Welcome everyone to our actually our fourth webinar in the Year Voices series. Year Voices is a one-year grant project that we started last fall and runs through this May. Myself, as well as my wonderful assistant Cara here, we have been hosting webinars as well as community learning spaces and our quarterly newsletter and really this project is about elevating student voices and bringing topics to you that may be of interest around I would say topics relevant when it comes to equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging and supporting one another and so that you can learn from even information professionals on how to navigate some of these topics and concerns within the field. So to learn more we are going to place our blog, our website in the chat so you can check out past webinars as well as our newsletters and if you have any questions please send them through the chat. We will be monitoring the chat for questions and we will address those at the end. I will say today's webinar is a little different. It's going to be kind of an interview type of conversational webinar versus a PowerPoint or presentation being shared. So with that I'm going to turn over to Cara to kick off our program. Yes, so as you already know the topic for today's webinar is on neurodiversity and college. Colleges are increasingly striving to address concerns around diversity, equity and inclusion and neurodiversity is an important part of this conversation. This interactive presentation will cover the basics of neurodiversity, how society benefits from neurodiversity and the impact of neurodiversity on the college experience. Student staff and faculty members will learn how to be supportive allies. So today with us we have Eric and like and Luna and Bruno Larson. So Eric and like is a clinical psychologist and founder of top college consultants, and he helps students with learning differences and emotional challenges apply to college. Dr. and like is on the learning differences slash neurodiversity and diversity, equity, inclusion committees of the independent educational consultants Association or IECA. And he was honored by the IECA with a making a difference award for contributions such as neurodiversity friendly college list. Dr. and like a neurodivergent adult and parent writes and presents on college admissions frequently and has been interviewed by various media outlets including Forbes. Money Magazine, College Confidential and US News and World Report. Luna Nombrano Larson is a proud autistic and dyslexic woman and passionate neurodiversity advocate. She has devoted her career to fighting for educational equity, including supporting underrepresented college students and pursuing their academic and professional goals. She is the founder and manager of the empowering autistic scholars mentoring and research training program at California Polytechnic State University at the San Luis Obespo campus, which provides inclusive community, pure mentoring, holistic support and professional development and research training for autistic scholars. She also conducts autism research and works to educate the neurotypical community about the beauty of neurodiversity and ways to create a more inclusive and equitable world. So let's start from the beginning. Whoever would like to answer first, what is the neurodiversity paradigm and how does this paradigm change how we view and treat people. I'm happy to jump in unless you want to, you know, you're muted. Okay, and feel free to add anything. So, yeah, I think the way I see the neurodiversity paradigm is being really fundamentally different from the previous paradigms like medical or disability paradigms is that it looks at differences such as autism, ADHD or dyslexia as being simply different ways that our brains are wired rather than defects, deficits or disabilities.  And it's really a very fundamental shift in the same way that we look at genders or races in terms of diversity. It's simply looking at the spectrum of diversity in how our brains work. And not only that someone who has a neurological difference or a different kind of brain is not defective, but we may have a lot to offer because of our differences. It's not in spite of our differences. It's not by overcoming those differences. It's because we're different. We have unique perspectives and ways of thinking about problems and solutions. Yes, that is all I agree with everything you've said. And I just wanted to mention a couple other things. So some of the main components of the neurodiversity paradigm, along with what Eric said about this variability between people and how they learn is completely natural. And it's a strength for the human race and also that there's no one good way to be. Like the way that everyone is, the way that everyone thinks it's all important, it's all right, and it's all valid. And then the last is that it's just like other forms of diversity, including ethnicity, gender, sexuality. And you really need to look at it within our personal dynamics that our lives as neurodivergent people are really impacted by the reactions to us by neurotypical people. So that we do face a lot of stigma, prejudice, discrimination, and even abuse by others. And one last thing that I know a lot of people who don't necessarily agree with the neurodiversity paradigm because it makes it sound as if, oh, you know, people who are neurodivergent don't need support. That's totally not true, that we do recognize that neurodivergent people may need supports in different areas of our lives. And we just try and focus on creating support systems that are inclusion focused, that are really going to benefit us and not keep us from getting certain opportunities or anything like that. I agree with everything Luna said, I just want to underscore kind of one of those points that some of the challenges that neurodivergent people face, as Luna said, are partially because of the environment that we're in. And so, you know, if you think of someone who, say, travels in a wheelchair, you know, if they can't get into a building or can't get up a building, is it intrinsic to them or is it because there's a lack of elevators and ramps. It's a sort of a combination between our differences or abilities and the environment that we're in. And so sometimes, you know, high levels of anxiety, depression, suicidality, what have you, could be at least partly mediated by the challenges in the environment. And one other point, which is that, you know, don't just take it from us that being different has its strengths, lots of employers, including large employers like Microsoft have recognized the value of neurodiversity are actively proactively recruiting neurodivergent job applicants because they see their strengths. I'll stop there. That's excellent to kick us off, I think, around this topic. Can you explain, because both of you mentioned neurodiverse and neurodivergent, can you share what's the difference between the two? Sure. I don't want to jump in first every time, but so Judy Singer was an Australian sociologist who's neurodivergent herself, coined the term neurodiversity and conceptualized it as diversity in the same way that there's biodiversity. So there are many different species in the world and you can say, you know, there's biodiversity in an environment where you have lots of different species, but one particular individual or species isn't biodiverse in itself. So one individual can't be neurodiverse because diversity is a property of groups. So we speak of ourselves individually as being neurodivergent versus neurotypical that someone who sort of is in the mainstream or more common way of brains being organized versus someone who is perhaps in the minority and neurodivergent. But that being said, the terms are thrown around quite in a very diverse way. So, you know, language is language evolves. So even though Judy Singer who can point the term neurodiversity would object to somebody calling themselves neurodiverse language changes. I think part of that too, whether somebody says neurodiverse versus neurodivergent would be people don't like the idea of saying divergent because it means, you know, you're different and you're not doing it kind of implies you're doing things or you are different in a negative way. And so they prefer to use neurodiverse, even though it's not exactly accurate and it's not grammatically correct. But so that that might be a reason. And I'd also like to mention that so even though we consider ourselves neuro minorities, approximately 20% of the population is actually neurodivergent. So we're, there's quite a lot of us out there. So on the topic are on the vein of language. We tend to hear things like, you know, someone who has autism or someone who's autistic. So could either of you talk about the difference between person first and identity first language. Take this one if that's okay. So identity first language is basically language that leads with a person's diagnosis. So for example, I am an autistic person. And a person first language is really language that puts the person before the diagnosis. So someone might say, they are a person with autism. And while some people might not care what you whether you use identity first or person first language, others will have a very strong preference. And if you don't know what the preference is, go ahead and ask the person first. Myself personally, I prefer identity first language because my neuro divergence is a very big part of who I am, particularly my, my being autistic. And for me, it's the same as how Jim Sinclair, an autistic advocate and researcher put it. Autism isn't something a person has autism as a way of being it is pervasive. It colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion and encounter and every aspect of existence. And so for me, my autism, my dyslexia, they have really molded me in a lot of ways with strengths and challenges as well. And I wouldn't be the same person without them. Yeah, I agree with all that. You can call myself a person with autism. So it seemed as strange to me as kind of a person with maleness or person with whiteness. You can't separate it from who you are.  That makes sense. It's just part of our identity. Yeah, I think that that really makes sense, specifically when thinking about just identity exercises. I do one in my class at the beginning around, you know, you tell me and share with me what your identities are and then which ones are most important to you, in the workplace or in, you know, in your education. So identifying that for me helps me to understand and know then how to better address my students and interact with them. And that I think leads to the next question, which is really around, well, two parts here. What is intersectionality, because that's, I think what you're kind of alluding to with your example, Luna. And how does it relate to neurodiversity? I think that would be a great one for Luna to tackle as well. I have something. This is for the definition from the Center for Intersectional Justice. So the concept of intersectionality describes the ways in which systems of inequality, based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability class and other forms of discrimination intersect to create unique dynamics and effects, while neurodivergent individuals share some commonalities because of our differences, our different social identities. We also have many differences in our experiences, opportunities and barriers. So as an example, so I'm a late diagnosed neurodivergent heterosexual female Latina, who is also first generation and from a low income family. So some of the opportunities and barriers and discrimination that I am going to face are different than those, say that are experienced by a white male who is diagnosed in early childhood, who is from a wealthy family or a black trans female from a middle income family who is diagnosed as a teacher. We all have differences and that we need to kind of keep in mind. And so what that kind of leads to for me is that we need to be mindful of each of our intersectionality and that the fact that we all have valuable insight to share and that we must really strive to truly hear and understand each other and give each other the same respect and validation to everyone's feelings, and needs and what they're going through.  