Hello, everybody. Thank you all, and thank you especially to the indefatigable and unflappable Fiona for helping us so much this morning. And the bad news is I wasted all my energy and anything I could ever say in the gossip. And now that's done, I'm not enough to say or any, I don't expect anything creative or anything. I'm going to give some academic references and do some stuff like this. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about kindness and try and unpack some ideas around this and talk a little bit about that maybe. And I have a desert picture here and a title of archeologies of the heart and search for the practice that cannot be practiced. We can't actually practice. So I choose to say I'm an associate professor of digital learning from Double City University. So my name is Emma Costello, it's over here. And I'll give you a speculative provocation, which is imagine a world without kindness. So think about that for a minute and try and think about that idea. And what I should have called my talk was if we lived in a world without tears. Does anybody know this song? This is a song by Lucinda Williams. If I could sing, I would sing it for you. If Rike had this lovely thing where you can jump to the future and then you can work your way back. So if I jump to the future and I could sing, I would try and sing it, not as good as Lucinda Williams, I'll try and sing it now just for a second. If we lived in a world without tears, how would bruises find the face to lie upon? How would scars find skin to etch themselves into? How would broken find the bone? So it's a lovely thing about imagining something without tears. And this is a nice analogy because if we didn't have kindness, we would have some kind of an arid world that would suggest you. Some kind of a desert landscape. So I've got a desert theme going on. And although it is virtually ignored by sociologists, this is, I've got to use academic references now today. I've got to make sure and get my chops in as an academic. But this is a lovely paper by Brownlee and Anderson thinking sociologically about kindness. And they're sociologists and they did some cool stuff going into libraries and looking at kindness in, doing kindness, all that's actually just great research in the library literature on this. And we feel it keenly by its absence, right? So that's a kind of key theme I'll suggest you, but this idea of presences and absences, we don't know something until it's missing. So why, why kindness? Okay. What is this about? Why should we be talking about this stuff? Thank you about this. And I will suggest to you that one of the reasons I think it's important to talk about these type of things is because of the negativity bias. So we have this negativity bias. A lot of modern cognitive science is telling us this about cognitive biases and the negativity bias is a big one. And the classic one is I'm walking along in the forest and there's something there. Is that a stick or is it a snake? And nine times out of 10, it's just a stick. But I am primed to scan my environment for threats. I get the sense sometimes that every time I'm in an interaction with another person, I'm thinking, am I safer? Am I unsafe? I'm asking myself these two questions. And a lot of environments we go into, we do this. We're asking ourselves, am I safe or am I unsafe? And like this is in education environments, I walked into my classroom this year and had this big sign, no eating or drinking in class.  It's just blue tacked up to the wall and it looks blank. That's ruining my room. So I took down all these signs that said, no eating or drinking in class. And I brought food into the class that the students could eat. And we ate in the class. And I gave the students my credit card and my pin number. From to go to the shop and buy some food, right? So that we could eat in the class. And that was a kind of possibly a reckless thing to do. But I was trying to make a point as well about the signs we put up in learning spaces and what that says about us and how we feel welcome in spaces. And this is in online environments too. Because the first thing I went to my online environment, my Moolo class, the template, it says plagiarism policy, right? That's the first thing the students see in the department. So it says, we don't trust you. And we have this, we start building up these trustless systems. And at least solutionism, because we have this kind of feeling of not enoughness, right? So we're always trying to fix things and fix ourselves and all this stuff. So we have this relentless solutionism and this manifests everywhere.  We're trying to just fix everything all the time. And you see that you can see this everywhere. It's great. You can see it in academic literature. We're trying to find the gaps in the literature. What is the gap? And if you look at Pat Thompson's website, where she talks about great advice for PhD researchers, she talks about other ways you can analyze literature without looking for gaps in the literature and seeing we're going to find the gap and plug the gap. And it's more about problematization and stuff like that. So we could have solutionism. We could have trustless environments, or we could have appreciative inquiries. So Max talked about appreciative inquiry yesterday, which is lovely. So I've changed the picture of the snake into a branch there. And a little cherry blossom. And one of the things we could do in appreciative inquiry is we could have gratitude for things, right? We could choose to pay attention. Because we're primed for the negativity bias, that's taken care of. You don't need to worry about worrying. You're going to do that. But what you need to do is tool up a little bit more. What I suggest we should do, I'm not going to tell you what you need to do, is tool up a little bit more on positivity. Why not? Why don't we give it a try? So we could have gratitude for things. Now I have a lot of gratitude for Fiona, for helping me. Thank you. And also just for things like electricity. There's electricity here. And I was at the EADTU conference with Rob and Martin, and lots of wonderful people this year. No, it was last year, it was in Italy. And there was a lady there from Nigeria, and she was talking about the pandemic and the electricity. The problems with electricity and stuff. I was like, these are problems I do not have, but I don't even know I don't have.  So many. There's so much that we have, but we don't even see it. There's electricity. So my colleague Nargis is working on this project with me, my colleague Nargis Mohamedi from Afghanistan. She used to tell me lovely stories about being in Afghanistan, going to school, university there, and there are struggles with electricity and Wi-Fi. And she's a great storyteller. And like, they'd be running through the shop, charge up their laptop, come home, go online to this pandemic madness, you know. And she told it beautifully. And it was just like, I was like, man, we have this stuff all the time. What would happen if electricity went away? Right? We'd be in trouble. And kindness could be like this. It could be some kind of invisible human infrastructure that we have, that we don't even know we have. Imagine. Now Nargis came to Dublin and she left Afghanistan because the Taliban came in, her university got bombed. And the university is now banned Afghanistan to women and post primary school, secondary school as well as banned to women now in Afghanistan since I told Nargis, Nargis, you came from the future to us because she got a degree in Kabul University. And now she came to Ireland.  And everything we have now, we're complaining about stuff, ah, management and all of this, that and the other. And I wish I was something else. I'm only an associate professor. Well, we have so much. Right. So what is kindness? So I talked about maybe it's some kind of infrastructure thing that we have. Appreciate it. So Brownlee and Anderson, they said the inverse of evil does exist a web or infrastructure of low level everyday kindness upon which much else depends. So so and they give a good definition of kindness. And they have their construct of kindness as four aspects to it. It's infrastructure quality, which we talked a little bit about. It's unobligated character. So it's not transactional. It's micro interpersonal focus and it's atmospheric potential. This is nice. So I was going to university one day and this guy on a bike, a delivery guy, and he dropped his phone or something. I picked it up from and we had this beautiful moment where we were just helping each other. I needed to send to him and it improved my day so much. Just a little thing, you know, and it was unplanned, unconditioned. So now, so that's kindness between people. Okay. Kindness is infrastructure. I just throw out another idea as well, which is we can have this is a book by Robert Bayer, a Buddhist teacher. And he's got this idea about meta to phenomena. So meta is loving kindness in Pali. And he's talking about this strange idea about being kind to stuff like rocks and trees and classrooms and your name badge, all this kind of stuff, right? It's actually a brilliant idea. So he's he's a whole book about this kind of stuff, right? And it helps because you have an inner voice, you have an orientation to things. And it's going to affect everything you do has this atmospheric potential. And I tried to write about a bit of this. I kind of was guest was influenced by Rob's work. And I wrote an article about this called Rewild My Heart with Pedagogues of Love, Kindness and the Sun and Moon. And really, I wanted to write a comic book, but no one would let me write a comic is my job description. So I snuck a comic into the middle. I'm not saying the art was really good or anything, but I was kind of proud of the comic. And it's about a character who's being kind to the sun and the moon and starting with these things. And then with words and with essays and classrooms and everything else that we have. So now we're looking at the sun until it's just the sun looking into you. So that was that. So what am I doing for time? What might be problematic about kindness? Anybody? I'm going to pause and ask. Tap into the wisdom of the people we are 23 proud. Rob. So drawing on