All right, today is November 10th. This is a meeting of the, a further record, a meeting of the lab testing and product safety subcommittee. In the room here, we have myself, Kyle Harris from the cannabis control board, and Nellie Marble from the cannabis control board. And we have two members of the public. On the phone, we have Kim Watson, Gary Jigar, and Sherman Hom. I think we have three, but one of them is separate. Three members of the public, excuse me. And Sherman Hom, an expert in this field, has been invited to participate in this meeting. From, where are you Sherman, in Massachusetts, New Hampshire? Sorry, New Jersey? Right, medicinal genomics is based in Massachusetts, and I'm based out of New Jersey. New Jersey, working remotely. Fantastic. Well, I just wanted to give some table setting. Gary, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Maybe if you wouldn't mind giving us an update on what you said, Kim, the other day and how we can hopefully move forward after we have a conversation. Yeah, okay, very good. Thanks. Kyle, I didn't send Kim anything additional beyond what we talked about originally. It just is sort of on paper. And that was using the framework that under Title VI, the Canvas Quality Control Program lays out what is to be tested for for hemp. The levels would be established in rule and non-statute, and using what was already in statute for hemp, the Canvas Quality Control Program, and also incorporating the standard operating procedures that Kim had developed for Oregon for sampling. So the sampling protocol and criteria that Kim developed coupled with the Canvas Quality Control Program as laid out in statute and in the hemp rules for what gets tested and when. And additionally, I appreciate Sherwin's input on actual levels of meaningful action levels, I guess is what I mean to say there. And I believe we should make a recommendation that those levels are incorporated in rule, but not in statute. So I think the level should be set by procedure so the control board can modify and change as new research comes to light. So I went through all the guidance that you sent, the tables basically. And so these tables, as I understand, you want to adapt them for cannabis. Yes? Okay. And then, so some of the language will all change. And I do have a couple of questions. So I noticed, which is interesting in your note four under table one, you do have please apply the standards articulated in the Vermont Hemp Program for potency compliance. And you do talk of a COA, which we talked about last time, you know, as being, were you planning on doing any type of database for reporting of these people sending in their tests or were you gonna, or did they just do it by paper right now? Right now it is by paper, but under a proposal that Trace presented to us, Trace would use a QR code on a product and all those test results would be available to the public. But I didn't want to imply that the control board should use the system that they were going to force one direction as far as database goes. Right, right. But some kind of QR code system to, so the registrant could upload that test to whatever you're gonna store it in or do whatever. Okay. Yeah, that's the, that's the plan. Yeah. So the action limits too, that you have presented in table seven, have any of the labs had a problem meeting the, I guess that level? Because I noticed you're a lot lower than some other states or some other on the pesticide table. And then, but again, it's only those, do you have any known use of dimethylate or carboforan in the state? No. Okay. No. Because I was wondering what limited you to that list. Um, knowledge of what does get used. Okay. In the state sort of, we are involved in the licensing and registration of the applicators for the current dispensaries. And, you know, carboforan, nobody's going to use that as furan than. There isn't any even sold in the state basically. In the list, I think that you see other states use, especially the West Coast states, you see a lot of older chemistry because I think a lot of unregistered chemistry is still coming up from south of the border. We don't really see that here. Folks are trying to use as a general rule, as light of chemistry as possible, trying to be as organic as possible. My concern is that maybe some of the traditional fungicide chemistry gets used. So you'll see that those maintain on there. But we did adopt that list from other states. And it's not as long as... Yeah, no, I know. And I would have to look at the fungicide names. I don't know. Maybe Sherman knows some of them. But I'm not sure. One of the ones that seems to be used, I'm not a pesticide expert, but one of the products that are used a lot is Eagle 20. Yeah. And then have a little bit of ethanol. So you have that on the list, right? Yes. Yeah. And what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna make a notation to send you the list of approximately 25 pesticides that were detected by some laboratory testing cannabis products in the United States that were found in marketed products. So you can just take a look at it. I'm not saying it's gonna be used in Vermont, but to be aware of it. And that one of the biggest problems, I suppose, well, everyone knows, is the mold growing on cannabis because of the high temperatures and humidity used in indoor grows. It's a big problem. And I found nine pesticides that were not tested by any state that were found in cannabis products. And so you might want to cross check that one too. I'll send you my poster. Please don't share it with anybody because it hasn't been published anywhere because it was suppressed by the state of New Jersey. Don't ask me why it was. So just looking at the action limits. This is, I'm assuming these are your action limits for hemp as well. Yeah. And speaking of a maze of the nil, I never can pronounce them correctly because they're always driving me. You have 0.04 and a lot of the other states have 0.2. Do they have any problem getting down to 0.04 in labs? No. Okay. No. And why that's so low just because of that concern? Yes, yeah. Okay. The thing is that we're using LC or GC math specs generally for the pesticide work. And we can see some parts per trillion generally. I know on the HPLC, but I didn't think on the GCMS, but they are getting better and better. So I mean, I don't know what could be on the lab. Our lab can generally is looking at residue levels from drift. Okay. So we're, you know, and it's small particles that do drift. We look very, very low. I have to figure out, I have to go back to my notes and figure out why we made that decision. If it is on the mycobutanil is because the other states were using a tolerance and ingestion tolerance in California is doing some of the pyrolysis work for inhalation. Yeah. And I saw some of the early numbers coming out of there. And I think that is why that number is low. It's not even published yet. Okay. This one is not, oh, so is amizanil, I-M-A-C-I-L-I-L. Yeah, that's 0.04. Clopyrifos, I can understand, but I didn't know there was as much work on that other one. And then the amidicloropyrid, you know, your level is so much higher than most states. Why was that? The human toxicity is very low on the neonicotinoids. Okay. Because you've got five PPM and I know to settle a lot of the other states are at 0.4. Right. And again, back to the inhalation studies, the neonicotinoids are sort of synthetic nicotine-type compounds. Yeah. And there's very low human toxicity, very toxic to bugs, but very low, I mean, very high or low in terms of toxicity, I think has the reverse, the inverse relationship. Okay. And also, is that true for your residual solvents? Not many pentanes are used and only the ones listed? I haven't looked at what the product tables are saying in this state. Yeah. And that's basically, we have a program we don't allow hydrocarbon extraction, but there are some after extraction, processing steps that do use hydrocarbons, solvents. Yeah. That's why there's a number of things that are there. But no pentanes and no, so, or the butanes aren't on there. Correct. And, because there should be, there should be none. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if we, if the state will allow hydrocarbon extraction of high THC cannabis and if so, then the butanes should be on there. So should we make that recommendation that maybe, or the, yeah, at least the butanes? I imagine. Even if they're not allowed, we should probably check because they're the most common. Yeah. Well, it, I mean, maybe it seems to me that most of the processes are either using CO2, butane or ethanol. Yeah. With the extractions. And by stat, you know, I can't remember all the statutes for all the different states, but I mean, Vermont is going to allow processes for early year. And then you're going to allow the different methodologies to extract or concentrate, I mean. Yeah. We may want to add that because although it seems, the note seems interesting, any solvent not permitted for extraction of the hemp rule. And then maybe permitted in the recreational rule. Yeah. Anyway, those were only my thoughts on those tables, but other than that, I had no questions about them. I haven't seen the tables and I just wanted to ensure that unless I missed it somewhere to ensure I understood you carry it concerning the microbial recommendations that you made. So my record would be that you said something about the hemp. Yeah. The recommendations would be that the control board used the levels that you've established because our levels were weaned from other states and they didn't necessarily do the health impact study that you've sort of taken the time to do. I guess what I'm saying is our numbers are based on what other states were using in those numbers. The other states were using more based on what they could see and setting an arbitrary threshold. Years are far less arbitrary and I think more useful. Right, I've watched the industry try state by state to make regulations to record microbial testing all the way back to like, I mean, 2012. Everyone started with a table that was published in the monograph in which the monograph in the footnote says, we do not intend these recommendations that we simply gleaned from various organizations throughout the world that you should just use for cannabis because of the unusual matrix, but all the states started doing that and it was a piper effect. And then many people or many regulators thought that, well, let's just take cannabis. Oh, it's a food. We'll start borrowing it from the USP, you know, pharmaceutical or food. It was like all the leader on that route. Being a scientist, I wanted to comb the literature and look at some states that did the same thing and find the pathogens that actually impacted cannabis users and the fact that a phenomenon is occurring amongst early states that have formed various task force and subcommittees to read, look or reexamine their microbial testing and they're circling back and adding these pathogens and doing it correctly. I see too many states that just arbitrarily say pathogenic E. coli without thinking it through. There's six different types of pathogenic E. coli and there's no single test that can detect those six of them. We got to go with the most toxic one. I mean, pathogenic one, which I checked with the laboratory director who is an MD at that start where I used to work in New Jersey. He totally agreed from a clinical viewpoint on picking, you know, stack E. coli and sell them out a lot of is, these are for sanitary purposes. And then the Aspergillus, there's, it's in the literature, it's killed people. Going to Florida, I just want to mention in Florida, an unnamed multi-state operator producing cannabis flower released product into the Florida medical cannabis industry that was contaminated with one of the Aspergillus pathogens. So you have, and I'm trying to track down whether a lab gave a false negative for this organization simply trying to slip it through. You got to be real watchful. So that I'm, I know you guys are referring to table five. And what was, what were some of the action limits? I didn't see those action limits proposed. Perry, for the trim, is it all different or what, what are we looking at? Yeah, they're not proposed other than we've gone back and forth on that level, yeah. Well, are we speaking about South Stack and the four Aspergillus pathogens? Or are we speaking about something else? Something else, we hadn't. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. The human pathogens we hadn't considered. Okay. Yeah, yeah, like if you're in a compost tea or a live manure or some processor is unsanitary. We hadn't really got there. We were focusing on micro toxins that were Oh, yeah. From botrytis or Aspergillus type. That was, was our thought and our focus, but you've included the human pathogens that we didn't, we weren't thinking about at all. Well, the thing is, is that one of the interesting pieces of literature I came across is that a lot of people may surmise that through burning or vaporizing cannabis that spores are destroyed. You're not. I have purified literature that shows that spores survive that process and they're inhaled and you have some individuals that are immunocompromised. And I even found one piece of, or one purified literature that showed that somebody that worked at a dispensary and selling, I mean Bakersfield, California, which is in the Big Valley. He was not immunocompromised and he was infected in the lung with another fungi. I forget which one. So, but anyway, so. Did he live? I don't remember. I mean, it's just, I wish I could. You can see, you know, you can see my white hair here. My memory is just that it's good. I'd have to look into that one. So what I hear you saying is that there's some added testing that would be the parameters for the cannabis side of things to this table five. Well, I'm a proponent of what I simply, I guess my cliche is the California model is that ever since they had medical and now they have both medical and adult uses that they've championed the, the list past the testing of just these six human pathogens and they're sticking to that and other states have done the same. I believe Alaska has done that. My trusty table is a little dated. It goes back to 2019 because I had to shut everything down and shift all my efforts towards COVID-19 the last 18 months I went with the Department of Health in New Jersey, but let's say. Okay. All right, we'll go forward that on. So I'll see what those are. Okay. So I remember looking at the Vermont hemp microbial testing and it had, let's say, total aerobic and total yeast and mold. Yeah. Um, various types of products. Mycotoxin, total of A-flactoxin, B1, B2, G1. Well, I see those are the mycotoxins. And then, Orc-Rotoxin A or. Right. No, one, two, three, four. Those represent the mycotoxins or aquatoxins that do, that are carcinogenic or otherwise impact humans. They may not necessarily be the correct one. Some of them only grow on grain. But it was a very fairly easy sweet to analyze for in the lab. So we kept them all. Right. That's what seems like everyone else's. That's what we started with back in 2012. Yeah. Where? With the help of DOA. But I guess what I'm asking Kerry is this, so you're recommending this total aerobic and total yeast and mold as we should have for him? So Sherwood, I really appreciate the work you've done. And I'm almost, I'm looking for your expertise to guide us there. My sort of expertise is the pesticide side and heavy metal. And then very much we lack. Right. Well, it's for these things. Same here. Well, I keep saying the same thing to many regular leaders. You know, all over the country is that, is that whatever action level you have for any total count, like what you have for the hemp, you know, total aerobic or total yeast and mold is that a commercial laboratory that has been licensed by the state of Vermont will perform some kind of test. And let's say the action level is above your action level. Then there's going to be a consequence to that grower, either remediation, I mean, diverting that batch to concentrate and to see if people are remediating the dried pure cannabis and retesting or destroying the crop. And maybe I'm too simplistic, but I keep saying to myself as a scientist, I really didn't get any information from the commercial laboratory that the batch sample that was tested had any deleterious human pathogens in the sample. So I'm not a proponent of total counts. As you know, in the original monograph that has been read by so many cannabis regulators, which is that American herbal pharmacopoeia published in 2014 indicates that if you read that section it says that total counts should