Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from The Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners. So we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. On today's program, John Russell reports on some news that will please cat lovers in Singapore. Later, Brian Lin presents this week's Science Report.  But first, here is John Russell. Sonny is a proud Singaporean citizen who follows the laws of her country. Mostly, anyway. For the last three years, she has been illegally sheltering a cat called Mooncake. A 34-year-old Singaporean law bars cats from government-built housing. Such housing is where most of the city-state's population lives, and Mooncake too, although secretly. Luckily for Sonny and her cat, Singapore plans to end the feline ban later this year. The legal change will free Sonny from the threat of a $3,007 fine or her pet's possible removal. The 30-year-old works in marketing and asked to be identified only by her first name for the security of her cat. She did not want to risk officials removing Sonny from her care. She wonders about the reasoning behind the ban. Cats are so much quieter than dogs. If they allow dogs, I don't understand why not cats? Officials rarely enforce the ban, and the law is only for the High Rise Housing and Development Board, HDB, Buildings. 80% of Singapore's 3.6 million people live in the Buildings. The ban does, however, make life difficult for cat owners.  Medical insurance cannot be provided for illegal pets. Lawmaker Louis Ong campaigned to end the ban. He said the law sometimes becomes part of disputes between neighbors. A lot of times the cats are collateral when there's neighborly disputes, he said. The neighbor will threaten to tell police about another neighbor's cat. Established in 1960, the HDB plan sells government-built housing directly to citizens for 99-year special agreements. The policy has led to one of the world's highest home ownership rates. Still, people who live in the Buildings are subject to many restrictions and laws. Cats were permitted in HDB apartments until 1989 when lawmakers changed the housing law. On its website, the HDB says cats are difficult to keep contained in individual homes. It also says that cats drop hairs and other body waste in public areas and can be loud. It is not clear what made the Singapore government decide to end the cat ban. But a 2022 government public opinion study may have been the turning point. The study results showed nine out of ten Singaporeans believed that cats were fit to keep as pets, including in HDB buildings. Officials are requesting public input on a proposed cat management policy. Dogs have not been subject to a similar ban, but they are limited to one per household. And only some kinds of dogs are permitted. Market research company EuroMonitor International has predicted a big increase in cat ownership. It estimated Singapore's current pet population at around 94,000 cats and 113,000 dogs. Lawmaker Ng, who ran an animal aid group before joining parliament in 2015, also hopes the change will lead more people to adopt rescued cats. Under the new rules, HDB homeowners would be limited to two pet cats. The rules also require owners to register their pets with the government. The owners must also get special identifying electronic devices for the animals. And owners must install protective devices on windows so cats do not get out. Some cat lovers say the new laws do not go far enough. Tenuga Vijakumar from the Cat Welfare Society wants the law to require sterilization. Another cat rescuer, Chancha Wah, urges officials to punish irresponsible owners. He said he had to take care of a cat that fell from a high window in one home. The owners refused to pay its medical bills. Wah also took care of another cat that was abandoned because he had heart disease. I end up taking over these cases. Basically, I look after them until they pass away, said Chan, estimating he spent $45,100 on cat medical expenses in 2022. But for many cat owners the law will bring peace of mind, including mooncakes. I think it is a good thing and it's a step forward after 30 years, Sonny said. I'm John Russell. A series of new space missions are planned for the coming year. Here is a look ahead at some of the ones to watch out for in 2024. The American Space Agency NASA launched its first flight in the Artemis program in 2022. That mission, called Artemis-1, sent the Orion spacecraft on a trip to fly around the moon. Artemis aims to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since NASA's Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Artemis-1 was a test of the Orion spacecraft or capsule as well as NASA's huge space launch system, the SLS rocket that carried it into space. That mission sent Orion more than 400,000 kilometers away from Earth and completed a close fly-by of the moon. NASA officials declared Artemis-1 a huge success. NASA plans to launch Artemis-2 in late 2024. It is expected to take the same path that Artemis-1 took around the moon, but this time it will be carrying four NASA astronauts aboard Orion. NASA says Artemis-2 aims to confirm all of the spacecraft's systems and operate as designed with crew aboard in the actual environment of deep space. While Artemis-2 will not complete a landing, several other lunar landers are expected to touch down on the moon's surface in 2024. The first of these launches is planned for January 8th. It involves a lander named Peregrine. The 1.9 meter tall spacecraft is made by the private American space company Astrobotic Technology. It will launch aboard a Vulcan Centaur rocket made by United Launch Alliance, ULA. Peregrine is expected to carry 20 research experiments to the moon for seven countries. It will aim to land in an area known as Sinus viscositatus. NASA says the area sits next to the Great Hoisin domes, the largest dark spot on the near side of the moon. Another Astrobotic lander called Gryphon is set to launch to the moon's south pole in late 2024. It will be carrying an exploring robot or rover called Viper. Viper is designed to search for water sources on the moon. In addition to those, American space company Intuitive Machines is providing two landers to NASA expected for launches next year. Japan will also attempt to become the fifth nation to reach the surface of the moon in mid-January. The country's space agency launched the spacecraft called SLIM in September. SLIM's mission goal is to test the possibility that spacecraft can land on very specific targets. The European Space Agency, ASA, plans to launch its HERA spacecraft in October on a mission to return to an asteroid system visited by NASA's Dart spacecraft in 2022. HERA is designed to collect data on the targeted system called DITAMOS. The spacecraft is expected to closely examine the physical properties of DITAMOS and measure detailed effects of Dart's crash. NASA hopes to launch its Europa Clipper mission in October. This orbiter is designed to carry out close examinations of Jupiter's moon Europa. Specifically, the mission will look for signs that the icy moon might hold the right conditions to support life. NASA says the orbiter will fly in orbit around Jupiter and perform repeated close flybys of the ice moon. NASA and Boeing have said they plan to launch the first crewed test flight of the company's Starliner spacecraft. NASA said it is targeting March 2024 to have Starliner ready for flight. The launch date is to be set later. The spacecraft completed its first uncrewed flight test to the ISS last May, but Boeing has experienced several technical difficulties with Starliner during the