Guys, it's official. We are officially packing for the destination that we have not told you guys We've mentioned it in so many of our videos, but it's crazy because it's literally coming. We're leaving tomorrow I want you guys, this is what I want you guys to do right now I want you guys to pause the video before we announce it and comment where you think we're going and what we're doing And then on pause it and see if you got it right because we've been keeping this a secret since literally the beginning of December So pause this video right now and comment down below your guesses It's gonna be awkward if they don't pause it right now I know like quiet. Alright, so if you did pause the video, thank you for commenting down your guesses Do we tell them right now? It's literally Insane we leave at 5 a.m. Tomorrow to go to the airport. Yeah, do you want to tell them or should I tell them? Let's tell them together. Okay, so I did mention that it's cross country It's a 11-hour flight. It's gonna be an 11-hour flight and we may be flying over an ocean So if you did not guess it already, this is my dream spot since I was a little girl I literally dreamt of this are going to We're going on a plane to Hawaii tomorrow, it's literally insane It's came up so quick, but do I know it's crazy We were supposed to already be in Hawaii December 1st through the 9th. Yes, I think and we got sick We got the flu so we didn't end up going it was so sad you guys like I Was looking forward to it so much, but honestly, I will say this I was not looking forward to it at the same time because we had so much going on December And I'm really glad that we were able to reschedule because I feel like now we were kind of able to like recoup and yeah We had she get excited. We just got home from Boston We were going to Chicago into three weeks And then we had the Christmas parties and then Christmas here and then New Year's literally an insane month So it is January new year new us and we are starting it off with a trip to freaking Hawaii I cannot believe it. Oh my god We have a lot to pack and so far the only thing in this giant suitcase is ariana grande perfume Really? This is the first thing you choose to pack I also have my other ariana grande perfume that I packed with you Baby, this needs to be full by the end of the day. We're literally leaving in 12 hours The reason we also delayed packing is because I wanted to kind of give you guys a little like tour of our suitcases, you know It's like it's a big trip. Good thing. I have my own suitcase. That's all I can say you guys I literally have had my Hawaii clothes in my closet for over a month now And let me say I ordered these clothes like I put fast shipping in because we were supposed to leave literally a couple days later How much did we spend on clothes? Do you want to tell them actually comment down below how much you thought we spent on clothes probably over a thousand dollars You you're the one that don't even I haven't even opened up on any of these clothes I've been saving them for over a month for Hawaii for this exact trip. Look at guys I got this bikini and it looks like a sunset like look at all these clothes I have a pile here, and I might pack more just so I have more options Like these are just like my nice outfits that I have packed and ready to go We're gonna have a whole new wardrobe. It's gonna be amazing Like we've literally been keeping our clothes on a back burner not touching them And I also didn't want to touch this perfume because I wanted to spray it in Hawaii So I had a scent to remember this girl bought me perfume for Cologne sorry for what Christmas like an early Christmas gift. Well, no I got it for Hawaii and she literally will not let me use it until we're in Hawaii sitting It's Gucci. It's been sitting in my vanity area in the bathroom It was like you guys should get a perfume or cologne that will remind you like wait to use Okay, that's a good idea. Okay. I didn't you never explain that That makes so much more sense, I wouldn't have even questioned why you were making me wait. Oh And by the way, not only are we going to Hawaii, but baby we are flying first class First class the whole way there we literally have two stopovers So we're going on three planes just to get there and then three planes on the way home And we are literally going to be filming our first class experience and one of the planes even has laid down seats where it's literally turned into a Bed, yeah, like the seats turn into a bed. So Right ready to join the mile These are just a few of clothes that I have not put away because I've been saving them for Hawaii now I know it looks maybe a little messy, but trust me. They're all folded I just didn't want to put them away. So I knew exactly what I want to bring and Mariah's been doing the same exact thing We literally have more clothes than we know what to do with but baby going to Hawaii is like a once-in-a-lifetime thing sometimes, right? We don't know the next time we're gonna be there So we have to pack like we're going there for a month even though we're gonna be there for a week where we have photo shoots lined up Okay, I want to get pictures Instagram photos if you're not following this thing on Instagram We should do a Hawaii Instagram giveaway. We should we should just just because of how amazing This opportunity is for us and this time of our life. We are gonna be doing a giveaway on Instagram So make sure to be following us there right now and keeping up to date with all of our posts watching our stories Just being active. That's all you got to do to get entered. I think that'll be really fun Yeah, oh also guys I ended up getting an air tag just because we are flying to Hawaii And I don't want my stuff to get lost because that would suck if we got to Hawaii And I had none of my clothes or anything and I'm really glad that I thought about this because if something does happen I'll be able to track it on my phone. So I got us air tags Hopefully nothing bad will happen wish us luck, but better be safe than sorry Just when you think you thought of it all you totally forget that a whole part of the reason We're going is to be able to film and bring all of you with us We have so much stuff to bring like I know you guys don't get to see the behind the scenes a lot But like we have so much like wires and camera gear Laptop like all of our cameras that we have to bring in order to take pictures to vlog around make sure we have a spare camera in case This one breaks because that's the last thing that you would ever want to be at is in a different state across the country We don't even know where to buy a camera or you don't even know if they have cameras to buy So I have a whole dedicated backpack just for all of my camera gear Laptop footage like everything on top of bringing all of our clothes So like we travel a little heavily here especially with Mariah Even if we go to Chicago, she's bringing this big old suitcase with her like for like a week stay I know she can't bring her hairdryer her curling iron Yeah, okay, oh, but this time babe you always do this don't pack any big liquids in your carry-on bag Because the security confiscated her stuff last time Good you learned your lesson Yeah, oh all this packing is so tiring guys. We need to take a little break. How about we go get a pedicure? We literally scheduled pedicures because we know we're gonna go to Hawaii tomorrow We need to get our toes looking good. We're gonna be in the deep in the sand, you know, we got to look good for everyone there Let's go. Okay Wow, that's the life Just kiss myself Let me see them toes Oh my gosh, bless you and my feet are all soft and luscious I got that lavender scent put on my legs. What scent did you get? The vitamin recharge you're looking recharge Not gonna lie We are super tired earlier and that kind of like Relaxed us Up because we have a lot of cleaning to do still before we leave It's crazy because I was actually really overwhelmed and stressing out and that pedicure really helped me No, it did it helped me too. I saw it. Mariah was relaxed She was having so much stress and anxiety about like leaving and going on the airplane and traveling 11 hours 15 hour day Like I'm just traveling but I feel like this definitely helped and we needed some relax And also our bags are looking way better Mariah has almost the whole thing packed She saw some stuff that she has put in some shoes and whatever clothes she has left me I haven't really done a lot as you could tell but I still I packed a bunch of stuff And I also finished packing my bag all I have to put left in my bag is my laptop for all of our filming stuff And other than that everything is coming together faster than I thought I thought we would be spending all day and night on this But turns out we're just gonna be cleaning the rest of the day. Look it. They don't even know we're leaving, babe You don't even know we're gonna be going across the country to Hawaii without you, but now we're gonna see you again Just kidding. Hi We all cute there and the awesome thing is even though my sister does come and check on our cats every once in a while We have automatic feeders automatic water feeders and automatic litter box So no matter what we can view and monitor them the whole time We're gone. We set up ring cameras in the house so we can make sure that they are okay So we don't have to stress about our cats at all because I feel like that's the one main thing when you go on vacation It's stressing about your animal. Oh, yeah, thankfully we figured out a way past that Mariah doesn't wash dishes a lot I'm not saying that you don't want to I'm saying you don't wash dishes a lot today She's been washing the dishes and let me just say She's getting water Kitchen Oh, so you're not even gonna wash the dishes in there? Probably not. You're just kidding Good otherwise the house might get flooded. There's water all the way out to here a good foot and a half away from the sink He's mean you guys. I'm not I just came over here and I saw a bunch of water sprayed everywhere. Yeah, I know there's a lot of water Oh my god, you got soap all over here. Look at this. I'm exposing you right now. Baby, I will get it clean Oh no, you see the water in the light guys. Yeah, you can. It's like a flood Make sure you guys are getting ready for all the content that's gonna be coming in Hawaii We have so much going on so much stuff planned like we said follow our Instagram It's because I really do want to do a giveaway for all of you everyone That's just been part of our channel even all the new subscribers We want to get to know you more and just show you that we appreciate you watching our videos But we're just gonna be spending the rest of the day since we got a lot packed already cleaning the house Because when you come home from vacation you don't want to come home to a messy house I've got to put myself Hannah. Oh my god. We have so much to do and we literally believe in exactly 13 hours and eight of those hours. We're gonna be sleeping probably so really we only have five more hours left To do whatever we want. Yeah, actually no that's six. We're leaving at five Oh never mind. We have 12 hours now. We're even down an hour These What was the one that we cut short oh my god We literally get to the airport ten minutes before our plane takes off That's how close we cut it that day because there was some traffic so never again We're gonna leave early especially for a trip like this make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel So you guys can see our next video which is gonna be a first class Airplane seat basically vlogged and you can see we're gonna go on a regular first class seat And then we're gonna show you the lay down bed seats that we go on. Yeah But thank you guys so much for watching this video, baby, you done enough today, let me take over I'll focus on the dishes got the vacuuming Got some laundry to do and then we're just gonna cover it up until we have to go to Hawaii But we hope you guys enjoyed this video make sure to give it a huge thumbs up and we will see you guys in the next one But until then peace love you guys actually we'll see you guys on a plane. Yeah, let's go


