It's popular belief that long-distance relationships never work out. But sometimes, absence does make the heart grow fonder, and people learn to take their partners less for granted when they're not always around. It's also worth noting that some couples far away from each other feel closer than couples who live with each other because they're more willing to communicate their problems with one another. It all boils down to one word, effort. Here's six tips on maintaining long-distance relationships. 1. Give them a personal gift to hold onto. Before the two of you depart, give each other something you can hold onto and remember one another by. A few examples you may be inspired by include exchanging nightlights, stuffed animals, jewelry, hoodies, or mugs.  Instead, focus on how the object has served to bring meaning into your life. 2. Set routines and learn about each other's schedules. Time zones can be tricky, but learn to appreciate the differences. This can teach you the value of patience and remind you that relationships don't thrive or grow for moments of instant gratification. Once you and your partner get settled in and adjust to your new lifestyles, let each other know about your schedules and routines. Depending on how much of a difference your time zone is, you may need to take turns accommodating to each other's availability to set up Skype dates or phone calls. It may sound daunting, but once the two of you figure out a rhythm that works for the both of you, the rest will set sail. 3. Build trust and try not to jump to conclusions or assume the worst. Life can be unpredictable, so sometimes things come up, such as family emergencies, working overtime, or illness that may interrupt your usual communication patterns. Rather than worrying about whether your partner is cheating on you or if they've grown bored of the relationship and may be spending more time with their friends, know that there's no actual proof or evidence to back up those anxious thoughts. Build trust with your partner and ask each other how you're feeling rather than bottling up insecurity and making the walls bigger. Getting answers directly from your partner is better than overanalyzing and filling in those gaps yourself. 4. It's not about how often you talk to each other. Instead, focus on quality communication. Consistent communication is important when the two of you are apart from each other, especially when the physical aspect of the relationship is absent. But too much of it can also backfire and leave the two of you feeling smothered or burnt out. Rather than texting each other every hour of the day, find balance and moderation and focus on the quality of your conversations instead of how frequently the two of you talk. You may come to find that the more you talk to each other, the more you end up talking about the same things in circles rather than delving into a meaningful conversation that makes you appreciate each other's intellect, ideas, and perspectives. 5. Make time to see each other, but know that every visit may not be ideal and that's okay. When you visit each other, you may want to make the best out of your time together and plan to do exciting things, but we're all human, so allow room for flexibility instead of perfection. There may be times when you're exhausted from traveling back and forth and just want to stay in and watch a movie with your partner. Or perhaps there's a delay in your flight that may bleed into your dinner reservations. Doing fun activities and bonding with your partner is important, but sometimes it's good to just play things by ear and go with the flow. Remember, it's about the company you're with and not necessarily what the two of you do. 6. Embrace the challenges together. Long-distance relationships are difficult, but don't let the challenges tear you apart. Instead, embrace them together. Sometimes, your insecurities may get the best of you. Consequently, you may believe the two of you would be better off breaking up and meeting new people. Take a step back and think about why you held on for so long in the first place. Whether the two of you are apart because you're going to different schools or because of a job promotion, know that the long distance is only temporary and that you're working on yourselves before the two of you can be together again. It's a common misconception to think that in order for relationships to work, one person has to sacrifice their needs and desires for the other. In reality, this is how relationships often break apart when people feel stifled and can't grow together.  Have you ever been or are currently in a long-distance relationship? Do you have some tips on how to deal with one? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. If you liked this video, be sure to check out our website and other social media, as well as our Patreon account for more content. And don't forget to subscribe. Thanks for watching!


Aaron Hicks tried to take some swings yesterday and his wrist just did not respond the way that Hicks would have liked and the way the Yankees would have liked. So this move was made as a result. You see Ryan Lamar on the roster officially now. And Aaron Boone did say that Aaron Hicks is not going to travel with the team to Texas. Instead, he'll come back to New York. He has not had any additional tests scheduled right now. But Aaron Boone said that Lamar is the correct choice because he's a guy that can play all three outfield positions and he really envisions maybe a platoon situation with him and Gardner in center field. Now, Estevan Florial is on the 40-man roster. He's one of the Yankees' top prospects. And I asked Aaron Boone if he was at all considered to be promoted today. He's not eligible yet too. He's got to be in that triple A for 72 hours at least. So, you know, we'll let Flo play. Obviously we're watching and paying attention to what he's doing, but it's important that he plays right now and gets those everyday reps. We want him to play. We want him to play and continue to gain experience. Obviously, you know, we know his ceiling, but look, I mean, the situation we're in with 2021 and things that are going on, being on the roster, he's in play. You know, that said, you got to strike that balance between obviously we want him playing and developing, but you know, also if it's a situation where we feel like we need or he can help us, then you know, we have to consider that. So all those things will be taken into consideration with Flo. So who is Ryan Lamar? He bats right, throws left. This is the sixth organization. He'll see some big league time. He was the second round picked by the Reds back in 2010. And today he is starting in center field for the New York Yankees.


This is the VOA Special English Technology Report. A rocket designed and built by a privately owned company recently made history by bringing a supply capsule to the International Space Station. It was the first private spacecraft to carry out such a mission. The company SpaceX launched its Dragon Space Capsule on the company's Falcon 9 rocket. It was launched May 22 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX mission controllers celebrated when the rocket reached orbit and its solar panels deployed. Three days earlier, a launch attempt was cancelled at the last second when a computer found a problem with the engine. Astronauts on the International Space Station used its robotic arm to secure the capsule. Later they released the Dragon Capsule and it returned to Earth. It landed in the Pacific Ocean after its nine-day mission. Charlie Bolden is the head of NASA, the American Space Agency. He spoke to reporters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the rocket was launched. The significance of this day cannot be overstated, he said. The head of SpaceX watched the launch from company headquarters in California. Elon Musk compared it to winning the Super Bowl. He said there was so much hope riding on that rocket. There was tremendous elation, he said, when his employees saw all their work operating as it should in space. NASA has invested about $400 million in SpaceX to help it develop space flight technology. And the agency also has a contract with SpaceX for 12 flights to resupply the space station. NASA wants private companies to carry out operations in low Earth orbit. The agency wants to focus its attention on developing the next generation of spacecraft that can travel to asteroids or Mars. The Falcon 9 rocket brought more than 500 kilograms of supplies to the space station. SpaceX said the rocket also carried the cremated remains of 300 people. The part of the rocket that carried their ashes will orbit the Earth for about a year until burning up in the atmosphere. Among the ashes were those of astronaut Gordon Cooper and actor James Dewan. He played Scotty, the chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the popular TV and movie series Star Trek. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villareal. To learn more about SpaceX and the Dragon capsule, go to voaspeshalinglish.com.


