Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for our event today titled Human Rights in the Digital Age. My name is Gordon LaForge. I'm a Senior Policy Analyst in New America's Planetary Politics Initiative which is thrilled to be hosting this conversation today. The subject we're covering is Urgent. An increasingly prominent feature of modern life is this pervasive data collection and surveillance that's carried out by corporations and states. It feels mundane and familiar and I think that's because in part it's creeped gradually into our lives. I always think that if you were living in 1993 and then you suddenly time travel forward to 2023 you would be appalled and outraged by just how pervasive it is and how privacy autonomy and dignity are all being undermined by this system of big data collection surveillance capitalism. Planetary Politics has performed research into some of these issues that we've captured in a landscaping report called Governing the Digital Future. You can check it out on our website and the other impetus for our event today is the release of a new book titled We the Data by Wendy Wong, one of our speakers. Wendy is Professor of Political Science and Principles Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. We are also joined by Michael Zelenko, the Executive Editor of Rest of World, which is a truly excellent online publication that covers the impacts of technology around the world, especially outside of the western bubble. If you don't read it, I strongly suggest that you start. And last but certainly not least, it will be jumping on in one moment is Bulalani Jili, who is a meta-research PhD fellow at Harvard University and a prolific researcher and writer on Africa-China relations, cyber security and surveillance, as well as internet policy and other subjects. So I want to thank you all again for being here. How we're going to proceed is we're going to start by turning it over to Wendy. She's going to talk about her book to kind of set up the conversation, introduce all the issues in it. We'll then turn over to Michael and Bulalani to give their thoughts and reactions to what Wendy says. And then we'll just proceed with some questions in a conversation that I will prompt some questions. And at the end, we'll turn it over to the audience for their questions. Welcome, Bulalani. We've just finished up our introductions to join. Throughout the event, everyone in the audience, I encourage you to send your questions at any time using the function that you have on your screen. We only have an hour for this event today, so let's jump right in. Wendy, please take it away. I want to thank Gordon and Heela Russell for setting up this event and also to Bulalani and Michael. I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say and also our conversation around these really important issues that Gordon was raising. So I'm a political scientist, but in this talk, I really think I'm trying, and in the book, I'm trying to engage more than just my own discipline here. In fact, the book is written really with a interdisciplinary and policy-oriented stance. It's a book that's recently been published by MIT Press. It is the same name as this talk, which is We the Data, Human Rights and the Digital Age. And in that book, the broad question I'm really trying to ask, I think at the very top level, is why is it important to talk about tech through the lens of human rights and vice versa? So this is a project just to give you a bit of context. It actually came around right when the pandemic hit, like right just a few months before. And what really enabled me to think this project through quite a bit was the fact that, like everybody else, I and my family were suddenly thrust into this world of digital interactions where we might, where we would have ordinarily done face-to-face interactions and work and all sorts of things that would have taken place in person all of a sudden had to be on digital platforms. And so it gave me a great reflection point and sort of a, you know, play by, a live play by play of how pervasive digital technologies are and how much of our lives have actually changed because of them. And also how much our lives have become data as a result of the pervasiveness of digital technologies. So this is a book about AI and human rights that approaches it through the lens of data about people, data from all of us. And so in the short time we have today, I'm going to be giving a very broad overview of the book in anticipation for what I think is going to be a great conversation. So I'd like to start at the intersection of amazon.com, basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal and the reality TV show Shark Tank to talk about data and human rights, which I know is not exactly where most people start, but it is where I start because I wanted to talk about the Ring doorbell. And this is actually where these three entities come together. So amazon.com owns the Ring company, which was initially featured on Shark Tank and whose fortunes turned around or were turned around by, among other things, Shaq's willing endorsement in a series of commercials. So I'm sure many people here today have encountered Ring or other video doorbells with names like Google Nest or Arlo or Blink, another amazon company. You may own one, you know, about 16% of American households do and numbers will have changed since then because of the pandemic sales surge, especially here in North America. So the Ring, like other video doorbells, really offers people the ability to monitor and record the area around their doors or wherever they decide to place these doorbells.  And it's really handy too because you can link a bunch of Ring products together. They sell lights and they sell other cameras, really being able to link a system around your property for security. And so, you know, what this really effectively does is it changes the ability of the terms of who surveys. And so I think in the current contemporary age, we might be accustomed to, we might have even, we might have started not even seeing things like closed-circuit TV monitoring in public spaces by government or by private entities, let's say in a mall, right? We're sort of used to seeing cameras. But I think Ring products takes it to the next level, right? So these are now surveillance products that are on people's private homes but face public spaces. So we're talking about streets, right? Where people walk and drive and otherwise go through their daily lives. And so, you know, voices and images are being captured on Ring snippets, which then creates audio and visual data for analysis. And actually Ring company has gotten into some controversy for agreements it has with law enforcement, about thousands of law enforcement agencies to share Ring camera data without the knowledge or consent of the actual owners of the device that collected those data. So there's some controversy there and also if by merit of a paid subscription, people who own doorbells or other Ring devices can download video and audio that are captured through their devices. Sometimes these things work in unanticipated ways of course, as many of these things do. There have been a number of highly high-profile documented cases where hackers have actually hijacked the camera and two-way microphones on these devices to harass the elderly, to stop children, or otherwise unsuspecting users of these products. And I think more generally we as pedestrians or as drivers, we're going about our everyday lives. We're probably unaware of these devices as we move through neighborhoods. We're definitely not consenting to our activities, however mundane or harmless, being captured on Ring. And also, doorbell owners are not always consenting to how the footage is being used from their devices. And I would say that practically speaking, because of the Ring's functions, it's actually quite difficult to obtain consent for all these different capacities that just one kind of device can have. And the Ring is just one of many what we call smart, quote unquote, objects, recording and sharing data about us with various entities, be they corporate or government, because these entities have an interest in collecting data from people about our activities. And these days I think we hear a lot about data from people, data being taken, data about our activities. We're often confronted with news about how companies are using data in ways we find troubling. So either tracking our behavior across the internet or even sometimes we can serve as free fodder for generative AI like GBT. And perhaps there's also a feeling among many people, we can't help but fall victim to these incidents because of how our lives are structured and organized around smartphones and other internet linked devices to conduct our day to day activities. So we engage with digital technologies whether we like it or not. So if you live in a big city and you're tapping into public transit, if you're patronizing stores that use loyalty programs and some even use facial recognition technology these days, we have our purchasing histories analyzed and tracked through websites and apps. And those are just some of the ways. And even today, the medium of our interaction today is the Zoom platform. It's a digital meeting platform. In a lot of ways then our lives are data-fied, which is to say that behaviors that are revealing of our innermost thoughts and personal activities have become digital data. Another way we might say this is that a big part of our lives have been made into data. And I think this is it's important to flag here that we are often told that when we think about datafication, when we think about data, that data are valuable because they're commodities, right? Something to be bought and sold like oil. Or we're told data are byproducts. They're dust or detritus or exhaust. And we're told often that we're the product if we're not paying. And all these things are I think market relationships and market driven ways to think about the relationship between human beings and the data generated about our activities. But I really want to push us to think about data, not as part of these market transactions, but actually as part of us, what it means to be human, as part and parcel with the human life and the human experience. And in that, and so doing, I want to think about data as subject to the globally endorsed framework of human rights. But I do so in a very specific way. So, you know, I don't have time to go through all of these today. I'll only be going through two, but there are five main takeaways from the book that I'd be happy to talk about more in conversation with Michael and Bulalani and also in the Q&A. But I will be talking about data stickiness and why we need human rights now more than ever. So, when I talk about data stickiness, I'm really talking about data as though it's gum. Gum sticking on the bottom of your shoe. So we've all had this experience of unknowingly stepping on some gum and getting it really stuck on your shoe. And it's really hard to take it off. So similarly, we can think about data generation, the creation of data around our activities, kind of like this process where it's relatively easy and seamless to have data created about your activities and your choices. But it's actually very difficult to, often we don't know that it's being done, which makes it different from gum. But in the same way that, you know, gum is sticky like data that once created, data are pretty hard to get rid of. So let me explain why that is through four different dimensions. So one thing I will say before I get to those dimensions is that we all know that digital data are easily copied and transferred. That's what makes them valuable. That's what makes them useful for us. And so that's not the reason why they're sticky. Because there are four other ways in which data about people, the process of datafication is actually quite sticky. And the first is that the great majority of the data being taken about people's activities are quite mundane. They're not extraordinary. They're not really remarkable and not notable. So you think about the types of data that are collected on a routine basis about your life. It might be the number of steps you take. It might be what you ordered on Amazon or your commute pattern to drop off