philosophy a little bit. Nietzsche had some unkind things to say about kindness and the idea of sort of slave morality. Kindness is basically just there to protect weak people from strong people, establish it as a norm, really to sort of constrain strength and people who would otherwise dominate. And so kindness is a kind of like a weak idea, you know, to protect the weak, to protect weak people. Very tale. Well, yeah. Well, it's a sort of inversion of Christian morality in Nietzsche. So Christianity is a dominant thing and the Christian so-called virtues from Nietzsche's point of view is kind of ideas that are there to constrain natural strength and natural dominance. So that might be problematic. I'm not saying I agree with that necessarily. That's good. It's a great critique. And I love Nietzsche. He's fantastic. Does Sprech Saratouzo. One of my favorite books. I've actually read it. Not read many books. And I guess like, you know, we could try and have this attitude where we create all this stuff and we're going to dominate and, you know, trust this environment. We're going to check everything and control everything. And we're going to be strong and dominant. And we can put on this shirt of barbed wire, you know, to protect us from our enemies and it's going to cut the shelves. So the biggest missing was when he had the psychotic breakdown when he was salvaging a horse and he just lost it, you know. Well, the idea is he was kind to the horse. He was kind to the horse. So, but yeah, there's a lot of critique of kindness. I haven't had that one. So that's very helpful to me. Yeah, Mark. I suppose like anything, it can be weaponized. We've been kind of, and it's like, I think you're generally like, we generally do know what kindness is. This absence is a Tory government, you know, that's kind of good. But I guess they might argue they are being kind, you know. People would weaponize, like anything, I guess. Kindness for one group might be an unkindness for another group. Autumn Cairns, weaponization of care. Yeah, this is a big thing. You can use it to sell anything from student exam surveillance systems to baby monitors and cribs. Kindness washing. Kindness washing. Yeah. Beating a child and saying, I'm doing this out kindness to you. Exactly. Gotta be cruel to be kind. A lot of people say this, right? So these are some of the things. And one of the ways this arises in Memphis is sometimes we're unwilling to admit to ourselves that there could be such a thing, that it's not real. Two minutes. One the other side. And Unwind has got a beautiful stuff on this. This is an amazing report, right? By Julie Unwind. Kindness Emotional Heal Race to the Blind Spot and Public Policy. It's wonderful. And she tackles a lot of these critiques and she talks about how we can integrate this stuff, right? So I'm not going to talk about that. I'll just talk a little bit about this project that I have very quickly. A small funder project is funded by Scotland's Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South of the Queen's University of Memphis, Dublin City University. It's called Kindred Spirit. And I'm talking to student educators here in Dublin City University, my wonderful university. We have 130 faculty members who are educators. This is one of the biggest faculties of education in Europe. We have 4,000 student educators. And these are my two archaeologists. I mentioned Nargis. Ruby's an undergrad student with me. They're around. They're doing Vox pops around the campus talking to people. What does kindness mean to you? This is a way we could get ethical approval. A low-key guerrilla style interviews. We're doing this collection of kindness. And we're going to build some kind of speculative world out of this when we get all the data back and analysts from our students. And we're going to have an event in Belfast June 16th that you're very welcome to come to. So around about 16 minutes there. Yes, all of it. Four or five minutes for puny. Okay. So I zoomed a little bit through some of that there. Sorry about that. But any more comments or questions or please tell me any more slides. What does kindness mean to you? And I think the other thing, Martin, you were talking about there as well. I'll just respond to that question a little bit as well. I don't want to troll in too many ideas. But there is this thing where we have a near enemy of kindness. So we could have something. So you've got far enemies and near enemies. So like say, this is called the Brahman-Paharas. This is the thing from Buddhist thought. It's a great structure, great framework, great map. So you can have loving kindness, right? And ill will is the obvious thing.  But then there's sentimentality. That's the near enemy. The one that's harder to see. Or if it's compassion, you know, I care. I have compassion for somebody. And the far enemy of compassion is cruelty. But the near enemy is pity. And I'll tell you a difference between compassion and pity, which would you rather have? Which rather have someone show you compassion or someone pity it. No one wants to be pitied. And that where you're talking about governments or people weaponizing stuff, they're not, they're not, we're not talking about the same thing. You know, I often wonder, walking around my beautiful campus, why we can't be enjoying this. Very few people enjoying this. And I think, wow, you know, with all the human potential it hears here and the grounds that we have, we also miss. So I do believe in this infrastructure. I really do. And I think actually if anyone were to make me a university president, I think I'll talk about kindness a lot. This is what all we have, really, to make everybody their best. So but I did, you know, I spent 10 years in the US and I would say the predominant philosophy there at the moment is sort of an I and Rand, if you're being kind, you're being unkind, right, because you're not maximizing your utility. And that's what kindness is. So it's odd, it's the near enemy. And it is, there's like something about kindness as well. It is, it does, it is vulnerability, it hurts a little bit. So that's the Cinderella song puts it beautifully, like if you lived in a world without tears, you know, because it is going to hurt a little bit to get there. That's the problem. And people don't want to experience that hurt. So they just say, no, we're going to just be got to be cruel to be kind. I'm just thinking about, you know, how we kind of think about kindness. And so probably sort of thinking of it as, I guess, sort of interpersonal thing. But you have also the examples of kindness towards nonhuman species, towards environments as a whole. And it kind of taps into some of the stuff from, you know, yesterday, where it's like, and it's also something that you see in sort of environmental ethics, but traditionally in philosophy, ethics is something that happens between people. Only people are morally valid agents. But you with the emergence of environmental ethics, you get this idea of, no, something like a forest can be already valuable in its own right. It doesn't require the opinions of humans about it to be, you know, have any ethical significance. So you could sort of have a kindness towards environments or animals or plants and that kind of thing. But I can also see how it becomes a sort of paradox is going too far.  You never mow the lawn because you don't want to be unkind to the grass. Do you know what I mean? Like where do you draw the line between us and say, actually kindness to the environment is sometimes going to involve just sort of devil's work when there's golf courses, but it's going to involve sometimes destruction of things, right? And that can be seen as another way to vary from that kind of spanking a child then. Yes, for your own good. No, I'm harming you, but it's for your own good. It's done out of kindness. I'm re-diverting the river, but it's for your own good. All these animals that live nearby and rely on it, you know, because this environment is not sustainable or something. So it's very sort of convoluted and much messier than the idea of just sort of being nice. It is. It is. It's very, it's very complicated. It's very difficult. Yeah, we'll see. Thank you. Really interesting exploration there. You mentioned basically appreciative inquiry and making that link. And why what comes from research? Do you think there's an opportunity maybe to look at appreciation and learning? And how, how could we make that a part of how we, we learn at university, for example? Do you see value in that? Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I'm not sure. I have to think about that. It's a great... But we focus a lot on the problems, like you said. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we don't appreciate it and honor, honor those solutions that people already have, you know, the solutions that people are finding, whatever is getting people through, you know, whatever people are using this to, because we have our own, like Dave was saying, we have the solution. We want you to pass the test. But people are constantly creative and coming up with cool stuff that works for them in their context and their very confined ways to do that. You're right. I agree. It'd be wonderful. So what would you suggest? Any specific ways forward? I was just thinking of this appreciative inquiry and I had to do like, what do you call it, 360, you know, and I looked at all these questions that I was supposed to ask my colleagues and I was like, none of these, well, I wouldn't say none is applying to me, but this is not what I want to know. So I made my own list based upon appreciative inquiry about things that people do, perhaps, you know, enjoy. And now that you're asking this question, it's like, what would happen if, instead of giving a test, you would ask students to make up their own questions that they think wouldn't be good to ask the teacher about them or something like that? I don't know if it's possible, but. One thing that I wish to leave is what I'm doing an online lecture, if you will. I get, I invite students from my class to come in and interview me and I take that instead. So what I find is when the students watch that now, it can actually put themselves in that position. And it's just, you know, there's a lot more laughing happening with that back and forth. So the videos that I actually post online now have two or three or four people in them and they're, it's your turn, you know, this group, you're going to interview and then we post that. So I find that interesting. It's a kinder approach, it's more appreciative. It's been really thoughtful, actually, just talking about the law in there. So, yeah, I just saw somebody this morning at like quarter to eight when we were on and I thought, that's it, here we go, a fever time. So that's why I'm a bit husky. Nothing to do with the fact that I got dragged out last night at all, sitting in my can-iron booth. But not the year for that. Thank you very much for that, as I'll hopefully start the morning. It can be great stopping. Get up and stretch. It's good. Right, thanks very much for coming along to this.  