Kids love chicken nuggets. Everybody knows that. So I say if you can't beat them, at least make a healthy version of it. So that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna make real chicken nuggets.  You can get boneless skinless chicken thighs. That's what they look like when they come from the butcher. And it's not too fatty, but it's dark meat, so it's not too dry like breast, and it comes out quite nicely. And what you have to do is cut them into approximately the size of a chicken nugget. Something like this is a good size for a chicken nugget. It doesn't matter if some of them are smaller or some of them are bigger because in general, if you tell them they're chicken nuggets and you present them in a nice way, they won't mind if they don't look exactly like the thing that comes from McDonald's or a place like that. So we're just gonna keep cutting these up. Okay, so there are my chicken nuggets. I'm just gonna wash my hands because I've been touching chicken. Refrigerate the part that I'm not using because you don't want to leave chicken sitting out for a long time. And we're gonna basically bread these chicken nuggets. Now I have my four-year-old can't have any gluten or any wheat, so I'm gonna use a gluten-free flour, but you can just as easily use regular wheat flour. That's gonna be our step one. We're gonna take some breadcrumbs, and I use gluten-free panko breadcrumbs, but if you can get regular panko crumbs, it's great. And you can actually do this with fish as well. You don't need to use chicken. Anything that you want breaded and crispy on the outside, this is a great pattern. In the middle, go the eggs. And then we're gonna take these little pieces and we're gonna go flour, breadcrumbs, flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, and that is how you get that golden, crispy-looking thing that they love to eat. So we're getting ready to fry our chicken nuggets, our real chicken nuggets. And this is so easy. All you have to do is pour a little bit of olive oil onto your pan, and you just want to kind of coat the bottom of the pan. It's not deep-frying, so we don't want it to be soaking in olive oil. There, now my pan is getting coated.  Yep, you can hear it start to sizzle, so that's a good sign. The only other thing we have to do is to put some salt on this. So I'm just gonna take my salt shaker and add a bit of flavor, and we'll do that on the other side as well. And now we just wait. If you see that there are bits of your pan that are getting dry, you can just drop a little bit more oil on there.  Okay, I can smell these guys cooking, so I'm gonna start to flip them. There we go. And you can see they've got a nice crispy shell on the outside, actually makes my mouth water. And the thing is, if you're gonna serve this to your child for dinner, you probably give them one or two. You don't want to give them a huge amount of meat, but if you serve them this with a nice side of vegetables and maybe some kind of either potato or pasta or rice or something on the side, you have a balanced meal, and they'll really love it. So I'm gonna put a bit of salt on this side. Again, not too much because it's for young children, but there's a little bit of salt on there for flavor, and then we just let it cook on the other side until the chicken gets cooked all the way through. I didn't hear you.


I really like the way horses feel when I get them out of their bit and out of their bridle. And maybe the truth comes out a little bit about what the horses really know. Are they really going off of your seat? It's an interesting thing. How much hands do we need to ride with when we ride horses? So I'm using my hands, but I'd like to get to where I don't need much at all. Good. Feels good. That's pretty nice. It doesn't have to be perfect in one day. It just has to be better. Good. I like to feel her reach up, stretch up, just kind of sucking back a little bit. I want to see those ears come up. Come on, ears. Get a little life in there. If those ears don't come up, I might just come up to cancer. That'll get those ears up. So I want my horse arching forward, stretching forward.


Authorities report an outbreak of a mild form of bird flu in turkeys and Kandy, Ohio County of Minnesota. The world organization for animal health says routine surveillance testing confirmed the presence of a low pathogenic N5N2 virus and a flock of 40,000 turkeys in Minnesota's top turkey producing county. The virus is different from from H5N2 virus that caused a massive outbreak in US turkeys and chickens in 2015. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


The National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations present the Pacific story. In the mounting fury of world conflicts, events in the Pacific are taking on ever greater importance. Here is the story of the Pacific and the millions of people who live around this greatest sea. The drama of the people whose destiny is at stake in the Pacific War. Here is the tale of the war in the Pacific and its meaning to us and to the generations to come. The Pacific story comes to you as another public service with drama of the past and present and commentary by Agnes Smetley, noted traveler and author of the Battle Hymn of China. The Chinese Communist. Stop that, go for that coffee. It's the slightest noise could give us away. Do you think the Japanese are close enough to hear us, Major Chen? They are all around us. The only protection we have is the darkness. That man is a bad cold. Middle of the man now. But where must we are? Very business. Not a light. We are passing within half a mile. The Japanese are post. They have a radio transmitter. Mr. Scott, Middle of the man. They could radio the girls in the weaker rivers. I'm coming to see you, Mr. Scott. Yeah, I'm right behind you. Some of the men suffer from back climbers. That is why we must march single-fire. What a surprise those Japanese, the garrison, are going to get. If we cover the 20 miles before dawn, one of the men cannot see. He is lost in the column. Night blindness? Yes. This will show him where we are. This is operating behind the Japanese lines. Yes. Sergeant? Yes, sir. We will halt for a rest. Give the order. Whisper down the line. Yes, sir. Column halt. Column halt. Column halt. The order faded out and whispers along the column. I could hear the machine gunners grunt and sigh with relief as they put down their heavy weapons. We rested, standing or squatting, where the mud was ankle deep and there was no place to sit down. The only sound was a drizzling rain and the intermittent sound of the men moving around in the mud. Until a few days before this, the Chinese communists had never seen me. The Chinese nationalists permitted me as a correspondent to cross the blockade along the Yellow River and go into the Chinese communist country. This forced night march through the rain was the first time I'd seen them in operation. Sergeant? Yes, sir. Give the order. March quickly. Yes, sir. March quickly. March quickly. That's remarkable, Major Chen, Honour Chairman. A gorilla must be about in order to live. Somebody else has wandered off the trail. They will direct him back to the column. Stop that. The runner is slipping, falling down the bank. Go down and help him. Yes. Night blindness, Major. Yes. The men are undeniesed. They are blind in the dark. The soldier broke a rib and twisted a ankle in the fall. He helped him back to the trail. He moved along with the rest. We slugged on until we came to a swift river. Here's my hand, Mr. Scott. Hold on tight. Yeah. I will take you another hand, Mr. Scott. All right. Now we must hold firmly to each other as we wait across. All right. Come along. We will lead the way. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, I'm coming. Come along back there. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The men in the mules, all loaded with supplies, ordered the icy river as the rain beat down. We slugged on through the night. Hurry. Go. Hurry. Go. Hurry. Go. The orders were little more than suppressed whispers. Run. Come to the right. Turn to the right. Turn to the right. Turn to the right. It was unreal. Pressing on and on through the darkness. Just before dawn, it reached the vicinity of the Japanese garrison. The machine gunners crept up and set up their weapons at strategic points. Major Tenfu lie, deployed his men around the garrison. What is this on the little? This. They killed all. They killed and wounded some of us. We killed all of them. We are bringing in the horses with carbines and ammunition and food. Yellow River.  