whole lot. They're just trying to get back to work and get their lives reorganized and get their families supported.  So there could be a slowdown coming up. I find this fascinating for a number of reasons, but I think the idea at this point is the reason that people are tepid is because they just are tired of hearing something that ends up not happening. When people try to speculate even about a new switch coming with Tears of the Kingdom, there's pushback on that when it's nothing but speculation. And I get it. I mean, guys, we've been talking about upgraded harbors since 2016 at this point. I'm gonna continue to cover and talk about it when it's relevant. We've got podcast episodes recently on it. I just think we are in this realm where the logic-based part of our brains is meeting the really part of our brains. Does this make sense? Logically, Switch is entering the seventh year. We should be talking about the next system. We should be talking about it a lot and speculating away and talking about how Nintendo can transition because it makes sense. We're at that point in the Switch's life cycle where we should start really having those conversations. On the other hand, we've been having conversations like this already for four years because, well, these rumors have existed and the rumors have kind of led to us tiring out of the actual conversation before we should have been having the actual conversation. Right now is when we should be talking about that successor, when we should be talking about an upgraded Switch, but because we did it a little early, we're in the middle of a pandemic at that when we're desperate for content. I think it just leads to now when we should be having the conversation so people are just not having it. By the way, there's always going to be people who want the conversation and are going to continue it as well. So I don't know. So I don't know. What camp do you find yourself in? Are you in the camp that's just so sick and tired of hearing about this thing that, you know what, until it's announced by Nintendo, you'd rather people just never bring it up or are you in the camp that thinks, hey look, we're entering the seventh year of Switch. We probably should be talking about this more and I want to hear more speculation and more content on it. You know, I'm going to be speculating and making a whole bunch of videos on tiers of the kingdom, something we know very little about, but we do know it at least exists. So some people find some value in that kind of content. Some people still find value in new hardware content as well, but what's that balance for you personally? That's what I want you to go down in the comments and let me know which side of the fence are you on. Thank you guys so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.


Amen. All right, so we're finishing our sermon series this morning, our two-part series on persecution. We're going to look again at Luke 6.22. Luke 6.22, we're going to look at the last half of the verse. Let's read it together. In chapter 6 of Luke, look at verse 22.  So, of course, we talked last week about the first part of this, where men shall hate you and men shall separate you from their company. We talked about how the context of this verse is Jesus talking to his disciples. Jesus is preparing the disciples here for what they're going to experience in their lives, in their lives as a follower of Jesus. He's getting them ready. I mean, it wouldn't have been very good leadership of Jesus to just be on this earth and teach these men to do what they were supposed to do and then leave and not tell them what was going to be in front of them, what to expect coming from men that they were going to deal with. So, we talked largely about separation last week. How men will separate from you. We talked about how that really shouldn't be a big deal for us because, as Jesus says here, men will want to separate from you. So, it should be a mutual understanding where we want to be separate. The Bible tells us that we should be separate from the world, but it says that men will want to separate you from their company. So, that's one thing we looked at last week. Jesus is giving more advice here to the disciples. Don't forget who he's talking to is the context of Luke 6.22. But let's look at the last two things that he talks about in this verse where it says, and they shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake. And it's interesting that this is the last part of the verse because once you separate, here's what you're going to find, is once you separate and you make that decision because maybe you're deciding to get into this Christian life or maybe you've just started getting into this Christian life, you may not see these things yet, but it's when you make those decisions to be separate and to change your life and to change the way that you do things and operate in a different way. That is when all of a sudden men will reproach you and all of a sudden they'll cast out your name as evil because people as you start to make this move into this Christian life, people may try to convince you otherwise. They may try to talk to you about, hey, they may think it's just a fad or maybe a stage that you're going through, but as soon as they realize that this is not a stage you're going through, this is something that is going to be the life that you lead your family forward in and you start to make these very visible moves and changes in your life, that's when they're going to turn. That's when you will see people turn on you and they will do these last two things. So let's talk about these last two things and look at a little bit of what the Bible says on what that's going to look like and how we should respond to that this morning. So the first one is this, men shall reproach you. Men shall reproach you. That means to rebuke you or to express disapproval of you. They'll shame you.   