Well, all the presentations I've been to, been read this morning and now this. So yeah, now for something completely different. I'm going to give a bit of a run through of what's the start of a pilot project. I'm trying, in fact, not to speak for entire 15 minutes and give us much time for you to ask me the questions are actually on your mind, quite possibly not things that are in my talk. So my name is Tracy Madden. I'm a learning technology advisor at the University of Edinburgh. I work in a central team and we support our supportive services, supportive learning technology with various kinds of advice that help you out. So digital badges are by no means new, and I'm sure we'll have plenty of experts in the room who know far more than I do. But for anyone who's not been involved with them, I'll do a very quick recap. So a digital badge is an award for having, say, completed a course or achieved something like some kind of skill or up in your skill level. Now they have all the information that's on an image. So I'm wearing a no kind of badge. So they contain all this information that's on the image of the badge. These kind of badges are a bit thin. Digital badges have an extra dimension of what's called metadata. So they have extra data baked into them. It's not a separate level. It's part and parcel of the badge. Now this is great for those people who are trying to share the dumb, what they know. This could be, say, looking to get a fellowship, looking to get a job. CV, as I've just been looking at CVs from people looking at internships with us, and there's not a lot of space to make your claim. And badges can be a way of losing that space quite wisely because the badge is quite small, but behind it can be a lot more information. Now we know that some people are going to have to verify that you actually, that is your badge and you've earned it. And because this metadata is baked in, they are easily verifiable for those people who have to do that job. We've just started a pilot project for three years. We've just started this semester. The aim of the project is to focus on recognition of non-credit or extracurricular skills, achievements, competences, i.e. not the credit-bearing stuff which is already recognised and already awarded and rewarded. But there's a lot of other things that learners do which just move through the cracks, but we're finding that's an awful lot of it. We're also supporting the growing interest or re-emergence of interest in recognition of through using digital badges and exploring how badge pathways, collections of badges, progressions of badges, and skills framework could enhance the value of badges and that's the value to the people who earn them and the value to the awarding body or partner of. Our strategy is threefold. One, scalability, co-creation, and agility. We're quite a small team and a very large university. There is no way that on our own we could serve all the needs of the entire university. At the project level we can, we're quite small, but we're building the way we mean to go on with something that we can bit by bit scale up to eventually be conserved the needs of the whole entire university if they all wanted to get on board. We're using co-creation because we want not this to be a service we deliver to people but that we become the service as a wider group of users so everybody has a part of it. And that's by not having a lot of answers to begin with which is what started this morning. I'll talk a little bit more of that so that what we build is actually representative of the people are involved with it, not just the central team. We also want to be agile because we're creating things as we go to make sure we are where we need to be, reflect on what we've done, make appropriate adjustments before we move forward. So in this pilot phase, as I said we really only just started but we have gathered colleagues from across the university. We try to make sure we have a really diverse range of people who have expressed an interest and they've taken one of three roles our so-called early adopters, champions and a governance group. And between all of us in the central supporting team we're co-designing and testing the resources for this project. This will be concluded by summer 23 and any of the feedback gathered that we can't make immediate use of will be using to inform the next phase. So our early adopters are people who want to make an issue badges. When we met with them we said we want to run a workshop with you, make sure that this is what you want to do but mostly because we want you to tell us what you want from this. So we asked them various kinds of open-ended questions and they included things like what did they understand by digital badges, what did they think they were, why were they interested in the first place, why not use certificates, what activities they wanted to badge and what value they felt badges could give the earner and the university. This created a great deal of information from us and it's been an invaluable first step. Before we started anything find out what other people think this is before you build something. We also found that there is a great deal of diversity across these questions. We're talking to people that perhaps we haven't spoken to before. We wanted all these people to be included in this and we know there's many parts of the university we haven't yet spoken to so we knew this was both an opportunity and a challenge whatever we built had to bring in this diversity of understanding and not crush it by giving them a very narrow model if they would if they wanted to stay involved it would have to fit into. This is much more challenging but personally I think it's a lot more exciting. We also were told when we spoke to other universities who have already done this that value is an incredibly important thing to focus on right at the beginning but likewise we didn't have a definition of what value is just knew it was important and that we knew that together with everybody who's involved we're going to have to work out how value is how it's expressed because otherwise we're just imposing something and it just becomes a rule that people follow rather than something they really understand. So our champions so having champions is going to be absolutely key to us having a scalable service because as I say small teams centrally we can't support everyone so we have a sort of devolved situation where the champions will take on responsibilities of their own they'll support their local colleagues with understanding badges and then with the practical business of creation and issuing them. But again we haven't given them a strict job definition. By them doing this work they are working out what the role is and therefore informing us that if we have this devolved situation what champions need and what we need to do to support them. Last but not least is a governance group. This is to provide oversight but more importantly it's to stop us accidentally creating silos because it's such a big university some things just end up living in the school or a college not because anybody's hiding it's just it's just like that there's so much good stuff out there but it ends up being invisible to most university so this governance group it's sort of by stealth they're going to see all the applications for badges and yes they're going to look to make sure that people have expressed the value of the badge to the honor to the university but more importantly they're going to get sight across the university and both help give some reflection on what this badge description looks like to somebody who just doesn't work in the business school say so that's really important but also stop this accidental siloing of things and and help keep people talking to one another even after the pilot stage. We're also known these are quite well connected people around the university this is going to help them see these kinds of activities through which one could own a badge okay but it's the activity that's the important thing then the governance group know about it they can pass the word on about what's going on they may be able to bring something back are you're doing this activity do you know over in that building over there this is going on so if you're asking people to volunteer there's got to be something for them and our governance group are amazingly for very very busy people very very keen to do more than we're asking them to do which is enough that also a question about volunteering will come up a bit later in fact right now even at this early stage I think we've learned quite a lot it's it's been slightly important to not start with a thing but talk to other people who've already built things and find out what went right what went wrong and we're really grateful for people being so open about sharing you know the good and bad we want to keep that going we want to be really open about what we've done what we've not done because this just keeps this whole thing going and just just for you know more productive. The scaling does depend on other people taking our responsibility the thing is that you know that some people are very good at volunteering and helping you out but there is always a problem that volunteers offer to do too much and it then this is a risk to the project but hopefully with an agile approach we can keep an eye on this