So a very warm welcome to everyone here at the old sea summer summit and to a session which has no comparables and because now it's gas the time at the summer summit and A few years ago. It was the first time that we had the pleasure of welcoming Tom Farrelly To a face-to-face alt event where we were introduced into the magic that is this particular Type of talk and we're so thrilled that after the runaway success that was gas the ghost global Tom has decided to grace us with his presence and is joining the summer summit and this time for a very special OGM Gusta session and we are absolutely delighted to have Speakers exclusively from the gog and network at the summer summit today So they're going to be moderating in the chat and we have many people with mics who are going to do their best to try and Count along so first of all everybody who has a mic Please applaud physically and everybody who doesn't please clap virtually and give Tom the loudest welcome that we can manage in a webinar over to you Tom I Got something new hey joy impaired there. Hi. It's great for all the their virtual classes So it's great to see it all there So I'm a little bit worried because the weather is sunny which means that that grass is gonna have to be cut now this evening So but anyway, we're gonna enjoy we're gonna enjoy ourselves I've been sitting here all day looking at the grass and looking at all the see so much So look, it's great to have everybody here As I said for people who haven't come up the gasta it got to just yours word It just means that a quick it's a sort of poor Irish man's version of Petit Coucher five minutes, but it's far less restrictive The only thing is that we're really strict on five minutes does five minutes I mean you're all sitting here at Conferences and you've all sat there and they're gonna go. Oh my god. Well that person ever move on I wish the chairperson was far stricter I'm only gonna have nine minutes instead of 15 minutes. Well fear not gasta takes all that out As I said, I am one of the least those mental people. I'm strict with everybody. I don't care who you are Where you're from that's absolutely. It's five minutes and five minutes But we want everybody to feel part of it. I enjoy it So so you actually get to count count the person in but also if the person goes over the five minutes We also count them down So we'll be counting in Irish.  I want you to to use the hashtag and Use the hashtag count take photographs of yourself and tweet more videos of yourself counting I want people to get involved what you know the thing great thing about gasta and I done three sessions last year and Edward's brilliant to finish off the whole of the day and See the sandals there. I like to see that twist Twitter is coming in from from Lorna there as well. So What I'm saying here is I want you to all to feel part of it because it's at the end of the day You've been sitting there your third.  Yeah, I can assure you this stuff is going to be absolutely brilliant there Joanna there is they all get myself so it's it's three days now. She's so far away I think it's Sunday afternoon in Australia where he is was absolutely brilliant. So we're back to the future So we have horse. It's Sunday Michael is back in British Columbia. It's only one day Ross is in Cologne. I don't know what day or timer is there like that for it's all the one so the Anyway, we're gonna have to crack so we're gonna do one or possibly two rehearsals to get people to speak us guy again Okay, so to make life easy all trees that you're really our career trees in McKinnon is really showing us all up with that skill set there So we're going to be doing all together. I'll do it nice and visual what? Hey, no Tree car we do it at a speed. Okay, so I don't want them to be lagging behind so it'll be hey Doh Tree trees easy car. I always drum good girl Car and Kuig and then shout out a big lusty Gusto Gosta So we'll be all ready to have a go. I love the place. Then the way is there. Did you did you tidy up the place? Did you? Now Martin Weller is tell you is he gonna join in as well We want to know Modra Modra Irish word for dog. It is Modra. Anyway, are we all ready are all our money gone? I don't want to say anybody hiding. Are we ready? We start to get You're looking a bit for dare the centric. I want everybody are we ready? Hey I don't At three Absolutely rubbish I know I should be encouraging the people but I want a bit more speed the pronunciations was pretty good I think otherwise it was Okay, so we're going to try this here and guys. This is the last chance and everybody at home We're all gonna do together. We need live captions Somebody can do captions if they can understand my dog an accent I tell I don't think it's a caption software that's built for my accent But we'll give it are we already get the hands up when we all do the county to get Michael get the hands up there Get the hands up. Are we ready? Hey Hey Yeah, Trace McKinnon is right, but I think we'll have to we'll we'd be here all night And I tell you it'll be next Monday for Joanna over there by the time we get started so So right we have the the the order is touching a Ada Aras Joanna Michael and Debbie that's our order I wanted to be horrible and and do a sort of random eyes thing So people couldn't get comfortable what madam was nice to them and she said no we take them in that order So but who am willing to say anything else like that So what we'll be doing is so Tashkine if you want to bring up your slides to get ready and then when you when we say Gosta you have five minutes I'll shout out if you have ten seconds to go and if you would when the five minutes is up What we will all do then is do the same thing again. Hey, no tree Cooke, but instead of Gosta, it's starred STAD start, but it's the fodder, but we leave her a stardust means stop and it's really fun if someone runs out of time So if I'm really wants to run out of time and we all get to show please feel free it adds to it It's a bit like a sort of The Coliseum was reinvented for the online world 2000 years later. So anyway, Katie, I'm delighted to see that you're there So are we all ready Catherine Catherine crowning out there in Galway and Sharon Flynn? It's great to see you up all there brutal. You're right Already A quick sound check for me if everyone can hear me before I rattle on Absolutely, sorry to ask you. Yes, I can hear you and the main thing is once I can hear you don't worry about the rest of them I'm the only one that matters. Don't worry about that Okay, are we all ready to count in and to ask you once we show Gosta, it's your time to go Have we ready? Hey Hey, Oh Oh Hey, hi everyone, I'm just seen from South Africa today I want to talk about the privilege of public online as the global number of COVID-19 case cases increased there's been a mass shift online education right from early childhood education to tertiary education While the public online has become a new norm for some there. There are others who don't have the same luxury South Africa is one of the highest inequalities in the world and the impact of virus has exacerbated these inequalities While the most privileged can isolate in their homes and cast many people in densely populated areas Don't have the same luxury and it's struggling with basic needs such as water and sanitation So today I want to focus on deep underrepresented views of the marginalized learners that are often not considered So in the past few months I thought myself being divided between two types of conversation on the one hand We have debates and discussions on synchronous teaching methods on assessment methods on the best types of other methods and video conferencing Platform and then on the other hand the education response has had to deal with students lacking electricity devices the internet high data cost and lack of full feeding program now Although I say this from a global perspective It is also important to remember that I learned with these issues in all parts of the world And that's I share my reflection today for everyone Now before I share some guidelines I want to focus on three different Levels of the digital device So the first one is the access gap and this refers to the resources and infrastructure needed for tech-supported learning The access gap is further shaped by factors such as gender, age, education, neighborhood and household income The usage gap refers to the fact that access does not actually equate to effective learning So for example to benefit from online learning opportunities Learnies need to have digital literacy, internet literacy, parent support and also the capacity for self-sacrificed learning Now the reception gap deals with an individual's ability to interpret information So for example, information literacy is needed for searching and working through a set of information online Those with higher socio-economic status are able to extract greater benefits from the educational possibilities available So now I will share four guidelines to an education response to COVID-19 that considers these low resource content The first one is students need care support and communication They're going through a great deal of anxiety right now. So educators need to keep in contact They need to keep updates with students' situations and offer emotional support beyond academic support Number two, more focus is needed to opening schools justly Governments in different countries have taken different responses to reopening schools. In Kenya, for example, schools are closed for the rest of the year In South Africa, however, many failed attempts to reopen schools have led to schools being open and justly without proper precautions The safety of teachers and learners have been put second behind the goals to complete the academic year My favorite quote from the people's coalition, they say, no to just opening schools. Yes, to opening schools justly Number three, use low tech and low tech approaches for learning continuity These include things like WhatsApp, radio, TV But most importantly, distribution of printed workflows and educational contents in free newspapers Lastly, join courts of solidarity with marginalized students One example of this is a group of sub-applicant scholar activists who have drafted a course of social pedagogy guided by four principles which can be online And lastly, I want to end on the note with a quote from Arundhati Roy Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine the world anew This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next The pandemic has shown that the injustices of the pandemic has shown the injustices of our current education system And now is the time to reimagine it Thank you everyone Now when I say round of applause, you do realize that you finished Very well on time. So that kind of takes to put out Honestly, well done and very very well done. Look some really good points there and it's certainly not easy to go To go forth. So as I said, really really well done So are you glad that's over now Tashkine? You can sit back and you can just Relax now and you know that you have have done all of that stuff there and as I said, you're the force of the Go gn crowd now to earn your badges and you can say you are now Well done Okay, so now Ada, are you ready to go? It is it is up next Excellent. Yes Oh, that's very good Oh, I like that I don't know if I can see it. That's a really nice way of doing it This is my presentation Excellent Deb, she doesn't get an exercise for beating the clock. The fun is to go So are you all ready to go? Excellent Okay, so everybody Can start then once Once we all show cast that we already get our hands up there. We all enjoying ourselves back there I'm watching I'm watching Twitter here as well like that. Okay. Don't forget get some pictures up there Video whatever it is lay in the room Do whatever you have to do. I got my hair done far all this. I hope you all appreciate it Oh my god, Chris I tell you this I tell you this a lot of people becoming multilingual here today. Are we all ready? Are we all ready? Yes Okay Okay So I'd like to introduce four clues that reflect my personal view about The crisis and all the times that we were Traveling And first of all, I'd like to talk about care, of course A lot have been said about care during these times Let me start by saying that when the health crisis was particularly in Uruguay on March 13 We were about to start a new academic year at the university of the republic. This is the public The only public and also the biggest university in the country and I work at nothing faculty and I'm not a nurse but surrounded by nurses. They know a lot about care and the concept of care is Is a very profound and a very In the discipline in the nursing discipline gene Watson dr. Gene Watson Developed this concept back in 1979 So I think that's maybe the reason why we had a dancing faculty A contingency educational plan Even before the whole university had a plan of its own Of course, both plans were based on care Of the community of the entire university community And the resources of the of the university Secondly, I'd like to talk about tolerance And I work at the virtual Learning and teaching uni. That's one ever and that's our team and we've been Doing teacher training during the last It's almost 11 years We work In learning technology and in and training teachers In in learning technology and also using our virtual Platform our virtual Learning platform For all these this years and the major task we had during These days has been to Teachers and here's where tolerance. He came to play and also flexibility to let them to move their courses Fully online because they are accustomed to mostly blended learning And we developed some things to To help us in this task And our oh, yeah section. That's the the platform the the The institutional platform we developed virtual essential tools that that's an open course for teachers and also a site for tutorials That keeps growing fortunately now I'd like to Have a word about trust and of course it's uh Think we especially recommend during these complex times trust and mutual confidence Between to establish relationships between teachers and students And regarding to examinations we have been always Recommending and and during today our teacher trainings to work With formative assessments, but formative assessment can be a bit difficult when you are in a massive context So we planned a different strategy based on on mood equations mainly With well-designed questions focusing on well-designed questions mostly multiple choice questions And also working with different groups of students in the platform And we had Finished the final examinations period and with more than Thousand students only in generation in this year's generation. We had more than A hundred examinations and most of them delivered through the institutional platform with more than 50 model quizzes And most important without any system of surveillance or or anti-pleasureism system Finally a word A word of flexibility That's my personal statement I'd like to To Use this opportunity If you are learning or trying or applying A new software I I always recommend to try and move To open solutions during this system. I think this is A great opportunity to do that Thank you. Well done. Well done round of applause Now really well done and certainly not easy for anybody and certainly for someone who's in If the English is not their first language it makes it doubly Uh, a doubly great achievement. So honestly really well well done as we say in in Irish Boulevard.  I I love the video of of Deb and our dancing feet So if anybody else is getting stuff out there, I hope you're all enjoying yourself. This is at the end of the day so Now what I want you to do now we've I've let you off kind of easy enough now at the moment. So Uh, if anybody else I'm gonna trust you off. Yes, absolutely in this different language. Well done really. I've always really All people who can can do it in a second language I want in a five five minute time. So so what we want to do this time as well We're gonna do the count. We're gonna do what we all often do with the face to face We're gonna go left to right as well. So we'll be going hey in the left Doe on the right To her Kuig and then Gosta Okay, so family has any videos or any cameras. I'll just switch around for a moment I just want to see a few people get the hands up there. I see Marin there. Yes. That's what we're going to be doing Hey, that's it. So we'd be so we love start off to our left everybody at home I'm trusting you all to do all this All right, I can only see so many of you on the videos, but this is it. It's the end of the day Well, it's the end of the day here for me for Joanna. It's it's it's September actually at this day She's gone so far ahead And Michael's back in July and BC. But anyway, we're we're crossing transit transit be time zones and everything there Hey, I don't know what time reason you were to go down there. It's I don't know April. I don't know 130 130 Well, anyway, we all need we've all been going at this for hours and hours and I see people are Going down a little bit So are we already don't think we're all going to swing to our left? Okay, and for those who were in the southern hemisphere. That's that way So are we all ready we're all going to start out are we ready? Hey I don't I can't Yes Hello everyone I am Aras Bosgurt and an associate professor of distance education at another university turkey Today if I can I will talk about the emergence of remote education and trauma informed pedagogy in less than five minutes That will be a challenge COVID-19 not only interrupted education, but it also caused trauma psychological pressure and Anxiety as well as many problems such as digital divide inequity in equality and injustice To lessen damage derived from COVID-19 crisis and to ensure the continuity of the teaching and learning Emergency remote education was put into practice across the globe. It was necessary, but unfortunately we did many states We thought that education is all about delivering information That notion is actually a trap that will be encountered again and again throughout the story COVID-19 revealed many facts that we have ignored so far We have witnessed the real face of education and saw that education can be so curial to many vulnerable learners I believe that education is beyond sending and receiving knowledge. It's more about care Therefore care is one of the essential ingredients of teaching and learning Emergency remote education taught us many things We've learned that by the epic knowledge sharing centric pedagogies doesn't work anymore Education is beyond Processes and there are effective emotional processes that should be taken into consideration In a recent Editorial we said that what we teach in these times can have secondary importance We have to keep in mind that students will remember Not the educational content delivered, but how they felt during these hard times With an empathetic approach the story will not center on how to successfully Deliver educational content, but it will be on how learners narrate these times This notion in fact highlights why we need trauma in fourth pedagogy In brief trauma can be physical or emotional and it is about learners well-being From this perspective we can argue that trauma is a broad term and I believe that there are many reasons Visible or invisible that causes trauma for vulnerable learners every single second can be traumatic Identity color preferences and even how you feel can trigger traumatic moments Now, please consider yourself as a learner affected from COVID-19 crisis Please further consider yourself as a refugee as a minority as a learner with different sexual orientation As a learner that doesn't fit so-called ideal educational system Individually in economic crisis as a person at the margins or simply as an individual who is not understood by society We could be one of them. We must develop empathy and we must act now Not tomorrow not in the future. We have to start seeing the world from their eyes right now As educators and most important as humans we must welcome welcome them as they are We must distance them. We must value them. We must share their burdens Once we really understand them once we really know about their feelings The world will definitely be a better place for them and for everyone I would like to conclude my guest representation with the same from Sufi poet Rumi Centuries ago he said come come wherever you are to emphasize that we have to embrace any individual as they are Centuries later in 2020 I believe that it shouldn't be too hard to love and care each other as educators Learners and most important players humans Thank you for your participation I think I did it in less than five minutes Well done. I was frightened everybody to make sure that they're finishing on time So well done and great points and and you're right Iris I mean you list the list that you have there were that's all We all fit into at least one of them if not more than one of them. So it's it's not a demo. No, we're all awesome And in that respect. So yeah, well done. Well, well done. Just just a final remark, you know Try to present this presentation in less than five minutes. It's kind of experiencing the trauma during the five minutes Yeah Well, it was funny because you know, but I think it takes it takes us a real skill to present You know and get your message across as I said, there's a there's an old story like in Ireland and The guy writing the letter home to his mother and says dear mommy. I'm sorry. I wrote such a long letter I didn't have the time to write a short one and it takes That that's skilled there like that, you know, so Uh, that's that's absolutely brilliant. Now Joanna, I've waiting and look forward to this one though This can't be really No pressure at all like that. No, because it's great to talk to someone from the future So anyway, now did we all like to go left to right? So Dave, you're not showing your beard. I that was a highlight of the day for me so far There's no camera on this just you know I don't know. Anyway Sorry about that Now I think Braddon's starting to the left. We start to the right Okay, just to make that. Oh pretty good. Are we all ready? We all the hands are all up and we're gonna start to the right this time I'm trying to find where I'm trying to find my slides.  You're fine. Let's be no panic. Let's be no panic Thanks We're all good. Are we all ready we're gonna start off to the right this time to get the hands up Are we ready? Yeah Okay, hi everyone I'm Johanna and I teach a core unit in cultural capability at CDU here in Darwin, Australia When we moved from blended delivery to online only We had a lot of digital first Correct us in place. So let me concentrate on supporting the students more generally with the pressures. We all found ourselves affected by This is a mandatory unit for all first year students And I have about 800 students each term three times a year We start each lesson by acknowledging the traditional owners and indigenous cultures and the lands on which we meet And I do that today here from Larakia country and I want to acknowledge the owners And elders past present and emerging that are here and also those where you are I find that this um A base cultural protocols, but also helps us shift cognitive gears Uh situate ourselves in relation to the learning Not just to acknowledge but really transfer our learning Into a cultural respect for the frameworks shared by our senior authorities And setting an intention for how we're going to care for the knowledge Now we have the absolute privilege of having a team of yomo lecturers. Yomo are from east Arnhem country. Um, so That's a different territory, but a few hours away They provided these wonderful mini lectures, uh, which formed their conceptual framework for what cultural capability is This provided a backbone from a complementary theoretical language readings and learning activities So we're engaging with them from the ground up and it informs everything else we do in the unit The mind map here Represents culture as a set of practices for behavior rather than a tick list and for the rest of the semester Students critically engage with relations of power cultural border crossings bias equity diversity And this provokes a lot of hot discussion that especially at the moment, but um the participatory Focus And with the emphasis on multiple perspectives Means they feel safe not to choose a side but to still engage We made students discussion board that then they claim for themselves um, they gave the teacher or sorry, they gave each other feedback on the drafts for each of the Um lessons we break down and do weekly. So we'd spend a lot of tutorial time working through those things a lot of interaction weekly, um And this demystified a lot of work for students who are unaccustomed to critical thinking and assessment pedagogies. So There's a forum they could meet up regionally. They have a peer assisted, um student support sessions there too um So they could also set up Partners to do their assignments together and a lot of them did that without ever meeting their their partner face to face Because there's students all over the country So they learned how to work remotely, um as well I also um wanted to acknowledge that they were under certain kinds of pressures and Oh how to better deliver the online experience. Um, so we pulled students to see what blend of synchronous and asynchronous stuff That we would choose to do and so they kind of had a had a real say in that and they did this cute polling thing um And then we could use the time in like the synchronous time to really, you know Break down things and have a proper discussion about stuff rather than Keep lecturing. So lots of lots of blended mixed up ideas about mini lectures and a whole bunch of asynchronous stuff and then we have um q and a sessions During a week and so it was a really lovely blend and helped inform lots of mixtures And the final assignment uh was based on real events. So from the top left is the mining in catheter national park Then we did the bottom left, which is a covid related discrimination and racism in australia and around the world and That gave the students a chance to process and apply The the concepts and the and the learning straight away To things that were actually happening and then there was this other one, which was a racist incident against a traditional owner here in australia so They were also So we're creating a space for them to really use their learning in an immediate sense to support each other through a difficult time Thank you That's what I thought of finished You only blurred me into a false sense of that I was gonna be at the count you and stop you Oh no, I have said I love the photograph my ethnicity is not a verse absolutely really really powerful stuff. So, um, yeah really well done and That's really really good stuff as everybody here is doing like that. It's it's it's great stuff So michael i'm going to give you a chance to get your your your stuff Up there Okay, that was that was too quick anyway now I haven't asked any of you to leave your chairs yet. Have I I've been very nice But what I think is move your seat back a little bit So we're going to give ourselves a little bit of a bit of space, okay? So we're going to go up on the hang Down on the dough up on the tree Down on the counter and up on the kooie We all got that now because you've really been sitting there for all a far far too long now And I think we need to get the blood flowing here I know every bath has had our feet up and then our feet dancing on me and as I said like I just want everybody So I know look it's it's actually brilliant to think that we have people literally around the world Making Egypt themselves counting on the screen. That's absolutely brilliant And I'm leading it. I'm happy to happy to lead that because guys look I don't want to go on too much, but you know what? We need to come together and this is like this is absolutely brilliant. It's a great idea to come together Yes, we're sharing good ideas. We're sharing good thought But that doesn't mean we can't sort of enjoy ourselves a little bit along the way And then it's sort of this idea of fellowship and coming together And that's what I think the also was really about and if I can just sort of get you to all to just get the blood going Then we'll say the little part. So are we all ready now? Okay, we're going to go up on the height down on the dough up on the tree down on the Kaha and open the kuih. Are we all ready? Hey I Well, hi everyone, my name is Michael Pascovacius I am joining you from the west coast of canada on the unceded territories of the Songhees primal and wasanage people I'm currently assistant professor of educational technology at the University of Victoria, and I'm very great to live with you today So with limited time, I can't share too much about myself But what I would like you to know is that I've been working in open education since about 2009 I think it's a really useful way to design both learning resources, but also learning experiences Also worth knowing is that most of my teaching at present is with teacher candidates. So for many of them They're now facing a future teaching in ways previously unimagined So I returned to the theme of the session Without doubt these are extraordinary times and everyone I know is working Like they never have the forum pulling together in ways. It's really remarkable Depending on your context teachers and learners are now engaging in ways They never thought they would many are figuring it out as they go Leading it to an entirely new term for what's happening called emergency remote teaching like others I don't believe that what is happening so far is representative of our history of online and technology integrated learning So how is your institution responded? what I've seen My institution is a rush to buy new tools and technologies to catch up on time lost in supporting online learning Our university even went As far as doing an lms migration over the summer All the while while introducing zoom Calteria calteravidu streaming microsoft teams and crowd marked for large class exam marking I truly hope I will never find a need to use that I hope you or I think we all have significantly more buttons that we can now push I would have hope for more emphasis on learning design community Information and ways to communicate with and support our learners in a meaningful way during this time I hope you would agree that the availability of the technology alone does not ensure this I do not want to bash the institutional response However, I would have hoped to see more discussion and explicit prompts about care and consider it learning design as part of the response In my own research, I found the principles will be open education useful in guiding my thinking around learning design I think there's ways that you can integrate openness through All aspects of learning design from the outcomes activities assessment and All of these can be supported with open educational resources I'm going to present you with some provocations that came out of my research I believe openness presents a learning design approach that can be used for the Integration of educational technology open educational resources and practices Actually represent new possibilities for action and teaching and learning And I do believe the open network literacies associated with open practices both for teachers and students represent important digital literacies And lastly, it's paramount learners make I think I jumped a slide here. Sorry. It's paramount that learners make informed and deliberate choices regarding openness if we're to engage them with it So I just wanted to share one example about learning design that tries to prioritize openness across the spectrum This is how we teach our technology integrated learning course to teacher candidates Personally, we use an open course website We avoid the LMS to ensure persistent access to the resources and also Evolving access to the content so they could come back years later and see What's been there when they it's still there we use a free driven learning projects. We allow students interest to drive their project work and We allow them to present it through portfolios that Enable them to develop network literacy. It celebrates their work. It shows that it's portable They can get it out and keep it and maintain ownership We network these portfolios together so that people can see the work of others to encourage peer review and community formation And I'll just skip just because I only have 30 seconds left Anyway, if you're interested in this, we're hoping to produce a paper My colleagues Valerie urban and I are hoping to write something about this model very soon So this coming term we all have mountains to climb I think it's important to acknowledge the cry crisis and prioritize care Consider the whole student experience. You might have to talk to your colleagues But even better talk to your students Consider how much screen time and zoom meetings they're being involved in And what other trauma might exist? I want to thank you and wish you all the best Great to see all of that pretty well though Michael As I said, yeah Trying to keep stuff as accessible as as possible Um, I think that's the thing, you know sometimes There's a sense in the whole ed tech world that, you know, if we're not careful it can become technology for itself And say not amongst ourselves. I think some people can become besotted. So we need something here to Apologies my dog now. It's starting to buy one of my three dogs Um, so mark's dog. It's very very quiet at the moment. So look, I am as I said, I think everybody's been Been brilliant. It's it's it's it's a great I'm nearly actually tempted to to start doing a phd again. Just so I can join this network. So That's nearly Any postdocs going in Charles Darwin, I'm all over that, you know, so So yeah, no if you need someone for counting and dancing and stuff don't ask for any academic stuff That's that ran out about 10 years ago I'm Martin harsh, but fair. I think that's a fair comment. Everybody says that they're Harsh but fair Oh come on Bodger. Oh Lorna now I'm gonna try my best here because Lorna was saying in the spirit of sort of pan Celtic Affirmation we're all trying to come together. So everybody else can count In Irish, but I'm gonna try some little I think it's a and go Three care quick some slight variation when we go on that So I think the counting up and down like that. So look, I won't make you stand up and down We just go back left to right. I was going to get people to sing it But I think no we've done enough for me save the voice Like like that. So the inimitable deadbath at me We couldn't have actually planned at the finish with another great and as I said Oh, it's you've all earned those badges now.  Yes, Martin. Yes fair play. Deb. Don't ruin the fun Feel free to go over the five minutes by all means go over the five minutes. No pressure No pressure On what I might actually do is after four minutes. I might just lie and say You've only 10 seconds Yeah, I don't know I should I should be nice, but I won't be But you're supposed to have the warmer pact is supposed to be at the beginning none of at the end, you know Oh, look, we're finishing up with a bang here. We're finishing up with a buy Okay, we're ready. So we'll just go we'll just go left to right again We won't make this stand up. Ah, do you know what we will we'll stand up and down? I think that was better actually up on the hand and down on the toe Are we already moved the seats back a bit? Okay, shake out the arm So lads, this is this is our last one our last one of of the session last one of the year Are we all ready? We're all going to start we're going to go up on that on the hand And I'll do the I'll do my best for this Scottish Got it. Okay. Are we ready? Hey A tree Hi everybody, um, I'm Debbie bath That's my little bit moji you might see the few of those today And that's my bit moji student me. So obviously I'm a phd student at Lancaster University And I'm in my fourth year and for those of you that don't know I also work for alt now So I'm the membership and professional development manager at alt Please join alt. Okay And I want to talk to you today about my phd research I feel like I keep telling everybody that I'm going to be doing this stuff And I'm not actually doing it, but I really am trying to do it. Honestly. Um, so my research is Set in obviously the context of cobit 19, but I'm hoping to look at education educators experiences of emotional support And also their engagement with open educational practices within personal learning that works the idea being hopefully that It will help look at possible strategies to maintain the well-being of educators, which I'm sure you're all Interested in Okay So why is this research needed mindful of the fact that I've only got five minutes before tom starts shouting at me I've tried to give myself a little reminder. Um, this is the short version about why I want to do this Um, I'm really really happy to see that there's actually some people in my personal learning network in the audience today And you can probably find yourself in there somewhere. Um, that's a little picture that we did the other day Um, in terms of personal learning networks, one of the reasons I want to do this is because I feel that I've gained a lot of emotional support From my own pln Um, and also although there's research out there that says that people do associate Pln's with emotional support. We don't actually know that much about exactly how and sort to what extent is experienced by people So I'm hoping that my research will explore that to see if other people are also experienced this sort of emotional support Um in terms of um, the kind of openness side of it There is also support in the research that says uh, that if you look at the relationship between pln's and open educational practices It might help some reveal some sort of conceptual insights And I found a great piece of work by kaodon. So I've been looking at hers And um, I'm kind of encouraged that I'm along the right lines So here we go in terms of um, why now and why in this context? I'm still going tom. I'm still going. I'm going to try and beat the clock. Hang on. Right. Okay Um, everybody knows we've all been under massive pressure during them during the last few months Educators are normally under pressure, but they've been under even more pressure over the last couple of months um, there's a lot of Appetite for looking at psychological and social research. So I'm hoping again that I'm on the right lines with this and the idea being that um If we can kind of look at how to support educators, we can support their well-being now Um, there is a kind of an indication that we really need to prioritize this But whether or not it is actually being prioritized. I'm not quite sure That's me my well-being Although I have to say my well-being and alt is really really good. Okay. Um, great to see aris here Thank you so much aris for your wonderful paper because that's given me some evidence as well to say that We really should be focusing on effective dimensions of learning as well as academic content and rigor So hopefully that all helps to kind of stay that I uh, I'm definitely should be doing this sort of research and again the stuff that I found um in terms of UNESCO and also places like Yale Center for Emotion Intelligence Um, they've kind of stressed that teachers really do need this sort of socio emotional support In order to kind of deliver the learning. Um, and obviously They're also supporting students as well. So it is kind of critical stuff Okay, I don't know how I'm doing time can't even deal. I can't even look at my watch. Ah, okay openness in covid 19 um aris's paper again kind of stresses that um, you know openness has really come to the foreground during covid 19 and it's been sort of Something that um people have shared actively and basically try to support people and obviously we think that they are Having sort of significant roles during the covid 19 pandemic because you know, we've all been living in this world for a while People who practice in open education, but hopefully, you know, it will start to kind of spread the way as we go Okay, so I don't have time a couple of minutes. What approach will I take? Okay? I keep again. This is another one of these things that I keep going around in circles, but um, I have found um A nice definition from k. O'Dell which talks about personal learning networks as being something that's maintained mainly within the online space Um, and kind of using all of the social media aspects to connect and look at professional learning I'm using Catherine's open educational practice definition was well. I'm not going to let you stop qualitative research And one of the things I'm hoping to do is look at heuristic inquiry Um, so if anybody knows anything about that, please let me know because I'm trying to look at that now And that is me nearly nearly done. Here's my draft re-scratch questions That's it. I'm done. I'm done.


So I have some really great monthly favorites for you this month, for the month of April 2020. I think we can all agree that we're glad that that month is over. So much happened in all of our lives. I hope that you all held up during the quarantine and the different things that were going on. And if any of you were touched by the virus and things happen in your life, please know that my heart goes out to you. So I'm going to be bringing you everything that I used in the month because I had a lot of time to test. And I had a lot of time to enjoy the different products that I have already. And then there were a couple that I had gotten from Ulta's 21 Days of Beauty that I want to share with you as well. So if you're new to my channel, please consider subscribing and don't forget to hit the bell if you do so that you can be notified of any future videos I have. And everybody, if you would, please give my video a thumbs up. It does help the video out very much to get it populated out there. So let's get into monthly beauty favorites over the month of April, 2020 right now. So let's start out with hair care. So the first thing about hair I want to talk about is from Pure Body Naturals. This is the Restore and Strengthen Hair Loss Prevention Therapy Shampoo for Men and Women. It says it has no parabens, no SLSs, which is the foaming agent that is harsh on your hair. And it says no harmful chemicals and sulfate free. So this is basically a shampoo that I am using now to help regrow my hair. After I had my weight loss surgery, I lost a lot of hair from the trauma of that and then also a lot of stressors that I had around that time. And so I lost about half the volume of my hair. But I have got hairs that are about this long all over my head right now. I actually have to take my hair spray and kind of almost comb them down because I've got a ton of them sprouting. But this is helping it, I feel like helping it grow much faster and helping new hairs grow because I noticed that my hairline isn't as far back as it used to be. So this is one that I will go in. I will first go in with just an everyday drugstore shampoo to get my hair clean. And then this is kind of a treatment shampoo. It acts just like a shampoo. You can use it as your regular shampoo. But I feel like if I go in with that initial shampoo first and get everything clean and then go in with this, then I can use this right on the scalp. It doesn't have to get anything clean. It's just sinking into the hair follicles and the scalp is mainly where I concentrate the most of it. And then I will give it a really, really good massage. And I mean, I'm talking like three, four minutes of a really good massage. I'll leave it on a total of five minutes. It has a very vitamin-y smell to it. It's not got a lot of fragrance in it from other things. But I can definitely smell whatever vitamins, whatever herbs they're using in there. So it has a fragrance that isn't offensive by any means, but it's not like other shampoos where you get it and you get them and they're so aromatic with like a strawberry scent or something like that. So this has just been such a good thing for me. I did hear about this from my good friend Sherry from Graceful Beauty and yeah, she loves it. I love it. Now that I've tried it, this is my second bottle and I'm really enjoying it. And I wanted to make sure that I told you guys about it in the monthly favorites. The second thing that I am so happy that I've got, and again, this is my second bottle. I'm almost out of this tube. I'm almost out of this. This is from Provana. This is the Perfect Blonde Pure Toning Mask. It takes down any brassiness that your hair might have if you're blonde or even if you are brunette and you have a lot of brassy in your hair and you don't like that, it will take that down. And what I absolutely love about that is that my hair gets so yellow or even almost to the side of looking orange. But I can put this on and it tones it down and that means that I can do two things. One, I can do my hair at home as far as dyeing it, which has been really valuable during this time. I just use a box from L'Oreal. It's the, I think it's the lightest ash blonde they have. And I can do that at home. It does still leave my hair brassy but this will tone it down. The other thing that it helps with so much is to kind of blend the grow out with the, you know, the really light stuff I have down here. And you guys, this is highly, highly purple. That is like so purple. It's thick and it does the job like no other. I have never run across another product. Even the shimmer lights I used to get from Sally Beauty, anything like that didn't tone it down enough and this does the trick. I put this on after I've used that particular shampoo. I might use another conditioner just for a little bit of condition in my hair because my hair is a little bit dry on the ends and then I'll rinse that out.  And you guys, it's great. It is absolutely great and it does the job of bringing it to that ashy color that everybody is so crazy about right now and I love not having the brassies in my hair too. Okay, so for the skin, one of my subscribers, Lori, she told me about this, she's kept telling me about this and I finally pulled the trigger and I went on Amazon and I got this Alpha Skincare Renewal Body Lotion and this contains 12% glycolic AHA acid and that Alpha Hydroxy Acid, it helps to really help with aging skin. It's really good for that, but this really helps with the moisture and you're gonna have that moisture held in all day. The first time that I actually used this, I used it at night and I used it everywhere, all over my body because it felt so good, but I went to bed and I was so hydrated that and I wasn't used to that. I was so hydrated that I got super hot all night long because my skin was holding in all of its moisture and everything. I opt to put it on in the morning now so that I don't get so hot at night, but really truly it is very, very hydrating and I'm so thankful that she told me about this. For skincare this month, I have to talk about this again. I know that I've talked about this like three or four times this month on my channel, but I am so in love with this product from Good Molecules. It's the Niacinamide Brightening Toner. This is my second bottle. I'm getting ready to reorder my third one and this stuff is fantastic you guys. It has Alpha Arbutin in it. It has licorice root. It has vitamin C in it and the Niacinamide and you guys for a long time, my pores looked so huge and as you age you know that your pores do get to looking bigger and bigger, but what is so great about this is mine. I actually felt like after half of the first bottle that mine were looking diminished like they hadn't in years and years, but I just think that this is something that for the price, it is just a really great product for what it needs to do, which is brightening and pore refining and I just think it's absolutely wonderful and I won't be without that one. So my next product is a product that I've never spoken before on my channel. I don't know why because I've used this for as long as I can remember, even when I was a little girl, my mother used this on me and it's Obus Oil. If you don't know what Obus Oil is, it's really kind of something that my mom would use seasonally when we got colds or when we were really stuffy. She would use this to help us breathe like you would use mentholatum or VIX, vapor rub or things like that, but this is all natural, 100% natural and acts really quickly in helping with breathing. So if you're really stuffed up and you use this, I actually will use just a daughter, two of it right underneath my nostrils if I'm super stuffed up and it works so good, but my husband has terrible allergies this time of year and I discovered these. I bought these in a package of three. He has one right now that he carries in his truck, but this is an inhaler.  So if you suffer with allergies or anything like that, maybe give this a try and the fact that it's all natural is so good. I have never had any irritation from it. Let me tell you what else I do with it. When I get a sinus headache, I will take it and I will rub some that right behind my ears. You wanna be so careful to keep this away from your eyes because it won't hurt your eyes if you get it in there, but it has a very cooling effect. So you're gonna have to like, it's gonna take a while for it to wear off. It's the eucalyptus in it that's gonna do that. So it smells like eucalyptus and peppermint and menthol, all those things that are natural. It has a fantastic fragrance, you guys. I love it. Lots of people say that it's a little bit too strong, but it's just been one that I have grown up with so I love it. It makes me feel really calm and relaxed. I think that's more about the peppermint in it, but I digress.  If you know what those kind of headaches are like, this can help so much in immediate relief and the being able to breathe in deeply when you have a headache is really important because it opens up everything and you can get a lot of oxygen to your brain which helps heal that headache or helps move that headache along I should say.  Like if I get really tight shoulders or something with my hips, I still have a lot of problems with my hips and I can put that on there and rub it in almost like a icy hot or sports cream or something like that. It just works so good. So I really do love it and I wanted to make sure I talked about it this time. Okay, over to the makeup. We've talked enough about all those other things. Over to the makeup. I have been waiting to show you guys how excited I am about this palette from ColourPop and the accessories that go with it. Accessories meaning blush and lip gloss that go with it. But this came out right before the quarantine happened and right before ColourPop shut down. This is a very cool tone palette and I am absolutely head over heels in love with this thing. It is not like it's super vibrant. It's not that at all. It does blend like a dream. I think that it is just wonderful quality from them but it has all of these cool tone colors in it. Now those are just the mats, you guys. That's just the mats of them. But it also has three very, very beautiful right along here. Three very beautiful super shock shadows. These don't have any glitter in them. They are just that formula that is creamy and buttery and they're just intensely beautiful and they just have that reflect to them that makes everything just look very glowy without having any sort of texture in my opinion. As far as someone that loves these cool tones that we're seeing more and more of now, it just is one that I have just absolutely fallen in love with.  Hopefully really soon they'll be able to ramp up production again and we'll be able to get this back in stock. But it is a lovely, lovely palette and both of them. I just think that both of those are just so pretty. Now along with that is the two blushes that came out. This one is Catch My Vibe and then this one is Coast to Coast. So Coast to Coast is very mauve, more along the lines of a very muted rose. And then Catch My Vibe is a little bit more on the bright side. The quality is the same that ColourPop has. They have such good quality in their line. I really loved Coast to Coast for just a very soft mauve color. But Catch My Vibe for the more springy, vibrant color is really beautiful as well.  That's the Catch My Vibe. And then this one right here is Coast to Coast. So both of them are super pretty. I think Catch My Vibe is such a beautiful color for spring. And I just absolutely love that one. So definitely wanted to show those to you. And during Altas 21 Days of Beauty, Cover FX had their blush duos and their bronzer duos that were half priced and I got three of them. I got two blushes. This first one is, let's see, Pink Dahlia. I will swatch that one for you. So on each of these, you have the matte color and then you have the shimmer color over here. And these were so pretty because they just have this, I don't know, they have a brightness to them that I just really liked. This one was kind of a peachy pink color but they complement each other so well. So you can wear the matte one first and then this one over top of it if you want that subtle glow. And then the next one was called Mojave Mauve. So very on the mauve tone, rose-toned on this one. Really liked this one as well. As a matter of fact, this is the one that I am wearing today as my blush. And I really liked it a lot. I'm kind of running out of spots here. But I love how they paired them just with different finishes. So they really truly are just absolutely beautiful with the different finishes as compared to just having two different colors of blush in there. And then this one right here is Sun Kissed Bronze. So this was the bronze one that I picked up. So they had several of these. This bronze is really good. It does have, it's kind of more of a neutral bronze, I should say. It doesn't have a lot of orange in it and it doesn't have a lot of cool tones in it. But it just works so well. And I think it's just such a pretty color. And it is what I'm using for my bronzer today. So again, it has both finishes in there, but the colors are pretty much the same. They've just put a different finish into there. And really nice quality packaging and really nice quality as far as the where time goes and the blendability was fantastic. And then I want to show you another product that I got during the 21 Days of Beauty. And I actually, this is from NABLA. And it's the Skin Glazing and this is in Ozone.  When I first got it, I thought, well, that's gonna be kind of stiff. And then I was like using it and it is just so high beam. You guys, this is probably one of those glass-like ones that I've, you know, it's so high beam and it's reflect that it's way up here. Hopefully you guys can see that. And it's reflect that it just is something that is just so incandescent on the skin. So let me tell you what I do with this because I was finding that if I was putting it on top of my blush, it was actually so beaming that it was like almost canceling out my blush. So I looked like I just had this super high shine on my face, which I don't mind. You know, if you want to dust that around, it could be really pretty with a light hand. But what I started doing with this is I started dusting it on my cheeks before I put my blush on. And wow, it just gives this candlelight glow to my skin on the cheeks. And I think it's just so pretty. And the other thing I thought about the other day was why not put this on a little bit, you know, even before you put on some of your foundations or things like that.  It worked out so pretty because the consistency of it isn't super powdery. It's just super, super high beam. And I just, I think it's so beautiful on the skin. And yes, it is beyond highlighting. It is glowing, glowing skin. Also while we were in quarantine, the balm announced that it was having 50% off. And I did order quite a few products because I've never tried the balm before. I was quite disappointed in several of the products, but these are the two that I really did like. And this one is from the Bahama Mama Bronzer. And I liked it because it was one that wasn't too orange. Again, I have very cool toned skin. So I needed something to be more along the lines of just giving a glow without having that orange high beam in it. So I am running out of places. It's right there, you guys. It's got just a little bit of that tanning property in it that makes it just about perfect for my skin as we're going into summer. So it doesn't pull itself to be cool where it would look muddy, but it doesn't pull itself to be orange where it would look like I was an oompa loompa or something. And then the in stain, this is spring for this blush. This one is called Argyle, but this is so pretty for spring. Oh my goodness. I am just completely running out of places to put stuff. Okay, let's put it right there. So this blush, it lasts a really, really long time on the skin. And see how bright and vibrant it is right there, you guys? I just thought this is so beautiful and it just brightens up my complexion. Matter of fact, let me just put a little bit of it on. It just does really give a beautiful look to the cheeks as far as brightening it up. And I'm just, I really like it, you guys. I just think it's really, really pretty. It's a brightening color. It's one of those ones that you don't have to worry about and it can go with just about any look. And they had some really pretty colors on it and it does last a really long time. So I was quite pleased with that. And if you're wondering about my brush, from It Cosmetics, this is the best blush brush I have ever had in my whole life. It is dirty. Yes, I know because I haven't watched it in about four days. So this brush is an angled brush. It has duo fibers. It is really dense down here, but up here it's very airy. And I adore this brush for putting on blush products or cheek products because I can start out here and I can stipple and it puts on the perfect amount without going too heavy.  Best blush brush ever, you guys. I've tried tons of blush brushes. You know, the angled ones that have the full bristles, those don't work for me. It ends up putting too much blush down too fast. And since I'm so fair, it just doesn't work. But this is just the way that it lays down is fantastic. I'll make sure that I link it for you guys. Okay, we're gonna talk about three mascaras and then we're done. First of all is from Rimmel and this is the Scandalized On Demand mascara. This wand is a little bit different than the average hourglass wand we've been seeing. It's a little bit thicker down here with that hourglass, but then it tapers down just a bit down here. So I find that I'm really enjoying how this builds, how it layers on itself, even though this is the waterproof one. The other one I think is in an orange tube. I do have that, I do like it, but I prefer the waterproof one because it stays on longer. And I also prefer it because it washes off really easy, whereas the other one just smears. But this one washes off really well with just some waterproof makeup remover, as does the Milani. And I think I enjoy the Milani just a tiny bit more than the Rimmel. This one really lengthens well. The Milani gives a little bit more volume. So I actually kind of like them both for different reasons. This is just your regular, you know, tree wand where it just kind of tapers down to the bottom and wider at the base. And I just really like this one for its waterproof factor. It stays on all day. It's not going anywhere. Absolutely love that. And this does both, it does both the thickening or the volumizing and the lengthening, but it does a really, really good job of the volumizing. So love both of those. And I also got a mini size of the Anastasia Beverly Hills New Mascara. I don't remember what this is called, but I'll make sure that I throw it up for you. And that didn't sound good. I won't throw up for you, but I'll throw the name of this up on the screen for you guys. I really enjoy this one. It really gives you a very feathery like feel to your lashes.  So I really did like that about it. This is kind of the atypical wand. It's a little bit tapered in the middle. So it's that little tiny bit hourglass, but at the same time it's almost just straight. So I like very much what this does to my lashes. I like that you can layer this like crazy without any problems. I don't have any raccoon eyes or any little dots of black or anything from it. So you know that. And I didn't from either of those from Milani or Rimmel either. That's it for today's favorites. Thank you so much for hanging around. I know this was longer, but I had a lot to talk about because there was so many good things that I had tried and I had had a chance to really dive in, really enjoying these products very much and loving what they're doing for my skin, my hair, and loving playing with makeup too. So if you did enjoy it, please give it a thumbs up like I talked about at the beginning of the video. Thank you guys so much for hanging around. I do appreciate each and every one of you and I appreciate all the comments and the love that you gave me. Some of you know that I had a really bad month with my son, which I'm not gonna go into because I'll end up getting very teary, but it has been a challenging month for everyone. I know, not just me. And I wanna send you my love, my thoughts, my prayers. Tell you all that I am praying and hoping that we have such a better summer than our spring was. So please take care of yourselves. I love you all very much. Stay safe, stay sanitized, and I'll see you in my very next video. Bye you guys.


Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence says it's working with the Foreign Affairs Ministry to interface with the U.S. and U.K. governments to ensure all sensitive information, like the recent security alerts issued responsibly in the future. The Minister of Defence, who also defended the ministry's 2022-2023 budget before the House Committee on Defence. The House Committee on Defence, Honour Wubaba Jimmy Benson, in his welcoming remarks tasks the Defence Ministry to take the security alerts issued by the U.S. and U.K. embassies seriously. Honour this report's achievements, which is a proof of the level of professionalism often displayed by military in the discharge of their duties. However, this Committee requests that the Armed Forces of Nigeria should take note of the recent security alerts in Nigeria by the U.S. government. We urge you to effectively collaborate with sister security agencies to ensure that all security threats are completely neutralized and Nigerians can live peacefully. But the Minister is confident that the military and other sister security agencies are on top of the situation. The Security Council met and we discussed this threat and it was believed that we will not take it lightly. We tried to verify the source of the threat of the pronouncement made by the U.S. government. We tried to identify countries that are also interested in the same remarks made by the U.S. government and we would opinion that the best way to go about it is to continue aware possible beef up security in Abuja and its contagious states, that is Nassarawa, Niger and the rest of them. However, we believe that there is no smoke without fire and in that regard we were able to subject the details to our intelligence organizations and they have provided answers to those areas which the government is in doubt. An envelope system budgeting for the ministry. The ministry says a more vertical budgeting system for the military would have a more effective for a more robust armed forces. As it is now, it has its advantages and of course several other advantages which the government has been discussing with relevant authorities. We perhaps have the opportunity that the government has been given also to share the view for this. While operating now in the era of joint operations, you know joint operations from the armed forces from the test academy, joint operations at the level of junior course, joint operations at the level of senior course, joint operations at the level of strategic courses and of course joint operations at the field level. Therefore, it only means sense that the country operates one armed forces, especially at the professional level and that should also be reflected or rather reflected at the budgetary level which of course we all know will reduce wastages and also enhance opportunities for armed forces and also be better used for resources, especially now that we have drilling resources in the country. The committee goes into an executive session to address security details arising from the budget. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Welcome to Montpelier Civic Forum. It's another of our shows leading up until the election in November. All of these shows are covering the Washington County Senate race, the Montpelier Statehouse race, as well as Bill Fraser covering the parking garage bond, as well as the water bond. Now today I'm honored to have one of our candidates for the house. Mary Hooper. Hi, Richard. Mary, a lot of people know you. How long have you been in the Statehouse? I have served there for ten years, so five terms, and so I'm up for my election for the sixth term. And before that, what was your career? And during that, I served for eight years as the mayor of Montpelier, so four terms as mayor, and that overlapped a little bit. I was elected mayor in 2004. And then elected to the Statehouse in 2008. Prior to that, I had, actually I'd taken a couple of years off from working. I had been the commissioner of what was then the Department of Labor and Industry, and a job that I loved, really fascinating work, good work on behalf of working people in the state of Vermont. But I found myself all over the state, and not dedicated in working in my community. And I wanted to take a few years to just be in Montpelier and to really focus on community matters. And so I thought I'd take, you know, maybe two years off from... I've always worked. I've worked since I was 14 or 15, and we've always held a job. And so I thought, just take a little break. Did some volunteer work. I was on a committee that thought about how we do downtown redevelopment, what it takes to make our downtown a vital functioning place. What year would that have been? 1999. And you were looking at a parking garage. We'll come back to that, perhaps. But it was an interesting project. There were 20 or so of us on this committee that was appointed by the City Council. They really did a deep dive into what makes a functioning, effective downtown. What are the elements of it? And so we followed a model that's called the Main Street Model and thought about economic development and the appearance, so the vibe, how it feels when you're in the community, how you promote the community and how you have an organization that supports that work. That became what is now known as Montpelier Alive. So I was the first executive director of that organization. I worked on this committee and then I said, I've got to get a job, folks. Time to get back in the workforce. And they said, well, you know, will you be our first executive director? So I did that for a couple of years. And then I was elected mayor. Now in the state house, the Montpelier Alives are all over the state, actually. Those economic development functions and promoting downtown. Do you ever see issues in the state house that relate to the downtowns and to how the communities develop themselves economically? Absolutely. Can you give a couple of examples? Well, interestingly, the whole notion of how you do community development, and I would say it's community development. It's not just economic development. What is the distinction between community development and community economic development? So if you're just focused on making sure that the retailers are doing well, incredibly important work, and of course we need to be focused on that, you need to also think about how you invite the community into the downtown and how you engage them so that they want to support the initiatives that you need to be making to support those downtown retailers. You know how we love our downtown in Montpelier. But if we didn't feel that way, folks would be doing more online buying than they're doing now and you could substitute Montpelier for Middlebury, for Brattleboro, for any of them. I think there's a deeper passion for Montpelier. We've got something pretty special going on here. But you have to nurture that. It doesn't happen accidentally. That actually was one of the tags that we had for what was then called the Montpelier Downtown Community Association. We picked that cumbersome name very intentionally because we wanted it to be about not just economic development, but about community and how you invite the community in and ask the community to support that. How does that play in the state house, in the house? Okay, so in a variety of ways, where I started to go, when we passed legislation, it was probably in the mid-90s and I was fortunate to work on that when I worked in the executive branch that put a number of incentives and provisions in state law that said, essentially, we value our downtown and we want to figure out ways to make investments in our downtowns. And so, in statute, our provisions that say, if you become a designated downtown, there are certain opportunities that flow to you. Some of them are tax credits. I worked on bringing lots of tax credits into the downtown, a couple million dollars worth of tax credits to private individuals. Back in those days, we had grants and brought some sprinkler grants in because I was worried about buildings burning. A huge threat to our downtowns is buildings burning one at a time and losing that fabric of the community. Nowadays, we have tax increment finance districts. What is a tax increment finance district?  You should have people... Well, if it's not a good answer, at least make it short. Yeah, yeah. It's a mechanism that allows a community that has gone through a number of steps to recapture the education portion of the property tax and retain it to pay for the cost of bonds for infrastructure, for making civic improvements. So it's a way of trying to focus growth into our developed communities, which is important. You want people on our water and sewer and using our roads rather than out developing cornfields. When we talk about a town, we not only talk about the businesses, we not only talk about the downtown, but we talk about the schools. And every legislative session, school finance is upfront and then ends up at the very, very end of the session. It starts the session and then it ends up in a crunch at the end of the session. Why? It's hugely complex and it's deeply personal. I've always said I would never serve on a school board because it's the most difficult civic position you can take because you're talking about it. So you're saying that John Holler is a masochist but not only having served on the school board but been mayor. Yeah. You are making decisions that affect children's lives and that is huge. But they're also civic lives. The schools determine the civic life of the city or the town. Absolutely. Personally, I think that is one of the more troubling things about what is now Act 46, which has been the school consolidation. School consolidation. Done under the rubric of we're going to save tax money. Big important question of how do you control expenses. We could have a long conversation about whether or not that was accomplished. Do you think it was accomplished in a short conversation? No. Why not? Logically, you would think it would do that. So I think that there were going to be some savings that some communities were already going to do the consolidation.  They were incentives. They were huge incentives. There was a 10% deduction or reduction in your property tax on the education side that the rest of us paid for. So it wasn't...  But I think when you do that analysis that you're not seeing that you're getting rid of that many school administrators or that you're seeing those sort of changes. What you're seeing is a change in spending patterns rather than a reduction in spending. But what you've lost, which is where you began, which is what does that do to the community? In some places it may strengthen the community but particularly in rural communities where the school is what you do. It is where you see your neighbors. It's grandparents going to watch basketball games but it's also just... it's where stuff happens. Unlike Montpelier where we have other excuses to get together. We've got the farmers market and different festivals. So we have a way of drawing ourselves together. But these small communities, their school is the heart and soul of their community. And I fear for them that they're going to lose their heart and soul as schools are closed. Do you feel that perhaps it's worth visiting what Maine has, which is each county is a separate supervisory district. So in Vermont we would have 14 supervisory districts. I think there may be fair discussions about should we have different governance structures. People have pointed to Maine and the fact is that after Maine instituted that consolidation approach, they said, whoops, that was a mistake and they have been backing off of that. Well, they had a vote that verified it initially. Yeah, yeah. But they have rethought that and are trying to figure out how to... if that was the right sort of thing to do. What about in the last legislative session, the unified teacher health contract? Let's stay on schools for a while. What were your thoughts on that? How did you vote on that? I voted... so the first half of the biennium, the proposal to do that and we turned that back and I voted to turn it back to say no. I tried as hard as I could to get the provision that essentially creates a unified statewide teacher's health care contract. They put it in the budget at the end of the day and it was a very last minute move. Now we're talking about the beginning and the end. Yeah. Well, there's a reason these things happen but I would like to say I voted against it but I could not vote against the budget and so I voted for the budget which had a provision. I actually shouldn't have put a frame to that way. I should have said, do you support that? Do you think that notion ultimately will help in cost containment and will hurt... Yes, it's cost containment too. It takes away some local bargaining power or bargaining control. So what disturbs me about that is that I think it's an intrusion upon bargaining and into the basic construct of labor management agreements. Once you take health care out of it, health care and wages are integrally related. There's no distinction and people will frequently bargain for lower wages in exchange for a decent... And so separating the two is just logically inconsistent to me. I think the net result is that in fact... Let me come back. There were different units around the state who particularly not teachers as much but the other people who participate. So folks janitors, cafeteria workers, folks like that have in many parts of the state bargained for really nice health care benefits in exchange for pretty lousy wages and suddenly... The ground shifts. Yeah, the ground shifts and I'm really worried about that group of people. I've always been ashamed that we're not willing to pay the workers who keep our systems moving and going, not just the professionals but the people who are cleaning rooms and feeding our kids aren't pay livable wages. Why is that? If it's a local decision, town by town, why is that? So that's the interesting thing of... So we weigh that against tax rates and I've sat there as mayor in supported budgets that I would have liked to have paid better wages. Actually I think the city's done pretty well on that side so I'm proud of that. But you make those choices. You know what people are willing to tolerate in terms of property tax payments and I think schools are making those decisions, making those choices. And some folks don't have very strong voices in that process which makes me a big union supporter because it gives unions and able people who individually do not have strong voices to amplify their voice. Do you believe when people say that the unified health contract is the beginning step to a unified teachers contract, to a statewide teachers contract? I think we're moving in that direction and interestingly... Would Vermont support that? Well, it's hard to imagine so the notions of having county-based systems are interesting. I come back to the value not only of our schools as centers of our communities but towns are also the centers of our communities. How many school boards do we have? I know. It's a huge number and it's difficult to bring people in. I understand those problems and I think those are fair observations but I would much rather go down to the end of the street, the other end of State Street and talk to my school board member at a school board meeting then get in the car and now the way the good folks in Roxbury are going... Well, we share where our school board meetings are but suddenly you feel a little removed. You wonder if they're going to listen to you or you're going to have as strong of a voice. You don't live next door to those folks necessarily so that they know you and you have a personal relationship. There's a loss there. Do you feel that the legislature's relationship with the Department of Education and with the State School Board is as it always has been? No, that's changed. So, remember the agency of education is separate from the State School, whatever it's called. No, the Board of Education is a separate entity not run by the agency of education. It used to be... So, those are two separate and distinct entities. It used to be that the person who is now the Secretary of Education was independent of the Governor's office and that has changed and I think that is a profound change in the way we look at education. It used to be, arguably, it was a... isolated from politics, from the politics of the executive... of a governorship. Right, right. I mean, Governors should be political. That's what we elect them to do. But we want the administrative functions to be separate, in particularly of education. I would love to see that not part of a political football. In terms of education, we've been talking micro-education on the school level. How do you finance that beast? Yeah, so therein lies the trouble. And I think that we need to be moving more rapidly toward an income-based system of financing which brings all sorts of interesting challenges with it to figure out... What is the problem with the current system of finance, income and part property? Well, because it's been cobbled together so much over the years that there are probably four people in the whole state of Vermont who can accurately describe the way it works. And I'm sure not one of them. So we've tried to make it a fair and equitable system, but we just keep building on it about every once in a while you need to tear it down, step back and go back up from the ground up. The governor, when he first came in two years ago, tried that in terms of his initiative to hold a separate vote that was quickly disposed of because he felt that income sensitivity makes people less aware of what the school budgets were. So just to be clear, he did not try to revamp the education financing system. What he did through his proposal which was to essentially set aside all of the budgets that school boards had already done. It already done all of the work. It came at the very beginning several months before town meeting day. Well, it came so late in the process that you couldn't put a proper budget in front of people. Had he said, I'm going to do this next year. Was there merit in that in your view? So he used the bully pulpit to say that budgets are too high and they need to be reduced. Even though they were massively approved. Well, even though they were massively approved and in fact the rate of increase I wanted to say was virtually zero but it was less than 2%. The school boards, the second year school boards brought in budgets that were lower than what the governor said they should do and then he still said that wasn't good enough. How would you see it fundamentally changed? You said changing it over to income less dependence on property. What would that mean to the average person? What would it mean to the wealthy person? What would it mean to the poor person? Well, they're in like all of the really thorny questions and I'm not sure. It's pretty easy for us all to say tax the rich and that'll take care of our problems and we basically do not have enough rich people to And you'd lose some if you tried that. I'm not sure, that's what people say but it's interesting that in fact we seem to have an in migration of people with wealth. So I'm not sure, I think they're coming here because we're a pretty fabulous place. Process-wise, how do you grab a consensus to change something that fundamental because the next question after this is going to be Act 250, which is another one that how do you change these things that are so structurally fundamental in education? Every year we say we're going to do it, we never do it. Well, we as a society and as Vermonters and certainly in the house we tend to approach these things incrementally rather than... With studies and task forces. But we do a little bit here. I mean a little bit more each year and sometimes that gets us to the right place or sometimes it gets us to an incredibly complex system like our education financing system. And so yes, in fact we do have yet another tax study that is, we had a very good one that I thought was the basis for making some of those fundamental changes where there were thoughtful people who reached close to a consensus on what to do but they didn't tackle the property tax side of things and this study is essentially an addendum so we have a study committee that's I think going to be a couple years long that is tackling that. And so I think we're going to look at it's not just what do you do about property taxes but what do you do about our revenue raising system that we need to be talking about sales and all of the other revenue generators that we have and thinking about whether or not they're equitable. People like to talk about our high property tax rates and those who pay high income tax, those rates but when you look at objective studies that really fairly look at each state and it's complicated because we all have different mechanisms for using revenue and some of those don't show up in those state reports. The fact is Vermont is kind of in the middle of the pack. We may be high on some things and very low on other things but at the end of the day the tax obligation in the state of Vermont is somewhere in the middle of the 50 states. That's an okay place to be. That's land use. It's having what it's 25th anniversary or whatever. And it hasn't been really seriously revisited. Do you think it should? Well we're having a task force, a commission to do this work. It's a really interesting question. I don't know that they're necessarily going to be getting into what are some of the fundamental areas that we didn't take care of. Remember when we put Act 250 in place we said we were also going to have a state land use plan. Exactly. And something else. I think it was three pronged and we just did the one and I'm forgetting what I could be referring to. I think the criticisms of Act 250 are if you had a time limit on this thing saying that it is a process that at its most will take six months or nine months. But sometimes Act 250 just keeps drawing on and on and on. So I haven't gone in depth with 250 related issues in some period of time. But in fact I believe if you look at the statistics the vast majority of permits are issued very quickly. Sometimes just I think the majority of them with an administrative process. And it's only the much larger more complex ones which arguably deserve more scrutiny. The other side and an element of that so is the system too complex? Fair. Good question. We've certainly changed in 25 years. There are other things that we may want to add in. There are things that we may want to pull out. Those are all fair questions. Now their element though of the system is the quality of work that people bring to the table. If you put together just like any permit application you can do it. Now we're hearing a mayor speak. Well I used to work in a regulatory role for the state. You put together if you know how the process works and you do your background work if it's a fair system you get through it pretty quickly. So you've got people who are familiar with the permitting system and they know how to move through it. They know they need to bring this set of blueprints or this set of plans. I've got to remember to get the well permit or the septic or the road cut or the driveway cut. That's why we have lawyers who specialize in 250. That's too bad that it's not just people can do it but if you're doing a very complex project you probably want people with the expertise to help you out. What we forget is and it was interesting to watch during the crash of 2008 spurred by over development of housing. We ought to talk about housing at some point. But in so many other states there was this tremendous overproduction of housing because people could move through the permitting process. People thought that it was an easy money maker and a lot of people really suffered from that. We didn't see that in Vermont and that's not the purpose of our permitting but our permitting process in general does require you to be thoughtful and careful and to ask deep questions before you make those investments. Is the state house working on housing policy that encourages housing in Vermont? What's your view on that? We passed a very good sized bond $35 million to support housing. Burlington has a 1% vacancy rate. We have a 1% vacancy rate down here. That's just untenable. What is a vacancy rate? It's the amount of apartments that are dwelling units that are available to people at any given time. I don't know the time frame that they measure it but it basically is... We're booked. Yeah, we're booked and that means that prices are high. There's not enough competition in the market to help hold those prices and so it gets to one down which gets to the affordability. What do you think of the market then? I know. Would create units because you can flip them quickly? Yeah and we're not seeing that. Generally the market is acting in a weird way, not just with housing but also salaries. Wouldn't you think that if it is so impossible to hire people that we'd be offering higher salaries to attract them and that's not happening with wages in the state of Vermont either. But on housing... I was reflecting and I've been very consistent in the issues that I believe are important to Montpelier and to the people of the state of Vermont and they all revolve around the economy and poverty and people's ability to thrive. I've consistently talked about housing, heating and food as kind of the three pillars of things that we need to pay attention to. And heating, can you really do much? Let's finish the housing conversation. We have 100 people who are homeless in Washington County. We should be able to solve that problem. We should be able to figure out how to put 100 people into some sort of safe place to live. There are 1200 people statewide. Compared to Los Angeles that has what, 35,000 people on a given day. We can solve this problem and this is kind of the thing that I'm going to dig into hard this year. Let's fix that problem because once you have a safe and secure place to live your less likely food stability, kids doing better in schools, hold a job better, your health is better, all of those things that we know throw you into poverty or keep you in poverty begin to be, you can begin to sort them out. Huge issue for our communities now is substance abuse, the opioid issue. Well, again, let's get people housed so that we can tackle substance abuse and those related issues. How about the minimum wage? That's the intersection of the economy and need. Yeah, yeah. I've struggled. I past tense struggled with this when this was an issue. Frankly, it came down to my committee. I served on the House Appropriations Committee and that was the last stop of the minimum wage bill for the house before it came to the floor. I heard very clearly and I understand what our downtown retailers were telling me. Our mom and pops stores that I think are very special. The backbone of... I love being able to walk down the street and not see a chain store. But it's also the small ones you see on the roads as you're in the outers. People just working hard to make a living. But it's not a corporate policy that you're dealing with. It's keeping the books on your kitchen table. And I know for them it's very hard to look at the sort of wage increases that we're talking about. But at the end of the day, I came back to my feelings about the dignity of work and looking at the important policy changes over the past 120 or 30 years that we have made where we said, you know what? It's not okay to work seven days a week or six and a half days a week. How many jobs? Or how many jobs. Or that kids can work in terrible working conditions. Or how about if you get injured while you're working for your employer that you get fired rather than health care, which is what workers' comp is about. Those are all very significant increases, changes that we made that supported the dignity of work. And working for a livable wage is part of that. So you have to weigh those two together. And how did you come down on that story? So I came down after like, what do I do? How do I look at the stores? I've got to support the minimum wage increase over time. People are not making it on our minimum wage now. And we've just got to see the increase. And the Federals are pointing the issue. Yeah, right.  We've got to raise up wages. This is Montpelier we're talking about, which means I have to discuss the marijuana legislation. That went through the house last year and no one, it's the baby no one likes. It's partially there, it's not partially there. They're decriminalized and only partially legalized. As we're taping this, Quebec has legalized. Maine has legalized. Massachusetts is legalized. What do you see in the next legislative session for marijuana? So I personally would rather not deal with it. I think we spent a lot of time, our poor judiciary committee. So one of the ways our legislative process works is that bills, proposals get assigned to a committee and our judiciary committee got the marijuana bill and spent a huge amount of time on it. And I think we have other important things to be dealing with. I am fine with where we landed, which was the legalization but not the tax and regulate. I know that people... Which still maintains a black market for marijuana? Yeah, I get it. I understand, but at least we're not putting people in jail for possession and ruining their lives that way. Although we could talk about criminal justice reform too. No, but I want to talk about guns. But hang on. So the problem with the tax and regulate system is that I am concerned. People say, yeah, we can raise a bunch of money and deal with those poverty issues you're talking about, Mary. You know, you could build more housing. You could put food in people's homes. I don't think we'll raise the sort of money because of the need to do education on the use of marijuana. Law enforcement. Law enforcement, setting up another bureaucracy. I just... I don't see that we'll see a lot of extra money coming in and that would be the only... So I'm not looking at the gray market problem. For people who were gun supporters, civil unions took two years to get through the legislature. Death with dignity took two years. Gay marriage took two years in a veto to get through the legislature. This got through very, very quickly. Do you feel that they might have a point that something happened that was extraordinary in a process sense? Well, something happened that was extraordinary. I don't know that the process was subverted. There have, in fact, been many gun regulation bills over the years. There have been multiple attempts to make sure that people are safe in their homes and to make sure that gun violence is reduced. So it has been a long process. We just happened to have kind of the spotlight shown on a particular moment. Marjorie Stone and Douglas? Well, I'm thinking now of the... Up there? Yeah, up here. Here in Vermont. Which was after that? Which was after that, but honestly, why all of the horrific civil shootings? You've been in there for ten years. Why was it bottled for ten years then if they've been introduced over and over and they were, in your mind, common sense? And I'm not saying they all were common sense, but what I was saying is there's always been a conversation about how do we move this forward. It was not out of the blue. There has been a conversation. I think over time people have become... We have reached a consensus, and that is our legislative process. It's very rare that we do kind of this earth-shattering move-the-world sort of legislation.  So these horrific shootings around the country, I think we're bringing people along who were looking at their communities and thinking gun violence wasn't an issue. Finally started to see, oh, if that can happen in Castleton or Pultney... Pultney. Oh, my goodness, it can happen here. And then we've seen to our horror here in Montpelier. It's very close to home. So I think people finally saw the light. In that process where you say, it's been brought up and it's going to come again, is there anything in the next legislative agenda that you see that was left from last year, other than yet another discussion on marijuana that you see will come up in this legislative session? We're certainly going to talk about taxes. We're certainly going to talk more about school-related issues. I think the administration's proposal for some of the last consolidation questions, which will affect our surrounding schools. The U-32 district has been told to behave in a certain way. So that's certainly going to be looked at. Will paid leave come back again? So I expect paid family leave will come back. I hope it will. And I expect the minimum wage will come back again. I hope that looking at funding for housing and my issue of what are we going to do about homelessness. Will the like, will financing the cleaning of the lake come back? Absolutely. We have to. So yeah, we've got an expensive agenda in front of us. I'm going to close just on a question, and only someone who's been in the state house as a Democrat for so many years can answer. What is the role of the minority Republicans in the House? It's a very important role. And before I answer that, precisely talk about people see the debate on the House floor and Senate floor, but we actually have debates because there really is a larger minority. And sometimes it seems kind of tankerous and a little clashy and difficult, which is good because that is a voice and it's important to allow, not allow, but that every voice have a place. What I see happen in our committees, which is where the work on bills is done, is this very civil, cordial discussion about how do we support what is important to Vermonters. And that is the question that all 150 members of the body ask themselves, independent, Prague, Democrat or Republican. I really am confident that that's the fundamental question, is how do I serve Vermonters? And that's what we ask ourselves in committee. We have strange alliances, the most conservative guy on the Appropriations Committee, and it becomes a joke because we're voting together on issues, but it's because Bob and I have worked our stuff out and we've moved more toward the center, which is frustrating to people. I mean, Montpelier, if I could vote for Montpelier in the way most Montpelier people think, it would be a very, very different budget that we would pass. You know, the piece of policy would be very different. But I don't just represent Montpelier. I do represent Montpelier, but I represent the state of Vermont and what's best for the state of Vermont. Is there anything more frustrating to you than Berlin Pond? That's just confounding to me. Speaking of a local issue. Speaking of a local issue, and to say, oh, don't worry about that. If there's a problem, we'll just throw money at it later. Really? Why aren't we protecting our resources and making sure that we don't throw money at issues later? So, yeah, that was frustrating on a local level. I'm totally confused by the governor's position on our budget, which he said was a fabulous budget, which spent, came in at a lower growth rate than his budget did. But then he vetoed it because we weren't spending money on ongoing expenses. And to me, that is just one of the worst budgeting practices there is, is to say, oh, I'm not going to worry about where the money's coming from in the future. I've got it today. It's in my wallet, so I'm going to spend it. And what we wanted to do was invest in the pension where we knew we could buy down cost that would be significant over time. And it was like, wait a minute. I'm a liberal Democrat, and I'm having this argument with Republicans. We've just reversed our roles. Were there Republicans on your committee who were in favor of investing in the pension? Oh, absolutely. We voted it out 11-0. Yeah, it's just later it became political. At that point, we're going to leave this. Thank you, Richard. Thank you so very much, Mary, for being here. Thank you for watching this show, and I'll leave with the two things I always leave with. Watch the other shows. Watch all of the candidates. Watch Bill talk about the garage bond. Watch Bill talk about the water bond.  Encourage your family. Encourage your friends to get out and vote as well. It's not only your civic duty, but it's your civic responsibility. Thank you very much.