People are going to shame you for that.  So it's going to be a disapproval that may be direct. It may be through your family. It may be through your children. It may be through your wife. But that's the first thing. They're going to reproach you. They're going to express disapproval to you. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. The second part Jesus says to the disciples is he says that they will cast out your name as evil. He says that men will cast out your name as evil. That means they're going to speak horribly about you. They're going to say that what you're doing is wrong.  But I do want to, before I get into this section, I want to give a disclaimer.  And the disclaimer is in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. The disclaimer is this. And we always, look, we always must keep this in mind. And you'll see in this verse how important it is to keep this in mind because everything, the profit, whether or not your life is profitable or not depends on this. This is what the Bible says. So you say, I want to live. I mean, isn't that the purpose of your life? Isn't that the purpose of living this Christian life? Look, I'm saved. Nothing's going to change that. Nothing's going to change the fact that I'm saved. Okay? But is this some free ride for me?  That's why I'm doing what I'm doing with my life. You say, why are you doing what you're doing with your life? Because I want to be profitable. Why am I wanting to go into the ministry? Because I want to be profitable. Why do I go out soul winning? Because I want to be profitable. Why do I make the decisions that I make raising my children? Because I want to be profitable. Because, look, I'm saved. I'm going to heaven. I'm going to heaven. That's it. Nothing's ever going to change that. But what if I'm of no profit to my children? What if I'm of no profit to my wife? What if I have zero profit in my life? Look, it's all for nothing.  So here's the disclaimer. Look at 1 Corinthians 13. Look at verse number one. The Bible says, Though I speak with tons of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. It says, no matter what I say, if I say all these great things and I speak all these wonderful things from the Bible, I sound like an angel. I sound like a messenger of God. But I have not charity. It's for nothing. It's just vain babbling. Verse two, And though I have a gift of prophecy of all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so I can remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing. If I'm this great man and just says, I'm just filled with faith. I'm just filled with faith. I know everything that there is to know about the Bible.  See what I'm saying? And I have, but look, if I have filled with all knowledge, if I know the Bible backwards and forwards, I know the law of God. I have faith like no one you've ever seen, but I have not charity, it's nothing. Look at verse three. This is a really bad one. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, I mean, what was the rich young ruler's problem? He couldn't give away his riches. Though I just, I'll give anything to everybody, no matter what.  Look, and though I give my body to be burned, look, I'll give my life for this ministry. I'll give my life, but I have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Can you imagine the tragedy of somebody who gave their life for the cause of Christ? And it profits them nothing? So the point I'm trying to make is this. And this is why 1 Corinthians 13 is in the Bible. Because if men speak evil of you, because you have no charity, that's not what we're talking about today. If men speak evil of you, because you have all, you understand all knowledge.  Even to the point where if you didn't have charity and you lost charity, you lost, I mean, you lost that love for the lost is an example of charity. You lost that charity in your life. Look, maybe many of us have made this mistake to a certain degree. When, you know, we first got saved and we started learning what the Bible had to say and we started, you know, listening to biblical preaching and we just got all this knowledge because look, it doesn't take long to pass the average Joe on what they know about the Bible because people know nothing about the Bible. So you get saved and you get some knowledge and then you just want to correct everybody on everything.   