echnically challenging because you've got to ensure that those materials are safe to be used in contact with food and that that journey was should always be pursued if you can make it but you should never ignore the other opportunities and there are great opportunities that we're seeing now for a number of polymers to be that were traditionally looked at as more difficult polymers to recycle to be used in a variety of different applications those include everything from flood defence railway sleepers and a wide range of different applications in addition I would also say the traditional focus has always been on mechanical recycling and in the future I think we will see other forms of recycling which will open opportunities for recycling the more difficult structures in the future as well Just maybe to pick up another word of optimism here I think if you look at what's in the media around plastics at the moment recent months we've seen quite a large focus around black packaging black food trays that are unrecyclable I think if you see the pace that the industry is moving now in response to that consumer demand to do something different to Alexa, Marks and Spencer's co-op moving very fast on detectable black plastics and then looking at opportunities in the UK as to where they could make investments with partners I think that's hugely encouraging and I think we'll see some really big progress in that area in the coming months Other views on that at all? It may have changed but up until recently then agricultural film and agricultural bailing material was another one that was problematic and again had the same things that it couldn't be recycled back into agricultural bails because of standards of quality again for that material I think overall I mean plastics are and there are problematic plastics out there and I would say probably most if not all of the plastic waste generated in Scotland leave Scotland and I think when we're looking at a circular economy and what we're trying to do there are some good things happening we are involved in a project it's called Project Beacon with Zero Waste Scotland and that's looking at hopefully something that'll be a success story going forward looking at mechanically recycling plastics sorting out all the different plastics into their plastic types and then chemically recycling them and turning them into things like fuel, naptha that sort of thing so that project has just been we've recently just been granted some funding to take that forward along with some other parties as well in conjunction with Zero Waste Scotland so that would be a terrific we're very confident that we'll then improve the picture in Scotland and help deliver that circular economy story in terms of packaging where do you see the greatest opportunities in terms of minimising the amount of packaging that we're generating so not just recycling but waste minimisation you've already mentioned light weighting but where do you see producer responsibility fitting into this as well there's quite a lot of change we'll see come about in terms of the sort of packaging that will get used in the future and that will be very dependent on our ability to take those products and recycle them further in the future we've already seen pouches, laminated pouches come into the market they present unique problems in terms of recycling for those problems now being looked at by the industry to see if we can get a win-win because the pouch compared to a rigid container can take roughly 80% of the weight of material away, the challenge then is what you do with it at the end of its life we now as an industry have established a working group at a European level to look at how we can re-engineer those structures so that we maintain the barrier properties that you need in the material so that we don't compromise the packaging in that way so that we can continue development to give further opportunities to reduce the weight of packaging placed on the market so I think you'll see more movement in that area in the future over and above that we have an initiative called PERAP which brings together the waste management industry brings together the retailers the brands and together with our industry and the recyclers to look at how we can actually change designs to make them more easy to recycle and whether that's removing a sleeve from a bottle and replacing it with a label or making sure that the materials in use in a particular packaging design are compatible so that they don't present problems when they get into the waste chain so we're doing a lot of work in that area as well Does that have widespread industry buy-in or do you still see the manufacturers of Pringles and other companies have got problematic packaging resisting that or are they on board as well you're working together to try and make that change Clearly the packaging suppliers are part of the chain and only part of the chain the design by the brand or the retailer if they want to go in a particular direction we can't say to them we're not going to supply that packaging so however having said that with the focus on the circular economy package in Europe I think most brands and retailers will be forced to look at the design of packaging that they use in the future and will have to make changes whether that comes from consumer pressure or whether it or whether it just comes from best practice in terms of sustainability I think we'll see change in that in that space occur more rapidly in the future OK Any other comments on packaging? I think the key is just something Barry touched on at the very end I think it's sustainable procurement because you know taking it back to a local level some of the clients that we've dealt with in the past and the drinks, the food and drinks industry the the design people were pretty much disengaged from the procurement people and it wasn't a joined up chain within you know one company so I think we've raised an awful lot in that front and I think companies are now sitting together and looking at how they can design out non-recyclable materials from their packaging I think there's a lot of I think there's still some businesses probably need to come on board with that but I think there's a lot of I think the profile of that element of packaging is much higher than it was before Thank you Mark. Can I just take you back to the subject of plastics I think Richard Lyle wants to come in on something but just to get this on the record can you give us a feel for where plastic drinks bottles actually sit in terms of contribution to the whole plastics scenario and within that what's your best guess on what the impact of a deposit return scheme would have on the rates of recapture and recirculation Okay. Well if you look at the plastic bottles that are likely to be affected by a DRS if it was introduced you are probably looking at 5% of all plastic waste arising so and then of course you've got to put that into context in terms of total waste arising as well it would only make a very, very small impact on the achievement of Scotland's overall targets and the obviously the performance of the DRS has obviously got to improve on the current level of recycling that we're actually achieving otherwise you will have just invested in an infrastructure I don't know additional costs for no no extra gain So from the experience elsewhere in Europe was there an upsurge in the amount of plastic of that type that was came back into circulation because of DRS or was it negligible Well if you look at the UK as a whole if you look at the plastics bottle and what gets collected and of the type that would be affected by a DRS you're probably looking at a figure of 60% that we're achieving in the UK as a whole there are parts of the UK where we actually achieve above that rate Wales for example I think they're currently achieving a rate of around about 75% if you look at DRS schemes many of which were introduced in the 70s, 80s and obviously packaging mix has changed a lot since then they vary in performance rates from anything in the 50s right the way through the 90s and so it's where you think we would be in that spectrum Okay that's useful to get on the record to Richard Lyle I'd be interested You heard Glasgow earlier talking about recycling rates and how they're 29th out of 32 councils 25% where Angus is 60% Would you agree that because of the make up of the caliber of houses Glasgow has a lot of flats tower blocks that they need to really drill down and get people involved in these houses in order to improve their rates I think I'll pass this over to other comments but one brief comment obviously there are unique challenges with people living in flats particularly where those flats have been designed many many years ago and have got no infrastructure built into them to allow the residents to recycle the streams of materials that we want to I do think that there are unique challenges that require a tailor made solution for that sort of sector of the population would be my view but I'll pass that to other colleagues I think I might broaden that out just to Scotland as a whole in terms of where are we with public attitudes to recycling we've done quite a lot of work in this space so we do an annual for the door recycling index at public attitudes right across the UK and I think there's probably four key facts that would leave you with 8 in 10 people see recycling as a valuable resource but 60% of people aren't confident they know what can be recycled I've been in the industry for seven or eight years and quite often I'll be picking up a material type and I don't know what should be happening with that as well so if that's me I can understand that that public confusion over that one of the elements that was picked up in the earlier discussion was the lack of consistency and 76% of Scots say they are extremely frustrated that recycling collections vary across the country so these add to some of the problems of low participation but quite interestingly 79% of Scots say that they would recycle more if they could see the economic benefit of that going back into public services so the more material is contaminated the higher the cost to councils to recycle that but actually if they could see that as a result of their actions money was being saved and reinvested in local public services that would encourage more recycling so going back to Ian Gullin's point this morning is central to this I don't think that we've done enough to sell that message although there's excellent work going on across the country but that would be a key fundamental element we've got to take the public with us and we've still got a long way to go in terms of achieving that About that survey that you've done have you published that? Yeah, it has published and I can leave a copy with the committee That meeting because it breaks and blows all over the place and you don't know where to put it Is that recyclable? Polostaring is recyclable can be recycled the challenge is because it is particularly lightweight is getting enough volume back to make it economic to do so having said that we've got to be careful that we don't lose some of the advantages with that material because although I can understand your frustration it does offer a fairly unique protection in terms of absorption and also in terms of insulation so it does play a role but yes it can be challenging getting enough volume back to make it worthwhile and that's why it's not currently collected Thank you for that I had three questions to ask on treatment infrastructure I'm going to put them all together to hopefully you can address all the points and compact them to take out some of the wastage we've had we've had we've had quite a bit of enthusiasm about how we're moving forward in Scotland but are the panel