not be utilized to fail a batch and no one seems to have read that part. And they're in the process that had communications with them and then they're in the process of rewriting and coming out with a new addition and they've asked me to write microbial section that at the time I was busy with COVID-19. But there are differences of opinion by many state regulators throughout the country. But that's the only thing that makes sense to me and others that medicinal genomics is to start with that. With the interview literature, the ideal thing is something that I don't think will ever happen. I may have mentioned that in the previous meeting and I'll just briefly summarize by saying it would be the most ideal thing is to get samples to be tested, it's called microbiome, hogenome sequence, cannabis samples from all over the country and to collect all of that information and identify truly what are the pathogens found that has grown in cannabis throughout the United States of America. Then those are the ones that should be looked at. But that's never gonna happen. That is a major project that could be funded by the federal government or something like that. We're talking lots of money, but I think the ideal at the same time. But we start with the peer reviewed literature and then monitor that literature and add more human pathogens more and more information comes out. But that's why I start with these six because in Oklahoma, for example, because I attend many meetings throughout the country and listen in Oklahoma, they had some problems with Salmonella, for example. And where did it come from? It's a little funny, you know. The grower let his pet of Juana freely roam in his indoor grower. Oh, wow. So it's that kind of thing. Yeah, everybody's thinking that people are washing their hands and then they handle the cannabis inside the grower, but it could be from other reasons perhaps. But I'm sure that Vermont is gonna have a much better regulated industry than Oklahoma, which is the most out of hand. They have 13,000 licensees. They have no caps for growers. Wow. There's 13,000 and only 31 teams of inspectors. It's a horrifying situation to have there. I can't imagine. I know how they are in regular pesticide work. Well, that's what I recommend. I don't really recommend anything else. I can get behind that, I don't know. Those are my reasons. The thing also, in terms of the accuracy, even when you try to do total counts, any laboratories end up using auger plating techniques, but one has to really examine this cannabis matrix. And again, I go to the peer review literature is that there's multiple publications that indicate that the different cannabinoids are anti-biotic, anti-biotic properties. So you've homogenized the cannabis sample and then you plate directly on an auger medium and when you have some of those cannabinoids that you've put on the plate and so you have some antibiotic, you're gonna get lower counts. People don't think about that. Also, the human pathogens that have killed people, they're endo-fights. It's another thing. These cells live inside the plant cells and so plating is never going to identify those human pathogens, the aspergillus and even the enterics like salmonella E. coli. I can provide you with peer-reviewed literature that shows they have been found inside plant cells. These are some literature that's just coming out the last few years. Mechanisms have not been identified yet. And again, that's why I've had a five-year decade-long career in microbiology besides my graduate degree being in microbiology and I started plating on auger plates as a sophomore in college and I've been through the PCR, I've been through hoaching and sequencing and I was a subject matter expert for the state of New Jersey and that was a recommendation I gave to the Medical Cannabis Program that was accepted but as soon as I disappeared from the scene, it got into another direction but that's up to that regulatory commission that I hope to see the light in the end. So that's, I think what I sent to Gary was my last modification with all the peer-reviewed literature and everything. Very good. So are you thinking of adding what he listed there as the aspergillus pathogens and the salmonella species and the toxin-producing E. coli? I do think that makes a lot of sense to him. Like I said, we're getting invaluable input from an expert and this is out of my depth. I'm, you know, like, it's not good. Yeah. The only place I deal with my co-toxins is the feed regulatory program and that's why you see what you're seeing on the cannabis side. Drawing on expertise from one of my other program or, you know, standards from one of my other programs but we have a strong recommendation from a depth of knowledge that I don't have and I think we do use your SOPs, the outline that the hemp program has developed with the modification on the pathogen side of exactly what Sherman has proposed. Nice. And also the original consultant, maybe that was mentioned in the last minute, the original consultant wore the state of Vermont when it was only a medical cannabis program. I found some document that was provided to the state of Vermont back a few years that recommended exactly what I recommended. And I think I shared that with someone at the state. I can dig that up too. Carrie, I think Stephanie had mentioned that she was aware of the document that Sherman was referring to. Yeah. I haven't seen that document though. Right. All of it. That document that NSL put together, that was another one, Monique McHenry and his name just slipped my mind but they were one of our dispensaries and did put together a document years ago. Oh, I see. I thought it was an independent consultant. It was a dispensary, one of our dispensaries. But currently the dispensaries, there is no consumer protection component to the medical program at all. Right, yeah. But that occurred in other states until it was legislated. Like Arizona didn't have any protection for consumers for upwards of seven or eight years. And it was finally legislated. And then they had a big fight there between the leaders in the industry and so forth and so on. And then they came out with some testing regulations. So, right. And so those are, you know, I put all my thoughts in those words and we have that much more to add. And I've counted as many, I think now 12 states that have either began with or circled back and are adding these pathogens. And more and more states are automatically adding, well, salmonella has never been a problem. Everybody knows that every species of salmonella that exists on the earth is pathogenic. But for E. coli, I got a laugh, I'm sorry. We see regulations that just simply say E. coli and with an action level of less than one. And anybody can go into Wikipedia under E. coli and see that not all E. coli's are pathogenic. So you might detect a non-pathogenic E. coli and have a consequence on a grower. That's state of affairs. I just want to, that's why I've been, I was hired by MGC and wanted to do this as a government official, but I was never allowed to. And now I simply communicate with every state they like to communicate with and try to bring science into their programs. That's always been what I've known in serving the public for 20 years in public health. I want to protect the consumers and the patients. That is what I live for. I think your timing was perfect for interaction, interacting with Ramon and really appreciate everything you're offering. But you're most welcome. I also want to say to you, and thank you very much for inviting me to share with what I do know because not every state is as welcoming. That's just the facts. I think Ramon cares a lot about public input. So across the state, so. There are some very opinionated regulators, even a scientific subject matter experts that entered the cannabis field without humility. I don't know anything about cannabis in December, 2011 when I was asked to be the program project manager to start the first cannabis testing lab and know a thing. And I've learned one thing in my scientific career and that is to go into the literature and keep my mouth shut and learn. I've been learning for almost 10 years. And I continue to learn as I learned from experts and pesticides and metals and so forth and so on. And the cannabinoids too. I have one pet peeve about states that put