Maybe depending on, you know, somebody who's Latino, maybe their community doesn't really support diagnosis or getting special assistance. You know, so it really depends on your your lived experience and we need to listen to each other. Yeah, I completely agree. Our experiences really do change how we navigate this world, you know, especially those who are neurodivergent and have, you know, other things that they may have personally experienced or have endured. I, for example, a lot of women or females or, you know, people who are born as female tend to be under diagnosed when it comes to autism because they tend to they mask really well. So, leading into that, how would either of you define masking and why is that important to know or to identify or see and other people. I just want to add something to your last point and I'll let Luna start with me asking if you want to, which is that, you know, women are highly under diagnosed with autism. My colleagues or co-authors and I researched 150 autistic adults around the world and women were more likely to self identify versus getting a diagnosis professionally. And I think that's partly because of the lack of diagnosis and when more thorough studies have been done, the ratio is not as unbalanced as the main research reports show. So, even though in most studies, males are diagnosed more, the ratio is not as imbalanced as it appears in the popular literature when more thorough studies are done. And also in terms of intersectionality, there is a significant overlap between the autistic population and the LGBTQIA plus population in both directions. So you see kind of higher percentages and significant overlaps there and lots of my students are gender non-conforming or trans, for example. So, Luna, did you want to start with the masking question? Sure. So, masking is essentially hiding your neurodivergence in order to fit in and appear neurotypical. It's a protective measure that individuals use, they're either consciously doing it or unconsciously doing it as a way to kind of try to avoid as much discrimination as possible that's aimed at neurodivergent people. It takes a significant mental, physical and emotional toll on the person because they're in constant fear that if they're unmasked, they're going to be bullied and or rejected for being themselves, which can cause internalized ableism, self-loathing, self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and also burnout. And additionally to that, it takes keeping up that mask takes up vital energy that you could otherwise be using to in better ways such as like academics, career, social life, self-care. You don't have that energy because it's going to keep maintaining that mask. And I want to talk a little bit about burnout, which is a very seriously debilitating effect of masking. It's per autistic researcher Dora Raymaker, it's a state of physical and mental fatigue, heightened stress and diminished capacity to manage life skills, sensory input, and our social interactions, which comes from years of severely overtaxed, overtaxing by the strain of trying to live up to demands that are out of sync with our needs. You can tell which one of us is the active scholar. I really appreciate all the quotes. Yeah, in terms of masking, you know, adult neurotypical people do not look the same as neurotypical children, right? That's kind of self-added into all of us.  They don't grow out of autism. It doesn't go away. It's an intrinsic part of who you are. But autistic adults look different from autistic children. So unfortunately, lots of autistic adults have had the experience of having people say things like, oh, you don't seem autistic, or I never would have guessed. Which is actually not necessarily a compliment, even if it's meant to be. So, you know, you want to think carefully before you say something like that.  Children don't have years of experience, as many years of experience hiding that. But in our study, you know, the over 80% of the adults reported having been bullied in childhood as I was. And so you kind of learn just instinctively to try to blend in without even really consciously thinking, oh, I should do this so that I don't seem different.  You don't even realize, kind of have to untangle those threads to figure out how much of what I'm doing is me and how much is, you know, just trying to blend in. When you also have to, if you want to unmask, you have to find a safe space to do it. Because even if you get to adulthood and decide masking is unhealthy, it's bad for me, you know. But you also risk rejection again, you are just, you know, you have to worry about discrimination, you have to worry about losing your job, potentially. So it's, it's a very difficult thing to do, even if you want to. Thank you for sharing all of that. I'm going to move to the next question. What challenges do neurodivergent students encounter in transitioning to college? And maybe I think Luna, I don't know if you're going to start. If you don't mind actually starting Eric, because of your area of expertise. Yeah, I work with neurodivergent. Yeah, I work with neurodivergent high school students applying to college and transitioning to college and so it can occur in almost every area, you know, students who are just arriving academically in high school don't really encounter the academic challenge but some of my students do because sometimes in high school they haven't had access to some of the same courses that other students do, even if, you know, honors or AP courses are offered at the high school. They may be held back if they have an IEP there may be people on their team saying, Oh, we really don't think you should take that we're worried about the stress or, you know, or doesn't fit into their schedule because they have all these resource study halls or resource rooms that they need to participate in so sometimes it's a big jump academically and they can address that a number of ways like doing dual enrollment taking community college courses in high school to kind of get a taste of college courses before they start. So academic maybe one area that doesn't tend to be the biggest area one of the biggest areas is executive functioning and that is students ability to manage their time organize themselves, get things done. And so most of the students I work with have challenges in that area, and those challenges become much more prominent in college because in high school the day is very structured relatively speaking, many hours in high school, living at home having parents kind of oversee things activities after school family dinners homework, kind of a very busy structured day, and that kind of flips in college where there's relatively few hours in classroom, relatively little oversight, many hours where students have free. Those of you listening who are college students probably know what I'm talking about. So those who have been challenged with organization and time management really need to step up and kind of plan for themselves and schedule their time and think about well if I have an assignment that's not due for three weeks. How am I going to stay on track with that rather than you know start at the night before. And so there are various ways to address that that's a big one. And then of course socially there may be challenges you know if they're in high school. They may have been in school with a lot of the same kids since kindergarten first grade. They may not have had to make new friends for a long time they may have a couple of friends in the neighborhood that they're just you know very comfortable with and then you're in college and boom you don't know anybody you're starting fresh. It's a big challenge. And then there's the independent living skills area you know you have to take care of your own hygiene you don't have a parent saying hey you need to take a shower, or getting up at a certain time doing laundry, managing money, enrolling for class. So it's it's a lot of different areas and so students vary in terms of how ready they are for college and how much they need to work on those skills before they start college. I agree with all of that. And it's it's proven I mean neurodivergent students are very intelligent, very capable of doing it being successful in college. They just need a little bit of maybe different supports than some other students might. And it is very overwhelming that that transition to college.   So conflict resolution, interpersonal skills you need to work on and then also different kinds of interpersonal skills such as like how to interact with professors how to interact with potential employers. For, if you haven't had a job before. Another big one is locating the resources that they need in order to be successful. Aside from any accommodations that they might get if they if they choose to sign up for like a disability center, which a lot of students choose not to sign up for accommodations because they're worried about getting found out as being disabled. And so once they they do find out like what resources they are eligible for actually asking for help can be very difficult. And following up is often very difficult already if you think about students who are already overwhelmed with just keeping their grades up trying to do anything over on top of that it can be very hard. So managing health and well being, making sure that they get their meds consistently if they're taking meds, making sure that they're getting exercise they're eating that they're taking breaks and getting enough sleep. They're feeling isolated and they have social anxiety, trying to navigate more adult interpersonal relationships. Imposter syndrome. A lot of students have suffer from imposter syndrome sensory overload which can lead to chronic exhaustion and just dealing with stress, anxiety and depression. In effective ways. Yeah, those are all great examples and great areas you mentioned stress anxiety and depression so I think about emotional readiness as well as you know academic readiness and social readiness as a clinical psychologist it's you know near and dear to my heart. In high school again students may have had a certain safety net they come home from school if they had a bad day maybe they lean on their parents or other folks in their network to help support them. If something happens in in college like you get a disappointing grade on a test or you're not getting along with a roommate or you broke up a room ended a romantic relationship, and you have an emotional challenge.  