Welcome back after lunch. I hope you manage to perhaps grab an ice cream in this lovely weather. I have the pleasure of introducing Rob and Laura from the University of Derby, who are going to present to us this afternoon. So over to you Rob and Laura. OK, so I'll start just by introducing ourselves. So my name's Laura Hollinshead and I'm a learning technologist in the department for digital learning at the University of Derby. Hi everyone, my name's Rob Higson. I'm also a learning technologist and worked with Laura for perhaps the last six or so years now across all different areas of the university but now I'm mainly focused on the School of College of Business, Law and Social Sciences. So the focus of the presentation today is just to talk a little bit about how we've been using some institutional data about the digital student experience to actually inform teaching and learning practice at our institution. So just to give a little bit of a background about where we started out with this. So we've been using the JISC Students Digital Insights Experience Survey since 2016-17 and so far in terms of that data and the use of that data we've been using that to make some strategic decisions about the investment in sort of the investment in technology and to advise sort of digital approaches that staff can use as well. So for instance we've used it as a business case to get in things like Padlet and Poll Everywhere, so polling tools, but also just investment within the infrastructure, within the institution as well. So that's how the data's been used so far, but what we've found is during the period so since 2016 that the university is becoming a much more data-driven institution so the challenge that has been for us is to ensure that actually we're making the best use of that data and that feedback that we're getting from students through the survey to just support the teaching, learning and assessment practice and improve that student experience so the students are getting the most out of that experiencing that we're really, really using that data. So an example of that is actually at the beginning of the pandemic so in March, oh god so long ago now but March 2020, we actually looked at the data that we've collected in the December 2019 survey so we traditionally run our surveys in December and we actually took that data and then utilised that to help inform the strategic, some of the strategic nature of the way that the university operated during that period of time so within the institution it helped us to understand the challenges that students face during that period and also the types of challenges that staff might face as well so as an example the survey in 2019 gave us some data that said that only 46% of the students who were surveyed had never used, never worked online with other learners before so again that gave us an understanding of the fact that actually a lot of these students don't particularly have experience within that area so that was important to think about and also that it's likely that a lot of academic staff wouldn't have had experience of that either so when we think about this year's survey so just to give some context in terms of obviously there were significant changes in the way that teaching and learning was delivered during 2020-21 as everybody experienced but for the University of Derby we moved to remote delivery but that we had in person teaching for at least three hours per week for our students so they were still getting some on campus contact time alongside that remote provision and as previously the survey and the data that we gathered was gathered during that December 2020 period which was when they were still having that partly on-campus experience and obviously we know that after that point some of that changed and it did become very dominantly remote with very few students having any out on campus time at all so during that transition it was kind of an intense period of trying to upskill staff to use those digital tools to enable them to teach and one of the key things about the survey was that it was giving us data about that student experience of the digital aspects of their course so it was seen as really valuable data during that period of time so within the survey and the students that we surveyed so we surveyed predominantly Derby students who were at Derby campus so we do have online students and we also do have collaborative partners who are also delivering but this survey was just for students who were at Derby campuses and we had around 11% of the student population so that's around 1,922 students who completed the survey so and this was the biggest number of student respondents that we'd had in the survey's history showing that it was quite an emotive topic to give feedback on at that point so I'm just going to hand over to Rob now he's going to talk you through some of the findings from the survey. Thanks Laura so there were lots of findings from the survey and what we've done is we've changed the small selection which had been useful for us when discussing the student digital experience we thought it'd be good to show you how this has filtered down into our kind of data day operations and the kind of discussions that we've been having around the data so one of the first things we looked at were the barriers that students were facing when working online and one of the key things we wanted to do with this data was to communicate this to academic staff in order to influence their teaching and learning as these results are quite closely linked to other questions related to satisfaction so we wanted to help understand why students may or may not be engaging and what considerations do we need to make and how can we mitigate against the these factors that are stopping students from engaging in their studies. So you can see from the results that Wi-Fi issues were top but this didn't just mean student Wi-Fi issues we had quite a few students tell us that one of their barriers was that the connection problems that staff were having was causing issues and we subsequently found out that staff were actually facing a lot of the same barriers that the students were so a lot of work was done on collecting strategies for kind of squeezing the most out of people's connections we had the IT department helping out with pieces of kit like dongles and things and we were having discussions about the practices that could be adopted and this ranged from things like keeping file sizes down we had a lot of people who were doing recorded power points things like that to only using cameras when they were necessary and even to things like making sure that academics kids weren't streaming movies at the same time as they were delivering sessions which probably led to some interesting discussions at home but it did seem to solve a couple of problems and we also had some critical discussions about the types of content that would be created and approaches used we started to think through things like low bandwidth solutions for more asynchronous tasks which was perhaps something we hadn't thought through before and the second area I want to pick upon here was the idea of students having no safe or private area to work in because what became clear was that this was a really new space for students and mostly for staff as well and there was in the sense of knowing what was acceptable in these digital spaces what was going to occur in them it was very new and clearly that was heightened by the pandemic as well for example we had some comments about things like staff pets being a bit distracting for students which you know we we couldn't have ever foreseen that as being something that would be brought up but what this did do what this data did do was it really opened up the discussion about inclusion more so than ever and for us it heightened that importance of ensuring that there's an open dialogue with students about the expectations on them the reasons why things