mission and has worked with NASA to fix the problems as it prepares for the planned crewed flight. SpaceX, another NASA partner, has been successfully using its rockets and spacecraft to transport astronauts and materials to the ISS since 2020. But the company will be seeking a successful test flight in 2024 for its super-heavy Starship spacecraft. SpaceX experienced two failed Starship tests in 2023, one in April and the other in November, which resulted in explosions. The April blast caused major damage to the launch structure in the state of Texas. SpaceX has said it has been examining the issues related to the explosions and plans to carry out another test of Starship as soon as possible. But it will have to wait until the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, completes its investigation of the launch site damage and approves a new test. I'm Brian Lin. Brian Lin joins me now to talk more about his science report. Thanks for being here, Brian. Sure, Ashley. Thanks for having me. This week you looked ahead to some big planned space missions. And one thing that stood out in the report is the increasing numbers of missions involving private companies. Why are we seeing so many of these right now? Yes, this is one thing I noticed too, preparing the report. The main reason I think we're seeing so many of these right now is that these private partnerships with NASA have finally developed to the point where flights can actually be launched. NASA began its commercial crew program in 2011, and this is how these private space missions were established. But, of course, it takes years to develop the program, award private contracts, and receive NASA approvals for specific missions. So I think this is really the beginning of many more to come. Perhaps one of the most important missions to watch will be Artemis II, scheduled for late 2024, because it can mark a big step forward in bringing the US closer to its goal of finally returning astronauts to the Moon. Yes, and I think it will be particularly exciting because this flight will be traveling to very distant areas around the Moon, and this time carrying astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft. Of course, it won't land on the Moon, but will transport the astronauts to areas nearly 400,000 kilometers away from Earth, and this is, of course, way farther than current flights to the International Space Station, which travel distances closer to just 400 kilometers. Okay, well, thanks again for being here, Brian. You're welcome. Thank you, Ashley. My name is Anna Matteo. My name is Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. You're listening to The Lesson of the Day on the Learning English podcast. Today's lesson helps you do more with Level 2 of our video series, Let's Learn English. This series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. At the beginning of Lesson 5 of Level 2, Anna feels like she needs a break from work. At that moment, she sees an advertisement near the street. The advertisement, or ad, has a question in large letters and a picture of a beach. The question says, Do you need a vacation? The name of a travel agency is written at the bottom of the ad. It says, World's Best Travel Agency. Agency is a word for a kind of business that helps people with some plans or that provides a service for another business. In addition to travel agency, some examples are insurance agency, advertising agency, and employment agency. The word agency can also mean a government administration or office, such as a security agency. Anna decides to visit the travel agency she saw in the advertisement. And it's not just any travel agency. It should be very special because it is called the World's Best Travel Agency. The word best is the superlative form of the adjective good. And Lesson 5 of Level 2 reviews the comparative and superlative forms. The words better and best and the words worse and worst are special examples of these comparative and superlative forms. Let's listen to the first part of Anna's visit to the agency and be sure to listen for the superlative form.  I don't care that it was your worst vacation ever. Hello. Have a seat. Welcome to the world's best travel agency. Thank you and congratulations. For what? For being the world's best travel agency. Right. Thanks. Trudy, hold my calls. I'm going to sell our most expensive vacation. The travel agent played by our colleague Dan thinks Anna will buy the most expensive vacation he offers because Anna believes his agency really is the best one. In other words, he thinks Anna is naive and gullible. That means he thinks she will believe whatever he says and that she can be easily tricked. Naive is spelled N-A-I-V-E and we put two little dots above the letter I to show that we pronounce that vowel separately. And gullible is spelled G-U-L-L-I-B-L-E. Dan tells his assistant Trudy to hold his calls. When we call a business, we often get put on hold on the phone. That means we have to wait to speak to someone. Dan says hold my calls to show he does not want to be interrupted. Let's listen to the first kind of vacation the agent tries to sell Anna. The mountain getaway is good for you. It's a little pricey but think of it, you on top of a mountain for seven days. I'm afraid of high places. The adjective pricey means expensive and the comparative form is pricier and the superlative form is priciest. Now let's listen to more vacations Dan tries to sell Anna. I'm afraid of high places. Of course you are. That's why our deep sea adventure is better for you. It is pricier than the mountain getaway. Just you and the animals of the sea. Shark! Shark! Shark! No, there are no sharks in your dream vacation. You need the safari camp out. It is our priciest vacation but I think it's the best one for you. During the day you'll see elephants, giraffes and lions. At night you'll sleep out under the stars. Look I think this was a bad idea. Sure you can leave but then you won't see the latest vacation technology. When Dan says the latest he isn't referring to being on time or not being on time. Instead we say the latest to describe something that is the newest or most modern. For example we can say the latest technology, the latest news, the latest styles, the latest ideas and so on. And in casual speech we might ask someone, so what's the latest? This just means what is the news or most recent information about a particular topic. Now let's listen to Professor Botte explain a bit more. If you find all of those adjectives Dan started with good then he moved to better and finally he said the safari camp out was the best vacation for Anna. You can repeat the forms to help you remember them like this. Good, better, best. Good, better, best. Good, better, best. You can do the same for the negative forms. Bad, worse, worst. Bad, worse, worst. Bad, worse, worst. Now let's see if Dan can get Anna to stay and see the latest in vacation technology. Sure you can leave but then you won't see the latest vacation technology. Exactly what is the latest vacation technology exactly. I'm happy you asked. Meet the Travelmax 2000. Wow. So tell me how you like to travel. I like travel that is cozy and romantic but still exciting. Great, tell me more. I like traveling in a plane but not in a helicopter.  My favorite way of traveling is by train. Ships can be the scariest. Have you seen the movie Titanic? Oh and no horses. I will ride a camel. Oh and no bike tours. Biking is the slowest and least romantic way to travel. Excuse me but I think the Travelmax 2000 is on fire. Yes, we're both on fire. We really want to sell you the best vacation ever. No, I mean it's really on fire. You killed it. You killed the Travelmax 2000. I am so sorry. Can I help you fix this? No, no. Don't cry. I know what you need. Oh. A vacation. Oh no. The safari camp out looks fun. It is the priciest but I think you deserve it. No, no. This is the smokiest lesson yet. I can't breathe. Just go to the website. It's true. You can learn more from our website. Remember that each lesson of Let's Learn English has a lesson plan you can download for free. It explains more about the lesson and has helpful information for both students and teachers. And listeners, here are some questions for you. You can email us your answers. What have been some of your best and worst travel experiences? What would be the best kind of vacation for you? And what is scary for you? What is the scariest situation you have ever been in? You can email your answers to learningenglishatvoanews.com and we might mention your answers in a future podcast. Thanks for listening and be sure to write to us. Remember that you can also find us on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.