Look, just because somebody's saved doesn't mean that they understand anything about the Bible. They understand it. Look, it means they understood the simplest thing in the Bible, the simplicity which is in Christ, the simplicity of the Gospel. So that's my disclaimer as we go forward. As men speak evil of you, just make sure that you have charity, that you have that love in your heart as a Christian should have or your life will profit nothing. Okay? But look, people may speak evil of you because of that. So keep that charity. Keep that charity. With that being said, with that disclaimer being put out there, when you do live this Christian life even if you have charity and you start living this Christian life and doing what you're supposed to do, people are going to cast out your name as evil. Just for that.  Can you imagine? It's going to happen. It's going to happen to you for sure. And all, all for the Son of Man's sake. All for Christ's sake. You say, turn to Acts chapter 5.  I mean, how could that be? Turn to Acts chapter 5. Turn to Acts chapter 5 and look at verse 41. Yes.  Look at the disciples in Acts 5. Look at verse 41. And they departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. And daily in the temple and in every house, they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Go back to verse 20. Go back to verse number 20. So in verse number 20, an angel tells them. So what were they doing where they suffered this shame? We see how they reacted to it. What were they actually doing? They were teaching and preaching Christ. But look what the angel tells them. So this is the angel just breaks them out of prison and says, go stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life. And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning and taught. But the high priest came and they that were with him and called the council together and all the senate of the children of Israel and sent to the prison to have them brought. So look, they were out there and they were teaching and they were preaching Jesus Christ and people hated them for it. People were speaking evil of them for it. They're healing people. I mean that's what they were in trouble for. That's what they were being persecuted for. So look, people were upset at the message of Jesus Christ. I mean that message upsets people. You say, I mean you say what? I mean you say, how could the gospel upset people?  People that you're preaching the gospel to and other people that may know that you're doing that. They're going to be upset. They're going to be upset at you. Look, and they'll express this to your face. This is what Jesus is saying in Luke 622.  So that's what they're going to do to you. You say, okay, got it, let's pray. Okay, but look, we're going to look a little bit deeper into it. All right, you say why? You say why is that? I mean what we know the gospel is, the gospel is the most wonderful message that's ever come to the earth. It's the most wonderful message that will free every man that will ever live. It has the ability to free every single person in the history of the world till the end of the world to just set them free. I mean how could anybody be upset at that? Turn to Hebrews chapter 4. So we're going to look at why the gospel upsets people first. I mean let's look into it. Why? I mean Jesus lets us know that what's going to happen, but why does the gospel upset people? Why in the world would the gospel upset people? Turn to Hebrews 4 and look at verse number 12. This is why, right here. Hebrews 4 in verse number 12. The Bible says this. It says, for the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Okay, got it. But here's the problem. Here's the problem for people right here. Piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and to the joints and marrow and as a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Turn to Acts chapter 7. Because look, because the gospel, it cuts to the heart, is what the Bible says. It cuts right through the joints. It cuts through the flesh. It cuts through whatever is covering people's hearts. It cuts straight through and it cuts right to the heart. The Bible says. Look at Acts chapter 7. Look, I mean it forces a decision on people is what the gospel does. And that decision that is laid in front of them, it cuts to the heart. To believe or not. It cuts to the heart of what they believe. Now look, the devil's philosophy. How many of you know people that have a culture? Maybe that culture is even in their church. Let me just sidebar this thing for a second. But there was even a culture in the churches that I grew up in where you just, I mean, just men in general, and I can only speak from a man's perspective, but men in general were very uncomfortable talking about spiritual things. In church, after church, at coffee, and cookies, or snacks, or even fellowship events, it was talking about, you know, it was talking about, you know, our worldly lives. It was talking about our jobs. It was talking about, which are not bad things to talk about in church, but there was this thing where if you would ever bring up spiritual things, like men, just in the culture that I grew up in, just didn't, they were not comfortable talking about spiritual things. That is from the devil. That is the devil's philosophy.  They're super uncomfortable.  