in their rules what cannabinoids must be tested for, and of course there's the big four, but I hate it when they list a neutral form without listing the acid form because greater than 90% of the cannabinoids stored in trichomes are in the acid form. Cannabinoids are quantitatively determined, utilizing HPLC, which is formed at a new temperature and is not gonna convert any of the acid forms into the neutral forms. I see Reagan-Langer's making that error because they're copying each other, but that's not my purview. I have to focus on the microbial testing. That's one thing that I have to do, but when I do have the opportunity, one-on-one I do mention it. That is something that we've been aware of all along, so as we, yeah. Not everybody is, Kari, not everybody, you know. So Kari, go ahead, Kari. Go ahead. I was gonna say, do we wanna, I'm trying to find a natural conclusion to the substantive conversation here, and I'm way out of my element because I don't have the expertise that the three of you have when it comes to determining these action limits for various, various pesticides and others, microbials and stuff like that that are on all these tables. I'm trying to find a logical ending to talking about procedure as it relates to getting a tangible document to the full board and how might that look and timing and so on and so forth. So, but if you have a more substantive comment, Kari, before that, feel free to go. I don't, Kyle, you in the board and we collectively all, we have all the pieces, we just haven't put them together in a recommendation to you. Yeah, that's what I was wondering to, is it, I'm wondering how you wanna go about that. I certainly recognize that there is, that the information is all there, that the puzzle or Lego set just needs to be put together and delivered. So, I wanted to talk about what works considering that this is supplemental to your day jobs. I don't wanna overly burden either one of you, but who might be best positioned to get a draft of all this together and does it make sense to have another meeting next Wednesday to talk about that draft and get its final approval from the two of you and square up any loose ends or do you think that can be done via email? I think the goal is hopefully I can take some of this conversation to our board meeting next Friday and make sure that the board examines the proposal and raises any concerns so that hopefully, and I see David's watching, we're trying to get certain rules pre-filed for the end of the month. So, I just wanna be conscious of time and for the folks listening or for the folks in their room, there will be many more comment periods down the road. So even if the board does recommend that we take the subcommittees work next Friday, there will be multiple times to express differing opinions when it comes to these action limits and allowables and so on and so forth. So what I am going to recommend that the board do is adopt a framework similar to what's in statute in Title VI about the Canvas Quality Control Program and what to test and then the action levels and what like list of pesticides be done via either rule or procedure so the board can modify them without going through changing legislation and what those procedures. So you can go ahead with a proposed rule and then have in your folder or back pocket if you will the outline that we're proposing and that's that the Vermont adopt the SOPs and procedures that Kim developed for Oregon as far as taking a sample and getting those samples to the lab, I'd even propose that the board hire Kim to do training of field inspectors and the criteria that gets tested for is what's outlined in the HEM program with the modification of throwing away what's in there completely that we have for microtoxins and substituting what Sherman has proposed as the most appropriate human pathogens or pathogens to be tested for in Canvas. The SIGs if you will. Right and the action levels for that is it's non-detected. It's president's absence, it's that is always the action level in all states that have adopted testing of any of those six human pathogens, always non-detected. So period Kim can we get that kind of all packaged into one document including the SOPs and so on and so forth by like next Wednesday? Is that a timeline that might work? A couple of weeks ago I kind of like volunteered to do that. Some of the stuff has gotten lost in my email but I have Sherman's document. Kim, I apologize for asking but can you resend me those SOPs and I'll put it all together in one document by the end of the week. That would be fantastic. Kim, you're muted. Sorry, I was, so what I hear is you're going to take, you need to take the whole act and reproduce it with the words or what are you actually proposing that you have to do? Because I looked at these tables and this is pretty much the testing and the action limits with the modifications that we've talked about today. What else do you have to produce for them? Just the whole rule or what do you have to do, Gary? I'm like, I feel bad. I don't, I don't, and as far as the rule goes, Kim, I'll send you a copy of the statue. Okay, I have that, I think. I think that's what they need to do. Okay. It's going to test for but not when to test for it. It's just, it basically says that the cannabis control board would take the cannabis quality control program language from Title VI. Okay. So that's all they need for rule. And then the action limits and all that would be done by procedure. So if a new, if new chemistry shows up, they can add it to the list. Right, I, yeah. Or removal chemistry without having to go to the legislature. That's the best way to do it. So then you're going to do that by the end of this week. Do you want to, or next week? Yeah, no, I'm going to do it probably Friday. Okay. A 930 meeting and then a whole until noon. So from 930 noon, I can work on that. So we tentatively just schedule a meeting and hold it on your calendars for next Wednesday in case we need to clear up any loose ends. And if it's not needed and it's going to be done via email, we can cross that bridge when we get there. Do you want to, were you going to set up another standard operating procedure with like Vermont's information? And because I think you guys had a little bit different incremental sampling when I looked on the website, but were you just going to set up an SOP or use the generic one from Oregon or how do you want to do that? Either way, worse. I've used the generic one from Oregon and just let the board map their applications. Yeah, let me see if I can order. Okay. How about, does that work for you? Yeah, that is an open document that they made free to everybody. It's been on their website for ages. Okay, well, I'm talking with Nellie. We might have a, okay. She says, no board meeting next Wednesday. Okay. So does Wednesday get noon again to put on your calendars and hold that for the 17th? Work. I'm trying to think, I'm actually going to be away. And if I have to take someone to the airport, I may not be available or I'll have to, I can call in from, I'll let you know if I can call in or not. Kyle, this is just two of us and we've already expressed to the board whatever intent is. I think we can accomplish, Tim and I can accomplish this and keep Sherman involved as well to make sure we don't screw up his edition. We can accomplish this over email and I'll email, include everyone on this invite on the email I send out Friday and we can go from there. So you officially have a proposal from us but don't have it in writing yet. I think we can tackle it via email. Yeah, absolutely. That sounds good. And I can follow up what you carry as needed as well but I appreciate everybody's time here today. I think we're getting pretty close to moving on to the next phase. Last call for public comment? Yeah, I'll be back for the following Wednesday if you choose to, that distant. Great, yeah. I saw David just jump in really quick. David, do you have the floor? Real quick, Carrie, if you can just keep me on those emails as I'm trying to put this into real language, that'll be super helpful. Excellent, thanks, David. Thank you. All right, well, we can end this a little bit early, 12.54. Thank you, everybody, looking forward to Friday. All right, thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you very much. Everybody have a great week. Bye.