Nearly 60 million of them. 60 million. They have been up here in North China nearly eight years now. They have their own army. 500,000 men or more. And their own government at Yanan and Shenty Province. And besides, they have much more. And millet and cotton and corn. We have opened up 600,000 acres of new land. This is a Chinese communist farmer. Mao Zedong said that we must be self-supporting. Mao Zedong is a brilliant leader of the Chinese communists. He said that we must depend on ourselves. We must not count on anything from the outside. The blockades cut us off from the outside. So now we grow the cotton and wool for our clothes. And we grow our own food. I have seen their fields. In the last several years, they have cultivated great areas. From their own soil, they feed their 60 million and maintain their own army. Among them are many refugees. I walked 400 miles to Yanan here. This is a student. I came here to attend college. The Chinese communists have established four colleges. Education is compulsory behind the communist lines. And the schools are free. But I came here of my own free will. Once, this was a poverty-stricken region. In a matter of a few years, it has been transformed. Today, everyone works or fights. There's no opium traffic. There's little vice. There are no ligards. For only those who believe in the cause of the Chinese communists are here. We have given much of our blood for what we believe. This is one of the Chinese communist government. Our government is the most democratic China has ever had. The communists have worked out the problems of all the people. Working and fighting together. We have our own system for handling the mail. We publish our own books and newspapers. We collect taxes and we administrate all the functions of government. We believe that all Chinese should have a voice in the government and that the government should be a true constitutional government. This is a basic belief of the Chinese communists. We believe all Chinese should have a voice in the government and that the government should be a true constitutional government. They support Dr. Sun Yat-sen's theories. The three principles of the people. Nationalism, democracy, and livelihood. The three principles of the people answer the needs of present-day China. But the bone of contention between the communists and the nationalists is the introduction of the second principle, democracy. And the third principle, livelihood. The communists demand their realization. The nationalists say all such problems must wait till after the war. And the nationalists say we believe it in the interest of the country for the communists to disband their two big guerrilla armies and their administration in North China and disband their party, placing themselves under the government. And the communists say China cannot be ruled by a single party. The Guomindong must end its control of the Chinese government and allow full development of democracy with equal rights for all parties, including our own. This demand is in accordance with the three people's principles of Sun Yat-sen and is the only basis for national unity and continued resistance to the enemy. We have carried out these principles in the territory which we have reconquered from the enemy and with the people we administer. This is the thinking of the Chinese communists today. This stem is back to about 1919. Right after World War I, a group of Chinese students began to work for the emancipation of the Chinese people. They raised their voice against the decision of the Big Four at the Versailles Peace Conference. They have surrendered our Shandong to Japan. They have shown a total disregard for China's rights. We were one of the Allied nations, yet now the peacemakers have given our Shandong to Japan. We must fight to show the world that might should never be right. But how can we fight? China is weak and helpless. China is weak because it is stagnant. We must live by our ancient traditions. No, our ancient traditions are responsible for our stagnation. The world is changing and we must change. China had its revolution. The Manchus were overthrown seven years ago, yes. But not yet foreign control of our country. To become an independent and progressive nation, we must complete the anti-imperialist struggle and begin the agrarian revolution and feudalism in agriculture. We must achieve real democracy. Young China was disillusioned, especially about western civilization. They talked about rejuvenation of China and they looked toward Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia expresses its willingness to renounce all the advantages and privileges and concessions which were extorted from China by the tsarist regime of Russia. This was the far-reaching declaration of Karakam. It won many Chinese sympathizers. In the next year, the first communist group was formed at Shanghai. And soon, Mao Zedong was busier than organizer. If we are to succeed, we must organize the workers, not merely to talk of the nature of man and of human society and of China's relation to the world. We must organize the workers politically. The Communist Party of China was formed. China had turned toward Russia. In 1922, Dr. Sun Yat-sen invited the party of Soviet Russian advisors to come to China. At 1922, the second congress of the Communist Party was held at Shanghai. The influence of the party grew. Chinese workers are striking for better wages than human rights. Chinese workers are striking for better working conditions. The Chinese workers are daily becoming stronger and are uniting in a powerful labor movement. Chinese scholars and intellectuals took part in the promotion of the Communist Party. And in 1923, at the third congress of the party of Canton, they made an important decision. It is therefore the will of this Communist Congress assembled to join the Kuomintang, to cooperate with the Kuomintang, and together with the Kuomintang to move against the militarists of North China. But it was plain to all of us in China, after Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, that there was a growing rift between them. Yes, I am Xu Wing, one of your students. Yes, you are from Inner Mongolia, are you not? You remember me? Every one of you. We have men from 21 different provinces in our course. And you are going to be our organizers in the peasant movement. How could I forget you? There are so many being trained here. I know you all. You've been attacking the right wing of the Kuomintang in the political weekly. They are reactionary. Are we not working for solidarity with the Kuomintang? Yes. And the only way solidarity can be achieved is to work together with a single point of view, for a singleness of purpose against imperialism, for the agrarian revolution, the right wing of the Kuomintang is moving far... Mao Zedong went on working in the Kuomintang. They also went on writing. We knew the crisis was not far off. It came in 1927 in Shanghai. That's it! That's it! You are dead! Are they straight down every worker they can see? Every organized worker. Revolutionary students. Even revolutionary Kuomintang members. If we can make that cellar, we will be safe. Just ahead of us there. But we can hide there. I'll open the door. I'll help you. No, no. Quick, get down in it. Yes. Close the door. We have been waiting for you. Soldiers, gangsters, jump to the... I'll get in with them! Soldiers, come... You thought you could escape us? The communists in the leftist group of the Kuomintang joined forces. But these split, too. And Chao and Lai and some of the other communists made their way to Nanchang. There, with the 20th Kuomintang army, they led the uprising. Kuomintang soldiers mutinied. And there at Nanchang, the Red Army of the Chinese communists was born. From this time forward, communist armies were to be an important factor. As the communist movement grew, its armies grew. The first Soviets were set up in China. For years the Chinese had talked about the old feudal land policies. Most Chinese are peasants. Now they committed themselves to redistribution of the land. The movement spread like an epidemic. Peasants swarmed to join. I am from Chiangxi province. I am from Hunan province. I want to join. I am from Anhui province. I am from Hunan province. I want to join. I am from Hopei province. I want to join. I want to join. I want to join. I want to join. It was in the last part of the 1930s that the Nanking government became alarmed by the growing power of the Chinese workers and peasants' Red Army led by the communists. The nationalists started out to exterminate. The communist forces, nearly five to one, the communists have defeated the drive to exterminate. The second campaign to exterminate the Chinese communists has ended in failure. To exterminate the Chinese communists has ended in defeat. Instead of being crushed, the communists became stronger. More poor men, more students, engineers joined them. And in November 1931 they established their own government in Chiangxi. And now it's a turn with elected chairman. No party should aim at a monopoly of state power. No party should insist upon exclusive control of national policy. No party should attempt to establish dictatorship. The communists had a breathing space of about 18 months. Then the nationalists attacked again. The strategy was mapped out by the German Reichswehr officer General von Siegel. Seated, the force drive to exterminate them. The communists captured 13,000 nationalist troops. Zheng Kai-shek with 900,000 men has surrounded the communist troops with a system of blockhouses. The Reds are retreating. The retreat turned out to be one of the greatest forced marches in all history, 6,000 miles. Over mountain ranges, great plains, rivers. And Mao Zedong marched nearly every mile of the way. We have made it. Yes, come let's not Zedong. The credit should go to you soldiers. You outmaneuvers and out fought and outwitted those who tried to trap us. All of us did it together. Come let Mao. All of us suffered privation. How many of us are left? 20,000. 20,000. But other thousands are coming from other provinces. We started with 90,000. Yes. And every mile of the way is strewn with our dead. Northwest, the communists build up their own economy. They've established their own form of government at Yanan. And behind the bandits of their armies worked out their way of living. When the Japanese attacked China in July 1937, the communists joined the Nationalist forces to fight their common enemy. You have your instructions? Yes. Very well. You are well trained for your mission. You will move with your fighting units at all times. Inspire them. Educate them.  