confident that the optimum waste infrastructure is being developed in Scotland for example looking at type location and capacity of facilities and with that in mind is there any particular sectors or materials where Scotland is particularly well placed to develop further and on the back of that what would further developments what would they be affected on the amount of waste that Scotland imports and exports just in terms of what I think we've done well and I'll maybe leave one example with you in terms of that in 2013 Scottish Government had a vision that it wanted to boost sustainability as we heard this morning in her number one export Scotch whisky as a result of that the Scottish Government decided that it wanted to develop further processing capacity in that area so that the policy direction from Scottish Government for it or invested £25 million and genuinely one of Europe's most advanced glass recycling facilities at Newhouse that not only boosts the sustainability of recycling in Scotland but also really helps with the Scotch whisky industry and is a real economic driver for investment in the area and also the interesting example about that one linking to SEPA's point has developed in a former waste crime site that was closed by SEPA and other partners it's a really good example of when we try and fit all those pieces together how that can work in terms of what the opportunities are I think my view very firmly would be that those are around plastics I think that's where we're starting to see across the UK and across Europe the most rapid innovation in that space plastic is a part of our life but the two examples that I would give are we talked about very briefly black plastics in the pace that that's moving at but also think back eight months ago in the back of the Hugh Finlay whitting styles BBC, Warren Waste, Hughes Warren Waste the public outcry at the fact that many coffee cups weren't recyclable and the rapid pace of change from the coffee companies et cetera in that space so for me that's where things like this and work like this have real potential to drive that investment case and I think that's where we're going to make the most progress in Scotland is probably plastics for me I think that's we're always keen to be looking at pilots I mean if you take polystyrene as an example we are currently working together with as it happens Welsh Government and looking at trialling how we actually overcome the barrier that I was referring to before and I think in terms of how we move forward I think we've got to be constantly looking at opportunities to do things differently that respond to the unique challenges that we have and whether that's ensuring consistency that you can bring enough volume together and contract with that volume to allow a plastic facility to be built in Scotland or whether it's looking at how we actually overcome the unique challenges of recycling from people that are living in flats we need to be moving into those places if we're going to make real progress in the future and looking at how we can make a difference I think generally have we got optimum infrastructure is it coming? No I don't think so at the moment I think it makes me really sad that we lost our paper mills and our glass plants and our steel mills that could have contributed so much to what we now need in terms of this new infrastructure and generating the circular economy requirements I think we should do more in terms of what I would term intermediate facilities so facilities like we heard Glasgow mention they're smart material recycling facilities that can take multi materials and improve the quality of them so that those can then enter a market and have a value and trade as commodities in their own right it's great that we've got some single stream once but I think to really make the difference on recycling councils like Glasgow I think it's entirely appropriate for Glasgow to do that where it's really struggling to I think generally we struggle with recognition of material types within our bins as householders and I think we do as a nation and in terms of quality then the recognition is the best where you can actually recognise what the item is so is it a plastic bottle it doesn't come under a generic name that nobody understands so I think if we're going to continue to ask people to do things that they don't quite understand what they are then we need facilities that take those ambiguous items and sort them and improve that quality for the market Am I confident that waste infrastructure is right in Scotland? No I think there's massive lots of good work has taken place and I feel as if I'm repeating myself I've said that already, there genuinely is but no I don't think it is there's lots more we can do I mentioned the project beacon thing the project we've got on the go with Zero Waste Scotland just now and I'd be happy to share that with the committee the details on that that's one example of how things can be made better in Scotland but I would come back to the point the energy recovery capacity that we have in build in Scotland in Viridor I've got the plant in Dunbar in Glasgow and the two others that we referred to earlier is almost completely taken up with local authority waste, local authority tonnage which leaves a huge void in Scotland in that area for residual non-recyclable waste so I heard what Ian from Ian Gullin said earlier on he sort of disagreed with Robin I share Robin's view I think come 2021 we I'm not going to say we'll have a gun held to our heads in terms of price for moving export to materials that you were asking about I mean we currently export because we've got no alternative of here, we don't have one so we export RDF and SRF refuse derived fuel and solid recovered fuel to Europe we've already had an increase this year due to what happened to the pound with the Brexit thing and we are concerned about what's going to happen come 2021 when we have no infrastructure in place and you know I think it's something that we really need to be working on now I think it's something that's hugely, hugely important if we can build capacity in Scotland then there's all various different types of facilities you know combined energy plants we look to mainland Europe and there's lots of good examples of that and there's maybe perhaps some overcapacity but there's lots of good examples that we can learn from, learn from their mistakes we're not building a prototype we can learn from other people and I think it's important that we not tomorrow, today, we need to be looking at that We can just come in with just one more example of projects agricultural wise was touched on recently there is within Scotland the committee is a recycling plant for agricultural plastics and that plant the main challenge that that plant has faced has been one of collection so it almost comes back to what I was saying earlier on the on the infrastructure if we can collect the volume the technical solutions will follow to enable us to recycle these materials but the first step is absolutely critical actually making sure you've got the infrastructure in place that actually optimises the collection of material Claudia Beamish Thank you, convener Could I seek views from the panel on compliance and enforcement issues and on the the really specific detail please on the compliance rates for requirements for businesses to present key recyclables metal plastic glass paper and card separately for collection and also if relevant to your business or your knowledge the food businesses to present waste food separately as per the waste regulations for 2012 if you could comment on that and if you're able to take in so much at once I'm just conscious of time so if it's relevant we could just take all the points at once please just seep as new integration authorisation framework and enforcement tools whether they have in your view had an improvement on compliance to date so I'm sorry there's a rather a range of questions but obviously just if you have a specific knowledge of a specific aspect of that if you could so who wants to go first I'm looking at Linda Owens yet again I'll take that head on yes of course there is a lot in that I mean in terms of I do want to see more in terms of business business recycling and they do have things that they're supposed to be doing at the moment and I do recognise the good work that seep is doing with the fixed pallets and notices and do that but I think it's the tip I wouldn't want to see well I think seep are within the resources that they have or are doing what they can but it's nearly a business at a time and there are a huge amount of businesses that are not complying but some that are not even aware that they are required to comply at the moment I think how I would like to fix that is that we talked about the smoking ban and how that happened overnight and the single use carry bag overnight change and the difference with that is that everybody was aware of that and everybody enforced that so if you were a public owner or if you were a supermarket you can't have a bag, you need to pay 5p you can't smoke in here and every member of the public was enforcing that as well so it was self-regulated and that's definitely not the case in terms of understanding and business awareness so that's a huge communication message for all of us and I think if we all got behind that then we would see huge increase in business uptake and participation in the regulations Other comments from the panel? Sorry, I was just going to on the integrated authorisation then I haven't seen too much change at the moment, again that's still going through the implementation process and it's still coming into effect the consultation on some of that is just finished but welcome that in terms of streamlining and consistent messaging across all enforcement Other panel members? I would maybe just comment on the overall compliance rates and maybe look at it from our own business perspective I think with regard to you mentioned card paper plastics in glass on the whole it's an on-going challenge I would say for us as a business tackling contamination we have to educate our drivers who are the guys at the coalface who are collecting those waste streams and we do encounter on-going issues with contamination but we as a business communicate with our customers and try and improve that picture I think it is getting better and I think it's because we're continually communicating with them and I think that comes back to the message that I think what we really need to do is have real focused public education campaigns I think probably each local authority in many ways is but I know there have been lots of national things like love food, hate waste which has been very positive but I think a lot of the local authorities have 32 local authorities doing 28 different things in terms of putting the message out there and I think there needs to be a more combined coherent campaign along the lines of the smoking ban getting a single message out there about what we're trying to achieve that would be my comments on that thank you okay, thanks very much just to wrap up this part Dan Stewart you'd have heard my question at the last panel but what assessment have you all made on the possible effects of Brexit have you set up particular contingency plans to look at the effect that Brexit may have on your own industry so again I maybe pick that up firstly I think the industry as a whole to take it from that perspective has done quite a huge amount of work around Brexit we have looked carefully at the risks and also the opportunities I may draw the committee's attention to a report by Policy Exchange called Going Round in Circles developing a new approach to waste policy following Brexit which I would commend to the committee