Hello, hello and welcome to our Learn With The Expert, our discussion tonight with Dr. Ruben Puentadora. Excited to have you joining us. You should be able to turn on your camera and microphone as you're joining us. So feel free to do that because tonight really, we get to or today, depending on where you are in the world, we get to have a discussion, welcome. So glad to see you, is it Juliette? Yes, it is, I am in Australia. Welcome and Juliette, where are you joining us from? Brisbane, Australia, Brisbane Queensland. Awesome, welcome. What time is it there? It's probably the morning, tomorrow. It is, it's 10.30 tomorrow. It's wonderful, this thing about time is fantastic. I have got a question. In the session the other day, we were talking about you discussing chat GPT, but I can't find any links to that. Ah, okay, let me remedy that by giving you that link one second. That's wonderful. You have no idea how much your work is influencing mine because I'm educating educators, helping them to learn how to apply the summer model because in Australia, we don't seem to have, yeah, there's a lot of talk around using technology and it's being used extensively, but getting teachers to a mindset where they're willing to take risks and coaching them through, your model has been fundamental to that and also taking them up and down through it, seeing it as a liquid, like being on the lift, you can move according to what your need is. And I think that so many times people have shown it, the summer model as a hierarchy thing, not realizing just as you blend physical teaching with crayons and books and letters and all sorts of things and experiential, it's a blend, it's a movement through. So I just want to say thank you on a personal level because I've been 33 years in the classroom and I've been now into a situation of teaching teachers. So it's fantastic. Thank you, Julia. You did the best intro that we could have done for our event for sure. So I know that we have a few other people and I want to encourage them also to join us with their cameras and microphones. If they feel comfortable, if you don't, we totally understand and feel free to use the chat or the Q&A that's on the right-hand side of your screen at the bottom. If it's not open, you can click the little button to open it up. So feel free to turn on your cameras and microphones if you want to to join us. And Julia, I loved that introduction and the impact of the summer model and just Ruben's work has definitely seen a lot of different places. So tonight we just, or today I keep on saying tonight, but wherever we get to join right now and ask questions to Ruben. It's kind of an open time for us to have these discussions. So please feel free to throw your questions in the chat or unmute and ask them as well. And we can start with your question, Julia, and I'll let Ruben respond. And before, sorry, I just want to do a quick introduction. My name is Tracy Purdy and I am the Training and Professional Development Manager at Seesaw. And we're just really excited to be able to bring Ruben here to have this discussion and hopefully you were able to join us over the last couple of days for his talks. If not, those will be available to you in a follow-up email so you can watch them at another time. So take it away, Ruben. Welcome. Thank you. Well, thank you again for the welcome and listen, Julia, thank you so much for your very kind words. I have to add one more thing, which is Brisbane is an amazing city. It's been very kind to me. Every time I've been there, I've had wonderful experiences working teams there. So I'm very, very happy indeed to hear that you're using the SAMR model and the research to work with educators. So thank you so much. Regarding chat GPT, your question, I've just put in the chat, the link. It's in the future of Education Forum. And I've linked all the sessions that are currently in plan, but mine is the second from the top and you'll have all the links, scheduling, et cetera, information there. And again, part of what I'm going to be talking about is not just chat GPT, but also generative AI in general, as well as the bigger panorama of AI and education. Because I think there's a whole series of questions that have been opened up here and they're worth discussing. I think it's more than just an immediate well, good, bad, so the press reaction has, I fear, not been terribly thoughtful in either direction. So I really want to discuss how these tools play out in education, yes, where they play out relative to SAMR, what can be a thing now for the future. What I might be looking at. So that's what's on the menu there. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. And again, if you have other questions, please, as well as anybody else. And as we already have, there's eight other people right now. So please join us on stage. Again, this is intended as a conversation. There are topics I'm happy to cover, but view this as an open discussion session. I really, we had one session, which was primarily with people from the teaching side of work and education. The other session was primarily with people from administration and leadership. And I'm hoping that we can also get some conversations among the groups happening, because I also feel that that's a crucial piece of the puzzle to make things work. So, oh, so good evening, Hortens. Welcome. Again, feel free, please, to join us on stage and or ask in the Q&A, whatever you feel most comfortable with, please.  And Juliette, what did you say your role was? Oh, you're muted, you. Yeah? Let me go back there. Sorry, no, sorry. I was fiddling with the settings to try and give me a background, while you're not looking at my kitchen. Sorry, I was in the classroom for 33 years and I was in high school and I was not an IT teacher. So everything that I've done has been self-taught to some extent and then directed by other people because I think mentors are really important, which is why you're so wonderful, Riven. But I'm now in a situation where I'm an education innovation specialist for Datacombe, which is a company that understands that in order for our students to be able to enter the knowledge economy, they need to have the skills, but they're not going to get the skills if we don't get the skills to teachers. So by addressing and supporting teachers in the classroom to become more confident and competent and comfortable with different tools and their applications in a very sound, pedagogical way, that's going to have a filtering on effect with the students where they can learn agency and they can learn to have self-confidence and they can learn ownership, but they have to be taught it. And if we don't teach the teachers and show them how to step through and develop their skills and learn how to be tolerant to ambiguity, being willing to try new things but it's not going to happen. I'm terribly sorry about the noise, I'm going to get into business buildings going around me, so forgive me. Oh please, don't worry. Great, thank you for that, Juliet. Any, we would love to have any of the other participants either share in the chat just what your role is. And yep, Juliet, don't be shy, you can join us on the stage the whole entire time, we love having you, so anybody who wants to join us, please come on up, but we would love to have you share your role in the chat as well so that we know if you are an administrator or a teacher. Oh, good, you're back. Wonderful. I had to close the windows. I had to close the windows, that's not so noisy. Great, and welcome, Jenny Lamar. You are welcome to turn on your camera and microphone if you want. If not, it does look like we have a question that did come in. I think these can get us started, Ruben, and then we can have our participants answer your questions in the Q&A or feel free to just unmute your microphone and share. But one of the questions that we get a ton, and I'll maximize this question that we got here of, how do I push my teachers to get out of those initial steps of SAMR, so just out of substitution and augmentation and move a little bit deeper into that modification and redefinition phases? That's a great question. And one of the first things I always encourage people to do is to wait carefully the pros and cons of taking that step, right? Because I've seen some people get very enthusiastic and say, oh, now let's push forward and sometimes teachers aren't quite ready to take the step. So that's the first thing to do. You need to evaluate, are they comfortable enough with what they've done so far that they can move forward? Now in some cases, it's a question of having the teacher realize for themselves that in fact they are ready. But in other cases, you might be saying, well, okay, so what's the first step? Well, make sure that you sit down with them and you say, how happy are you with what's happened up till now? Where would you like to go next? So you can assess where they're at. And one of the key elements here then in terms of moving from substitution to an augmentation to modification and redefinition, is this is the point at which you're moving from enhancing an activity we're already doing to doing something that either significantly changes it or adds something completely new. So the second question to be asked here is, well, why would you like to change this? And if the teacher is saying, I'm actually perfectly happy as things are, then you may have a situation where in fact, it may not be the best candidate at least at this point to move forward. You might be saying, well, let's do this and say, but it's working well, why? And this is something I always mention. You know, I, for instance, mentioned, I read a lot of research papers in my work and there are a lot of tools I use to organize those and so on. But if I'm talking about the reading itself, at the end of the day, I'm reading them on very traditional e-readers. You could say that that aspect of my work is in fact occurring at an augmentation level because I do use some extraction tools for extracting quotes that I want, link data that I want to analyze, et cetera. But it's not really moving beyond that because it works well enough at that level. And in fact, I've tried some tools that say, well, look at this amazing tool for taking all your reading stuff and projecting it into 3D, it doesn't work very well. And it doesn't help me with that. So that's one of the key aspects. But let's assume that your teacher does want to do something that is not what they've been doing so far. So then what you want to do is talk with them about, okay, what would be a bite-sized project that you could undertake that would get you what you want in modification and redefinition, right? And I mentioned yesterday a couple of the options. One option is to say you're passionate about something. Can you convey that passion better or an aspect of your passion you haven't been able to convey before? I've had some wonderful experiences, for instance, working with arts educators that tell me they have a passion for how the art works. They work with introducing them to students and how they work with students to have them develop their own artistic practice. How they've always wanted these things to come together to fit together into bigger pictures. But they've done it, but they would like to do it even better so they can show what they see as the constellation of art. I had some amazing experiences talking with our teachers during the pandemic when they were figuring out saying, well, I can't be in the same room working same watercolor with the students. Can I bring more of my passion now that I can't just show them the beauty of what's happening on the paper and the pigments in front of it? And that was a good driver. A second one, as I mentioned, is when you have students that are getting stuck on something. And for instance, you see this a lot in some aspects of mathematics where you see students getting stuck on a topic on a particular concept and having great difficulty. And again, some of the traditional methods don't work very well, but if you can use the technology to construct alternative approaches, multiple ways of thinking about the math, think about it, that will again, significantly change things or add things or take into modification with definition. That's the type of tool that can take a teacher that says, I have so many students who get stuck on this and then really sort of struggle them or have difficulty keeping up or maybe they do okay, but they sort of become somewhat distance from the subject. Well, that's another good approach in terms of finding that with the teacher. And as I said yesterday, the third one is to say, well, what do you think your students really need to know about this to go into the next stage of learning or if they're older students going to the job market or going to higher ed, et cetera. And that's also a good place to look for it because if the teacher feels that, well, I've managed to cover but I haven't managed to focus on this. That's a great place to look for that. So as I say, first assess, is there a real need for this? And second, where that need will give you the maximum benefit. And yesterday, somebody, and I'm sorry, I don't remember right now the name of the person who brought this up, but brought up another option, which is absolutely true when a teacher is actively dissatisfied with how something has been working in the class. So this is not a case of students reaching a barrier, but a teacher feels that something has not gelled, that something has not been quite working. We say, well, let's focus on that. And all of these things have the advantage that they all have clear high cost to benefit ratio. In ours, you're asking the teacher to say, let's