Yes. Goodbye, Wang. Goodbye, Major Chen. Good luck to you. Thank you, sir. I shall see you again. Hmm. Dangerous mission that young man is going on, Mr. Scott. What will he do? He will work in occupied territory, organizing and training and arming the civilians to fight the Japanese. Behind the Japanese lines, eh? Yes. We have an iron-educated army of 500,000 in our new 8th Route, and 4th Arm. With inadequate arms, the Chinese communists reconquered great areas from the Japanese in northern regions from which the Japanese had driven out the regular Chinese armies. And here they organized and educated the common people to elect their own officials to establish a democratic administration. This is the first time I have ever voted. I am a citizen. I am the first one in all the generations of my family to vote. My wife and my sisters voted along with me today. What great things are happening to our China. No class lines were drawn. And for the first time, these Chinese had a part in the system of democracy. But in 1940, the central government imposed a military and economic blockade against the communists. Blockade them along the Yellow River. Today, as the war closes in toward Japan, the differences between the Chinese central government and the Chinese communists are seen as having a direct relationship to the prosecution of the war. If we are to have important basis in China for direct operations against Japan, then we should have the help of those hundreds of thousands of communist guerrillas. Chinese Reds are not only blockaded up there in northwest China, but they would have to be properly armed. All they have now are what they have captured, or small arms made by themselves. Yes, and many of them have no weapons at all. Well, what the Chinese communists want most of all is political rights for themselves and all the people. They want a thorough going democracy. That is what they are fighting for. As much as fighting the domination of the Japanese. And in the coming operations on the mainland of Asia are the 60 million Chinese communists. To tell the significance of these people in the complex political situation in the Pacific, the National Broadcasting Company presents a message from Agnes Medley, noted traveler and author of the Battle Hymn of China, who has visited and studied the Chinese communists. Miss Medley's message. The dramatization, which you have just heard, gives a brief glimpse into what is generally referred to as guerrilla or partisan or communist China. It introduces you to the famous Chinese guerrilla armies, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies, which are very similar in both form and content to the Yugoslav Army of National Liberation, whose commander is Marshal Tito. Within a few months after the Japanese invasion of China began in July 1937, the Japanese had overrun most of the territory north of the Yellow River. The regular Chinese armies fought hard, but were driven out by the powerful Japanese armies. Chinese officials and the wealthy people fled either with the armies or into Japanese occupied cities such as Bebing. The Eighth Route Army began to filter through the Japanese lines into this occupied territory in the autumn of 1937. They began widespread guerrilla fighting, recapturing towns and villages and whole country sides from the enemy. Since the old Chinese officials had already fled from the north, the communists and their armies were faced with an administrative vacuum in newly liberated territory. They solved the problem by democratic methods. First, they conducted educational campaigns among the people in self-government and democratic elections. Next, they granted suffrage rights to all men and women over 18, regardless of class. Elections were then held from the village up through all the administrative organs to the new regional administrative governments which were established in safe northern mountain retreats. Hospital bases and various kinds of training schools and camps were also established in need mountain retreats. Simultaneously, with this development, new laws were passed in the liberated regions guaranteeing rights of free speech, press, assembly, religion, residence, movement and the right to own property. Private trade and industry were permitted and encouraged. Primary schools and some high schools were re-established, universities were founded and night schools to eradicate illiteracy among adults became universal. A medical training school with a three-year course was founded in Yanan. Study and learning permeates every branch of these guerrilla armies. Their leaders believe that men fight best who know what they are fighting for and have a good goal and a good cause. All soldiers must learn reading and writing and other general subjects as also all the political and historical knowledge taught in the training camps. This education continues ceaselessly and proceeds hand in hand with fighting. Every conceivable educational method such as singing, patriotic plays, discussion groups, mass meeting and slogans are used. The Japanese constantly made use of the so-called communist menace in an effort to break the resistance of the Chinese government. In the past three years, the Japanese have used 42% of their total armed forces in China against the guerrillas. The guerrillas have suffered serious losses as high as 100,000 men a year. In one year alone, they lost 75 of their highest commanders in action. But the Japanese have lost three or more men to every Chinese guerrilla. In 1940, the Guomandong, or sole ruling party of China, became frightened by the rapid growth, success and influence over the people of the communist armies. The Chinese government, therefore, withdrew one of its most powerful armies from the battlefield and used it to institute a blockade against the guerrilla regions. Since that time, the guerrillas have been cut off from the rest of China and have had to depend upon themselves and the civilian population. They have had to capture guns and ammunition from the enemy or to manufacture what they could in their network of small arsenals. The communists have repeatedly announced that they are willing to negotiate with the Guomandong or ruling party but that negotiations must be sincere and conducted on a basis of equality. They refuse to abolish their armies of the democratic system they have introduced. They insist that the Chinese government introduce democracy and give all parties and groups of the people a voice in the government that rules them. China leaves American arms and ammunition and airplanes and leaves them badly. But even without foreign help, indeed even without any help whatever from the Chinese government, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies have been able to hold their own in a territory which is the most difficult in China, directly in the rear of the enemy. You have just heard a message from Agnes Smedley, read by Lynn Whitney. To the Pacific Story, presented by the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations as a public service to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross-currents of life in the Pacific Basin. For a reprint of this Pacific Story program, send 10 cents in stamps or coin to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. It is written and directed by Arnold Marquess. The original musical score was composed and conducted by Thomas Pelusel. Your narrator, Herbert Lytton. This program came to you from Hollywood. This is the National Broadcasting Company.


Here we have also similar name CETP in Hungary, another European program, which is the Central European Teaching Programme. So this is also quite established long-running program that also places applicants into schools in Hungary to work as English language teachers. Contracts are between 10 months and a year in duration. So usually it starts in September until mid-June the next year. But you can also apply for six-month contracts there, which is great because a lot of positions are for a year or sometimes even two years, depending on where you want to teach. So if you're looking for something just short-term, this program might be really good because you have this six-month option. So you can go January to June. So if that's something you're interested in, check out CETP.info for the Central European Teaching Programme in Hungary. For this program, if you get accepted, there is a five- to seven-day orientation in Budapest prior to the beginning of the school year. You also typically have 22 to 26 class meetings per week. So class teachings, I presume that's what that means. Teachers are paid a salary and local currency according to the same pay scale as native teachers. So you make the same money as native teachers in Hungary. And then what you do get, you also get health insurance in Hungary. So you fall under the health care system of the host country there, so that's also great. And you're also provided accommodation for the duration of your stay. Yeah. And the CETP provides all documents necessary to receive your work visa after arrival. So they really take care of you. They guide you through the whole process. So that's also really, really great if that's something you're interested in. And I've been to Budapest. It's beautiful. I would love to go there, actually, this program. All right. Let's take a look at more comments here. Amit says, which one is the best Tefl or SELTA? Okay. It's sort of what your goal is in terms of best Tefl course. We offer Tefl courses between 60 hours of training and 550 hours of training. So there's a lot of different options for you. We also have online courses, in-class courses, combined courses. So it all depends what you want. But if you don't have any Tefl yet, I always recommend starting at the 120 hour certification level, because 120 hours is pretty much the standard certificate now for teaching English abroad. That's the minimum hours that you need to have. So that's a good one to start with. And you can find that on Tefl course.net. I can also paste the link. Let me find it real quick. So here are all our online course options. I'm posting the link into the comment box. You can check that out. And here you can find all the options. But if you don't have any certification yet, I highly recommend starting at the 120 hour level. And then you can top it up with specializations in business English, in teaching English to young learners, in teaching English online, things like that. Once you have that, you can get the TESOL diploma and work your way up, basically. All right. Okay, back to Hungary. The CETP Central European Teaching Program. The requirements for this program are, you need to be a native English speaker from the US, Canada, UK, or any other EU country. So again, the options are a little bit more open than the previous program in Spain. And it's another great opportunity for people outside of the EU, so US Americans or Canadians, to get their foot into the door in Europe. There's no official upper age limit, which is also great for anyone who wants to do it. You need to have a bachelor's degree and you need to have a minimum of a 40 hour online TEFL course. And what's also great in this program is that you can also bring your partner, a friend or family member along with you and you can be placed together, which is great. And also, I found this really interesting, might be good for some people. So if you don't want to teach English, you have some other skill, you can actually also teach something beside English. So for example, a lot of teachers under this program also teach history, they teach literature, German social studies, American and British culture, all these kinds of different things and they are all taught in English except German. And then some teachers also become sports coaches for things like basketball, soccer or other sports is volunteer activities. So that's also good opportunity. If you're like, oh, you know, I love history or, well, I'm not sure about the qualifications that you need to have. Maybe you need to, if you're like already history teacher back home, then this would make sense, right, that you go to Hungary and then also be history teacher. So this would be something you need to clarify with them directly. I don't know this information, what other qualifications you would need if you're like, oh, I want to teach history or I want to teach social studies there. But I just thought it's worth mentioning because maybe someone is interested in that it's, we get a lot of like retired teachers. I know someone was a retired French teacher. So things like that, retired teachers. So this would be a great opportunity. There's no upper age limit. Yeah. So think about it. I think it's great. Thank you for teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