may be done in a certain way and we saw some really good examples from staff of things like staff inductions where those parameters were set in partnership with students and everyone kind of knew what was expected of them and why we were going to run things in a certain way but what the data did here has provided us with an evidence base for us to work with academic staff to kind of start to positively influence their practices and when we could combine the data with some of the best practices that we were drawing on from around the university it provided a really powerful reflective and critical space to actually engage staffing which was really really helpful so another useful question asked the students which of the following options they found most useful to themselves as a learner and data like this was really useful to be able to frame staff development and conversation through the use of bringing that student voice to the forefront because it's obviously student data and one key way we used this data was to consider how this year's results differed from previous years so there was a change in what students found most useful and we tried to highlight that in this graphic and we were able to use that change as a starting point for discussion and unpick at least at a surface level the idea that the most useful items had changed once we were in a mostly remote or online situation and started to think about what does that mean for staff in the future when they're teaching in this space is why have students suddenly found those things a little bit more useful now that we're online where's the value in those activities for both academics and students and interestingly for us in a recent session that we ran before we showed them this data we actually asked staff the same question we don't give them the options but we asked them what they found most useful and a common theme from staff was the use of videos which obviously correlated what we're seeing here and being able to bring this institutional level data into that discussion provides an extra level of depth for us and it's prompted some really critical discussion amongst colleagues about the value of resources such as videos and particularly for those colleagues you might have been a bit a bit skeptical about using some of these things we've now got the fact that they can see anecdotal evidence from their peers and we know that's a major influence in them adopting their technologies and we've got that alongside the student data collected from the students at the institutional level so that was really nice and this was a really interesting question from the survey around students where where students gave a help and one in which actually our data differed from the sector for the top two items so the top two sector answers here were other students were a 65 percent and then second was lecturers and tutors at 60 percent now this emphasised for us that there's been a large load on academic staff in supporting students and also coincided for the area I supported in with a request for strategies to help students become a little bit more independent and really what we were trying to do here was we were looking for opportunities and approaches that reduce obviously where it's appropriate the dependency on individual responses to students and where we can look to apply a more whole kind of cohort focused approach and this fell into a session we've been running on the use of narrative across modules so utilising the tools and channels available to ensure students are clear in the journey that they're taking between things like sessions between modes between activities and thinking about how we can reduce the potential for misinformation create a kind of transparent environment with a consistency of message and that shared whole cohort understanding of what was happening what they needed to do which we had seen anecdotally when people have applied that kind of methodology to their teaching it had really reduced the amount of logistical type questions that staff were getting and there was more of a focus on the more individual academic questions which were more personal to the student and so the final set of findings I want to look at before we move on to the more strategic approaches was to look at the areas students felt there could be improvement in online learning now again this was really useful for discussion and reflection in individual conversations but we also used a lot of quotes from this particular question to frame elements in an all staff course on blended learning which we've been running over the summer so the course kind of sets out expectations of what digital learning should look like and again having that student boys front and centre providing starting point for the activities I think is a really powerful and a really privileged position that we're able to start that conversation from this data is so so useful for those kind of things and to kind of dig into that data a little more we also conducted three focus groups we had around six students in each and similar themes were coming up in those focus groups that Laura ran so that also gave us a little bit of extra insight to back up some of the data that we're seeing and so that was a quick tour through some of the findings and how they filtered down in some of the conversations we're having to try and influence the teaching learning practices I'm going to pass back to Laura now who's going to look at some more of the strategic level uses of the data yeah so what we wanted to do and what we've done previously is obviously use that data at a strategic level so a lot of the data that was coming up was taken to strategic level meetings and in particular a lot of the data that was quite engaging to them to hear about was aspects that linked to the digital divide so some of that problem-based data that we saw earlier on around the challenges that students have faced during that period of time was something that they were very keen to hear about and actually that data itself resulted in more investment within the laptop loans available to students and also trying to make Wi-Fi more available to them in terms of giving out more devices to enable that through perhaps mobile networks instead but it also prompted a bit of a review of the Wi-Fi within halls as well so within the residences linked to university because a lot of the students found that because a lot of them were using it all at the same time that became problematic in terms of you know the Wi-Fi reliability within halls so it prompted perhaps a quicker review of that then maybe would have been planned originally it also helped to develop that some digital learning baselines that we have at the university so we have had those for a while now we had a set developed off the back of the fact that we were moving to remote teaching so that was more focused on remote teaching but the data from this year's survey has actually also influenced this year's digital learning baselines which have slightly expanded in terms of what they covered so in this one it also covers things like the importance of module induction, preparing students for assessments using digital resources and also the opportunities to develop digital skills as well has become a more important part of what we want to provide in terms of the digital experience for our students it's also helped to inform the development of a blended applied learning model which is being used at the institution to help again guide the delivery of courses through this academic year what we also wanted to make sure that we did was to send that information on to the academic staff as well so what we did is we developed a number of infographics to help lead that so we had an institutional infographic that had some of that institutional level data and we looked and focused on those elements which we felt it was most important for them to be aware of and emphasised the things