So guys I am back with another cyberpunk 2077 video today guys I'm going to showcase to you in my opinion the best XP farm Money-making farm you need shards you need eddies you need weapons you need money you need XP This is absolutely perfect for you new players old players. It doesn't matter How's it going guys? My name is DPG and if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you're seeing Want to see more be sure to subscribe So this farm basically consists of you runnace a small circle Well infinite adds will spawn I mean you can take these out get XP from doing what you gotta do Loot their bodies get those weapons sell the weapons get eddies get shards from their bodies get everything guys But first things first you want to come to your apartment any apartment in Night Sea where you have a bed and take a nap simple as this Just take a nap five hours perfectly fine So once you've done this guy, you'll actually get a 20% increase bonus for the XP and A lot of people didn't know about this But yet this is true Nothing people didn't know about as well is if you take a shower You'll get a health increase for an hour Both these did these buffs last for one hour. So that's one hour of farming Craziness so come to your shower and take a shower and then we'll do what you gotta do guys Leave the shower now when you leave your apartment, you'll see top left that you've got these buffs active So leave you see right there top left never got an hour So once you have this guys and this is also something I recommend it isn't necessary I recommend you having it come to your character go to reflexes and have your two points into dash What this allows to do is just allows you to get around much quicker If you got double jump cyberware legs as well even better. So with that come to this point on the map now you want to come to This point this is where the loop starts. So basically gonna run around here do a loop come back This repeat that's literally it so with that dash Double jump cyberware legs. It makes things so much quicker. So any one of these fast travel points are perfectly fine for this But yeah, so we're just gonna go there. So what I do guys is I cut the video and I was doing one Here just makes life easier. Okay. So we are at the spot We need to start this farm at and it's right here guys You can see where I'm at right there and the best place Well, the best point about this whole place is there's a weapon vendor here, which sells ammo There's drop points all around here as well if you want to sell your stuff you're looting You'll even sell them to the weapons vendor too, but hey Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do now with your best weapon in hand the fastest thing you can kill enemies with That's what you want to be using. So if you're a new player, let's get the best weapon you can get If you're an experienced player like myself, you know what you gotta do guys. So from this point set roller coaster We're just gonna run forward Just like so That's jump just makes life so much easier. We start at the second amendment take these two out To be honest, I could probably use a better weapon in this But hey now if I were you loot their bodies loot everybody if you need money just loot loot loot From here guys take these guys out. This is another gang. There's like six enemies here Do what you gotta do should be one up there too and there should be one behind me now There we go right there. So take her out to this weapon. It's shoots fast poison But hey legend over there can look that if you want to or leave I just leave it Again, if you need that ammo, I mean if you need that that money loot what you gotta do guys Okay, so I've come here take these guys out Just like so Now we're gonna dash down the beach I'm just gonna switch weapons because these guys are in cars and it's just quicker to blow them up It's just for demonstration purposes. So take these guys out. It's just your up to tier five there. That's money Just like so take him out and all there's a guy there take him out to Grab what you want and grab guys. There we go from here. He's still live. Okay There we go. So from here guys gonna turn around. I'm gonna go to these steps Just shoot at the top of these steps right there take them out There behind we're gonna come back this way. I'm gonna make our way left up these steps Up these steps Take it right and you'll see that there's a party going on right here So from here guys try not to blow up the car This can like despawn the old grab the whole crowd So hey just aim at one of them and normally the civilians run away You don't really want to kill civilians because police will come I mean it ain't too hard to get with the police in this game But hey do what you gotta do so there I got one star That's nothing so from here guys we're gonna go this way To this corner right here and I pull up my map to show you exactly where I am So we've basically guys just done we started there So we basically just run around here go down to the beach come up the steps and come here And I was gonna do another cycle quickly back. So from here guys Come this way Now what we'll say is Normally there's ads in here. There's not here all the time, but you might as well check where you're running past So take these guys out. There should be three There's also a loot in here too as you can see right there in that box You can take that some are you doing but someone's slapping the back of my head as one guy left there And I don't really want to leave enemies That's not what you want to do because sometimes they can mess up the rotation from here come to the corner There's three more there from here guys cross the road Just like so and there's a gang right here Block their vehicles if you want to again, sometimes I mean like I've run this now for Well, I'm not like this for a long while but sometimes somebody is don't spawn It's like a weird cycle to do where they won't spawn which is fair enough If they they're the second time or third time just keep coming back and they will eventually come back But normally for me they're always here But there can be that one odd chance where they're coming at me So we're gonna come this way now making way back down here. There's a group here three We take them out Just like so then you want to cross the street here go under this bridge and there's two more across there Let's hit them out then guys. We don't actually touch these we leave these here. This is where we reset So back to the wall Just like so and then we'll just go again Again, if you need ammo ammo shop down your right Do what you got to do guys. It really is that simple take them out Just like so I mean if I couldn't it is it be even quicker because drop grenades with enough But I like my disguise I love my disguise the simple way you get for playing the story ain't gonna ruin nothing for nobody if they haven't got that far yet But it's incredible Again take all these guys out again. You should be looting their bodies of shards and stuff I'm only doing this for the video to make it quicker.   I've done a bit far But hey, it's almost brought my legs Take these guys out I need to invest in some fall damage or something man.  We can just if you don't care. Just take them out Take out civilians as well. Whatever Take them all out there we go good So now guys we're gonna run back to this corner and then do what you gotta do guys It's basically just a constant cycle of enemies respawning over and over and over again Again, sometimes these are in here.  I'm not too sure But hey, they're back sometimes they just well you do what you gotta do guys I think I don't think it matters whether he is too much of a block the car by not that group having a party definitely does Took them out guys now. We're gonna go back to where we just come from ignore the police. They're doing their own thing Come back here. Keep coming this way. There's a couple more here guys And this is a farm of Iran consistently No, no problems whatsoever. So I take these guys out cross the street and There we have two more again and There we have guys who just reset it Come back to the same point right here Just like so and then go again. Everything will have reset This can do this for as long as you like Long as you like XP. I mean money eddies Whatever everything's here everything's what you need is here. I'm with the XP buffs as well It just makes life way easier So so yes guys do what you've got to do and the XP and those eddies get those shards Components to craft via dismantling things you're picking up You know it goes guys, you know how it goes But yes guys if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out I'm no doubt you're gonna see this on other people's channels But hey YouTube is YouTube these days. I notice that good people will take it That's fair enough do what you got to do But yeah, if you enjoyed the video leaving like really helps me out If you like what you're seeing want to see more be sure to subscribe and hopefully guys. I will see you on that next one


OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Well, welcome, everyone. We're at our session today with using Canvas with ABE programs to help us get started with that and using learning tools called LTIs. We'll get all the details about that. We had a bit of a rocky start here. I forgot to turn on the recording, so I'm going to go ahead right over to Jamie and I'll let her introduce herself. And I'll get us back to her slide. We just had introductions, so everybody will reintroduce themselves when they start their section. Again, my name is Jamie Nash, director at Tamal Pais adult school, and I appreciate the participants putting their Canvas experience in the chat. Sounds like we have a range here from wanting to learn more about it to have downloaded some shells and I'm kind of getting started with the program in our school. So that's great. So that's really just helpful for all of us to know here as we present on this topic. So next slide, please. All right, so one of the things that I've noticed, I imagine you guys on the panel and the participants here today is that a lot of TDLS this time around, we're talking about Canvas, that it's being widely used not just in the adult school world, but not just in the university world and high school setting, but now more so in the adult ed realm as well. So when the pandemic hit, there were some schools, some high schools, and some adult schools that were online using Canvas. But really what I saw as a administrator is that there was a trend to bring in Canvas, whether it was my own kids' high school experience or the adult schools, to really make learning accessible because it looked like we were going to be online for a while. So it's a really great platform to use with students. It's engaging. It's widely used, whether it's in the university or community college system or the high school system. So in another presentation I was in this morning, one of the educators in that presentation went so far as to say that if we're not introducing our students to Canvas, we're doing them a disservice. And actually, I tend to agree with that because I think it's important that