So we're now in a position where we can talk about the probability that each of the energy levels of a rigid rotor is occupied. The ground state, we might have expected would be most populated, but it turns out that's not quite true because if we look at that equation for the population of each one of these energy levels, it includes not just a Boltzmann factor for how high up the ladder of the energy state is, but also a degeneracy and the higher up this ladder we climb, the more degenerate, the higher the number of states there are at that level. So if we look a little more closely at this equation, so we've got constants all over the place in this equation, but this depends on the quantum number. If I want to know the probability as a function of the quantum number, the Ls show up in front of the exponential as just a linear term, an L, and then the exponential looks like e to the minus L squared, actually L squared plus L, but in a rough sense it looks like L times e to the minus L squared. That function, if I were to graph what L times e to the minus L squared looks like, or in fact what this piece of L function looks like as a function of L, at small values of L, this number is small, so the function is small, at large values of L, e to the minus L squared is certainly become very small, so the function becomes very small at high values of L. And what we have is a function that starts out small when L equals zero, goes through a maximum and comes back down. The key points about this are the degeneracy, this increase as I begin increasing the value of L, the probability of occupying the zero state, when I go to the first state or the second state, those probabilities are increasing and the reason they're increasing is because of the degeneracy. But then later on, so that happens at small values of L, at larger values of L, the function begins to decrease again, and that's Boltzmann telling us why that's true. The higher the value of L, the higher the energy of each energy level, the Boltzmann factor, either the full blown Boltzmann factor or this little sketch of the Boltzmann factor tells us that that Boltzmann factor becomes very small when L becomes very large, so for large values of L, the probability begins to decrease again. So there's some point after increasing and then decreasing, the function goes through a maximum at some point. So there's some particular value of L where this function takes on its highest possible value. That's interesting because it says the ground state is not the most occupied energy level. The L equals one state might be more occupied because even though each one of these individual states has a higher energy and is less occupied than the ground state, there's three of them, so the whole level might be more populated than the ground state. So somewhere up this ladder, you get to an energy level, maybe the L equals two or maybe the L equals three, that's most populated, and then the population starts to drop off as you continue to climb higher. So it's interesting to know what is that most populated rotational level? What can we expect a rotating diatomic molecule to do, whether it rotates with a little bit of energy in the L equals two level or a lot of energy in the L equals five level depends on the conditions. But we can learn something about what that maximum rotational level is or rotational level with the highest population. So the way we do that, of course, we're looking for the point on this graph that's the highest. We're looking for the point where the slope reaches zero. So since we have an equation for a piece of L, we can take its derivative and set it equal to zero. So the derivative is equal to zero when I'm at the most populated rotational level, L max. So let's go ahead and take the derivative of this expression with respect to L. The L's here show up both in the pre-factor as well as in the exponent, so we're going to have to use chain rule. I'm sorry, not chain rule, product rule. So if I take the derivative of this L, I've got one over q times two. That's the derivative of this quantity two L plus one. And since I've taken the derivative of this one, I leave the exponential alone e to the minus theta rotational over t L times L plus one. I need to add to that the derivative when I leave this L alone and take the derivative of the other ones. So leave the two L plus one alone. Take the derivative of this exponential. The derivative of an exponential is an exponential multiplied by the derivative of the exponent. So I've got constants in front of some L's, so this derivative is going to look like minus theta rotational over t. That's this minus theta rotational over t. And the derivative of L times L plus one, let's write this as L squared plus L. The derivative of L squared plus L is two L plus one. Notice that two L plus one is the same as this two L plus one. I can on the next line I'll write that as two L plus one quantity squared. So this long fairly ugly expression is the thing we want to set equal to zero, but luckily a lot of things factor out. So I've got a one over q in both terms. I've got the exponential in both terms. So let's go ahead and say one over q e to the minus theta over t L plus one. Those are the terms that those two terms have in common. Those all multiply. All that's left over in the first term is a two. All that's left over in the second term is a minus theta rotational over t and a two L plus one that shows up twice. So that whole thing we need to be equal to zero. One over q is not going to be zero. This exponential is not going to be zero. Only thing that can be zero is the quantity in brackets. So in the way to make that equal to zero is if the two is equal to the theta rotational over t times two L plus one quantity squared. So I need theta rotational over t times two L plus one squared to be equal to two. So I need to solve that expression. Remember what we're solving for. We're solving for the value of L that makes this function reach its max. So we're looking for this value of L at which the function reaches a maximum. So we just do some algebra to isolate this L. If I bring the t and the theta over to the right hand side I'll have a two L plus one squared on the left side. If I take the square root to get rid of the square I'll have this expression. I need to subtract one from both sides. So on the left side I've got square root of two t over theta minus one. That's equal to two L. And if I divide by two the last version of this equation will be L is equal to if I divide by two inside the square root it becomes a four. So two divided by four puts a two in the denominator and if I have minus one when I divide that by two it becomes minus one half. So I'll put that expression in a box it's one that we can reuse. That value of L that's our L max. That's the value of L at which the derivative of the function is equal to zero. So that tells us the most populated rotational level. So we can work an example or two and see how that works. So with our favorite molecules let's say we have carbon monoxide which has a rotational temperature of 2.77 Kelvin. If we have carbon monoxide molecules at a room temperature of 298 Kelvin then the most populated rotational level according to this expression we just arrived square root of temperature over twice the rotational temperature minus a half. So plug those numbers into our calculator 298 Kelvin divided by about five and a half Kelvin take the square root of that number subtract a half and we find that it's equal to six point eight. That's a little strange what does that mean? We've solved for the most populated rotational level rotational level is an integer that's a quantum number it has to be L equals zero, L equals one, L equals two, L equals three L equals where's L equals six point eight that's between six and seven so that's impossible there's no molecules that occupy the six point eight rotational level all that means is only zero or one or two only integer values of this function are acceptable so somewhere so six point eight is the max which is somewhere between the six value and the seven value so the way to interpret this result is to say maybe the sixth or maybe the seventh value is the most populated this one is closer to the L equals seventh level so if we wanted to be extra careful we could evaluate the L equals six and the L equals seven and see which one has a higher population using this expression or we can round off to seven and say the most populated rotational level is going to be the L equals seven level so not zero or one or two or three but remember because carbon monoxide behaved fairly classically somewhere way up multiple levels higher the L equals seven level is going to be the most populated one on the other hand if we take a molecule like HCl which has a rotational constant of fifteen point four Kelvin earlier when we asked some questions about that molecule at seventy seven that experimental temperature seventy seven Kelvin and decided it behaved somewhat quantum mechanically its most populated rotational level square root of temperature over twice the rotational temperature minus a half calculator tells us that that result comes out to be one point zero eight which again to round off to an integer rounds off to one so for HCl we decided that was a fairly quantum mechanical molecule because only about a handful of states are occupied the most populated state is this L equals one state there's more molecules in this L equals one energy level than are in the ground state but there's also more molecules here than there are up here so already the population has begun to fall off as we climb beyond L equals one this expression is is fairly useful it tells us something about the tension between the degeneracy that causes the states to be more occupied as I climb the ladder and the Boltzmann energy which causes them to be less occupied as I climb the ladder and somewhere in the middle there's a maximum and we can now calculate what that maximum is.