that they should potentially keep doing and try doing what we did in addition though this year was to actually break that data down on a college level so at the university we have four colleges covering the different subject areas so we actually took that data and then divided it into those different colleges and then created reports and infographics which helped to emphasise that data hopefully helping our academic staff to connect with the fact that that was about their students not just about all students because sometimes some people disconnect from that and suggest that that's not representative of their students because their students are different from others so we wanted to try and extend what we've done previously and just bring that in in terms of having that college level data and disseminating that to staff and one of the areas that you know we've wanted to prompt was some of those barrier areas as Rob discussed before so that we could get them to be aware of the facts that a lot of the students were facing these types of barriers as well we also as Rob's mentioned we've used it to inform our course that we've delivered over the summer as well to academic staff helping to emphasise the importance of those digital learning baselines showing examples of really good practice but like Rob said leading with that data to just help move that in and one of the things that amongst the people who have attended those sessions and the online course we also do a live element to that and they have really appreciated that data and it has prompted a lot of really good discussions with academic staff as well so if we just move on to the next slide Rob. So what I wanted to do is just to give a bit of an idea about where we're going next so I'm already in the process of preparing for this year's survey because obviously December is actually not that far away so we are looking to run it again in 2021-22 again looking at doing that in December and we are also looking at doing similar dissemination to that that we've done before in terms of having that institutional and college level information being being sent out as well however one of the things that we found challenging with the last survey was actually the turnaround in data so ideally we wanted to turn that around that data quickly to try and help inform semester's twos learning and teaching so what we want to try and do is to do that in a more timely way to just ensure that we are getting that data out to our academic staff so we do need to also carefully think about how we can get that to the academic staff who are doing the dominant amount of the teaching rather than just getting that information at a strategic level where we're kind of reliant upon other people in order to then get that out to to their academic staff so the other thing that we're also aiming to do which is a bit challenging based on our capacity but we are also looking to try and get some research outputs with this so we've had ethical approval for last year's data and we're looking to do the same for the data that we're looking to collect in December as well so that again we're able to do a bit of a deeper dive into the experience but also get some research published off the back of that data as well so i think we've just got time for some questions and there's our contact details as well it's really insightful and it's good to have that example of how in institutions do you think the just insights are very it's definitely giving me some top tips to take back and i was really impressed with that infographic as well like and there were some of the comments in the chat if you have got a link to it i'm sure many of you would like to have a look at it in a bit more detail but if we go to Jim Turner so he's got a question about um so it's on the screen so i'll let you read it so i don't confuse you by reading over it i think that it's a it's you in combination with a lot of other sources of information so often sector-based things that have come out like gravity assist and also the overall disk report that will come out sorry that's been launched and come out yesterday again a lot of those institutional sorry the sector-based information is often influencing the practice and the direction of the university but obviously big big ones nsrs peters um you know those types of things as well are also influencing the direction that we're going in as well um fantastic thank you and there's another question from scott um asking whether um you'd fed back any of the data with what the data from the vle um so we we haven't necessarily cross-referenced it with data from the vle mainly because i think the data from the vle is doesn't tell you much about what's actually going on because um there's a limit to what sort of those types of analytics can actually tell you about the students experience because you would think that somebody who's been on the platform for longer is getting more use out of it but it could be that they're just really confused and can't find what they need so it doesn't actually tell you about their potential behaviours within the platform itself so i have to admit that's not something that we have done um one of the things that we have done which i'm talking about tomorrow is we have been doing um an audit of the base so we've got baselines we've been doing an audit of that so some some of that has been looked at together in terms of what that experience looks like compared to some of the data that's coming through and there certainly have been some close links between those different things in terms of what we've found um and the things that students are raising yeah i'd echo that actually that that process um we actually interviewed or met with the staff who were delivering particular programmes and talked through the baselines and in a lot of cases we were really able to dig down into some of the practices that they changed and see you know certainly an anecdotal level the the impact that had had on students and their experience and then in certain cases we were also able to see some kind of module and a module questionnaire things like that which backed up the kind of approaches that they'd taken which you know as i say when we were able to link it with the data was it was a really useful um set of tools to have thank you um i think we're out of timing actually so don't we don't have any time for other questions but i think there was another question asking whether the benchmarking was useful but i think you mentioned that you found it useful benchmarking you were great so didn't you record with them what the sector report said um i'd like yeah a big thank you um to both your presentation as i say i found it really insightful and there's been a lot of chat going on as well if anyone's got any questions for Laura and Rob they've provided their contact details i'm sure they're happy to follow up with anything with you and they'll be around on discord and i'm sure on twitter and as Laura said they're presented far as well so thanks again if you use your best emoji to thank them in the comments that'll be great


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I'm going to try this Patrick Munnery here with another tip and chart it and draw your attention today to a developing opportunity in the Dollar Swiss. Once again looking at this potential inverse head and shoulder scenario with a nice bullish reversal, creating this symmetry in the inverse head and shoulder pattern now, big outside day yesterday. If we can see some follow through now, through yesterday's highs, so through the 91 level and I think we can extend higher to test the quality objective versus this swing here up into the 92-33 area, through there we can extend to test the 93 range resistance. Protective stop just below the overnight lows if we get filled on the upside, so giving us a nice risk reward set up there. As always traders, plan the trade, trade the plan and invest in it.