And look, the gospel is the most spiritual thing and it will cut straight to the core of someone's heart. And if they're not comfortable talking about that, you won't even have a chance to open that door. So this is the, this idea, this philosophy, this culture of the tough man that can never talk about spiritual things. That is straight from the pit of hell. That is Satan's religion creeping its way into, you know, modern day churches to create that culture. Because look, Satan knows that if you will never talk about spiritual things, there is zero chance that you will ever get saved. There is zero chance. If you are completely freaked out, if someone wants to open a Bible and show you what the Bible says, you have no chance of getting saved. None. That's why this comes from the devil himself.  It's a terrible culture. Look at Acts chapter 7. Proving once again. Acts chapter 7, look at verse 54. And when they heard these things, look at what happened to these people. Here are the guys, the disciples are preaching the gospel. It says, and when they heard these things, the people, the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, they were cut to the heart because it cuts to the heart. And they gnashed on him with their teeth.  They killed him for this. Look, they got angry and spoke evil of them. They took it much further than that in this story. But this is why, look, this is why people can't just be like, oh, you don't go to my same church. No big deal. I mean, a lot of people are weirded out when this first happens. When, you know, they get right, they get in a good Bible preaching church and getting people saved, and they have a heart for the lost, and they want to preach the gospel, and they want to actually make decisions in their life to, I don't know, follow what the Bible says. This is why people can't just be like, okay with that, because this is not a message that, you know, is just some random surface level message. It's the greatest message ever, but it cuts to the heart. Turn to Luke chapter 12. Another reason is this. And this is just a little recap of last week, but Luke chapter 12, look at verse 51. Look, following Christ causes separation. It's just naturally going to happen. Okay, and that's why Jesus mentioned it in the first part of Luke 6.22. Following Christ causes separation. They will want to separate from you, and you should feel the same way. And Jesus told us that in multiple different ways, but look at Luke 12 and verse 51. Suppose you that I'm come to give peace on earth. That's why these people that just think, oh, Jesus is here to bring everybody together. You know, I mean, if you think in your life, if you grew up in some liberal nothing church where it just teaches that Jesus is just this guy who just love everything, love everybody, love all this, love all the time. Look, have charity. We understand that.  I tell you nay, but rather division. Look, the message of Christ divides people. From henceforth, there should be five in one house divided three against two, two against three. And then he gets specific and he says, look, he's like, this message that I have, which is the gospel, this wonderful message, it's going to divide houses. It's going to divide families he's talking here. It's again talking about family, just the nature of it. Look, I'm telling you, from our very core, we are all messed up about family. We are all messed up. Turn to Mark chapter three. Turn to Mark chapter three. This whole idea of blood relations, you know, because we're related to people, look, we're messed up. We're messed up about it. I'm telling you. And when I say messed up, I mean, we have our culture in us that is against what the Bible says when it comes to this type of thing. Look at Mark three in verse 31. Look at Mark three in verse 31. You say, well, you know, but they're my family and I must give them another chance and another chance and another chance and I know they don't agree with me and I know they, you know, want us to be part of things that we don't want to be part of, but they're angry that, you know, we won't be part of these things and there's all this conflict and all this kind of stuff, but they're family, but they're family. Look at what Jesus said in Mark three, 31. I mean, look, there's very specific cases with Jesus dealing with family. Jesus here is preaching and he is teaching to people. He's preaching and teaching about the kingdom of heaven. He's preaching to people. He is teaching the Bible to people. He is preaching the gospel to people. Look at verse 31. There came his brethren and his mother and standing without sin, sent unto him, calling him. And the multitude sat about him and they said unto him, behold thy mother and thy brethren are without seeking for thee. They went and they're like, Jesus, come out to us. He's in there preaching and teaching. And they're like, come out here.   And he answered them saying, okay, I'll be right there. Okay, okay, I'm coming. Oh, it's my mom. It's my brothers.  See you later. Look what he said. He said, who is my mother or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat about him and said, behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God the same as my brother and my sister and my mother.  Look, honor your father and mother. That's in the Bible. Okay, that's in the Bible. But you're still subject to the higher powers. That's how it goes.  