we expose our students to what is being used in adult education and also in the world of work or university or even trainings within university. So not only does Canvas build that exposure, but it also builds digital literacy skills with our student population. And I'm wondering if some of you on the participant list are wondering, well, Canvas is really just for students at the intermediate level of ESL and ABEGD levels. However, I would ask for you to consider that I think we have a responsibility to all of our students, to all of our adults, to build their tech skills no matter where their level is because that's the world that we live in. And that's been especially apparent as COVID has sort of taken over the world. And many of the presentations in TDLS have been by educators in adult schools who are working with the beginning levels of ESL. So I think there's a lot of possibility out there. And I'm excited to actually bring in more Canvas, not just to the ABE level, but even to our other levels as well. So let's go to the next slide. Hey, Jamie. Yeah. Also, just to reiterate too, when this says user-friendly platform, this is a user-friendly platform on multiple levels. Most of our students, because we've seen data out of our student surveys, they have a smartphone. They own a device. They use it. Not only that, they have tablets. Or yes, yes, there are issues sometimes with access to broadband. But we still, we should be able to meet our students where they have those devices and Canvas is wonderfully compatible with all of those different devices. So back to you, Jamie. Thank you. And thank you for saying that, because it also reminded me that we're hearing a lot now just as global citizens of how the workforce has changed and will continue to change with the pandemic parameters. And so so many of us have been working from home or now starting to come back on to school sites or work sites. But you're also hearing in the news that work from home options or study from home options are increasing. So it's another important reason and component for us all to think about as we create our programs for adult learners is how are we going to meet that challenge? How are we going to offer that accessibility to our students so that they don't just have to be on site to get the instruction? And so that would be another reason to use. If you're a creative type, I struggle with that. But you can get so creative in Canvas from the design of your platform and the look of your class to the way that you create and roll out assignments and graphics. It's a wonderful place to organize all your amazing materials. If you're in the ABE field, you know that there's very little out there for us. And the materials that we find, we have to struggle and work really hard to find. And they're from a lot of different places. We don't just have one book that we can use. So what's nice about the Canvas portal is that you can use that portal. You can use your class as a way to organize your wonderful materials. You can do it by module. You can do it by week. You can do it by subject area. And you can move it all around in the course. So there's just a lot of really great opportunities. The other piece is that the Canvas portal, as long as you have Wi-Fi, it's accessible. So we could have students that we all know that we have students that take a couple of weeks off, three weeks off, sometimes longer to go visit family out of the country, or they did. And now this is a way that your students can still stay engaged and continue to be with family or go places. And that includes if there's child care issues on a given day. So there's just really great opportunities to have both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities for learning. And yeah, Penny's saying that students can go hang out at Starbucks and other places, the libraries, other places where Wi-Fi is better to do work. And so those are just some of the other things to think about why you might want to implement Canvas at your site. All right, next slide. And can I add one thing, Jamie? Absolutely. You have on your list your accessible and paper list. I think that it's really important to understand. We're not talking just about students being able to get to Canvas and be able to manipulate the materials there. But it's also accessible in the terms of 508 compliance. So if you have the needs, if you have students that have special needs or they have a disability of one kind or another, Canvas is already built in the necessary tools to make that navigation piece much easier for them. So I tend to tout that one because I'm very much about equal access and or equivalent experiences for learners so they can actually be able to get to those materials. That's the access via broadband piece and then have them accessible if they have any type of visual impairment or a hearing impairment that they can have a similar experience as the rest of the learners in the classroom. And before we go to the next slide, thank you for saying that, too, Penny, because that reminded me that really you can make your online, your Canvas course very engaging for students. If a student, if you give them homework and they turn in an assignment, you can provide written feedback on that assignment. You can provide verbal through the use of audio feedback. You can create discussions within a course or a module for students. Instead of imagining yourself in the physical classroom setting, asking an opener question, you can do that online and solicit the same kind of feedback and discussion as you would in person. It just looks a little different. And so there's just a lot of different possibilities that are there and it's a matter of getting started. You're not going to be as amazing online if you've never taught online as you are in person. There's a building process. It's our journey to get there, but you'll get there. So that's just something to think about as well. Hey, Jamie, I just want to support what you're saying about the participation. As students, if you do an online thing and discussion, some students who would not maybe be brave enough to participate face to face actually will participate online, where it's a different playing field. So you're adding something that is very rich for certain types of students. So I think that's a real benefit. The Shire student, for example, might not raise their hand or speak up face to face. Online has sort of more equal opportunity. Really good point. Really, really good point. All right, let's go to the next slide. You know, one thing I did forget. For any of you on the listening in now, if you are a Google Classroom teacher user, I would highly, and you haven't started Canvas yet, I would highly encourage you to just play with it. Because I think you'll find that you like, once you get through that learning curve, and there is a learning curve, that you'll like Canvas probably more than you like Google Classroom. There's a lot more flexibility within the platform than I found there to be with Google Classroom. And I'm not disparaging Google Classroom at all. I think it's a great tool. We use it here also. But I just think it's another thought in terms of your implementation of Canvas if you decide to go that route. So let's talk about the LTI tools. These are online publishers, online tools that you may already use in your adult school to that perhaps you've given students account, like in, for instance, Newzella. Perhaps students already have Newzella as part of your teaching program within an ABE program outside of Canvas. Within Canvas, they have different publishers and programs that you can incorporate right into your Canvas class and assign instead of giving multiple emails and logins and accounts, it can all be done in one place. And I think more and more publishers for adult schools are understanding that Canvas is sort of the direction that we're all going to be going. So I think we'll see more and more of them that decide to figure out how to integrate with Canvas. Let's see. And I know Zoe's going to talk a little bit about that. I know Mary Ann's going to talk a little bit about that. I will be very candid here that I am just still learning about LTIs and even how to incorporate them and what that really looks like. And I'm finding sometimes that the publishers and programs materials that we use and really count on don't yet have an LTI embed code. So we're kind of working on that as well. We're working through some of those issues. Jamie. Yes, go ahead. I'm a believer in that drip-drip water torture or the squeaky wheel. If teachers and administrators start pinging on these publishers more and more about, look, I want an LTI because I like using your stuff. But if I can't make it work for my learners to give them, the learners the flexibility of having access to this material, then I can vote with my feet and go to another publisher. I think that you're right, that publishers are getting the word. I mean, there are many, many, many of these learning tools, the LTIs out there. It's just sometimes you don't know if you don't ask and you don't know if you don't find the resources to help you explore them. That's why these types of sessions are really helpful because we can talk about specifics, which is what we will do here today. But please expand your thought process of thinking about, well, what do I currently use? And what do I have available to me? Could I integrate my textbook with what I could do in Canvas along with all of those other wonderful tools that allow for feedback and the student voice in so many different ways? And then you still get to use what you've invested in in terms of that textbook. Because I'm a true believer in that squeaky wheel thing. So I just wanted to throw that out there because a lot of times we get stuck in, well, it takes so long for new textbooks to get approved or whatever the case may be. There may be options here that could be very valuable to your agency in providing more of these LTIs in a Canvas instance that you're using. So I'll get off my soapbox. Sorry. Thank you, Penny. So much. And I will say, just having listened into an earlier session today that Corona Norco Adult School, they have done some really good work in bringing LTIs into their Canvas world. And so Sean and Pamela and some of the other people on the listening in, I would highly recommend also, if you can, go back and listen to that recording if it's available and or reach out to them as well. Because I think they're kind of doing what Penny suggests, which is making sure that the publishers that they use are getting LTI codes. And then they're finding new ones if they don't. So they're a little farther ahead where we are, but I'm hoping we'll get there as well. And I've been very thankful. You're going to hear from Zoe in a little bit. I've been very thankful for Zoe's tenacity and for her drive. She's really asked us to add LTIs to her Canvas course on several occasions. And so she's learning as she goes and she's doing a great job. So I'm going to go on to the final slide. So next slide, please. So if you have not considered joining the Canvas pilot with OTAN, you definitely want to do that. Even if you're just playing with it, even if you think only one teacher is going to use it, it's just important to get started and to just try. They've made the pilot very inexpensive and it's very adult-ed user-friendly, even at the lowest levels of tech skill. At least that's been our experience. So I would just say it's important to get started. Don't let the tech piece scare you out of just starting. And I think I anticipate and Penny can certainly weigh in here that next year, maybe even starting as early as this summer, there will be a tremendous amount of training for new agencies that come on and join the pilot program. Yeah, go ahead. No, I mean, just to let folks know, I know we don't have a huge audience here, but if your adult school does not have Canvas, please know that California Distance Learning Initiative is meant to provide all adult schools with an instance or their own Canvas platform, their own Canvas gateway. We pay for it and we pay for the initial 50 licenses for you. And then after that, then if you need more licenses, we have a memorandum of understanding that we will enter into with your agency and you can purchase additional licenses at an extraordinarily low rate. And you can get more information. I put the email address also in the chat. Please, please, this is where you can go to your administrator because an administrator has to be the one that signs up for this and approves this because we have to have somebody who has that fiduciary responsibility. They're the ones that can spend the money. We get lots of wonderfully enthusiastic teachers that want to do something like this and say, sign me up, but they're not authorized to spend money. So go to your administrators and keep pinging on them and bring them chocolate chip cookies or something and say, look, I think this is really good for our learners because it is. And it's an amazing deal for adult schools across the state. So I highly encourage anyone who's not signed up yet. And it's no big rush. Don't think you have to get started and do it immediately. You do have the time. We put you through training.  And you've got now from now until whenever you want to start using Canvas with your students, you might want to work with your teachers first and then bring your students on the next semester. You have that flexibility. So I strongly encourage you to get in touch with us to learn more. And we've got resources for you that are a quick read and it gives you the baseline of what's going on that you can share with your administrators. Or if you are an administrator, if you email us at that canvas at scowy.net, we will be sure to get that information out to you as soon as possible. So I will then turn it back to Jamie. Jamie, where are we going next? Well, I think I'm done. I would just encourage you to keep putting your questions in the chat. I love Sean's question, which is I'm a Google classroom user, will it integrate with Canvas? And Penny answered that, yes, it will. And so keep those questions flowing if you have them. And thank you. Definitely. Moving on. And we're moving on to Zoe, right? Your perspective from getting started with Canvas, do you want me to go to the next slide? Yes. Yeah, hi, everyone. My name is Zoe Miner, and I'm a teacher at Tammel Pies Adult School. I teach a multi-subject high school equivalency GED test prep course to ABE and ASC students. Can I advance myself for this? Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah, so I have ABE and ASC students at Tammel Pies Adult School. We do high school equivalency GED test prep. And so I got, as most of us, I'm trying to add, oh, here we go. There you go. You got it. Yeah, OK, that is right. All right. So as most of us did, I got drawn into the virtual teaching and learning universe when schools weren't remote in 2020. I did start with Google Classroom also, which for me also was a learning curve. And it took me a while to get comfortable there and get my students comfortable there. And so at first, and I didn't take it too seriously, because at first I thought the move to distance learning would be temporary, and everybody would be going back to in-person. And it seemed very clunky at first to be online compared to the visceral in-person classroom experience that I was used to. So I did put a lot of focus. I just did enough to get by with the Google Classroom. But I started to see that there were advantages also to the online environment for teaching and learning. But so I dove in feet first, because I had to. But my head was still in the paper world. So I was scanning all my favorite worksheets and trying to just transfer everything the way I was doing it before, because I had a lot of good materials, what I thought. But some of them didn't transfer as well to the digital environment. But I was playing around and starting to just explore this new virtual world of teaching and learning. And even though I had been exposed to a lot, actually quite a bit of tech training, our district is pretty generous with training opportunities. So over the years, I was exposed to different egg tech training opportunities. But even so, once we had to do it actually for real and didn't have the option to be in person with the students and show them in person, I and my students have to admit I was often seriously, seriously confused and lost and overwhelmed with all the new vocabulary, all the new ways for doing things and new algorithms. And I have to say, and the new apps and all the possibilities, it was overwhelming. And so I did spend a lot of time, a lot of time exploring. But mostly stumbling and fumbling around in the ed tech world and bringing my students along with me. But they were very patient. And we've all been in this process of learning together in the learning curve. But the ed tech world, as much as I put my effort into really trying to learn, it seemed like it was growing tentacles faster than I could even begin to keep up with. And so it was just, and it still seems that way, I have to admit, that it's just there's a lot of new things coming up as long as well as the things that are already in place. So my learning curve was, and it still is on its trajectory. Let's see, yeah. So pretty much started with blissful ignorance. I didn't know what I didn't know. And I was fine with that until I had to kind of move to the next level, blissful ignorance. And then sometimes called unconscious incompetence. But then once I realized what I needed to know, but didn't know, it was a little bit of panic there. And very daunting, the magnitude and the expanse of what I didn't know and needed to know. It was overwhelming. And now I'm moving along. So I can't say that I'm at the conscious competent place quite yet. But getting there, getting there, and striving towards getting to that. And I'd love to be able to achieve the unconscious competence with a flow where I can get to, where I and my students can focus on the content and use our tech skills to enhance, not impede our learning process and our learning experience, because I do feel that a lot of time and effort has been spent on just learning the tech, both of us, the students and myself included. And I do think that getting myself first out of the fixed mindset of, oh no, this is secondary to in-person. In-person is better to just the growth mindset of, oh, look at all the possibilities here. And maybe there are some benefits here that I haven't explored quite yet. So I'm trying to just stay open to all the possibilities and finding that there are a lot of positives. And especially for our adults, students who do have the challenges of childcare and time schedules and transportation and all of that. Yes. I have a question for you. First of all, I love this four stages of competency. And I love that willingness of someone who admits to this unconscious and competent, because we've all been there. And I'm just curious, I know this trajectory can be quite steep or it can be kind of a level gain over time. And at your point in this stage is that right now, can you identify or is there anything that you would go and say, well, OK, I would have done this better or different or something if I had just done X beforehand. Is there any additional supports, resources, things that you think that if you had known about them at the time that would have been help to move along this four stages? Well, the thing that got me, that really confused me at the beginning. And maybe it was because I wasn't really organized in how I sort of approached it in terms of the trainings and all of that. But the vocabulary, or just the jargon, like a page in Canvas. And I'm used to the page on my Mac and files mean something different than the files on my computer. Just some of the jargon confused me in that way. So I had to, in the beginning, just kind of get my terms straight, define terms. So maybe if it was more on my user error on my side to just really approach it maybe with a little more organization, I didn't realize what I didn't know. And how the sort of this vast expanse of new learning that had to happen. And so I'm not sure if there was something anyone else besides myself could have done different. You know, that's very compelling to me what you just said. Because it kind of lends itself to some empathy for our own learners, right? Because we go through that experience. But then secondarily, it's like, oh, my gosh, of course. Let's describe the situation. Let's describe what we have before we're tossing people into the frying pan on top of the fire. And I ask that because OTAN does a lot of training. And sometimes we kind of miss that force for the trees, not intentionally, but because we might make assumptions that we shouldn't make. And I really like hearing that point of view from you of having a better idea of when we do some of these trainings, especially with brand newbie teachers. We have other elements that should be considered. I mean, we might make an assumption. And I'm just speaking off the cuff here. We might make assumptions that somebody has a great deal of technology experience because, golly, they have an interest in using Canvas. Well, that's not always the case. You stated quite clearly that you were very used to being in a paper world. And now you had to convert to digital. And I think that that journey in and of itself is commendable. I mean, I just want to give you super rounds of applause because it's obvious of what you're doing is working with your learners and your learning and you're comfortable with that discomfort. I guess that's as far as I could go. But I really appreciate that insight because, like I said, I do like these four stages of competency and understanding where you are in those stages. So thank you. And can I just interrupt here and just say that she has a great attendance. Zoe has a great attendance. And Zoe has given our office some ideas about how we need to enroll new students and what preparation they need before they get into her class. And while we always don't always get it right, we have listened to her guidance and it's helped us reshape how we enroll new students with the mindset that they're going to be getting