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Yeah, we have till 90 minutes before, but I would say that that's more likely than not that, you know, Ryan will start the game as the backup and be active. I was kind of thinking when you kind of settled in and gotten up to speed in the short time he's been here. Yeah, well, two days working hard trying to figure out our system and you know there's a lot of carry over offensive line wise it's just terminology as it relates to, you know, what we call something and what we call play, but again seems to be conscientious and seems to be, you know, willing to study in a short amount of time, so see where he's at for the game. Brown's killed kind of in what you guys expected or hoped for anyway in terms of consistency, dependability. Those are all things that we strive for. I mean, halfway through the season, and I'm glad that Daniel's here, each and every week is different. I like coaching Danny and I mean he's kind of figured it out like a story and you know where he's progressed through this league and made it, you know, all those types of things and so he's played in this league and again, we'll see how he does this week, but that's the most important thing. You've talked a couple of times about wanting to monitor Peter's progress at guard. How would you say that's gone in his first full-year play in that position? Well, yeah, full-year. We're halfway through. Let's talk about the jab wires, not mid-season reports, not really what I'm looking for. Has had some really good plays, continued to talk about, you know, using length and pass protection, not letting guys get into our body, but loved the competitiveness. So we'll have to play with that this week, a very, very good defensive line with the jab wires. How much does Lawrence's mobility still figure into his game as a whole day? I think it does. I mean, he's long strides, he gains ground. They have the ability to run their zone read and the read game with him.  But I know that he's gaining a lot of yards when he scrambles, you know, he's aggressive with it. It's not like he goes and just gets ready to slide, he's stretched out some 20-yard gains with the scrambles and so he takes a peek, he looks, he looks and then, you know, if it's there, it's done a nice job of getting into the defense and breaking down the defense and gaining a lot of yards. You look at Christian Kirk and just the way that they use him, how does it stand out, you know, how they try to isolate and create a match up? Well, there's a lot of overs, a lot of, you know, option routes.  What would you say makes him feel good in getting yards after the catch? Him or everybody? Christian Kirk's, I'm a seven career putt return, kickoff return touchdowns in college, so there's a skill set there, he's fast, he's quick, runs hard, again, those are all things that make for guys that are good after the catch. Got one from Teresa here, just wants to know if you've ever heard a sideline report on a network fabricated, he quotes from you while you've been in the game, all that stuff with the Carissa Thompson. Have I ever heard? No, I haven't heard. I'm sure it'd be boring if they fabricated what I had to say. Yeah, don't laugh at one time, guys.  Good, I mean, I think, again, the only day that matters is game day, you know, we put work in, we have, we study, we ask questions, and, you know, but the one day that we have the test, like, any mistakes are going to happen, can't let them mount up, can't let one mistake turn into another and to another.  How was Sean's week coming back with the thumb? And is there a chance that, I don't know, like a club or something like that could be a factor for him to allow him to be out there? No, he'll be out. Last year, this Jaguar's team really got ebbing them going at times when they played you guys. What kind of challenge is it to contain him and defend him underneath with flying backers? Yes, it's a challenge. They do a nice job of getting them, you know, catching run opportunities, keepers, things on the move, boots, he's quick, you know, he's fast, he builds speed, it's very, you know, a lot of examples on tape of three or four-yard routes or catches that turn into 25 yards, just the circles, circles the guys up. And so I agree with you with the first game. I thought we did a much, much better job and an understanding of how they were trying to play the game the second time this year is a new year. But those types of plays are still showing up, you know, with him. And if teams can tackle him, you know, that they've had success. And his average per catch is what it is, it's eight or nine yards. And to me, watching our film, it's either 24 yards or it's two. And so he has the ability to take those two or three-yard routes and turn them in to 25-yard gains. If you're not careful and you don't tackle, you're not good in a perimeter when a ball gets out there. Anybody else besides Sean? Dillard and Burke. And to your question, you know, I think you probably asked about, he had a good week of practice on the show team, you know, allowing him to get some of those looks and what we would call a return to play. But just probably glossed over some of that just because he was out. But yes, there was ability to get out and practice and do some things. But probably trying to give that thing another, you know, week to just heal from the procedure. But from what I saw, I felt good, you know, helping us on the show team and getting his look in and his reaction and seeing things. How well is your fourth year, week four being out there with him?  I feel like it's, you know, getting a grasp of what this league is like and what it has to offer every game. What can you say about the way this team, in this tough time, is being able to keep the morale up and be praying for plenty of things? Having a lot of guys who play a lot of football, that helps. Being, you know, me being on a different team, other guys being on different teams and just, you know, going through certain things we went through at different places. I think us being here and obviously these guys here was in the same situation last year that we're in now. So I don't think anybody is, you know, too much worried about, you know, the record, taking everything game for game. You get props in film study, film review, I should say, for, you know, for breaking up that, what's the interception on Sunday? No, not too much, not too many props. So, you know, I didn't score a touchdown. That's my job, you know, not to break out the football, but, you know, obviously it was a good play.  But, you know, we're trying to score touchdowns down there, not break out PBU's. You played a lot on your AFC South Kings in your life, just kind of what stands out, kind of the standout, particularly with the best division, kind of rivalries? Oh, yeah, man. It's gotten better since I've been in, I would say, just overall, you know, it used to be a couple of teams that, you know, kind of run away with it. But, you know, it's up for grabs now, which is good. Yondra, you mentioned how, like, this team has kind of been in this situation last year. And you've been on teams that have maybe struggled for stretches.  Like, in your experience? From my experience, you know, it's focusing on your job more, worrying about what you can control and not what goes on around you. When you're in a situation like that, it's easy to point fingers or, you know, speak on something that you can't control. But, you know, when you kind of focus on what you have to do and just stay down that lane, I think it helps. Because, you know, when your record is what it is, you know, everybody can do something better. In talking to some of the other receivers, they mentioned how, sometimes, you guys got to cut your ropes a little short. But there's an understanding with Will as far as, like, when that has to happen. How do you develop that relationship and that understanding? Communicating with him after the play, you know, practice, communicating with him on the sideline, speaking on certain things that we feel like we can hit, you know, in certain things that, you know, if, you know, if he feel like he doesn't have time, you know, just adjusting to it a certain way. But, you know, that comes with just communicating with Will.  And then when you see, you know, over the last three weeks, like, something like 33 QB hits, 11 sacks, you see him take that and come back to the huddle. What does that tell you about him? Man, he's tough. That, you know, he want to win.  And you got to love that. I would say places to eat. Surprisingly, there's some good food here.  It's just not, you know, hot chicken. So, and I like to cook, but, you know, I eat out here and there. So it's definitely some good restaurants here. Yeah, maybe one, when they let me invest in them, but no, maybe I'll speak on it when I got my own restaurant here. Of course, I might call it nukes. That might be a good one. Sorry, a nukes. Oh no, so it's not, we good then. It's not spelled in UK.