As a matter of fact, Jesus spoke specifically of it several times. Here's a test for you. Here's a test for you. And I brought this up to one of you out soul winning yesterday. But here's a test. If what you're dealing with from somebody, you're dealing with people speaking evil of you, people pulling your family aside and trying to, you know, curb them against the beliefs that you're trying to teach and they're against what you're doing. Let me ask you this. Here's a test. A test is this. Would you put up with that from somebody who is not related to you? And if the answer is no, then you have your answer. That's it. That's it. That is all it is. And that test makes things pretty simple for most people in their minds. Turn to 1 Peter 4. Why are they, I mean, but why are they so upset? Why are they so upset? Turn to 1 Peter 4. 1 Peter 4. Look at verse number 3. And the Bible says in 1 Peter 4, for the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. And we walked in lasciviousness, lust, excess of wine, revelings, banquettings, and abominable idolatries. Wherein think it's strange? Wherein they think it's strange that ye run not? Look, these people that you separate from, they think it's weird. They think it's weird that you run not with them to the same excess of riot and they're going to do what? They're going to speak evil of you. Look, they're not going to like it. They're not going to like it. They're going to speak evil of you. You're not going to run with them. They're not going to like that. You would think, but you become a disciple of Jesus Christ and this is just what's going to happen. This is what Jesus is saying. Start living your life for Christ, making these moves, and you're running not with them anymore. The Bible says. I mean soul winning. You're out preaching the gospel to people.   But look, here's the good news. The rest of the sermon is going to be almost nothing but good news. So you're like, this all sounds bad, it's ugly. But no, it's really good news. It's really a story of good news. But look, the first thing is the Bible says that you should rejoice over this. In Acts chapter 5, they rejoiced. The disciples revered Christ. They revered Christ so much that they counted it glory to suffer shame for His name.  That if you do suffer shame, it's a glorious thing. People recognize you. It's a sign that people recognize you as representing Christ. Amen. How do we respond? Well, respond with grace. It's what the Bible says and it's what Jesus says in look at verse 35 of Luke chapter 6. Here's how you respond. I mean, if people even become your enemies, you respond this way. But love ye your enemies and do good and lend. Hoping for nothing again and your reward shall be great and ye shall be the children of the highest for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Look. Be merciful and ye shall have mercy. I mean, that's how you respond to this. I mean, everyone makes this mistake at first.  I mean, people have a general lack of knowledge of the Bible in this world that we're living in. And it's not going to take long for a believer that gets saved and starts wanting to know the Bible and tries to just surpass everybody else. And, you know, when people get upset at them, they may, you know, respond in the wrong way. They may respond without grace, you know, just because, you know, we have a tendency to do that. But look, I mean, and it may be it's out of excitement that you push on people too hard after you get saved. I think we've all probably done this. But we're not to slam this knowledge in people's faces. You know, that's back to the point I made earlier. You know, not just the gospel but just doctrine in general. I mean, even remember this, by the way. Somebody that gets saved, they know nothing about doctrine. Just because they get saved, it means they accepted the gospel.  They know nothing about the things that they're doing wrong. So, I mean, we got to be easy about stuff like that. We can't be just hammer people to death over these things, or, you know, that's not really a graceful way of handling it. Realize where we started from is that not everyone is going to receive the gospel. Look, here's the thing. Not everyone that receives the gospel and gets saved is going to serve Jesus Christ. And it may be those people, it may be those same people that decide that, you know what, I'm going to get saved, but that's all I'm going to do. And it may be those same people that gnash on you with their teeth later on. You say, how's that possible? Because that's what Jesus is warning us about here. Jesus is telling us to be ready for this. But look, here's another point I want to make on how to react to this. And especially this is for the men. You must protect against this. You must protect against this. Because you say, I'm this strong Christian man and I'm leading my family. But guess what? You've got some weaker vessels in your family. This moment is the weaker vessel.  You will find that many times people that attack you for your faith will not attack you, men. They will attack your wife.  They'll make these little digs. They'll make these little digs about the things that you're doing in your life.   