What I'm going to do today is talk about the continuity of learning from a provincial, national, and global perspective, and I'm doing that all in 40 minutes or something, so it'll be around the world in 40 minutes. Much of what I'm going to say has been raised earlier today in various comments, so I will be reinforcing some of the ideas that are coming forward, and I might poke a bit and provoke you a bit to think about some aspects of those things as we go along. So what we know, and much of this has been covered today, we know that kids' children benefit from early learning programs before entry to kindergarten at age five. There's an avalanche of evidence from 60 years about that. Good quality programs support children benefit, and we know that disadvantaged and vulnerable kids benefit the most, but in Canada, they are the least likely to attend, and that is something we share across our provincial and territorial boundaries, and that was raised earlier today. Craig said, can you imagine if we had, you know, took away public funding and was every parent for themselves to pay for it, et cetera, et cetera. So even in Quebec, which has the highest amount of early childhood education and care offered to children, vulnerable kids are least likely to be able to attend. So that's something to think about. Early learning benefits can be leveraged or diminished by the primary school experiences. When primary school is able to build on the benefits of early learning by the curriculum approach and interactions with kids, those benefits, as Craig said, compound. But if it's a distinctly different approach to learning in the school system, you don't see the benefits come forward. And poor primary schools can actually wipe out many of the benefits if not all of the benefits. So it is about the continuum going along. We do know that the investment in early learning pays triple dividends, and Craig made that obvious today. There is the economic immediate return on labor force participation. There is the longer-term return on investment, on reducing needs for extra efforts in the school system, and skills that children acquired, that they build on going forward, graduation from high school, et cetera, et cetera. The third benefit are those social equity benefits. And I think those are really important. And tie into the child's right to this. Why do some kids get excellent programs and other kids get nothing or poor quality? When we provide it to all kids at a reasonable, equitable level, there are social benefits. And in my opinion, that is the most important rationale for going forward. So I want to talk about not transitions to school, not transitions during the school day to other programs. I want to flip that and talk about a continuity of learning. And I'm not the only one who's talked about it. We've heard it from several of the speakers today. But rather than get kids ready for school or schools ready for children, let's think about continuous learning pathways and shared practices so that there is no need for a transition. It's seamless. It goes forward. And the same across the school day. When we reduce harsh transitions from point A to point B, Jen talked eloquently about the challenge of that and the anxieties that come from that. Can't we do better than that? Can't we make it easy for a child to have a seamless kind of day in many ways? Now there's challenges. There's differing legislation, regulation, funding, employers, collective agreements. The public school system is a public system. Licensed childcare is market delivery. Very little of it in this country is delivered in a public platform. So those are very different things. And we've touched on this today, and I think it's important to note. We have a very different culture in education from early childhood education. Our professional learning, our in-service is very different, okay? Doesn't mean we can't find ways to bridge across it, but I think we have to acknowledge early childhood educators see the curriculum as everything that happens throughout the time a child derives until they leave. It's as much about getting ready to go outside as it is about any kinds of learning experiences. By and large, teachers are prepared through the degree Bachelor of Education programs to cover a curriculum, right? To take the learning expectation standards, whatever the province is calling them, and think about how to cover those and assess children against those. It's not, we can find ways to bridge and talk together, but I think we have to acknowledge we're starting from very different cultures. And that's just one of them. We'll get into some of the other aspects of that as I go through and pay attention to time. But I think the starting point for that is in early childhood education, and that includes licensed childcare, that includes other types of programs, we need to make the shift to see that is the education in the broadest sense of the word, it is the education of young children that should lead, not the childcare that those programs provide. Your primary school system provides, is a childcare system. If it shuts, well no, tomorrow, Saturday, if it shuts down next week for labour negotiations or something like that, what is the number one concern for kids up to 10 or 12? Childcare. That almost happened three weeks ago in Ontario, I guess a very few days before the federal election, our provincial government was up against it and our clever QP negotiators for the province-wide educational assistance, a whole bunch of different, including the ECEs who work in many school boards, was in negotiation and they were going to pull their members and walk out on Monday morning. Our big school boards said, we'll have to close down, it's not safe to operate. They negotiated all weekend and settled at 10 o'clock Sunday night, something like that. Myself and my colleagues who all have backgrounds in early childhood education did not get calls from our adult children about our grandchildren saying, Mom, come help us with early learning for blah, blah, child. They did call and say, Mom, what are you doing this week? There's not going to any school. Can you come? You can bring your computer and work, you know. She can watch Netflix all day. They were not worrying about the early learning of their five-year-old, right? They were worrying about childcare. So let's recognize that the school system provides childcare for the school day, okay? And early childhood education programs provide education. And we should lead with that. And of course that means entry to early childhood education, including funding format, should not be based on what parents do, whether they're working 20 hours or 40 hours or not at all. But it should be based on the child. The child's needs, the child's age, like the education system is. So I think if we're going to make the transition, we have to keep those things in mind. So in talking about continuity of learning, I'm going to talk about three aspects, curricular continuity, before and after school programs, aka school-aged childcare. I don't want to get too caught up in language, but extending the school day and leadership. So curriculum continuity. This is something that's under discussion around in many, many places. The organization for economic and cooperative development and their work in early childhood education and care and into the primary school system is definitely concerned about this and is doing, has put out papers and studies on it. This one that I have up here is curriculum alignment and progression between early childhood education and primary schools. They identified things to think about or had to be taken into account. The education system organization and educator policies need to accommodate this. Regional and local authorities or providers need to be on board. We need to bring that together. It's not about a school takeover. The impact of the differing goals in primary education and ECEC, the ways we look at children's learning and what's important, we need to think about those differences and think about how to bridge them. And the alignment of broad level of goals or strands of education that promote learning. These were all things that they identified as essential if we want to talk about alignment. Another OECD study did, looked at across the OECD countries, the higher income countries, many European countries, North America, Australia, about ECEC, early childhood education and primary, and identified ones where the curriculum was fully integrated. That would be one curriculum, okay, that would be in this province, you'd have the core competencies for up to grade three and the early learning framework and you would bring them together and you'd have one document for everybody. That's integration. 