Canvas. And I also forgot to mention with Zoe is that we hired Zoe on this year to be a remote only instructor to deal with the pandemic parameters and the fact that our students wanted online only. And so Canvas, although it felt very large and it is very large, Zoe's taken it on and made it pretty doable for our students. We do not get a lot of complaints that it's something they can't do or they don't understand why we're using. So it's been very, I wouldn't call it seamless because nothing new is, but it's been a really nice addition for us. And yeah. And thank you, Jamie. You guys have been very supportive in just being receptive to my suggestions. And we know we're all learning. We definitely are all learning. Like even that video, Jamie, that you just shared in your presentation about just that intro to Canvas. In the beginning, I didn't even know what Canvas was. I'm sure I could have found that video, but I didn't. And so just now, I liked how it just was a very basic overview of even what it was. In the beginning, I was trying to figure out even what is it? How can I use it? So in fact, I'd like to be able to share that video with the students so they know too what it is and how we're using it. So yeah. Perfect. Yeah. So we all need to just get more comfortable. And I'm always telling the students that they have to be uncomfortable with that sense of not knowing. And so I got to experience it firsthand here. So yeah, I'm moving real long. So I've been using Canvas since September 2021. So just this last couple of semesters. And where I am so far is I was able to create my Canvas course. I've got some modules going. I'm still working with the particulars, but I was at least able to get myself and students on there. I still have a lot of questions, a lot more to learn, lots of hours of trial and error in there, clicking around, and lots of my own user error and frustration stumbling around, like I said. But I was able to create this Canvas course, and I'm still working on it. And I was able to publish it. It looks great. Now I'm at the point where I can, even though I'm still daunted and confused at times, I'm excited about all the possibilities. And for myself, for my students, and for the potential of education in general. Because yeah, it has really opened up possibilities here, and especially for access and just ability to students to move at their own pace, teachers to be more creative. I love being creative. That's why part of it is I've spent a lot of time because I'm just looking for the right little image or the right just scouring the internet, looking for digital resources and all that. So that's taken me a lot of time and still does. But it's kind of fun to do. And I think the students are kind of getting into it as well. We're still struggling with the assignments, the quizzes. I haven't quite figured out. And also the, here we go. Trying to go to the next slide, but. Need some help, Zoe? Yeah, the next slide. There we go. There we go. OK. So there is this thing called, which I didn't know at first, what LTI was, LMS, LTI. Again, all those acronyms. But LTI, learning tool interoperability. And at first, you're just in Canvas and I don't even want to add anything because it was just too complicated as it was. But then little by little, it became clear that it would be nice to be able to have the students work on a Google Doc in the Canvas itself and then that I would be able to then access it there, comment on it, return it to them. Instead of the way we were doing it, where they were sharing with me by email and then my email box would get filled with student work. And that was also not manageable. So the fact that they can do work in Google and then submit their work within the Canvas platform is really nice. I've done that a few times. It doesn't always work, but I'm still working on how to do it better. And then I've also worked also with juice. Students are able to access juice right out of the Canvas course and Newzella and CK12. I'm just starting to look at that. And like I say, it doesn't always work. And a lot of times it's on my end, just not. And I just need more training and more practice. But the fact that it's there and that there might be even more and I know there will be more different learning tools that we'll be able to use, it's amazing that we've come this far. I mean, just in terms of the ability for students to learn online like this is pretty great. Now that I'm a little more comfortable, I can say that. At first, I was way not as positive in terms of my outlook. But I knew it was there. I knew the possibilities were there. And that's what actually created a lot of the frustration is that I knew that there was a lot I could do and I wasn't doing it. And I knew that I can do it a lot better and I wasn't doing it as well as I thought I should. So yeah, it's all that part of it. You can see what you can do, but then aren't able to do. So that's part of it. So far, as you saw, I created the modules. I've created some lessons in there, just starting to work with assignments and quizzes. I know there's a lot more features on Canvas that I could use, but I'm not going to go. I'm trying to go slow and just getting this far has been quite a journey and an adventure. Awesome. Yeah. So it kind of reminds me of I just got a new car recently and it's got all these buttons on the dashboard that I have no idea what they are. But I know enough to drive the car and that's what I need to do right now. And eventually, I might really dive into that user manual and find out what all those buttons are about. But for now, I can drive the car and that's what I need to do. And once I get a little more comfortable, I will look into all that stuff. But I'm not there yet. I'm still just moving along. And then my final slide here is just looking at where I am actually with Canvas and moving forward. So for needs, I would say that myself and teachers both, and students rather, but also other teachers, all of us, need additional training and tech support just to end the time to integrate and apply what we learned. Because in the past, I would take these ed tech workshops and webinars and this and that, but then go back to teaching the way I was teaching because that's what I had time for. And so we've been kind of forced into this virtual learning universe. And so it's given us time to apply here and there and try things out. But I'm not quite sure I'm there where it's totally integrated in all my past teaching experience can really be effectively presented to my students because I'm still fumbling around with the tech part of things, but I'm getting there. I'm excited about the new possibilities here in teaching and learning. And then our challenges will still be student access to devices and internet, but we're trying to overcome that with just learning devices out. Now that we have in person, we're having students come to the school site and then take my remote class from the school site so they can use the Wi-Fi and the devices there. So that's one way that we're overcoming that. And then, of course, the learning curve and just the mindset of all of us just being willing to move into this new world and just being positive about our experience and moving forward. Anyone have any questions or comments? Zoe, I was just going to make a connection. When Jamie was showing her slides, and I think she had a slide where she talked about single sign on, and that is one of the big advantages when you were showing the various resources that you can now link to from your course. It makes it a lot easier for the learner if they don't have to log in again each time they link out to something. And that's one of the jobs that the Canvas LTI connection can do. So it can make it a lot more smooth for the learner to just go into whether it's Google Docs or Juice or New Zeal or the other ones you mentioned. And I just think that's a really big benefit because for all of us, just remembering our login name and password is really one of the big hassles of working online. So I just wanted to make that connection in case people hadn't thought about the single sign-on benefit. That's a very good point, Penny, because that's where we were getting into troubles. It was like, OK, now we're here on the Zoom class. Let's go to Newzella or let's go somewhere else. And then I'd lose students because they couldn't find their other screen. And so if it's all there, it's one place to go. And then just the ability of students who miss a class or being able to work on things during the week when we are out of not in class, I think is really, really a big benefit. Also, I just want to commend you on all the work you've done because I met you a little bit earlier along this journey. And your course looks beautiful. And one of the things I've learned is that when one person has created a nice course, that can be shared sometimes as a template or a course that gets copied. And I think it's just helpful for anyone listening to know that every time someone makes a step like you have, you are creating a path for someone else who if they want to teach like you do, Jamie and the other administrators can actually use that and build on that. You've just come such a long way. Just I think it really opens the path for others. Thank you. Yeah, now that I feel a little more comfortable with creating the modules and the pages and those kinds of things, now my bigger challenge is finding and designing the lessons that are really work on the screen as opposed to in-person how I was used to. So it's interesting to explore those possibilities. But it's not like I have a huge bank like I had before of just materials I can pull on depending on who my students were. So just creating those modules and the lessons is part of what I would like more time to do and all that. Well, one of the other things I learned from you and Jamie is and I hadn't really thought about it this way. But once you have your class or your course in Canvas, you can use it face to face in a classroom as a presentation tool too and just link to whatever it is you want to do with your class.  So it's amazing once you get it all together. It doesn't have to be completely online. It can be hybrid or high flex or they're just, it's not taking away any of the flexibility you have to use those materials in a variety of ways. Yeah, I'm finding it. It's sort of like an interactive textbook almost for the students because I'm putting a lot of reference materials in there so that if they forget things like the rules of order of operations or anything, they can just go there and click on there and remember. So it's like a textbook or a bookshelf. It has a lot of different ways you can look at it. But yeah, just sort of switching the mindset to the digital. And I wanted to highlight one of the comments that Linda just made in the chat, which is that the classes are reusable. So what's amazing is all the work that Zoe's putting in on this class. She has a couple of different ones going, but let's just say she's selected one and she's giving all her attention to it. You can copy it. You can move it over and start a new class, move things around, delete stuff, quiet stuff. It's an incredible time saver, as Penny just mentions. But all the amazing work that you do for this particular one course is it's just going to get better year after year, time after time. And that's amazing. That's the fun part about this. Right, right. You've laid so much groundwork. And I mean, back to your slide, Zoe, it's a process. And you're going through a lot of stages and it's just going to get more interesting and richer as you go forward. So cool. So like I said, I'm just trying. And I think we're all trying to get to the point where the tech is in the background and we can focus on the content and the learning. But it is a learning curve and what we're putting in now is the well payoff. That's the hope anyway. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much, Zoe, for sharing your work and what you've been doing at Mount Tampa Pius there. It's just amazing. Thank you. You're welcome. And I think we're going to move on so you can learn a little more about at least one LTI tool. And this is something that Zoe is using. And there are many, many others, as we've mentioned several times before. But we wanted to take a deeper dive into this tool that I will let Marianne talk about and I'll advance us to the next slide. And Marianne, do you want control? Sure. I think I know what to do. I'll get it. Hold on here. You should be able to get it now. I'll keep my hands off my mouse. OK, you're an amazing pilot of all this technology. Well, really, I'm very happy to talk about juice. I worked on a four year grant from the Department of Education. And what we built, we decided was so valuable and could be so useful to learners, adult learners, in many different contexts that I have a little startup company. And I'm delighted to be piloting it with Tamil Pius and other schools in the California Distance Learning Cooperative and also with the NEDP high school external diploma program. But we're a great example of what Jamie and Zoe are talking about. And LTI is really just a standard interface, just a plug-in interface, just like the reason all our lights work in our sockets. And they did this in education to reduce the complexity that Zoe is talking about of having all these different products that you might want to use at the same time. And it is a fairly new standard, but not that new. It's been around for probably seven or eight, maybe 10 years. So we integrated juice with this standard interface, or programming interface. And that means that you can use a product like ours. And I'll tell you a little bit about it inside Canvas or any other learning management system that supports the standard. So just for an example, so juice is a readiness library that provides very rich tutorial, interactive, and game-based learning of basic academic skills. And we're just looking at a view. I'm not planning to do a live demo, although if we have time, we can look at it if you want to. So all of the things that you see there in this library, you can link to and link to any part of it. And you can add that link. And when we looked at Zoe's class, you saw her curriculum there. You can link to those things. Sorry, can everybody hear me OK? OK, great. I'm just going to make sure I go to the next one to see if I can get that to work. OK, I think I got it. There we go. All right, so just a little bit more about juice. When you go to a particular skill in juice, there are many different ways for a learner to practice. A teacher could use some of these resources in class to present or have an interactive class activity, which Zoe and Jamie are familiar with and Penny too, about juice. Our goal is to motivate and engage learners at different skill levels and support them where they are and let them do as much as little or as much as they need in a tutorial experience online to get the help they need in practice. And the example I like to give is if you want to help me become a better basketball player, you're not going to sit and talk to me about it.  And you know that I won't become a better player unless I play. And that's what we try to do in juice. We try to engage the learner in working through a real world problem and applying skills to solve them. So it could be in the future adaptive for any skill context.  And that's why you need to be able to understand how to do percentages, for example. So learners can use these overviews, try it tutorials. And I don't think you can see too well, but they give different real world problem solving contexts or challenge games, which are very short, sort of three questions at a time with interactive feedback. And in juice or philosophy is if you get the answer wrong, you just didn't get it right yet. So we don't tell you you're wrong. We say, hey, good try. Here's some feedback and why that answer is wrong. Try again. And then the idea is to keep them going until they have success, go to the next question. Those little games you see there are only three questions each, but you can play many times, seven or eight times and get new questions each time. So that's just an example. Juice has a lot of flexibility. It's not really like a textbook in the sense that you start in chapter one and go to chapter whatever. But it's a resource for classes like Zoe's teaching when she knows students need help in particular scolariah or she can link to juice or she can link to the whole library and let them find what they or go to what they are working on at that time. So Zoe, I think you're in a multi, you have a multi-level class. So that's actually super challenging to teach, right? Correct. And I have just linked the whole juice for the students as just another place they can practice. Yeah. And so what's interesting, also our philosophy is really about building confidence as a learner to take chances and try and then get that supportive feedback so you can figure out what it is you need to learn and then you can practice. But again, stepping back, so let's, oops, sorry, kind of click my, click in the right way here. There we go. So how does it work in your Canvas in which I know a lot of people are getting ready to work in Canvas. So your Canvas administrator will just get a couple of codes from me or a company like me. And it'll be sort of, you know, techie things, a consumer key and a shared secret. And this is what Jamie and I did. So we would give you those codes, you the Canvas administrator and you go through kind of a step-by-step process. It's totally standard as part of what Canvas is and how it works. And you install what is called the external app, you know, like juice or some of those others. And then once it's installed, when a teacher like Zoe goes in to work on assignments and of course, they'll see the option to get a link, to create a link to an external tool. They can get into juice, copy the length they want. They can link to a game, to a module, to, you know, a particular skill like how to improve your capitalization and grammar or how to write a topic sentence in paragraph. And then she could paste that into the Canvas assignment, apply whatever set she wants and then say that. And then that link, when the student comes in, the student would link directly to it. Another difference with LTIs is the student, it's a personalized experience. So when that student links from let's say Zoe's course into juice, juice knows that it's Marianne and saves the information about Marianne. And that's just one of the characteristics of most LTI products. Although I think some of them probably just give you permission to access whatever you want. In the case of juice, it really is a personalized learning environment. And, you know, juice can track the answers and save information and let students see what they did before, go back and continue and things like that. Does that make sense? Any questions so far? Definitely, I'll try to check the chat, but if you guys have a question, please chime in. There's nothing in the chat yet. Okay. So this is just showing what we just talked about. This is just a teeny tiny version of kind of what Zoe showed us in her course. So, you know, this would be the link that the teacher set up and put in an assignment. And when the student clicks the link, you know, it just opens in a new browser tab. So you're getting to take a peek at one of the juice modules on basic math skills, finding percentage, percent of a number and so on. And as you can see, all of these skills are being presented in the context of home improvement problem solving. And you'll also notice there's a little game here called the challenge wheel game. And this reminds me of something you said, Zoe, which is Zoe, when you said, I didn't know what I didn't know or now I know what I didn't know. And of course as a learner, that's really a huge problem because you really don't know necessarily what all these skills are and you're not sure what you know and what you don't know. So these particular games on juice modules are designed to help you know what you don't know and then send you back to where you could work on that when you have time. And you can come back later in products like juice and work on it when you do have time. So, Ann, can I admit something? Yes. Okay, I separated from mathematics ages ago. So when you showed me juice, I was able to come in here and go, I need to figure out a percentage increase on some data that I was working on. Great. And it worked. That's fantastic. That is, well, that's, you know what? I confess, I was more of a languages geek and also not so much of a math geek. But really, I think you're making the point at any age, at any stage of mastering a skill, we need to go back and refresh. So I'm guessing the students in Zoey's class are a wide range of ages and some of them may even be as old as I am. It's gonna be true as we all go forward in the world. We have to keep refreshing our skills. So, but thank you, Penny. That's great. I love it. But the nice thing is, I wanna use your example. You can get a little bit of help or a lot of help. And that leads me, I think, to my next slide. So let me see if I put this in here. Yeah, okay. So this is a little peek at some data from a pilot we're running. It's not like Zoey's class or anything. It's actually from the NEDP program students who are using juice to work on specific skills for their high school diploma. And these students are in New York and they've come into juice at different times. But even so, what you're seeing on the left here is the number of hours that they worked in juice. And these are the individual students. And they've all started at different times. So maybe some of these students just got access to juice, but some of them have had access for several months. And the point I think my takeaway is a couple of things. Some people need a lot of help. They need back to my basketball court example. They need to work with that ball skills for a long time to build their confidence. And other students just need a little refresh. And Penny, I just know in your case, you just needed a little refresh and you probably got it very quickly. But some of the students that have been working on their skills in juice, even in a couple of