the kids and go to work. These are all little things that are being taken from our devices or about us that we don't necessarily have the capacity to change. And so it's very mundane every day. It's stuff that we can't really avoid doing. The second reason why data are sticky is because they're linked. And this is just a way to say that to refer back to the idea that digital data are easily copied and transferred. So this is data don't just stay nicely in a single data set. In fact, once data are created, they're often broken up and sold and traded on the market. And so there are lots of links between the various data sets that are out there about our activities. And this doesn't have positive or negative effects and we can talk about that more later on. The third reason why data are sticky is because they're effectively forever. And this is because once they are created, it's actually very difficult to verify the deletion of any data even after we do our best to close accounts or ask data be deleted. And so it's actually best to assume that data are out there and are effectively immortal. And finally, data are sticky because they're co-created. And I want to talk a little bit longer about this because I think it's a really important idea that sort of connects datafication directly to human rights in a very problematic way. So data are co-created because data about people require a data source and a data collector. So we're all sources of data and data collectors have an interest in creating data about certain types of activities that we participate in. Without data sources or data collectors, there is no data. There's no one to collect from and no one to do the collecting. So we need both parties, which is why data are co-created. And this is actually a practical problem in terms of thinking about property in the human rights term, especially about whose data they are. Because on the one hand, you could say data sources have a legitimate claim because the data are about them. But you could also see why data collectors also have a claim because they actually have created the process by which to make those data. And so there's a data source and data collector relationship that's really important for human rights. And there's also a need to think about actually the fact that many data are collective in nature. So while we all individually experience data collection, the data are only valuable in the aggregate when data collectors and other analysts can draw inferences from quote, people like you, right?  And so even though data come from individuals, they're actually made use to draw boundaries between different groups to create different collectivities that we're not even aware of. And so there's a very, there's a high likelihood that you have the possibility of affecting someone else's experience without even knowing when or how. And so it's important to remember that when data are created, they're not created in an isolation and they have collective and individual implications. So I want to turn to talking about human rights and why human rights matter. And so as political scientist Jack Donnelly notes, human rights are about human potential, not who we are now, but what we might become. And so many of you here might be familiar with the story of how human rights came about after World War II at the international level. And the big document that came out of this was, of course, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which set up 30 articles that established international human rights as universal, unconditional, and interdependent. And human rights are also entitlements that states are responsible for providing or protecting. And so some of the big examples that you many people are familiar with in terms of human rights are freedom of expression, freedom from torture. But there's also the right to education, the right to choose a marriage partner, the right to a fair trial. And there are lots of different documents that protect human rights now at the UN level and at the regional level. I don't want to get into that because I actually think what's important is to think about the logic of the UDHR. And so there was a logic that the framers of the UDHR came came to the table with after negotiating for years over what was important. And they came to this idea that human rights and the UDHR fit into what was called a portico.  There's a rationale for the different types of rights that are listed. And they came up with rough categories for how to think about human rights and how to think about the collective human rights project in the roof of this building. And so there's a real way to think about how things fit together, even though their freedom of expression and the right to choose a marriage partner are actually quite different types of rights, but they all fit in in the same document. And what I really think is important about this document is actually the foundation, the foundational values of human rights. In other words, what sustains human rights are these four values at the base of the temple. And I encourage people in the book and in my thinking about this, not to think about individual human rights that already exist as the starting point for for thinking about how we might use human rights in a world of datafication. I think there are lots of different ways we could do that. But the values of human rights really matter because that explains what all these documents what all these articles are for. And so in the book I focused on these four values. You know in 1948 they had slightly different terminology. So instead of liberty I actually use the word autonomy to think about acting and making choices freely because that points out one's agency. I talk about community instead of brotherhood. I think that's a nice genderless way to think about sociality and membership. And I also focus on dignity which is about the worth of a person in terms of how they feel and how they're treated. And finally, equality is also about this idea of a desire to be treated without discrimination in accordance to a common baseline that we all share. And you know it's important to note that these issues are the ones that are coming forth in a lot of the debates about AI. It's not that dignity and equality autonomy and a community are no longer relevant. But it's that now we have to think about how to to enact and exercise and realize these values in a world where we're not just worried about physical detention and physical harm just the world that the UDHR framers were working with. And I think that it's really important to think about how datafication is a change in human life but it's not that data and the digital are separate from physical human life. In fact they're quite intertwined and I think that's really the issue that we're all trying to grapple with today. And so you know to conclude I don't I don't think human rights are the silver bullet for the challenges of datafication on humanity but I think centering the values of autonomy, community, dignity and equality is going to get us started down a path that's globally established but also important for thinking about regulation of AI and data more generally. And I think this really speaks to how we can balance the scales of power that Gordon referred to in his opening remarks thinking about how data sources might have more recourse than they actually currently do with regard to our relationship with with data collectors. And I think you know it's also really important to grapple with the collective nature of data and how individual choices that we make can have implications for many others who may not agree or even know about what we're doing. And I just think about this it's Christmas time there you know advertisements for DNA kits like 23andMe now. 23andMe is inherently you know a day and DNA data are inherently shared so if one person chooses to use these kits there's information about all of their relatives in all the outputs that they receive and I think that's a really important point to think about that many digital data are actually collective in in nature and in their their implication. So I'll end my comments there thank you for listening. Thank you Wendy that was fascinating a great setup and overview and I appreciate that there's so much more in your book that we couldn't you couldn't cover in the talk so all of you listening I encourage you to go out and buy it. We the data it's from MIT Press. So I want to turn to Michael first and then Guililani afterwards but just to offer any remarks or comments or thoughts that you have on the the issues and the topics that Wendy raised. So Michael over to you. Thank you Wendy thank you so much for that and Gordon thank you so much for inviting me to this I think I really appreciate that conversation I think just combining actually Gordon your opening remarks with Wendy's presentation I think thinking about the two ways in which we got into our current state right one is kind of rewinding the clock 30 years and and being shocked by where we are now it's an incremental kind of step by step year by year it feels like a little bit more data is being collected from us we feel it's a normalization right it's a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water to the point where I think I'm curious to hear from Wendy in terms of how do we make people kind of reopen their eyes to this to the state of data collection and the importance of it and I think kind of comparing that kind of slowly boiling pot of water with data collection happening outside of the west where your new systems are being introduced very quickly that are collecting lots of data and you actually don't there's a large loss of the population actually don't know what the data is for they seem largely unconcerned with that data collection and there you know I was actually just speaking with a deputy editor here at rest of world who said you know in India the customer would would give their you know their medical records to the to a grocer right if they asked right there is no sense of ownership over that or sense of value in terms of what that data actually means and so I wonder kind of for both those communities you know the one community that's grown totally accustomed over 30 years of data collection and communities that are just kind of facing this mass data collection all at once how do how Wendy how are you thinking about kind of signaling the importance of that data collection to them opening their eyes to it I think you talk about in the framework of data literacy but I'm wondering if you can speak more to that that's great thanks Michael yeah Wendy do you want to go ahead and respond to that and then we'll go to Mulalani right afterwards sure I mean thank you Michael for a very easy question to answer you know you're asking like this this is I mean this is a huge question and but I think so my history as an as an academic is you know I looked at collective action I studied NGOs for a very long time working in the human rights space in particular and so you know I've spent a lot of time thinking about how people get together around issues that that seem intractable to change so I think part of it is talking about it I think there's a normalization to data collection but I also think there is a sort of non-realization as to how pervasive these practices are so a lot of times they give this talk and people say oh well I've known about this for a long time I don't have a smartphone or but then I'm like but you use the internet right like and you have you have other ways you have an email right and maybe you have a gmail account like that okay then you're you're in the system so I think part of it is understanding data collection and what it's for and how how it undergirds this whole system of AI and I think part of the problem actually is that the debates around AI have existed I think largely disconnected from the debates around data collection when in fact AI is dependent on data in order to generate the output set that we find valuable in society so without big data we wouldn't have a lot of the advances we have today with with AI and I think that really needs to be brought to the forefront that we should not be just talking about algorithms or just talking about computing resources that when we talk about AI we need to talk