It used to be, we'd say we had a bad day if we lost a few houses, but what's happened to us this year is we've not only lost a few houses, we've lost a few towns. We've had fires burn completely through communities. The city of Cross Plains is certainly a population of about 1,000, lost 116 homes. Ringgold lost about 32 of 40 homes in that community. The community of Kokomo was basically decimated, I mean it's got two homes left. So we had never seen anything like that in Texas. We've been fighting grass fires and wildland fires for 30 years.  We've had a couple of fires in Palo Pena County this year that the estimated speed of the fire was 40 miles an hour. You absolutely cannot outrun something that's coming at you at 40 miles an hour. You have to attack it differently than what we've been doing in the past. You have to attack it from the black. You have to stay behind it and you have to leave yourself a way to get out of there. Interagency cooperation in the wildland urban interface is nothing new to firefighters in the state of Texas. 97% of the land mass in Texas is privately owned and they have over 1,800 different fire departments to service initial attack responders. 1,400 of these departments are strictly volunteer. 200 are mixed, paid and volunteer and 200 of them are fully paid. This last year the state's resources were stretched to their limits as they dealt with one of the worst fire seasons they've ever seen. Here in Texas we've had a very unusual fire season and actually started about Memorial Day weekend of 2005. But just this year, just since January 1st, we've had over 2,000 fires. It just Texas Forest Service has responded to that doesn't count what all the fire departments have also responded to. And we've lost 1.3 million acres in 19 lives, over 400 homes. So it's been just a devastating year and it hasn't. We didn't really have much of a spring this year, no spring rain. So we're going into the summer fire season with a huge deficit. In 2004, we had one of the wettest years on record. So we had extensive fuel growth everywhere. With that fuel buildup, then we went into 2005, starting about April 2005. It was very dry. We had a dry summer, a dry fall, very dry winter. And the other thing that precipitated this was very unusual fronts coming through with winds that were just unbelievable. Several days we had winds of more than 50 mile an hour gusts, which just isn't typical for most of Texas. When you're looking at state as large as Texas is, we have, I mean the state is 800, better than 800 miles crossed and 800 some miles deep. So it's a huge area to cover with very minimal people. What's happened this year is because the fire response has been so extended and so large, we've had to bring in a lot of out of state resources. We're looking at now about 3,200 firefighters have been brought in from out of state, I think 47 states have sent people. So it's been a huge response and it's been going on since the end of November. In this module, we'll look at what it's like to take an assignment in Texas and see if there's any lessons learned from their unusual fire season that can apply to your home units. When firefighters come from out of state in Texas, they don't necessarily know what type of fuel model they'll be going in because we have such a huge variety across the state. In East Texas, you have your piney woods and then you get more in central Texas. You've got the hill country with the heavy load of juniper, which is a very volatile fuel model. Then you get the oak savannas and a lot of grass. You get up in the panhandle, it's going to be primarily grasses and a lot of that is CRP grass that's been growing for a long time, maybe very tall, very thick, it'll really carry fire. And then you get out in far west Texas and you have the more mountainous areas. So we have a variety of everything and we've got our coastlines as well, which is a different fuel model. So depending on where you are in Texas, you're going to look at totally different vegetative models. Predictive services will put out risk levels across the state. So once we get to risk level three, we're looking at a drought index that is usually higher than 500 KBDI or our ERCs are at the 90th percentile or higher and then we're going to have resources available and ready to respond. If we're looking at a fire weather day where winds are going to be sustained at over 15 miles an hour and our age is going to be below 25%, it's a heads up for us that we're probably going to have some fires that day. The primary resources for a fire department are going to be basically a type six engine or a brush truck. They may have a little larger type five or type four and primarily they're equipped so that they can ride on the back of the truck and shoot the fire. They're not going to drag a lot of hose or do a lot of hose lays or anything like that. They aren't typically trained to as hand crews. They don't do a lot of work as hand crews. When we bring resources in, we provide a lot of times dozer units that's going to be our first initial response to help them put a fire line around the fire. In different areas of the state, other resources come in really handy. We do use hand crews out in West Texas where we've got the Guadalupe's and the Davis Mountains. We've got more mountainous terrain and that we definitely need hand crews back there. What the fire department's like the most that we can bring in and we can provide are helicopters is a lot of times they can really help in areas that it's difficult to access from the back of a brush truck.  So you have a lot of variety of fire departments there with a variety of experience levels. Communications can sometimes be difficult. We all work off at Texas Fire One which is basically our mutual aid channel but when you get huge fires like we saw in the panhandle this year that frequency is going to be overloaded in a hurry. Some of the other challenges you face when you have varied levels of experience and when federal folks or firefighters from out of region are coming in and they see people out there that don't have full PPE on, they might be fighting fire and denim jeans and a T-shirt, they ride on the back of the truck to fight fire or sometimes on the front of the truck and it goes against a lot of our safety practices. So sometimes that's difficult for out of state resources to some especially safety officers that come in and see a lot of safety violations but we really can't send the volunteers home we've got to work with them, we've got to find a way to show them how to more safely fight the fire but they may not have that background in training. The fire departments don't really give over control of the fire, we