take a small step forward further in the technology or what could be a big payoff to you. So that's one of the other things that helps. So make sure that you're not forcing people to move faster than they're ready to move. Make sure they're moving with something that actually does make a difference that you're not accidentally damaging something that's already working just fine as is. And then finally, something in these slides, or again, many other options that could come has a high benefit for a low cost of how you enter into this field. Those are some of the ways I found work well. One last thing, I mentioned this yesterday, but again, I want to emphasize it, the more you can build a community of practice among teachers, the better off it will be. This is really quite central. Somebody, there have been many articles written on the isolation that many teachers feel in their classroom walls, that they feel that they themselves are alone in their classroom and while they have colleagues in their day to day work, they may meet for meetings and so on, but really they're on their own. And if you can shift out of that mode, if that's where you're at, or even if you have a good community of collegiality, but it still isn't a community that works together, building a community of practice that has at least two key components. They discuss what they want to do and then they trade tokens of what they wanna do. And by this, I mean people coming in and saying, hey, I use this tool for X and it's working for me or I use this tool for Y and it's not working. Have any of you tried this, et cetera? So this is important because sometimes you'll have the conversation, but absent the tokens of practice. Okay, and some people think that you mean a physical object, not necessarily, it can be a conceptual object, how I use this tool to achieve this goal. But that's the other key component of a community of practice. And if you have the slides from yesterday, and again, anybody who needs them, please, we've made them available, but if you don't get it, just let us know and we'll make sure you get them. You've got the references from Labian Bangor in terms of how to build communities of practice. And again, I found that this is a very powerful way because people suddenly don't feel that they're on their own making the shift from SA to MR by itself. Okay, we're all kind of pulling our expertise, our knowledge and in a way moving together. Some people will move faster, some people will move slower. It's not, you know, people sometimes assume a community of practice is monolithic. That's not necessarily the case at all. In fact, it usually isn't. But it is supportive of the community's efforts as a whole. Wonderful. Thank you, Rivet, very much. Thank you. Is it Janine that you joined us? Hi, Janine, welcome. Did I say it correctly?  There we go. Hi, yes, you did say it correctly. Wonderful.  Wonderful, welcome. Thank you. You can either ask questions here. I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you have any, you can either put them in the chat or just jump right in and ask those questions. And anybody else who is joining us too, just know that either turn your camera on or microphone or ask them in the chat or Q&A. Thanks, I know our district is working on digitally enhanced student led discourse. And by trying to add that student led discourse component with a digital tool in, we are looking at ways to leverage that to move people from beyond an S to the AMR levels. And I think a lot of things that were just mentioned really hit home with communities of practice. I think that's a great suggestion to get more buy-in from lots of different avenues. So that's something I definitely want to pursue after that. But we've been focusing also on trying to give more students a voice. And it seems like the minute you incorporate those student led discourse tools in a digital manner, it typically will bump you above an S. The big part is trying to make sure that we allocate the right time and resources to help people meet them where they are so that they can make those incremental changes. And I'm also just looking for more tips and resources on how to kind of, I guess, market those ideas for growth and pushing forward no matter what level you feel you're at because I do think we need to meet people where they are and make things more interesting to people based on what you said, like their passions, their interests, their roadblocks that they want to overcome. So that's why I joined today to get those ideas. And again, community of practice sounds like a wonderful way to really get people to talk. Thank you. Absolutely. No, thank you. And you're absolutely right. When you start bringing in that student voice in meaningful manner, you do indeed tend to push towards the upper levels of SAMR. So let me give a couple of additional suggestions that might be useful. Again, in terms of scaffolding the process, a lot of teachers will say, well, it's one thing when I have students meeting face to face in my classroom, I can see them around the table or whatever the space may be, maybe it's outdoors, et cetera. But I'm not quite sure how to handle it. So one of the ways in which I find that you can scaffold this rather nicely is when you start to say, well, let's build up what the community interactions are like. So an easy place or relatively easy place for teachers to start is in two aspects. One of them synchronous, one of them asynchronous. Insynchronous, any type of peer to peer interactions, peer learning that are peer oriented or very small group oriented. So let's talk for instance about peer oriented activities. You have a think-peer-share type of discussion processes, right? Where you have introduced a question, you break up, there are several ways of doing this, but you introduce a question for discussion by students in pairs to resolve, to address the issue. Again, there's several different paths you can take here and then you have them report back briefly to the group in terms of what you're doing. That type of pair-wise interaction works also very well synchronously if your platform permits it online. And it's an easy one to look at because teachers can see, for instance, if you have, whether you have the room or the type of more chat oriented interface both exist, of course. It allows them to say, oh, okay, I can see what's going on. I can, you know, if any students are sort of stuck, I can help with the process. But it's also something that is conceptually proximal to what they might have been doing physically in the classroom. So that's an example of a synchronous activity that helps this type of transition. And an asynchronous activity that I strongly encourage people to use is blogging. But blogging with what I would call intentional groups. What I mean by this, it's easy to ask students to say, well, instead of writing a paper for me, et cetera, just post what they were interested in or posted a blog. The trouble is that if you just say post to a blog and that's it, it's no different than turning in a paper via email. And if you say post to a blog and then just say in general, well, just have a discussion around it. I can tell you right now that tends to be a place where things don't flow very smoothly unless you have an educator who's already very experienced in moderating and stimulating online conversations. It tends to be a lot of students saying, yep, or good, or I agree, and not much else, right? So what you want to do is you have, and for instance, a CSOR has actually a very nice little blogging tool that allows the students to say, hey, I'll post, but use and say, well, it's not just a generic conversation. You say, okay, you're going to be in reading groups. And typically I do groups of four, I find works very well. And you break up your students into groups of four and you say, in this group, you are all going to be reading each other's blogs, but you're also going to be responsible for posting something that's an addition or a response, a significant response to a blog. It can be use of X. Based upon X, I would like to add Y and Z. Or it could be use of X, but I sort of disagree and I think it's beta or use of X and I don't quite understand. Could you explain this because here is my question. In other words, you ask them to engage beyond this simple approval, disapproval, like this, like level. And that becomes part of the task. And of course, the response to a response becomes part of it. What happens is here, you build students very quickly from just presenting, here's my work, that's it. I'm done with it, whatever grade I get, I grade. And that's it, to being groups of writers and readers. And that's important. That's important because it gives them a meaning to the task because they're all relating to each other. It also gives them a practice of how they interact. And I've seen amazing results, frankly, in terms of classrooms of students that work, not terribly engaged with the materials and become very engaged when they're in these small groups responding to each other. And that's mostly an asynchronous activity. So that's why I said you have one synchronous, one asynchronous to build a path. And then finally, in a mode that can be both simultaneously asynchronous and synchronous to build out, but I recommend that you build out from one of these smaller activities. It's when you build out a genuine or authentic audience for your students. So this is where your students are interested in biology. And one of the things that has always, to me, seemed frankly problematic at points is when you bring in the expert that they give a talk to the students in the class saying, hi, I'm a biologist, I work in ecosystems. They answer a few questions and that's it. But there's no way for a student to really follow up on their interest or say, this is what matters to me about my community, the world I live in, et cetera. Let me show you what I made, what I did. So this is where you can build out a broader community by having students. And again, this is where some people say, well, I'll just put it out there. No, you have to separate the process. And there is some work involved in this. And it can range from in some areas, for instance, for writing there are good online groups to discuss bringing together students from different cultures and ways that go beyond the traditional pen pal for this type of interaction. In communities like the sciences, particularly these days with climate change, you'll find some very good groups. I'm talking right now with a group that's hopefully, it's very, very early history, but it got the backing of UNESCO to bring some of these, move some of these conversations forward among students. So you have, again, an environment that is scaffolded by groups of people that have both an interest and a responsibility in an area and really get into this. Oh, Joe, write the world, absolutely. Excellent platform, thank you. I agree. Very, very good example of this. So this type of scaffolded process gets students to, this is where you really begin to move into MR because these are audiences they normally would not have had, these are audiences that they normally wouldn't have been able to reach. And yet, when they can, it's transformative really in terms of what the students understand and what they see as their own sense of agency. This to me is a, you've hardly say this on both sessions, but the idea that students need to have a sense of agency, even very young students, you know, it's to me very interesting to see the difference. Just when you go with, even if the activity hasn't changed all that much, but the student suddenly realizes, wait, the way I'm doing it, I have more choice. I have more of a decision orientation in terms of how I can do this can make a huge, huge difference. And it's not really just for older students. I've seen this, for instance, with pre-K and kindergarten students. Some of the most fun I've ever had has been working with kindergarten students where they are doing robotics projects and using them to tell stories. And suddenly it's kind of, well, it's not just, okay, everybody make the robot, the ladybug move from one end of the room to the other and pick up the ball along the way. It's a, sure, they are learning how to do the basic coding and robotics, et cetera, to do it. But it's because the ladybug you see is actually, this is a story I was told, it's actually a robber. And the robber is being chased by cats, the protective, and it was the most amazing story. I was like, wow, can we get this kid a script writing job in TV, this is much better than what I hear normally. It's much more fun. So even for a very young student, this sense of agency can make a huge, huge difference in terms of what they can accomplish, how they can accomplish in their engagement in a real sense with the test. So to, sorry, to get back to your point, these are the types of ways in which I recommend scaffolding exactly the type of process for what you were discussing. And I'm very happy to hear that that's the path you're following because it's been incredibly fruitful in my experience. Thank you for... Thank you for that. Your work. Yes, thank you, Jeanine. Claire, welcome. We wanna make sure that you have an opportunity to ask your question if you have one. I don't wanna put you on the spot. And Valerie, welcome too. You can either join us or stay off camera. Either one is great. So if you have a question, jump on in or else put it in the Q&A. Either one is great. I can help you unmute if it's hard to unmute, but just let us know. Looking here to see if, let's see. Just scroll quickly through the chat to make sure. We see you talking and it looks like your microphone is on, but