I think that that looks at some of the opportunities to maintain that focus and the environmental opportunity of what we are trying to achieve here I would go back to the point from a business and an investor perspective what I think Scotland does very well is that it has that ambitious policy agenda matched by the realism of how do we get there and what it also has is that long-term policy support and also that regulatory framework both together give that investor confidence so that whole combined raft of packages from the household recycling charter in particular that's what's going to make the difference and that's what's going to continue to make Scotland an attractive place to invest and I think maybe my last comment on that I think what's also particularly important in Scotland is that cross-party support for what we're trying to achieve here and the fact that it's not just an environmental obligation but it's an economic opportunity and if Scotland keeps to that that remit and that strong policy agenda I think that will continue to make Scotland an attractive place to invest We as an industry have looked at the situation we've looked at the situation as it might impinge on skills obviously the some uncertainty there in terms of our ability to be able to secure labour in the future so we are taking steps to try and make sure that we can compensate for any risks in that area economic growth risks that's the biggest uncertainty I guess for us as an industry because of the uncertainty around exchange rate around tariffs depending on the nature of the actual exit when it's finally negotiated again it's very difficult to offset those risks there is going to be an element of inevitable cost inflation probably as a result of those risks those are going to affect a lot of sectors in terms of legislation our view as an industry is because our industry exports in common with many industries and the EU is an important market legislation as it affects our industry will probably still be framed by and large in the EU it will be tweaked when it comes into the UK I'm sure that will continue but because we will wish to continue to export we will also take a lead continuing lead from Europe Linda I mean generally I'm quite relaxed about what Brexit might be in it and what leaving the EU might be in terms of materials trading given that the majority of materials that we're trading are globally traded anyway so there's not a huge link to Europe and the majority of global trade is linked through OEC the countries the Bala Basal Convention so I would expect that all to continue whatever happens legislation and regulation then I've been called on a number of times by global companies to then to teach them about European law and about European legislation given that it's recognised as the strictest in the world so I wouldn't see that move away from that in any means and just not being in the EU doesn't mean that we can't follow the best parts of Scotland RDF is probably the only thing that I have concerns about an export of RDF or if he's derived fuel and that is a market that is diminishing already the demand for that capacity in other EU countries is growing as everyone has an EU 50% recycling target to meet so all of Eastern Europe is asking for that capacity the same as we are but I would see that SIPA mentioned it earlier in terms of trans frontier shipment requirements I can see them getting tighter and economics changing not just on gate fees for facilities but emissions and shipping and border control of being getting that trade to Europe so that would be my risk area and we talked earlier about capacity in Scotland to mitigate that risk and a lack of that at the moment I think it probably remains to be seen what impact Brexit will have although we do have some concerns that I think have been alluded to earlier in terms of material whether it be RDF SRF or whether that be actually recyclers that are going to predominantly mainland Europe so I think that would be the concerns for me for our industry also though I would agree with what Ian Gullin said earlier I think will continue to share ideas I think will continue to learn from each other both in terms of legislation regulation and just good practice I think that will continue again I mentioned earlier that a lot of people even within Europe are looking to Scotland at some of the good work that is going on with the circular economy and such like and I think those relationships will continue but no doubt there will be challenges around things like Labour that Barry mentioned and exporting Do any of the panel members have any concerns about enforcement in the future of European directives obviously that will be in Europe because clearly it is looking like we are going to withdraw from the European Court of Justice which are the kind of guardians on European-wide of all things European on the environment is it something that has appeared in any of your contingency planning or is it not seen as a central issue I don't think I've been fit to add to what was answered earlier who's not thank you very much for your evidence today it's contributed greatly to the sum of knowledge and if there is anything you want to follow up on please feel free to write to the committee so thank you very much for your time the third item on our agenda today alright you're not being rude by leaving it's okay the third item on our agenda today is consideration of a negative instrument the environmental impact assessment miscellaneous amendment Scotland regulations 2017 SSI 2017 slash 168 can I ask if any members have any comments to make upon that so is the committee therefore agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument thank you at its next meeting on the 27th the committee will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform on the wild animals travelling in Circuses Scotland Bill and also seek general update on her wider portfolio as agreed earlier I will now move into private and I ask that the public gallery be clear as the public part of the meeting is closed


Good morning from the land of maple syrup. I'd say we did pretty good yesterday in yesterday's video, driving in the rain. Although, I have realized this bus is about as leaky as a White House right now. But on this here road, so we're gonna try and not get stuck in the soft part. It looks like that's the funky, all set up for us. You know, good old Canadian hospitality.  So, looks like here's a little set up. We got, there's patch. I was patched so excited. The badge is waving us down. I got a mic behind the wheel. It looks like it was parking right here. Alright, I'm gonna say hi to badge real quick. But Lakutas, everybody, it's Bajanel in patch. Back by Pop. That's an amazing shirt, by the way. I gotta get one of those.  So, what do you like the bus so far? I think it's stolen myself. I don't even know how you sleep at night when you get in. I think it's stolen myself.  That's what we did. That's exactly it. It's a good deal. Like the thing you can tell is there's no oil on it, right? Yep, that's true. He likes the clean engine. They never washed it, they told me. Yeah, that's pretty nice. So, this is the part of the property out here. That's Alberta. That's one of the trailers. There's a little oil rig over there. Those are kinda cool. There's another one out in the field. But they got so much oil now that they're all turned off right now. There's an injection tank that's full of water. And they said that every little pump's got a heater on it and injects the water into the ground to bring the oil up. Right now, they've redone it all. Now it's gone haywire. They've got lots of oil on it. Because the oil goes above the water. Interesting. They've also rebuilt the road coming in. So, here's the... We've got a quarter section here. Yeah, it's a cool spot. Got a little setup over here. It's a pickup truck. Oh yeah. This is Badge's other trailer. Which, by the way, it's for sale. So, look for Badge in the comments. If you're interested in something like this, but you would have to come up to Canada. This is like trying to solve Dan, right? Micro light by Flagstaff. What year is this in case anybody actually wants a 15? Yeah. Look at the room in this thing. Well, it's a good layout. It's a cool layout. It's got the same fridge. And a hot water tank is a big one. And a big air conditioner. This is a 13.5 air conditioner, which you don't find very often. It's a 10. That's cool. A big washroom. A porcelain toilet. This is pretty cool. We are living in luxury. This is where you guys are staying. It's a little bit below your standard, but we'll have to live with it, I guess. I think we'll make do, huh, Michael? We'll have to figure it out. Anyways, you guys know what time it is? It's Waffle Time. Let's go do some waffles. With the real Canadian meat for sure. Oh boy. We're heading into town. I don't know why I think to just get familiar with things versus so we're going to leave the still unnamed bus here at Ground Zero. So, apparently this was under the road, and then it just kind of came up that of the road. I don't know. Is that right, Badge? It was right in the middle of the road there. In the hole there. It was about this wide. About six, eight feet long. I was trying to grab it, pull it up, but Brad tried it. He went along with the grader and pulled it out, not so it was. When they originally made these roads, they'd come in and flatten the trees like it was like that, right? Flatten the trees, bury the trees on the road, and then make the road over top of the trees. Like a corridor road, that's what they used to call them, right? And then they built the road, and then those trees are all the way through this road, all the way down. Interesting. We're about to go into Badge's favorite store, the Badge where we're going. This is the backbone of the Canadian right here. We're going into Canadian Tire for the first time. This is what dinner is looking like. I made Ampatti's famous coleslaw. If you guys want the recipe, it's just half Greek yogurt, half mayo, fresh dill, and cilantro, salt and pepper, cabbage. We got the crew over here. Badge, what are we cooking up? German sausage, bacon and cheese, and wingers. And what do you call these things? Burnt dogs. What about smokies? Smokies, yeah. We call them smokies, yeah. There's a campground host, Brad, over there. Yeah, there's a campground host, Brad. Don't forget there is a fire ban on and we're not allowed to have fires out.  Yeah, that's right. We got the hammock set up right over there. Life is beautiful. Hey, Canada. Welcome to Canada. Where's the maple syrup for the hot dogs? Oh, good idea. Well, if you guys ever wondered what 7.30pm looked like in Canada, this is it. The boys are getting antsy and the bus is ready to be ripped out. There's a truck right there. We're gonna get out of here.  You still got sunlight in this. It's clocked. We got three hours of sunlight. It's weird. We're gonna have the bus done in like two weeks. It's gonna be like so much sunlight and we never have to stop. Did you show anybody the bunkie yet? Yeah, well maybe I don't know about the inside. Yeah, we did a brief thing. By the way, it's for sale. Let me know what you think in the comments. All right. Got my suit on. Ready for action. The boys are getting antsy. Looks like first up to go is this thing right here, this lift. Yes? Oh, you got one. I did. All right, what are you doing? I don't know. I'm just gonna take out screws all over the place. I told you, the boys are getting antsy in here. All right, so this is where we are currently. We're removing some seats, so we did these first little group of bolts here. You ready? Inside? See how easy that is? Ready? Look at that. Rust free. This is what you can expect with a rust free bus.