But look, and here's the danger. Here's the danger of family as well in this area. It's like everybody you've known them for so long, everybody has this inherent desire inside them to get approval from their family. And, you know, that could be dangerous. And that's where these little digs and this not having approval could really bother people. And it could really set you back in your Christian life. But look, these things can wear you down.  I mean, let me just give you an example. Let me just have a theoretical hypothetical situation here. So, let's say you homeschool your kids.  We talk a lot about homeschooling here.  And so these kids are around your kids and you're just talking about how awesome public school is and all this and all the things that they do and all the things, their places they go or whatever. Look, that's going to cause your kids to stumble. That will cause your kids to stumble 100%. It's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? It's extremely dangerous. So men, look, you need to lead here. You need to protect here. Because I mean, we know the right way. We know the right path.  We must be protective. We must be protective. So, I mean, it's rarely, especially if you're this strong Christian man. It's rare that they will attack you. It's rare that they will attack you. They'll come at you from the flanks. So you need to be ready for that. Turn back to Luke chapter 6. Turn back to Luke chapter 6. So what's the conclusion of all this? We see what's going to happen. You know, Jesus is warning us. He's telling us. We know why it's happening. What's the conclusion to all this? I mean, how could we possibly get joy from this? I mean, this all sounds like it's no fun at all. Look at Luke chapter 6 in verse number 21. The Bible says, blessed are ye. I mean, so the Bible here is saying, blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. So the first point we can get out of, I mean, why this is okay and why this is good and why we should be joyful is because he says, blessed are ye that hunger now. He says, you know, blessed are ye that weep now. Look, this is all temporary is what he's saying. First, first of all the things that I've talked about in this two-part series, you know, this is more how to operate and the things to look for but it's not, you know, like physical persecution or anything like that. You know, there's Christians being killed in this world now. Do you know that?  In America, everything that we have is light affliction. If we don't handle these things that I'm talking about, don't get me wrong. If we don't handle these things correctly, the consequences will be severe. But, you know, it's light affliction compared to what some people are going through.  I mean, at this point I'm just like, whatever. I mean, who cares? Boo-hoo. Right? I mean, but look, there exists modern day persecution. I mean, think about the Middle East. You think about, you know, that's what people don't realize about, you know, all these, you say these wars in the Middle East don't really matter. You know, we, and a good example is in Iraq, for example. You know, just talking about Christian persecution.  But do you know that in 2003, when the invasion there was 1.4 million Christians living in Iraq? Look, I don't know what church they go to. These are just the numbers. There's 1.4 million Christians living in Iraq in 2003. Today, there's like 200,000. Maybe less. You say, where did they all go? Well, they either all got killed or they left so they wouldn't get killed. I mean, that doesn't sound good to me. When things get unstable, you know, especially in places like the Middle East, Africa is like always unstable. The Christians suffer. So there's real suffering in this world. I mean, that's the only point I'm trying to make there. But look, Jesus says this is all temporary in verse number 21. So that's good news. The second one is look at verse number 23. The second point is this. You will be rewarded. Did you know that? Did you know that you're going to have rewards? That if you successfully endure persecution in your life, that there's going to be rewards for that. That's exactly what Jesus says. Look at verse 23. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy. Look, it's in the day. When this happens to you and you're upset because somebody is persecuting you and is trying to push against the life that you're trying to live here on this earth, it says in that day rejoice. I mean, look, first of all, count at glory that you're being persecuted for Christ. That's the first thing. Rejoice, behold. Why? Why rejoice? Behold, because your reward is great in heaven. I mean, you're going to be rewarded for that very thing. So rejoice that day. So you have two choices. When that happens to you, you can let it get you down. You can let it derail you. You can let it cause doubt in your mind. Am I really doing the right thing? And you know, why are these people saying all these things about me? You know, you can let it get you down or you can rejoice. You can move on and let it put look, it's a sign you're over the target. When this happens, it's a sign that you're over the target. It proves the Bible right. If nobody's ever persecuting you for anything, you're not over anything. You're over a field in Kansas. There's nothing there. You're over a, you know, a field in the hills of western North Dakota. There's nothing there. There's nothing there. Turn to 1 Peter chapter 4. Let it be a source of joy. Look, it's proof of the Bible. It's proof that you're right. It's proof that what Jesus said is exactly what's happening. Look at 1 Peter chapter 4. And look at verse 13. Look at verse 13 of 1 Peter chapter 4. But rejoice. Inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be exceeding joy.  