If you have a plan if you are starting to struggle in college with anxiety or depression, and you have a plan in place, you know, I'll go back on medication if I need to I'll start up therapy if I need to again, I'll go back to the gym and exercise and start up meditating again if you have strategies and plans you may get through that. If you don't have a plan in place, you may have much more difficulty. One of the things that is beneficial for students is to create kind of a team for themselves of people that they can go to for help with different challenges. So a lot of students really benefit from having peer mentors. There's a lot of peer mentoring programs available on campuses, not necessarily for neurodivergent students specifically, but just in general, to make sure that you have a therapist, whether you know you have an official diagnosis or not but somebody that you can go to to talk to when one you're getting stressed out or if there's something specific that you need, trying to find a trusted faculty member that can be a mentor for you, having that maybe another faculty mentor that helps you with questions about, you know, your specific field, and then another mentor who can possibly help you with more, I want to say like more person to person support. So you just have to make sure that you have that team around you so that you have people to go to, no matter what is going on to help. So what about on the other side, how can faculty staff or even other students support neurodivergent students. That's a great question. I'm being in the college setting. I'm sure Lynn has lots of thoughts about it. I'll just say something quickly. And that is to, you know, don't assume. Ask, just as you would with with any other issue with, if someone discloses to you, whether it's your roommate or a student in your class, you know, I'm autistic, I'm on the spectrum. Find out from them. Well, okay, thanks for sharing that with me. What can I do to be supportive. Okay, so I do have a lot of things to talk about in this area. So keep in mind that neurotypical and neurodivergent people, again, they experience the world process information and communicate differently. There's no right or wrong way to do any of these things. The burden should not be on us to conform to narrow typical ways of being or communicating. So just realize that communication and engagement are two way streets, and we must each do our part to accommodate each other. Also treat us with the same respect, compassion and understanding that you would with any other person. Uncover and eradicate any unconscious bias you may hold against people with invisible disabilities.  And we have a lot to offer, even if we do things differently than you are used to. So here is some things to keep in mind regarding how we might communicate differently and kind of tips. So please be patient, kind, open-minded and non-judgmental. It is easier for us to understand you if you use very clear, concise and concrete speech. So please avoid using figurative language, idioms, sarcasm, etc. A lot of people who are neurodivergent kind of take things literally. Nonverbal communication can be difficult for us. We might have a hard time understanding or keeping track of your body language, facial expressions, tone of voice. Just straight out tell us what you need or how you're feeling because that's how we're going to be able to understand and react better. If you try and show us, we might miss it. Our facial expressions or tone of voice may not match with what we are saying, so please prioritize our words over anything else. Making eye contact can be uncomfortable. So don't think we are paying attention to you if we're not looking at you when you're speaking. A lot of the time it's also we're trying to focus on what you are saying without being distracted by facial expressions or things going on behind you. Let's see. Don't kind of search for hidden meetings in what we're saying. We're usually pretty blunt and honest and to the point. It may take us longer to process information and answer a question, so give us a little bit of time. Don't overload us with too many questions at once. Try to avoid open-ended questions for things that you want concrete specific answers for. We might ask the same question multiple times because we don't completely understand what you're looking for. Don't get frustrated or think that we're being disrespectful. Please just restate your response maybe in a slightly different way so that we understand. If you are a student, please reach out to your neurodivergent classmate to get to know them and invite them to join your group in class or even just to chat. They may have a hard time initiating conversation, but would probably appreciate your any friendly overtures that you make. Also, just understand that some people need to move around or stim to help them concentrate or regulate themselves so that they're feeling more calm and able to focus. And it's a natural thing for some of us to do, so please don't stigmatize it. It's very helpful for us. For professors and staff, do what you can to help develop accommodations that will allow us to be successful in your classroom, even if they're not required by the disability center on your campus. Many accommodations are actually left to the discretion of the professor. So some things that are helpful that aren't necessarily required are providing lecture notes ahead of time to help students figure out what they should prioritize in what they're learning. And also offering study guides, for example, so students understand what specifically they should be focusing on. Utilize universal design for learning guidelines, including multiple means of engagement, representation, action and expression in your courses and allow for different options for participation. Try to relate coursework to students' interests if possible because that will keep them more engaged. Set ground rules of respect and inclusion for your class and how students interact with each other. And create spaces where students feel comfortable and like they don't have to mask, but they can just be themselves. Pay attention to sensory aspects of the environment such as maybe the volume, background noise, etc. Include breaks during lectures and labs. And don't assume that because a student isn't participating in an in-person class discussion that they haven't done the reading or don't have any worthwhile ideas to share. Students have a difficult time coming up with answers and opinions on the spot because their processing time may be slower. They might have a praxia of speech. They might have social anxiety. So give them time to formulate responses and don't expect them to have an answer right away when asked. Hi, that was a mouthful. Oh, that's fantastic. I hope you write an article on that if you haven't already, Luna, because that would be a really useful list for folks. The only one I want to kind of highlight is the universal design for learning, providing, you know, multiple channels or ways for folks to access information. And an example that comes to mind may or may not be a perfect example of this is a while back I did an interview for the organization and website Different Brains. And what I liked is after the, you know, as a video interview like this webinar, they post the video on the website. They also post it in the form of a podcast, just an audio, and they post the transcripts. You've got three different ways to access the same information. Personally, I much prefer accessing information through my eyes by reading. So I almost never watch videos or podcasts. My daughter is always saying, Hey, dad, you really should watch this podcast. I'm like, you know, if there's a transcript, I'll read it. But that's just me. So giving people different options is great. You know, Luna mentioned giving professors giving lecture notes. That's just one way of giving someone a different way to access the information. Because if I'm sitting there in a classroom listening to professor, you know, I'm just not going to absorb as much as if I also have it in written form.  Right.  And because you have those lecture notes, you now have, you know, more information that you would have if you had just been sitting in class or maybe you didn't get enough sleep the night before and you're just really tired and you're having trouble absorbing it. Everyone benefits with these interventions, not just giving special treatment to people with differences or disabilities. That's great. I, Luna, write an article. That's I was writing trying to write it all down fast and great, great tips. I will say within the iSchool for those that are here with the iSchool, we do have a requirement with and as you've probably aware Luna. So there's the video, the transcript, the captioning. I even include the audio, like I have all formats in mind for all of my lectures. And some that, you know, it's great to have other options to like if you prefer audio, we all learn differently. So having all those options for all of our students is really critical. I wanted to ask one question before we go to the final one. I wanted to ask, have either of you or has you come across this in your experiences or even in the literature around any differences for online education versus a face to face education when it comes to supporting neurodivergent students. Anything beyond, you know, the having the multiple, you know, the transcript, etc. I know it really differs, but having the ability to do asynchronous online courses versus synchronous and having the ability to respond like during class participation to respond via chat is very helpful. Or to be able to keep your screen blank, if you feel like it, or if you feel like you need to do that. See, for for lectures, being able to read like the transcript of the lecture, instead of having to watch the video. Of course, there's like, you're showing an example of how to do something, then obviously it's better to be able to watch it in the, the lecture, the video, but a lot of times for me personally it's easier to read the lecture transcript, because it's hard for me to sit and focus on a video. Great. Thank you for sharing that Eric did you have other thoughts. You know, just to agree with all of that. I've taken online courses that were asynchronous and found them, you know, very accessible and really handy, you know, people's energy levels vary at different times of days. So if it's asynchronous, you can log in and watch the lecture or read the articles at the time when you have the time available, and when you have the mental resources available. And yeah doing, being able to respond via chat I'm in lots of professional meetings and frequently a lot of my interaction will be through the chat I don't really like being the center of attention so right. I like just being able to type my comments there and also just let me kind of think and process rather than having to be kind of in the spotlight. So, let's go to our final question and then we'll address questions from the audience. What about neurodivergent faculty, what are some of their needs are they similar different and do you have any resources you might recommend for faculty. I just want to say one thing which is that, you know, if you, if you believe that neurodivergent people are, I think you said 20% of the population Luna, you know, plus or minus it depends on how you define neurodiversity. And that's going to be just as true a faculty as it is of students, you know, there's so much focus on providing programs and supports for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty seem to be kind of left out of the conversation. And as somebody who's, you know, always looking for resources for undergraduates, I'm just really conscious of how they're so little talk about what is being done. And our is an environment made is conducive for faculty to quote come out our faculty comfortable approaching colleagues or administrators disclosing that they're neurodivergent and asking for accommodations or other kinds of supports. And again, I'm sure Luna has a lot more to say on this. I would say, and for faculty and staff. Yes, we have a lot of similar needs as students. But another thing is, you have, if you do disclose, there's the real very real, very real fear that you will be let go. And if a faculty hasn't gained tenure yet, you know, that might, that is still a very real fear. And the same for staff, they can be let go because often they're considered, oh, they're not a team player, they need accommodations that we don't really want to provide, even though they're generally pretty simple and free or inexpensive.  And so people don't like that, or you're not communicating the way that people expect you to communicate or want you to communicate and so it's more work to have to figure out how to communicate with you or, you know, Anyway, so there's a lot of things like that. There's a lot of feeling as if faculty who are neurodivergent aren't as capable as neurotypical faculty. And a lot of times to I mean just even getting to the point of getting hired is very difficult. A lot of the times, the problems that neurodivergent people in general have, it's not that they can't do the work and can't be successful.  