for some reason we can't hear you. Yeah, just a second. I actually have a question for you as well. Being a former fourth and sixth grade teacher, I was a digital learning specialist for a while, we would always talk about the SAMR model as a swimming pool. And I'm really curious to hear your reflection on that and whether you agree with that or not. I know you talk about it more as like a ladder going up and down and we talked about it as a swimming pool of like dabbling in the shallow end of that S and sometimes swimming to the deep end, but when you're swimming, you're not always in that deep end. And so I mean someone who told us to a lot of different teachers, I would absolutely love to know your opinion on that. I'm absolutely fine with the swimming pool metaphor. And I don't view it as contradicting the ladder metaphor. It's a question of context and which metaphors work better in different senses, right? So the ladder works better when you're talking about saying, well, let's start with the easier things that some of the things are more proximal to your practice and gradually work away from them. The swimming pool metaphor works better when you're trying to say, well, let's think about what's appropriate to a given level and realize that sometimes, sure, you're going into the deep end, but sometimes you're in the shallow and that's fine too, that it's not necessarily, you can't, you don't always have to be swimming at the deep end of the pool and there's absolutely nothing there's much to be gained from swimming in the shallows as well. So if I would either metaphor, and again, I do want to emphasize something I've mentioned, there isn't necessarily, when I talked about yesterday, for instance, the idea of saying, well, when you're working with people developing at the start of their integration of technology units using SAMR and saying, well, start with the grounding knowledge at S, then the development of the unit at AMM and then the culminating experience at R. There's nothing magical about that, okay? It's something that I found works well for people who are starting out, but as you develop your practice, please feel free to go anywhere you want in the spectrum. It has to be what works. It has to be what's appropriate to what you're doing. And one other thing I always mention is sometimes you can do some things because you incorporate the technology that do not necessarily require the technology but you couldn't have done without it. And let me show you again, I showed this little model the other day, but here we go, okay? This is 3D printed. And one of the things I've found is it's very interesting to see what you can do in the arts or in architecture or in social studies by allowing students to play with a range of simulations. So this particular little model is associated with an experiment I'm running in terms of understanding how cities and communities might change, particularly in the context of climate change. How you can view that as representing all sorts of information in terms of a community as well as where people live. So you start to get into what some people have called the hidden structure or the hidden life of cities where you're talking about, well, it's not just here's a house but how do people get to and from that house? Where do they go for entertainment? Where do they go to relax? Where do they go for work, et cetera? Or do they work at home? All of these things start to tell you something about cities. And as I say, I've been working on this. But the interesting thing is that I find that there's a very interesting ping-pong that you can do in these domains where you experiment with lots of virtual things on screen. A subset of those get printed out or made into a physical object. And then you go with the students and you do activities in the world that may not use the technology directly at all. They may simply use, let's now walk in our city and let's talk with each other based upon the understanding those models that we printed out, et cetera. What did we see when we were able to explore those virtual or theoretical patterns? What are we looking for now in the physical world? And maybe there, so maybe you're taking a few pictures or something like that, but at the end of the day, the activity is physical. But that activity to have been very difficult to do or do as meaningfully if you didn't have that world of exploration preceding it. So this is the other thing I encourage people to do.  Okay, but you're going to a different part of this sports or gym or park or recreational complex, whatever it is that you never would have gone to before. But because by swimming in the pool, you develop both an interest and the skills to be able to explore this part of the complex. Now you can do so. So a little bit of an overextension of the metaphor, but you get where it's going. I love it. I love it. That's great. Thank you. So yeah, Claire, Valerie, welcome both. Thank you. So let's see, Valerie, I just noticed that. Right, yeah, exactly. And again, I always keep going back to why are we doing this? Because that's ultimately the goal, right? What do we want our students to get? What do we want them to experience to think about to be able to create to deal to the side for themselves, to be able to think about what they would like next in their lives and so on. And as I say, that's exactly it. The possibilities for the technology when you're exploring these far away places, as you're saying, right? It's the idea of saying, how does a far away place become a place that becomes not just, hmm, I saw that and that's it. It becomes something that the student can communicate with, relate to and perhaps revisit their own communities, thinking about what they saw in those far away places in those virtual visits. It really can be extremely, extremely powerful. I'll give you one more example that I've seen with a different type of visit. All the different sites that have set up scientific instruments of one sort or another worldwide or pointing into space, et cetera, that again, make for an experience that sometimes students have not had. So a student that lives in a large city, the night view in sky even on a very, very good night is tends to have a lot of light pollution. But when they can cook into a camera or a telescope that's somewhere out in an area, say in Chile or in Arizona or one of the areas that is not like blue and they can suddenly see that sky. I'll be honest with you, I've heard so many just, oh wow, I never realized, you know, without stars it was one, two, you know, the few that are not obscured by light but seeing something that milky, you know, the milky way as a thing, it shows up in textbooks, in literature, but it's out that lives in a large city with lots of light pollution and really hasn't had many opportunities to move beyond that environment has never seen it as such. So that's yet another experience of exactly the type that you're talking about Valerie and believe me, I've heard suddenly the interest and the joy of, oh, I see why somebody would want to become in this particular case, you know, any type of astronomer or, you know, stay scientist to understand this more or even just simply the beauty and the joy of the experience. I'd love, I think it's working now, is it? Can you hear me now? Yes, I'm sorry, I've had some serious tech issues over the last couple of days. So if you lose me, I apologize. I wanted to ask whether you have any tips on how, I think one of the biggest challenges post, if I can use the word post pandemic, I guess to a point we are now post pandemic, is capturing that learning and capacity of the teachers who really learnt without realising they were learning and redefining how they were teaching, but now have gone back into that four walled classroom. I see everyone else is nodding. You've all got the same issues. Do you have any fantastic tips you could share or with us on how we continue to capture that learning and build on it, but also in a way that allows those teachers to gain the confidence because I think as soon as they walked back through that classroom door, they'd lost all of that confidence and probably didn't even realise just what they'd learnt in the process. And it's very easy to go back in this context. So I'm going to do it this way again now. And I know with some of the stuff I've been working with, I struggled to maintain that momentum and we've gone back. Have you got some pearls of wisdom to help us with keeping that learning going? It's an amazing question and thank you for bringing it up because I agree wholeheartedly and I've seen exactly what you described. The person that was doing these things that they said, well, I can't retry this, but what if I try this? Oh, they tried, it was wonderful. And it's got, well, okay, guess I'm back in the regular classroom and that goes, yep, the snapback, unfortunately. That's right. And it's a question to me of saying, hold on, let's not lose this. Let's both honour and value the work that people put in because there's another thing I have to mean. This is something that I don't think people realise the amount of work, the amount of rapid change that everybody in education went through across the entire spectrum of different school contexts, ages, everything. I mean, I'll give you just one little anecdote from one school I work with. The problem of saying, okay, we've got, we managed to get devices, in this case, it happened to be iPads, so I'll do the students. So they have the connectivity, we've managed to get information to those students that didn't have broadband access on how they can access it. So we've managed all of this, but now, how do we get tangible objects? And it won't be, the teachers putting together these kits of physical objects. And yes, it was the head of the school, getting in their car and driving over the huge range of where all the parents and families live, dropping off little boxes, waving. I actually saw them waving from under the eaves as it was pouring rain and so on. And figuring out, okay, we got to get this, and okay, but this is interesting. The students are doing physical experiments with these little kits that the teachers put together and on the fly, because there wasn't a lot of time, there wasn't huge sums of money waiting to be picked up to buy equipment. In fact, a lot of this had to be pieced together from what was available and so on. And they did some pretty incredible things. So let's not lose that, because to me, there was both ingenuity, but also thoughtfulness in this. And there was a creativity and some things did not work. And that's fine. Listen, we were all improvising at one point or another. I can certainly, you know, I'll speak to my own experience with a colleague, we decided, oh, this type of resource will be very useful for teachers during the pandemic. We very quickly found out that, in fact, the particular questions that we thought teachers would be looking at and these had to do with some issues around broadband and some situations, they weren't looking at that at all and stuff. Right, we might have thought that was a good idea, but clearly not what people needed at that point in time. And I think we all had experiences like that as well, but it's important not to lose what people had. So to your point, a couple of things that we found help. One thing I'm working on right now with Tula Dlamini in South Africa, we are doing a qualitative project where we're conducting interviews with educators who were through the pandemic in different contexts. We've completed a test run. This is also being done under the auspices of the shaping review project at ASU, but we will be completing the analysis, putting this out there with the hope that more people will be able to use the tools. And what we're trying to do is do two things. Document what happened, but also document people's experiences relative to what happened. So we're not just talking about saying, well, I did this in the classroom, okay? Or I did this as a school leader, or I did this as an ed tech specialist, et cetera. But also to say, well, how did you respond? What worked for you? What didn't work? We're trying to also get at some of the intangibles that unfortunately frequently go lost, such as how much time did it take you to do this? And we all realize, again, emergency situation, that's not necessarily the same amount it would take regularly, but we want to document this. And we're trying to find patterns, things that work and things that didn't work. Patterns behind them, brands around them. Because, okay, I can point to a lot of the work. I mentioned this, a lot of the data I have already points to, okay, these things were at the higher levels of SAMR, the things were at the lower levels of SAMR, but there are other types of patterns that tell us how did people respond to context for different subject areas, different age groups that are also worth documenting. So that's one aspect. As I say, so in terms of how to do this, I recommend that people who have the resources or the time or know somebody who does do exactly this. Short interviews, keep it short. I strongly recommend a cup of coffee tea, water, whatever your favorite orange juice, whatever your favorite beverage is to not have it be a dry conversation, so I can resist the pun, but to be able to document this, record it. This is one place where other transcription systems are your friend. Used to be that you needed somebody with lots of time and a very good transcription pedal. I still have some work here and Old Olympus recorded with a little pedal so you could go back and forth and transcribe as you were doing your tapes for quite the analysis that's no longer needed, but so you can use all