So, the mean square displacement or the ensemble average square displacement denoted by d n square expectation is basically i equal to 1 to n sigma i whole square its expectation which we can write as i equal to 1 to n when you square a sum can always write it as a double sum j equal to 1 to n sigma i sigma j and then the expectation process will come come out with the sum. So, you can take the expectation inside if you expand the double terms there will be n terms where sigma i will be equal to sigma j that is i equal to j. So, one could then write the first terms where i equal to j as basically sigma i square i equal to 1 this is corresponding to i equal to j term and then of course expectation and the remaining one will remain as double sums, but subject to the constraint that i not equal to j, but all i i equal to 1 to n j equal to 1 to n taking care to see that it does not include the same terms. So, this will be again sigma i sigma j expectation. From the property that we have seen the sigma i square expectation is l square. So, it will have l square n such term. So, it will be n into l square and here we have seen that the cross correlation is 0 because of the mutual independence or the process is iid. So, we can write it as 0 since sigma i sigma j equal to 0 i not equal to j which is independence or it is identically independently distributed r v property. Hence we see that my so, the square displacement is n into l square or d r m s if we define root mean square distance from the origin in n steps which is a square root of d n square average just take the square root it is going to be l root n. We can actually if I divide by n for the mean. So, we can one can say that the standard deviation sigma with respect in the mean distance for a given realization is going to be d r m s by n. So, that will be l by root n. So, we have obtained very important result that although on an average the random walkers displacement from the origin is 0, his root mean square distance the measure of dispersity that he would walk he would have increases with the number of walks, but it goes as a square root of the number of walks. So, number of steps. So, as he takes more and more steps although he is random there is a chance significant chance that he would in one step he would have reached by the nearest house. And if that particular house let us say the person living there recognizes him and he could have taken him inside and he could have reached the destination although he was actually having no clue which way his house is. We now connect it to the CLT property that we saw. So, in the CLT property or in the CLT connection every one of the sigma i's that we were taking it maps to this value sample value x i the realization of a particular random variable x. So, here sigma i is a realization of a particular random variable sigma. And the d for example, d n that we denoted between the sum of sigma i. So, this corresponds to sum of x i. So, d n by n this corresponds to sigma x i by n which we had denoted as y the so called sample mean. And from the property that we saw of the sample mean follows which follows from the central limit theorem. We had established that the probability density that the probability that you will obtain a value y different or y whereas, the absolute mean is mu in this case the absolute mean or the universal mean is 0. So, this is going to be 1 of root 2 pi e to the it was actually that distribution is s e standard error e to the power minus y square by 2 s e square since mean mu equal to 0 and s e is basically the standard error sigma by root n. So, accordingly we can establish by mapping with respect to this a distribution from y you can easily go to d n because it is just y equal to d n by n. So, a distribution function can be mapped onto a distribution which is a distribution of a quantity which is a product of another constant n. So, I can obtain a distribution function for the displacement in n steps as e to the power minus d n square by 2 n l square 1 by square root of 2 pi n l square. So, we without having done explicit detailed study of this random work phenomenon by mapping the problem of a marching process stochastically marching process to a statistical process arrive at the details of the distribution probability that the person will be at a distance d n after n steps and how this probability distribution increases or changes with changing or increasing number of steps. There is a very deep physical connection of this random work using steps to the classical diffusion problem let us say of a Brownian particle. So, that connection to physics and engineering is very interesting. Supposing now we try to connect the steps to time, suppose he took each step at regular intervals of time tau that is tau 2 tau correspond to n equal to 1 2 etcetera. Hence if he has taken n steps the time he would have spent at t is a if the time he has spent is t then n is t by tau to take n steps he would have taken at time t and one can relate the steps to the time in terms of the mean time per step this way. Hence we can replace n with the t by tau which means we can write our RMS displacement as it was n square root of l root n it was if I take l inside it is square root of n l square and n I am going to write it as t by tau. So, it is l square by tau into t. So, there is a convention in physics to define a quantity called a diffusion coefficient denoted by d and it is a microscopic quantity independent of the time taken or the position of the particle and that is often denoted by l square by 2 tau. So, if you define d as l square by 2 tau we get d RMS equal to square root of twice d t where d is now a constant of the system expressed in terms of the microscopic parameters the jump length l and the mean time taken to perform this jump tau in terms of the ratio of them then we obtain a very famous law which discovered by Einstein first regarding the mean square displacement that is square root law it is called Einstein's relation a square roots law. So, using this law Einstein proposed that experiments conducted with Brownian particles the should be interpreted carefully instead of looking for a law for the mean displacement which is on an average should be 0 one should look for the RMS displacement calculate each time plot it as a function of square root of t and you should get a straight line or you can plot the square of the RMS distance as a function of time that would be also a straight line then the slope of that straight line