The proposed FDSSC framework was able to reduce the training time and improve accuracy when compared to existing deep learning-based methods. It achieved state-of-the-art performance on three datasets while significantly reducing the training time. This article was authored by Wenju Wang, Xu Guangdo, Zhongming Jiang, and others.


Hi everyone, Joe for jasmiescasebreaks.com coming at you with mosaic football 2020 mosaic football hobby pack number 92 with nine of those national treasures football first off the line spots that were given away It's pretty nice 52 dollars can get you a pretty pretty awesome spot for a fraction of the price if you end up in the top Nine a little bit of a risk, but all of these people here are willing to take that risk. So thank you As always we're gonna do the break itself first. Let's roll it randomize it one and a four five times for names and teams one two three four and five five times for the teams one two three Fifth and final time. All right, so no trade windows in these sort of filler breaks that you see often Chance to get a a pricier spot For a fraction of the price. All right, so let's sort by column B alphabetically by team. Let's just print this out Let's rip and let's see what we got in the pack Now there's the fresh box that we opened up. We did pull an autograph, but there still could be one more So we're gonna select a die I'm gonna select that one right there. We're gonna roll it. Well, first of all, we'll pick a side one two three for the left side four five six for the right side Four five six right side. So then we'll go one two three four five six on the packs And it's one so it's from the top pack right here right. Andre Johnson Donovan McNabb Jalen Rigor and there's a Tua. Nice. That's not bad Base rookie card going to Sean and the Dolphins There we go. That's not too shabby All right. Now that was the final print out. Let's go back to the list again. Let's grab everybody's names There's some new dice. There's a new list And it's gonna be the top nine After five one and a four. Good luck one two three four And fifth and final time So from ten on down It is sad times. I appreciate you trying to thank you Happy times though for the top nine because you are in that nt first off the line break brian Matthew shear a couple times pj. Sean o Matthew pj pj and Matthew Congrats to you. Thanks everyone else for giving this a shot We're gonna do one more of these before we can rip that box open So let's finish it off jaspy's case breaks.com


Hi, I'm Camille. And I'm Stephanie. And we're from sicksisterstuff.com. Today we're going to be sharing one of our most popular recipes on the blog. And it's also in our cookbook. It's our Black Bean Tuck of Soup. And this kind of happened by accident. I needed dinner really fast. So I was just throwing stuff in the pots, whatever I had in my pantry. And it worked out, which doesn't happen a lot. So this is how I made it. It's just one pound of ground beef and browned with one onion. You can also do ground turkey. If you want to do a vegetarian style, just don't use the meat and just add another can of beans or you could do a pinto bean, something else. So anyways, you can brown your meat in the one pot. It's a one pot meal. Super easy. Once it's all browned and the onion is soft, then you just start dumping in cans. It's literally that simple. So because it's a black bean soup, obviously, can of black beans, you want to make sure these are rinsed and drained. So dump that in. And then the rest, you don't even have to drain. We have two cans of diced tomatoes and just keep them with all their yummy juices in there. And then a can of corn. And once again, don't even worry about draining it. So thanks for serving that. You're welcome. Getting that all done. I love green chilies. I love them. You can add them if you want, but if you don't want the heat or if your kids maybe don't like the heat as much, don't worry about adding them. But they do add a really yummy taste, I think. And then a can of tomato sauce, just a little can. Mix it all in. And the thing that makes it taco is taco seasoning. Now, a lot of people don't like to use the taco seasoning packets because of what's in there. We have a delicious homemade taco seasoning that you can find on our other site that we started, MyRecipeMagic.com. Just type in the search, homemade taco seasoning, and you'll find that there. Okay, so mix that all together. You'll simmer it on the stovetop for about 20 minutes.   My family loves to put tortilla chips with it, and then of course, cheese on top, always. And then throw a couple of chips in there, and dinner is done. So we'll slide this over so you can see. And there you go. So there it is, your easy black bean taco soup. You can find great recipes like this that are quick and simple on our blog, SixSisterStuff.com. And also on our cookbook, Six Sister Stuff. Have a good day.


A wide range of resources used in everyday life such as charcoal, honey, medicinal plants and fish are derived from the sustainable utilization of our wetlands. In commemoration of World Wetlands Day, the Department of Forestry in collaboration with the Southeast Coast Project, the Department of Fisheries and the St. Lucia National Trust hosted a tree planting at the Makote Mangrove in efforts to regenerate the mangrove forest ecosystems in areas where the species previously existed. Chief Forest Officer Alwyn Donnelly notes that wetlands are an integral part of the natural environment of St. Lucia and have significant value for biodiversity and coastal protection. He also stressed on the importance of ensuring that wetlands remain protected and preserved. We take today to observe the importance and the value of wetlands, not only to us but the intrinsic value around the world about a third of our wetlands have been destroyed and our activities, our actions here today cause for us to do a lot more to protect and preserve our remaining wetlands. A series of waterbed consensus were also conducted to determine the waterbed populations levels and the trends in numbers and distribution. National Project Coordinator for the Jeff South East Coast Project, John Calyxt, explains that the activity is fitting with the mandate of the organization to rehabilitate degraded areas and preserve as well as conserve areas in the Southeast Coast. Wetlands have very significant importance, as was said, as a carbon sink. They're migratory species, bird species that come here every year. And also there's a lot of biodiversity in the area which needs protection and conservation. So all of these activities fit nicely into our project objectives, so therefore it was not a problem for us to accept the invitation to be here today, to participate in the activities and also to support what's happening here today. The theme for this year's event was wetlands action for people and nature, which highlights the importance of our actions to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands for humans and planetary health. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anisia Antoine reporting.