and to make sure if it's going to be dangerous to scale too wider if we need to change our approach to get other people involved because we do need to take care of the project but we need to take care of our colleagues who we want to make sure they don't get overloaded that's that's no good for anybody. It shouldn't be underestimated how much work this kind of thing takes and because we're not just writing down rules and sending out and saying this is how it's done this is what value means a badge is worth 50 hours of work plus a test plus a reflective blog post that would be so easy and some people would actually probably appreciate it if we just tell them how it's done but that's not really what we're here for so sitting with a group of people and saying but what do you think value means and saying no really we do have to talk about that is going to be so much better people will have something they can truly relate to and they're truly part of but it is uncomfortable because people are not being used to as we said this morning not being used to ask questions where somebody actually doesn't have the answer to start with and it's not going to answer for you also we found we're bringing together colleagues who are from different I'd say different traditions different bits of the university they've been working in that environment and they they are being brought up in a particular tradition and forgetting that it's just one tradition so now we're bringing those people together with people from other the university and they're seeing things which to them are challenging they believe they have rigorous practices and then when they see what happens another part of the university this this mention of lack of rigor turns up so some places they want a high degree of control that's how they do it and they believe it's right and has the best results they come across somewhere else where things are a lot more open and a lot more active discussion and it jars with them but again again we could make it easy by going for the easy choices the traditional choices that don't scare anybody but that's not the point is it if somebody has very strict lines on something maybe they need to be open to the more possibilities they are and if we're going to work together these badges need to work across the university and some of the strict guidelines they have in parts of the university will completely push out I think some of the more interesting badges situations with ideas about demonstrating your skills ideas about what is assessment of very very non-traditional we have already got a very highly controlled system for our credit-based courses we do not need to build another one this is for everything else that gets left out we don't want to squeeze out by building a system build on the old lines because it makes some people comfortable so we want to have those tricky conversations about rigor and about making this a richer project by thinking and doing things in new ways this is a slow slow process though I must admit it will be easy to just make the rules and I've been told that was just under five minutes and I'm going to take any questions away or provocations or statements that's just fine I'm also findable through many different means I'm on Bluebird but also I'm mastered on if you're trying contact me that way haven't quite let go sorry yes yeah you just mentioned your traditional systems of probably handing out certificates and then now the badges and how does that combine or not is well again we're saying to people like do you do you reward do award you can be in you can keep your certificate if you want those well do you want to switch from a certificate why is that for some people it's well this is just so much more shareable I mean I'm sharing my badge right now doesn't work at the back of the room for some people that they have an idea of offering a badge to students it will be digital badges are controlled by the person who's been given the badge if I don't want to share my badge I don't have to but they think well this could be something that students would maybe like to share it would also in some cases help other students or I should say learners know about this opportunity there is a marketing angle as some of these things I say live within the university and it's difficult to get word out but you see a badge and think I'd like to do that so it is a way of getting opportunities out of soft selling things why not does that mean that I can as a student choose for a certificate add a badge or or or yeah with the with the platform that we're using I mean it's happens to be that it will both issue a badge and a certificate so people can take what they want so yeah they can make that choice and if people want to issue because they might actually of the platform certificate might be a bit dull if you want to award and reward in another way as well you can we're absolutely not trying to well if you come into our system you have to play by the rules no you you can do the other thing as well and you don't have to join if you've got your own badging project going which some people have in the university you can carry on it's it that's just fine or you can do both we don't want to stop anyone yes but what does students do with their badges once they've right now we are going to give them guidance as to what they could do so there's practical things about just getting that into things so the possibilities are you can put it in say you're you're linked in profile which some parts of university very much encourage students to get linked in profile you might be able to imagine where that is for some people it's putting it into their signature lines in their any messages or could be email you could put it into your CV you could just keep it because the other thing about badges is it's a way of somebody saying you know you did a thing you know you did a real thing and I find as I say from looking at students CVs last week and knowing the students have worked with on projects with us they're they're some of them are really quite shy I think about a lot of people staff as well find it very hard to talk about themselves and their achievements and it can be that badges can help them recognize what they just did and and recognize their own achievement you know our students are really really smart but some you know may not be as confident as I was yes thank you um would you be able to give an example of the platform that you're using for the badges and also a couple examples of what people have earned badges for right we've not yet issued badges because as you say we're taking the slow routes of people you know working out what their jobs are the issue in the badge bit is going to be cut and paste data into the platform press the button that the tech is easy there are many platforms we have gone with what was called badger I think you've got to work out what's appropriate there's there's a lot of things including money involved but a lot of different examples so please after later as I need to move my time is up in Australia it is all but the last question unfortunately I'm sorry so it's going to be a lot of different things and as I say the diversity of activities that people want to badge we didn't expect and we want to be ready not to push things out because these are the things ultimately not included thank you very much it's not enough time I think I've had all the sessions I think yesterday they've been the same which has been so it's so informative I'd like to create a listen to William's few on my playlist too I think it's going to be fine because in that session it's going to be a karaoke lesson let's see first of all minutes for a five q and a so in 10 minutes I'm going to have five sounds okay yeah all right thanks very much gonna adapt over to yourself and if people want to move beyond the session beyond the exam session don't leave up for it hi everyone I'm Joanne Keeho I work at McMaster University which is in southern Ontario Canada about an hour west of Toronto in Hamilton Ontario which is the capital of capital city of waterfalls if anybody has a burning desire to come to Hamilton um but there's a bit like too if you wanted to follow along the extrabony of the influence sharing it's beyond the exam OER 23 um the waterfalls are also in Canada it's very important to us as our steps towards truth and reconciliation to acknowledge the lands that we we are gathering on so McMaster's campus is on the land traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and the Mississauga nations and that image that you see there is the wampum belt so it's the dish with one spoon wampum agreement that binds us to those lands and so it's a symbolic intricate beadwork done by the Haudenosaunee peoples and the center represents the dish the circle and the spoon is in the in the middle and that represents the idea of sharing in peace so I it's not just a token land acknowledgement I always think that this is the grounding of some of the work that we do and I try to do and make sure that the traditional ways of knowing are embedded in the work and that really I think is illustrated with work in OER open education so let's take a little journey back in time for some of you it might be a longer journey coming back to your higher education experience but just think about your assessments when you're an undergrad graduate school maybe even high school maybe even primary school what was the most the most valuable assessment the coolest assignment I guess maybe what you felt you learned the most from you felt like the work that you invested in it um you know truly reflected a learning experience you had some deeper learning going on there about that sometimes I might be you might have to dig through some cobwebs I had to um I'll just pause for a second to think about your coolest assignment all right so who show of hands who thought an exam was their their best assignment what about um the presentation that you had to do in front of a group yeah um an experiential learning opportunity where you were actually doing a field yeah a couple of boring great an essay or a paper still a few okay what about a project project based learning yeah so that's that's usually that I get the most for