is a measure of the diffusion coefficient of the system. So, this is a very practical connection established by a very simple random walk model starting with the coin tossing giving it a direction and a sequence putting it on a lattice and then interpreting the steps via time and this of course, is consisted has been validated by large number of experiments and is the cornerstone of modern non equilibrium physics. However, coin tossing as a measure of performing a random walk has very limited possibilities since a coin has only two sites and they supposed to be a fair coin and you can only have a plus half probability or a minus half probability most stochastic phenomena have different probabilities for taking different values for their jump or random variation or random fluctuation in the variable. So, in order to perform this experiment one must have a very satisfactory way of generating random numbers other than half which cannot be done with the coin. If you use a dice for example, well you can probably have unequal probabilities one third or five one third or any other combination two third etcetera, but you cannot have any number that you want. So, generating a required probability generation of say transition probability other than half in general can be best done by a random number generator or it is sometimes called a pseudo random number generator because these most softwares have algorithms by which random number sequence of random numbers can be generated. However, there is some limitation very large after very large number of cycles they may have some periodicity and that is why for theoretical reasons they are called pseudo random number generators, but for all practical purposes when we do simulations with smaller number not very large number I would say of steps more or less the distribution is random. So, this is based on the concept of uniform distribution between the interval 0 to 1. So, a random number generator like in Mathematica the command random moment you execute this command one gets a random number and the probability of that number is lying in the interval 0 to 1 is uniform. There by there is an equal probability of getting another number lying between 0 to 1 to next time when you execute the command random. So, if I want to have a stochastic process to which I want to assign a probability let us say not half, but let us say 0.3 and then of course, 0.1 minus 0.3 as the con converse process then I would I will execute this process by by the commands let us say random in such a way that if the random number generated lies between 0 to 0.3 the action corresponding to that probability executed if it is not then the counter action is executed. So, if I have to execute a random walk in which the probability of forward jump is 0.3 and let us say p probability of forward jump that is probability of taking a plus l let us say this is 0.3 and probability of taking a minus l let us say is 0.7 then all that I have to do is to generate a random number and if that number lies anywhere between 0 to 0.3 I will ask the random walker to take a plus l jump otherwise I will ask him to take a minus l jump. So, this way we can assign arbitrary probabilities for the process random walk process at each step. We now discuss something more on this transition probability now that we have learnt how to assign different probability values we have to understand the concept of transition probability in a little more detail. In fact, transition probability it sets the rule of propagating the stochastic process it is the cornerstone every time that probability that we assign to march the random walk or march the stochastic phenomena that is the importance of transition probability. So, how exactly this probability differs with respect to other probability. So, what are the other probability concepts which enter into the domain of stochastic processes. So, to understand that we first have to differentiate it from let us say occupancy probability, conditional probability or joint probability. Other definitions or other concepts of probability we will take up as and when we are faced with it. So, we note one thing that perhaps the transition probability is closer to the concept of conditional probability because they have very similar connotations we often say conditional probability as the probability of occurrence of an event A given event B has occurred. So, often one denotes conditional probability let us say of an event A given that an event B has occurred. So, the previous event or the conditional to which this probability is defined is written on the to the right of the probability to which the quantity to which the probability is assigned. So, this is to be read as A given B probability for A given B. In the same way when we say transition probability B let us say of a site or taking up a step length sigma 1 in the next step then it is also conditional in the sense it is also defined as given the present state what is the probability of the system being in the next state in the next step. So, we can say probability of being in a certain state say A given that it was in state B previously, but however here there is a clear cut step sequencing. So, one actually implies that probability of the system let us say is being in a state A n plus 1 state A taking up a value n plus 1 in the n plus 1th step subject to the fact that it had a value let us say A n equal to A n. Let us say random variable is denoted by uppercase A the realization is lower case A then the probability that it acquired a value A n plus 1 given that it had a value A n in the previous step. So, this therefore has very close analogy with the concept of conditional probability in statistics. We understand it in a little more detail how it is connected to other probabilities by taking up the following example. For example, let us take a detailed example it is this will illustrate the whole concept. Let us take natural numbers divisible by 1. So, I call it as multiples of 1 m 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 and 20. Now, this is the multiples of unity up to 20. Now, let us ask a question of multiples of 2. So, m 2 so, this is a multiple all the even numbers are multiples of 2 it is very simple space of even numbers. So, these constitute a set of multiples of 2. Now, we ask those numbers which are multiples of 3. There will be far fewer numbers and these will be for example, the first one is 3 itself then 6 9 then we will have 12 will have 50 then we will have 18. Now, this is the multiples of 3. So, we can record that we have the probability of getting a multiple of 1 p 1 equal to 20 by 20 is unity. So, if I randomly pick up a number in between 1 and 20 whether what will be the probability of it becoming a multiple of 1 it is 1. The probability that a randomly selected number is a multiple of 2 will be the total numbers are total number of even numbers are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. So, it will be 10 by 20 this will be 0.5. Similarly, the probability that a number randomly selected will be a multiple of 3 is going to be a 6 such numbers. So, this will be 0.3. Now, let us create those numbers we can say which are both multiples of 2 and 3 that is we call it as m 2 and 3. So, we note that is here 6 is one such number the very next number is going to be 12 and the third number is going to be 18 and these are only 3 numbers which are available. Hence, the joint probability of getting 2 and 3 we can also call it as p 2 comma 3 and that is going to be. So, joint probability is going to be 3 by 20 which is 0.15 15 percent chance