Isn't it annoying when your friend comes home, opens your phone and then uses any app? This simply don't seem to be care about your privacy. Whether it's your chat messages, photos, trackers or anything. And you certainly don't like that. Well, we recommend a strong application that understands your privacy very much and locks down your chosen app with one single tap. Yes, we are talking about secure lock apps for Android. Now, let me tell you how secure lock for apps works. Install secure lock for apps from Google Play Store and open it. Create a 4 digit passcode and reconfirm it. Add a recovery email address and save it. Enable the application from the next section and choose all those apps that you want to keep away from prying eyes. Applications will be listed in your phone and you can simply tap on the lock button. If the button turns green in color, the application is secured. If you wish to know the features, let me show you. Secure lock apps for Android can lock your app behind your own fingerprint or a newly created pen. It has an interactive interface so you do not need assistance for navigation. It doesn't let any unauthorized person access your WhatsApp, Facebook, photos or money transfer apps. This application is very light on your phone and uses minimum battery power to keep the performance up to mark. Even if you lose or forget your pen, you can recover it via your email address. It's simple, isn't it? So download it today and secure your apps from your inconsiderated friends. So that's all for today's video. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe to our channel. And for regular updates, press the bell icon.


Everybody forced here ripping one box of 2021 Chronicles football hobby for Abraham R. Thanks Abraham and good luck Is it for a break tomorrow's Invicta? Nico Collins to 49 rookie purple Terrace Marshall, Jr. Remondres Stevenson obvious is disconnected Zack Wilson score rookie silver Etn Wong Wu fire move Zack Wilson a flux rookie Trask Justin Fields rookie Jersey to 399 Gainwell Kellan Mond Brandon cooks to 399 Mack Jones dine-a-gon And Mack Jones clear vision Say Kenneth Gainwell rookie auto from prison black Magnitude Najee Harris read the 199 Terrace Marshall, Jr. Nico prison black rookie silver Sam Ellinger Eskridge Nice prison black purple Justin Fields to 199 Grats Abraham. There you go, man That is awesome. We'll get that in a mag for you Michael Carter to 75 rookie score auto there prison black Javante Williams a Herbert on the back that's gonna do it. Thanks again Abraham. We'll get it right out to you


Welcome back to Titans All Access from the Bet MGM studio. Time for Talking Ball, presented by Duncan, and here is Jim Wyatt. TennesseeTitans.com Senior Writer Editor. In our last segment, Amy Wells did a great interview with rookie punter Ryan Stonehouse. Are you even a little surprised at how his success from Colorado State has translated to the NFL? Not after seeing him this offseason. I watched him in college against Vanderbilt, I think at least like an 81-yard punt. I remember watching that game and thinking, well, this kid's got a leg and then he shows up for your camp and he's hitting bombs early on that this kid is legit. He's got a strong leg and I think this organization knew that if you let him go, somebody else was going to sign him and he's continued to do that during the course of the season. This week's opponent, Jacksonville. First time in 52 weeks we have seen the Jaguars. So as you studied them this week in preparation, Jim, what stands out to you as a difference or differences in Jacksonville? Well, Trevor Lars has gotten better and they've lost eight games. I think six of the eight they've lost in the final couple of minutes. So they could be sitting here at six and six and I'm not counting a game against Indianapolis. They lost late too. This is a team that could be over 500 trying to get into contention to win the AMC South. So I think he's a big part of it. He's thrown it all over the place. He's really settled down. Travis Etn has gotten a lot better for him. Kristen Kirk has been good. So the offense for Jacksonville has gotten better and better and that's got to be a concern for the Titans. Some people think he's the fastest back in the NFL. Maybe not. Defensively, a lot of young talent. What jumps out to you about the Jags defense? Well, they have not been as good on defense as they have on offense. I think they have had some shortcomings. They're not playing well enough in the secondary to allow their pass rush to get going. They've got 19 sacks this year. Certainly can rise up and play, but they've been winning games or been in games because of what the offense has been able to do. All right. So, ended up here, Jim. What are your keys to the Titans beating the Jaguars on Sunday in this very important AMC South game? Well, I think the Titans need to kind of reclaim their identity a little bit and that's running the football and being good against the run. We've got a home stretch coming up where you can kind of take care of the division and put yourself in a really good spot at the very end to maybe potentially get some guys rested up for a postseason. That's not on anybody's mind right now, but that's certainly what I think you've got to do is you've got to run the football. You've got to find more plays in the offense and kind of get back on a roll like you were during that 7-8 stretch. Read Jim Wyatt at TennesseeTitans.com every single day. He's got great Tennessee Titans information for you there. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Mike.


very welcome. I have a little bit of a broadband, what would I say, issue. So I may switch off my video once I've said hello to you, but thanks everybody for joining us today. What we're going to speak to you about is our experience of translating universal design for learning policy into practice and the way that we've approached that is it through the development of a toolkit for Moodle, which draws on the UDL principles and offers practical advice and tools for academics at DCU to translate those principles into practice. And whoops, okay, there we go. Just to give you an overview of our presentation, Karen is going to introduce you to universal design for learning very briefly. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the universal design for learning principles, but just to frame the discussion around the toolkit. Then I'm going to link the work of the UDL toolkit to the DigComp edu framework and also make reference to some of the findings from the index survey that was published last week. We're going to give you an overview of the components of the toolkit and then back to Karen, she's going to speak to you about the development process of the toolkit and a little bit about feedback from our pilot users and then we'll just wrap up by outlining our next steps, which includes the sharing of the toolkit through Creative Commons structures soon enough, probably in June or going well. So with that, I'm going to pass you over to Karen. Thanks, Suzanne. So I suppose to briefly provide a quick overview about universal design for learning. It's a framework essentially to improve and to optimize teaching learning and assessment by removing barriers in the environment, both physical and virtual. So we think that small considered changes to practice can make the curriculum accessible for everyone. And essentially it ensures that a high quality of education for students can still happen and certainly provides for full and very active participation for learners. So this practice improves student engagement and retention while positively enhancing the learning experience for everyone. UDL promotes the use of multiple approaches in teaching learning and assessment and it's encompassed by three main principles. So they are the multiple means of representation, multiple means of student engagement and multiple means of action or expression. So UDL is considered best practice for inclusion by suggesting flexible instructional materials, techniques and strategies that can empower educators to meet the varied needs of learners. So the three principles of UDL can help us refine how we approach who we teach, what we teach and also how we teach. And as we all know, technology enables the quick modification of learning materials to meet the specific needs of our students. But it also means that virtual learning environments such as Moodle are really well placed to address the goal of universal design for learning. So it's the responsibility of institutions and developers who maintain these environments to plan for inclusive practice. In DCU we recognize that learning is a partnership between learners and teachers and we hope to employ student centred learning design where the student voice is heard and that informs the design and implementation of the learning experiences. So in order to enhance this inclusivity of the learning experience, what we intend to do is to promote the principles of UDL in the design and delivery of all of our programs. And I suppose now more than ever we're required to design our programs to allow more flexible delivery online and also using the technology that is available to us. So to fulfill the commitment that's outlined in the DCU strategic plan and the constituent teaching and learning strategies, we've tried to draw on expertise and best practice across DCU and beyond to implement a UDL pedagogic framework to underpin our institutional approach to teaching, learning and assessment. So maybe Suzanne will discuss the European framework for digital competencies. And really I suppose what we're looking at here is number five empowering learners. Thanks Karen and apologies if I got the timing on moving the slides a little bit wrong there. Not at all, perfect. Okay so the work of the UDL toolkit speaks to the dimension number five in the DHCAMPA edu framework which is called empowering learners. And this dimension is broken down into three parts. The first relates to accessibility and inclusion which obviously speaks to developing learning resources and activities that are accessible to all learners but it also speaks to considering learners' expectations and their digital abilities or capacities. The next part of this dimension, differentiation and personalization explores offering choice to learners so perhaps allowing learners to advance at their own pace through a piece of learning or to develop the development of individual learning pathways. And then the final part or aspect of the dimension is the active engagement of learners both in terms of engaging with the content and then engaging with the creative expression of their learning. Okay so you can see how those three aspects of dimension five connect quite easily with the universal design