That's one of the big ones. Or for faculty, it might be that, you know, they they teach a little bit differently and maybe students don't understand about neurodiversity or you know, and so they might feel uncomfortable with that. And so a big thing is really to really change the way people think about neurodiversity and look at all the benefits of it. And we need to educate mainstream society basically is what it what it's going to take. So we need to have program like trainings at colleges where you teach about neurodiversity and the strengths and the needs of people and how to help them how to be more inclusive. And you also need to train, you know, the students about as well you need to train everybody and that makes the whole campus more inclusive of faculty, staff and students. Those things aren't going to change if we don't we don't get over past this stigma about neurodivergence. Thank you, Luna. I was just thinking about it's so critical to continue the dialogue and have these conversations as well as normalize it like we should be talking about this and we should be taking action and steps. No matter what our role is, whether and not come to the conversation from like the deficit mindset, but more from the and you said it really the benefits. There's so many benefits that can even benefit those that are non divergent. So it's, I think, so critical to figure out how we can educate normalize get this out there training have programs resources, this webinar for example and others. So thank you for that. I'm going to move to we've had several questions and we have I think about seven minutes so hopefully we can get to these three at least and if others come in. We can hopefully share with you them after and then maybe you can respond and we can share them out with the recording. So the first one was you mentioned that employers are starting to look into purposely hiring neurodiverse people. So how recent is the shift and do you believe it is nationwide or have certain companies or fields been making more strides than others. In my personal experience masking is still encouraged if not necessary in order to hold down a job. I would say it's really recent and you know every year I see changes in this lots of new initiatives coming online all the time so very recent and because it's very recent. It's not nationwide it's not across all industries. Some industries seem to be more proactive in this area than others I would say high tech and finance kind of stand out, maybe not the only ones but those are two that I've seen a lot of. And sometimes people get discouraged and think oh well you know I'm not a programmer so how does that help me well you know if a company like Microsoft or Apple or Google is hiring they need people in lots of different kinds of roles managers sales HR. Marketing advertising not just not just programming roles. So if you can't just go by the industry as far as you know whether your skills are going to be relevant for a particular company. So, I see a lot of exciting initiatives coming you know if you look at if you Google neurodiversity in the workplace or something like that you'll see a lot of organizations doing great work in that area there are also some neurodiversity diversity hiring platforms, like mantra comes to mind. That's me and t r a that's one example where if you're neurodivergent. There's a hiring platform that is more suited to you than you know the standard ones. I'll add to that. I got it is definitely very new and the last less than 10 years I would say some of the bigger companies that are are have been focused on neurodiversity hires is like SAP Wells Fargo Microsoft Northrop Grumman has just started an internship program. I will say that they're motivated to hire tech people for these positions right now because they really need to fill these tech positions and there's this positive stereotype of Autistics as being great tech people so engineers and mathematicians and computer programmers and such like and they're they're moving towards pushing cybersecurity as well. So it's not really across the board with with hiring yet, as far as changing HR practices and ways of conducting interviews in order to hire for other positions that are non tech at this point but hopefully that will be changing. Because yeah, they're one of the big things that a lot of neurodivergent people have in common is they're very creative and they're very innovative. So there's definitely hateful wall of doing jobs outside of tech, but I think that's coming. We're in all fields. Yeah. Thank you for that. Oh, go ahead Luna. Oh, I was just going to say that part of the reason that I started the program that I started is because I want to bring more Autistic and neurodivergent students into academia. Like, so that's one of the goals. That's great. Let's see if we can get in the next two questions. And then Luna, I'd love at the end if you can share a little bit about the the program or the grant and what you're doing at your institution. Next question. What are your thoughts on tone indicators for text interactions. Emoticons or emojis. Came into being for a reason. Right. Text doesn't have a lot of context when you're when you're sending a text or even an email someone when you're having a face to face. A verbal conversation. Lots of information is conveyed through means other than the words, your facial expression, body language, the rhythm of your speech tone of voice. Although some of us don't communicate as much that way as others. And so, in text, people have devised these other ways to add information that's missing. So, I think it makes sense but it also just sort of highlights the limitations of those forms of communication and sometimes if you're trying to have a conversation over text. There are some things that aren't really very well suited to text when I was a therapist I would often encourage couples not to have you know intense emotional conversations through text. Emoticons a lot. And text as well as in emails sometimes depending on the person that I'm talking to if it's somebody that I work with a lot who will not look down on me for using the emoticons but they're very helpful for me because a lot of times I can't gauge how people are feeling even in person. So, to be able to have the little pictures that show emotions are are helpful. Okay, I think we might have to pause I see I know Eric has to leave us that one. So, and I might have your name wrong, Lily, we have your question about the lived experience the framework, instead of evidence based we will get that to Eric and Luna and get an answer for you and share it back with attendees with the recording. But Luna, can you just briefly tell us about the, the program that you started over at Cal Poly. And so it's called the empowering autistic scholars mentoring and research training program. And it's essentially well it's going to be a two year program so the first year we focus on a peer mentoring to help the students, you know, find community on campus inclusive community with their mentor as well as the other autistic scholars in the group and ease staff. So they have a safe place to go where they can unmask, they can be themselves they can ask a question and get the help that they need without feeling judged. They can make friends have social groups do exercise groups, study halls to keep each other accountable for getting their work done. And also do some academic and professional development presentations, teach students the skills that they're going to need and then have them put them into practice conducting autism research that will then be the thing that what they create with the research will then be shared with other colleges and universities, so that they can be used to benefit their students. And another part of it is actually creating materials presentations what have you to educate the mainstream community about how best to support autistic and other neurodivergent students. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that we will also make sure to share that with attendees. So they'll have a link to that. But I know we're at the top of the hour. So please join me in thanking both Eric and Luna for their time today and their expertise in this area very important topic that we all should be having ongoing conversations take it back to your friends right now and let's take some action. But thank you both. Well, thanks for inviting us and thanks for everyone for tuning in. Yes, thank you so much everyone for being here. It was a pleasure.


Hello everybody! Watch this video to find out how to install and configure Citrix Hypervisor or SandServer, how to take a snapshot and how to restore the whole system back to its previous state. Also, you will see how to recover data from a SandServer virtual machine if it's deleted by mistake, if it refuses to boot, or if it displays an error at startup that cannot be fixed. Citrix Hypervisor or SandServer is a virtualization platform based on a special version of Linux and developed by the company called Citrix Systems. With this platform, you can run a number of virtual machines on a single physical server. This Hypervisor lets you create virtual machines, take snapshots of their disks and manage virtual machine workloads. Just like other virtualization products, it's by no means perfect, and sometimes there may be failures or errors resulting in loss of data. If that's the case, there's a question to answer – how to recover the data? This video will give you the answer in all detail how to recover files from virtual machine working with SandHypervisor. For status, let's explore how to install this Hypervisor. There are a few things to be checked before installing SandServer version 8. It requires a 64-bit Intel VT or AMDV processor based on x86 architecture. If you plan to run Windows virtual machines, you need to enable hardware virtualization technologies, Intel VT or AMDV in BIOS. Also, you need to download an installation ISO image from the Citrix website before you can install the Xsense Hypervisor. To do it, go to the Citrix Download page. From the drop-down menu, select Citrix Hypervisor, Xsense Server, and then choose the latest version – 8.2 LTSR. You need to register before you can download anything. Enter the ISO image to your server with a remote management console such as IMM, ILO, etc. or create a bootable USB drive. To begin the installation, start the server and boot from the USB drive. In the Grab Boot menu, choose Install. At the first stage, choose the keyboard layout to be used and click OK. At the next step, press F9 if you need to download a special device driver or click OK to continue if you don't need it. Select the license agreement. Then choose the disk where you want to install Citrix Hypervisor, Xsense Server. As I installed from a local disk, I choose local media from the list of sources and click OK to continue. When installing from CD or DVD, it is recommended to check the disk. Otherwise, skip the check by clicking OK. Set the password for the root account. Type it again to confirm and click OK. At the next step, you need to configure network parameters, set the automatic or static IP address, add a subnet and gateway, and finally click OK. After that, set the hostname and configure the DNS server. And click OK when you're done. Select Location, click OK, and sit in Click OK again. To synchronize time, select NTP and click OK to continue. Finally, it's time to hit the button Install Citrix Hypervisor to begin the installation. All the data on the disk will be removed. At the end of this process, you will be offered to install supplemental packs if necessary. If you don't need them, click No to complete the installation. Now that it's over, remove the installation media and press Enter to reboot. When the server has booted, you can connect