that number is divisible by both. Now, I ask a question on a conditional probability p probability that a number which is divisible by 3 is also divisible by 2 that is p 2 given 3 this conditional probability is defined as p 2 and 3 divided by p 3. So, the conditional probability of obtaining number divisible by 2 given that it is divisible by 3 is basically a contracted sample space normalized with respect to the probability of 3 from the joint distribution and this is going to be 0.15 divided by 0.3 which is 0.5. However, the probability of obtaining 3 or divisible by 3 given that it was divisible by 2 will again be given by p 2 and 3, but divided by p 2 the probability of obtaining even numbers and this is going to be 0.15 was the joint probability the even number probability is 0.5. So, it is going to be about 0.3 which is different. So, in other words p a b is different from p b a obviously, because the probability space in the denominators are different. This therefore, brings us to the definition in general of a conditional probability p a given b equal to p a comma b divided by b b. This definition is very useful for relating the transition probability with the joint probabilities of the system given the occupation occupancy probability is p b. So, if b is the state the probability of occupying that state is p b the probability that distribution for the joint distribution for finding both a and b is p a comma b or p a and b and the conditional probability of finding a given b is p a b which is similar to transition probability. From this background we now move over to any increasing level of sophistication in the theory of stochastic phenomena oh among the wide and very wide vast range of stochastic phenomena a very narrow subset of them are tractable at times and such processes which are relatively simpler to to follow formulate they are called Markov processes. So, we in the next lecture see what this Markov phenomena are, what are the examples and what perhaps could be the counter examples to Markov processes. Thank you.


Everybody forced here ripping one box of 2021 22 prison Premier League soccer breakaway for Greg H. Thanks. Great. Good luck Well season nice color here Got pulsar Casper Schmeichel silver Jack Graylisch nice graylish blue pulsar Christian Moreno or Christian Romero excuse me Christian Romero to 199 This first color match in the blue Rookie pulsar Peter a table Purple pulsar is Danny Ings to 99 Pulsar rookie Yvonne Tony Pulsar Mate Vigra Nice a gold Roberto Firmino That's number three of ten nice gold. There you go Greg Very nice silver appear Emmerich Obama Yang Silver Davenson Sanchez and last pack got a blue to 199 Romelo Lukaku Romelo Lukaku nice color match to 199 there. Good box for your Greg. Thanks again, man. We'll get it right out to you


By the way, I forgot to hit record, so that's my bad as a facilitator, so jumping in. And for those of you who might be joining us, we're looking at a spreadsheet that Stacey has shared about sort of helping identify some activities or performance based assessments around the framework. Any other questions from the, from the folks to join the breakout group because this is your time to to ask questions of Stacey. Yeah, I was just wondering, you know which of these assessments is sort of an online, you know, assessment that people take automatically and you know scoring those and which are more hands on or you're doing something on paper. Now, how did they buy that. So, I'm sorry, also, sorry, also just assigned like dumping like so there's an and maybe I can share. So I would say that most of them are are kind of like the ones that we are working with are not interact like they're, they're on paper or like maybe in the more traditional survey type stuff format. And those I should say that the assessments that are a little bit more kind of can be lifted and adapted for different contexts right. So, I think that's what's everybody. I talked to a lot of people that want digital skills assessments. And, you know, really what's best about, you know, assessing somebody's skills that's within a context right and which depends on, you know, your learner and kind of what they're interested in. And so, so I think, again, yes, some people kind of integrated within other assessments that they're they're doing as part of a part of a class. So, there is, and then, so then you have some interactive assessments like that are built into like a program or curriculum. So like Google has built in kind of assessments, or in the kind of lessons that they do and there's a certification you can take so there's a lot of applications that are kind of standalone pieces, which, like, you know, is usually cost money in a lot of time really it should be a real need a reason why you're spending that much energy into something like that. But then of course then you have more star, which is probably this the most popular most common kind of digital skills assessment, which is this, it's a interactive like multiple choice questions that you can take. And their assessment is available for anybody to use and then you can pay to to access their curriculum and track users and things like that. North Star is it came out of adult education in Minnesota as curious if is anybody here use North Star at all. Okay, Rachel. Yeah, curious about your experience with it. Yeah, I mean it's kind of like a almost like a simulator like if you know that you're clicking on a screen a simulated screen of something and maybe their opening files. It was, it was very useful we used it for like a pre assessment in a basic, you know, computer course that we gave. And so we had different models on like file management and stuff it helped us really gauge where the students were in a post assessment to the question I had actually for you was if you know if there's anything like North Star for mobile phones if anybody is doing anything with mobile phones like in that same vein where we can gauge students ability to toggle between apps or something like that. I don't think anything exists now. I think that North Star may be working on something for that. You know, it's so funny because it's been so I got mentioned briefly in the talk that our group has done a lot of international work and actually I for a project that our group had worked on and then I also picked up. We kind of co created this mobile information literacy curriculum, like some years back, and it was originally developed for, you know, again for these kind of context where people were starting with mobile phones so like some years ago it was like oh you know man Mar all of a sudden like their first interaction with the computer is using a mobile phone. And so from our experience with that, as we started seeing these trends in the US of mobile only we were trying to like. What about mobile like let's focus mobile let's integrate mobile and I feel like that it took this pandemic to like really like be like, okay yes, it's important. Because yeah, because far in my interviews and conversations with organizations and you probably have more knowledge about this is like you know they, you know trying to do everything remotely and so you're going to start with what people can do use with their mobile device because that's what they're most familiar with and then you can build upon that before moving to the computer. And so I see a couple of comments. Yeah, so I think that North Star one of the things that I am not crazy about some of the things North Star especially their basics assessment I feel like really focuses on things that I don't think are really as important