the transcription services, ranging from free ones to pay ones. That's not the issue. And then document, analyze, start to look for patterns. And this has, as I say, a double effort. If actually, one is it documents it for others, but it also helps those people realize, all right, I did something worthwhile, I did something important, I did something good, it deserves to be shared and do that. So that's one. And the other is to use the community of practice approach I mentioned earlier and to also incorporate that and to say, hey, let's get the conversation going. And when we get the conversation going with what happened during the pandemic because you already have that on the table. And again, encourage people. I just saw G.L. Poon out saying, absolutely having the time and the freedom to fail and giving people the realization that, well, of course we all accepted because it was emergency situation, but you know what, in day to day work, we also need time and freedom to fail. We need to figure out how to do it responsibly in certain contexts, how to try experiments, what to do when they don't work, right? And that's why I think I mentioned with the summer ladder approach, it gives you a certain freedom to experiment at the upper end and to be able to say, well, that didn't work, but that's okay because everything else up to that point built upon this. So this is the other place, you know, as I say, one is the narratives, the qualitative analysis to both hear that but also make people realize for themselves that this is of value. But second, the community of practice to say, well, no, no, no, this isn't going away. Let's take this and let's move it forward. So those are two thoughts relative to your question, which again, thank you for bringing up. Thank you, that's fantastic. I think too, it's also about building people's confidence in their capacity as well to allow them to keep going. And if the pandemic did anything for us, it gave us that opportunity to fail because it's much easier to fail behind a computer rather than fail in a classroom full of 25 children that you're trying to control at the same time when your lesson doesn't quite go as you hoped it was going to go. It's a bit easy when they're all on mute. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you very much. That's great. Thank you, Claire. And I know Juliet said some of that in the chat as well.  Do you have a question? Yes, yes. And I'm happy to be here today. My question is or comment just on the conversation that we were just having. Not only allowing people to fail, but having these, as you stated, documenting some of these great successes because teachers were not different. Preparation time. We were, I don't know about you guys, but we were online just, we were out like Thursday or Friday. By Monday, we were in the classrooms online, Google classroom, face to face. I mean, well, virtually conducting class. So many teachers didn't have a lot of preparation time at all. So, and one of the things that, one of the reasons why I was taking this particular class is I actually, I'm working on a master's thesis. And on my thesis, I'm preparing a virtual, well, a classroom, a computer classroom or computer lab in a school that does not have one in an elementary school. You know, many of the high schools have them, but a lot of, not as many elementary schools have computer labs. Some of them, some people were working with carts and things like that, prior to the pandemic, where when the pandemic happened, all of the students needed a computer or some type of device at home. So even schools that usually may not have had a computer for every student, somehow they were able to do that and provide a computer for every student. So, but I'm setting up a computer lab, but at the same time I was getting, I'm getting input from different teachers and administrators and on different levels, not just on the elementary level, but on the college level and or on the middle school through high school level also of how a computer lab could come in handy because not only were we not, were the teachers not prepared, the students and the parents were not prepared even more because they didn't have lessons on appropriate use of the computers.  You know, you take it for granted, we all know, they all know, but appropriately, if they were in the classroom, when they're at home, they were possibly two or three windows open. So they were doing other things. And, you know, so those controls were not available. You couldn't see your student doing all of that, you know, playing games instead of paying attention, you know, so there's a lot of factors involved that now that we are looking at it in hindsight, we can kind of see our 2020 vision now, looking back, we can see some of the things that if we ever, we can actually utilize because we're, we've only had to use virtual and I'm not gonna take up a whole lot more time, I do apologize for being so long with it. But we can use a lot of this, we've only used virtual time when I live in Michigan, so when the weather's bad and we have to close down, we've had virtual classes, right? So the school, instead of having a snow day, if you guys have never heard of that, depending on where you live, instead of having a snow day, we go virtual again, right? So I think there should be some planned virtual days, period, because there were some wonderful things about this virtual learning that can actually work in the future to actually enhance learning and become a part of the whole platform. So during some of that time, maybe utilizing some virtual learning as part of the curriculum. Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I mean, you're absolutely right. The whole domain where this is getting discussed is what's sometimes called high flex for hybrid flexible learning. And there's some... The original meaning is exactly what you described. Some people have started to expand the meaning or I'm a little worried that it's getting so diffused that isn't this side. It becomes all forms of online learning. Well, okay, hold on. High flex is more closely associated with what you're talking about where you say, well, no, we have a definite need for X amount of hybrid time and that needs to be accommodating to certain needs which may not be the traditional schedule needs. So it might involve families it might involve other contexts as well. So I think there is very definitely a case to be made for. It's not, oh, well, we are no longer in this situation we were before in the earlier days of the pandemic. Therefore we don't do this. I agree with you. In other words, I think that using the hybrid experiences using the mix of remote to face to face in different ways than might have been as you said correctly, the snow days. I'm very familiar with snow days. I live in Western Massachusetts in the mountains. So yes, we can have, I'm sure a conversation has to... So what's the very worst snow day you ever had, right? But I think you're going to be that every time the old policy of lake affects snow. But so anyhow, but the key thing is that there's a whole range of opportunities beyond that. And again, I think we also wanna think about other contexts. You mentioned labs, for instance. To me, that can be very interesting because people always think of, well, you have the individual device and the mobile individual device is very powerful indeed. But that doesn't mean that having a meeting place or a meeting locale that is particularly set up in some ways that can leverage computing power. It's not a worthwhile thing. And I'm seeing, for instance, some work, I was just in Arizona in Phoenix at ASU. And of course, their students routinely use mobile devices and so on, but they also have lab spaces for specific types of purposes. Some of them are oriented more towards multimedia. Some of them are oriented towards making, maker spaces. Some of them are oriented towards just social discussion. And some of them, particularly now that we're seeing communities that prior to the pandemic did not have access to broadband come into this world, be able to say, well, how do we work with people who have not had the experience of being in these tech-enabled worlds and both help them not just get up to speed, but actually again, once again, take agency. So whether it's the parents of our students, the other people in the community that our students inhabit and so on, these labs can become indeed sharing points. And once again, starting to think richly about the mix of hybrid and in-person experiences is a very good way to look at it. So thank you and I'm very curious by way to hear where your master's thesis is going to go. It's a great topic. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Valerie. I know we're getting towards the end. We have about five more minutes slotted right now and I know Juliet, you have your hand raised. So we would love to have you jump in and ask your question as well. It's more of an observation. I was just thinking about Valerie's comment about the idea of having non-school days because I know in the senior school, I taught high school for 33 years. So much time is actually lost because the students get caught up in the social aspect. Their attention isn't in the right spots. So if it were to be a hybrid situation where students were in the school for certain areas, flipping your learning to some extent, actually using and teaching students how to use the technology in a way that's empowering for them. They're going to be doing this in the world they inhabit beyond the classroom. I think that that's really important and these skills are really important in that context. But we do have a massive exodus of teachers in Australia and I think it's probably quite a global experience because teachers were burned out very quickly and stressed and then going back into a situation where they didn't know what to do or how much support they were going to get. You know, I think that we're moving into a space where virtual academies will become quite the norm. We have so much anxiety with students who have school refusal or we have a lack of teachers. So therefore by having virtual academies, if we can leverage our teachers and build their skills, they can come from situations where they don't want to go into a physical classroom again because they are so done with that. But we're not losing that expertise. We're not losing that incredible content knowledge and that culture and that learning culture. So I think that the gift that you're giving us Ruben is a gift that is and has a very long legacy and an incredible reach far beyond these Black Swan events you mentioned the other day. And I just want to again, I just want to thank you but I just think it's very interesting to see how nuanced your discussion is and how it helps us to anticipate what's coming. But for us to also engage with that, again, I keep saying it, the tolerance of ambiguity. I think that's kind of key. It's one of those skills that we need to have because it enhances our learning disposition and our willingness to engage. And I think we need to get teachers to celebrate that rather than fear it. That's true. Thank you. I agree. Wholeheartedly. Absolutely. I mean, Julia, you brought us in with a great welcoming statement, bringing us out with a great closing statement too. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise as well.  I learned a ton and it was just great to be a part of it with all of you. Thank you so much for joining us, being willing to jump in on the conversation. And if you have further questions, just please let us know. You can pop in the Q&A quickly and Ruben can get back to you, but we really enjoyed the evening and or send them to pdsx.me as was just put in the chat. So send any of those questions, we'll get them to Ruben and he can answer those questions for you as well. But as we close Ruben, any final thoughts or advice for this group that joined us tonight or today? You know, Claire just put a great statement in the chat, which is the idea of global teachers. And that to me is really important because that's yet another thing that we gain with the pandemic, right?  And I strongly encourage people to reach out around the world right now. It's both an opportunity, but also frankly, a need. We need to get, it's not just a question of saying we have expertise, but there's also a need for communities to come together to talk to each other, to use the resources to really come to better understand each other and to create jointly and share what they create jointly from that understanding. So I think that to me is frankly, thank you, Claire because that's a beautiful sentiment and it's what I indeed would encourage people to explore. How do you become to use your term global teachers? So thank you. Well, great. Well, thank you, Ruben. Thank you everyone for joining us. And we hope that you'll, there's a feedback form that you can give us some feedback in the chat. It will also pop up when you leave. We would love to have that feedback. And we just hope that you'll join us again and keep sharing your experiences with us here at Seesaw. And Ruben, once again, we just thank you so much for joining us this entire week and sharing your expertise. It is something that is very needed right now. So I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of your day or a wonderful evening depending on where you are in the world. And thank you for joining us. We'll see you soon. Thank you so much for coming. See you all. Just going to give you the heads up. The feedback form came back with internal error. Okay, wonderful. It will pop up when you, it will pop up when we leave right now. Awesome, thank you very much. Thank you so much.