54% are aligned and that's where I'd say British Columbia is. It's pretty clear your early learning framework is talking to your core competencies, right? It's right in there and it's aligned. And we have that example in a few other provinces. Ontario has a zero to eight approach that bridges over, et cetera, et cetera. And 54% of the member OECD countries do as well. 24% are not aligned at all. And that number seems to be growing and coming along. So that's where we're at. In BC, we have the BC core competencies for thinking, for personal and social competencies and communication. And they're broken down into sub competencies, excuse me. And we have the, and that's how it's organized, okay? That's the organizing frame for the new BC core curriculum core competencies. Then we have the BC early learning framework, which everybody got a copy of. And it's really organized around four living inquiries. Well-being and belonging, engagement with others, materials in the world, communication and literacies, identity, social responsibilities and diversity. It's not hard to see some cross walking here, right? There might be different language when you drill down. But you can see where we're in the same general sphere. And there is definite alignment. The BC early learning framework, which I really wanna take a moment and give credit to that framework and to some of the, to the author, Kim, who's here and others who worked so hard on it. It does a really good job, in my opinion, it being concrete about some of the bigger ideas. It does not say, go forth and reflect. Leaving the first year EC student to wonder, what's that? It spells it out. It talks about traces of learning, fabulous concept, love it. But it really breaks it down and makes it more accessible. So I think done a really good job on that. And it, of course, talks about living inquiries. What we've just talked about is big organizing frame. Then it talks about pathways. And pathways is deliberately used to be not linear, to be non-linear, to recognize multiple ways of learning, multiple languages. And then, instead of outcomes for children, it talks about or it leads on to critically reflective questions for the educators to think about when they're reflecting on the children's learning. The BC new curriculum starts with those core competencies. Then in separate disciplines, it is discipline organized from K to 12, in some cases, et cetera, et cetera. It breaks it down and within the disciplines are some big ideas. And then learning standards with curriculum competencies and content and ideas what to expect. It is not a prescriptive child will be able to count to 100, child will have 20 sight words and things like that. It's broader than that. It's more open-ended. But it is, there are learning standards. Just one of them, I had a glance at, in communication and literacies, and the pathways in the BC framework talked about vocabulary, symbolic language, et cetera. And then moved on into the critically reflective questions about thinking about symbol representations and meaning making marks or making marks have meanings and where's the child's understanding of that is, okay? So it leads you to think about, leads you to critically reflect on. Over in the BC curriculum, communication in language arts, that's the discipline for kindergarten, has big ideas, play with language and help us discover, helps discover how language works. And in the curricular competencies, explore foundation concepts of print, oral, and visual symbols. Pedagogical strategies for play-based learning. This is something that is a direct lift out of, thank you Kira for doing this for me today. From Play Today, that is a document I worked on with people in Kira and her team in the Ministry of Education. And I bring this to you because this is a tool, I think, that helps ECEs and primary teachers collaborate together. It is not an early learning framework. It is not a curriculum document. But it's a tool, I think, this notion of the play-based learning different, going across child-directed, educator-directed, educator and all the way in between, that helps us understand each other. And it was developed in Ontario for that very purpose, in those full-day kindergartens with the ECE and the teacher, and a mandate to go forth with the play-based learning curriculum and also meet some learning outcomes. What was happening is a real fear about hijacking the children's play. So let them play and stay out of it. Oh, yes. But we have to do some teaching.  Do a really prescriptive large group time or small group time to make sure they had letter recognition or something or other, right? And some of the evaluators that always came up with this is a way to help people talk to each other and see that there was a range of strategies and that you could use multiple strategies and you could recognize the benefits of multiple strategies. That free play is definitely an incredible opportunity to observe what children know and can do, who they are. It's amazing time. It is not time to have a cup of coffee and check out. There's an amazing time there. And we can do lots of things to disrupt it or not by how we facilitate the space, the temporal time, how we use time and space. Then inquiry play. This is an emergent curriculum of approaches where we're extending children's thinking and their ideas through explorations, provocations, et cetera. Collaborative play where we use opportunities to enter their play and incorporate target, might be incorporating target skills. The notion of entering, if there's a disruption in the dramatic play, sometimes entering in and modeling some effective social-emotional kind of skills that David was talking about might be something that happens. Then sometimes we actually do plan something more intentional, building out of children's interest, building out of their play narrative. And finally, learning games, which are more prescriptive but are not ever intended, in my view, to be done with the whole group. But children individually, short, judicious, to see where kids are at in specific areas of their learning. And we can appreciate that across these different strategies without saying it all has to be this way and that way. And we can really learn from each other. So I think this is a tool to think about as a tool that can help practitioners talk to each other and understand and appreciate each other's skills and backgrounds. I'm going to move on to before and after-school programs, which we've talked a lot about today. As we're talking about extending the school day through before and after schools. And when we talk about as extending the school day, we're already putting it into a different frame, a different understanding. An extended day has multiple possibilities for children. There's multiple ways to do it. Shared space is critical. And you've already heard it from different people today. The opportunities. If you have a school for 120 children from 8.30 to 2.30 in the morning, you have space for children after school. But it might mean shared space. And that's a big thing. But you've got space. You can use it. And then there's shared practices. If we're sharing space, we need to have some shared practices. I was in this great playground once. And it was this fabulous program where, before and after school, it was licensed child care, came in at 3.30. The kindergarten, four and five year old, and grade one teachers brought their children outside for the last 20 minutes or so. And then those children would be picked up, go home, would go home. And the new staff would come in. There'd be chit chat between the educators, the school-based educators. And then the early childhood folks would be left with the children who were staying for the after school. That day, there had been a parent who was caught in traffic who wasn't registered in the after school program. But that was no problem. They had a chat. The educators had a chat with each other. There was a pass-over of message books. I'm thinking, this is wonderful. I'm standing beside a little guy, Benjamin. And all of a sudden, Benjamin goes, oh my god. So I said, oh my goodness, what is it, Benjamin? I think I'd reframe the language. Oh my god. I said, what is it, Benjamin? Well, Johnny and Sally are on the climber. I said, yeah, they're on the climber. Yeah, but look, Miss Bell has left. Sally's here. I said, yes? Well, you can't be on the climber when Sally's here. And I said, why not? Well, when Miss Bell's here, the climber is safe and we can be on it. When Sally's here, the climber is not safe and we're not allowed to be on it. Now, on one hand, you've got to give the child credit, right? He's got this figured out. And he can't believe that Johnny can't figure it out. But on the other hand, really? We're asking five-year-olds to figure that one out instead of figuring out something about licensing and insurance, et cetera, et cetera. So thinking about shared practices I think is important. If we're going to share space, we have to have shared practices. And by the way, that's how you manage to share the blocks and the et cetera, et cetera. You've got to have some agreement on that. There are opportunities for overlapping staffing. You may not be going the whole distance that we heard about from Beth, that full integration. But there may be opportunities for educational assistance, particularly if they have a background in early childhood, to also be some of the before and after school staffing and make more of a complete day and avoid the shift work, et cetera, et cetera. And we maximize public investments in people and spaces. And that's important. The extended day will increase. If you had universal extended day availability across this province, you would see maternal labor force participation for women with children, six to whatever we count up to 12 or 16, you would see it go up. A whole lot of them are working part-time to accommodate their kids or not working at all. And you would see, and it might not, as Craig said, be as dramatic, but it would have an impact on that. So that's one consider what the school day is. And this extended day has the opportunity to bring back the third space of childhood. There's home, there's school for school-aged kids. There used to be a third space where you played outside until somebody called you in, right? That used to be very, very common. I know I'm going back a few decades to my own childhood and that is ancient history. But nevertheless, we have this third space and it's been lost. There's been a lot of emphasis on very structured after-school activities, which is fine. There's room for that and particular sports and things like that. But the opportunity for kids to direct their own time and their own play with each other outside is dramatically diminishing. And we could think about how to bring that back. We could also do a whole lot more with outdoor play.  