about data and because a lot of AI systems are being deployed in society using data taken from people's activities we need to be really upfront and honest and explicit with that kind of that relationship I think that might generate some some traction but you did mention data literacy that is something that I usually do talk about with this book because I think one of the things I when I got to the end of the book I realized is that a lot of people don't when they hear the word data it's you know either people are intimidated by it or they haven't had experience working with it with with data and as a social scientist I you know I have a lot of experience working with data about people taken directly from research subjects and so I think this is something I thought about a lot and it's also something I think is really important for this idea of data literacy so it's not about making everyone a data scientist or forcing them to you know become computer scientists working with with lots and lots of data I think the idea is just really getting people to understand the choices behind data creation and that data collection and analysis involves a lot of different choices about the types of things we look at the populations we're collecting from the methods we use to collect those data how we understand you know certain types of indicators to symbolize some quality about a human being that you know that is not a direct observation of someone's thinking but maybe is is is an indication right and or is a way as a shortcut and these are decisions that data creators have to make that those of us who are data sources don't necessarily have to think about right now but I think if we don't start thinking about these types of things yeah you're you're right there then we end up with this situation where people don't they feel paralyzed right and I think that's a real concern. Thanks Wendy and I want to return later to some of those points that you raised regarding transparency regarding openness and then AI we already have some questions coming in from the chat regarding the the implications that AI will have for this whole conversation but but before that I want to turn it over to Bulalani to hear your thoughts in this conversation so please. Yeah sure firstly I'm just like likely to kind of thank everybody for being here and I'd also specifically like to thank Wendy for a wonderful and kind of thought-provoking book I'll kind of initiate my comments first with some reflections around the book but more kind of immediate some of the comments made in the presentation and then I will kind of kind of end it with a question one thing that I'd say firstly two things that I thought were quite significant is really the kind of scholarly and then kind of scholarly and public contribution that the that the book makes at one level it's really about problematizing technical artifacts and how they are traditionally offered to the general public as a solve for traditional problems like security so for example the kind of the surveillance camera where it is a commodity then is you know made exchangeable in markets that then is presented to larger publics as a means to solve an obviously challenging and intimately felt problem around security and so in kind of reexamining this kind of technical solve for traditional problems were both being asked to reconsider our relationship with technologies as in effect not functional instruments but really as political and cultural and social artifacts and then we'll also then ask to think a bit about the the data that those technologies rely on to offer us the solve or to offer us the solution to our challenges and so in many ways it's kind of an intervention that asks several questions about us but also several questions about the technical artifact and to me one particular question that I think I had right afterwards was you know what is really the kind of conceptual distance between densification and commodification and how are they possibly interchangeable but also how they possibly different because in many ways data vacation to me is intimately kind of connected with the commodification of things where commodities are offered as solves which in many ways then offer skate other ways of thinking other ways of addressing problems and so why go to a security camera for a sense of safety and not think about other possible alternatives to questions about safety and so the kind of the question that I had was in particular you know how can we you know adequately squared notification with commodification and I'll just leave it there that is a very insightful and deep question and Wendy I wonder if you have any thoughts about that and then Michael also if you have any reactions to that go for it but but Wendy sure thank you Bilalani for your very kind comments with regard to the book and you know I'm seems like we're really on the same page with regard to of the way that we see the importance of technology is is not a fix right with the technological solution but actually there are so many social political cultural implications and economic implications and I think this is one of my this is the concern I have with regard to how data are talked about because we tend to treat data as the commodity as something that can be bought in Seoul but because most of the data that I'm interested in and that that AI companies are interested in is taken from people and their activities for their choices this becomes problematic because in the human under the human rights framework people are not commodities and in fact you know one of the the most widely accepted sort of customary international norms is this idea that slavery should not be allowed right and if we treat human beings as commodities this is what we're you know we're getting closer to this idea that that then we can trade some elements of human beings on the market and I think that is where human rights are really important to bring forth I do think as you point out we are dangerously close to treating data as as come we do treat data as commodities I think there are efforts to retrieve that through financial relations so you know paying people dividends for for data that are collected about them but again that's a commodification of human behaviors and traits that I actually think given our human rights framework of autonomy or the values of autonomy and dignity that those are fundamental violation of of those values in terms of thinking about how data are bought in Seoul so in that sense I think the that you struck up the very heart of the book which is a rejection of thinking about data only about commodity only at the commodity or in the economic sphere when we have as human beings so many other spheres of interaction that we you are engaged in Michael do you have any additional thoughts there I don't I mean I think it's a really interesting conversation I think the other kind of framework I wonder when we're talking about data is through like a political lens in terms of data collected not necessarily by corporations but by government bodies and how that data is then transformed into kind of political power that's something that we've seen in some of our reporting and I wonder if that actually offers a different avenue for understanding data that isn't just a commodity right but it's actually a political a political token that can be used well alani do you have any thoughts about that because I know a lot of your research is focused on how national governments especially operating in in foreign contexts are generating and using data for political purposes but do you have any thoughts there for sure for sure you know um and you kind of uh correctly pointed out is that you know much of my work is very much interested in both I'd say technology being presented as a fix to traditional political problems but also those kinds of questions sitting at the intersections of kind of I'd say historical inequalities at a global scale between the global north and the global majority and in particular I'm actually working now on a project that looks into offering us a genealogical account of the construction of the technological fix to economic inequalities that were kind of earmarked at the end of the colonial encounter so kind of the colonial encounter here I'm specifically thinking about the kind of the 20th century kind of colonial end of the colonial moment and how kind of the World Bank and other kind of stakeholders constructed ICT infrastructure projects so kind of telecommunication infrastructure as a way to pursue development i.e. as a way to kind of address inequalities during you know the colonial moment but then afterwards and what is particularly interesting is trying then to figure out one whether or not these kind of technologies offer the promise of development then while simultaneously also then thinking about well what are the limitations of development particularly the development that is kind of neoclassical in orientation i.e. that like the market is the basis to offer solutions and then you know effectively what is left behind or what is forgotten or what is then obfuscated by that general commitment and at one particular level that I have become more curious about is in particular about the kinds of you know uh say resistances that you can see at least from the ground surrounding that and you know many of the kind of the stakeholders that I engage with in Kenya in particular you know either said you know we need to effectively try and ban surveillance systems or we need to effectively try and go completely off grid but you know that general I'd say uh I think correct kind of political instinct runs against the kind of the narrative of well you know surveillance is here for your own security but you know again the question you know from them is it's like you know are we really safe or are we you know being asked to kind of further participate in a kind of um default setting where mass surveillance is the only uh solution to kind of political and political stability questions in the context of Kenya. Can I jump in here actually I mean I just in response to Bulalani and Michael I do think you know this question of of when states use data um is it is it different is a relationship still and um and I think it I think it's important to think about who is providing the state with these data and so you know we many states just outsource the data collection to private corporations like NSO group right with the famous Pegasus app I'm thinking in my own work on facial recognition Clearview AI is a huge important player for many governments because they provide this massive database of facial data for for police and other agencies to use so on the one hand I think yeah governments and they may not be commodifying in the same way as companies the data from people but they certainly are engaged also in the in the sort of separation almost of human beings under their jurisdiction and the data that come from those human beings and so they're objectifying right we're being objectified and then and then there's this market relationship that we focused on in terms of commodities but I think that's a that's a really good question and distinction sure yeah could I quickly jump on to that also and then you know we could kind of you know maybe I don't know it's actually really up to Gordon um but you know um I definitely do kind of think it's it's interesting to think a bit about of justification and codification um and at least to me at least I could directly speak to my own personal work what is kind of interesting is specifically thinking about the state and it's kind of I'd say atrophy over time at least in the context of low income countries where effectively it does rely on the private sector to offer you know solutions to additional problems that were initially in the purview of the state and so it begins to kind of effectively outsource policing functions to a large corporate actor and now the corporate actor you know in some ways it is interested not necessarily always directly aligned with the state you know the state in itself might say you know we're interested actually in offering better say policing services uh while say you know the company that it's kind of partnered with that's in the context of Kenya as a far away they're more interested effectively in extracting as much data as possible for commercial products that they'll offer in the future to the citizenry as customers and so to me in many ways uh at least what I've become more curious about is specifically how do we understand least out-solventies uh and you know is the analytical aperture of kind of the private public useful or should we be kind of thinking of more hybridized states similarly with the relationship between I'd say like the citizen consumer and like uh how does that necessarily collapse specifically when you're experiencing your rights only through consumption and not through other uh purviews um and having a kind of more uh let's say nuanced language about those kind of bifurcations or at least now let's call them entanglements uh as these come you know as these become more important to me in my own personal writing and I think in many ways uh your work also tries to speak to that I really like that distinction you raised uh Bulalani and I often think about the distinction between rights and obligations as citizens and how we have to a large degree abrogate at any sense of obligation um and to see ourselves as consumers and as as takers in these in whether it's with governments or whether with corporations I want to return to something that Michael brought up earlier and that Bulalani you've been mentioning um which is how you know we our conversation here has been focusing primarily on you know the the western world and on how uh perceptions of datafication are occurring here um and I know the conversation in the US and Europe really focuses on data privacy and data protection um but Michael brought up the example earlier of the Indian citizen who goes to the grocer and is completely happy sharing medical records and I wonder if you could just talk more about what variations you see in perceptions around the world with regard to data and how much how how much this co-creation and this giving up of data is a problem or not what the objectives are that people have um how do how does the rest of the world think about data and human rights um I think it's a really interesting question and I don't think I can kind of answer it for you know countless numbers of governments and communities but I think what we see in terms of action is in the last few years we are seeing more GDPR style bills being rolled out country by country to various effect right um oftentimes these are bills that you know govern what data can be shared across international boundaries across different organizations um and you are seeing real progress there I think to take a little bit more of a critical lens to it I think the question is often about enforcement um how many of these laws are actually enforced and then um there's certainly kind of like a a data literacy component in terms of uh how important are these laws to the populations there to the actual populations there right um if they're unaware of them if they care about them and then also um why are these laws being put in effect right so one is kind of good governance um dictating how data is transferred I think two is for a lot of what we're seeing is it's a way for a political body to leverage power over a large tech company that they may otherwise have no control over right and it can be seen um it can be viewed kind of in the public space as as asserting power right um whether or not that power is actually put into action is a different question um and so a lot of these laws are just coming into effect in the last two to three years so I think it's it's very early to say how it's going to play out it's certainly a kind of a fractured legislative framework where it's going to create huge headaches for companies who have to navigate country by country but um I do want to pair that with this conversation about kind of data collection and legislation is while we are seeing more and more government oversight in terms of uh how this data is shared um at the same time we're also seeing governments collect more and more data on their citizens um and so and a lot of times that data is not stored in very safe ways and that data ends up being leaked and so it's kind of a hand in hand parallel process where we're seeing this almost I don't want to call it performative because I think it's really valuable this kind of legislation of how data is shared by private parties I think it's super valuable but at the same time you're also seeing government bodies collecting mass troves of data um not really governing themselves and actually exposing that data in really unsafe and harmful ways so um it's an interesting moment where um you're kind of seeing both things happen at once that's great thanks Michael uh blue line here Wendy do you have any reactions to that I mean very quickly for me I just want to say um you know I think that you're absolutely right Michael and this is part of the issue and I think part of the problem with GDPR like documents is that they presume data ought to be collected and then we have to do something about it keep it safe and I think using a human rights lens we can actually illuminate some types of data collection and maybe outlaw certain types of of data that are too revealing of people and I should just really quickly also say that GDPR style regulations differentiate between identifiable and deidentifiable or anonymized data and there's so much data out there now that effectively this distinction is no longer protecting anybody and so you know we find ourselves in so many data sets even if we it's missing an identifier people can cross reference across data to re-identify who we are if they if they so chose to do so so that's really a problem with a lot of the legislation out there yeah at least what I can kind of say to this is that like in my at least my own personal work but also in some of the advocacy that I've been um engaging with what is particularly striking to me is the general presumption that somehow instruments like GDPR that have a kind of a privacy approach presume that somehow privacy can be the linchpin that holds other rights together um and that general prejudgment to me while simultaneously prioritizes privacy precisely so that's way it can manage the further collection of human data and in many ways the underlining general prejudgment of that is that more data is better than no data or that more data is also in line with commercial interests and therefore it must take priority against other kinds of interests and so to me that general kind of prejudgment surrounding privacy simply just has to be further problematized particularly in terms of how it doesn't necessarily allow for other kinds of rights to be prioritized you know because for me you know I'd be more interested in kind of hearing about you know say rights to use of land for example which is like a clear issue in the context of say Kenya uh where you know uh indigenous communities are being displaced for the purposes of building another kind of state project or another kind of commercial venture and so in many ways you know I think when we're having conversations of datafication thinking about privacy both as an important instrument but also a limited instrument is something that I think needs to be kind of further thought out so I want to turn to a question that we have in the chat um we're running on time we're getting close to just we have six minutes remaining but there's a question here that's come from the audience asking how can consumers and governments effectively influence big tech companies so that they do not base their business models on the exploitation of consumer data and I think bigger picture this is a um a component of a question that we've kind of been talking about and dancing around a lot which is the big power imbalance between those who are collecting the data and then us the source of the data and I really like Wendy's clarification of the co-creation process um but as she notes and as this question speaks to there's a big imbalance in the amount of power one party has versus the other so so first I'll ask Wendy how do you think of that question very concretely how can consumers and governments influence the business models of these big tech companies yeah I mean I think that's a it's so it's a it's a pretty long slog but I also think just in sort of talking about the book to various audiences one thing that I do think is not become not been part of the legislators toolkit is incentive so so there's a lot of punishment when big tech companies do something bad when they don't share their data that they have or you know they don't take down content quickly enough they get fine I think one other way we could push companies to do better actually is to incentivize them right so there's a growing idea about data minimization which is the idea that you don't collect the data you could possibly collect you collect the data you need for your specific purposes why not incentivize companies to develop a process around that or develop business models around data minimization I mean you know the US has done this around EVs and encouraging car makers to to create more EVs as opposed to internal combustion engines I don't see why we can't do this sort of similar incentivization with regard to AI companies to get them to do better to respect human rights and I cannot agree with you more about this excessive focus on privacy at the at the you know expensive other rights where privacy is just one of many many rights we have it's an important one but it's not the only one that's affected by datafication and I would say some conversations are actually being hijacked because they've become excessively about privacy something like facial recognition and not about dignity or autonomy which I think are really what's at stake here with regard to facial data so with we have three minutes left so I want to go to each of you to get a final word or a final comment and maybe one way to frame those final words or comments is to focus on your thoughts about where you think we're headed and what if anything makes you optimistic that we will start to or could possibly see human rights play a larger role in how the data economy operates and how this process of datafication occurs so first let's go to Michael and then Lulani and then Wendy who will give you the last word thank you and thanks again for having me I think optimism is sometimes hard to come by but I will say that you know even though I can be critical I do think this turn towards legislations it is a good it is it's a first step right it's a reckoning with the fact that it doesn't need to be governed that it needs to be dealt with in a serious way that it's a conversation that needs to happen the way it's happening is certainly imperfect but I think it does raise general consciousness about you know it's a pressing concern and I hope step by step kind of we can kind of bring the general population around because I think some of this conversation is very very high level and I hope at some point we can figure out a way to bring the general population around to the fact that your data does it you know to Wendy's point it's not just the commodity it is who you are and I think that's that's a fundamental right and I think we can get there. Yeah you know I you know I always tell myself that you know that optimism is earned by your work and so I'm always very much optimistic at least about some of the conversations that I'm involved in and I'll just mention kind of two at one level you know I've been kind of fortunate enough to be in conversations in Kenya, Ethiopia and in South Africa where people are talking about effectively trying to bring African epistemic traditions to constructions of datafication and data governance frameworks as a way to kind of somewhat disrupt you know GDPR's privileging of privacy and saying that like there are other rights and the other values that should be expressed in this kind of digital and selection point and that they should have you know the diversity the both kind of cultural but also epistemic diversity of the communities that they're hoping to govern and then another one is really around like again like getting beyond this at least in my work in my communities of this kind of bifurcational line between it's either you give me your data or you get no service and people are starting to realize it's like a false kind of choice model that like you actually have to disrupt that to offer a really other ways of engaging both with with data but also with the possibilities of people getting the services that they actually really need. Yeah I think you know just to add to what has already been said I think what gives me optimism in a space where it is often difficult to be optimistic is this conversation this talk with Bulalani and Michael and thinking about the things that they're doing right and it's not there's no one one fix for this I think it's realizing how important data sources are to the AI creation of AI and data I think in the book I talk about as data stakeholdership that we're not subjects we're stakeholders and I think that word has come up out of other people's mouths today too but I think what gives me hope is that just disrupting this narrative that AI is for good that AI will improve humanity that data are necessary for the functioning of of our society and going forward I mean the fact is not all data are necessary for for improving social outcomes and so I think it's really incumbent on all of us to really engage in that conversation of what we want to do what types of things we want to give up what types of things we want to take advantage of and and hopefully we can have a conversation about this in multiple contexts so that it's appropriate for all the different societies all the societies in the world that are affected by AI which is basically all of us thank you Wendy that's a great note to end on I want to thank thank the audience thank you all for joining us today thank you Bulalani thank you Michael thank you Wendy everyone go you can go purchase We The Data go read Rest of World online and you can just google Bulalani and you'll see all the great work that he puts out but we thank you all for joining us and have a great day


Now, guest today, folks, is Bob Lasher. Bob is the external affairs office for the PSTA. Now, the PSTA, folks, is the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority. That's our public transportation in Pinellas County. Pinellas County, Nice County, no doubt. Bob, welcome to TFNN. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Absolutely. So this is a little unusual that we have a PSTA on a financial program. But I thought this was really important because every city, I'm originally from Boston, but now I'm here 25 years. Every city, if you're from a city, public transportation is awesome, man, when you're used to it, do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. What you guys are doing now is really, well, I'd love to bring the audience through it. Tell us about the sunrise and how it's going to go from St. Pete all the way down to the beach. Yeah, this is unlike anything we're going to see in the Bay Area. Starts at the pier, goes down by USF, and the medical centers then uses 1st Avenue North and South going out all the way to Pasadena through Pasadena and the St. Pete Beach to the County Beach Park. And a lot of it on North and South, 1st Avenue's North and South will be in a semi-dedicated lane for buses and then cars and trucks, whatnot, making turns. The buses are going to have level boarding. You're not going to have to step up. You can roll on with your bikes. You can roll on with wheelchairs and mobility aids. Really? We're going to have tap-off fares. So that means when a bus stops, people are going to get on and off really quickly. And around the world, we've seen that when you have a bus where people are paying fare cards or cash, that's what really slows down the route. So we've taken that pretty much out and made it so that these things are only going to have a stop every mile and people will get on and off quickly and keep going. So we should cut the travel time from a safety. We're using the current bus system by at least 30%. And that's going to rival, I mean, and we'll also have some priority at lights. If we're running a little behind, we'll have a signal to the lights that'll hold the green for the bus and let it go through the light a little bit longer to keep it on time and to keep it consistent so we can show people in the cars, hey, this is a nice alternative, particularly for people who want to enjoy themselves. And you know, it is amazing, Bob, when you actually go over the structure, and folks, I have the page up and we have the link on. We're talking about every 15 minutes during the day and what, every half hour at night. So you're talking about like, I mean, that's a consistent deal going back and forth to the beach or are the beach coming back and forth to St. Petersburg? Absolutely, and you know, the first time we'll be able to get a lot of these second and third shift workers back and forth to the beaches and we can get the people from the beaches and from the West in to a raise game and then they can be there long enough to see the ninth inning and then we can take them home again. You know, public transit's relying on funding everywhere in the world and we just haven't had the funding to run some of our services late enough to serve the raise and other organizations, but we've got some good federal funding for this one and it's exciting. It definitely is exciting. Now the second part of this folks, which is really huge no matter what city you're in and just pay attention to this because it's really cool. You know, cities are turning into walkable deals. Everyone wants to walk. So talk to me about the aspect, you know, when you look at the second part, the discussion that you've had with the community that any part of the community and what has happened in St. Pete folks is that they're changing, they're gonna be changing the zoning. There's a plan, the 2050 plan, they're gonna be looking at the zoning and then they turn around and look at the P.S.T.A. because the bottom line is if you live close to it, the bottom line, the zoning can change. So the texture of housing is gonna change from the first street going all the way down to the seventh street. So talk to me a little bit about that because I thought, you know, when you put this together Bob, it's really a lot more than just public transportation. It's really the aspect that let's say if me or you are 16 years old growing up, great, I can get a job at the beach, I can jump on there and go make some money, man. Do you know what I mean? You absolutely hit the nail on the head. You're right, it's a lot, it's gonna be a whole lot more than just a new transit line. We have been already out meeting with all kinds of community leaders as broad as we can to get their input as well as residents of what they wanna see along this line. When we have a station and we start to see development around it, we want more people to be in the area to make it nice and walkable like you said, making an easy walk to and from the stations. But we also wanna make sure that what goes in there and what happens fits with the local community. We don't wanna lose any neighborhood charm, we wanna be part of it. We'll even have the shelters will have dedicated special art that was been designed for each neighborhood along the way. So the Sunrunner Rising Study that we're working on right now and last week we just launched our new webpage is all about that. It lets people get into the line itself, look at where the stations are and then you can drop a pin. It opens up a little bit of a box and you can put in whatever you wanna see. Do you wanna see say instead of single family homes, maybe duplexes or small apartments? I mean, it's not like we're gonna wanna take downtown St. Pete and plug it in along the line. That wouldn't make sense. But we wanna allow a little bit more density, make it easier for people to live around these stations but we don't wanna change the neighborhood charm. And that's kind of the key. We're looking forward to that and we wanna hear what the public and our developers working with them have to say because they're looking at this too seeing their opportunities. Maybe further out where we're nice and close to the Pinellas Trail, somebody can put in, hey, how about a bike share here? So you can get off this and grab a bike and go onto the trail. And that's the kind of things we're looking for with this Sunrunner Rising webpage and study. Well, listen, you've done a great job thus far, no doubt. And I know it's not easy going, you know, we're talking to folks, first you have the county, then you'd have the different cities. When Bob and his team have to deal with different cities, it's pretty intense, right? It can be. We're pretty proud of the partners we've had. You should be proud, man. I mean, as I've gone over this, I've been in the finance business a long time but growing up in Boston, my father put me on the streetcar when I was five years old, right? Got me to the boys club. That was the beginning of me shining shoes, man. That's the bottom line. It gives, public transportation gives people freedom and they can do what they want with it. And you know, in my particular case, I think, listen, I've seen people and say, it works great, that's the real bottom line. And that's what we, it's great we did doing and in Florida, we don't have enough of it. That's the bottom line. And this is a great start, man. This is a great start. And you're dead on, that's right, because even though cities like St. Petersburg were built around transit, the old streetcar, which went away in 49, most of Florida has been built up after World War II. We had a very car-centric society and now we're starting to see the benefits of being able to come back and offer alternative to single occupancy vehicles and giving people a chance to step on something that's really a lot more convenient. I am a bus rider. Some of my routes are once an hour and that's a little nerve-racking if you think, gee, if I miss my bus, I'm an hour late. Seriously. Yeah. Every 15 minutes. So say you're staying at the trade winds and they have a deal with us where their employees and guests ride free. Yes. Show your ID, hop on this thing every 15 minutes. You're good. Huge. Well, listen, thank you so much for all the hard work. Thanks for coming on. Love to have you again. You can give us an update in a few months from now. Anytime, be my pleasure. Thanks, Bob. Have a great one. Have a safe one.


Well, Magic, back on the podium again, but your first win of 2019 and that also pushes you up into our top eight. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. That's amazing, you know. It's always, if you can win a GP, that's an amazing feeling. The whole meeting was very tough. We worked very hard and when I saw these two boys' races, I knew that the final would be very hard. But in Sami, I feel very good from the start and I try to do the same in the final and I make a perfect start, what helps me to win the final, so I'm very happy. I bet you are indeed. Now, Bartos, you are top of our championship table at the moment.  Tonight was definitely well worth it. Really? I don't look for the top. I now get second place and very happy because all weeks the team is really hard working with the engine for a little bit more slick. Now it's so nice and thank you very much for the Rishu Kowalski because I have the new engine and so it's really good working and yeah, I'm working for the second and the last next round. Fantastic. Congratulations. I'll get you to pass your mic over to Mati Zegar. Mati Zegar, you have qualified for next year already. You were fastest in qualifying and you're now on the podium, holding a trophy in third place. This has been a good week around. Yeah, it's been a pretty hectic week for me, but issues with travelling, not a lot of meetings, but yeah, it was a good week for me overall. I think in a week I achieved what I wanted. This is the GP challenge which I won in today's third place. It's good confirmation that after yesterday's qualifiers I managed to get podiums. So I think first of all that I managed to do that, so I'm really glad, you know, happy. Well congratulations. Now Magic, just final thoughts in your own language if you like. Congratulations. Well congratulations. That draws to a close at 2019 Astron German FIM Speedway Grand Prix with Magic Inoski as the winner Bartos Marzlik as second and Mati Zegar as third. Congratulations guys.


Hi, everybody. Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com doing a 2021 select baseball hobby pack break. This is round team number one. We're giving away 11 of those 1989 upper deck baseball pack spots, which in turn could win you an opening day mixer spot. So it's like a parlay. A lot of things being parlayed here. All right. Now, there's actually three different dice rolls happening here. Whether you knew it or not, we were giving away three spots. So that's our first dice roll. Second dice roll will be for the pack break itself, names and teams. And the third and final dice roll will be like the top 11 to get into that other break. So first dice roll. So some of you may get a spot for the price of one, an extra spot. Let's roll it, randomize it, three and a five, eight times. So top three after eight. One, two, three, four, six, seven, and eighth in final time. So after eight, congrats to Michael, Barry, and John. There you go. Boom, a few extra spots going your way. That's nice, right? Put a little rooftop next to your name so you can differentiate your winning spots versus your regularly purchased spots. Now, we can do the break. Let's put your names in this list here. You need a list of baseball teams as well. There are the baseball teams right there. And second dice roll for the names and teams. Two and a one, three times. One, two, three. Easy, easy dice rolls here. Two and a one, three times for the teams. One, two, and three. All right, so here's the first half of the list right there. And the second half of the list right over here. Let's sort alphabetically, and let's just print. And rip. Now it's a single hobby pack, popping from a fresh hobby box. There it is, 2021 select baseball. It's just, here's what we'll do. We'll just roll the die for left and right side. One, two, three for the left side, four, five, six. For the right side, it's two. We'll go left side. And then we'll just go one, two, three, four, five, six from top to bottom on the dice roll. And it's one. There you go. Well, the dice is going to pick. Dice picked, that kind of looks like a Fallon. All right, final print out. Hot off the presses, makes this official. Appreciate everybody once again getting in. Anything, a relic? Yeah, maybe? Or a blank card? No, something. There's Kesson here. Jesus Lizardo, Juan Soto, Brian Anderson. And it is just a relic only.  And that'll go to Dennis and the Rays.  Not bad, not bad. All right, now the whole point of this is who's going to win those upper deck baseball spots. That should be a pretty fun break, too. Let's gather everybody's names, top to bottom, third and final dice roll. Once again, top 11 will be in that 89 upper deck baseball break. Let's roll it, randomize it two and a six, eight times for that list, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eighth and final time. So from 12 on down right there on the screen, sad times. But thank you for trying. We'll get them next time. Top 11 though, happy times for you. Happy times for Jeff, Barry, Jeff again, Jeff, Barry, Nathan, Brandon, Jeff, Michael, Jeff, and John. So congrats to the 11 here. We'll see you for that break. Maybe we'll get to that later tonight. To ask me is casebreak.com, bye-bye.


This is stock number 10774, we are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, you're new and used sports car and Camaro headquarters. Today we are checking out this super clean 2014 Chevy Camaro 2SS. This vehicle has a 6.2 liter V8 motor. When paired up with the automatic transmission it pumps out 400 horsepower. This vehicle has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off and this car is 100% ready to go. Red hot is the color we shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the quality and condition of the vehicle before seeing it in person. If you want to check out all the photos on this car in the upper right hand party screen is a link right to our website click that and check us out there. This one comes with the 20 inch painted alloy rims the Brembo brakes and it has brand new Pirelli P0 245 ZR20 tires on here we put those on in our safety inspection inspection you can still see the little wear notches there brand new tires all the way around front fender is in excellent condition didn't see any dents or dings on that headlights are in nice condition front bumper no major dents dings or cracks on that and you do get the projector lamp fog lamps the hood is in excellent condition as well no dents or dings on there passenger side front fender is in excellent condition too and the passenger side rim no scuffs or scrapes on there as you go down this side of the car take note of how clean the body is how reflective and mirror like that paint is we take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down you can still see the car hear the car and have confidence in the vehicle that you are looking at before you even get here so that when you get here there's absolutely no surprises soft top is in excellent shape as well no rips or tears we're gonna put that down in just a little bit here but that's why we offer the Summit Auto Fastpass option in the upper right hand part of your screen a link right to our web website where you can you can check out all the photos fill out a credit app get pre-approved even do an appraisal if you have one on a trade-in all from the comfort of your own home so when you get here all you got to do is drive the car love it you'll be all set to go back rooms in pretty nice shape got a couple little scuffs right there but other than that that's really the only thing I saw in the entire car back tires are brand new as well and you do get the Brembo brakes back here too rear quarter absolutely perfect and as we come around to the back of the vehicle rear bumper is in excellent shape no dense dings or scuffs on that chrome tip dual exhaust backup parking sensors you get the deck lid spoiler and that deck lid is an excellent condition didn't see any denser dings on there down the driver's side just as clean as that passenger side what's nice is these aren't all rock chip which they sometimes can get on these Camaro's back rim absolutely perfect no scuffs or scrapes on there and down the rest of the side of the car is an excellent excellent shape no dense no dings do get the heated power mirrors we'll take a quick look at the trunk and then we'll check out the interior back trunk area you do get the covers and stuff for when the soft top is down and if you ever wondered where the RPO codes are in these Camaro's they're right back here feel free to pause that but you can see it's a 2SS right there that's where that is now you have to have this shade pulled back and in place this thing right here pulled back and in place so that you can put that soft top down otherwise it will not go the rest of the soft top is in great shape no rips or tears inside the 2SS package gives you the black leather interior no rips no tears on these seats both of these seats are heated power driver's seat factory floor mats are out the back seats are in excellent condition looks like they've never been sat in do have the latch child safety system to try and put car seats back there if you want and the carpeting is very nice and clean side current airbags power windows power locks power mirrors you get the Boston premium audio system you get this really cool silver metallic trim on the door and the dash auto head lamps and as we hop inside the car here you can see that this one has 23,300 and seven miles you get the digital speedometer instrument cluster is very nice and clean you get the leather wrapped steering wheel excellent condition Bluetooth and audio controls on the right cruise controls on the left this one has the Chevy my link system and FM and serious XM radio capabilities you do get the factory navigation system on there as well this one also has the backup camera there are your heated seat buttons as well as your climate controls down here you get your oil temp oil pressure volts and trans temp you do get your stability control and automatic transmission there passenger side floor mat and seat are in excellent condition no rips or tears smells very clean inside this car I don't think it's ever been smoked in and the headliner is an absolutely perfect condition up here you get your home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems your power top convertible switch and then your you have on-star capabilities in that rear view mirror so I got the parking brake on I'm going to open that up and then you just press this button right there and that's going to go up like so and when it's all done it'll tell you that the folding motion is complete so then you know it's all ready to go and we'll take a quick look under the hood and we'll do one more final walk around on the car with the top off I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this HD video you will have been able to tell just how clean this car is all the way around inside and out under the hood we have the 6.2 liter v8 motor and jambay is very clean runs very smooth this car has been fully safety then inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off and this car is 100% ready to go we'll do one more final walk around here I would highly recommend this car from a quality and condition standpoint four brand new tires and to see more pictures of this car one of our other 450 new and use cars trucks SUVs minivans Wrangler sports cars Camaro's Corvettes Mustangs GT 500's Challengers Chargers you name it we got it go to our website www.SummitAuto.com full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at SummitAuto.com and if you'd like to check out more HD videos you can go to youtube.com slash Summit Auto remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact in a second you will see link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left a link to more Camaro videos like this one on your right if you have not been to our website on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website click those check us out and we really look forward to helping with this extremely clean 2014 Chevy Camaro 2SS in red hot clear coat thanks again


are now recording, I think. So it's over to you, Suzanne. Grace, thanks very much, Rob. And welcome to everybody from across the world really today, which is very exciting. And so we today's presentation is, I'm going to be doing with my colleagues, I'm Marie Farrell and Dr. Rene Harbison from the Institute of Education at Dublin City University. We are going to speak to you, we're building on a previous Moodle Munch presentation, that I did with my colleague Karen Buckley, also of the Institute of Education last year. And it was around the development of UDL toolkit for Moodle. And we're just going to build on that conversation today. And just to very quickly link it to the DigComp edu framework. This piece of work links to area number five and powering learners, just just my way of reference for you. Okay, so today we're, I'm not going to rehash what we did in the presentation last year, we spoke in great detail around the development of the UDL toolkit, the process of developing the toolkit and the kind of structure of it. Today, we're going to focus more so on reflections of the application of the toolkit. And I'm going to give you a very brief reminder of the concept and process behind the toolkit. And then Lorraine and Amarie are going to kindly share their reflections on applying the toolkit in practice, both in Moodle and slightly outside of Moodle as well. Amarie is going to speak about her own UDL practice, and that will take us a little bit beyond Moodle. But if you want to find out more about the UDL toolkit in detail, we have the recording of the Moodle Munch, which I'll pop into this presentation and also a link to the toolkit. The toolkit is available on creative commons licensing, and we very much encourage you to share and adapt for your own context. I'm sure most of you here today are familiar with universal design for learning and that framework. But just for the benefit of those who are not familiar, I will direct you to the toolkit where we have a deeper explanation around the framework. But essentially, it's a framework for inclusive practice. And when we're talking about inclusive learning design here, we're talking about designing learning for everybody, for the benefit of everybody. So not just for those with special needs in relation to teaching and learning. And that framework is supported by three key principles, multiple means of engagement or flexible ways of learning for students, multiple means of representation, flexible study resources and facilities. And then finally, multiple means of action and expression of learning or flexible assessments. So again, not too much detail on that today, but more information in the UDL toolkit should you need it. Okay, so why did we develop a toolkit? Well, Karen, Buckley and I, together with other colleagues in the teaching enhancement unit and our colleague who has since moved to the DCU Business School, Shadi Karatsi, we wanted to find a kind of a practical way to translate those UDL principles into practice. So to scaffold staff who are teaching involved in teaching both academics and teaching support, to scaffold their practice, you know, translated essentially into practice, particularly in moodle, but also as you will see, to stretch beyond moodle as well. Okay. The toolkit development was very much a collaborative process. So we started here with the planning stage, just highlighted in yellow there. We did a sketch outline of the toolkit, which essentially includes an introduction to UDL. Secondly, a moodle template, a moodle page template to support UDL practice. And then importantly, a checklist of UDL practice. And again, you can find out more detail in the link to the toolkit. Then we took that sketch outline of the toolkit to two focus groups, we got some feedback on the structure of the toolkit. We took that feedback, and we revised the toolkit. And then our next stage was to actually work with staff. Lorraine and Amri worked with us back in September 2019, which seems a million years ago, and only yesterday as well, to pilot the toolkit, to support them in a scaffolded session where Ms. Alvin Karan offered them additional support. And just discussion time, really, because Lorraine, Amri and their colleague Ellen did all the work, they were redesigning their loop, or moodle pages, loop is moodle.tcu. And we offered them just kind of time to reflect and kind of answer questions around that process. So I'm going to pass over now to Lorraine, firstly, and then to Amri to share their reflections. So over to you, Lorraine, and you can just direct me along the slides as well there. Okay, so as you can see, this was the starting point when both Karen and Suzanne, what we said down, and we were looking at our existing learning environment. At the time is because this is what it looked like. So this is like a snapshot of the actual page. These were for B. Ed, one first year undergraduates, and the particular module I was looking at was maths education. For me, at that time, moodle was just what I loved. I loved it from the start. But for me, it was just a lovely giant filing cabinet, where I could store everything online. And from that, just to make it accessible to the students, where they were maybe my lecture notes, my slides, etc. But you will notice the whole time we're talking so far, the emphasis was on me, me as a teacher. And really, if we move on to the next slide, this is where the journey started. So it focused on me, me as a teacher, M for moodle M for me to actually, this is meant to be virtual learning environment. And if we're talking about the principles of universal design for learning, have I actually thought about how I'm actually using moodle as a learning environment. So to begin with as with most of our colleagues in DCU, we began to do a loss of work on just the actual design of the moodle page to begin with. And there's also like learning design units that would help if if that were needed. And we were actually happy kind of to make a start on that. So from the outside, so when you think of multiple means of representation, you can see that well, it does look easier to navigate. But as multiple means of representation is really only one element. And was moved to the form or so is this idea of learner and learner engagement? And how actually, can we enable students? And the word that Suzanne was using from the digital strategy was empowering students to engage fully with this learning environment. So I just want to give you a snapshot of what two elements of this learning environment looked like as a method of engagement. So moving on to the next slide. Sorry, somebody want to come in there? No, go ahead, Lorraine, thanks. Thank you, Rob, because you're talking in the background. No worries. Well, the first element was our recommended reasoning section, whereas before we would have had, you know, kind of PDFs and links, etc, for the students to explore. But we went one step further. And this again was with the help of Suzanne and Karen. And I was looking at developing our own resources. So in this way, then we could design our own resources that would meet the needs of our students. And I just want to flag from the outset that this was not done alone. This was done very much in collaboration with my colleague, Mary Kingston. And, you know, we really kind of I suppose built on each other's strengths here. So in designing this recommended reading, we decided we would make our own book. And it was looking at teaching measures in the classroom. You can see we took text and images that would normally have been part of a PowerPoint presentation, and started to rework them into a book where students could actually go chapter by chapter. And what we actually did with and moving on to the next slide there, Suzanne, was the interactive elements. And if you want to request access, you'll have to get the access there from Mary Kingston, if that's okay. And no, don't worry about that. We read this, unless people would like it. But what it actually is here is we decided ourselves to incorporate videos. So we made videos. This was the beauty of of being able to develop our own resources from a learner's perspective. So what we did was we went into on campus, and we recorded there. There are unicams are you can do micro teaching type rings, where we would have recorded ourselves and we would have uploaded those videos as part of that book. So when the students were engaging, not only was it going to be text, but there's going to be text, those graphics. And then there were actual video excerpts of us in action they're using the resources. You know, if you want me to come back to us and share the screen, I can absolutely do that. But no worries for the moment. The next element, and we're talking about maximizing engagement, was to look at assessment. Okay, so up to now, assessment, you don't be very aware students can get very heads up on on, you know, that summative that great, and that's really important. But what we wanted to help the students to do was again, back to this idea of empowering them was to help them on that learning journey. So we wanted to take them from being where they were after just doing their leave insert, they were students to actually now we were trying to encourage them to be moving to the other side to be teachers, and we need them to take control of their own learning. So we wanted to develop kind of self paced, and tasks for them. So at the end of every seminar, they might have something to read. And again, ask maybe answer little questions on that. And what we did was we we when we're exploring the the loop page, one activity we really thought we loved was this lesson for us. Again, when when when you just read what it can empower you to do, there were so many things that just really appealed to us, like flexibility of design, learner engagement, etc. Just to let you know, that's kind of not how it worked. And we wanted these experiences to be very formative. But but unfortunately, that actual lesson activity meant that when the students would do an answer at the very end, they could go back and review their answers that they had written. But once they kind of press that submit button, that was it, it was gone. And so what I've posted up here was the panic from students, you're right, I thought I have it done, but I don't know if I have it done when I go in, it looks like I have to do this again. And students redoing this and redoing redoing the same exercises. We even were trying to work with with with a grade book, even though at the end it comes up.  That's lovely. There was another thing underneath. And we just could not read this. It was, first of all, it was you got, say, zero out of three questions, correct? If we had three questions, we were able to change that you got zero out of zero questions. We even got on to Henry Langton there. Henry came in, at which stage he tried to play with this. And the best we'll get was these assessments will not be added to your final grade. So as you can see, what we thought was going to be this wonderful new addition to our new page ended up not really the way we wanted to be. So that brings us to where we did come to. This is the next slide there, Suzanne, and be glad to know my last one. We ended up having to go back to the quiz for us. So again, the students would go in every week. And it was very similar. So from Cessiness Up point of view, very similar to CessUp. But I suppose a bit easier for the students at the end, at least they could see their responses. Because what we wanted them was that at the end of the module, before they would actually do their final assignment, that they would be able to go back onto the page, see what they had written. And that would be like as in their study notes there. So that's where it went. And now I'm going to pass on to Anne-Marie, if that's alright. And then I think at the end, then very happy to take any questions you have. And I think hopefully my colleague Mary Kingston is here, and she will be able to help us as well if needed. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Well, as Suzanne said there at the beginning, she linked in with myself and the rain and another colleague, Ellen, when they were developing that when herself and Karen were developing the toolkit. And I suppose the heavy emphasis at the time was on using universal design for learning the principles of universal design, and in the moodle space. So a bit like Lorraine, I had, and really continue to look at moodle, primarily as filing cabinet as a resource that supported teaching and learning. And what I found very useful about being involved with the toolkit, that Lorraine and I work in initial teacher education. So we're teachers who are working with student teachers. So both of us, even prior to the development of the toolkit would have been talking about universal design for learning in relation to our students and our student teachers. But what was interesting was with me anyway, was being involved with the design, with the rollout of the toolkit with Suzanne and Karen, in relation to moodle specifically, really got me thinking much more about the moodle space, much more than I had previously. And I'm wondering, I suppose one of the things that I did after that experience was to make sure that my voice was literally on the moodle page. So, you know, recording a welcome message and so on, that students could link in with asynchronously. And just to make give myself a presence on that page above and beyond one that was text based, based. The other really useful thing that came out of the development of the toolkit was the teaching enhancement unit in DCU and applied the principles to the skeleton of everybody's moodle pages. So there was a basic redesign done there. And I actually found that really, really useful. And the basic framework was there. And it meant that and still does mean that when students go into the moodle pages, they are generally faced with a very similar layout, not exactly the same, we don't have to stick to the exact same layout. But but they're quite similar across all of the loop pages, which makes it really useful, and particularly on, you know, really large undergraduate programs with lots and lots of modules. And the, I suppose my, my, the university, I've always looked at university design for learning as our and moodle as being just one part of teaching and learning. And universal design seeped has seeped into other elements of my teaching as well. So looking at this from a teacher's perspective, the design of the loop or the moodle page, and using universal design for learning is just one element of universal design for learning in my practice. And because it has mattered when I am physically teaching in class, it has mattered when I'm developing assessments and so on. Well, what's been really interesting to me, since last March, since the 13th of March is how the principles of universal design, and the fact that with Suzanne and Karen's help, I had looked at that in the moodle space really, really helped me when everything moved into the moodle space last March. So the filing cabinet became the classroom. And, and how the classroom was organized, and really mattered, not just in terms of, of, you know, signposting clearly resources and so on, but actually, a space in which the teaching was happening, and learning was happening in that space. And it really, really helped me conceptualize the framework of UDL helped me think about the blend, for example, of synchronous and asynchronous engagement. And it made me divide asynchronous, for example, into two, to think about it in two different ways. So I would think, first of all, and I'm thinking of one particular module in particular, the first module that I moved online in September, the module I moved online just last September, which is 429 students in it, the final year undergraduate module. And the, the, it was really challenging to move that module online, but the UDL framework helped frame my thinking around that. So in relation, for example, to asynchronous engagement, I thought about it in two different ways. I thought about it, firstly, asynchronous engagement, which would lead directly to a live class and live learning. And then the other type of asynchronous engagement, which would support independent study, which wouldn't necessarily have lead directly into a live class, but might be required for independence, broader independent study for assignments and so on. And just how I structured that really was informed by the UDL framework, particularly around multiple means of engagement and multiple means of representation. So how core concepts were presented asynchronously, and then followed up and supported synchronously. Really, the structure for that was enabled by my experience of using UDL in Moodle as a filing cabinet first, before it became a classroom. And I think going forward, my, you know, I have a much broader understanding, I suppose, and I'm more flexible than I was 12 months ago before COVID. And I think a lot of the elements, particularly around asynchronous engagement, I will continue forward, even if we are back face to face with 430 students, there will be elements of the Moodle page that I will absolutely continue forward into that more face to face context. So that's just a brief overview or reflection. So I don't know if it makes sense. But and thanks, Rob, for that. Thank you guys very much. I'm just going to pause the recording now. Perfect. Over to you, Adele. Hi, Rob. Thank you for the opportunity to come and speak to you all today. I'm delighted to be here and to see so many friendly and familiar faces. It's like a family. So my name is Adele Gavin, and I'm the Technology Enhanced Learning Coordinator, or Talbot Coordinator at Mayo's Library at ATB. And today, I'm joined by my colleague, Lorraine Devaney, our e-learning mentor, who says apprenticeship program, and she's also our Moodle Guru. We also have Shimon Magner here too, who is the National Sales Program Manager. So today, we're going to talk to you a little bit about our learner background, the background of our learners and our core platforms. We're going to look at the learner journey. We'll have a little bit about our educators journey, and we're going to show some practical examples of collaboration using the sales apprenticeship program. So just to be specific, our core platforms are Office 365, Moodle, and Microsoft Teams. And we use those together to support our learners to learn together. Just to frame this, we can map this to the teaching and learning on the GTCOM edu competencies framework, and more specifically to collaborative learning section 3.3. So this is to use digital technologies to foster and enhance learner collaboration. So just a little bit of background, further education and training or FET, learners are very, very diverse, very diverse in terms of their age, their socioeconomic background, their cultural background, the levels of literacy and numeracy and the digital skills that they have attained. And we have a saying that FET is for everybody and it has opportunities for everybody. So Moodle is the LMS provided by and supported by Solace, but we also use Office 365 and Microsoft Teams. Our educators use our core platforms in a variety of different ways. Some of our educators use Office 365 and Teams as a light for emergency remote learning, and other educators use Moodle, Microsoft Teams and Office 365 combined. So really, they're the ones we're going to focus on today. So I'm just going to talk you through the learning journey, and then I'm going to give you a demo of how that might look like. So all our learners of Office 365 accounts, and they use an open ID connect single sign and feature when they come into Moodle. So you can just see how that looks on the right. So the journey is very seamless for our learners. Once they're in Moodle, there's Microsoft, Microsoft Block. And that's also there on the right. And they have access to their various office tools there. They can use email, they can get into Teams, or whatever they need. So we also encourage our learners to sync their calendars, so that all of their online classes appear in their calendar. Learning collaboration options are quite varied with Teams and Moodle. So just to mention it, a few, you have video conferencing software with Teams. There's also breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams. Teams can be used for learner group projects. And also there's the Moodle forms. So just bear with me and I'm just going to show you a quick demo. In this video, I demo how our learners use Moodle with Teams. All learners can sign into Moodle using their Office 365 username and password using the open ID connect button. Rob, could I just confirm that everybody can hear that? Okay. Yeah, all good. So in this case, our learner is tele support. So I'm brought directly to my graphic design Moodle site. And here as a learner, I can access my online weekly class and the any of the channels for the group projects that have been set up by the tutor. So to access the weekly classes, click on the link. Teams opens. Okay, so I can see the corresponding team in teams for graphic design class. And when it comes to Monday at two for my class, I can click here and join. Okay, if I go back to Moodle just to finally point out to you, we've got a Microsoft block here in Moodle and it means all Office 365 apps are just one click away. Learners can go directly to their email OneDrive teams by clicking these and the app will open in a new tab in their browser. So I'm just going to talk you through the educators journey. And then we're going to have another quick demo. So for the educator, a course or module is set up in Moodle. And from here, a team is automatically set up. So on this team, the teacher is the owner and the student is the member. And this all happens because of Microsoft Azure integration with Moodle. Also, if you add an additional additional person to your Moodle course, this is automatically synchronized and they're also added to the team. And also teachers can set up meetings in the calendar and embed them into Moodle and teachers can set up recurring meetings for group projects. So I'm just going to show you how that might look. In this video, I demo one way you can use Moodle with teams to schedule weekly classes and group project work. As with all technology, there are alternative ways you can do this. So I'm logged in as an administrator in Moodle and I've set up a new Moodle course from a module called Graphic Design Demo. You can see here I've enrolled myself as a teacher and tell support as a student. Both of these profiles are linked to Office 365 accounts. And as Office 365 is integrated with teams, once a new course is created on Moodle with one teacher role assigned, a Microsoft team is automatically created. So when I go to teams, I can see here there's a corresponding team called Graphic Design Demo automatically created. When I click into it, I have a look at the team. I can see membership is synchronized. I've got the owner, the rain and member tell support. So let's say I have my graphic design online class on a Monday from two to four. And I want to set up a virtual classroom for it. So first thing I'm going to do is create a channel. I'm just going to go Graphic Design into a classroom. Click here so everybody can see it. And add it.  And again, I'm going to call the meeting Graphic Design. And it's going to repeat weekly on a Monday. Okay, from two to four. Okay, so graphic design current weekly on Monday from two to four. And it's added to my graphic design virtual classroom channel. So I create this here. And when I go back to the channel, I can see here the schedule meeting graphic design occurs every Monday at two. So what I want to do now is get a link to this channel and add it to my Moodle course. So I'm going to add it as a label weekly class and add the hyperlink to the channel. Okay, so now students can access their online class, any of three ways. Okay, when you set the the online class up through Microsoft Teams, okay, students will get an email into their inbox, inviting them to join the class, they can join it from there. The event will also appear in their calendar. So I'm logged in as my student and I tell support so I can see my graphic design class there is scheduled from two on the Monday. Okay, or alternatively, I can go to Moodle, click on the weekly class link, and that brings me to my team's channel. Okay, and I can join my class from here either. Okay, so I'm close out of this. Similarly, you can set up recurring meetings and channels to facilitate group work. For example, at this module, students are divided into four groups to complete projects. So I would first of all create a channel for each group. So I might call it meeting room A, another channel meeting room B, C and D, add recurring meeting to each channel, just like I did this one here, okay, and then create a link to Moodle from the channel, just like I did with this channel here. And once you set up the meeting rooms, you can reuse them for all project work by changing the students assigned to each meeting room for each project. So the diagram here shows the various telltales and that support collaboration on sales apprenticeship program. The integration of Moodle and Office 365 is really the backbone of this program. And it ensures that the collaboration is seamless between the workplace and the education provider. It also allows everybody to benefit from the best features of each product. So I'd just like to say thank you all for your attention this afternoon. And a special thank you to my colleagues, whose work I'm showcasing here today. So I'll open the floor to questions. Thank you very much, Adele.