Before we start, so this is going to be very interactive and we're going to do some thinking and talking and working together, hopefully. But before we start, I thought it would be good to just go around the room very quickly and just for each person to say, what is their name, and then answer one question, and that question is Jim Rulmore, Josh Jarrett. We'll start right here. Charlie and Jarrett. Just maybe stand up and tell everyone, kind of show everyone who you are. We can do this quickly. First of all, I'd like to talk to Jarrett. Tomo, I'd like to say Josh. David Peterson, and I'd like to choose. Carly Sillian, I'd like to get rid of that whose name is Jay. Pino Rahman, suddenly I picked Jim Rulmore. Denise Wender, Jarrett. James and Josh, definitely. Bob Gabbins, and Jim. Emily Seiber, undecided. Charles Snare, undecided. And Jonas, both. Oh, is that Trent? Yeah. Paul Lertz, Groom, we go to the St. Barber. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Mike Mather, Jim, Groom. Jay Heate, Josh. Andrew Maleficent, Jim. Michael Valstein, I want to see him a lot of child. Sarah Loose, definitely the one in each world. I'm just groomed. Mike Silver, I like Josh's grooming. Preston Parker, too. Heather Leary, in the study. I'm also groomed. Quickly the last question. I can't hear, I don't know about it. We're going to read this about them. Not about that, I'm friends with Joseph. I can't read about it. John Mayer, it's not about who you like. I don't have any experience. I'm wearing a sports coat, but I still vote. I'm going to ask you to Jim Groom. Jane Gallagher, vote. Scott Ashton, Jim. Kevin Ashton, vote. Papa Cumbering, Jim. I don't know what we're voting on. You're actually not voting, it's just a question. Jim Groom or Josh Jarrett? Oh, Jim. Someone in the door there? I don't have a question. Jim Groom or... Oh, um... Yeah, there's some of me who can be married to him. Carl Schiffler, vote. Chris Doppler, vote. I'm sure he's not challenged. I'm sure he's not challenged. I still vote. I'm going to Jim Groom. What was your different question? Eric Hopper, vote. Luna Daly, vote. Robert Hart, Jim. Morati, much tomorrow. I like both. Then Wilson and Josh. Ira Gooding, the head says Josh. The heart says Jim. Ariel Diaz, Josh. Jeff Davidson, channel foundation. Yes, to vote. Kim Emery, vote. Sarah Carter, Jim. Royce Kimmins, Jim. Satoshi Amalaki, this is my proposition. Okay. Colin Clark, I slept in this morning. I slept in this dimple in the fall. I slept in this deep end group in the fall. I was looking at Demi and Jim. Okay, Jim. Sean Hurtman, definitely vote. Harash Bissell, Jim Jarrett. We have more seats here at the front, actually, or on the sides and kind of... you guys want to sit? You can stroll. Leave in the middle. I'll be right about it. I'll be right about it. Okay, so I think that the set of keynotes is actually going to shake up what we can talk about here a little bit in a good way. But I'll just quickly run through some slides that I put together to provide a little bit... as little context as necessary, I thought. And I'm actually also a little surprised that there are so many people here because I submitted this session idea kind of a little bit tiny and cheek, and I wasn't... first I didn't think I was going to make it into the program. And then I actually didn't think that there would be over, well, however many people are here, with many people. So, can you play is kind of that the moment when, as a kid, you're coming into the playground to play football in Germany where I grew up, and you don't know the other guys and then there's that question, can you play? And I'm sure it's the same in the States when you play basketball or any other sport. And it's that weird moment where they don't know anything about you, maybe watch them a little bit, but then you're nervous and how well can you play. And if you could... In the States you say, do you have game? Do you have game? Okay. Do you have game? So, and you kind of... you know, there isn't really a way to show them a passport or like, yes, I graduated from the School of Football in 7th grade, and so we're facing these situations in our lives all the time where we have no certification for things that we can do or who we are and maybe that's good or maybe that's not. But why did I think that was a useful topic to talk about at the Open Education Conference? The reason is that it seems to me one of the big pushes that this community is kind of being confronted with or one of the big areas that people are saying we should be moving into around assessment, certification and credentials. And there are lots of interesting things happening that we could kind of dive into including some of the work around badges that a lot of people here are familiar with and Carla who's sitting in the front here is actually the project manager for the Open Badges Infrastructure Project at Mozilla. She works with Erin Knight, that's someone you might know. Who just had a baby on Wednesday? Who just had a baby? She immediately received a baby... What is it? The baby badge? I will pull that up later and show you guys there is that badge. There's this focus that's shifting certainly into analytics and how can we track what people learn and what can we say about their competencies and it's become a big focus area for Open Education. There are these statements that we need some validation, we need standardization so we can compare success we need to be able to have kind of compatibility across different sets of standards and at the beginning of a very interesting trajectory where we're going with this so I think it's a good time to talk about this kind of in a more general way. And then the kind of hesitation I bring to this is some of the stuff I'm observing and hearing and so there's for example James, I don't know if it's G or G but he's a kind of well-known researcher around games and learning and digital literacies and he basically said testing is primitive so any kind of testing that you do to assess learning is primitive and will never produce any really meaningful results and so he's come up with these pretty strong statements against testing and then people are arguing around that it's like games don't have tests if you work through a game you kind of get to the next level when you've achieved a certain level of competency but no one says stop, let's do a test if you've really achieved those things but you actually, you know you get onto that basketball court you hit the first three point attempts, it's like it's clear that you can play and they don't stop you there and say how many meters is the three point line away from the basket how high is the basket who shot the most three points in the 1979 season it's like it's part of what's important about playing basketball which is playing basketball and communities likewise we don't really have tests and that is also intellectual communities where we have very sophisticated patterns of new people coming into the community often through processes of mentorship or apprenticeship and it's focused around the activities that the community cares about and in that process assessments are made feedback is given, learning happens but there rarely is kind of a test that is the actual projects that people are working on the learning that happens and so there's a certain feeling that these games and these communities they know people's competencies and I think in that tension between the desire to test and quantify everything and to just know everything and there are problems with this as well I think, somewhere in the middle there is an interesting space and I'm just going to give one example as a story we need to include stories in presentations that's the only way people listen and remember everything so there's Auguste Volna who's arguably the greatest the father of modern sculpture and one of the greatest sculptors in the history of sculpture he, when you when you look at his work and his life there's some interesting things about assessment and certification that we can take from that and one is I think about the process of assessment so I thought about this a little bit there are always constraints that are part of assessment you always have to focus either you need a series of questions or you have a series of multiple choice options or you have a certain time limit to produce something but assessment always there are certain constraints in a very broad sense and in his work the constraints of assessments are really set by the stone and the tools and then his ability or his competence is the process of using kind of pushing up against these constraints and creating a work of art that happens in that tension between the constraints and his creativity and maybe that so I don't usually talk in that anyway I feel like I'm a thin ice here very artsy farty things but I'm going with it anyway so I think there's something about constraints that's kind of an interesting concept when we think about assessment and what are good constraints and what are bad constraints and what are meaningful constraints and how do we make sure that the constraints are meaningful and actually useful and then there's something about measurements so in his case he was never admitted into the great art school of France that was his dream was to go to this great school and he applied three times and he was rejected three times and at the time the requirements to enter the school were actually fairly low it wasn't so hard to get into this school and so for him to be refused three times was a pretty crushing defeat and thankfully he carried on he became more of a craftsman for a while so he worked his way up and eventually got to the point where he had the freedom to pursue his vision but I think what this says about measurements is that we're creating certain measurements or standards or qualifications that we expected the history has shown us over and over again that often the people who are doing the measuring are the wrong people and the things they are measuring are the wrong things to measure and so I just want us to keep that in mind as we think about assessments that if we look at the history we basically and this isn't just in arts it would be easy to discount this but what about Galileo the things we were looking for in the history of science often if we had measured them and standardized them we would just listen to that how do we make that next step to the things that we don't know yet we should be looking for what could this world of assessment and certification look like if we what could the ideal world of assessment and certification look like I think we can draw some inspiration from games we can draw some inspiration from sculpture the constraint of the material and the tools we can take some inspiration maybe from chess because it's so implicit in the act of playing chess that I never need to stop and ask you if you play chess against me you're most likely to win against me by the way and then I have some assessment of your ability to play chess and you have some lower assessment of my ability to play chess so my question that I would like to discuss as a group is kind of around how can open learning and really also pushing on the idea of open why is open different than not open learning how can it be authentic or engaging or social so that it produces all the necessary evidence of achievements as a byproduct of the learning so we don't need to stop so this is kind of my broader question and I think I I was going to do this next but I think I want to pause let me tell you what I want to do next but then I want to pause and I want us to spend a little bit of time discussing the keynotes because I think there's sort of rich stuff from the keynotes that actually is directly related to these questions but so what I want to do after the kind of open discussions I want you to form groups of two people so just grab the person that sits next to you if you know the person that sits next to you probably grab someone else someone you haven't spoken to and spend 5 minutes or 7 minutes thinking about assessment and certification in the open education space and try to find one example or try to come up with one story of the perfect kind of assessment in an area that you care about so if you work in a certain content area and you think about assessment how it's done and you think about all the dreams you may have for assessment in that area what's a perfect example for amazing assessment in your area and then also one example for an area or a case where the kind of more inspirational some of these examples I've talked about where that will never work where we need the standardized tests where we need the multiple choice reviews where we need rigor and standards structure and we need to have committees that agree on those the institutional level of assessment where we absolutely need that so those are the two things but let's pause and by the way the etherpad here everyone can take notes in there you don't need to log in or anything you just open it you can see other multiple types don't use the chat there's a ping attached to the chat so if you start using the chat there will be endless ping in this room coming out of all your laptops but if you want to start taking notes or putting stuff in there there's like a shared note taking space available let's not do this right now I thought what would be most useful is especially for the people who have been to the keynotes um um is to maybe just kind of general reactions on it seemed to me like they were talking about two extreme ends of an open education future