The message of Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Luke is best summarized by a parable that only appears in Luke, the Prodigal Son. We are all one family and that family includes those that are ostracized or condemned, often for religious reasons. The good news of Christ is that God is a love that desires reconciliation of lost sons and daughters more than law that punishes sinners. Good news in case any of us should ever be lost.


Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, visited the Pentagon Thursday to discuss our role in the Asia-Pacific rebalance. We have initiatives in the Marine Corps. We have initiatives in the Navy, which means LCSs and additional submarines, and I think that long term we would be looking at the possibility of foreign deploying more maritime assets throughout the theater. He talked about U.S. partnerships with Asia-Pacific allies and continuing to work together to carry out missions. Over in Hawaii, exercise koakai kicks off. This semi-annual exercise is designed to improve joint warfighting and ensure our forces can operate forward on short notice. The exercise includes Hawaii-based surface, submarine, and aviation commands in the region and the Canadian Navy. Read more about these stories at Navy.mil. From all hands, update, thanks for watching.


I went to a tattoo party when I was like five years old with my parents and everyone was just having a really good time and everyone in my life that I knew who was heavily tattooed were just really nice people. So I think that kind of brought me into the world of it a little bit and I just was always interested in them. I do line drawings, flash paintings on my iPad. I've actually been a digital artist for the past 10 years or so and I started off with just like a little tablet with my computer and then it sort of moved up to my iPad which is pretty cool. It's not good to draw right on the screen and not have to worry about it. That's one that I did on myself, that like big cross-stitch flower right there. Laser tattoo removal all weekend. Tattoo removal is a multi-step process. The number of sessions necessary to fully remove a tattoo varies from client to client and from tattoo to tattoo. In many cases our clients aren't even seeking full tattoo removal. They're looking to lighten a tattoo to then get a new tattoo over it. We work in 30 tattoo shops around the Northeast throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York State. We also have brick and mortar offices here in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Buffalo, New York. So being a part of the tattoo community is like a big deal for us.


In past years, I've addressed the most pressing dietary issues of our time. Like, what's the healthiest variety of apple? Or what's the most nutritious nut? Or dried fruit? Or what's the best bean? What's the best berry? What's the best bowel movement? We had fun. People got to vote. Some folks came away all huffy, especially the New Yorkers back there. But this year, I thought I'd lighten it up and answer, What's the best way to prevent death? Every year, the CDC updates the latest leading causes of death in the United States. So, let's start at the top and go down the list, see what's new in each category. Heart disease, number one, the 35-year follow-up of the Harvard Nurses Health Study just published. Now, the most definitive long-term study on older women's health we have. Since the study started, thousands of participants died, but that allowed them to study the risk factors for mortality. Heart disease was the leading cause of death. It comes to no surprise. The dietary cholesterol intake was significant risk factor for dying. The second leading cause was smoking-related cancer deaths. But what's so neat about this study is that it's a competing risks analysis. So, it allowed them to compare different risks to one another. So, consuming the amount of cholesterol found in just a single egg a day appears to cut a woman's life short as much as smoking five cigarettes a day for 15 years. The most protective behavior they found was fiber consumption. Eating just a cup of oatmeal worth of fiber a day appears to extend a woman's life as much as four hours of jogging a week. Though you can do both, don't you? So, it's worth noting that, look, the intake of cholesterol only found in animal foods associated with living a shorter life and the intake of fiber only found in plant foods associated with living a longer life. The one specific food most tied to longevity was nuts. You also appear to get four hours of weekly jogging benefit eating just two handfuls of nuts a week. Yeah, heart disease number one cost of death. But what if your cholesterol is normal? Hear that all the time from patients. Have to break it to them. Look, having a normal cholesterol in a society where it's normal to drop dead of a heart attack, not necessarily a good thing. And remember, it's our number one killer. In a huge study last year, most heart attack patients fell within the recommended targets for cholesterol demonstrating that the current diet guidelines just not low enough to cut heart attack risk. Close to half of heart attack victims had cholesterol levels classified in the guidelines as optimal. Though I'm not sure their grieving spouses and orphan children will take much comfort in that fact. What is considered optimal is still way too high. Now, having a below average cholesterol reduces your risk, but as the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Cardiology wrote more than a decade ago, it's time to shift from just decreasing risk to actually preventing and reversing, arresting atherosclerosis. We don't want low risk. We want no risk. How do you do it? Well, for the buildup of plaque in our arteries to cease, it appears that we have to get our total cholesterol down to be about 150. In other words, the cholesterol must be lower to that of your average pure vegetarian. Now, but because relatively few people are willing to abide by the vegetarian lifestyle, you know, drugs are required to get down to similar levels. So it's our choice. Now notice, though, even though the average vegan has a cholesterol of 150, it doesn't mean that all vegans have 150. That's why I do free cholesterol screenings here at Summerfest.  Just take a couple of minutes. I'll be happy to do that for you. All right. So it's our choice, diet or drugs. Why not just choose the drugs? All right. Well, that's it. That's a good question. Well, as the good doctor noted last night, the FDA just announced newly mandated safety labeling by law to cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. So this is nalipotor, mebicor, crustor, zocorbitorn, that kind of thing. The FDA issued new side effect warning labels this year regarding the increased risks, brain-related risks, associated memory loss and confusion, an increase in blood sugar levels, as well as new onset diabetes. One prominent cardiologist described this kind of Faustian bargain, less fewer heart attacks, but more diabetes. With all the memory loss and confusion caused by these drugs, folks may have forgot there's actually a way to reduce the risk of heart attacks and diabetes at the same time, called the plant-based diet. All right. Now, cholesterol is just half of the heart disease story. The other half is inflammation. We've known for 15 years that a single meal, high in animal fat, a sausage and egg McMuffin was used in the original study, can paralyze our arteries, right, cutting up their ability to relax normally in half within hours of eating animal products. The whole lining of our vascular tree gets inflamed and stiffened, right? And just as that inflammation, so here's hours, right, one, two, three, four, five, six, just as that inflammation, right, the purpling of our arteries starts to finally calm down after five or six hours, lunchtime, right? And then we may whack our arteries with another load of meat, eggs, or dairy, right? And so most people are in this chronic state of low-grade inflammation, increasing risk for these inflammation-related diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, one meal at a time. Does the same thing to our lungs, right? Again, within hours, inflammation in our airways, a single meal causing internal damage, not just years down the road, but literally right then and there, that day, within hours of it going into your mouth. And just this year, we finally figured out, we finally solved the mystery as to why. And it doesn't appear to be the animal fat itself. And it's apparently not the animal protein, which is what's implicated in the inflammation from arthritis. So it was not the animal fat, it's not the animal protein. What is it? The whole thing is a crazy, cool detective story that I'll be putting in a series of videos next week, actually, July 4th, July 5th, July 6th. But I'll just cut to the chase, spoiler alert. After a meal of animal products, people suffer from endotoxemia. Their bloodstream becomes awash with bacterial toxins, known as endotoxins, that are present in the animal products. So I mean, no wonder our body goes crazy. These dead meat bacteria toxins aren't destroyed by stomach acid, aren't destroyed by pancreatic enzymes, right? They aren't destroyed by cooking, they tried boiling meat for hours, still didn't work. And so these bacterial toxins were found to be highly resistant to cooking, and our body's best attempts at acid and enzyme digestion. Now, the animal fat actually does play a profound role in this whole process by ferrying the bacterial toxins present in the meat through the gut into our system. So the reason animal products trigger immediate inflammation appears to be because they're so loaded with bacteria that can trigger inflammation dead or alive, even if they're fully cooked.  So now that we know what's going on, what do we have to do? Well, from a 2012 follow-up, well, the obvious, most obvious solution to this metabolic endotoxemia, okay, well, we can reduce saturated fat intake, which in this country is mostly cheese and chicken, but the Western diet is not conducive to this mode of action, and it is difficult for patients to comply with this request. So what, let's not even tell them, right?  That attitude may be one of the real leading causes of death. But let's get back to the official list and take on cancer next. What's the latest? Well, we know from the largest forward-looking study on diet and cancer ever performed by humanity, the incidence of all cancers combined lower among vegetarians than meat-eaters, especially some of the fastest growing tumors like lymphomas and leukemias, and for that the worst meat was actually poultry chicken, up to triple the rates for every 50 grams of poultry consumption.  