I'm happy for the spirit of the glory of God rested upon you. In their part he is evil spoken of, but on your side. I mean it glorifies God. You're doing the right thing. It's a proof.  Didn't you ever do those? It's like it's a proof that the math works. It's a proof that you know the geometry works out. It's a proof of the theory. Look this, when this happens to you it's a proof of the Bible. And look it's a proof of the truth of the Bible and it's a proof that what you're doing matches the Bible. That's awesome. I mean that's something to be joyful about. He's proven correct. He's glorified. And you're proven correct. You're doing the right thing. It should be, look it should be when you see these things. It shouldn't be oh this is weird. Why is this happening? It should be a real encouragement to you actually. It should be a real encouragement in your life. I mean you will have some pragmatic measures in place to make sure it happens in your family's men. I'm talking to you when I say that. You have to do stuff. You've got to put some walls up and you've got to make some actual separation decisions here. You can't just say oh yeah we're going to be, no. There may be some hard conversations. There may be some hard phone calls. There may be some hard, but look you make sure that none of that influences your family. That's what you do. Your actions need to come out of that is what you do. Whether that's conversations. Whether that's actions of not going to things you used to go to or places you used to go to or you know events or whatever. I mean you might be uncomfortable, but I mean who cares? I mean become a man. At the end of the day it's definite proof about what you believe. And it will be rewarded. Turn to James chapter 1. All good. All good things. All good things. James chapter 1. Now I don't focus a lot on rewards. I'll talk to you about that in a minute. But look at James chapter 1 and verse 12. The Bible says this. It says, That doubt to quit. I mean people quit the Christian life because of persecution.  What's that look like? I don't know. It's probably pretty nice. I don't think a lot about rewards myself. Here's the thing. If rewards keep you going great it's biblical you're going to get them. If you're going out and you're working for the Lord you're going to be rewarded for that. The Lord Jesus believes you should be paid for your time. Look that's biblical. And He's going to reward you for your time. But here's the thing. I mean me personally I don't really think I deserve what I have. I don't really think that I'm still kind of in shock that I'm saved. I hope that shock never really goes away. You know when I got saved I told the guys this the other night when I got saved the first feeling I had was that was close. I mean God thanks for not letting me go. I'm still kind of getting over that one. I mean the rewards that's going to be great I'm sure it's going to be more than I could ever imagine more than you could ever imagine but that's not what keeps me going. It's here. Here it is. You're going to be rewarded for this. It's true. You'll be rewarded for your work here. So at the end of the day persecution is a good thing. Do you understand that? No matter what happens with persecution more than even this Luke chapter 6 stuff anything that happens physical persecution verbal persecution you know whatever I mean it's a good thing it proves the Bible right I mean you want to talk about history of Christians. You want to look you want to get Baptists fired up for the Lord start persecuting them you want to get them really fired up for the Lord start killing them that's when you see the greatest things happen that's when you see the greatest things done in the Christian life the greatest moves that men have made for the Lord are in times of heavy persecution. Think of the book of Acts think of what happened to every single one of these men after the book of Acts and it's because I mean times of great persecution makes great exploits for the Lord I mean the two go together take no thought for how you shall speak the Bible says you know it says it shall be given you in that hour what you shall speak the greatest words that you will ever say in your life will be in times of persecution and the greatest actions that will ever have I mean just think about this think about if things just go terribly bad against Christians which you know what maybe they will think about if things go incredibly bad in this Christian life but now you're trained to rejoice in persecution look that will be your greatest moments that's what the Bible says in that moment will be your greatest the Bible says persecution be ready for it it's real it's coming it's going to happen to you if it hasn't already but we rejoice in it we rejoice in it for all these reasons let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer