Get this and get it straight. Crime is a sucker's road and those who travel it wind up in the gutter the prison of the grave. This time I tangled with a mad Scotchman, a phony English lord and a beautiful blonde corpse in a freight house all because of a butler who walked on his knuckles. It happened like this. From the pen of Raymond Chandler, outstanding author of Cry In Fiction, comes his most famous character in The Adventures of Philip Marlowe. Now with Gerald Moore, starred as Philip Marlowe, we bring you tonight's exciting story, The Monkey's Uncle. This is Marlowe. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Who are you? Who's Cornelius? Where are you calling from and about what? Let's have it a slow step at a time, huh? All right, lead on, McDuff. Ashley who? Yes, but my first reaction was to forget the whole thing. Curiosity is strong stuff with me. Any triumvirate labeled Wesley McDuff, Lord Ashley, Duke and Cornelius had to add up the screwball no matter where you started. The word kill was still big in my vocabulary, so I buttoned the office up quickly, got down in my car and drove over to the Beekman Plaza Hotel where a ten-minute stand in the lobby produced nothing closer to worried Scotchman than the plaid covering in a sagging Morris chair. And at the reception desk there was no Wesley McDuff registered or ever heard of. I'm sorry sir. So at that I was ready to call it quits. I turned for the door, but before I got there I was stopped. The uniform said bellhop and the sprinkle of freckles plus barn cowlakes said all-American boy.  Say, pardon me sir, but I happened over here you asked after a Scotchman. Wesley McDuff was it? Yeah, you know where he is? Well, yes, and yes, and how much? Ten? Five. Okay, sport five. But let's get out of the traffic, huh?  That's a fresh idea. Thanks. The fiver? Oh, here. Now, where's McDuff? On his way to Burbank, dead drunk. You're crazy. I talked to him less than half an hour ago. He was tone sober and a long way from the party mood. Could be, but 15 minutes ago I helped Lord Ashley Duke pile him into a cab. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Lord Ashley Duke, how does he fit? He found this McDuff in the alley outside. I was just coming back from dinner when I saw him pick the guy up. He couldn't say a word. But a blue shield medical card we found in his wallet, Red Wesley McDuff, 13, Vinelland Avenue, Burbank. Boy, he was out colder than my old man. Now, listen, Junior, here's another five. Tell me in fast, who's Lord Ashley Duke? A nightclub character, entertainer. Lives here with his wife, Lady Ashley Duke, when they're in LA. Well, is he legitimate, this Lord business? No, but he plays it to the hilt. Well, we piled that McDuff into the cab. He dusted his white gloves off genteel-like, slipped the monocly wears into his eye, and grabbed another cab and shoved. He's a phony. His real name is Bird Dukes, and my lady is Gert, and on her it shows... What do you mean shows? That the second she gets behind her door, they got Suite 312. She climbs out of her accent like it was a tight girdle. Especially when she and that niece of hers go at it. Yes, sir, the famous Merrimack cabins are on Route 66 near St. Louis. Oh, good evening, Mr. Fisher. Good evening, Tom. Okay, where were we? The niece, the niece. Oh, yeah, quite a doll. Her name's Merle Brimmer. Acts as a business manager, so she must also have brains. And tell me, who's Cornelius? Cornelius. What's breaking you up? Who is he? Nobody but the star of the act. The Lord and the Lady do a farce thing, a take-off on English drawing room stuff, and Cornelius plays the butler. Plays it in a Derby in a boiled shirt, no less. Oh, why the giggles? You've seen a Derby in a boiled shirt before? Yeah, sure I have. But on Cornelius it looks different.  The affair Cornelius definitely added screwball. But I also knew that prospective client Macduff had been sapped and piled into a cab for good riddance, which could add to less than funny.  When I stepped out of the elevator on the third floor, an old-faced waiter was just piloting a dinner cot loaded down with dirty dishes out of the room. And when the cot juggled out of the car to rug it nearly upset a coffee pot, which left the waiter's mind on the juxtaposition of cot and pot and not the door. Here he'd left open inches. I waited till he passed me. Then I moved up to where I could both see and hear Lady Ashley Duke and her niece Merle, exploding at each other through an after-dinner conversation. The former was built like an upended blimp with as much charm as a mooring mast. The latter was blonde and female, spy-beautiful. And also she was nonchalantly slipping a shiny 32-automatic from desk drawer to purse. Oh, now wait a minute, Gert. Before you snap a stay, you listen to me. Why?  Ten thousand bucks were the bad luck, nuts. Bert don't know anything about investments. He shouldn't be allowed to touch a red scent. And my pretty, from here on out, that's exactly the way it's gonna be, believe me. Got it, Gert. And quit blaming Uncle Bert and me. Are you kidding? Why shouldn't I blame the two of you?  I never wanted you with us in the first place. My niece. Ha!   I'm good for his morale, he says. He'll never let you fire me. So don't waste your breath, auntie. Get out of here.  We don't want to lose Cornelius. Don't worry, darling. Guard duty's an old specialty of mine. Yes, who is it? Name's Marlowe. I'd like to see Lord Ashley Duke. Oh, well, I... Oh, wow. Ah, yes. He's not in, but what did you want to see him about? Oh, a business. Can you help me? Perhaps. You see, I'm his business... So she used to be his business manager. She was just leaving. Weren't you, Merle Darling? Yes, Merle Darling was. Mr. Marlowe, Lady Ashley Duke. Goodbye, auntie. Unhappy, huh? Oh, well, well. Now, sir, to save each other's time, let me be blunt. Lord Ashley Duke is no longer interested in making any investments whatsoever, nor will he be interested at a future date. Is that clear, sir? Yes, like well water, Lady Ashley Duke, and if I were looking for an investor, I'd keep it in mind. But, you see, I'm a private detective working for Wesley McDuff. A paper? A lousy paper? You're pushing his way in here while you're... Easy, easy, Gertie. Let go.  Just as soon as you get back in a neutral. I also want to save us time, and I want to save Cornelius, too. How do we talk a wrestle, witch? Oh, all right. Seven weeks ago, Lord Ashley Duke and I bought Cornelius from that crazy monkey racer out in Burbank. We paid McDuff $30,000 for a run-down 17-year-old chimpanzee. Well, then why do you want to kill him? Yeah, McDuff's crazy. Just because we change our minds, and instead of staying here in LA, decide to go on the road. McDuff thinks Cornelius will catch cold and die. So he wants him back.  Yeah, but what about the seven weeks of work just to teach him to drop a glass? Not only that, he's a wonderful imitator. I can see your point. Besides a deal's a deal. Now, we're taking the risk of Cornelius' death, not the loon who runs that Burbank animal farm. Well, that scotchman thinks every animal in the joint's related to him. It's an old idea, honey. But look, lady- At what? We've had our talk, people.  Go on. Go on.  Over here, Tompkins. What is it? A telephone call, sir. Boot four this way, please. Make that all right up there? Jim Dandy. Good. Now, if you feel I was on the page... I feel we came out even, Buster. Besides, I'm running low on farthings. Unless... Yes? You know where the Freight House Cornelius calls home is located. Uh-uh. Blank. Okay. So long, Tompkins. Hello. Mr. Monroe? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, are you all right, McDuff? Uh, it is going to discover in many minutes. What do you mean? That I've run out of patience. Oh, now, wait a minute. Now, look, man. I want you to be me... You can't steal it, McDuff. Yeah. McDuff, I can't go along with that. Then I... Besides McDuff, you'll never get away with it. There's a girl, Ashley Duke's niece, who's got a gun. And I... McDuff. McDuff! From the phone booth through the lobby and in my car outside, I kept telling myself three things. One, I wasn't working for McDuff.  And three, I couldn't worry about the gun and Merle Brimmer's purse. It was all none of my business. So, when I was in behind the wheel of my car, I pointed it toward my apartment on Franklin, lit a cigarette and forgot about the whole thing.  Scots with animal farms in Burbank obviously weren't the only crazy people in Los Angeles. After arriving at Pershing Square, I was 30 minutes piling up wisecracks, frozen stares and assorted giggles before I hit pay dirt. A bottle boy with a great memory. Yeah, sure. I know the place. Only spot around in the ship live animals or the rest of the stuff that they handled. Anything from a needle to an elephant. How about pink ones? They got those, too. That's what I thought. Yeah, I worked there once during the Christmas rush. Made the price of a fifth in one day. Now, look, look, you'll do it again right now if you can tell me one thing. The address. What is it? It's 44...  