I could go on until the early evening on that. I won't. But I think we need to think about the opportunities that before and after school offer. So some examples of what's happening across Canada. Quebec, when they brought in their $5 a day child care and their whole plan in the late 90s, also brought in universal before and after school as part of the school system. The staff are employed by the school boards, et cetera, et cetera. Is it all fabulous? No, but some of it is and it's evolved over the years and that's just part of what is on offer. There is a cost, but it's a flat rate. It's very affordable. Ontario, I've already talked about that the schools must provide some sort of before and after school, some sort of extended day program. It might be licensed school aged child care. It might be directly operated by the school board and then they don't have to get licensed because they've moved the requirements over to the education regulations and act so they don't go through licensing for something else anymore. Or it might be third party delivery for a licensed child care program or a recognized recreation program. Nova Scotia is brought in pre-primary for four-year-olds and by next September, it'll be across the whole province. It's been a five-year scale in and they're bringing in before and after programs that will be for those four-year-olds but also the five-year-olds, grade one and two. Many of them are recreation-based and the emphasis is on outdoor play for those programs. So those are just some highlights of what's happening across Canada. So I want to talk now about leadership. I'm moving on to talk about the third component of what we need to take into account. In order to move this file forward, in order to bring these fabulous demonstrations that are happening here in British Columbia and not scale each one up but scale up some of the big ideas, bring them into policies, we need leadership. And one way of leadership is what happened in Ontario. Started off with this little tiny demonstration, not that different than what we heard from Bev today called Toronto First Duty. It was actually in five schools. And they all looked a little different, right? They were all trying things out to bring the notion bringing kindergarten together with childcare together with family support programs, et cetera, et cetera. And they were very small initiatives and oh yeah, the province didn't like them. They weren't any part of it. That particular political regime had nothing to do with it. But the big school board did, the municipality city of Toronto did and foundations funded it. Started small but was thinking big and it led to in less than ten years our best future in mind was the blueprint to bring in full day kindergarten and to reorganize the governance for all early learning programs. Okay, so it was a big shift. It's a big province. It did that. It was successful in doing that because it always, Toronto First Duty always thought big and always thought about how communicating it was always thinking about so what does that mean for what we need for public policy? It was a, and what we've always communicated about it. Told everybody about it. Told the media about it. And that was, kept it alive instead of being a good idea that came for three years and went home. Not many of these things haven't happened before. Some of them 30 and 40 years ago. When an ECE had a program, preschool program beside a kindergarten class, the two educators got together and did incredible things by sharing, by actually sharing kids space. But then somebody got pregnant or somebody retired or the principal changed and it disappeared. That wasn't going to happen here because we were too noisy about it. We talked about it. We lifted it up. So that's one thing I want to suggest here is important to do. In the local context and thinking about it, it's disruptive. It's disruptive to many, can be disruptive to the ECE community. It can be disruptive. I saw some of you think about, you mean your teachers have to share their space. That's a biggie. It's disruptive. But you can manage that.  So I don't think disruption should be, you know, something that's a showstopper. You can maximize local assets, which we heard about from the examples today and always recognize the schools were built with public money. They are public space and place. We own them. There are places. So keeping that in mind, front and center, and I know I'm speaking to a room of converted here because you're excited about this and you're here, but we've got to remember that even when the going gets tough. But you do need to go forward to think about public infrastructure and you've got to start thinking about it early in the game. You need to find short-term workarounds, my last point. And I heard some of them today. I heard Jeff say, yeah, it's illegal, but we're doing it anyway. That's one approach. And so forth. And then working through the nitty-gritty of getting things licensed. Somewhere down the line, you stop the licensing and you have to reorganize how you do education to that. But that's all part of it and thinking about designing public policies, that make working relationships, relationships are central. But you have to have policies so that you don't need extraordinary people like you heard today to make this work. Some of the rest of us ordinary people can do it if we have the policy backup. And you've got to resource the public teacher, you've got to resource the public school principals, right? Because school principals are central, you've got to have them on board and design ways of doing it that doesn't make it impossible. So moving forward, you have 47 changing results for young children. You have 12 transition to kindergarten initiatives. You have the three initiatives we heard about today. You've got something to work with and to build up and to learn from and making that learning centralizing in some ways. As I said, the public schools belong to the public. They're a universal platform. And the benefit about basing things in public schools is they don't have a stigma. Everybody goes to them. And thinking about what can you do? What can you take home and do to share your space more with the partners you do have in your schools? What can you do to bridge those cultural divides? What conversations can you have? Strong Start 5 came out in 2017 with a focus on transitions to primary school. That was the focus. They were promoting this. It's essential and it's a good document. But they pulled together people from Australia. They pulled together people from European countries, from North America to talk about that. And that group came up with five themes at the end. And one of them was, let's not talk about transitions. Let's talk about a continuum. And let's talk about the policy practices we make. We need to base them on data. Let's find ways to have a common way of looking at quality. Let's require... If we want to make this serious, we have to have a public policy platform and funding. We need to make it universal, ECE for all. And it got to be playification, play a thing up, not schoolification playing down. So the Congress actually went further than the OECD did. Essential to going forward in this province, in my humble opinion, is you have to pay attention to only one in four children between two and four years right now participate in an early childhood education program in preschools or licensed childcare. You're not going to be able to have continuity of learning into primary schools if there's nothing for them to continue from. So thinking about that is the lowest in Canada. So that's something to think about. And it must be quality and that requires infrastructure and funding and the schools can play a role in that. And access requires, as I said before, based on the child's age, not parent's activity. If we want to get serious about doing it from the child's right. And I want to close with what's coming up from our foundation. Our foundation is publishing early years study four. Four isn't there, but it is on... There's some cards there. And you can go to the study website. It'll be out in the early new year. It'll expand some of these ideas and others. It's the fourth one. Margaret McCain is the author of it. And if you want to sign up to hear updates, you go to the website and sign up. So on that note, I'll leave you with that, is something to take away. And I am finished. I see you. So I think my time is up. Yeah.