that and what about development of a portfolio yeah yeah that's a valuable one too and are there any others that I'm not captured there that I'd like to hear about them what what what one were you thinking about adventure story oh wow choose your own adventure story so you could just make up your own assignment basically kind of align to some outcomes yeah yeah it was what it was supposed to illustrate was already set and it was the first assignment where I didn't want to stop writing wow that is rare I was thinking back I I don't want to reveal where I went for undergrad but I I couldn't think of a good one from it was like it was all exams it was all exams so anyways and that is traditionally what we have so how this project evolved is a picture of my wonderful colleague in Ontario who Julia Forsyte who works at Brock University um she does a lot of like visual thinkery type brand mother stuff with her website edgidoodle she was doing a doodle around the start of the pandemic thinking about all of these you know the top you how you so you need to put your exam online in March 2020 that's frantic like I need to I can't let go of my exam it has to stay and it has to be online it has to be proctured and so we were talking about it we meet that weekly as a group of people working in digital learning um and uh kind of commiserated and and shared the kindness that was that was happening with each other as we went through that um so those conversations also the rise against proctoring we all know I won't go into detail how problematic uh proctoring was as a short-term solution but was a short-term solution many people turn to um with privacy issues equity issues you know the built-in AI biases that we all have heard about and technical issues for students who just can't access robust internet so we wanted to kind of look at other alternatives I was fortunate to work at a university where although we did adapt to proctoring software we had to it was an application basically you had to you had to um request access and why because of an alternative I think was a good approach um also we know that as many of us I'm working I should have said in my introduction I do I do teach some classes in digital literacy at my master but I also largely support faculty so a big group of us maybe some of in this room we're supporting instructors with this rapid switch to remote teaching so there was a lot of this those spaces help like I need some help and be considering my assessments that are normally in person to an online forum and I don't know what to do any instructions I need rubrics there's that abundance issue that we were talking earlier this morning and how to kind of grapple with what's out there I also need help with the technology like I don't know what to use I'm learning all these things so yeah I was thinking even about when you're talking about kindness like that the emotional labor that's involved sometimes being kind you know a 10 minute consultation with a faculty member turns into an hour long and we're all crying at the end so so yeah it's it's wanting to support we also wanted to advocate for good pedagogy which we know alternative authentic assessments are good ways to teach lots of choice around a universal design for learning um thinking of the blooms levels higher order thinking skills not to actually deep learning and not just cramming for an exam but we also recognize the time investment stuff it's easy to say to an instructor you need to consider an alternative go away and do your thing you have to think there's a lot of labor involved and coming up with instructions examples directions for students so we were lucky in Ontario to have some provincial funding available through eCampus Ontario which is a hub for the publicly funded colleges and universities and indigenous institutes great colleagues again at Brock University College Boreal which is with Brankophone College in Roman Ontario and my ourselves applied and got the funding to develop this alternative assessment toolkit so this there's the link beyond the exam dot ca if you want to check it out it's really divided into two main sections one is the design perspective so we have a student involved in the project who wrote a piece on from her perspective we had an instructional designer write a chapter and then an instructor and then the bulk of the toolkit is around the examples so the student perspective was great and this wonderful students have done she wrote a very funny piece on professor T Rex you know marking up the exam with red pen and and just the experience of the student feeling judged and critiqued and not really learning or actively engaged in her and her assessment so it's a wonderful way to open up the toolkit we also have the instructional design part which is the blooms tax on me and we you know we we saw a lot as instructional designers or people work in learning design people say that they're doing creating evaluating analyzing and their learning outcomes but in actuality they have you know an exam that's remembering understanding it so good attentions but how to actually do that so we this I think it's from Arizona State University this blooms digital tax on me so trying to come up with those digital ways of an reimagining assessment and then we had this one amazing faculty member from Brock University Maureen Connolly who teaches in their gender studies and recreation programs I think so she wrote this piece on after week eight consolidate which I have taken I was like this is what I have to tell everybody to do so I won't go into too much detail but this is kind of how she mapped it out you know finding out what students knew already coming into the class the beginning first few weeks then doing some low stakes assessments some practice the threshold concepts toward the kind of yes second third of the course and then no new material being introduced after that so after week eight you're consolidating all that you know and you're doing the app practical application and yeah you deal I won't go into that you may all know that so we have lots of examples in our in our toolkit there's some of them kind of highlighted there looking for more that's my first seed of come on and contribute each exam exemplar include includes those blooms levels so we tag them a description facilitation tips so if an instructor has provided one and did a board game assignment it was just reflecting on what worked well what maybe they need to do differently next time how students responded a criteria so a rubric often there's some measurements of learning and then some examples so some frames of reference that you could build in a couple I won't go into a lot of detail a couple of my favorites we're a mind mapping assignment at the end of a course which was accompanied by a reflective paper but you know mapping out all the topics in the course and doing some color coding and symbolizing of how the knowledge was gained see a lineup of the Jordan also a podcast which I think probably many of you have used but just talking about some of the the technical ways to to facilitate a pot having the students create a podcast as an assignment and then one of my favorites because it is a multimodal culminating project so giving students a choice kind of a choose your own adventure a little bit you know how do you kind of take the key concepts in the course and make a product you can do any way you want you could do an art piece you could do a podcast you could do a video you could do many things so yes so now we are I thought it becomes wrongly in the short session but if you want to and you have access to the slides there's an activity if you're thinking about reconsidering your alternative assessment or helping faculty there's a bit of a guiding that's based on the art of interrogation which is on the BC campus so just a guided prompt kind of talking about your original assessment where your goals are some things new ways you can reimagine and that can help with the refrain we considering a new a new assessment design so what's beyond beyond the exam we're coming up with version two a workshop design so a third piece part of the press book will be an actual you know slides and facilitation tips if you want to offer an alternative assessment workshop on your your institution we also want to categorize the assessments right now it's just a big laundry list of things and I was working on another project with Terry Green who's a great I may know him from trying and he has this takeout menu at the beginning of his it's a liberated learner project and it's great because you can once you open you know press books sometimes it's difficult to find what you need so it's it's like a kind of check it off what you need I need an assessment that is a group project that's online that is culminating so we're looking at try to categorize it a bit better as it grows some more exemplars are on the way so please I have four I was hoping we're going to be ready by this but they're just being written up right now from OE global some great consistent service offers to I'd love it if head more um there's some additional resources if you want or I just wanted to show you actually just how you can contribute right here on the website if you did take a chance get a chance to open her up oh it's here and there's a French and English version and there's a this is the one to highlight right here submit an alternative online assessment you'll be directed to a forum just saying hey I'm so and so from such and such university I'd like to contribute that's all you have to do I would contact you and interview you and we work out together how to let me get that added into the mix so that's it I know I'm at time right right so yeah okay so please reach out if you need to if you want to have part of the on various reasons I know we don't have time for questions just thank you have a good day


Hi Peggy, this is Ashley with Oxmore Toyota. Thank you so much for speaking with me earlier about your interest in our pre-owned 2007 Matrix. As soon as I find out the price on this vehicle, I'll let you know. If you need anything in the meantime, feel free to give me a call. My number is<PHONE_NUMBER> or you can also email me back. Thanks. Bye.


Hey everyone, welcome back to figure fantasy. So we're here now with orange alert under urban alert We're gonna be going through hard stage and let's see my lineup for this one. Okay, guys So this is my lineup. Let's try this out you have Karoko up front with Vasili and you have Mikoto and Mako at the back We'll just have to weather this storm And see if we can clear this within 25 seconds So a timely heal there from Mako. So again, this stage is going to be RNG dependent Okay, there we go Three star clears. Let's move on to the next. Okay. The last one would be torment and let's see my lineup Okay, guys. So for torment We have this lineup. Obviously Koroko should be in the middle Counter countering Vazer with the back All you have to do guys after that one is Just to survive this and also to clear this within 25 seconds, which would be a little bit tricky Especially if you don't survive the initial onslaught. So we have eight seconds to go Hopefully we could clear the rest within five seconds two more seconds and I think we're good That is it. So again, just repeat this if you counter problems and That is it guys. Thank you very much for staying this far. Take care. Stay safe The warden and I'm out of here


This structure built some 12,000 years ago – that's 6,000 years before Stonehenge, 5,000 years before the first pyramid – highlights that for millennia, humans have used the engineering method to solve problems long before the rise of science. In this video, I define and illustrate the essence of the engineering method. This is called Bekle Tepa, an ancient ruin in southeastern Turkey. Stone structures cover 9 hectares, about 18-foot ball fields. Filled with circular rooms, its purpose remains a mystery. Embedded in the stone walls of the rooms are decorative T-shaped pillars. Carved into the pillars are lions, bears, wild boars, lizards, spiders, and surprisingly, ducks. Not only are the stones beautifully carved, they are placed with precision. To see the degree of precision, look at the circular room I showed you initially. At the center are the remains of two T-pillars the tops fell off long ago. If we look at this room from above – keep your eye on the two central pillars highlighted in red – you see two circular rooms nearby, which each have the same arrangement of pillars at their center. The pillars in the two rooms at the bottom sit on a line, with little deviation. If we locate the exact centers between the pillars and the two lower circles, and connect them to the center of pillars in the circle above, we inscribe an equilateral tricle. Its sides deviate less than 1.5% from perfection. This is unlikely to be coincidental, nor the result of some self-organization. My point is that these stones are erected in a purposefully designed layout, not haphazard, that responds to societal needs, which means that Gobekli Tepa is an engineered object. The people of Gobekli Tepa created all this by applying the engineering method. The method we still use today, yet this powerful method, the engineering method, is an all-but-hidden process that few of us have heard of but alone understand, even though it influences every aspect of our lives. In this video series, I explore the essence of that engineering method. The age of Gobekli Tepa highlights that the engineering method long predates science, which conflicts with a commonplace notion that engineering somehow arises from the scientific method. So I start by asking, do engineers need science? And here's the answer. This is a model of Saint-Chapelle, a stunning 13th-century building built nearly 12,000 years after Gobekli Tepa. Saint-Chapelle was designed and constructed by a team who had never learned basic arithmetic or the geometry taught today in third grade that alone anything we'd call science. In fact, they had no standardized length because a foot varied from region to region. The medieval engineers aspired to create a building that celebrated a spiritual world by streaming light through the structure's walls. Sunlight was transformed by the stained glass windows into a diffuse red, blue, and gold that glimmers on the chapel sculptures and gilded arches. To create these stunning displays of light, to house these giant stained glass windows, they built vast walls by constructing spectacularly high ceilings. How did these engineers, called masons, know how to carve a cathedral's thousands of building blocks to create when assembled not only beauty, but also stability? Like all great engineers, they drew on past knowledge. They used an architectural element that originated in present-day Pakistan. Notice that Saint-Chapelle has, as do all cathedrals, pointed arches, some six on the front, at least ten on each side, and on the back six more. And of course, many pointed arches support the ceiling. They chose this pointed arch over the arch used in the Roman's extraordinary pantheon, built about 1,400 years before Saint-Chapelle. The pantheon, typical of all imperial Roman architecture, features a semi-circular arch. It is exactly half of a circle. If a medieval engineer used a semi-circular Roman arch to construct a soaring cathedral, it would cover entire city blocks and use so much stone that the cost would skyrocket. The savings from using a pointed arch instead of a semi-circular arch can be seen clearly by comparing Saint-Chapelle with the pantheon. Note how Saint-Chapelle is nearly the same height as the pantheon, yet just a little over a third is wide. This Roman semi-circular arch was rejected by medieval engineers because its width has to grow proportionally to its height. To see the problem, consider a semi-circular arch that is ten meters in width. It is five meters in height because it's half of a circle. So its height is half of the diameter. Now, if I double the span covered from ten meters to twenty meters, you see that the height is now ten meters. It has doubled. Contrast this to the pointed arch. As the arch increases in height, the span covered can stay the same because the shape of the arch can change as its height increases. Although medieval engineers didn't adopt the Roman semi-circular arch, from the Romans they inherited the key idea that enabled them to build their stunning cathedrals that have stood for centuries. We can see it in this arch from Saint-Chapelle. To support this arch, the medieval engineers had to correctly size the thickness of this wall. If this wall were too thin, the weight of the arch would buckle the wall, the structure would collapse. If too thick, stone would be wasted at a huge cost and the desired open space inside the cathedral diminished. To size the wall, the medieval builder used a rule that created the stable semi-circular arches of the pantheon. A stable arch results when the supporting wall's thickness is between a fourth or a fifth of the arch's span. If an arch's span were this long, then you divide it into about four equal parts and use one of these to size the wall's thickness. But there's a problem with applying this proportional rule. The Mason's knew no mathematics, nor, as I've said, they even have a ruler. So this rule was not a calculation, but was instead an action. The Mason would have a life-size chalk drawing of the interior of this arch on the floor of the drawing room. No. Instead, I've drawn the interior of a pointed arch on a large sheet of paper. In addition to this arch drawing or template, he needed a piece of string the Mason would have used to rope. I need to drape it over the arch, so I'll insert map pins along the arch to support the string. The Mason would have done this on the floor, so he would simply lay the rope on top of his drawing. Now, drape the rope over the arch, mark the string at the base of the arch, then cut the string so it's only as long as the arch. Next, lay the string on the ground and fold it into thirds. I've marked the thirds with pink tape here the Mason would have used colored chalk. That thirds isn't obvious, but it will get us to a wall thickness of about a fourth or a fifth. With the rope now marked into three sections of equal length, return it to its original place along the arch template. We see that this divides the arch into three equal sections. Let's mark one of them. Then pin one end of a new string to that marked spot. Draw a taut and pin it to the base of the arch. We need to attach to the base a length of string