Stick with it. 4th Street. And a boy. Here's five. Crawl back in a bottle. I'll see you. The neighborhood was half-residential, half-industrial, and all rundown, including the Freight House, which was two windowless stories of dirty red brick, hovering over a loading ramp on a deserted shadowy street. I thought it slowly taught it when suddenly a side door flew open and an excited old man with flashlight and giant key ring that spelled Night Watchman leaped out of the building arms and legs going like twin beaters on a Mixmaster. Help me, I can't catch you myself. Hey, hey, pop, hold it. Is it the chimp? Yes, and he's raising the roof in there. Yeah?  He's worth a fortune. Yeah, I know all about it.  Oh, okay, good. Well, let's go. Where is he? Upstairs, hanging in one window at the back. I just turned the lights on and there he was. Oh. When he seen me, grabbed a stick from the floor and started beating things with it. Oh, fine. And then he broke the window and began to swing on the blocking tackle that runs outside from the roof to the ground. Look, there he is. Yeah, still beat him. Hey, pop, he's gonna fling it. All right, pop, we better call the cops. Over there. Near his empty cage. It's a girl.  Holy smoke. Merle Brimmer. Beat the death with a stick the chimp just threw at us. Then, then you think the monkey did it? I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. He's a great imitator. Pop, it could have been somebody else. Not the monkey, then who? Who else? A monkey's uncle. A Scotchman named Mac Duff. In just a moment, the second act of Philip Marlowe. But first, Groucho Marx will make another of his famed personal appearances on most of these same CBS stations this Wednesday night. Groucho Marx, whose many activities include emceeing You Bet Your Life, one of the craziest quiz shows on the air. You're cordially invited to hear Groucho Marx every Wednesday on CBS. Now with our star, Gerald Moore, we return to the second act of Philip Marlowe. In tonight's story, the monkey's uncle. I walked around the body of a girl on the freight house floor. I took a close look at the cage lock. There was no doubt that it had been forced from the outside. The watchman staring down at the body was shaking like a motorcycle with square wheels. I took him by the arm and walked him down the stairs and outside with some air. It's terrible. I don't know what to do. Nothing like this ever happened here before, and the boss never told me what I'm supposed to do in a case like this. Well, it's easy. Just call the police. The police? Yeah. Also the SPCA and Frank Buck. Chances are we'll need them all before the night's over. Okay, Mr. Sangsash. Hey, who's that getting out of that cab? From the top hat cap and spats. I'd say it was one lord, Ashley Duke, the legal owner of the chimp. What are you two blighters staring at him out of my way? Just a moment. Just a moment before you go inside. I want to talk to you, Lord Ashley Duke. You know my name, do you? Well, now, my job. That's interesting. I don't know you, sir. I'll survive. Why'd you come down here tonight? Because I heard that my niece was here, protecting my property. And that's no suitable task for a girl not capable to do that sort of thing, you know? There's a man's job, you know? And a beastly time finding the place, too.  Oh, yes. A couple of days ago. That was in broad daylight. One thing more. Did you slug Wesley McDuff tonight and dump him in a cab? Just who are you, anyway? Private Detective Philip Marlowe's name. Sounds British enough. About as British as you are. Oh, yes.  Yes, sir. That's me, Your Highness. What about McDuff, Your Highness? There's no choice. The blighter wanted to welch on the transaction we've made. I refused and he threatened me. So I bopped him. Made out he was intoxicated, you know?  Oh, yes. When a man sells me a monkey, that monkey is mine.  Well, it didn't. It made him tougher. And what's more, the chimpanzee is gone. Cornelius is gone. Wait a minute. Come on. What's happened to him? Oh, no. Merle. Merle, baby. That's the way she was when we found her. And that crazy monkey was in here and down like he was throwing a fit. It was McDuff. McDuff. That's who it was. Madman. I don't know, but I'm going to find out. You stay here. The company architectural blunder next door was one of those big gingerbread houses left over from the 1800s. And I got there just in time to meet the witch. The scaly front portal was jerked open in front of me and there she stood. Like a pool cue and high panicked top by a head of brittle orange hair half down up tightened curlers. The other half streaming over her face. I was alone with one hand and me with the other one. Hold it. What's going on? Oh, that face. What face? Calm down and tell me what happened. I was upstairs in my room taking my shirt down. When I happened to look over at the window and before I took the cue, I missed it. And hair all over it. One of them giant gorillas got in the moon. That's Cornelius, all right. Where's the room? Up there at the head of them stairs. Come along. Cornelius is a trained chimp. He won't hurt you. Oh, you mean he can't get through to the alley? Yeah, yeah, that's right. All right, come on. Let's get outside. We got him cornered.  Not me.  The air shaft was a scant 18 inches wide and as dark and cluttered as the inside of a goat pen without as to mesh. I worked my way back as far as the bashful light from the street leech. Oh, be careful in there, mister. And I stopped and listened. But Cornelius was a genius. There wasn't a sound.  I decided to try psychology on him. So I called and what I hoped was a firm but friendly voice and it got me no place. I groped my way along the wall of the drain pipe and called again. This time shorter on the friendly and longer on the firm, which was a mistake. The drain pipe should have given me a hint, but it didn't. Oh! What's the matter? He's gone. Who's gone? That gorilla. It was up on the drain pipe. It hit you on the head with something that ran right past me and got away in a taxi. Oh, come on. Let's get out. Wait a minute, baby. I could have sworn you said the monkey took a taxi. Yeah, you did. I watched the whole thing. Oh, my. As soon as it got out in the street, a man in a checkered tan with a crooked stick in his hand came out from between them buildings over there and called it. They ran up to a taxi. The driver jumped out and they drove away. I don't think you took the cue as soon enough. Well, I seen something else, too. A fat breed in a high hat and spats came charging out of the freight house there.  Holy smoke, that's my car. Oh, it's gone. How do you like that? Yeah. Now maybe you believe me, huh? Every screwy word, sweetheart. Now look, you didn't happen to see... No. Well, look, that's the cab driver there. Did anybody see what happened? I gotta have a witness. My taxi was hijacked off of me by two crazy guys. One of them looked like an ape, exactly like an ape. Move over, bud. We're on the same raft. My car's gone, too. Tell me what happened. Will you start at the top? Okay. Tonight I bring this big shot in a high hat down here to the freight house. He hops out, tells me to wait, see? Yeah. So I drive down the block and turn around. I park right over there trying to grab a quick 40-winks. When up comes this loon... A Scotchman? Yeah, that's him. He throws me a fast address and starts getting in, see? I politely tell him the flag is down. But he keeps coming. Yeah, I know. It's just like him. Now look, did you ever see this Scotchman before? No, never. I figure maybe he's got a snoot full of happy days. Nothing more. So I'm reaching over to block him when a pair of hands that feels like a doormat with muscles grabs me around the neck. I twist around and look, and what do I see? Cornelius. Him I don't know, but an ape man is crawling in my wind. So help me, I'm rubbing noses with a missing link. Yeah, I know. Then what happened? Mac, I jump out of the taxi, and before I know it, the old geezer gives me a claw with his stick, piles in, the next thing my taxi is gone just like that. You gotta believe me, somebody's gotta bug me up. If I try this on the cops, they'll have me in a padded cell in no time. Don't worry about it, fella. Just reach hard for that address the Scotchman gave you. Can you remember it? Oh, sure. Let me see. It was the... The Rushmore. That's down at the Hills Motel out on Vernon. Somewhere around the Beverly Boulevard. Ed Nations. Oh, stepped on something here on this sidewalk. Oh, you sure did, cutie. Smashed it too. It looks like somebody's watch crystal. Sure, lady's watch crystal. Oh, nice one. See, it had this hunk of black ribbon with it. Lady's one. Hey, wait a minute. Let me see that. Sure, here. Velvet, see? Yeah, yeah, sure is. It doesn't fit not here. No one's been here but the three of us in the chimp. So long, kids. Hey, hey, wait. Where are you going?  I'll see you later at headquarters, I hope. Talk to the night watchman in the freight house. She'll be good for each other. I was two blocks on foot finding another taxi and 15 minutes getting from there out to the motel, worrying all the way. Because I'd left my gun under the front seat of my car. Business was slow at the Rushmore. The only cabin that showed light was the last in the rear next to the alley. I was sure of what I'd find inside. In spite of the fact that neither the stolen cab nor my coop was any place in sight. When I heard the voices, I decided to bluff it. I went up to the front door and pressed my ear against the flimsy panel. Anyway, a bargain's a bargain, but, Duff, you'd have done better to stick by it.  Don't reach for your chain. I was a little late for that. You're in a real jam now. I'm going to see you blame for my niece's murder. But I didn't kill her. I pushed her down. She got me unlocking Cornelius Cage and tried to stop me. But I didn't kill her. You did that. Yes, yes, but who knows that? Except you and the monk there. And he can't talk, and you won't believe me. Ah, you daft man. Why did you do it? Because I had to. Because Merle was bleeding me to death. Every cynic laid my hands on. I had to buy her silence. I had to pretend to lose thousands and poor investments. Well, Merle got what was coming to her and you gave me that chance. I found her on the floor where you left her and simply finished the job. Then you ran off and came back in that taxi 15 minutes later, the very spirit of innocence. I saw you. Very well, Lord Ashley Duke. You've got me as a thief too, so get on with it. Get on with it. Filt the evil plan. I'm ready. Don't be in a hurry, McDuffs. Here we are, Ashley. Don't bother turning around. Just drop the gun. Oh, I knew you'd know. Let me down, lady. I knew it. What's this, old boy? Skip the accent, Bert. You won't need it where you're going. Drop that gun, I said. Or you'll move. Shoot me with that pipe in your pocket. I've got your gun here in my hand and you know it. Want a bet? Well, with the light out. Yes, Ashley! Oh! It's a very strange thing, lad. He hit you but once. There are two lumps on your skull. You can miscondition. Never mind. Skip it. I don't want to talk about it. Where's Ashley? Thrust up there in the corner. He should be coming around soon. Cornelius, as you've no doubt learned, is a great imitator. When he saw Ashley bat you on the head with a gun, he grabbed McCain, leaped up on the dresser there, and batted Ashley on the head. Oh, no. Not with this headache. I'll tell me I'm indebted to that. Just when I was learning to hate him. We both are. For our lives. But tell me, what does a black velvet ribbon and a watch crystal mean? He mumbled that over and over while you were out. Well, that's how I knew Ashley was a liar and a killer. See, the cab driver stepped on a round piece of glass that looked like a watch crystal with a ribbon attached. Happened on the sidewalk in front of an air shaft. Actually, the... Actually, the glass was a monocle. Oh, drop my lord, Ashley Duke, eh? No. Ashley'd never been at that spot. No? But if Cornelius had, and if Cornelius dropped a monocle, it indicated that Lord Ashley Duke had been someplace with Cornelius early at night, you see? That could only be the freight house. And Ashley claimed he hadn't been there for two days. Oh, I see. Oh, you do. Oh, my head. How about you, Cornelius? Yeah, well, that's one of the best answers I've had tonight. It didn't take long at police headquarters. Maybe an hour altogether. A killer was locked up for trial and the key witness ate three erasers, spilled a quarter of ink and broke a window.  I watched the phony lord Ashley Duke walk down the corridor to his cell. Any connection he had with man was just the category. And I watched McDuffin Company leave, too. A couple of regular guys.  A monkey's uncle.  And his shuffling friend whose only limitation was his inability to speak. But he communicated all right. In the only language that means anything. Love of one creature for another. The Adventures of Philip Marlowe bringing you Raymond Chandler's most famous character, star Gerald Moore are produced and directed by Norman McDonnell and are written for radio by Robert Mitchell and Gene Levitt. As a special note of interest, Philip Marlowe fans, you'll be glad to know that Radio and Television Life Magazine has this week named Gerald Moore as the best male actor in radio. Featured in our cast were Mary Lansing, John Daener, Tudor Owen, Sam Edwards, Michael Ann Barrett, Harry Bartell and Junius Matthews. This special music is composed and conducted by Richard O'Rant. Be sure and be with us again next week when Philip Marlowe says... This time a case-hardened car hop knocked me down a flight of stairs. An honest woman was strangled by a green silk sash and a simpering dandy was shot to death. All because of a run-of-the-mill traffic accident 500 miles away. You hear them all on CBS and one of the funniest parts of that all comes from the birdbrain of a woman, Miss Gracie Allen of Burns and Allen. Top troopers on the American stage for years, top radio stars after that, George and Gracie are now playing a big part in CBS's Great Wednesday Night lineup. Bing Crosby, Groucho Marx, George and Gracie, Dr. Christian Join George Burns and Gracie Allen this Wednesday night on most of the same CBS stations. This is Roy Rowan speaking. Now, stay tuned for Pursuit, which follows immediately over most of the same CBS stations. This is CBS where Burns and Allen are heard every Wednesday night at the Columbia Broadcasting System.


Fantastic. Hello everyone to wherever you may be in the world today. We are excited to hear from some folks from Athabasca University on new use and remix, assembling interdisciplinary high school secondary STEAM OER, which Stella has already told us kind of compliments the previous session that we heard from Byron here talking about AI and data science. So I'm excited to learn more about this and by the way my name is Christina. I'm the director of primary and secondary education for open ed global. I'm joined by my colleague Marcella Morales who is serving as our tech facilitator here. We are here to help and facilitate this session but we know that these folks are more than capable of keeping your attention with their lovely presentation and their work. So take it away folks. So good morning everyone. So we're talking about an interesting project that the three of us have been working on along with a number of other colleagues around assembling some interdisciplinary STEAM resources for high school. So before we start though at Athabasca we really always recognise that we are and acknowledge that we're on and we work on traditional lands of the indigenous people of Canada. You know it the First Nation and the Métis and we honour the ancestry heritage and gifts of the indigenous peoples and give thanks to them and we very are appreciative of where we are in the world where we are situated and although we're an open university many of us do live and work within Canada in all different areas and so it's very important for us to acknowledge the land and the peoples. Other acknowledgements are also people that are making this project possible so not only did we work on this but Athabasca and Callisto as you just heard from in the previous presentation have helped us immensely doing this project and our sort of principal funders but we also the PIMS Institute is also very important to us in their relationship with Callisto and providing the Jupiter hub network and of course Sherk is one of our fund. Oh sorry very sensitive keep up. So who are we? Well today I will put myself in there so I'm assistant prof at the Baskering Computing and Information Systems. I work in the ethics of AI and you'll see why I'm on this project a little bit later on. James. Hi I'm James Greenwood Lee I'm an assistant professor in applied mathematics at Athabasca University and sort of my area of focus in mathematics is in mathematical modeling. And good morning everyone my name is Dr. Connie Blomgren and I am an associate professor at Athabasca University and I am part of this team working from the pedagogy side and we also have two research assistants on the project with us Brad Skeet who's a teacher and vice principal at the Meadow Ridge School in Okatoks here in Alberta. Brad works very much around the practicalities of creating the design of how this the work that we're doing will transition and be available as an OER resource that makes sense to teaching community. And then we have lovely Bubbly Liliana who works as our software developer and data scientist and Liliana is working principally on the Jupiter notebooks and the technology gods being in our favor we hope that you'll be hearing from her later today. So over to you Connie. Thanks so much Stella we are interested to hear your questions and what we decided it would be best that we walk you through the project so you have an understanding and if you have questions please put them in the chat box James and I will be monitoring that and we will you know invite some conversations and questions after we've talked about the project overall but as you will see there are a lot of moving parts and parts and more parts to this process and project so I think it's helpful to kind of get the overview in in your understanding of what's going on and then we can dive in and have some interesting conversations about what we are learning as we're going along. So it is an integrated STEAM approach and we're looking at how to introduce high school students to the concept of sustainable design through form and function and this involves the four perspectives of the discipline there's disciplines of architecture biology computing and mathematics which normally of course in high school and in higher education they are primarily taught within their disciplines and their silos but to help students recognize how important understanding computational thinking the role of modeling mathematical modeling through genetic algorithms the project is working to try and create some process based OER learning activities and lessons through a design learning plan process and so we're collaboratively developing these materials through by accessing the faculty at Athabasca University in architecture biology computing mathematics and then myself in pedagogy. So we are trying to challenge learners to both learn and apply computational thinking to real world phenomena maybe next slide yes so here's the the conceptual framing and so what you can see is that we have Jupiter notebooks using python coding is sort of the envelope or the wrapping that covers our ability or our attempt to integrate and work in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ways to help students understand the connections that are coming from the natural sciences primarily biology and the idea of genetics and then how that relates to mathematical modeling but also because of the design aspect its purpose you know its purposeful design for sustainability and then how computational thinking can also again describe and be a language to talk about how there can be changes to be sustainable to have mathematical models. Of course I am not the expert in this area this is more for James and Stella to speak to and this is why as I said it's very interdisciplinary and we each bring our own perspectives to the discussion of how to work together we have faculty I think there's easily we have a list at the end but there are a lot of people at Athabasca that have an interest in the project and are providing feedback and comments in different ways so we're working on these design plans to create learning activities that will support the overall goal of helping students understand what it means to have computational thinking with situations that they can relate to. We'll use some essential questions and we'll talk about the design plans a little bit later and I'll let James we'll talk about the origin story of the project and then he can bring forward that one word that you're probably wondering about what is co-operatition and I'll let James explain that fast. So James over to you. So James over to you. Thanks Connie um yeah so so this project has an an interesting origin story it came about from a essentially a brainstorming session in which you know myself and my colleague Douglas McLeod from architecture here at AU we're in a meeting with James Colliener who's the the director of the Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences of PIMS and the meeting was actually focused on other things it was it was focused on you know potential partnership between Athabasca University and PIMS and research work and whatnot so it came from a very sort of organic I would say conversation one that was really grounded in real-world research and I think that's sort of important here and I'll get into that later on but for now what really where this came from was Douglas and James were having a conversation and Douglas being an architect is very interested in and of course design and you know communities but also sustainable communities you know architects are beginning to see the future in which and I don't want to put words in their mouths but I guess I kind of have to in the situation but seeing a future in which buildings aren't just sort of within environments but they're integrated into environments that they sort of play a role that they sort of minimize their impact on our environments and that they perhaps are even sort of playing a role in generating energy or you know integrated into other chemical cycles or natural cycles of the of their built in their environments so you know not only smarter communities but more integrated communities and and it turned out this this conversation was happening because James and Douglas both have sort of this interest in these these future communities and so we were talking about approaches of how to you know how does design work and I actually come from an evolutionary biology background and so one of the things that I'm grounded in is this sort of natural selection and adaptation processes and how those processes can lead to you know we don't really say it in sort of the biology world as design but there's this sort of that natural intuition that natural selection sort of creates you know it doesn't design specifically but what it does is it generates really great solutions for complex problems and and the mechanism that it goes through to do that is essentially trial and error and so through this conversation we sort of went from um this idea of architecture and design uh to well how could we you know which is quite a complex problem and if we're trying to integrate into natural environments and the complexity of doing that how could we do it well perhaps a natural solution is to just emulate what natural selection does because natural selection is very good at finding solutions to integrate into natural environments obviously um and then and then from there you pivot well how would you do that and and the question or the answer of course becomes well you you can't do it the way the natural selection does because that takes millions of years but you could model that and you could simulate it in in a computer environment and at the end of it we sort of had this proposal for this this project um I'll speak about challenges later because obviously there's a complexity to it but um you know this sort of wrapped up the goal of the project which is is to really you know highlight that we often think about mathematics and computing and computational thinking as sort of being um very uh tied to to a particular way of thinking um but I think this origin story actually sort of reflects that that it's not all about sort of the algorithms and the computation that it's it's really about um you know looking for inspiration that there's the side of computational thinking that isn't about the technical it's about the inspiration and the concepts and so that sort of reflected in our goal which was ultimately we wanted to aim for students to recognize that computational thinking uh didn't equate to mathematics and computing but rather that mathematics and computing are just tools that we use for computational thinking um yeah so in other words uh you know often and often what we find is that if we approach the problems sort of from that very rigorous technical side uh we may come up short and and what we really need to do is is draw inspiration from outside um and that's sort of the history of genetic algorithms which are tools that we use in computational thinking um and other modified versions of or similar approaches like ant algorithms and whatnot um as we draw inspiration from nature as to see how nature solves the problems and we just simply emulate that process um but what I want to do now is shift a little bit to to sort of speak about what uh I really find compelling about this this project and that's sort of the interdisciplinary and the interdisciplinary nature of it um and the steam aspects and so my plan was to speak a little bit about the challenges we face when we teach and when we learn mathematics and I think it's well recognized that teaching mathematics is difficult you know whether you're at the k through 12 level or post-secondary or what have you there always seems to be this an inherent barrier uh or barriers that can make both teaching and learning mathematics difficult and challenging and I recall as a student um you know certainly being faced with some of these barriers myself and then when you were pivoted into the teaching role it was you know I gained I was like whoa what am I doing here um and it still remains a challenge I you know I teach at the university level now but through distance education and again it's a whole uh it's a whole news set of problems and challenges and you're constantly trying to sort of maneuver and figure out um but what I've I've really kind of learned over the years and and started to question is whether that you know because in some of my conversations uh you know I've I've had colleagues to simply say to me well math is difficult and there'll certainly be some people that'll just never get it and never succeed and and you can't teach to them um and I find that obviously this tastes full like it's inherently um yeah it's a bad taste in my mouth um and so you know what I began to wonder is whether you know essentially the problem is uh whether we make whether mathematics is actually difficult or or whether we make it uh less accessible because of the teaching choices we make um and what I mean by this is that we tend to teach mathematics in a very specific way and we tend to assess mathematics in a very specific way so we place a strong emphasis on mathematics as being unyielding you know a result is either correct or it's incorrect um we place us um this in placing the strong emphasis we we essentially emphasize algorithms over concepts you know like this is the recipe for getting the right answer uh as opposed to you know the concept behind it we emphasize solutions over analysis um and we tend to to to present our students with exercises that they actually sort of grow to fear over problems that really actually captivate them and so what happens is that we ultimately lose the ability to explore and to discover to iterate um the opportunity to be wrong and to learn from it to adjust to correct and to reiterate uh and I think this is a very sort of it's obviously a very important part of learning um but in math I think we sort of you know it's the it's we can sort of default to teaching well here's the problem here's the solution and now I expect you to be able to do that almost instantly uh to be able to regenerate that so one of the tools that I think we can move sort of to so that we move towards more of a discovery process in mathematics is to embrace mathematical modeling essentially as a tool to provide motivation and context for the mathematical concepts we teach and so this really relates back to that sort of origin story of this project you know this wasn't us talking about how to teach a specific topic it came out of a discussion uh based on research it was very much that iterative process was a brainstorming session uh where we were just pitching ideas back at each other and we were really going through that iterative process in which you can sort of discover and learn and be wrong and adjust and and uh and move from there and so um I think you know and modeling is one of those tools there's others there's certainly other tools that we can use within mathematics to to sort of captivate our students better I think but modeling is one of these tools it's the tool that we've adopted here and so why mathematics well um or why modeling and I think there's there's you know there's a number of reasons but I I want to highlight two uh because I find them particularly valuable and uh and actually especially in this climate right now so every day we're sort of reminded of mathematical modeling and it's and its use in society in our in situation of a global pandemic uh you know been presented with the numbers on a daily basis of of the infection uh the number of infections and the rates and you know and the likely behind most of the modeling that's happening is one of these SIR models it's just being updated and reiterated every as the data comes in but getting back to to sort of the reasons of of why modeling I think one of the important reasons is is that we don't always recognize that math has a language so there's sort of these two components to mathematics one is sort of the ideas and the concepts but in presenting those ideas and concepts we're also developing this separate language work and we often ask students to learn that just on the fly without any sort of explanation of what that language is and that can be a lot to take in and different students will will be able to to grasp that at different rates so I know that for example I struggle with language I took French in in in school as a bilingual student but it's for me language doesn't come naturally and even with mathematics I can say the same thing so as a graduate students there was a point when you know it was a struggle to keep up to a certain point and then finally it was like click the language suddenly clicked in my brain and it made sense and now I could follow along with what was happening and I think we don't always sort of understand that and present that to our students especially in in sort of the K through 12 levels modeling is basically an act of translation it takes a real-world scenario and it forces you to put it into a mathematical language explaining the steps that that you're doing and to actively translate that and I think that can be a very valuable tool for students because it slows that learning of the language process down the other reason of course why I think mathematical modeling is important is because it's it's grounded in in it's grounded in the real world so like I said with you know in today's context we're seeing examples of it every day with the the modeling of the pandemic but it it tends to be interdisciplinary it tends to be transdisciplinary because it's grounded in the real world the idea of modeling is to solve real-world problems and the origin of this problem or origin of this project sorry it came from exactly that you know what happens when you stick a a mathematician a bio-mathematician and an architect in a room together while they came up with this so just to end before I pass this back off to Connie is that I think one of the end goals with this um this project is is that you know we're sort of aiming it at the grade 10 11 level and and I certainly remember being a student at that that level and as a mathematician I can tell you that my own discovery of mathematics didn't really happen until about fourth year university I did my undergraduate in biology and and sort of so as a student I grappled with that a huge old question of you know when will I ever use this in the real world I was I was good at math I could you know crank those algorithms out but I didn't see the the connection and so one of my big hopes is that the materials like what we're endeavoring to create um will sort of create a shift in which students aren't asking that question when will I ever use this in the real world but instead they might you know come out of their mathematics class and say you know wow today I learned about natural selection I learned how natural selection work and in doing so we learned all this math but you know it was it was grounded in something that was sort of fascinating all right so I'll pass it off to Connie now thanks James yes so um of course we're wanting to um think about the A in STEM because the A part is a mechanism and a means to help probably more inclusive and relevant interactions and engagement with you know the science technology engineering and mathematics as a discipline and also of course there's connections among those four but when you add the A into STEM and change it into STEAM something changes it shifts and it's probably moving more into what we would be calling transdisciplinary thinking and then there's a slide coming up that shows a bit about that so also um you know A is a broad you know aesthetics or art um people often think about that in quite a narrow understanding in some ways about what is art and what does that mean to bring it to these subjects and um engaging essential questions actually is a fundamental aspect of the design plans that we are using but additionally there is this idea of a good question is actually poetic and it creates wonder and awe and curiosity which of course you know in psychology is you know considered motivation and then of course then that's good for your learning theories but wonder and awe curiosity imagination these are the elements of a good powerful question so in developing engaging essential questions to guide the inquiry to guide the design plans this is essential so I mean sometimes we think about questions in a very pragmatic manner but there's a beauty and a poetry in good question so as James eloquently described we're really looking at trying to solve real life problems through biology which is a subject often taken by females and yet then looking at interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to what we would consider more the hard sciences so the gender aspects of uh stem and steam are starting to they're underwritten in so much of this and not just females but of course you know many of the students who may initially endeavor to take some of the sciences the hard sciences and recognize that there's something important going on there but yet never feeling completely that they belong that somehow they're on the outside of the periphery of those subjects so we're looking to try and also have a look and feel of the open assets that we are creating and we are using we've hired because of the funding an animation company to create some open assets for us so we're going to some fairly simplistic animations that can be played as a full animation but then also as individual more module aspects and those will have open licenses so the animation company was a bit excited to think that rather than having their work you know with with the copyright held with us um because we were purchasing it through them that they would be able to have you know open licensing on their materials so for the animation company they they thought that was kind of interesting and certainly different and uh so we're looking at um trying to make sure that we have an aesthetic and the novel visual aspects to attract both teachers and students I mean there's something to be said about working with beautiful resources you know something that looks appealing to the eye that makes you go oh right that's interesting how they've used these icons to sort of tag the different aspects of the different learning activities and so just the other day we had an opportunity to look at some initial drafts from the animation company about some styles and I think we've decided on something that would be considered more of a collage which I thought it was we we picked it for lots of different reasons but I I thought collage is really about remix and so how interesting that that is kind of where we felt we had something that was uh and something a little different yet something appealing and so what that looks like we we're not we're still in that process of working with the company but that whole idea of trying to use the visuals to actually create some aesthetics to the project as well um and as I said those animations will be openly licensed and this could encourage remix for the design students so because in high schools in Alberta there are design study classes which are different than art although art 10 20 30 students could also take these open assets the visuals and remix them perhaps you know as part of a project for working with perhaps the biology teacher or the math teacher or whatever so there's many possibilities in how these assets could be sort of played out into the future and then if our budget allows and because of covid some of our budget has shifted so there's potential that we could maybe have what I would call the cool laptop sticker for teachers and students and of course anyone who's been at any of the open education global conferences you know that we love our our stickers and so this year we won't be having any from OE global but in our project I thought that's kind of a it's a nice little something um people like something tactile so that was something that we thought maybe if our budget holds so then moving into some of the ideas of open pedagogy this is from Hegerty's work and she has the eight attributes of open pedagogy and at the top of course is participatory technology and what's important is this whole idea of participation really participation at different times in different ways by different stakeholder groups so we have our we have our larger you know faculty providing input from the different discipline areas and then James myself and Stella and the two research assistants Brad and Liliana are doing quite a bit of the shaping and the actual content creation that is then shared out through different ways for feedback we incorporate the feedback make changes have different discussions and then we are working towards working with teachers in-service teachers to provide comment on the mathematics aspects the design studies and the computational thinking and biology so that process we'll talk about a little bit later in the presentation but so this idea of participation is really integral to the entire project then of course there's you know the aspects of all the other attributes openness and trust people working together innovation and creativity so there's you know always this constant I'm always interested to see the creativity of James and Stella and Brad and Liliana what they bring to the team we talk about ideas and we share them and it's very interesting to see how over time we come up with solutions in different ways we're tying into the connected community of Callisto because they do have a fairly broad Canadian network of teachers that they can support us and are able to help us find teachers for feedback and so of course then we're looking at the ideas and resources and that it's learner generated is not perhaps what the focus of this particular project is about in this current iteration but if those licenses are taken up in meaningful manners by teachers which we have no control or influence over then there could be opportunity for you know students to be sharing out there what they've created so that is more down the down the road then of course reflective practice and peer review those are processes that the design team is engaging in all the time I would probably call this entire project in a way about more about taking the necessary requirements of open pedagogy and translating it into what I would call open design for open pedagogy so on the right we have you know often we talk about discipline or multidisciplinary and of course interdisciplinary but then we have also what we would be calling here transdisciplinary which is not as well discussed as as far as I'm aware and it's something that is probably more what is coming up in the future in education as we look at problem-based learning inquiry models infusing as Brad often talks about especially in the younger years of primary secondary K to 12 so often there is more of a global look at how we understand the world in the younger years and then we start moving into the disciplinary thinking more as they grow up and we're starting to recognize that maybe we need to rethink some of that not to say that disciplinary thinking isn't important but transdisciplinary thinking is also part of the of what we're offering in this project and yeah there we are so Stella your turn and mute works much better okay so as Connie just said it it's not just the content of this course which is interdisciplinary it's interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary it's both it's it's content it's focus but also it's nature of how we work so if we look first we're we're deliberately exploring a complex focus but we're trying to do it in an accessible way I hope you've heard that from the previous slides so when we're looking at the examples we're looking for something that's going to be illustrative but not oversimplified so we want something which maintains its realness but doesn't get too simplistic and we are maintaining a common context through the modules so although we have different disciplinary perspectives we create that interdisciplinary nature by having that common context so in the examples that we're using we're trying to relate them back to architecture all of the time to make the learning activities connect to each other in a more intuitive way without it having to be a taught lesson about why it's interdisciplinary obviously the different perspectives that we have in this the different disciplines that are contributing to it give us a more rounded picture about what's going on as well also create challenges because each discipline has its own focus and has its own agenda of how much it would like to see of it discipline within but we're looking at that meshing between the pieces and then all of the time we're looking at the content we're trying to keep inclusion in mind so we're looking at where points of understanding might fail we're looking at not just providing the resources within the context of the story that we're going through within these learning activities and in the plan but also augmenting it with some resources that provide laddering for learning if students are at a point where you know there's a gap or there's something missing or it's a student group which is doing this that hasn't done you know it's not a typical student group that would be doing this so there may be some other laddering opportunities and some of these activities can be remixed into a separate ladder even so in terms of our focus we're thinking about keeping it interdisciplinary and then in terms of the nature of our collaboration it's very interdisciplinary so we have chosen to make collaborative spaces we use teams we have used we create meetings that are virtual so that we can have an ongoing conversation in collaboration about how we're working on this we vary the size and membership of the collaborated groups to suit the task so it's not the whole group all the time but sometimes it is the whole group and we really want to hear all those voices there's an interdisciplinary tension when we're looking at the balance of competing interests and hearing all the voices but keeping it realistic and keeping everything in and we really are looking to pull on the flexibility of the membership of the collaborative group to create something that is inclusive in in in what's covered and balanced but that also we have all that sharing and communication in and together we're fostering through that communication how we're going to move forward and and within that we in in order to keep that flexibility and to keep that sort of like evolution of the process we need some structure in that whole place to manage it so that the whole project moves along we're not in this evolutionary creative melee all the time so we do have structured