months have spent over 10 hours. And others, there's just a range. But what also I think is really important and we're all different kinds of learners and we all like to make our own choices. And the overview is more like an interactive textbook and it has audio narration. So you can go at a really slow pace. You can have it read to you and read along. You'll see your examples. You get the explanation of percents or grammar or writing. And that's one way to learn. And in our design prototyping, some students said, I like to read. I would always start with the overview. But other students said, I hate to read. And they would always start with a game and the game is how they figured out what they know and what they don't know and what they need to work on. And so I think a graph like this, and I presented this also just so we can see all these learners are so different. When you use an online learning environment, you can learn so much about the learning process simply by looking at how they're spending time and how much time they're spending. And as people who work on a product, of course it helps us know, well, is this thing that we do valuable and is it valuable in the same way to every learner? So I used it more as an example of how learning data can also really help you as an educator make choices and decisions that will help your learners get where they wanna go. So that's my, I think that's my last slide, Penny, you can double check me on that. But I hope that gives people a little bit of a sense. Oh yeah, this is just kind of a summary of how LTIs are very flexible. And when you make them available in your class more along the themes of what others have already said, those links and those resources are there for the people that need them when they need them. And I'm just calling out some of the things that we do in juice. Like we have a very nice search feature. So Penny can come in and put in percent anytime she wants to refresh. That's what I did, percent increase. See, you don't have to go in order and all of that. Also, I was speaking to the points that I think Penny, you were making or Jamie on mobile and accessible. And although just wasn't designed for ESL learners specifically, the audio narration is good, I think for people who don't have confidence in their reading, but it's also good for people who have to study in very noisy places and want to wear headphones. So it's just a way to improve concentration for some people, for others it really is a language assist. And anyway, we're committed to those things. So thank you very much for giving me a chance to talk about juice a little bit. We are still piloting and we're very excited to say we still have opportunities to pilot with programs like other folks in the session today who are in the CDLC, would love to hear from you, would love to start a little pilot with you and there's no charge up to a certain level and we've got lots of room to bring new people into the pilot. And I just wanna personally thank Jamie and Zoe because they've been piloting with us and it was a really fantastic opportunity for us to get a lot more insight, just the kind of things that they're sharing in the session today, which is super helpful for us. So thank you and would love to answer any questions on the chat or later, just get in touch. Thank you, Mary Ann. And this is another situation where we're just showcasing one particular LTI. And as you've heard in the session before, there are many, many, many of them. And you need to do your due diligence as a teacher, as an administrator of finding those tools that work the best for your learners. But this is something that I personally have been looking at for over a year or two years now, I think. And it just, it fits all of the notches in terms of providing that flexible learning environment. It's flexible across many different devices. It provides access whenever a learner needs it. And as we're seeing more and more of the data coming out of the pandemic of what our learners have discovered is first and foremost, remote does work. If teachers are well-prepared, they have the training and the learners now have starting to request, I'd rather be able to learn this in an online environment because I need that flexibility. My husband lost his job or my wife has to work, swing shifts, I can't make it to class for a couple of weeks at a time. So being able to provide that for our learners, I think is helping us see better persistence rates even during a worldwide pandemic. And all of those numbers aren't all allowed and there's gonna be a lot of number crunching and everything else. But I think tools like this, like juice, the LTIs for Google Suite, the LTIs for CK12, and there's hundreds of them. Please do not think that this is a limit that access for learners and give them the flexibility that they need. So if you are at all interested in exploring juice any further, because it is a great tool for your high school diploma students, GED, ASE, ABE, because they can use this to help build their learning skills at many different levels. And as Marianne said, we're even seeing that it's valuable for English language learners because of the audio capabilities. And that's always been a thing for me with accessibility. They need to have a way to get this information in more than one form. So I'm always pleased to be able to see that.


Hello, first of all, I'm going to introduce you to talk to you about free and open source software in the animation industry. Things evolved pretty quickly since a few years, so when Christophe proposed me to make a talk at the Open Media Dev Room, I thought that it would be a good idea to speak about how things are evolving in the animation industry. So before going further, I'm going to introduce myself. I'm Frank Rousseau. I'm a first entrepreneur. I did the first company which was doing open source personal clouds. After that, I created a new company, which is a CGWire, a very big company of three people, including me. At CGWire, we work for the animation industry. We do production tracking software, but everything as free and open source software. Aside from that, I did some side projects, contributed to some others, and I worked since now 15 years. So I had the opportunity to see many things and many software projects. Now let's go to the animation. Before talking about the software that are used now, I'm going to explain you very quickly how to make an animation production. So here I'm going to talk mainly about 3D, because when it's about 2D animation, everything is proprietary, so it's not so interesting for this talk. So there are three big steps to make a movie. There is a pre-production, mainly it's about writing the story and looking for funding. There is the production step, which is the one we will interest us is the production step. I will go back very soon to it. And there is the post-production step where it's mostly fine tuning and refining of the movies. So in the production step, we have many departments, many things to do. The first thing is the layout. It's like the directing of the movie. We create shots and we put everything in place, but we only allow polygons, assets, and just to make sure that every shot is good in directing point of view and that they match properly the storyboard. There is some R&D to make sure that the artistic direction is doable and that some effects are possible. Then starts the real creation of the movies. There is the modeling phase. It's about sculpting the 3D elements. After that there is the texturing. Every elements are painted and some settings are done to manage the reflection of the light on the elements. Then there is the rigging step, which means that we add bones to every assets that are going to be animated. Then we do the animations. Mainly it's about taking the elements of the layouts, including the high-polygon stuff to animate them to make sure that at the end we have a nice shot. This is the most time-consuming part of the movie. Then we add some VFX, some lighting to make things a little bit more artistic. Finally, we finish with the rendering, which can be very long because one frame can take hours or days to render. For a feature film, for instance, you have an average of 130,000 frames. All of that requires a lot of different skill sets, people with different expertise, and many software. What we have to understand is that the animation industry has really a proprietary mindset. For them, pictures must not leak. Pictures belong to the producer. There is this notion of not really sharing the IP. There is a strong notion of IP. When it's about software, we can see that it's something similar. Most of the big software are proprietary. They come from Autodesk, the Foundry, Adobe, or Toon Boom. There is a challenger, which is SideFX. They do really interesting software, but only proprietary. But reality doesn't really fit with the proprietary mindset. What is happening is that in every industry, they need to reduce costs. They need for more automations, and there is a lack of developers. Now every developer works for startups, GAFA, and everything like that. So there is not so much people to do software in the animation industry. Before that, they thought that they could make a difference with their technology, that the studio could be more competitive because of its technology. But now they are figuring out that it's mostly the artistic specificities that help them to stand out from the others. So they decided to go up and through. For that, many of the big players decided to work on more interoperability between software. They decided to stick to proprietary digital creation content tools. And for that, they decided to work on more standardizations of file exchange. Because when you do a production, a few years ago when you did a production, you could use only one software. Now you have many software involved. You have Maya, software like Maya, like Substance, Mari, ZBrush. You have to use many tools to make a very beautiful picture. It's a choice, but now really big productions use many, many tools. And so they need some standardizations. And for that, they created several file formats and associated libraries to manage them. So there are formats like Alambic, ABC, which is one of the most used, I think, where here it's used to store the coordinates of the animation. So it's the first step towards more interoperability. There is a USD. This probably is the most exciting format because it's really aimed at enabling collaborative work. And there is some kind of layering in any, with every change. So it really helps to work from different tools and with different people on it. And there are some others. This is a non-exhaustive list. There are others, but there are other formats that happens on different parts of the production. That are used on different parts of the production. And there is another interesting story. It's the story of OpenQ. It's a render farm manager that was built at Sony, something. And it was kind of acquired by Google. I think the main developer was hired by Google, but it's something like this. But Sony decided to open-source it. It was the first time that