it to it from the client you see. To do it, enter the service IP address in the browser. You can find this address in the hypervisor window. To manage the server, download and install SansCenter by following this link. Start the utility and add the server. Right-click on SansCenter and choose Add. Type the service IP address, administrative's name and password, and click Add. Now that you have connected to the server, you can create virtual machines, manage the host network, and it's storage and do many other things. To install an operating system for the virtual machine, you will need an installation disk or ISO file. I'll be using an ISO image. For this purpose, you need to create a repository where ISO images of operating systems will be stored. To do that, connect to the server by SSH and create a local folder there by running this command. After that, create a repository with the store manager using another command. In this command, name, label, local ISO is the repository name. When this command is performed, a new storage will appear in the GUI, which stands for Graphical User Interface window. To upload images to the server, connect to it by SFTP and copy the image to this folder. To activate images, you should browse to local ISO storage and hit the RISCAN button. After that, the image will appear on the list. Also, every item initialized in the local repository will be added to the boot list of the virtual machine. Now, you can select the un-uploaded image and install it onto a new virtual machine. To create a virtual machine in the Send Center, go to the tab New VM. Select an operating system you'd like to install and click Next. Give a name for this new virtual machine, Next. Select Installation Media, an ISO image from the repository you have created earlier and click Next. Select the server where you would like to create a virtual machine, click Next. Choose a number of processors and amount of memory to be allocated to this virtual machine, Next. After that, set the preferred storage size and click Next. If necessary, add one more network interface, click Next, and finally click Create Now to have the machine created. The virtual machine will appear on this list. When it happens, the machine will start automatically and the installation of the operating system will begin. When you are through with all typical stages of installation, the virtual machine will be ready to use. The Xen Hypervisor lets you take snapshots of your virtual machine. To create and manage snapshots, you need quite a lot of free space, in fact, more than twice the size of your virtual machine. If it happens so that you created a virtual machine on a storage device with a smaller free space reserved than required and then decided to take a snapshot, it will occupy all the free space available. When you try to remove it, the snapshot will be gone, but you won't get any free space back. A snapshot captures the state of a virtual machine at a specific date and time when the snapshot was taken. Such snapshots will help you recover accidentally removed files or system settings that existed at the time when the snapshot was taken. To create a snapshot, select a virtual machine, go to the Snapshots tab, and click Take Snapshot. Give the snapshot name, add a description if necessary, and click Take Snapshot. The folder will appear on this list. To go back to a specific system snapshot, select it from this list and click Revert to. Check this box if you need a snapshot of the current state of your virtual machine and click Yes. After that, the operating system will roll back to its previous state. You will find the specific snapshot you need by checking its date and time. If the virtual machine refuses to boot or displays an error that can't be fixed, or if there is a server error, in any of these cases, you can safely use Hetman Partition Recovery to bring your data back. It supports data recovery from virtual disks of various hyperwisers, including Citrix Xen. By default, Citrix Xen Server uses LVM storage for its virtual machines. This storage method has quite a lot of advantages if compared with VHD files, but sometimes you need to use the file-based storage mode, like in VMware ESX, and it may also create additional difficulties for the recovery process. When the physical disk containing virtual machine files is connected to the computer, Hetman Partition Recovery will display all the virtual machine disks. To see which virtual disks belong to a specific virtual machine, you should run some commands on the server to find the UUID, Universal Unique Identifier, of the virtual machine, the UUID of its disk, and the UUIDSR, which stands for Universal Unique Identifier of the Storage Repository. To do all that, connect to the server by SSH and type the first command. As a result, you found the virtual machine UUID. Now you can use this identifier to view the connected disks with the help of this command. In the end, the virtual machine UUID is given. As a result, you get the virtual disk UUID, which in its turn can be used to find the Storage Repository UUID. Now that we have the repository identifier, it's easy to understand to which virtual machine specific disks belong, and you'll be able to identify those disks in the Data Recovery utility. Connect the server's disks to Windows computer, download, install, and run the Data Recovery tool. Hetman Partition Recovery will display all virtual machine disks in the Drive Manager. Use the disk where the required files used to be stored, right-click on it, and select Open. Select the scan type, Fast Scan. If the Fast Scan can't find the required files, then go for Full Analysis. Right-click on the disk, Analyze again, Full Analysis, and specify the system for this disk. Then click Next. Find the folder where the files were stored, select the files you want to restore, click Recovery, specify the disk and folder where you'd like to save the files, and click Recovery again. When the entire process is over, you will find the recovered files in the folder you have chosen. If the Accent Service Storage was based on a RAID system, you will need to use Hetman RAID Recovery. This program will automatically build the RAID with the available disks, and all you have to do is to run the scan, wait for the results, and recover the information. And RAID Recovery supports the majority of most popular RAID times. To make your lives easier, our program features the option to search for files by their names. Also, you'll be able to preview the file contents to make sure that this is the actual file that you need. And that is all for now. Hopefully, this video was useful. Remember to click the Like button and subscribe to our channel. If you have comments to ask questions, thank you for watching and good luck. While you're watching this video, civilians in Ukraine are dying from attacks in bombardments on the Russian Federation. Putin's insane regime has attacked a peaceful country in the very heart of Europe. Support the Ukrainian army by making a contribution to the font Come Back Alive. Use the QR code of the link below the video to transfer any amount of money that will boost the Ukrainian resistance and help it counter Russia's designable invasion.


We are fifth graders at College View Elementary School in Council Bluffs, Iowa. There are two types of teasing, friendly teasing and unwanted teasing. We want to reduce unwanted teasing at our school. Unwanted teasing can lead to bullying, health issues, and physical action. We're hoping you can give us ideas to stop unwanted teasing. Some things we like to know include... What school do you attend and where is it located? How does your school prevent teasing? How big of a problem is teasing at your school? Where does teasing usually happen at your school? Do you ever report teasing to an adult at your school? Does your school have consequences for teasing? What are they? What else would you like to say about teasing? You don't have to answer all of our questions. What we are most interested in is what advice you can give us to stop teasing. If you have questions for us, we're happy to reply. Thank you for helping us put a stop to unwanted teasing.


I just want to introduce myself. I'm Renee Dobbs. I have my blog as Magnolia Days. It's primarily a food blog and every now and then I stick a little something in there about gardening or wine or something like that. So I've been blogging now for about three and a half years. This is my third word camp and the second time that I have presented at word camp. So what I want to do is find out how many of you here have blogs, a good number. Okay, how many of you have blogs, blog regularly? Ah, a little less, a little less, okay. So you either, how many of you do not have blogs at all but want to start one? Okay, so basically you're here at word camp to learn about WordPress, to either get your blog going or to learn more about getting your blog set up and everything. So here you do, you're here, you have this fabulous new blog. So like, there it is, so now what? What's the first thing that you need to do? And I can tell you that you need to blog. It may sound kind of strange but as you can see when I ask people how much do you blog regularly, the number of hands went down from how many people have blogs.  You may have spent a tremendous amount of money or a little bit of money to have somebody set that blog up for you and so you really have some time and investment to getting you to this point which is where it's going to take you and your business on to the next point. So the reason that you need to blog and it's important is, is as we just had this wonderful presentation by Jenny Munn about SEO and one of the very important factors about SEO is to get content out there because content does a lot of things. It tells Google that you've got something fresh out there and it also gives people something to read and learn about once they get to your site. So if you don't have fresh content, there's kind of no point in having a blog. You might as well just have a static site that you just have the same thing over and over again. So you really want to do something to keep things fresh out there to get ideas to draw people in to get people to know you're there. So the first thing I can say is blog. Start building content now. Even if your blog is just very rough, very in the start phase, you're in the middle of a design process, it doesn't matter. That content is still going to be there when it turns into this spectacular, the most perfect website ever. But if you don't have the history there and if you don't start putting content there, then you're, you know, there's no point. You really just have to start blogging. So then it's like, okay, so I blog and so how often am I supposed to blog? Well, there's a myth out there that if you look up how many times I should blog on the Internet, you're going to have a lot of people say every day. Well, no, not necessarily because that might be just a little bit too much for you to handle.   It's not really thoughtful. You really want to do something. You want to put content out there but you want to do it what is best for you and for your audience. And so what I say is there is really no rule but to come up with a manageable frequency. And that is just something, a schedule that you can think you can maintain over time. Because I know I have a food blog and when I first started I thought, oh my God, I have thousands of recipes and I just can't wait. I need to put all this stuff out there and everything. But, you know, when you start maintaining that all the time, it's really difficult to keep up with that schedule.  But if it's just your site, you're going to need to do things that fits in where you can provide good things in a reasonable amount of time. And so you just kind of have to look through and do something. And then that way when your audience signs up for your newsletter or your RSSV or just, you know, anything, they can rely on the fact that hey, maybe, you know, like for me every Tuesday and Thursday she comes out with a new post. Or once a week there's something that, you know, they come to expect in their inbox that hey, here's some more information, here's some great information. But it keeps you from disappearing from your audience but not overwhelming them with too much. Now, there are exceptions to that. Let's say you have an entertainment blog. Well, of course, entertainment news happens all the time. Or you have a blog where you do daily coupons, you know, something like that. You have to be on top of it and that really kind of is something that you might want to do every day. But other than that, I would stress more in putting thoughtful content out there so that when somebody does read your post, it's really worthy of them reading it. And so you kind of want to sort of plan things out. And, you know, if you have a plan, then you can work your plan. You know, it's always good to say, okay, and give yourself a goal. A great way to do it is to use a calendar. Personally, me, my calendar is just a paper calendar. I write down the days that I want to do what recipes or the things that are going on. Or you might want to use a Google calendar or something like that. There's also, if you have a company or multiple things or you want to have more of a calendar on your WordPress dashboard, there's an editorial calendar plugin. And that's where you can manage multiple authors, multiple days. You can put in a post and say, okay, I want it to be on this day. And then you come up with something else that you need to go ahead of that and you can move it to another day really easy. So there's a great editorial calendar plugin that is really great for scheduling things out. And so the thing to do is to try to get content built up ahead of time. Because you really sort of want to get things out there and ready to post so that you can maintain that regular schedule. Let's say you have three or four days where you could just work on posts one right after another. Instead of just hitting publish, publish, publish, publish, you can use that wonderful WordPress feature to schedule posts.  Why would I post a recipe for Christmas right now? So I could develop it, I could take pictures, write the post, get everything and then schedule it to be around the first of December. So that that way I've got that done out of the way and I don't have to think about it. And then when that comes around I've already got something scheduled for that time frame. So, you know, it's good to get the content out there and then to think about, look ahead and see what's going on, what's happening in your niche, what's happening in your community and to build that content and get some posts done and get them scheduled. Even if it's a partial post and you can go back and revisit it right beforehand. But it's really good to have something, you know, out there so that it gives you a goal and things you can check off on your calendar. So then it's like, alright, okay, so I got to do all these posts where, how can I find inspiration? How am I supposed to write all these things? Well, of course your passion for what you do will help you write. But there's always those writer blocks and things. So I always say, you know, look around the world around you. For example, let's say you're a company that repairs windows. Well, look out a window. You know, come up with inspiration for, let's say you start a new series of things that says looking out the window. And you just have different, maybe pictures of windows that you fixed. And there's something interesting that's outside of that window. Maybe it's a tree. Maybe it's a scene. Maybe it was a truck going by or something like that.  Or I have this picture of steps there. You're walking along. You see these really cool steps. You know, take a picture of it or something. And then let's say you have the 10 best steps to fixing your window. Or the 10 greatest things for SEO content. You know, everything just kind of look around. You know, you can find lots of inspiration and twists and different things that you can spend your business or your niche or whatever. And to come up with something other than just a monotonous sale about whatever's going on in your company right now. And another great thing is events and holidays. Like I said, Christmas for my recipes. You know, maybe there's a certain event that's going on.   You were there before or what you're presenting, you know, coming up. There's niche things in the food world that I'm in. You know, there's upcoming next week is Tater Day. So it's fun little things, either, you know, quirky events or national events or holidays or things like that that you could use to find inspiration to write a post on. You know, anything other than the boring old sales post. And then of course current news. Anything that's going on that is really high in the news right now. You could bump up a post you've got scheduled for next week and put it for after that and then write a new post. It's something that correlates to your business and something very, you know, powerful that's going on in the news right now. And also projects. If you're, let's say you're a website designer and you want to talk about the project, you know, here's what we're working on.   We're doing this for a client for this reason or maybe it's a woodworking project.  Just any kind of anything that you could have an inspiration for your post. It doesn't always have to be what is actually happening, you know, in your business. It's good to tie things outside of your business to your posts. So then very important thing to do is try not to be a pushy sales person. Is anybody here familiar with Macy's shopping site? Yeah, yeah, Macy's. Well, Macy's has a sale every day. Okay. Every single day they have a sale. So you get an envelope in the mail for Macy's. It's like, yay. Okay. It's a sale. Macy's is like, yay. It's a sale. And soon you have the same thing over and over again and people just delete or unsubscribe or whatever.  You know, keep them going that bounce rate and stuff. So what do you do? You don't want to advertise your sale every day in your blog post. So the most very important thing that I think you can do is to tell a story. And there's even a WordPress session at WordCamp today. I think it's either today or tomorrow that is about telling a story. I highly recommend going to that session because people want to know a story. That's what captivates people. You know, I could say, here's cookies. Here's a recipe. What about those cookies? Are they crunchy? Are they chewy? Why did I make those cookies? I had the most incredible failure. My mix are caught on fire when I was making the cookies.  You know, put a little bit of yourself out there. Put your voice out there. Because, you know, people, why read dull, boring stuff? You really need to have a story. And those stories is what's going to connect you with your audience. Those stories are going to get people in so that they look forward to your next post. You know, wow, I wonder what happened next. I wonder, you know, what's the next thing that's going on?  They're your friends. They're connected with you like you care about them. And show a little bit of your expertise.   This logo is the best logo in the whole world.  It's really pretty. But it could be that I sat with the client and we discussed what it is their, you know, our audiences and why it is and the story behind that logo and how you took the client's needs and put your expertise with it and made that perfect logo that tells a story about that company with just by somebody looking at it. You know, anything, anything that shows something that you have your knowledge there, you know, tell them the story in a way that lets them, that draws them in and also help them solve problems. I'm not saying, you know, click here and I'll fix your website for free.  People love tips. They look tips like crazy. You know, if I say, if you want to bake a chocolate cake and you don't want to have that white film around the outside, dust your pan with cocoa powder instead of flour. And so that way the outside of your chocolate cake is nice and dark and you don't have this yellow film on the outside. Well, hey, that's a tip. You know, I didn't just give them a cake recipe. I gave them a tip too. So that way, you know, or let's say your muffin's always sticking in the pan. I give them how-to or why, you know, how you can prevent that from happening. So give them tips. Show them some expertise. Solve their problems. And a fantastic way to connect with your community is to answer questions. Your blog comments, the emails that you get, those are perfect blog posts. Somebody, you know, hey, I got this email from my client the other day or a customer or from Betty Jo in Colorado wanted to know this. It means that, hey, I'm listening to you. I hear you. I'm responding.  And that way it gets people drawn in. And they might want to, you know, send you questions or ask you questions or hire you or see that, hey, this is a helpful person. This is somebody that can help me. So this is, you know, it's just really great. And I can only say that it's so very important to connect with your customers on that emotional level. People like to be helped. People want to learn things. People want to read stories. If people didn't want to read stories, there wouldn't be a book sold ever. So keep that all in mind when you're doing your blog post and putting that content out there that it isn't all about those keywords. It's filtering in those words into that copy that people will read and draw them in and make them want to come back and visit you or so that they get more information from you and subscribe to your newsletter and subscribe to your feed and follow you on social media because there's something interesting about you.  You know, don't put boring news out there about your company. You know, put exciting things out there. And like I said, have another page where you can say, go here for offers and that benefits both, you know, your visit time and gets people more interested to go see those offers and see what you have to say. And of course a picture is worth a thousand words. I can't express enough about how much people love pictures. If you go to a website and you get to a page and all you see is words I think people cross over. Try to find photographs that portray the message that you're wanting to give in your post. Make it visual. Make it something that connects that earlier slide I had about stairs. If you're doing something that says steps to reach your goal, have a picture of steps there. You know, do something to make it so that the first time they come there they see something that really gives a message about what it is that you're trying to say. So there's places to find photos. I know there was a session earlier Tom Tortorici had about photos for your website and I believe there's another session later today or tomorrow also about great photography for your website. And you can also find photos on different places. There's photo sites. There's Flickr and all of that. Or you can create your own images. Creating images doesn't always mean taking a photo. You could create an infographic and those are really, really, really popular.  And then videos. Videos are incredibly, incredibly hot right now. Put a little 15-second video on your blog. Upload it to Facebook. Upload it to Instagram. If you have that little tip, like I said, dusting the pan with cocoa one of my goals is to do more of those little tips and start videos on mine but it would be good just to show a quick little how-to or your woodworking project. How do you select the right piece of something to put in your saw? Just something out there, a little video. People love them and it will keep people on your website too. And of course, with all things blogging and all things, you know, all that stuff you need to keep it legal. There are legalities that are involved in blogging. First off, very, very important, those photos and those videos and those images and even words all fall under copyright laws. Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever pull and use somebody else's images without permission or without buying them and never just copy their content from their blog post and put it on your blog post because these days there are actually law firms that are starting to come up right now and people that are actually looking for people who are using other people's images and lawsuits are going out like crazy. There's even been a lawsuit for $120,000 just for one photo. So you really, really, really have to be careful and protect yourself and make sure that you just don't do your regular Google image search and say, oh, that's great. Download it and put it up onto your blog site. Getty Images is notorious these days. I think they have like a generic $500 invoice that they'll send to you if they find you're using one of their images. So it's really, really important that you make sure that whatever you put on your blog in the image, the video, and the text is all legal and you're not copying somebody else's work or using somebody else's work. So it's not going to do you a whole lot of good to spend all this money and spend all this time to build a blog and then next thing you know, all the money and investment you've put into it, you're hiring a lawyer to take care of lawsuits for things that might be on your blog. So you really need to be careful about that. Can't stress that enough. Other things that you need to do is you need to disclose information. Sponsored posts. I have a lot of sponsored posts. A food company says, hey, I'll pay you $500 to write about this, our product. Well, I need to put it in there. This is a post sponsored by this company to let people know that I receive money in order for that post. And it's not just that, it's also free product. Hey, you know, I've gotten boxes of produce before and if I use that produce in my post, I will put in there. This post, I received a box of produce at no charge from X company. I was under no obligations to write a post, but I still put it in there because legally I need to say that some company gave me something. Money or otherwise gave me something to make that post happen. So that way you're covered and the FTC is, you know, they really want you to follow those federal trade commission guidelines. So the other things that you need to disclose is affiliate links. I make money off of Amazon. Anybody else make money off of Amazon? Yay. So when you put a link that I said, hey, this is the greatest cookbook ever. I received this cookbook from, you know, to review. I let them know that I received it for free and then this is where you can buy it. And I put a link to it and I say Amazon affiliate link in parentheses side. You have to put, anytime you put an affiliate link in there, you need to tell people that those are affiliate links. So that way you're covered because you are earning money from people clicking on those links. So if you use Amazon Associates, if you're a, let's say you are earned money for selling web hosting, you have a little ad on the side that says, you know, hosted by SiteGround and people click on that and they get hosting and you earn money from it. You really need to disclose on your website that that is an affiliate link. And then paid links are not exactly what you really want to do and Jenny sort of explained that for people to, you know, if you do have somebody gives you money just to put a link in there but you really need to disclose that you were given money to have that link in there. Google really frowns upon paid links and it's also deceiving to your readers if you don't have something in there that says, you know, hey, I was paid for this. The other thing that kind of goes along with keeping it legal is to give credit, okay? I go to this site and I see this amazing, amazing thing. This recipe and I just can't, I just, I love it. It's the best thing in the world but instead of it being one thing I want to switch something out and all that I give credit to that person that says, hey, this recipe was inspired by this one on this site. You know, always give credit where you have inspiration.  It's sort of that, you know, hey, thank you. It's nice to say thank you and to build your community that way. And of course the other things going with the under legal is you definitely don't want to fringe upon any trademark laws. So keep trademarks in mind and you do not want to cause yourself to be put, given something for, you don't want to be liable for anything.  And also an extremely, extremely important thing is privacy. When somebody has a form and they give you your email address and your phone number or if you have an e-commerce site and you have the credit card information and you need to do everything you can possible to ensure that those, that all that private information stays private. So do whatever you have to do to guarantee and ensure that the visitors that come to you and give you that valuable information that you're not giving it out to someone else or putting it in a place where someone else can find it. Last thing you need is to be giving out people's financial information or even, you know, email lists or anything like that. So make sure that you have, you know, take care of people's privacy.  So what next? Well, nobody really knows you're out there unless you tell them. You can write blog posts till you're blue in the face. You might have some good SEO on there and people could, you know, come visit your website after you've built up this nice SEO and you get up into the rankings. But in order to really kind of let people know about your blog posts that you've masterfully done and done everything right and it's so perfect, and that is to be a part of a community. Be a good neighbor.  And then to let people know about your posts and your company and all that, it's really important these days to be active on social media. And I say active because there's a lot of people who sign up, they do that automatic thing where I do a blog post and it automatically publishes to Facebook and it automatically publishes Twitter and it's like, okay, that's it. Well, no, you really need to find which social media channel or channels are the most relevant to what your business is and concentrate on those and be active. Talk to people, communicate with people on that site, tweet out to people, answer people's tweets, find other people and tweet to them. Just make sure that you interact and if somebody sends you a question or replies or tweets to you, just thank them. They retweeted something of yours, we'll thank you for that. I hope you have a fabulous day or how can I help you or anything like that. And it's really a good idea not to just share your own stuff. You're not the most important thing in the world. What you want to do is make sure that you're an authority on a subject. So if you have, let's say, a website design company, you're not the only website design company out there and you don't have all the greatest ideas. And if company XYZ has this awesome post about something about web design, share it. Share, share, share. Share about five things of somebody else's for one thing of yours. And that way it kind of shows that you're relevant in the industry, that you want to give information out to your people. And then people start seeing that and start seeing, hey, they don't just know about them, they know about the whole thing. And so that will get attention to you and to your blog. And you don't always have to just do those helpful tips and hints on your blog itself. You can put a great tip and a tweet. You can do a Facebook post and do a mini blog, something on Instagram, just something, hey, you can search Twitter for people asking questions. There's ways you can do a search, looking for a question, a question mark and all that. And you can do that and then you can reply and say, hey, try this.  And then also it's good to have a newsletter or at least a feed of your posts and that way that people know communication is coming to them. And so the other thing is, is you want to join communities. There are some amazing communities on Facebook and Google Plus. I know me being a food blogger, I'm a part of several food blogging communities and it's not just about cooking, it's about website design. It's about SEO. People have questions. What's your hosting provider? Which WordPress theme do you use? How do you format your recipes and all this stuff? You will get, when you find that you're in a community of your niche, then people will start helping each other and offering things and you can ask questions and it becomes a place of a resource. It's kind of like an ongoing conference. So, you know, join and be active in those communities because doing that also, if you can contribute to that community, they see you as that authority person and they go, hey, who are they? And they start looking you up and they might find your website and then you might have another reader, you might have another follower, you might have a new customer.  You know, if you just have to pick one, pick one that's your strongest and do that. There's also forums, online forums that are really great. Look for forums that is in your business. And then, of course, there's meetups. There's WordPress meetups. Lots of them in Atlanta and different ones around the country. There's conferences like this. And so, just like here, you learn things in the sessions but you also learn things out there in the hallway and the happiness bar. And when you're out at dinner and the after party and you talk to people and you get to know people, that's what all those communities is about. Be a part of a community, build a community, and that gets the information out there about your website and your blog. And that's it. And that's where you can find me. Does anybody have any questions about blogging? Yes. Could you maybe tell me a little bit about Google Plus? I've kind of seen it. I've heard kind of some confirmations about it. Do you use it? Yes, I do use it right now. Well, Google Plus is really, it's just another social media platform. It's Google's version of Facebook. You've got your stream. You've got communities. It's really, it's easier to get to the world on Google Plus because you don't have the so much privacy restrictions and all that like on Facebook. Like Facebook right now, you have your personal profile which you're not supposed to use for your business.  