to start with, like you know, you know, I think one of the things is like you know tell the difference between like a monitor and it's CPU like things like that. And it's like yes sure like that's good but again thinking about somebody who is like really beginning coming in, like, let's not get bogged down until like some of those terminologies like let's just like, let's get them doing what they want to do and then we can you know backfill some of that. And then, and then again there's no, there's no mobile abuse to that. I think what's, what's with appealing about North Star is it's, it's something you can use out of the box. They have a lot of support to it, there's a lot of people using it. I know our state library is actually like bought a license and that's going to for libraries to be able to use it. So, so it'll be interesting to see how, how they, how they end up doing that scale. Any other quite I think you know where we're some of those shortcomings of North Star is I think why there was a couple questions around that performance based. You know, sort of element I think one of the things that we've seen here in Chicago, or even say Illinois with the words that are using there's language barriers, obviously with North Star and just that setting in general. You know, being in a proper test can be intimidating, whereas if you're just asking a student to do something and just observing them, you can sometimes get a little more insight and sometimes they're just doing it in a different way than the way that sort of prescribes on that test as is the case with any. You know sort of box there can the standardized I guess test if you will. Yeah, and there's some good points in the chat here too I think something else that kind of. I don't know if North Star necessarily does that some of these sort of same sort of assessments do where it's, you know, it tests to see if you know, you know, like, you know, can you click on the right menu first to go where the edit button is or that and it's like, who cares, like I click around on menus all the time because I can't remember. Yeah, I will say that I am there were some assessments that I didn't score that one line only because I had some other route of copying and pasting or something like that. Right. So, mm hmm. To that point and one of the other comments that was made by Amy thank you is the challenge is being outdated so you had mentioned that you know that's one of the things that you're looking at how do you envision sort of, I guess, maintaining this framework, knowing that like a lot of you know, the genesis of the framework itself is because you were looking at the things that are common across these assessments and this curriculum. As a sort of mechanism for defining what are the skills folks need but when you're looking at things like the skills need people need for work, or which is sort of going to be changing in an ongoing basis what do you have plans or thoughts in terms of how you're going to work to sort of update the this the framework. No, I mean really. I mean somebody came to me and we're like, here's some money to do it. Okay, let's talk. You know, comes down to comes down to funding. And I, you know, I think that if we were to do an update. I think that one of the first steps would be to then go back to. Yeah, thanks Rachel. Yes, very interested in this my email address is available. You know, would be that we would talk with a little bit more back again to the organizations, you know, going back to this idea of kind of around, you know, it's original purpose and talking with organizations and like what do they need and how is this useful. I think it's, it's interesting to see kind of where it's been a constant, you know, it's been, it's being used and adapted from. I mean I would love to see others take up on it and riff, you know, kind of improve upon it. And, and move this forward to so I think that's one of the nice things about research right is you can put something out there, you put something out there and then others take it and and make it better. So, yeah, no, no, no plans at this moment to do further updates. Yeah, I just to that and I chatted a link in the, in the chat. And that is the way that we had developed actually as part of digital us that it includes the Seattle framework as well as a number of the curriculum assessments that they used for that, as well as some interesting studies that actually released around the same time last year. There's one sort of just understanding like the implications of these changing skills that that are needed for success using technology, and it is it's it's not going to, you know, stop or go away and it's not. There's like the baseline skills that are that sort of are part of digital resilience so that one can adapt to a new technology when it comes around. And there's even things that, you know, we continue to struggle with even as seasoned professionals there was a great podcast by Ezra Klein, last week I think on how email and slack have actually made us less productive because of sort of the nature of the intrigue and the sort of idealism around being able to immediately contact somebody and how that really actually creates more noise than. And I've said this for a year, you, how can you name something slack for something that is about productivity that makes no sense to me. No, and that's anything that's in it goes to like this, you know, thinking about digital literacy and this intersection of like 21st century skills right and like you know strategies around, you know, managing all this, all this stuff. Although I know that we're about I think about out of time, but unless I have my calendar wrong, but I didn't want to mention going back to kind of what you talked about there. Like building up for it to work, I have like these, I, what I what I'm hope to be hope to work on within the next year or so is really is writing kind of a larger paper about digital skills like building upon all these pieces of research that I've been doing with these different organizations and conversations that I'm having, like with, like people with youth, it really is, you know, thinking about, you know, digital skills in the placement of kind of technology, you know, you know, trying to synthesize things to be again like a kind of a kind of a different angle the resource and again kind of making this can you're talking about the digital assessments that are available and not available and how they relate to these other kind of frameworks and stuff and it's, I've got a lot of things kind of swirling around and I'm hoping that I can put some time aside this summer to kind of actually get that down. Get some drafts going. Great. Well thank you again so much for your time today. And for all the work that you've done it's, it's helpful and I'm hopeful that the work that we do can help to amplify that great sort of start. Yeah. Yeah, thanks so much for having me this is great I love that. You know you're taking, you know, building upon our framework and building it out and you know into this completely different kind of these resources that's fantastic. You know why we, you know, do the research for people to use it so it's great to see it being used. All right, well everyone enjoy your afternoon I don't know if we all have beautiful cherry trees around us but it's like sunny here in Chicago so hopefully you can enjoy your afternoon and weekends and thank you again stay safe we're joining us today. I put my email address again in the chat feel free to reach out if you want to talk some more. Thanks so much. Take care everyone.