come in to help them. It's a unified command effort and we're working with a lot of volunteers with various levels of experience but our whole mission is to work with them not to take the fire over or not to dismiss them and their capabilities because we desperately need the fire departments in this state. Along with the record number of fatalities suffered by Texas there was also a large number of near misses that resulted in critical injuries. In response the Texas Forest Service assigned Hunter Winston to look closely at these incidents and try to extract any lessons learned from them. The Texas Forest Service started having lots of large fires and it started in March of 2005 and they continue up until today having large fires. They've asked me to come in and look at the safety aspect of those large fires. We've had lots of injuries and a few fatalities associated with those wildland fires and so beginning around April the first I started doing that and doing an intensive review of those fatalities and serious injuries across the state. What we've found is we've had 19 fatalities associated with wildland fires since March the first of 2005. 17 of those were civilians. Of the 19 fatalities only two were associated with volunteer or fire departments within the state. Those two fatalities were associated with rollovers or what they call tankers in Texas which wildland community we call them water tenders. Also there were 13 firefighters that had injuries, serious injuries which required hospitalization across the state during that same time period. Of those 13, seven had third degree burns and so that's what I mainly concentrated my efforts on were those individuals that had third degree burns in those instances which they occurred on. What I did was I contacted the fire departments that were associated with those particular individuals that got burns and we actually interviewed five of the seven that had burns, had third degree burns on them and through those interviews we asked them to go through the scenarios and how they got in those positions and what they would do differently if they had to do it again. And it was very eye-opening for me to do those interviews with those five individuals. Now we're gonna take you through part of one of the scenarios that resulted in a serious injury. We jumped in the first unit, responded, come in and come in and started attacking the fire on the West flank, working our way towards the head of it. Before we even got completely out of the station was already initiating mutual aid call for different units out of Wichita County. They were available to respond during that time all the tone going out for those units. That time we were attacking, like I said on the West flank working towards the head of this fire which was rapidly spreading on us because of the different gullies and the tall vegetation that it was into. Sometime after that was my second arriving unit come in, joined in, had them go in front of us because they carry more water to go towards the head of it and try to start cutting the head of the fire off.  They were the unit that was in there and they come back and reported that they were stuck. They were on the head of the fire in the black but they were stuck. At this time another, one of the mutual aid units come in and started attacking just a few minutes after that another one come in. I had come out, this unit had come out, another firefighter was on scene put him in that apparatus and we had reports of the fire spring towards the east towards two exposure structures down here went down to check it out and knew there was no problem there stayed in my command vehicle and we had initiated, like I said, mutual aid. We had one unit come in and stage at those exposures to stay to protect those. During this time we're still having more mutual aid units arrive, the fire is spreading on us and all. Still growing, spreading and going to the north. By this time it's already passed this lake so that's pretty well where the truck got stuck. Anyway, during this time we're still having the fire reported I had got into a unit and taken it down and it stopped where it was below a hill over here on the other side spreading that the apparatus protecting exposures couldn't see it. I stayed there, two firefighters showed up I left them with it. I come up, got in my command vehicle and at this time had the white Murphy respond with me going up, he was here at the station got him into the small one ton told him to respond up here on 171. This time I'd heard had got reports of the Clay County unit coming in 171 from the east. Got to the head of it and all and at this time she was all the way up to getting close to this 171 told the two units we want to try to stop it here at the road. I had entered into the middle of it to make sure what they were of what the unit on the east was doing knew Dwight was coming in behind me. Got them told them to stop, stop it there and Dwight had stopped behind me. I'd seen him stop. I turned around and come back and when I come back, that's when I discovered Dwight had sustained his burns. And Dwight, you had gotten off the truck and going in across the barbed wire fence you're on the right of way. Yes sir, at that time, the fire was about 20 or 30 yards out and it was in the vegetation but it wasn't going that bad. And I thought, well, I didn't, you know, get on top of it and get it there. And about the time that I got over the fence and took about 10 or 15 steps in and I actually started spraying water, the wind picked up considerably. And boy, it brought that thing to life in a major way. And there wasn't anywhere to go where it was coming and it was coming quick. And I briefly thought about trying to go back over that fence. No, if you get hung up in there that's where you're going to stay. So the only other decision I could do was just wet myself down, try to get through the fire and get into the black. And that's pretty well when I did and just waited for help to come. And thankfully, Richard turned around and come back. I feel bad cause you know, this is kind of a rookie mistake. I had training I knew better but the old saying complacency will get you every time. And it's been a long time since we had a fire this size. And I was one of the later arriving units and I'm thinking, you know, this thing's running away from us. When I went in to make my initial attack it wasn't going that bad. It was coming to me, but it wasn't going that bad. And like I say, the tone goes off.  