for learning principles. The first one accessibility and inclusion connects to multiple means of representation, differentiation and personalization then connects to multiple means of engagement and then the active engagement of learners speaks to two of the principles, multiple means of engagement and multiple means of action or expression. And just we wanted because the index survey is hot up the press we just wanted to mention two findings from that report very briefly but are relevant to the UDL toolkit. Students have called in the in the survey for consistency around the use of the VLE and we feel that the UDL toolkit offers some opportunities and tools for staff to create consistency in their use of the VLE. And the other finding that stood out to us when we were preparing for this session was that students are calling for improved navigation and signposting in the use of the VLE which we also feel that the toolkit can offer some guidance and support around. So the toolkit itself comprises of three different parts. The first is an introduction or overview of UDL which is available in both text and video format in line with Universal Design for Learning Principles. The second piece is a Moodle template which I'm going to show to you shortly which seeks to address the issues raised in the index survey around creating some consistency in the use of VLE. And then we've got a series of UDL checklists which we hope will also support engagement with UDL principles for staff. So just bear with me because I want to share the template with you so I need to get another screen up if anybody can sing while I'm just doing this. And there we go. Apologies. Okay so you can see that the template is is very very simple it's not a very complicated toolkit. You will see over here on the right we've got a little section for the course outline or the contact details of the lecture and also a placeholder an image placeholder where we're encouraging people to pop a picture of themselves up just to orient the students and their office hours is the last kind of suggestion that we have in that section. We've gone in the introductory section of the page we've got automatically an announcement or course news forum. We've also added an ask a question forum the DCU academic integrity and plagiarism policy and then we've popped in a template for a Moodle handbook where we're hoping that people will populate with material related to their own specific module. And then very importantly over on the left we've got by default the accessibility toolbar available within the template. Karen is going to speak to more about the development of the toolkit but one of the surprises that we had when we began developing the toolkit was how few people were actually aware of this toolbar or block within Moodle and how well received it was when they became aware of the accessibility block. So that's here by default in our template as part of the toolkit. Okay stop sharing back to the slides bear with me a moment. Okay here we go. So then we've got our UDL guideline checklist and the idea here is that we've provided a range of checklist types for staff. Originally what we what we thought was that we would present these options to to staff and that they would select their preferred type of checklist but actually the feedback to us was that they'd like to have all of the checklist types available in the toolkit and that they would choose the appropriate toolkit checklist for their particular context at any particular time. So you'll see the first one here is a tick box kind of checklist which goes through each of the UDL principles and then breaks it down into checkpoints around the guidelines. So people just have a look at the suggestions there and they tick the box if they've met all of the requirements. The next one is the educator checklist which was developed by CAST and this again breaks down each of the UDL principles and then the soapheadings but here they offer kind of ideas or examples around how you might address each of those checkpoints on the UDL principle list and it also offers some space for your own ideas or notes over here to the right. So it's a little step up from the last one and then our final checklist type is is a progression rubric adapted from a rubric designed by Melissa Toland. We have the reference in these slides which will be shared later and what we did was we took Melissa's design and we incorporated the dimensions of the three framework developed by Napier University to support the engagement of staff with technology enhanced learning. So we we took those three dimensions and we mapped them on to Melissa's design. So you'll see here on the left you've got your your checkpoint relating to principle one and then at each dimension of the framework there are some examples and definitions offered within the breakdown of the checkpoint. So you'll see here use a Melissa's language if you're at a level of emerging practice in UDL you've got your choices here at checkpoint one, checkpoint two, checkpoint three then you can move on to proficient and finally to expert level and we've mapped those on using the language of the three framework enhanced extend and empower.  Thanks Suzanne. I suppose taken from our experience as learning technologists and academic developers we really thought about designing and developing the process of the toolkit really to be in consultation and partnership with our colleagues and we can all agree and we all know that we're all busy and I suppose we didn't want to just start designing the toolkit without consultation.  So what we wanted to do was to try and sketch an outline of exactly what would be useful I guess what would be a kind of a starting point perhaps for for our colleagues and really this started with a focus group. So what we wanted to do was to engage those who teach we wanted to pilot with two faculties who had different experiences I guess and engagement with Moodle and we wanted them to kind of tell us what exactly they need we wanted this to be something that enhances their practice but not so burdensome or not so cumbersome that would stop them in their tracks to implement a UDL template just like this. So that consultation or that initial focus groups were really really informative for us in designing and outlining some of the resources that Suzanne has just shared with you as well. So in piloting our toolkit, oh thanks Suzanne, in piloting our toolkit really what we wanted to do was get a sense of what exactly works for them we wanted to actually try and get into a conversation with meaningful engagement with our colleagues and what we discovered was that UDL was broadly understood by our participants they definitely aligned three principles of UDL to look like good teaching, good learning and fair assessment. So the idea of the toolkit was a nice way to scaffold and to use maybe stepping stones perhaps in applying the principles of UDL in their use of Moodle for teaching, learning and assessment. So in designing the toolkit I suppose on some of the results of the piloting and what we actually discovered in consultation with our colleagues was actually that we needed lots of time and I suppose each of our participants agreed that they wanted plenty of time to be able to practically apply these templates and these resources and any small or significant changes that they were making in their loop pages. The fact that Suzanne and I were present in this focus group or this semi-structured support session was also really important to help us design and to explore what was working well for the faculties who were testing this out. I think some of the real benefits of allowing the time and the space for colleagues to be able to sit with us to be able to take some time out of their day to redesign or to reimagine what their Moodle pages look like really out loud and opened up a conversation for what was important for both the lecturers and their students as well. With regards I suppose to what also I suppose ensures that we're always or we're continuing to design approaches that are efficient and are worthwhile for our student experience was really just about asking our colleagues what were maybe the most frequently asked questions or what were maybe some of the difficulties and what they perceived as barriers to learning for their students and we were really encouraged I suppose looking at the the responses to the pilot group we were really encouraged to see that it provided the use of these kind of templates and these progression checklists provided clarity for the students and allowed our colleagues to be able to organize their loop pages in a way that was able to respond effectively to maybe some of the common barriers or some of the common questions for our students as well and you'll see some of the pilot group responses presented on this slide and some of our participants responded that they've completely changed all of their loop pages which was really encouraging and ultimately that made them maybe much tidier and perhaps more clearer for the students to be able to access information and resources. Also setting up things like tasks in a in a considered way and allowed for the students to maybe engage a little bit deeper in some of the concepts or some of the ideas that were being shared as well. So all in all I suppose and while we're still I suppose I want to roll this out into a institution-wide rollout hopefully in September we think this is a really good opportunity and with all of the the difficulties surrounding the last few months with the shutdown of our institutions we're really seeing that UDL can be an opportunity for our faculty to be able to engage with these principles of inclusion to ensure that as they're redesigning and redeveloping their window pages for next semester that these toolkits and these checklists and these templates can be helpful for them redesigning or reimagining what their loop pages look like. I suppose to move on to maybe the next steps perhaps and what we would like to do is also get your feedback essentially and trying to get a sense of what exactly is working in your institutions and to share what works best. We're going to be further developing the toolkit again trying to have this kind of breadth across the institutions for all faculties and particularly perhaps for those faculties or those staff who aren't familiar with the UDL principles and also offer to deliver this and develop this with staff in a scaffolded process that was something that worked really really well with our colleagues but also we'd like to to share this toolkit with you as Moodle users as well to see how it can be adapted or how it can be implemented in your institutions. So finally I think we would just like to thank you for attending this presentation. We'd