I just wanted to show off, you know what I mean? In under two years, the government of St. Lucia, led by Prime Minister Honourable Philip J. Pierre, is on course to furnish every secondary school student with a laptop device, an accomplishment never before attained until the commencement of Prime Minister Pierre and his cabinet's tenure in office. Thank you very much and I'm sure the students will look forward to the use of these Chromebooks and I want to sign the means of Excel Affairs for being able to, as you'd see, navigate through the waters of the diplomatic channels and means of Excel Affairs, you'll be requested to do some more. Thousands of laptop and Chromebook devices have already been distributed in the last 18 months. On April 11th, the government officially accepted another 5,000 new devices from Taiwan. The new tech is airmarked for distribution among the incoming first-form secondary school students ahead of the commencement of the 2023-2024 academic year in September. Minister for Education Honourable Sean Edward has embraced Prime Minister Pierre's progressive one-laptop-per-child policy and continues to inspire the ensuing integration of modern technology into St Lucia classrooms. When we took to the Hurstins leading up to the elections of 2021, we made a promise to the people of St Lucia, more specifically the children of St Lucia, those who were old enough to understand that we would reinstate the one-laptop-per-child program. And today here we are, another demonstration of that commitment, another manifesto pledge fulfilled as an administration we decided that the government would meet the cost of procuring devices for students across the length and breadth of this country, irrespective of their socio-economic background, irrespective of their parents' political affiliation, irrespective of their station in life. Today, as we speak, every child in the school system has a state-issued device. The Republic of China on Taiwan continues to play an instrumental role in the government's reimagined classroom modernization and laptop initiative. My government really supports one student, one computer program that is promoted by the Honorable Prime Minister, the free JPA and the government of St Lucia. So we are honored to be part of this program, to be able to donate 5,000 crowns today. Under government's one-laptop-per-child policy was the brainchild of former Prime Minister Dr. Honorable Kenny Antony and initially introduced to St Lucia's secondary school system between the years 2011 to 2016. The wisdom of Dr. Antony's one-laptop-per-child policy was underscored during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when the Ministry of Education had to employ a distance learning concept to keep students engaged with their teachers during a time when public health measures restricted in-person learning to minimize COVID-19 infections. From the Office of the Prime Minister, Rihanna Izudo.


In this presentation we will discuss the question of why budget? In other words, what are the benefits of budgeting? One of the primary objectives is to have a future orientation, a future analysis, a future look to give everybody in the company an idea of first a word from our sponsor. Well, actually these are just items that we picked from the YouTube shopping affiliate program, but that's actually good for you because these aren't things that were just given to us from some large corporation which we don't even use in exchange for us selling them to you. These are things that we actually researched, purchased, and used ourselves. Here we have a western digital WD elements 20 terabyte USB 3.0 desktop external hard drive we use as part of our backup system noting that if you lower the number of terabytes of storage the price will lower dramatically as well. When you're thinking about a backup system you're usually thinking about an online system or an external hard drive system like this or ideally some combination between the two given you some redundancy. You can also work directly from an external hard drive like this but there are some drawbacks to doing that. One being if you use this as your primary drive you're working from it's no longer a backup drive and you're going to need a backup system possibly another external hard drive and or some kind of cloud backup system and if you're working on something that takes up a lot of short-term memory a lot of RAM as you're working on it such as video editing the external hard drive can slow up the system so you might want to come up with some kind of system where you download the project you're working on to your computer to your C drive or possibly to a solid state drive which is a much more expensive external hard drive as you do the work once the work is done then save the project to an external hard drive such as this. If you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accounting instruction dot com or accounting instruction dot thinkific dot com where we have many different courses you can purchase one at a time or have a subscription model given you access to all the courses courses which are well organized have other resources like excel files and pdf files to download and no commercials where the company is going in general and then a map in terms of how are we going to get to that future objective this seems obvious but if you take a look at different departments it's not as obvious as we might think because part of a company's objective is to divide tasks up by department and different departments are really geared towards what they're doing on a day-to-day type basis so it's management's job then to have that future orientation to be looking into the future to be planning that endpoint to be planning where the company is going what's the direction of the company from an overarching type of standpoint and then help the others to see that overarching standpoint within different departments so that each department although they are looking for the day-to-day goals and you'll note that many supervisors that are working within a particular department are really managing the day-to-day they're trying to get through the day manage all the problems that happen on a day-to-day basis it's not really the management's job all the time of a particular department to take the step back and have that big picture vision that's what the upper management is there to do to have that big picture vision and then align all the management together with that in order to apply that big picture vision however we do want to have everybody in the company to have a glimpse and have participation be able to see what that big picture is so that when we go into those day-to-day tasks when we go into the things that we got to do each day when we solve those problems each day we have at least in the back of our mind the big picture focused and we can take actions that are in alignment with the big picture focus even if possibly they don't line up with the exact policy that we are looking at or the exact rule or if there is no rule for one set or circumstance that happens if we have a big picture focus a big picture view then people that are managing particular departments can then say okay i know what to do within this situation because it's in alignment it's in congruity with our big picture goals and objectives another big objective is to communicate the plans with the organization so we want to be able to have the plans and oftentimes we think of top management coming together with a strategic plan that they're then going to implement but in order to implement the plan we really need to be able to communicate the plan and the communication of the plan will have a lot of different effects as we go into this process note when we have the budget as well the budgeting process should be a communication project in and of itself because that helps with the flow of ideas with the flow