And Richard told me where to go. I went there, oh, there's fire, there's fire. I got to get to it. Got off the truck, started a pump, went over a fence I knew better and started spraying. About that time the wind really picked up and it was coming to me faster than what I was comfortable with. And I looked behind me and I thought I can't get back over that fence in time. So the only thing I could do was just hose myself down and try to make it through the fire and get into the black.   It might be hot, it might be a little heavy, it might be a little cumbersome, but if I'd have had my gear I wouldn't look like I'd do right now. Take the time. Now let's listen to a few Texas firefighters and hunter talk about the lessons learned from this study. An abbreviated copy of Hunter's Report is included in your student workbook. The dead man's on is where most of these injuries to our firefighters, the third degree burns, happened over the last 14 months. People do not realize how fast fires can run through the vegetation that we have here in Texas. We have tall grass as high as knee to hip high grass, often mixed with a lot of brush. It not only runs through that vegetation really fast during these low humidity, high temperature days, but it spots in those same fuel types. And therefore you have fires actually jumping ahead of themselves. And these conditions is what I think caused a lot of the third degree burns that we've had over the state. In the volunteer fire service or in the fire service period, we spend an awful lot of time training in structural firefighting. And a lot of times people will try to take what they have learned in structure and change it over, if you will, to grass firefight, to wildland firefighting. And there's just no parallel because you don't have an inch and three quarter line. You've got at most an inch, maybe three quarters. You don't have an nozzle that will kick out 120 gallons a minute. You've got one that will kick out maybe 15, maybe 30. And a follow pattern, simply to didn't put enough water to protect you. It's, you know, we try to draw that parallel. It works to an extent, but it doesn't work to the full extent. So as you're working on wildland fires, we need to understand the heat and the intensity of wildland fires, especially coming through the volatile fuels of the grass and the brush that we have here in Texas. And that the fog will probably not help you if you're standing on the head of the fire. Along the flanks where it's cooler and down at the hill of the fire, it will help you a lot.   They don't have dozers and the other heavy equipment some of the federal and state agencies have. Thus, I think maybe the safest spot that they might be able to attack the fire might be from the black itself. Go in and start at the hill of the fire and go up the flanks, but staying in the black, always using again their water out of their engines to put the fire out as they go and making sure that it is extinguished good as they progress up the flanks.  That's what I always tell our guys. Anytime we can fight a fire from inside the black and we're doing a direct attack, then our trucks stay inside the black, our firemen drag the black with them. Keep one foot, one tire, one part of your body in the black. You know, that's the biggest safety zone there. The grass fires are very serious and very dangerous. One thing when fighting grass fires, and actually it was the sage old firefighter that told me this and I've always remembered it, always ask yourself one question. Do I really need to do this? If you ask that question and answer honestly, you can be safe. Do I really need to do this?   You know, I think a lot of times we don't look at the risk benefit factor enough. As we prepare for this upcoming fire season, keep in mind that witnessing unusual fire behavior is becoming more and more usual. It seems normal now to hear people talk about fire behavior that they've never seen before. Top federal fire officials are warning that climatic studies are predicting a continuation of warmer and drier conditions across the Western U.S. and that this will make wildland fires even more dangerous and unpredictable. Five of the 10 worst fire seasons since 1960 in terms of acres burned have occurred in the last seven years. What happened in Texas last year was unusual when you're looking back through history, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen again this year or at least in the near future. To help us prepare for whatever kind of fire season we're about to experience, let's listen to some final thoughts before we go back into our groups and complete the next exercise in our student workbooks. Now we're hoping to develop a DVD and this paper that we're gonna send out to every fire department which there's over 1,800 fire departments in Texas and we're hoping to help them with that and hopefully encourage them to get more wildland fire training. We've noticed also that most of these departments that I interviewed over 50% of their fires were wildland fires this past year and yet way less than 50% of their time is spent in wildland fire training. So we think that they need to increase the amount of wildland fire training that they're getting for their individuals and in order to keep them safe in the future. If there's a message to be made and a lesson to be learned from the wildfire season of 2005 and 2006, we can't do business as usual.  We can't do that with the kind of fire conditions we're seeing, it has to be attacked from the black. A lot of the fires that we had this year, it was kind of like the dog chasing the car theory.  What does the dog do with the car when they catch it? Under no circumstances are we gonna put anybody in front of it.  Our environment is always changing. Things change over time. Locations change over time. So re-evaluation, I put up on my watch. I have an hour beep. Every time that thing beeps, I start asking if my plan is still valid. I look at where I'm at, safety zones, escape routes, tactics, weather. Is everything still in line? Everything's still working. Put that hour beep on your watch. It helps.


You don't come. You can walk in this way, you know that? You are. Can we go up there? Yeah, but we go up from the bank anyway. I'm a bit none of the Dalgoreum. It's a little bit too fast when he gets on their trail. Yeah. Come in. Well, you do the Marlborough. Pardon? They do the Marlborough on the road then. Natural feats or? Oh, I see, yeah. Yeah. When they come, look. We're running a bit now. We're in a hurry. Big one first, isn't it, Henry? That's the biggest. Say that again. Say it again. Say it again. They do one of them after, don't they? Yeah. They walk in, don't they? They look in there. Hey, it's a good one. It's a good one. It's a good one. We're on a good date today, isn't it? Yeah. He's interested in you. It's a cozy house, you know, in this park. It's cozy.