points about where we're going to get to but this point of bringing the right people together at the right time to to create and to find that sweet line in all the possible options and ideas is really really important and then the final step is that we're doing and asking for help in areas where we're not you know it's not our specialism so it's not just that we've got interdisciplinary content and into we actually work in an interdisciplinary way and what we're trying to produce I think and what the project is going to get to is this very transdisciplinary overall product at the end of it oh sorry I'm going to have to start resharing hang on maybe while you're doing that Stella we could just pause and take a look at the chat that's a great idea thank you yeah no worries so I see some friendly folks that I know Jennifer Van Allen I met you last night nice to see you here she said her comment I love this as a literacy teacher educator I teach this as a disciplinary literacy and try to help my students see that they need to explicitly teach the language of math so James I think probably going back to something when you were talking there and then Christina brings up a suggestion there's a school in California who uses dream design research engineering arts mathematics and yeah that's a great acronym and James is interested to check that out so I think that would be good for us as well yeah and Christina just has a comment as well talking about the animation company that they were open to open licensing yeah and she says that's the opposite of my experiences with folks who create and she says I do love a good sticker so okay Christina we'll try and save one for you and from Sarah H this project seems like not only an amazing opportunity for students but also for the educators and perhaps pre-service educators as well so yes Sarah we're hopeful that we will be able to try and get some pre-service educators to provide some comment on it and actually it might we talk in a few minutes here about some of the strategies and challenges that COVID has placed upon us so the pre-service teachers they may be able to you know they may in some ways not be as immersed in all the challenges that COVID brings to in person or online teaching that we're experiencing right now so we had thought that we would include them in so we're going to try and look at that possibility as well so I think you're back Stella yeah sorry about that I went off the edge of the page and it got upset so now we're going to move on to what the design planning actually looks like how we've taken this creativity and then and moved right forward into tangible I think it's you again Connie okay so pretty much would like what it's saying here this is the contribution that Brad he created the next couple set of slides here but you know he poses the question like wow how do we bring together mathematics coding biology and architecture and Brad would say we design for learning and so he is very well versed in Wiggins and McTye's universal backward design I think is what it was called initially so there's a link if you're interested to the template and so you formulate the big ideas of this project and then because we're based in Alberta and we're wanting to make sure that it's relevant for Alberta teachers we looked at the curricular objectives that match the project and then with the end in mind wow they we it has been helping us to design activities for assessment and also how these would be incorporated into the Jupiter notebook and so we're in individual stage three activities were designed and so asking the question really as we're designing what are the lessons leading us to in our coding activities and then prototyping was done by teachers to get feed get pardon me to give feedback on the usability which has been very helpful there's a high school teacher who's very interested in the project doesn't teach coding though and doesn't have any background in coding and yet because of reviewing our materials from the point of view of is this interesting and useful from the point of view of teaching mathematics at the high school level is now thinking about hmm what can I how can I move into some computational thinking and and what are the Jupiter notebooks all about so you know again one thing leads to another it seems and so then I think there's at the next slide is shows the design plan template so there okay so if you're not familiar this is just a screenshot of a design plan and it's sort of the basic template that we have been following so you think about the desired results and then you think about the assessment evidence and then you think about the learning plan so really those essential questions and the understandings those are a stage one what do we want them to understand and what are the essential questions that are guiding this now a fourth stage is that because of the highly interdisciplinary aspect of the project but yet also recognizing that in a high school you might have a mathematics teacher thinking that this is the thing to to teach but the biology teacher or the computer science teacher saying no I've got my plan for the year or for the semester I cannot fit that in I you know this isn't going to work whatever we've had to make it's granular so that it can be used only by one teacher in one class so sort of accessing only part of the materials or you know our dream would be for you know all of those teachers to come together and say yeah let's kind of do this collectively and work together with our students so that the pieces are coming together as a whole which is quite a big ask etc so we have to design with that flexibility of sort of being granular but then also perhaps having a collective pathway through all the resources as well so that is a stage four additional aspect that the you know the design plans don't tend to have and then I think the next one here we are so just a close up of from our first design plans you can see the original like the student understandings on the left and the essential questions that are going to be guiding this part this mathematical design plan that's part of the overall project um so you can just see there that the those essential questions are how is the language of mathematics coding used in modeling and so how are mathematical models used to develop and test theory how are mathematical models used to problem solve see that's an interesting question because you know how how do you problem solve in the real world using mathematical models all of a sudden the relevancy and the importance of mathematics are starting to become something more than mathematics for pure mathematics sake and you know when am I ever going to use this mathematics to the practicality and the and the use of mathematics to help us solve problems and the next slide then Stella thank you so the design plans so really we brought together the respective experts and they helped to sort of give the overall necessary concepts and not drilling down too much to the lessons but sort of that the concepts and what do we want we had sketches from the faculty in architecture thinking about how can we design a building that's going to be responsive to the environment and then of course we would like to see how it's not just a building but a collection of buildings in a community responding and being sustainable so it's not just the individual but the community aspect as well we are using creative commons or pardon me OER commons to access the broader open community so our form and function OER will bring together from the design plan and remix those with others when suitable so we're going to try and tap into the good work of other people because of open licenses when when it's appropriate and it fits to remix and have some content that's been created by others and share it out in OER commons as part of our our work and we're still in that process because we're just finalizing the design plans and then come January 2020 we're looking at an OER sprint model of having the high school teachers looking at the design plans probably about 80 complete and so that they could provide commentary and then also brainstorm and generate maybe some new either learning activities or assessments that fit with what we have put together so we're still in that process of thinking about how that's going to look sort of a synchronous slash asynchronous model again because of COVID being a bit of a challenge there that's the next January 2021 because oh yeah I mean I want 2022 have existed I know no I want to just jump over that 2020 anyways here's a sample of the animation and just you know we're talking with the company just giving you a little look there about you know kind of building be more than a beautiful space as part of the dialogue and then the animation company Kelly and has been very helpful in doing a lot of research I think he's finding an interesting project and looking looking at sort of like Frank Lloyd Wright and there's in the background sort of a second hill and of course Frank Lloyd Wright was very famous for his ability