The 50 millimeter, is normal boring? My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best photographer I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures, in hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is Bright in the Edge. When I started photography, the 50 millimeter lens came with on just about all new cameras. It was, I guess what you could call, the kit lens of the day. So for those that don't know, a 50 millimeter and 35 millimeter frame is considered by some people, the normal focal length, what you see, what best represents what you see with your eye. It might be a little less than that. Maybe it's the 40 millimeter, but these have always been called the normal focal length. Recently I was watching a YouTube video and a pretty well-known landscape photographer was asked if he used a 50 millimeter lens. And his response was, a 50 millimeter lens is normal. And normal's boring. I laughed out loud when I heard that. And the reason I laughed was, that was me probably most of my life, at least at the beginning of my photography career. I probably heard it from someone else. When I started working as a professional many years ago as a news photographer, I just carried wide angle lenses or wide angle zooms and short telephoto. Usually carried two bodies. The 70 to 200 would be my telephoto. And I really just never concerned myself with the middle with the 50 millimeter. I just left, I've had this lens for many years and it just set on the shelf. Fast forward 25 years and I find myself feeling naked if I don't have the 50 millimeter in my bag. There are times when I'm going out and I want to save weight and space. And I think, well, I'll just take my 20 and my 85. But there's always that voice nagging in the back of my head. Take the 52.  It's very compact. I mean, it'd be silly not just take it. And there's so many times where I'm really glad I did. It was just the right focal length for the shot I was making. So why have I changed my mind? Why is it that I value the 50 millimeter so much now? Let's start with the size. Now, this is a 1.8 aperture, which keeps it pretty small, but still fairly, fairly fast lens. But the size of this thing is incredible. I mean, it is very light. It is very compact. I mean, there's really, it's like when I'm carrying it, it's not like I'm really carrying anything anyway. I might as well have it. I don't use wide angle zooms right now. I just have my 20 millimeter. I've kind of settled in on a wide angle that I like the most. And so this fills the gap between the 20 and the 70 to 200 or the 85, just depending on what I'm using that day.  And for me, I would prefer to have a little bit slower lens and stick with this size. Now image quality with the 15 millimeter is another attribute that I really enjoy. It's really very sharp lens. I've been so impressed with the image quality that I get out of this really affordable lens. I'll even use this thing at F16, I know. What about diffraction? I've tested this lens at F16. And it really, there's very little difference. It looks great. So why not, you know, get that extra depth of field. 22 might be, F22 might be pushing a little bit, but F16 works great, at least on my copy. Price is another thing that is very attractive to this 15 millimeter. I mean, they're very affordable. You could probably go on just about any site online and pick these things up for under a hundred bucks. I mean, extremely, extremely affordable, at least for the 1.8 aperture. When you start going to the faster lenses, they do the price does go up quite a bit. But for my needs, for landscape photography, I really don't need those fast apertures. The 1.8 is plenty fast, works plenty well. You're not gonna find a better bang for the buck than the 50 millimeter lens. It's just sharp, affordable, and extremely compact. Sometimes I feel a super wide angle lens pushes that background just too far away and it stores the image so much that I feel like all you're really seeing is the effects of the lens and I don't think sometimes it's doing justice to the subject. In this mountain scene, I really think the 50 millimeter is was the perfect choice for this shot. I also shot this photograph, more telephoto, but I really liked that I'm still getting the presence of the mountain. But with some interest in the foreground, it's more of a balanced image, I think. It's less of a portrait of a mountain and more about the overall scene. I think the 50 millimeter does an excellent job on the intimate landscape. Those middle distance landscapes, like a trail heading through the woods or a path or a road going through a field. I also find myself using this lens for detail shots, for close ups, maybe not macro, but just the detail shot showing some of the elements in the nature and landscape. But for just detail and textured shots, the 50 works great for that. And for those shots where you wanna isolate the subject, but still have the presence of the environment that it's in, you can get that nice separation. You still get a little bit of blur in the background, but it's still wide enough that the environment is giving context to the photograph. I think for portrait photography, the 50 millimeter is a very good choice for full length, through quarter length shots, for people and couples. I like using it for engagement photos. So when I'm doing portrait photography, it's probably my most used lens. I don't do a lot of tight stuff with the 50. I prefer a little bit longer focal length.  The 50 millimeter lens, may not be the best choice for every shot. But there are times where it's just the right lens for the subject or the scene. That's what keeps it in my camera bag. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Well, I hope this little video on the 50 millimeter lens has maybe got you thinking a little bit. Or you may have one and it may use it all the time and it might be your favorite lens. I wouldn't call it my favorite lens, but I appreciate what I get with it. And I definitely wouldn't call it boring. If the photographs you're getting with the 50 millimeter are boring, maybe it's the subject or the composition. I don't really think you should call any focal length or any lens boring. This is a purpose for everything. So give the 50 a try if you don't have one. You might find that it's worth having in your bag. Well, I'm just going to end today's video right here. Until the next time, if you're coming along to the rise.


Felly yw'r amser ar y ddiddordeb entyig o'ch cyffredin nhw a wahanol o'r cyfrinol, oherwydd masydd hordd, f remarkable, garfettau, allwch, am yr unrhyw paddol, fel y ddiddordeb nhw. Felly yw y ddiddordeb ynglyn nhw, y dyfyn nhw'n wych yn ysgrifennu cyrfrinol ar yr angen o'r mentef. I thesem wnaeth y diwylliannol yn eu hun arbennigol i dda'r cyfrinol at hynny, sy'n cyrniad fel y ddarparu gyda'r cwmwysgol i'r ysgrifennu. I was really interested in looking at one particular pilot project called Wellbeing Arrowwash, Arrowwash is in Derbyshire in England, and I worked alongside a voluntary sector organisation called Arrowwash voluntary action for the final 12 months of that project to really look at how they worked in it, whether they were able to enact a leadership role and really just get an idea of what their contribution was and how the project worked. I came to the OU because they have the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership, which is based in the Opium University Business School, and that's the specific centre that looks at the voluntary sector and does research on the sector, particularly looking at smaller organisations. So that was a great pull for me to be involved at the OU. So there's a lot of information here about the things that I was doing on a day-to-day basis when I was collecting my data as part of the project. One of the main things was the ID badge that I got when I was a part of the organisation Arrowwash Voluntary Action, and it was quite important to me to become a proper member of that organisation and to work alongside the people who were there every day. So they saw me as a colleague more than just someone who was coming in as a researcher and then disappearing again. One of the other things were the newsletters that I produced that contained a lot of information about how the project really saw the voluntary sector. I used all this kind of stuff as my data, but as well as actually contributing to it in practice. So I wrote an article in here which was about my research and just let people know in the project what I was doing, why I was there and why I'd be hanging around the meetings that they were in, just to reassure people a little bit that was there in a legitimate sense, that was quite important as well. I found that the new care models policy that informed the project that I was looking at really talked about the voluntary sector and volunteers as key partners and enablers in doing some of this work, but I found in reality that the voluntary sector were restricted a bit to certain areas that the NHS felt they should contribute to rather than contribute to an inan holistic way to the whole project. And also they were not really involved in some of the key decision making processes particularly around funding the project and sustainability moving forward. What being able to do some research on something that I had direct experience of and that I had an interest in was really great and something I didn't really think I'd get the opportunity to do. Obviously doing it in an environment like the Opium University where there are lots of inspirational stories of learning and achievement was great as well and it's not hard to be motivated when you see different people's stories about how they've engaged with the OU and the support that they've had. I'm not necessarily looking for an academic career out of doing my PhD. I'm really more interested in trying to take some of the learning from it and applying it into practice. That's what my background is and it's what I'd quite like to go on to do and I think there's a lot of knowledge and expertise in both academia and in practice about some of the subjects that I've been looking at. And so to combine those and act as a bit of a bridge I suppose would be great from my point of view. So I'd like to moving forward do a bit of both really.