exactly equal to the distance from the spot a third of the way along the arch to the base, so I just fold the rope and mark it. And then draw that taut and in a straight line with the pin section. Then pin it to the base. The distance from that pin to the inner line is the width of the wall, which will be between a fourth and a fifth of the arch's span. Let's compare it to the arch section from Saint-Chapelle. If I superimpose it on the string construction, you can see that it matches. It's puzzling that we divided the arch into three sections, which yield a width between a fourth and a fifth, but that's just how the geometry works out. That's part of the rule. I've never worked out why geometrically that works because it doesn't matter. The Mason would never have worked it out analytically. What matters, and that's the point here, is that it works. And to belabor the point a bit, it's the same rule the Romans used to size their supporting walls. Divide the interior of a Roman semi-circular arch into three equal size sections, draw a line from one of these third markings to the base of the arch, then double it, and you see the wall size of a bit less than a fourth of the interior arch's span. With that rule, we've arrived at the core of the engineering method. The proportional rule doesn't come from some scientific analysis of stone and its properties. It comes from centuries of experience, from trial and error. It's called a rule of thumb, more formally a heuristic. An imprecise method used as a shortcut to find the solution to a problem, often by narrowing the range of possible solutions. Here, a Mason sized the walls width in a matter of minutes without understanding the fundamental material properties of stone and without understanding the mathematics needed to apply the rule. That's a paradigm for the engineering method. Solving problems using rules of thumb that cause the best change in a poorly understood situation using available resources. That's a sharp contrast with the scientific method because these rules of thumb are only guides that offer a high probability of success but no guarantee. And unlike a scientific theory, a rule of thumb is never in a sense disproved. That hundreds of cathedrals are still around today, standing for eight or 900 years is proof of that. Instead of being disproved, this rule of thumb for stone became outdated, not wrong, as iron and steel I-beams replace stone. Yet no doubt there's a question in your mind. I've talked about buildings constructed to eight or so centuries ago. So surely you might wonder, is engineering based on rules of thumb antiquated in our scientific age? That line of thought misunderstands the purpose of the engineering method, which is to solve practical problems before we have full scientific knowledge. In the next video, I'll explore how engineers work their way around that lack of scientific understanding, how they overcome uncertainty. I'm Bill Hammack, The Engineer Guy.


Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with Josh, we're in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you had spent some time living in Jerusalem. Describe that. Like, when were you there? How long were you there? Why were you living and working in that city? Yeah, so we were, we lived there from 2015 to 2018, so three years from January to January. We were there living in Jerusalem, we lived inside the old city of Jerusalem, had the opportunity to live there, which is kind of a rare opportunity. I lived there for three years. In the Christian quarter, if you're familiar with the old city, it's Christian quarter, small Armenian quarter, Jewish quarter, and the Muslim quarter, which is the biggest of the four sections in the old city. We were there working in humanitarian aid, we worked throughout the region, but most of my work took me into Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza, but we were headquartered working from Jerusalem primarily, and like literally where we lived there in the old city, of course, is like right on the scene between East and West Jerusalem, which is was like the traditional dividing line after the 1967 Six Day War. Jerusalem, the old city, is kind of a place of its own within the larger Jerusalem, and of course Jerusalem itself is a big metropolitan area, but the old city is almost a square kilometer with a population of between 30,000 and 40,000 people living in it, so like very, very tightly packed in there and old cobblestone streets and history every time you turn around, so yeah, that's where we lived. We had two of our three children there in Jerusalem, really kind of an amazing and crazy and difficult place to live. Well, okay, because that would be like when you when you moved, I'm just speculating, but did you ever feel pressured to take some type of Christian Zionist stance or something to that effect? Yeah, like kind of walk us through that transition of moving and those pressures. Yeah, no, I don't know that I ever like felt any kind of pressure there. Obviously, it's something that's always in the back of your mind, because it's such a conflicted area, deep, deep history of the conflict going back many, many generations, but where we were kind of where we were situated, we could, we were in the Christian quarter in the old city, like I said, which is Christian Arab population, which is the majority of the Christians in Israel and Palestine area. You can't live there without feeling the tensions and there were waves of unrest and difficulty at times. Nothing too serious while we were there, but still it's always kind of there. It's kind of part of the fabric, even if it's not like always being active on it. It's always kind of there. I know it's a big question within the conservative and Baptist world. There's pretty big differences of opinion. What should be our response to the state of Israel? There are some who feel very strongly that as a country, we need to be supporting them. As a people, we need to be supporting Zionism. And then there are others who really take a pretty strong opposing stance to that. Living there, really you come out of it with just the conviction that any kind of easy narrative, any kind of simplistic narrative just really doesn't cut it. And so I think what I would say, some things that I would say to both sides of the issue, just based on my own experience. First of all, I think it's important that we appreciate the genuine connections that are there. It's really hard to see 2000-year-old synagogues and not appreciate like ruins of those synagogues and not appreciate like the deep kind of rootedness of the Jewish people in the land. Example, like we were the gets at the deep history that's there. We would often like Saturday evening, you know, pack a picnic lunch and go out in the grassy areas outside the old city to eat. And like soon after we were there, I forget how long it was. We were just kind of relaxing there in the grass. And you know, all of a sudden you come across these kind of caves in the wall, like in the city wall. Oh, what are these, right? So you kind of look around and then you find this plaque and like, oh yeah, these are tombs like dating back to the first temple period. Like that depth of history makes you really kind of plays with your perception of time, right?  Oh, that's like, like long ago. Like in terms of like the history of, you know, the Holy Land, it's like, it's like nothing, right? So I think first of all, to appreciate that connection. And also the second thing I would say is to really take seriously the extent to which Christianity has been implicated in, has been complicit with anti-Semitism over the years. Really, really terrible kind of legacy there, frankly. And the scars are very, very deep in Jewish memory. I'll never forget going to Yad Vashem, which is the Memorial Museum for the Holocaust recommended, you go there if you ever get the chance to visit.  