love to welcome your feedback as Suzanne mentioned earlier the toolkit is going to be available through Creative Commons in June and we'd love to open up to any questions that you may have. Thanks a lot Rob and thank you everybody for the invitation. I'm Fran McKegney and Justin is our learning technologist. We're going to change gears actually quite a bit here. I'm going to share my screen and let me just share my screen and bump up the presentation. Hopefully you can all see that. So while Karen and Suzanne were doing the presentation which was really which is really impressive I think well we're really going to change gears here. We've had both the interesting opportunity I guess and the challenge of really looking at teaching and learning and the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning from a very fundamental perspective over the past year and when Rob sort of approached us about would we like to participate in these in these webinars and suggested competence three of the European framework teaching and learning we immediately said yes not just because we couldn't say no to Rob but also because this is an area that we have been very guided by and really working on for the past year. So just to sort of you know ground you in this particular part of the framework you can see at the bottom I have this competence refers to designing planning and implementing the use of digital technologies in the different stages of the learning process and you can see some of the bullets in section three which is in blue you know teaching guidance collaborative learning and self-regulated learning. Rob said are you okay to do this and we said yes do you need to make any changes no we don't and the reason was because this is an area that we've been really looking at very closely over the past year so this is going to be a quite a simple presentation just to sort of revisit what we've looked at over the past year and how Moodle fits into our plans going forward I'm going to sort of talk about the overall architecture that we looked at and then I'll hand over to Justin who will talk more specifically about Moodle's piece within that just a little bit on a burning for those who don't know us we're obviously a digital college blended learning is our model for from the perspective of this webinar let's just say it's 50-50 it's not quite but I think it's a good way to think about what we do so 50% is online and then 50% is classroom based or face-to-face and so on our students are spread out around the country and we then organize them into regional groups we have about 23 different regional groups and the regional groups are overseen by a college tutor and members of the of the adjunct faculty the face-to-face elements so the classrooms and so on school placements happen are regionally based as well and obviously in since COVID-19 we've had to move all of those elements online so been 100% online at you know at the moment in addition to that we obviously have because of our teacher training we obviously have all of the sort of school placements and so on and so our architecture has to support this very distributed model and we have to support you know at least 50% at least 50% online now our model up to now our VLE is known as my hands it's Moodle based it's like a big brain and everybody comes into it from their laptops and you know as Rob has said we have used it very extensively in the last six seven years and pushed everything through it what we wanted to do was to step back and revisit our assumptions about about our digital architecture and to sort of have a broader conversation about what we might need going forward over the next five to 10 years so we looked at two fundamental questions and we involved everybody from the executive management team down in the discussion about what this might look like two big questions where what will teaching and learning look like in the next five to 10 years we really took a decade view we separated our conversations that were next week or next month or next six months in terms of immediate needs and said what's going to happen what do we think is going to happen what do we want our teaching and learning to look like over the next five to 10 years and then what digital architecture will we need to put into place to support this and does Moodle have a role does Moodle have a role in our in in our future so very fundamental very fundamental conversation what we did was excuse me what we did was initially we created six workshops we chose different teams for the workshops we gave short presentations and then opened it up to a broader discussion we also used Microsoft teams to create a series of channels around each of the workshops so that we could continue the conversations between the workshops so on six consecutive Monday afternoons we ran a series of workshops we had 40 to 50 people at each at each session and they included everybody from the executive team to department heads to you know functional leaders in their areas on the subject of what what do we do you know what where do we do what do we do going forward so you can see some of the teams here the role of mobile technologies and hibernious future student identity in the student journey using digital technology to strengthen community and learning in the regional groups given our regional structure collaborative learning and research the whole notion of collaboration was key to our to our work over the past year the future of the VLE future of student support use of video and teaching and learning and so on we then issued a report you can see the cover of us there on screen and we then got into a series of more detailed workshops for example we spent half a day looking at collaborative structures to support learning and research what would that what would that look like we moved away from email and and and so on how would we make it how would we make it more collaborative and so on and in parallel with this we were looking at technologies in the marketplace including moodle competitors to see what would be the best fit based on what came out of these what came out of these workshops so a simple functional representation of how we envisage ourselves going forward instead of moodle playing this hugely enormous central role that it does at the moment it would be more a component in a more distributed system and and would interact with those be seamlessly integrated and interact with those components so for example in in terms of video we fortunately made the decision that there would be a lot more use of video in education over the next decade we talked about a virtual video network we got talking to zoom about a year ago we did a series of pilots we deployed before the end of the year we trained up our staff at the beginning of this year so that when the coronavirus hit us in March we were actually quite well geared to to to deal with the sort of educational implications of what was of what was going on there we also want to encourage much greater use of mobile technologies in the future phones ipads and and so on and we're currently building student staff mobile apps which are hibernia college apps which will have quite powerful capability particularly in the area of particularly in the area of collaboration when we deployed zoom we also deployed zoom in every member of staff every student got a full professional license again to encourage not just student student communication but student student communication collaborative research our students are post graduates and so to really put more capability into the hands of both staff and students going forward other elements you can see every student has access to office 365 account and also kind of focusing on student dashboard initially but then moving to dashboards now more in general so in this sort of in this kind of functional architecture then we looked at moodle and had to make some decisions about how we would move forward with it and i'm going to hand you over to justin who kind of take the story from here brilliant you can leave it on that slide for him in the front and thanks everyone for being here this is fantastic for me really enjoying the session so thanks to Rob and just to comment and Rob know we didn't know it was coming and we didn't buy shares in zoom so we missed that boat so i've been pretty much working in building moodle to Tara and many other VLEs for the past 10 years and through all that time we still haven't managed in with hibernia now to actually build or turn moodle into the digital learning unicorn that everyone seems to want okay it's just unattainable we can't do it might be 10 years signed but at the moment definitely not and so as i said we looked at so many other platforms myself i must have went through about 20 25 30 of them weighed them all up and the one platform that kept rising to the top was moodle and just from every point from ease of use a lot of the times it's simplicity so if we just go on to the next slide there Fran oh yep sorry justin is that back on screen for you she's stuck on that one sorry will i stop sharing and reshare yeah please so at the workshop i brought up this slide to show staff moodle isn't just a name there's a reason behind the letters as you see and i don't most of the time as i've been working in moodle and working with it one of the things i've sort of neglected was the first letter there m for modular okay we've slowly been packing moodle with every type of plug-in and every type of integration but realistically moodle is fantastic at delivering learning it's fantastic at enabling students to upload assessments and it's really good at displaying grades and we we've consistently tried to pack it with everything else so we sort of took a step back and say how can we make this a little bit easier for the students to use uh faculty and staff and we sort of focus in on the modular look and aspect of it so we just want to move to the next slide there Fran so we wanted to create in hiberny at the moment um we have a module and inside that module we'd have subjects we're going to have up to four subjects five subjects so you'd have one um module would have english math science and history and the problem we were having was that all assessments were pushed into one particular module for the whole program so we decided to create a module hub based around these subjects where um the assessments were universal between all the subjects um the briefs and it would house a lot of universal documentation that would relate to each one of the subjects so this would make it easier for students to navigate to their assessments uh faculty to navigate around the actual subjects and cells and then staff to um pull reports and requests from us so we've put an awful lot of sort of time and effort into pairing