of communication both up from the bottom up to management as well from the top management on down in terms of the communication of the final direction that we can then be clear on and going forward and be able to put together the steps that will be necessary in order to move forward in an efficient way therefore the creation of the budget should be one that has communication with that creation so everybody feels like they have their input in the budget that they're part of the budget they're part of the plan and the execution of the plan then they are personally invested in once the plan has been made then it's the job of management to clearly define what the plan is once the budget committee has come up with the plan so that everybody is fully aware of it everybody can be in congruity with it and everybody can take steps along the way in the future as the future unfolds in accordance with the steps that have been laid out with the plan with the budget the budget should also make those long-term strategic plans into more short-term financial plans so it's going to be the job of management to have an idea of what the long-term plan for the company is what's the five year what's the 10 year plan for the company those overarching plans the objectives the goals of the company the mission statement of the company and then break those down into smaller chunks because the smaller chunks are the actual roadmap that we can see we can see only part of the road as we go forward and therefore we need to zoom in on that part of the road so we are conscious of what we are doing we're focused in on the steps that we need to take going forward while keeping in mind especially upper management keeping in mind but also communicating to the rest of the company what the overarching goal what the five-year goal what the 10-year goal is we want to have the overarching vision of where the company is going but then the budget of course is there to break that down into digestible chunks chunks that we can then see clearly going forward chunks that people within the company then know and can use in order to make the steps and decisions in the immediate future in the next month in the next year in the next week in the next day another objective of the budget is to provide a benchmark that we can then use to measure actual performance against so in other words when we make the budget we're saying this is what should happen this is what we think is going to happen we want to make that as numerical as possible because numerical items are easy for us to then compare in other words we say this is what we think should happen if we can measure it in terms of dollars that's very concrete that's easy to measure then we say hey this is what actually happened at the end of the time period that we had previously budgeted for and of course the difference between those two is something that we can then look into and think about and consider why so that we can then make another budget for the next period and move on and on and on in this fashion hopefully improving improving and improving another major goal of the budgeting process and one that's often overlooked is the motivation of employees through participation it's often thought that the budget's going to be applied from a top down type of perspective and sometimes it is but we want to be careful of that because we really want to have the bottom up type of feedback we want to make the budgeting process a communication process because it's a really big opportunity for us to have that communication process we want to be able to have all places within the company be able to give feedback so they feel like they're invested in the plan they've contributed to the plan they are part of the goal that has been taken on through the budgeting process and therefore they're personally invested in the outcome the only way to do that is to really get the feedback from everybody within the budgeting process so the budgeting process huge opportunity for communication to help everybody to feel heard it does not mean of course that it's going to be a democratic process and we're all going to take a vote and decide what the budget is but it does mean that the process of creating the budget should be in a systematic way and that the governing of the process should be in the format of how can we get the best information and everybody in the company should hopefully know that the budgeting process is designed in that and with that end goal in mind to get all the information that's what the budgeting process is for and then of course the final decision is made final decision made by management once the budget has been completed then hopefully every feel everybody feels like they have invested that they have been communicated with well to that that they've been able to contribute and that any kind of response to the budget in any decision that has been made has been well communicated hopefully in a way that addresses any consenting viewpoints so that everybody feels invested in the budget and then the implication the implementation of the budget can happen and management then wants to implement the budget and make sure that the plan is then executed once the decision has been made once the budget is set down and we're moving forward with it then we want to make sure that the plans of the budget are clearly communicated the process of making the budget now having been ended now we're in the implementation of the product of the budget and want to make sure that the implementation the communication of the goals of it are now communicated from management to the employees and in a way that everybody understands what those goals and objectives that everybody has decided and invested in are so to recap our budget objectives it should promote future analysis of thought and direction so it has everybody kind of focused on the goals of the company and the goals that are going to be the future orientation so if there's any question on the day to day type of activities that can happen they should have some idea we should have some idea of what to do given the overarching vision the overarching goals and objectives of the budget and the company communicates the plan to the organization so the organization everybody within the organization hopefully has a good idea of what the budget is how to act within the budgeting process what their department is required to do within that budgeting process because those steps have been well communicated make long-term strategic plans into short-term financial plans so we want to have an overarching vision upper management does of course want to communicate that vision but also want to communicate how we're going to get there on a step by step year by year month by month day by day type of basis so that people within the organization can then see the overarching vision but also what they got to do immediately they see the road in front of them how to take each step as they go along the right the way provides benchmarks for evaluation we should be able to compare what we do on the budget to what actually happens that given us feedback on our progress so that we can then make another budget and it motivates employees through participation it really should be a communal kind of activity if everybody if it if it is it's a huge benefit huge opportunity for everybody to feel like they put some feedback into the budget not necessarily feeling like the budget did everything that they wanted that's obviously not going to happen but feeling like the process was good process was geared to get communication to get feedback and all of that feedback hopefully was addressed and therefore people feel like it was a it was a good process to go through and therefore are invested in the plan and then once the plan is implemented they will feel invested in carrying out the plan and achieving the goals and objectives of the budget