I want to talk a little bit about how I personally dream journals today and this is very different to how I used to do things. I used to have like a physical notepad as I'm sure many of you might maybe have tried or maybe you still do this, right? There is a better way, a much better way, which I'll get onto in a second. But I used to have like, you know, literally pages and stacks of paper where I would hand write everything out, I would leave a space in between each line to go back and add notes and everything like that. And yeah, I would have like stacks of these things. And the problem is, as I'm sure you probably have figured out as well, when you wake up in the middle of the night, it's often dark, cold, you know, maybe you're half asleep, you're not fully awake. When you try and actually write a dream down in that state, what happens inevitably is you'll either write really badly, or you just won't write anything at all, you'll just be so tired that you'll think, I'll just remember it in the morning, you know, I'll go back to sleep for a bit. And then when I wake up properly, you know, when I fully wake up, then I'll write the dream down. And of course, what happens is you forget everything. And then you need to start again the next day from scratch. So how can you get past that problem?  But if you're using something like the wake back to bed, the wilds or the 90 isles or anything that really interrupts and kind of cuts into your sleep cycle, you're going to be pretty tired when you wake up. And so it's very hard to actually write things down properly in that state. So how do you fix it? Well, what I've started doing very recently, in fact, is we know that it's important to have dream journals. Okay, there's no getting around that. We also know that what you should know that it's important to have a digital dream journal, because if you don't have something digital, you can't go back and search through it. So imagine this scenario, right, you have a random dream. And in this dream, there's a really specific unique dream sign or like something really random that happens. Now, what you probably want to know, or what you should want to know is how many times before have I dreamt about this same dream symbol or this same dream sign? And what happened in each of those dreams? Well, the old way of doing it is you would have to literally go through your dream journal physically and read back through or skim read back through all of your old dream journal entries, it could take hours. However, digital dream journal, you literally just type in the keyword, and it highlights all of the times, you know, throughout your entire history of dream journaling, where you've had that dream symbol or that dream sign, it saves you hours of time. So if you didn't already know that, you should probably be keeping a digital dream journal. So what I did for a while is I would actually write my dreams down physically in a notepad, and then I would go and like maybe once or twice a week, I would actually type them up into a digital journal. And this was good as well. But then I suddenly had this realization, hold on a second, I'm spending firstly, I'm spending time writing the dream down manually, and then I'm typing it up into a dream journal. So I'm spending twice the amount of time I should be doing. So then I started using like a voice to text app. Now, I think this is a built in, it was a built in thing on the iPhone. And I think what I did is I had like, I had Google Docs app, the Google Docs app installed on my phone, and then I would use the dictation. So then I would speak into the phone, and it would type out the dream for me in a Google Doc. And that was a bit better, but it still had some problems. If you spoke too fast, or if it didn't catch a word, or if your internet connection was a bit faulty, then it would stop transcribing. And then you would have to go back and sort of repeat yourself. And it also meant that you had to speak in a very unnatural way.  You couldn't really speak naturally, because the transcription wasn't perfect, you know, it's basically just an app on a phone. So you had to speak in an unnatural way. And it also didn't add full stops and pauses and grammar and, you know, new sentences and everything like that. You had to go back and add those yourself. So all of this to say, I found a better way of doing it. So what I do now, so what I do now is I have this is just the bog standard basic recording app on my iPhone. The also called like text audio notes, right? So what I'll do is once a week, I will take, let me just go back to the start. So I'll wake up in the morning and I'll go back here and I'll edit this recording. And then you can do resume recording. So you can have one audio file and you just keep resuming the recording. So then what I'll do is I'll click resume and it will start recording. And I'll just basically say my dream naturally to the phone. It doesn't need to transcribe. It's just recording the audio. That's all it's doing. And so what that means is I don't have to speak in a weird way. I can literally just mumble pretty much. Like I don't have to even be fully awake. I can just click record and just say my dream, say what I saw in my dream. And then what I'll do is once a week, I will take that audio file, which is now seven days worth of dreams and I'll upload it to a text. No, sorry, I'll upload it to an audio to text transcription service. Now what that is is a service or website or even it can be a software on your computer where you upload an audio file and it transcribed it into text, but it does it in a way that actually adds grammar in and it kind of uses AI to accurately transcribe the audio into a dream journal entry. And this probably saves me hours of time. It means that I find it easier to record my dreams. I don't have to worry about how to write something because when you're half asleep, it's quite hard to write something legibly. You can scribble it, but it's going to be hard to read it back later. So yeah, once a week, I just upload this file to the audio transcription service that I use and then maybe a few hours up to a day later, I will get back a text file. And that's just broken down into the different dream journal entries. They add all the grammar and it's pretty accurate. It's like 90% accurate, maybe more. Now if you care about the one I use, there's no affiliate link or... I'm not in partnership with them in any way, but I use a service called AmberScript. And the reason I use this is because I actually found on this kind of software deals site called AppSumo. You can get a lifetime deal for AmberScript. So what that means is instead of paying... With a lot of these transcription services, you have to pay a monthly amount or you get a certain amount of credits per month and then you have to renew them and pay every time. And so I was doing that for a while. I was actually using something called Rev, which is another transcription service, but you have to pay each time. And it's pretty accurate, but you have to keep paying every time you transcribe it. So on AppSumo, I think it's like 70 bucks for a lifetime deal for AmberScript. You get a set amount of like recorded hours per month. I think it's about four, between four and 10 hours worth per month. And it just keeps renewing every month. Like you pay once and you have it for life. And there's... Trust me, there's no way you're going to have more than four hours a month worth of recording dreams unless you have incredibly long, vivid dreams every single day. But even then, it's pretty easy when you're speaking into a recording, it's pretty easy to explain your dreams. You don't need to spend that much time doing it. So, yeah, that's literally the method after many years of trial and error after trying every dream journaling technique you can probably imagine. This is not only the most efficient, but I think it's the most effective. And it's also the easiest. So it kind of ticks all the boxes for me. And it's... Over the course of several years, it's a lot cheaper than having to keep buying dream journal notepads and pens and nightlights and all kinds of stuff because you already have your phone. So it's just literally like a one-time payment of... I think it might even be less than $70, actually. It might be like $30 for a lifetime deal on this software. But you don't have to get that one. There's loads of them. Just type into Google, like, audio to text transcription service. And there'll be some that are free, some that are paid, somewhere you have to pay like $0.50 per transcription or something. The other one I've used, like I said, is Rev. That's very good as well. They even have... If you're new there, they give you like a free amount of credits, I think. I think you get up to like up to 45 minutes worth of transcribed audio for free just to test it out and see how good it is. And then after that, you can just order like... They're called automated transcriptions, which is more than good enough for what we're doing. And I think they're very cheap as well. It's like a few... It's like 30 to 40 cents for a two-minute clip. So very accurate. And yeah, it's very useful. So long story short, that's how I now dream journal. And I would say that's the best way. If you're struggling to dream journal or it's quite annoying having to write things down and then go back and just do it digitally. You already have the technology. You're probably watching this video on your phone anyway. So just switch apps, go to the dream journal, go to the audio notes app, build up an audio recording of seven days worth, and then just upload it to our transcription service. And then boom, you're done.