When you put something out on Google Plus, you can get more people to see it and there are the same communities and stuff. Now what Google Plus is currently working on and soon they're going to separate, they're going to have streams and they're going to have photos. So the streams part will still be more like Google Plus and the photos thing will be more, you know, just photo centric where you just post photos and all that. But it's just another social media outlet to explore and you just have to do like everything else. If you want... It's almost the same material on your site as you put on Google Plus, sir. Yes, I do. Every time I do a blog post, I tweet it multiple times. I put on my Facebook page, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Plus, a link which will go into streams, a photo which will go into Google, photos. I'm a kind of a social media nut. So it's just another platform. Yes. I don't auto post anything. I manually post, you know, manually do the tweets in the morning. I have buffer and I set up, you know, tweets to go throughout the day and each one is worded a little different and then I hop on over to Facebook and I'll put something. I word it just a little bit different so that it's not the same thing across all channels. Yes and yes. I have Hootsuite that manages a lot of things, but it doesn't connect to everything. You can't post to Pinterest from Hootsuite and you can't do your personal profile from Hootsuite either. So I don't know yet of one that will do everything, everything and Instagram and all of that stuff, but hopefully one day that will come soon. So I try to use as many social media tools as I can to condense it, but you still have to kind of visit each one and check on things, yeah. Yes. Do you blog at all on LinkedIn? I'll see you tomorrow by a consumer rather than a... Yes, LinkedIn is the only one that I'm not on because I personally am not selling anything. My blog is, of course, primarily a food blog, little gardening and all that stuff and what I have actually earned money on is things that I've done because of my blog, but I'm not looking... I'm not selling anything and all that so I just have never really seen the need for me to be on LinkedIn other than to say, hey, look at my recipe today. Yes, yes. She was saying that she has some things that she is sure is public domain in some countries but not all countries and if you can block countries from seeing your website and I'm very sure that if you go to the Happiness Bar, somebody there could probably help you with blocking countries and all of that from visiting your site. I do not have that expertise but I'm absolutely certain that somebody in this building can help you with that. Yes. The first step, blog, add that new post. Right up there, go into WordPress. See where it says post and then click add new. Just do a post, add new post. Just get them out there, just start blogging. I'm sorry, go ahead. I work directly on both. I reach out to them and they reach out to me. For sponsored posts, do I work with a middleman or do I contact them directly or whatever and for my sponsored posts, they contact me and if there's a company that I'm interested in working in, I'll contact them. If I say, hey, King Arthur Flower, I love your flower. Can we work something out? I'd like to be an ambassador for you. I reach out to them, too. 1099s. Yes, they do. Oh, yes, you report everything. It's not free. No, it's not free. No, it's not free money, it's income. I would say it would, you're past the first year and there's a lot of factors to that because with it being a food blog and having somebody who's never taken a picture in their life other than, you know, whatever, there's a lot of things that go along with a food blog that gets people attention to it and one of those is half decent photos and stuff like that and then of course getting the content out there and when people do recipe searches and making sure you've got the good SEO so if they're looking for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies they'll find your peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and so unless I had a lot of things going out there and a lot of posts, then Google wouldn't see me as being authority on recipes and cooking and cookies and all that stuff so that kind of helps get up and then the more you get up in searches and the more active you are on social media and your niche and all that then brands and sponsors and all that start noticing you too I have guest posts on my blog usually when I'm going on vacation or something like I went last October, I went to Germany for two weeks so I had a bunch of my food blogger friends do some posts and some recipes so that I could put it on my blog and that way I could focus on being on vacation and not having to do all that beforehand and all that so I have guest posts from basically friends and peers but I just don't let Joe Blow, who I don't know do a guest post on my site because most of those just want to have those links to go to they're just trying to build links what I will allow is you can use one of my photos and like a link that says hey, check out these these cookies are awesome go here for this recipe and they can put a link to the recipe and then there are some sites where you can do the photo and the the ingredients but not everything so they still have to come to my site to get the whole how to make it sort of thing you don't want to give your full stuff to somebody else because that way they have no reason to come see you no because I struggle enough with writing I doubt I could just go on and on and on but I suggest that if you are going to have a very long post that you should break it up part one, part two, part three plus it gives that incentive for somebody to keep looking for part two and part three so if you do have a whole bunch of information then divide it up into tasks that give somebody a little piece of something but they want the next thing and then they oh yeah that's great okay I can wait to see the next thing so and I've even done that with recipes I've had this great big massive recipe but in order to get to that recipe you have to make the potato salad part of it and you have to make the dressing part of it and you have to make something else part of it and then when you do all those together you can I can link and say to make this big thing go here to make this and this and this and then that way I've got part one, part two part three and the final thing I would have to say that the most important thing is to try your best to capture their attention in that first paragraph and then go into detail later well that's where the sponsored posts and all that came in my and I also because of blogging I met up with some people and we have the Sunday supper movement which is we do campaigns and all that for brands and all and we it's kind of like a PR firm in a way so my blogging and being in the community met up with somebody else and we started this business and that business gets us and also other bloggers paid to do these posts to work for these brands and then because of my blogging I mean I just seriously I started it for fun out of just because I love food you know and then all the these offers started coming in and so you know and then other people do it they get photography gigs they get recipe writing gigs they ghostwrite for cookbooks I mean just all kinds of different things can branch off from what you're doing that isn't specifically what you're doing alright so I think yep five minutes till four so I better clear out and so the next person can come in I'm available here I'm an organizer I'm at the front desk and yeah


In this video, I will describe the steps involved in transcription, including the enzymes involved and where the process occurs in the cell, and describe the post-transcriptional modifications of RNA. Transcription is the synthesis of a strand of RNA that is complementary to a gene. Then occurs in the nucleus, and then the resulting RNA that's produced can be a messenger RNA that will carry the information from DNA out of the nucleus in order to be translated by a ribosome to produce a protein. However, there are other forms of RNA produced by transcription. There's also R RNA, which is part of the ribosome structure. So R stands for ribosomal RNA, and there's T RNA, T stands for transfer. So transfer RNA functions to carry amino acids to the ribosome in order to provide those amino acids for the mechanism of translation. Here we can see the roles of ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA in the mechanism of translation. Ribosomal RNA is part of the structure of the ribosome, and ribosomal RNA actually forms the active site that enables the formation of the peptide bond. It catalyzes the formation of the peptide bond. And so the ribosome is an interesting example of an enzyme where RNA is a major catalyst instead of protein forming the enzyme. And then T RNA, transfer RNA we can see here, is functioning to carry amino acids into the ribosome during translation. The anticodon of the T RNA is complementary to the codon in the messenger RNA, and then the T RNA will transfer in an amino acid that corresponds to that codon following the genetic code to produce the primary sequence of the resulting polypeptide. Transcription has three basic steps. The first step known as initiation occurs when transcription factors a collection of proteins all bind to a sequence of the DNA known as the promoter. The promoter typically contains the sequence T A T A thymine adenine, thymine adenine. And because of that T A T A sequence, we often refer to the region of the promoter as the Tata box, that Tata box will be recognized by the transcription factors that initiate the process of transcription for that gene. These transcription factors will also enable gene transcription to be regulated so that RNA is not constantly being made from each of our genes, but can be made in larger or smaller quantities depending upon the needs of the cell. The enzyme RNA polymerase will also bind at the promoter region directed by the transcription factors, RNA polymerase will then start to produce the RNA nucleic acid that's complementary to the DNA sequence. RNA polymerase can function without the help of helicase to break the hydrogen bonds between complementary base pairs. RNA polymerase is able to break the hydrogen bonds itself and also catalyze the formation of the phosphodiester bond between the RNA nucleotides in order to initiate and then elongate the growing RNA polymer. Like DNA polymerase, RNA polymerase will only add nucleotides onto the 3 prime end, however RNA polymerase is able to initiate transcription without first having a primer. After elongation, the last step of transcription is termination and termination will be triggered by a termination sequence at the end of the gene. In transcription, post-transcriptional modifications will be required in order to produce the mature messenger RNA transfer RNA or ribosomal RNA. These post-transcriptional modifications include the addition of a 5 prime cap to a messenger RNA. This 5 prime cap includes a guanine trisphosphate, a modified nucleotide that's attached onto the 5 prime end of the RNA and will function as a signal to help guide the movement of the messenger RNA out of the nucleus and to the ribosome for translation. Then on the 3 prime end, a 3 prime tail is added. The 3 prime tail consists of a repeated adenine sequence where around 250 adenine nucleotides are added on at the 3 prime end and this helps to protect RNA from being degraded by RNA-ase nucleases enzymes that are constantly breaking down RNA in order to release the nucleotides and recycle them for producing new RNA. And then splicing is another mechanism that's required to produce a mature messenger RNA. Within the gene sequence, there are axons that are the sequences of DNA that code for the amino acids of a mature of a protein or a polypeptide that will be part of a protein. And then there are spaces of DNA sequence in between the axons. When a gene is transcribed, the RNA produced known as the pre-messenger RNA transcript includes introns that are separating the axons. Only the axons will be translated to produce a polypeptide and therefore the introns must be removed before translation. A structure known as a spliceosome will cut the introns out and join axons together in order to produce a mature messenger RNA that can then be translated by the ribosomes. The introns will then be degraded by nucleases and used in order to recycle those nucleotides to build new RNA in the process of transcription.


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Modern's COVID-19 vaccine could become the second shot given to adolescents in the European Union after regulators on Friday recommended approving it for 12 to 17-year-olds. The use of the vaccine will be the same in adolescents as in people over 18, the European Medicines Agency EMA said, adding that the shot produced a comparable antibody response to that seen in 18 to 25-year-olds. Modern's vaccinating children has been considered important for reaching herd immunity and in light of the highly contagious Delta variant. Moderna is in May and said that the vaccine was found to be safe and effective in teenagers. So you get notified about fresh news updates.