Normally this whole presentation being the kind of quiz show format, but there was a scheduling mix-up. I was supposed to be the last speaker at night, and so I could go long and not interfere with the schedule, but anyway, won't happen again, and so next year back to the quiz show format, and apologize, I had to cut this short. Okay, but the link between meat and cancer is such that even the Journal of Meat Science last year asked, should we become vegetarians? Or they said, can we make meat safer? There's a bunch of additives, for example, that can suppress the toxic effects of the blood-based iron, the heme iron found in meat. Now, the additives are still under study, but could provide an acceptable way to prevent colon cancer, because avoiding meat, obviously, completely out of the question. They fear that if the National Cancer Institute recommendations to reduce meat consumption were adhered to, sure cancer incidents may be reduced, but farmers in the meat industry would suffer important economic problems. Now, for those of us more concerned about the suffering caused by the meat industry, rather than the suffering of the meat industry, what happens if you put cancer on a vegan diet? Well, the Pritikin Research Foundation just completed this elegant series of experiments which you want to spend a bit of time on. Simple experiments. They put people on different diets, draw their blood, and then drip their blood on cancer cells growing in a petri dish, and just stood back to see whose blood was better at suppressing cancer growth. They're the ones that published that study showing that the blood of those on a vegan diet was dramatically less hospitable to cancer.  I mean, if it didn't, everybody would be dead, right? It's just that the blood of those eating vegan fights about eight times better. The blood of those on a standard American diet suppresses cancer growth by about 9%. You put people on a plant-based diet for a year, though, and their blood just tears it up, right? The blood circulating through the bodies of vegans has nearly eight times the stopping power when it comes to cancer cell growth. Now, this is for prostate cancer, most common cancer among men. For women, it's breast cancer. So the Pritikin Research has tried duplicating the study with women using breast cancer cells instead. Now, they didn't want to wait a whole year to get the results, so they figured they'd try to see what a plant-based diet could do in just two weeks against three different types of human breast cancer. This is the before. Cancer growth rates powering away at 100%, and then this is after eating a plant-based diet for just 14 days. Now, slowing down cancer growth is great, but getting rid of them, getting rid of cancer cells is even better. This is before and after measuring cancer cell death, right? This is the before and this is the after. Pre- and post-plants. The same blood now coursing through these women's bodies gained the power to significantly slow down and stop breast cancer growth thanks to just two weeks of eating a plant-based diet. What kind of blood do we want in our body? What kind of immune system? Do we want blood that's just kind of roll over when new cancer cells pop up? Or do we want blood circulating to every nook and cranny within our bodies with the power to slow down and stop them? Now, this strengthening of cancer defenses was after 14 days of a plant-based diet and exercise. They were out walking 30 to 60 minutes a day. Well, maybe the only reason their bodies became so effective at suppressing cancer cell growth was because of the exercise. Maybe diet didn't have anything to do with it. So they put it to the test. This is measuring cancer cell clearance. And this is what we saw before. The effect of blood taken from those eating a plant-based diet, in this case for 14 years, along with mild exercise, just like walking every day, right? So, plant-based diets, walking, that's the kind of cancer cell clearance you get. Now, compare that to the cancer-stopping power of your average sedentary, using this little burger, burger, apple. I'm sorry, I can't. On the website it's a little... Okay, compared to the cancer-stopping power of your average sedentary meat eater, which is basically non-existent. Okay, but what about this middle group? Now, this middle group, instead of 14 years on a plant-based diet, they had 14 years of the standard American diet, but had daily, strenuous, hour-long exercise, like boot camp this morning. Seriously, calisthenics, right? They wanted to know if you exercise hard enough and long enough, can you rival some strolling vegans? All right, let's find out. Exercise worked, no question, right? But, literally 5,000 hours in the gym, no match for a plant-based diet. An actual photomicrograph of cancer cells stained so that they release light when they die, right? As you can see in the control group, there are a few cancer cells dying, right? Even if you're a couch potato eating fried potatoes, your body's not totally defenseless, but here's the hardcore, strenuous exercise group, right? Cancer cells dying left and right, but nothing appears to kick cancer butt more than a plant-based diet. Why, though? Some people don't care, but I'm always curious. All right, how does a simple dietary change, right? Make one's bloodstream so inhospitable to cancer after just a few days? We didn't know until last year when they sought to determine the underlying mechanisms for these anti-cancer effects. And it is a wild story. I have a whole series of videos coming out about it.  It involves marshmallows, tinker toys, cannibalism, and vegan bodybuilders. From beef steak to beef cake. I wish I had time, believe me. But the videos will be up soon. Bottom line, the answer to the Pritikin puzzle is IGF-1. Insulin-like growth factor 1. Is the cancer-promoting growth hormone involved in every stage of cancer growth, spread, metastases, cancer invasion? But you put people on a plant-based diet in their IGF-1 levels. IGF-1 levels, plant-based diet go down. And if they continue to be on a plant-based diet, this is just after a few weeks, if you're on a plant-based diet, a long-term levels drop even further.  That's one of the ways our body suppresses cancer growth. Protect itself from cancer. Protect itself from excessive growth by releasing this binding protein into the bloodstream to bind up, to tie up IGF-1. It's like our body's kind of emergency break. Yes, in as little as 11 days. A plant-based diet can reprogram your body to bring down IGF-1 production. But what about all the IGF-1 that's circulating from the bacon and egg you ate last week? So the liver releases the snatch squad of binding proteins to tie up, to take all this IGF-1 out of circulation. And as you can see, it just gets better with time the longer we eat healthy. Here's the experiment that nailed IGF-1 as the villain. All right, same as last time. Go on a plant-based diet, plant-based diet, and cancer cell growth rates drop dramatically.  I already saw that. But then, here's the kicker. What if you added back to the cancer the exact same amount of IGF-1 banished from your body by eating a plant-based diet? Eating a plant-based diet goes back. The same IGF-1 added back to the cancer and see what happens, and it erases the diet and exercise effect. It says, if you never start eating healthy at all. So that's how we know that lowering animal product consumption leads to lower IGF-1, which leads to lower cancer growth. But how low does our animal product consumption have to go? How plant-based do our diets have to get? Well, let's look at the IGF-1 levels of meat-eaters compared to vegetarians compared to vegans. Does a plant-based diet, is it better at lowering a circulating levels of IGF-1 compared to a meat-eating diet or a lacto-ovo diet? And this is what they found. Only the vegans, so meat-eaters, vegetarians, vegans, only the vegans had significantly lower levels and the same relationship was found with IGF-1 binding protein levels. That's what we want higher. Again, we've got nothing here. One really had to go to that final step, vegans, to significantly bind up all that excess IGF-1 in their bloodstreams. This was a study done on women. What about... What about vegan men? They found the same thing. So even though vegan men tend to have significantly higher levels of testosterone than both vegetarians and meat-eaters, which actually can promote the growth of prostate cancer, but the reason vegans, a vegan diet, can actually reverse the progression of cancer, which I've shown you in previous years, the Dean Orner's work may be because of how low their IGF-1 levels are. So high testosterone, but still low cancer in the vegans. The bottom line is that male or female, just eating a vegetarian diet did not seem to cut it, didn't do your body many favors. Looks like to get that significant drop in that cancer-promoting growth hormone levels, one really has to move towards eliminating animal products altogether. Now the good news is that now, based on what we know about IGF-1, we can predict that a vegan diet may be profoundly protective with respect to risk, for example, for breast cancer in older women. Okay, just 13 leading causes of death to go. All right, let's run through the list here. The top three killers used to be heart disease cancer stroke. That is so 2011. Now it's heart disease cancer and COPD, like emphysema. So thankfully COPD can be prevented with a plant-based diet and even treated with plants, if you want to check that out. Now of course the tobacco industry took these landmark findings a little differently. Instead of adding plants to people's diets to prevent emphysema, wouldn't it be simpler to just add them to cigarettes? And voila, the addition of a sideberry to cigarettes evidently has a protective effect against emphysema and smoking mice. Berries and meats, right? I couldn't make this up, people. Look at this. Adding fruit extracts to burgers, right? Now this was not without its glitches. The blackberries literally dyed the burgers with this kind of distinct purplish color. Though infusing lamb carcasses with kiwi fruit juice before rigamortis set in does evidently lead to greater tenderness in the meat. And it is possible to improve the nutritional profile of frankfooters by adding ground-up grape seeds. Though there were complaints that the grape seed particles were visible in the final product. And look, if there's one thing we know about hotdog eaters is that they're picky about what goes in their food. Anus, okay, but grape seeds? Preventing strokes. Number four. Preventing strokes is all about eating potassium-rich foods. Potassium from the words potash. You take any plant, put it in a pot, reduce it to ash, and what you're left with is potashium. True story. But can anyone name me a plant food particularly high in potassium? Why is that like the one thing everyone knows about nutrition? Seriously. Like, did Chiquita have like this great PR firm or something? I bet you could walk into the heart attack grill where they're eating food like this, right? Ask anyone and they'd be like, I don't know what to eat, but I do know bananas got potassium, right? In reality, bananas don't even make the top 50 sources coming in at number 86 right behind fast food vanilla milkshakes and then bananas. And the top five sources are tomato and orange concentrates and in terms of the whole food sources it is greens, beans, and dates. In fact, if you look at the next leading cause of death, bananas could be downright dangerous. Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is now our sixth leading cause of death. We've known for 20 years now that those who eat meat, red or white, including poultry and fish, were between two and three times more likely to become demented compared to vegetarians. And the longer that you're vegetarian, the lower your risk of developing dementia. But the exciting new research is actually on treating Alzheimer's using these natural plant remedies, which actually beat out placebo and worked as well as leading Alzheimer's drug again on the website all for free. Next on the kick the bucket list is diabetes, which can be prevented with a plant-based diet and treated with a plant-based diet and even reversed in many cases with a plant-based diet. And I encourage everyone to check out Brenda's talk at three o'clock this afternoon. This is from October. Those eating vegetarian had significantly lower rates than meat-eaters, right? But it was the vegans that did the best. And this is the surprising thing. This was after controlling for obesity, right? Sure, vegans got lower diabetes rates, right? They're so skinny, right? But even at the same weight, vegans have just a fraction of the diabetes risk, right? Why are vegans on average so slim? Well, obesity is so rare among those eating plant-based diets. Nutrition researchers have been desperate to try to uncover the secret. Yes, they eat fewer calories, right? But not that many fewer. In the past years, I've gone through a number of theories to try to explain this. Maybe it's because people eating plant-strong diets express more of that fat-shoveling enzyme in the mitochondria, the power plants of ourselves. I've talked about that. Maybe it's because the gut bacteria populations are different. Maybe it's because of avoiding the obesogenic chemicals, these endocrine disrupting chemicals in the meat supply, obesity causing virus and poultry that may be playing a role. But after theories keep coming, here's the latest theory. Maybe it's to propionate. After all, what's one of the one things that's only in plant foods? Fiber, right? Animals have bones to hold them up, plants have fiber to hold them up, right? Now, we say, I thought fiber was defined as our inability to digest it, right? Well, true, we can't break down fiber, but the gazillions of good bacteria in our guts can. And what do they make with it? They make propionate, which gets absorbed into our bloodstream. So technically we can digest fiber, but just not without a little help from our little friends. So, but what does propionate do? Well, it inhibits cholesterol synthesis. That's good. It also appears to have what's called a hypophagic effect, meaning it helps us eat less by apparently slowing the emptying of our stomachs, which makes us feel fuller, longer. Propionate regulates food intake, or whether it's because it slows the generation of new fat cells, but it results in this overall anti-obesity effect. So, and we can actually boost the populations of these good bacteria in our guts without taking probiotics, just by eating vegetarian, because we're feeding our little friends with fiber. Animal foods also tend to be kind of colorically dense, for example, to walk off the calories found in a single pat of butter. You'd have to add an extra 700 yards to your evening stroll that day. Or a quarter-mile jog to each sardine we put in our mouth, and that's just the edible part.  And that's for steamed chicken skin removed. Here's the latest. Meat consumption and prospective weight gain. We're talking hundreds of thousands of men and women studied across 10 countries with weight gain measured over a five-year period. What did they find? Total meat consumption associated with weight gain in men and women. The conclusion is that the decrease in meat consumption may improve weight management. And this was after controlling for initial weight and physical activity, education level, smoking status, total energy intake. What? That's the kicker. This was after controlling for calories. The link between meat and weight gain remained even after controlling for calories, and you have two people eating the same number of calories, the one eating more meat may gain more weight. They even calculated how much more. Intake of 250 grams of meat a day, which is nothing compared to what the U.S. eats, will lead to an annual weight gain of 422 grams higher than the weight gain experience with the same calorie diets with lower meat content. After five years, the weight gain will be about five pounds more. So same calories, you had five pounds heavier eating meat. Intake was nothing. The strongest relationship between annual weight gain was observed for poultry. Let's say you start out at a normal weight, eat a hamburger every day. Well, this is how much extra weight you'd gain in addition to the calories that are present. And if you ate the same number of calories instead of processed meat, like a ham sandwich with three slices of deli meat, you'd be up to here.  Again, above and beyond the calories. In conclusion, our results indicate the meat intake positively associated with weight gain, this persisted after adjusting for energy intake, and therefore were in favor of this public health recommendation to decrease meat consumption for health improvement. For more, make sure to check out the meat industries take on this study, very interesting. As well as PCRMs, wonderful work trying to put a vegan diet to work in a corporate setting. Kidney failure, eighth leading cause of death, can be prevented with a plant-based diet, can be treated with a plant-based diet. Why? Because our kidneys are highly vascular organs. That's why kidneys look so red inside.  And so, if the standard American diet is so toxic to blood vessels in our heart, brain, and pelvis, leading to heart, text, stroke, sexual dysfunction, what might it be doing to our kidneys? Long story short, Harvard researchers found three significant risk factors for declining kidney function, meaning losing, you start to lose protein out of your urine. Your body's not supposed to be peeing out of its protein. The three risk factors for declining kidney function were animal protein, animal fat, and cholesterol. It's not protein, it's not fat. Animal protein, animal fat, no relationship found with plant protein and plant fat. Not only do vegans appear to have better kidney function, but dramatic improvements were found treating kidney failure patients with pure vegetarian diets after just one week, leading killer number nine is people dying from respiratory infections. So, check out my video, Kale and the Immune System, talking about the immunostimulatory effects of Kale. Is there anything Kale can't do? And if you look at my video, Boosting Immunity through Diet, which is actually, if you can see this, June 28th, this is just the video of the day that went up on Wednesday. You can see that eating just a few extra fruits and vegetables can significantly improve one's immune response to pneumococcal pneumonia. Suicide is number 10. Now, last year at SummerFest, I talked about improving mood through diet. We know vegetarian diets have been associated with healthier mood states, but you don't know if it's caused in effect until you put it to the test. And that's what was done this year. You take regular meat eaters and you remove meat, fish, poultry and eggs in this study from their diets. And you can see a significant improvement in mood scores after just two weeks. It can take drugs like Prozac in a month to take effect. In fact, the way drugs like Prozac work is they boost the levels of the so-called happiness hormone serotonin. Did you know that there is serotonin in plants? I had no idea. I certainly didn't. But there's serotonin in dope meat and all sorts of human neurotransmitters in plants. So much so, there's been a call to start treating depression with high-content sources of serotonin. You know, like plantains, pineapples, bananas, kiwis, plums and tomatoes. Right? And what's the side effects?  Maybe that's why high intake of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms and soy associated with decreased prevalence of depression. Maybe that's why improved behavior in teenagers was significantly associated with higher intakes of leafy green vegetables and fresh fruit. For more, keep an eye out for my videos on the wrong way to boost serotonin, which is by these tryptophan supplements, a better way to raise serotonin to fight things like premenstrual depression and then the best way, as reported in this double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study on the successful use of butternut squash seeds in the treatment of social anxiety disorder. For example. Amazing. How might a plant-based diet prevent systemic infections? Well, meat-borne bacteria can directly invade one's bloodstream through the intestinal wall in which women can creep up into their bladder just this month. June 2012, we have direct DNA fingerprinting proof, finally, that women eating meat are getting urinary tract infections from eating meat contaminated with fecal bacteria that then crawl up into their bladder. And chickens are the most likely reservoir. Wait a second. You can't sell unsafe cars. You can't sell unsafe toys. How is it legal to sell unsafe meat? Well, they do it by blaming the consumer. As one USDA poultry microbiologist said, meats, raw meats are not idiot-proof. They can be mishandled, and when they are, it's like handling a hand grenade. Hold the pin, someone's going to get hurt. See if we get sick, it's our fault. Now, while some may question the wisdom of selling hand grenades in supermarkets, the USDA poultry expert disagrees. Says, I think the consumer has the most responsibility but just refuses to accept it.  A director at the Centers for Disease Control responded famously to this kind of blame-the-victim attitude from the meat industry. Is it reasonable? She asked if a consumer undercooks a hamburger that their three-year-old dies. Is that reasonable? Not to worry, though, the meat industry's on it. They just got FDA approval for a bacteria-eating virus to spray on the meat. Now, some have raised concerns about these so-called bacteriophages, such as the possibility that these viruses can spread toxin genes between bacteria, which wouldn't go good, especially given the difficulties in preventing large numbers of these viruses from being released into the environment from the slaughterhouses. Now, it could also allow the meat industry to become more complacent about food safety. If they know they can just kind of spray some viruses on at the end, right, similar to the quick-fix argument about irradiation. From the industry point of view, who cares if there's fecal matter in the meats as long as you can just blast it at the end with enough radiation, right? Now, the meat industry's concerned that consumer acceptance of these bacteria-eating viruses may present somewhat of a challenge to the food industry. Not that they'd ever be labeled, of course. But if they think that's going to be a challenge, check out their other bright idea. The effects of extracted house-flyed pupae on chilled pork preservation. This is a science-y way of saying they want to smear a maggot mixture on the meat. Now, it's a low-cost, simple method. Think about it. Maggots thrive on rotting meat, yet there have been no reports of maggots having any serious diseases. Not that anyone's really checked, but, I mean, right? Indicating that they have a strong immune system, right? They must be packed with some kind of antibacterial properties.  