the full software was open-sourced by a big company like this. So it's interesting. And then it's now maintained by ASWF, Academic Software Foundation, which is the meeting. Sorry, I forgot. I don't find the right word, but this is the meeting of several big companies, like GARFA, big studios like Quetta, ILM, now Disney, and big companies and with some free software actors like Blenders and explanations. And their goal here is to maintain this library used for these five formats. Another interesting thing is Epic Games. They do Unreal Engine, which is not really used for animation. It's only used for video game cinematics. But what they do is that they give money to some open-source projects, which is still interesting because it brings some fuel to improve some software. So everything we talked about was really interesting, but it's more about big corporations, and that's not really what we like. Now let's talk more about free software. Free software is weird, free software is sometimes ugly, but it's much more exciting and much more fun. So I propose now that we focus more on this and talk less about the big ones. So the first thing to understand is that in animation, Python is king. Before that, many older software had their own scripting language, which are mostly badly designed and not well documented. So quickly, people, CG artists tended to use Python instead of the proprietary scripting language. And now Python is the default language for everything. Every time someone wants to do a script, you use Python, which is interesting because it's not C-sharp, it's not Java, it's really Python, which is, to me, it's really a more community-driven language. So it's interesting. And other tools that are widely used, I think one of the first tools which were widely used is FFMPEG. So it's interesting because a few years ago it was like, wow, it's open-source, so we don't want to use it. And now it's like the default software to process videos, to melt them, et cetera. There is Rez. I don't know if you know this, but it looks widely used outside of animation too. It's a packaging system to deploy easily tools on desktop machines, so when you have, especially on Windows, when you have a lot of machines, you can use Rez to package complex deployment. And there are some image processing libraries that are used. Another interesting thing is that there is a strong culture of self-hosting because they don't want that picture leak and because they always have an overloaded network because all files are really big and they need to watch a lot of video on YouTube for their as-references. So they like to have everything hosted locally because they can have better performance and they have a sense of security. The result is that they deploy a lot of software themselves and so they use C-substooling and communication tools like Matermos, Riot, et cetera. When they can, they prefer to use Linux for their workstation because it's much more pluggable. There is this notion, I forgot to mention it, but there is this notion of pipeline in animation, which means pipeline basically is the glue between every department and every steps of fabrication. So let's go a little bit faster now. Blender, so Python is king, so let's say that Blender is queen. There is since a few years and especially since the latest version arrived as 2.8. So there's really a lot of excitement around Blender. It's really changed. The community is very active, of course, but it comes from the fact that there is a lack of CGRTs like there is a lack of developers. So prior to that, people were kind of scared to use Blender because CGRTs were not trained to this. But now the question is more, how do I find good CGRTs? So when you find a good CGRTs, you find the tooling is not... The priority is to find a good CGRTs, not to find the CGRTs. We know the tools of the studio. So this is one of the... That was one of the main blocks to use Blender, so now it's not anymore there. So the result is that Blender was used on many productions. It really made their users happy. And now we have full productions like this one, MushMush. It will be broadcasted in the next year, I think. But now we have full productions done with Blender, which is really a big change. And there is another big event is that I Lost My Body. It's an animation movie which is nominated to Oscar and which had a price at NC Festival, the equivalent of Cannes Festival. And I Lost My Body was done with Blender too. So I think it's really a big change in the industry. To see that now you can do a full qualitative production with Blender. Plus they added many more features. They had many very cool features, like real-time viewports. So it's really faster to make movies and to have feedback on what you are doing. And there is this grease pencil thing that allows you to basically make 2D animation inside Blender, which is great for many studios. About the other main tools, there is GIMP. GIMP still has a bad reputation because most people don't like the UI. It's a little bit sad, but the result is that it's not used much on productions. There is the case of Netron. Netron is not considered as good in us compared to proprietary software, but it's still the only first alternative. The main issue today is that the maintainer's life didn't follow what happened next, but the maintainer's life, so there is a kind of old there. And it's sad because people really would like to have an alternative to Nuke, which is very expensive and doesn't work that way. I forgot to tell that Netron is mainly for compositing. So what is compositing is just adding some effects on a final video. Not final for this case, but when you have rendered all your pictures, you can add some other effects and it's done at the compositing steps. Most of the time it's considered the steps to fix some bugs in the video. And what is really more interesting I think is Krita. Krita is not widely used today, but it has really good reputation. Every CG artist would try it, love it, and it could replace at some point Photoshop for everything that is background. Because in animation movies, most of the time, even in big VFX movies, the backgrounds are 2D pictures that are done with Photoshop. Or similar. Here are some pictures made with Krita that I took from the Krita Gallery. So you can see that you can do everything you want with it when it's about 2D pictures. Now there is another phenomena which is very interesting too. It's that we have small to mid-sized studios who are now open sourcing some of their software. They are not big software, but it just means that the mindset is changing and it creates excitement in the community of developers in animation, which is good and which will probably lead to more interesting software in the future. There is another good case, Lefe Special. It's a studio which uses only free software. In the open source everything is white, which is very nice to see. And there is my company, CGWire. What makes it a little bit special is that we are the first company in the animation field to propose free software, which is we basically propose a project management tool named Production Tracker. And what makes it really great is that for us it was the opportunity to create more collaborations between studios. So for that we organize some meetups where people can share best practice on the same model as here. It didn't exist really for the animation, so we organized them and we created some online chat group and I published content on our blog. So that's important because the fact to publish an open source software allowed us really to create more collaborations between studios. And yes, I think that a first project is not only code and it can really benefit a side of the future. It can really benefit to the world industry, towards the mindset it brings. To conclude, things were pretty bad a few years ago. Now they are getting better. We have more and more software, more and more first softwares that are used. We have big players, are mainly interested in interoperability. Small and mid-sized studios are going further and try to use open source everywhere. Free software brings more collaborations and Blender is life. It's good and it's beautiful and we are happy to see that it's successful today after such a long time. Thank you for your attention. And if you have any questions, you can clap. Do you think that someday we will have an alternative to Nuke if open source and open source if nature disappears? I'm not sure it's related to nature. What surprised me is that no one tried to do it. It would really be a good idea to make an alternative to Nuke. Starting from nature sounds to me more like natural. So I'm not sure it's a good idea to kill nature and to have an alternative. What is in your opinion the largest slash most important component in these workflows that is mainly supported by open source communities as opposed to the tools coming from or funded by studios? I don't really get the question, but I think the largest component today that is emerging is really Blender because you can use it on every step of the production. So you can imagine now to have a production pipeline based on Blender, which is quite audacious, but it's possible. So the fact that it makes it probably the main component of a pipeline, it's hard to compare with Python because Python is everywhere. Of course it's the biggest, but it's more like a low-level thing when Blender could be the central software of a production. What we see too is that Blender is more appreciated by some modellers or some animators. So sometimes they do their work in Blender and then they import it in Maya to be compatible with the rest of the production, but it can be really adapted to any situation. So yeah, I would say that it's Blender. Last question, what is the scenario for video editing that I checked KDNR was having instability issues? I don't know well video editing. I don't know really well the software. I'm mostly focused on 3D and 2D creations because editing is almost another subject. When in animation production, when they have the storyboards, they really have to stick to it. Sometimes they can work with a dedicated video editor, but I'm not used in us to this problematic to talk about it. One question from the floor, is there anything? What is your take on that and how can we change that? What about the Blender certification? I don't really know about education. What I can tell is that now, this is what I told before, studios understand that they have to train people to Blender. So studios which decide to go with Blender know that they will have to train people that come to their studio. Of course certifications are interesting because for some others it's always easier if you have someone who is already trained to Blender. Now there is another phenomena because there is a lack of CG artists, there is something like every month a new CG school that is popping. So probably at some point they will include more Blender training. But currently in education I don't see much Blender. That's why the certifications of Blender Institute is probably interesting for the moment because there is not much alternative to this.