And all that. So so many instances of that. And like that's there. And that's something that we really need to take seriously. When we think about questions of, you know, Zionism and the land and the Jewish people. To the people who kind of take the opposite stance that who would be less inclined to think that, therefore, we need to support, you know, politically the state of Israel, who would take that position and be kind of anti, you know, the idea that the Palestinians have any kind of say in what goes on there, I would say this, don't adopt any kind of view that you couldn't justify or explain to your Palestinian brother or sister in Christ, right? Who are regularly discriminated against, profiled at checkpoints in the law. I mean that the racism, it's, you really don't have to be there long to really see how deeply seated the racism, the prejudice, the animosity, the tension that's there. They face that, right? And they're often the ones that they know. From my experience, of course, not all of them respond, you know, with, you know, Christ-like love and non-violence. But like for the most part, especially those that I've become close to my time, they're really seen powerful examples of enemy love.  So, and even, you know, even in Gaza, there's a very, very, very small, you know, Christian population there. So whenever, like, you know, Israel is shelling, you know, Gaza for whatever reason, if you think it's justified or not, remember that there are Christian brothers and sisters there. Of course, we should care about any life, right? But like, be able to justify your theological ideas, you know, to your brothers and sisters. And frankly, you know, there's also a stream of Judaism that's not accepted very well, and mainstream is really Jewish culture, but who also accept, you know, Christ as Messiah, as Lord and all that. The relationships there between Jewish Christians, if we can use that designation, and, you know, Palestinian Christians, it's a fraught relationship and something we, I think, need to pray about. Think about it. I think we're deeply, like, the tensions are very nuanced. And then also, if you're going to make a claim about, you know, like, God's chosen people and all that, that claim, even in Scripture, never exempted the people of Israel, the children of Israel, you know, in the Hebrew Scriptures, from upholding justice and equity and righteousness, right? And if anything was, I mean, it was always a call to greater righteousness. The way I see it sometimes played out is that, well, whatever, kind of whatever Israel does, we need to support it if we want God's blessing, right?   That's kind of what I have to say on that. And it's a big, messy topic. Ooh, big ball of yarn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, however you approach it, you know, it's a very flammable issue. So I kind of try to speak from experience, I think, and everything is, you can be quick to hearing, slow to speak. Don't assume that God can't do something or that you fit God's way of working in the world within your own ideological framework. So we're doing this kind of based on your personal experience of living there. So can you give us a story of a formative experience? Like something that deeply impacted you in your time there? So it's not so much a story, or it's a story, but one of the times that I was in Gaza, I forget it was first or second or what time it was, I remember just being deeply, deeply moved or deeply, deeply aware of kind of my social status in the global scheme of things. Hmm. You know, I am working there because I can. It's interesting to me, but I have a, I have a, you know, I'm being supported in doing it. It's, I'm being employed to work there, but anytime I want to, I can leave, I can come back home. There's a family business that I could potentially get involved in. I can pursue, you know, graduate education. I have all these, I have a passport where I can go kind of wherever I want to in the world. I don't typically think of myself as like having elevated social status in the American context, but like in Gaza where it is landlocked, it is sea locked, 25 miles long at the widest, five miles wide, and they're just realizing that there are young people, you know, my age, but also I'm getting up there, but there are people, there are young people growing up who never had, who have no hope of ever seeing any of the world outside of that 25x5 at the most, virtually unlivable.  Like it's just no longer sustainable. Most of the water is dirty. Only several hours of electricity a day. And it, like there's no political solution economically just devastated. And I don't know, like that just really kind of, I don't know that it shook me. It just gave me perspective and it helped me see just by virtue of being born with a U.S. passport, you know, like what kind of opportunities that opens up for you in the larger scheme of things, in kind of a global perspective. It's hard to get that perspective, you know. It seems like that part of the world is often in the news for the wrong reasons, you know, the latest conflict, the latest whatever attack, what so forth. When we see those things, you know, what are ways that we can respond? What's a proper perspective we can have regardless of, you know, everybody's differing opinions, whatever. I'm sure there's plenty of different opinions watching this. But what's some ways we can bring some clarity and some, maybe some Jesus attitude, I guess. You know, when we see these things in the news, because it is kind of disturbing, regardless. Yeah, it's a good question. And I really don't feel like I have a whole lot of like really insightful something perspective to bring. One of the things, if anything, kind of the emotion that I felt living in Jerusalem, and especially during times of turmoil, was just a kind of helplessness. Like here I am coming from the States. I'm getting introduced to these political conflicts. This situation has been just embedded for so long. And like coming away with just the feeling of helplessness, like you look at the disparity of reporting. And, you know, this is nothing new in American news, like polarization, but like you look at like how it's reported in, you know, Palestinian media versus how it's reported in Israeli media. It's just, it's a different story, right? Like what actually happened. And so like, even like it calls into question your ability to even understand, right? Like, what is actually going on here? So I don't know. I would just, it's not clarifying the question at all. But I mean, just like that kind of helplessness, helplessness. But I think being, again, being quick to hear, slow to speak, it's easy to come into these things, especially if you have preformed ideas, all this is what happened.  And so, and then you miss the complexity that's there. You miss the human element that's there. Always, always, you know, talking about Jesus perspective, you know, recognize the tragedy of conflict, of war, of death, regardless of what you think is justified and what's not. So that's, yeah, I would say that's, that's the biggest thing.  Jerusalem is particularly hard. Like sometimes we, we could, you know, we just needed to escape to like, you know, the coastal cities, you know, like Tel Aviv and Haifa and those just like Jerusalem is very intense. Like, because it's so deeply embedded in religion, you have Islam, you have Christianity, you have Judaism, obviously the three major players there. But also recognize that it's not always, you know, Molotov cocktails and you know, tear gas. Like, there are other realities.  In most cases, for our people, it's, you know, see the land of the Bible and like, and all that.  And I just want to use this platform, I guess, to speak for them. To raise awareness, I guess, of their, of their perspective on it. Kind of makes me want to go back again, you know, because it's been a few years since I was over there. And it was very eye-opening. You just see, whoa, like, this is really complicated and very rough. Like, this is just really hard for everybody. No easy answers. And once you start untangling, like, you know, what is, what is justice here?  But, yeah, at the end of the day, it's, it's really difficult. And especially coming in from the outside, I think it's important to come with a level of humility and willingness to listen. Thanks so much for taking the time to share. And, yeah, sometimes, I don't know, it's kind of random, actually, a little bit of a story. But when I was, when you're injured or something, I didn't even know you were there. And I, like, ran into you on the street. And I'm like, whoa, what are you doing here? Like, I had no, you know, it was bizarre. So anyway, it's been fun to talk about that and hear more about your time there. Sure.


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