So, they took maggots that were three days old, washed them, dried them, kind of toweled them off, put them in a tissue blender, kind of a little Vitamix action there, and then, well, ah, say for me, we did kidney failure. What about liver failure? We've known for 35 years. Since now, you can't even see this. 1977, that a vegetable protein diet can be used to treat liver failure, significantly reducing the toxins that otherwise would build up eating meat with a less than functional liver, right? Imagine eating meat without, you know, without a fully functioning liver to detoxify your blood, right? I do have to admit, though, that some people living on plant-based diets have worsening liver function. They're called alcoholics. In fact, strictly plant-based, right? Living on potatoes and corn and barley and grapes. Still, however, not doing so hot. It's unclear. High blood pressure is up next, so-called essential hypertension, essentially only found in those who eat meat. Again, look at this. We've known for decades. It was 1974 at Hopkins, right? We've known that consumption of foods of animal origin highly significantly associated with blood pressure even after, again, the weight effects are removed, right? Fast-forward 39 years to 2012 and compared to non-vegetarians, compared to meat-eaters as you get more and more plant-based, right? So meat-eater to flexitarian to just eating fish to lact-ovalvegetarian to vegan looks what happens to hypertension. High blood pressure, right? There is this progressive reduction in risk to just a tiny fraction. See the same thing in diabetes. Here's diabetes, right? A step-wise reduction of risk as one eliminates anal products on down, right? Oh, and same thing with body mass index, right? As you can see, obesity rates get lower and lower. In fact, vegans are actually the only population on average that was not overweight. Even the vegetarians were overweight. Diabetes, hypertension, leading causes of death. Is it going to take the medical profession another 39 years before we actually do something about it? How long does it take? Being vegan to bring blood pressures down 12 days, right? McDougal took 500 meat-eaters, put them on a vegan diet over a span of 11 days. Drought their blood pressure 6% about double that drop in those that were hypertensive to begin with. 14th leading killer, Parkinson's disease. Does a vegan diet reduce risk for Parkinson's disease? Good question. Well, we know that every single prospective study ever done on dairy products, milk consumption, and the risk of Parkinson's disease found increased risk of Parkinson's. Why? Well, one possibility is that dairy products in the United States are contaminated with neurotoxic chemicals. There's substantial evidence suggesting that exposure to pesticides may increase Parkinson's disease risk. And these autopsy studies have found that the levels of these pollutants and pesticides in the brains of elevated levels in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients and some of these toxins are present at low levels in dairy products. And they're talking about toxins like tetrahydroisoquinoline which is a Parkinsonism related compound found particularly in cheese. Now, although the amounts of this neurotoxin, even in cheese, are not very high, the concern is that they may accumulate. These neurotoxins may accumulate in the brain over long periods of consumption. And finally, aspiration pneumonia which is caused by swallowing problems due to Parkinson's or having a stroke or Alzheimer's, all of which we've already covered. All right, so where does that leave us? These are the top 15 causes of death. Top 15 reasons Americans die. And a plant-based diet can help prevent nearly all of them. Can help treat more than half of them. And in some cases even reverse the progression of disease including our top three killers. Now, there are drugs that can help too. You can take one drug to treat cholesterol every day for the rest of your life. Another drug for blood sugars, a few more pills for your blood pressure. The same diet, though, does it all. It's not like one diet for this and then a different diet for this. One diet to rule them all. And what about drug side effects? I'm not talking about a little rash or something. Prescription drugs kill more than 100,000 Americans every year. And I'm not talking about medication errors. Not abuse, not overdose. We're talking this is just deaths from side effects. So called ADRs, adverse drug reactions to prescription drugs. Wait a second, 100,000 deaths a year? That means, let's go down the list, whoa, that means that the sixth leading cause of death in the United States is doctors. The sixth leading cause of death is me. Thankfully, I can be prevented with a plant-based diet. Seriously, though, compared to 15,000 American vegetarians, meat eaters had about twice the odds of being on aspirin. Sleeping pills, tranquilizers, antacids, painkillers, blood pressure medications, laxatives, and insulin. So plant-based diets are great for people that don't like taking drugs and, of course, don't like risking adverse effects. Now, this study did show that plant-based diets have their own side effects. Side effects include a lower risk of chronic disease, fewer allergies, fewer surgeries. We're talking fewer varicose veins and hemorrhoids, even fewer hysterectomies. And we're not talking just the big killers, right? Not just less heart disease. This is the longest study on vegetarians in history. Not just less heart disease and stroke and on blood pressure and diabetes, but less diverticulosis. Less, if you can read this, less diseases overall. That's the side effects of a plant-based diet. Less disease overall. Here's the allergies thing. Again, longest-running study on vegetarians in history. Women who eat meat compared to vegetarians appear to have a 30% greater risk of reporting chemical allergies, 24% asthma, more drug allergies, more bee sting allergies, 15% more hay fever. A new side effect of plant-based diets we just learned about last year, fewer cataracts. That's what we get. Fewer cataracts. The leading cause of blindness and vision loss. Compared to those just eating a single serving of meat a day in one meal, those eating half a serving a day drop the risk 15%. Just eat fish, drop to about 21%, get rid of fish, drop 30%, get rid of eggs and dairy, full 40% drop in risk. And that's all in addition to my favorite side effect of plant-based diets helping to prevent 15 out of our 16 top killers. Want to solve the health care crisis? I've got a suggestion. Imagine if our nation embraced a plant-based diet. Imagine if we just significantly cut back on meat. Well, there's actually one country that did it. After World War II, Finland joined us and started packing on the meat, eggs, and dairy. And by 1970s, the mortality rate from heart disease of Finnish men was the highest in the world, even put us to shame. So, look, they didn't want to die, so they got serious. Heart disease is caused by high cholesterol, high cholesterol is caused by high saturated fat intake. So the main focus of the strategy was to reduce the high saturated fat intake in the country. So this means here that's cheese, chicken, cake, and pork, basically. So, a berry project was launched to help dairy farmers switch to berry farming. Whatever it took. And indeed, many farmers did switch from dairies to berries. They pitted villages against each other in these friendly, cholesterol-lowering competitions to see who could do the best. So how'd they do? Look, on a population scale, even if mortality rates dropped by 5%, that could save thousands a lot. But remarkably, great changes took place. In 80% drop in cardiac mortality across the entire country, 30% drop in heart disease deaths. With such greatly reduced rates of cardiovascular and cancer mortality, the all-carce mortality was basically almost cut in half, leading to seven more years of men living, seven more years, six more years for women. Look, this is just cutting down on animal products. Now vying for the world record for heart disease deaths, of course, the United States of America. So why doesn't our government do this? Well, I've got this whole series of videos on the conflicts of interest within the U.S. Dietary Guidelines committees. They're the ones that make the recommendations. And indeed, whether they're funded by Candy Bar Corporations or the Sugar Association or a member of McDonald's Council on Healthy Lifestyles serving on Coca-Cola's Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness. And notice we only know about this thanks to a PCRM lawsuit against the USDA. Very impressive. One committee member served as the Duncan Hines brand girl and then as the Crisco brand girl. These are the folks dictate U.S. nutrition policy. If you read the official Dietary Guideline recommendations you'll note that there is no discussion at all of the scientific research on the health consequences of eating meat. Why? Because if the committee actually discussed this research, it would be unable to justify its recommendation to eat meat at all. As the research would show that meat increases the risk for chronic diseases, contrary to the purpose of having Dietary Guidelines in the first place, right? Thus, by simply ignoring the research, the committee is able to come to a conclusion that would otherwise look improper. Right. So they can't even talk about the science. Right. We know that a plant-based diet, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, no meat, reverses heart disease, completely prevents death from heart disease, slows the progression of cancer, and the almost identical diet promoted by the World Cancer Research Fund prevent cancer based on the largest review of scientific studies to date. But again, they can't even talk about the science because how could they justify anything but a plant-based diet? Let me end with probably the best summary of nutrition policy in the United States that I've ever seen. The new Dietary Guidelines have been released. They tell us to eat healthier. Not as healthy as to noticeably affect any corporate profits. Thank you very much. Don't forget to check out my new video every day. Please share the site with friends and family. Buy them all DVDs. All proceeds to charity. And remember, please feel free to stop by for free cholesterol check. See you everybody there.