and on both of those ends there are interesting questions around certification and assessment and competencies so I'd love to just maybe open the floor to anyone who has reactions or questions or kind of when they were sitting and they went oh I really want to ask or I really want to say something we didn't have time at the end which was frustrating so I thought maybe we can do some of that now so I'll open the floor there we go I think both of them point into one of the things they both point into was that the system of education as it's been over the past centuries is breaking down that's working if it did work that's the other good question did you see any implications for the testing and assessment and those kind of things I have a lot of thoughts about that myself but let me just put it out in my opinion educational institutions do two different things and they can really be opposed to each other and one of them is teaching and the other is providing connections and one for some people the ability to learn is really hindered by the fact that somebody is sitting injection of what they're trying to learn this I've been really struck by your older Ivan Illich de-schooling was a huge thing what 30 years ago whenever it was and everybody got excited about it and credentialing is probably 10 times more powerful now than it was then so why, what happened because it was inspiring and it sounds like it's all happening again with the same kind of question and yet credentialing is the one thing that got sort of reinforced yeah, I guess and credentialing is for me is only one part of the problem the way I've heard those two talks is the the tension between empowerment and skill and I always go back I thought that Josh's story about Briana was incredibly moving for me what it's always about so on the one hand there are people like Briana out there many many many people like Briana out there who need help getting living lives of dignity and economic self sufficiency and so on and there's a lot of sort of objective credentialing kind of stuff you need to do and credentials are just one of the devices the very very imperfect devices that we create to try and scale that on the other hand I think when you listen to someone like Jim or Gardner what I get from them is that before they can achieve their goals in terms of learning these skills and so on they have to be empowered and talking about empowerment at scale and focusing more on because empowerment is fundamentally personal that's what I got from Jim's talk more than anything else people brought to that course what they have and what was important to them and it was the core inside of that course was I can bring that and get value out of it before I can learn to do anything I can learn I can do something and that's what that course teaches so so that's what I saw as the tension and it reached it I actually thought despite the differences there were a lot of common messages in both talks and one was exactly that about empowering students and Josh was talking about these assessments so that students knew at the onset of a course what their probability was of actually completing and what that information did for the students so there's empowerment and you could do that kind of empowerment at scale and make it more human centered really and more about the experience the other thing about I mean obviously Jim was talking about experience and I'm really excited to hear that conversation at this conference but Josh was also talking about it it's not just about resources floating out there it's how are you going to create that system where they're used really effectively and combine with all the things that we know about learning so I'm not going to give up on scaling empowerment and personalized learning and experiences of learning I think that's so important I'm still thinking this through but I think that one thing that both of them at our talk now is the need for multiple assessments and I think the reason I've resisted to choosing one over the other is that I'm nervous about trying to find the perfect assessment model because I think that and I'm still thinking this through different assessments might work best for different people I'm very nervous about standardized tests but I also know some people who weren't so great in the classroom because classrooms were boring but were able to show their knowledge and intelligence on standardized tests I know other people who don't do well on standardized tests that do great in the classroom or on particular assignments so I think that what's important to me is finding the multiplicity from the different talks for different sorts of things it strikes me that this was a lot of empowering students going to the public schools and you say are the teachers empowered I don't think so this is certain and why not partially because of all of the strengths of my stuff so they don't feel like well what do I feel is best I can't think about that that's nice so I think before I can really engage in the conversation I ask the question accreditation or assessment for what is it to get a job is it because it's a scorecard at some point in our lives to say we've engaged in a social activity to become better informed citizens there are a lot of folks that are very concerned in universities and the major part of what college universities do is to help create better folks that are better educated and that forms a better citizenry which makes a stronger social fabric and it's not necessarily about getting a job and there's tensions there I think that gets very interesting when you talk about badges because clearly if you're an employer and you've got a specific set of skills and competencies that you want and if you're a student looking for a job that's really your goal certainly in today's day and age that's probably a big goal of a lot of students then that's important so I'm with you you're asking what assessments might be best and I've got a lot of questions about why are we assessing and for what aims and I think that there's a lot there's different pathways there but we need to be transparent about that so when students come in to an educational environment whatever it might be transparency about here's a pathway of assessment it's really about getting a job this is a pathway of assessment it's really about the liberal arts education there's different answers liberal arts education is never getting a job hate certainly can't hold alright so I come from a liberal arts school and a very good one at that but listening to Briana's story I think that with what Jim Sheldon and Martha had to say yesterday I mean it's very obvious that the current system has failed people like Briana and so what I would like to us actually or someone to take the leadership is to go back to people who make the policy on accreditation because they hold the gates for new models to evolve so when you have new models of education which are looking at other ways of educating people like Briana they shouldn't be held back because the sex accreditation isn't available or whatever you know whatever the thing is so I think it's in conversations like this and in meetings like this we should be able to empower people who are willing to put out new models of colleges that are completely unlike where I come from which is a wonderful college but nevertheless we will never be able to serve the Brianas of the world and Briana's of the world shouldn't have to hit our doors and fail because there is something about them that's good and valuable we just need a different system a different college model or an educational model to give them the ability to say I'm educated and I am employable and go for them so it needs to go back to the Jims and the Martha's three people maybe Carla is this a direct look like what sort of badge is but I think there's lots of great questions the one thing I think about when I think about badges is learning is life long and we're really talking about kind of a subset here and they're all kind of things that people have skills and competencies in they don't get recognized for but they make them really great citizens or really great partners or really great workers and so I think there's lots of opportunities so the big question is like okay so what kind of assessment are we talking about and then who are the right people to be assessing the SSU does it have to be top down but then likewise also addressing what people was talking about you know from a governmental standpoint what are the standards that kind of exist right now and can we start to think about them in a brand new and broader way I'm the executive director of what's being when you say that current systems have failed I don't understand what system we're talking about we're talking about our society we kind of often say it's one of these people okay who talks to us and we kind of community colleges I'm talking about society I think that what I would be preparing is going to be right what I would be preparing for and we can start re-envisioning current systems but we can also start envisioning new systems to serve people in what we want to be doing I just thought it was just that I was just thinking that a test or an assessment isn't necessarily a bad thing it can be an illuminating thing it's just that we've often attached a certain stigma to kids who or even adults who fear failure I mean a failed test is not so much a bad thing as a great opportunity because now you know what you don't know before you take the test you're sort of you probably think you know everything I mean you wouldn't walk into a test if you didn't think you knew what the material so a test is not necessarily a bad thing it's just that you failed them and judged them and I think it's a great opportunity oh great this is awesome that you failed this test because now we can help you on these six questions that you clearly need a little bit of help with so I guess reframing it can have a positive impact I think video games are good examples or chess too if I lose to you in chess and I never play chess again and just go on to basketball that's not helping me learn it's helping me forget all the opportunity I could have had for you to teach me or someone else about it I think this is an excellent point I want to just respond quickly there's been some research recently about learning the importance of failure and problems and the research showed that the key thing is how you deal with that failure so if you we all fail right but if you fail and the failure happens in a way that encourages you to then kind of try again and find the answers that's how learning happens if you fail and then you go play basketball then no learning happens essentially and apparently there are these two broad strategies that we develop for dealing with failure and they're related to encouragement of expertise and motivation so if we tell our kids that they're very smart when they fail it's a big shock because all of a sudden they're catching their identities, I'm smart I'm failing, it threatens my identity they then tend to not try again because they don't want to have that bad experience if we encourage them to work hard and we say it's amazing you've worked really hard to get this they start developing a sense of you get somewhere to try and when they run into problems they'll try again and they end up learning more which I thought was really interesting I think it's related to how we assess them what are the effects of the assessments do we encourage you to try again or do we encourage you to go somewhere else I put a leader of times article about that perfect so there's a hand there and then we have one there it occurs to me that when we're talking about you play basketball and you lose and you never play basketball again we're talking about finality versus something that happens in an iterative cycle you play chess and you play another game you play another game you're iterating through these things I think that's part of the key if the assessment comes in the end then you're too late you just have a question I don't know what I don't know but we're moving on so I can't stop and go back but if it's iteratively working that's a different kind of story and the other thing that I was thinking I'm not sure where this part gets in but when we're talking about things like badges and proof it strikes me that we're really close to the idea of a portfolio of work but that's the whole website well that's the thing I go look at the website I built if it's a massive because it's horrible then obviously I don't but that's the kind of most honest about there is, this is what I've done I don't remember, I think you were next and then here's a hand so I think one of the things we tend to gloss over when we talk about authentic assessments we worry a lot about false negatives that we're not giving credit for people who deserve credit but I think we also need to worry about false positives I think we need to spare our thought for the coordinated souls who graduate from Ivy League schools thinking that they have necessarily learned something because they've graduated from Ivy League schools we actually have a pretty pure test of that here which is the financial services industry if anyone has ever talked all those folks are directly out of tier and top tier schools if you've ever talked to a sales side stock analyst about what they think about educational technology companies and the root dominant and why you have pretty good evidence that these folks have not been taught the critical thinking scales and they come from good elementary