back everything we've put into Moodle and um taking it way back to the basics um as you can see we're leveraging Moodle's underlying architecture it's quite simple um but it's very powerful so we're we're sort of trying to clean house so in order to do this we're after um pushing a new team and a new instance of Moodle and we're moving to version 3.9 in September isn't it friend? In September yeah in September and we're using the azure platform as the portal so anything regarding um sort of reports now will be housed in the portal um so a lot of the staff will not have to actually go into Moodle to pull reports they can actually do it through the portal the dashboard for students will be there so it's a base we're actually taking back control of Moodle of the VLE so we're taking all external items that we would have tried to push into Moodle we've put them into the portal and it's just free and Moodle up to be a learning environment and that's what it's designed to do so um this is the last slide here and as you can see um as Fran detailed all of our external sort of sources and functions will be held in the portal and Moodle will be just left as a learning um platform so one of the one of the interesting sort of integrations that we are faced with say is the integration of Moodle with a larger number of components um in in our architecture so for example the students and staff mobile apps will play a very central role in the life of in the life of the students at launch in September I'm going to say we have a one-way link between but it's really one and a halfway links which is largely from Moodle to to the students to students app notifying them of you know college notices events webinars school placement information and and so on there is a return path it's a little awkward at the beginning um in phase two then that will become a two a completely two-way flow between our own apps and our own collaborative workspaces and Moodle and that was leading leads us to some interesting issues like the integration of our mobile capabilities with say our discussion forums uh with with discussion forums on on Moodle and and so on so um what's been interesting to us is when we looked at competitors out in the marketplace Moodle as Justin said clearly arose to the top in terms of scalability functionality stability and so on but instead of being encompassing our whole world it has moved back to a more component of our overall architecture focused on a number of key things the calendar assessments delivering the the learning progress information and so on that that Justin has has outlined and it will be an interesting journey over the next couple of years as we see how it how it develops from here so just wanted to share share this with you and I'll hand back to Rob and any questions that people might have


For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. India's right-wing government is set on diluting its environment protection laws. The government has proposed amendments in the environment impact assessment process that will make it easier for private capital to exploit natural resources. EIA 2020 includes provisions that can grant environmental clearances to a variety of projects without adequate scrutiny that can allow violators of environmental laws to get their projects regularised by paying fines and that exempt many kinds of projects and activities from any consultation with the local communities. Historically, the efficacy of the EIA process in India has been limited. Environmentalists have referred to it as a rubber stamp for legitimising environmentally degrading projects. Almost no projects have been rejected as part of this process. The worst affected have always been and will continue to be the marginalised communities who survive on land and forests. Without public consultations, the forest communities will lose the only opportunity available to them to learn about the projects and demand that their needs are not neglected. It was the only real obstacle in the way of environmental approvals and it has now been removed. The exemptions to public hearings will adversely affect the rights of forest dwellers to conserve and protect forests, their right to minor forest produce, and their access to biodiversity which has been guaranteed to them under the Forest Rights Act. The law is yet another in a series of anti-people laws pushed by the Narendra Modi government in the midst of the pandemic. It is being pushed in a way that people are unable to resist and unable to get information. The notification for EIA 2020 came just before the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in India. Unable to physically resist, activists launched online campaigns against EIA 2020. Three websites where such campaigns were being carried out were blocked by agencies affiliated to the Modi government. The new impact assessment rules have only been published in two languages, English and Hindi and the government has refused to publish the document in the 22 regional languages notified in the Indian constitution. This makes it particularly inaccessible to the indigenous and forest communities. People in eco-sensitive zones especially have strongly opposed the proposed law. Trotters are gaining momentum in the northeast in states of India and over 50 environmental organisations and activists from across the Himalayan region have issued a statement opposing EIA 2020. They say in their statement that the Himalayan region today is in the most vulnerable position with massive climate-induced disasters, increasing deforestation, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, drying of rivers, death of groundwater sources, melting glaciers, hollowing of the mountains, solid and hazardous waste-related pollution. Amending environmental norms will accelerate the ecological crisis in the Himalayas.


In this video, you will learn how to install Miniconda, create an environment for the tutorials and use JupyterLab and the Python console from QGIS. First download the installer for Miniconda from this website. The link will be provided in the description of this video. Run the installer. Keep all the defaults and click install. After installation, uncheck these boxes and click finish. Then in the start menu, you can find the Anaconda prompt Miniconda 3. The 3 refers to Python 3. Now we need to create an environment with all the Python packages that we want to use for the tutorials. We use the command conda create, dash dash name, then the name of the environment, then dash c which means the channel where the packages need to be downloaded from, that's conda forge, and then the name of the packages. We need PCRuster, we need QGIS, we need a specific Python version, so therefore we specify Python equals 3.9, so it will use Python 3.9 instead of 3.10 if we don't define anything. That's because QGIS at this moment needs version 3.9. We also need matplotlib, JupyterLab, PyCRS, NumPy although it probably also comes with the other packages, and git to download the repository with the tutorials. Then you hit enter to install. The Python packages will now be fetched from the conda forge repository. It will also take care that the dependencies are met and that everything that you want will work well together, so you don't have to worry about that normally. I did it fast forward because this normally takes some time, and after installing the environment we can activate it by typing conda activate and then tutorials that's the name of the environment. In brackets before the prompt you see now tutorials instead of the base environment. I moved to the Z drive where I want to clone the repository, which basically means that I'm going to copy from GitHub the repository of the PCRuster tutorials that I want to use in this course. Now it has downloaded the files from the repository and I can find them here. These tutorials are in Jupyter notebooks and the best way to run them is to type JupyterLab and this will launch Jupyter from your browser and it will normally start with the launcher and you can choose to launch a new notebook, Python console, let's do that and here we can type Python commands, it uses ipython for example print hello world and with shift enter I can execute the command and the result will be printed here on the screen. With the plus I can add another launcher, let's add a terminal in this case is the Windows PowerShell and here you can use the command line interface to navigate your operating system. I can also create a Python file so here I can type a script, multiple lines of code that can then be executed and saved as a .py file. So let's make a simple script as a demonstration, a equals 1, b equals 7 and c is a plus b and we do print c. I can save this file, I can give it a name, if I remove everything here it will go to the root of where we started JupyterLab and I can click write and create a console for the editor so we can also run the code. You can choose which kind of console you want and we want a Python 3 console and then I can run this code by selecting the code and do shift enter then it will run in the console below, if you see it gives the result or we can also use the run menu to run all code or we can run selections. Now I can also run Jupyter notebook by just going to the folder and here I go to the contents page of the map algebra tutorial. Let's remove what we don't need and you can drag these tabs to a place where you want it so if I want one screen the Jupyter notebook and the Windows PowerShell and the Python console then I can do that in this way and this is very useful to have everything from the browser on screen so we can follow the tutorial, I can navigate my operating system using the terminal that can also run part of the code in the Python console. To run code in the Jupyter notebook you do shift enter. To close the JupyterLab server you simply go to file shutdown and then it stops the server. Normally you would save the state where you were so next time you launch it you have the same tabs open. Alternatively we can also use the Python console from QGIS because we have installed QGIS in this environment. So type QGIS to run the QGIS version that you have here in KONDA, this is version 3.18 because newer versions are not supported yet because some dependencies have not been solved. After starting QGIS you can click the button with the Python icon to run the Python console and there you can have a Python prompt where you can type Python code and run it there. You can also write scripts, you can write lines like print hello world and just do enter to run it and you can run scripts that you can write here in the editor. So you can write a script of a few lines here to demonstrate this and save the script and then you can run it and the result will be displayed in the console.