to integrate and reflect the landscape and the foliage and so integrating into the natural ecologies of the environment in which the buildings occur. So Lilliana has been working on using Jupiter notebooks for us so what Jupiter notebook is I think Byron talked about this in the previous talk essentially it's an interactive tool in which you can embed code and then run the code as the student goes through it so you can have a digital notebook with pieces of useful lesson type information then pieces of code embedded within and you can run them to either illustrate a point that you're making or to demonstrate how a piece of code works and we use that within this course so and and the other thing the other reason that we use that is and then Lilliana was very good at talking about this is that they the notebook itself really supports the ability to be a computational thinker it allows it allows the the person interacting with the notebook to tinker to try out new things to create new stuff to work on the fly and experiment with what's going on and the way we've written pieces of code we're working on architecture so we have sliders which then change the dimensions of the room and then make the calculations based on you know at the footprint the area base area of the of the house or the volume of the house the number of windows that are in the house the depth of the insulation on the walls so through using this interactive tool we've allowed very easy manipulation of the basic characteristics that will change the dimensions and possibilities of what the successful piece of architecture and so that computational thinking part is really simple to interact with and so then really really sort of encouraged for the for the students and Lilliana has put in a a demonstration of this but I actually think it's it's probably time wise not worth going through this but if you pull up the presentation you can interact with the presentation but it just shows you here very much what it looks like there's a bit of a piece of instruction and then code to run and a button you press run on the on the bar up here it runs the piece of code it'll draw you the space that you need now as it's stuck in a loop that's it okay so Connie want to talk about the next steps where we're going after we've completed sure I think we're pretty much getting close to out at time here but so we're moving forward we're going to have our lessons and activities on OER Commons and then also oh that should be learnful with an L.ca sort of a Canadian new learning open ecology platform somewhat similar to OER Commons as I mentioned we're going to have the sprint model at the end of January to help ensure that there's teacher prototyping and usability and then eventually publish those through OER Commons and learnful and I'm not sure that we have time to look at the next one so they're pretty straightforward these parts I don't know what we want to do for time I think we're close to being out so Christina if you can give us some guidance there what we need to be doing yes well we are at time right now but we I know that you had mentioned posting your slides in oeg connect and so we are happy to do that and continue the conversation over at oeg connect Marcella is already on it um if you want to upload your materials there we will encourage folks to follow up over there um and then I'm going to follow up with you specifically about my question so you're welcome thank you all so much for sharing the work that you're doing it sounds like an incredible kind of feat I would say right now especially given the fact that we are in a global pandemic and trying to figure out what that means for everyone so thank you so much for sharing the work that you're doing really appreciate it and again we'll continue the conversation over an oeg connect should you have any further questions then we will do that okay well thank you all so much thanks very much for your time thank you thank you thank you so much it's been good


Hello and welcome to the Dave Trumbo show presented by Buffalo Wildlings I'm Greg Royce joined by Stevenson Beach volleyball head coach Dave Trumbo coach You wrap up your season a little more than a week ago at the small college national championship First time you were in with the with the other division twos and the other division threes and division twos and Kind of finished about six plays kind of about where you were seated So just kind of talk about how that went starting with pool play Yeah, well, it's a three-day tournament And it's the first time they've had all the NCAA division twos and division threes together There was ten division twos and two division threes counting ourselves And we went and seated seventh and on Friday. We had three matches. Our second match was against st. Leo who? Beat us badly with during our spring break trip But we didn't have the same lineup we had jang was back in the lineup of ones And so our lineup was completely different and we literally won three matches By two points that went three And so we ended up beating them three to two Yeah, and but then we played Eckert So then there was torrential rain and lightning and all that and they postponed so you had to play eight o'clock the next morning We played Eckert 12 seed couldn't beat him. Yeah They were really good. Yeah, and we did not play well that morning. So we that put us Into it still put us in a silver bracket Yeah For the challenge Actually for the challenge and put us in a group of three. Yeah We came out of that Which was saturday in the silver bracket for sunday Top four teams are in the gold Five six seven and eight are in the silver. Yeah, I thought considering all the other d2 teams there. That was pretty good Yeah But wouldn't you know it would play st. Leo's first And it literally came down it was two to two and it came down um It was a two-point game that we didn't win. So we ended up losing three two. Yeah, so we kind of got tied for sixth Which was about what we were seated. So, you know all in all, I thought it was it was a good showing Yeah, certainly like you said Especially coming back there that team like st. Leo who was I think seed ahead of you And you were able to come back and beat them after you lost him earlier in the season And um, like you said when you came mostly to vision two schools to kind of finish mid-pack in that bracket Certainly a big accomplishment for you know one of the two division threes there right on and the ones I mean the two teams in the gold that we did play Um, we competed against spring hill. We we took we lost four to one and and the ones were really close The fours were pretty close too. Yeah, uh, so I was pleased. I thought we made great strides Especially in our strength and conditioning with uh, tony. Um, I think we got a lot stronger and um We are getting more out of our team now as they embrace beach and the cold and the cold or weather Yeah, uh, we got a lot more practice days in again. Yeah, absolutely Now the good news from beach is that you had no seniors this year. That's right So, you know kind of building on this year, you know competing that division two and three nca bracket for the first time Kind of see where you stand knowing that you can compete with those teams has to be a confidence boost moving forward Absolutely and the stronger our top five can be That's the key. Yeah, even if you're if your fives win you get one point if your ones win you get one point Uh, and with some of the freshmen we have coming in here the competition to be in that top five next year Is going to be very interesting. Uh, so I am really looking forward to getting everyone back Plus the addition of the freshmen. I think we're going to be we're going to be ready. Yeah, they are talking about There's two more d3 teams that out of beach this year. They're talking about a d3 national championship next year If they can get four of the five to come they're going to do it. Yeah So kathy de beer executive director of the abca was alluding to that when we were down there Yeah So we'll see what happens. Yeah rowing sport. Yeah, absolutely It's exciting to see more division three teams and teams at all divisions out of the sport And certainly an exciting sport if you haven't had a chance to come out wash it Certainly, uh, certainly entertaining for volleyball. It really is it really is and the fact that you guys streamed I don't think anybody Streams maybe the national championship But you know the exposure that stevensson's getting from beach volleyball and you know, joe did just a fantastic job Um with his crew out there on that day streaming and so everybody could watch us play. Yeah, absolutely All right coach, we thank you for your time all year not just during the beach season up for the indoor as well It's indoor season now greg. It is a few months away. So, um I'm sure we'll chat again in the fall, but again, thanks for your time all year and Like I said, we'll chat, you know, probably in mid august. I'm looking forward to it. All right for Dave trembo. I'm greg rois This has been the Dave trembo show