schools good high schools all that not their fault just what the other gentleman was saying our educational system is geared towards a prior age and so it's become this engine that has a life on its own so people learn to be good at school and we don't know whether that's what they come out with is of any use at all they can't tell you why the seasons happen either they what? the Harvard grad studies show that the graduates couldn't tell you why the seasons happen either whether it's because of the surroundings which is that's great and I think it ties back to the idea of any kind of credential is a proxy it holds meaning and people attribute different types of meaning to it and that credential for an Ivy League college we all have ideas of what that means and those ideas are grounded in a long history ideally or there's some evidence but they take on a value of their own no way to actually now go back and look at that credential and then drill deeper and say what did this person do exactly do they know critical thinking we bundle it all up into this very very high level aggregate and we hope that important things are in there I think there's a head here then so the point I was going to make was just what you said which is thank you proxy it's very imperfect blunt instrument and there are different degrees or details getting a degree from certain school is one level but getting a grade for one school for one course is another and you can go down to minute details if he did answer this question that way or that this way he wrote this essay for this assignment and we cannot really deal with infinite amount of details to get the society to work or economy so we rely on those proxies for the sake of efficiency but inevitably fails it does injustice to individual cases fail to sometimes capture the whole massive things because of the misconception of what it represents what it doesn't but at the same time I don't think we can just all together throw it away and I also have this idea that you know it is a lifelong learning kind of thing and we need to have that kind of proxy in order for how do you say to promote the circulation of information about who knows what who has that what kind of skills and if we don't then we might end up with even more imperfect signals signals in the economic sense so he did that or he's a friend of this he is trusted by this guy I might be the only signals that we might rely on which isn't that good as compared to some more specific badges it's my guess I would like to raise a fundamental question being from the Netherlands you might expect that maybe how assessments are far from perfect we all know that and I'll give the example of a student at the University of the Netherlands passing a philosophy exam it was a multiple choice exam 80 questions and he did not pass the exam and after asking the examiner what would happen if he would have an oral examination and the examiner said well he would have passed at a very high level because I knew the students was very good what it shows is that the way you are examining students is not as far from perfect and because that's true and also because we are referring to because of the limitations of our assessments and mechanisms I doubt that you are observing now that you can uncouple the learning process and the assessment process but that's my fundamental question it's in the heart of this discussion I think I'm much more sure about the added value of the things the example of philosophy students shows that because the examiner knows the student from the learning process he knows that he should have passed the exam and I'm sure we can improve our assessment very much but I'm sure we cannot improve to the perfect level so what does that mean? I'll start with coming back to the intro question around Josh versus Jim Josh lays out a really analytical framework for how to think about all the challenges and problems and Jim provides a very inspiring example of one way to really achieve that and I think for that reason they actually work in cohort and one model of education throughout there and what that leads to in terms of lifelong learning in terms of improving everything it's really about inspiring curiosity and providing tools and tools evolve across the educational landscape and providing curiosity something that we do our best to feed our children at a very young age but if you continue to inspire that curiosity and continue to provide the tools as those tools evolve and evaluate those tools and if you discretize a lot of the core tools you can actually get to a very deep understanding of what's the foundational tools around logic, around reading comprehension and then you can continue to build off of those and then once you combine those and how you really assess and teach which should be combined and the question is how you scale the assessment if it's an integral part of learning which becomes a more difficult challenge to scale which is part of the broader question but I think that's one framework I think Josh put up this analytical framework Jim has this inspirational example and how do we synthesize this curiosity and measuring tools and not to evaluate and promote failure as somebody mentioned but as a way to know where are the tools deficient and how do we improve those tools and then how do we continue to drive those tools to achieve broad things across citizenship, across career paths etc. So there's one more hand there and then I'd like to shift gears What's been missing for me in the discussion is a discussion around the learning targets or the outcomes and the question of validity and I'm using the assessment side Traditionally assessments are not the same thing and when you design assessments you have to understand what you're assessing what your targets are the goals, the context and the various forms of evidence that you have to collect prove or try to prove that outcome or that target would be met but it doesn't really matter what the results of the badge or anything else and then the validity of that if it results into some sort of credential find is really about to lead those assessments and how that was designed what I didn't see and hear about from Josh's discussion was anything about what the students were supposed to be learning the rate, destructivist, experiential type of environment totally agree with that but I didn't know what they were supposed to come out with and the word point knew all of this that we were doing that in Jim's example in Jim's, I'm sorry thank you and Josh did mention some things about a lot of the targets but I was in a different discussion but that wasn't so when we think about this that's what's missing for me we've been in adges and you start discussing let's talk about validity of attainment evidence of attainment that you've met this and how you're getting there and then when you say yes if you play chess and maybe the alchemist did you wing a chess in some cases you may not care on how you won okay well that's an outcome and that's an assessment and actually in chess they have very sophisticated measurements then that calculate my score based on what I've beaten so I would love there are two more hands no but I would love for us to actually move into the practical because it's always I think it's nice to stay in the theoretical and kind of engage with the ideas and then to walk out the door and kind of have an interesting conversation but it beats the next step is really to get our hands into what this could look like so I would love for us to try to think about concrete examples and the two kind of ideas I had is if you could just grab the person that sits next to you if you know them or you work with them a lot grab someone else and spend five minutes to really thinking about maybe paint one of the two either an area where some of the more out there ideas no more credentials no more tests where that will never work and for good reasons people are running out but now which is fine or pick an example where that is close to your heart where you think there could be a much much better way of doing assessment and credentialing or assessment or credentialing and you map out maybe in a few bullet points what that could look like who is the source of validity what's the mechanism of doing the assessment what is the assessment done for so that we can connect a few kind of examples or case studies which will then help us in the next step to think through all the complications so I'm ready set go I'm going to check I'm going to check about five minutes and then we have at least a little time for this is a very unruly class which is a good sign so there's a lot of juice in this which is great but I wonder so two things one is if you have any chance to put some notes into this etherpad of what you just talked about with your partner please do because I would love to see some of that stuff and then secondly can we just have one or two people who want to maybe give a little rundown of what they talked about so we've got one volunteer two volunteers maybe a third and four you only have about one minute each and we're already running over so we'll do it quickly we talked about portfolio assessment and how portfolio is a demonstration of what you know rather than credential the example that's difficult to measure is doctors where you think one way to measure whether they're good or not is malpractices but that actually correlates to how they did it more than what school they went to it's all about the personality in terms of not being sued so that's an area where almost any assessment you can do is orthogonal to what you're actually measuring and then an area where it's actually positive is things that you should be able to algorithmically assess and scaleably assess on a progression scale which is why video game work because you don't just randomly buy a huge character you buy a little character and then bigger characters and bigger characters like the three order production so you learn that scale which is something that's very, very measurable in math and reading for example Excellent Andrew, we talked about Jay's experience mostly in vocational instruction and how obviously the best way to know if someone gets it is to walk inside the brain if you were a psychic and that would be ideal since we're not we'd have to use other sort of proxies and things and generally speaking we were saying the best way is just to observe them doing it whether it's doing a balance sheet or rebuilding a transmission or doing woodwork or I suppose even mathematics if they're a way for direct observation and I suppose even I'm adding this coaching after the fact to just talk about, talk through the problems I think that would be your constructive means of assessment and anything else So we're just building on that so we're going to contrast two things twice Firstly, there's an important distinction between knowing certain specific things or just sort of content or actual knowledge and then there'll be the other thing which is knowing how to do something or just in general how you approach solving a particular problem that's really about, let's say, using a standard line for the global context So that contrast and then building on that, I think it's important that the advantages and disadvantages are two of these two ways of testing The one and the sort of the big hammer where you try and test just at a base level what people know so base standardized testing and you really have to know that that is a minimum kind of test that doesn't really tell you much about a person but it tells you that it gives you sort of a lower bar on what they know and then on the other hand it's not the base but more sort of the simple example I've said on T is just assessing really how so the things that are hard to say is like how people approach problems I think it's done much better through sort of almost like a network of trust kind of model where if somebody else from UTrust tells you that this other person is really good at doing tests then you do have good reasons to be trying to trust this person I think that's much more expensive but a much better way of assessing going into practice here Can we have one more hand? We talked about an area where I think in general our kind of discussion is about how there are different kinds of assessments we talked about how like a brain surgeon you would want to know that they knew their biology you know that's something where you kind of need to make sure that they know the parts of the brain it's really important something else I was thinking about is like that assessment doesn't have to be black and white, master or not I think always I think sometimes it could be okay people know this in this context or here are things that help people succeed that it's not necessarily always going to be that brain surgeon like they need to know the parts of the brain but hey this person counsels really well when they're working with this type of person somebody who's outgoing say but this type of person somebody who needs to be drawn out more they're not a good counselor for that situation or they need these structures to be a good counselor in that situation and that it's not sometimes black and white need to know the brain but that it's not always that simple okay well actually Kyle was going to raise his hand but I'm going to ask you not to because I will what we didn't talk about very much is the badges infrastructure and I will come back to that a little bit in my presentation tomorrow and so I think that's probably okay well anyway thank you all very very much this was awesome