Moving ahead with these evening's agenda, I would now like to introduce you to our next speaker who will be talking about transforming the election coverage on digital. So let's welcome on stage director sales of Daily Hunt Malika Kutub. I want to talk to you on a subject which I truly believe is going to is the single largest opportunity in digital in India in 2019, right? Before we start, I think an interesting fact, which according to BBC, out of the 815 million voters who are registered in India, the guesstimate is that the ballot count is likely going to be higher than the six US presidential elections put together. So it kind of puts things into perspective that how mammoth this entire exercise of general elections, the coverage in India is going to be, right? So I'm going to take the next 15 minutes to talk about what is it that we are doing at Daily Hunt? How is it that we are going to completely transform and revolutionize the way election coverage has happened in this country so far? Before I start, I think I'd like to ask each one of you present in the room today how many of you voted in the 2014 elections? Can we have a show of hands please? Alright so just take a look around you, right? It's not a surprise that the fate of this general election will not be decided by people residing in the metros. It is the people coming from the tier two, tier three, tier four cities and rural India who will decide which party or parties come to power in this general elections, right? So at Daily Hunt our attempt or endeavor is to ensure that these masses residing in across the length and breadth of the country take an informed decision. So starting with the user base and you know numbers, I promise you this is the only slide in my presentation with numbers today but if you look at it at Daily Hunt, we're reaching out, we're going to reach to about 50% of the first time voter base in India, almost about 30% of the second time voter base in the country. So what is it that we are doing to ensure that this large base of users take an informed decision, make sure that the users, they know their candidates, they know which is the party, what is their agenda and so on and so forth. So I'll take you through the election coverage architecture on our platform. What is the kind of content that we are going to bring to these users and more importantly how is it that this content is going to be served to these users? These are basically the five principles on the basis of which we are going to design the content. So starting with live content, so we are going to have a bunch of stringer network which I'm going to talk more about in the forthcoming slide. It is going to be interactive in nature, there is going to be a social element to it as well. The content is going to be across different formats, videos, infographics, interactive chatbots, etc. And it's going to be highly personalized and customized. So to put things into perspective, when I talk about live coverage, what is it exactly that we are trying to do on Daily Hunt? What we are going to do is have a stringer network across the length and breadth of the country, which means across 543 constituencies, we are going to have a stringer in each and every constituency, streaming content, giving us on-ground reporting in terms of what is exactly the public sentiment in a particular constituency, what is it that the user wants out of their candidates, what is it that they want out of the parties who are making these promises in the elections. So this chart kind of takes us through what is how the entire stringer network is going to go through the 10 centers and finally to the center in Noida, which will upload the content on the app. Please remember that this content that we are talking about is live content, not the broadcast version. So of course it will be moderated, but no deferment here, right? And the nature of content, so we are making sure that the way it is hosted on the platform, it is immersive in nature, it is, I've mentioned already, it's a streaming, it's not a broadcast, completely personalized and in terms of who are the users, who are the content providers, ranges from studios to experts to stringers and the other aggregators. So when I talk about, you know, stringers giving us live content, how is it that it will appear on the app? So if you look at it, a user, let's say sitting out of Patna logs in at 9 o'clock, someone from Kochi logs in, someone from Jalandhar and someone from let's say Andhra Bad. All these four users will see different feeds on their mobile phones. So they will have a choice to switch between different channels, they will have an opportunity to see exactly in their local area, what is the kind of coverage that is happening, right? This is how the platform is going to look like. You have the option on the top menu to choose the constituency that you want to follow. We've taken into consideration a lot of user feedback and consumer insights while building the selection product. So it's not just engineers sitting in a room and designing this product, but we've taken into consideration that what is it that users have not had an opportunity to see so far. So, you know, they want to see live content, they expect the platform to understand and then recommend content which they should be seeing. Audience are no longer satisfied with just one way speeches. So we made sure that we make it interactive in nature and we have a comment section, we have discussion forums. Again, what is it that others are seeing on the platform, right? So trending videos as a section has also been added. Given the popularity of the press conferences and the rallies, rallies will also be hosted. So another thing to highlight is that the entire experience is going to be non-linear. And when I say non-linear, it means that when you're, let's say watching a video where there is a debate happening in the newsroom and it's a topic on Mamta Banerjee, for example, her picture is there in the inside. And if you click on her picture, there's an option, it doesn't necessarily have to be that after watching that video, you have to go forward and then see the next video. You click on her picture and maybe if she's conducted a rally at that point of time, you can see the rally right there and then. Over and above the video content, we also have these interesting infographics and factoids, etc., which will be hosted. Again, shareable in nature, you can forward it to your friends, family members, and share it with them. Taking into consideration consumer insights. So we realize that users want to know more about their local candidates at the constituency level, how is it that, what is the kind of data that they have. So we've designed the entire app also as far as the text content is concerned accordingly. So user has an opportunity, if you look at it right here, they can pick and choose the various constituencies, 543 constituencies, who are the candidates, what is their past, their economic background, criminal record if any, and so on and so forth. So you can see it in these slides. The candidate's data, state-wise data, another ask that we got from users was that we don't want a one-way communication happening from the newsroom. I wanted to be a completely personalized experience. So how is it that we do that? We've made sure that we allow the users to choose the topics that they want to follow, who are the leaders that they want to follow, and which are the sources. So at Daily Hunt, like you guys know, we are aggregators of content, about 1500 different partners that we work with. And for elections, we have, we've built this entire stringer network. So the users will have at their disposal, at the tip of their fingers, they can pick and choose which sources do they want to follow and consume information as far as election coverage is concerned. They can search content as well. Entire controls, like I said, will be at their disposal. I'll go past these slides and they just kind of summed it up in terms of the user experience, another very important data point that all this content that I've spoken about so far, of course, lives by the philosophy of Daily Hunt, that if you're covering the length and breadth of the country in terms of content, it cannot be only in English. So we've ensured that all these formats, all these video channels, all the stringer network, live video coverage that we are getting is in 14 different languages that the content is hosted on the app. We'll also have polls around the burning issues. And so finally, I think it's like a great combination of product and technology and content which has come together. And we are extremely excited about covering the elections, on Daily Hunt, and ensuring that we do it in a personalized manner, which has never been done in India before. I'm hoping that you guys also come on board. If any of your brands want to partner with us, my coordinates are here, please do reach out to us. And I'll just leave it on this note that this election, and that's the theme that we have kept for our marketing campaign also. We are going to launch a marketing campaign which is going to focus on the fact, besides talking about the power of Brand Daily Hunt, that please use your God given intelligence, read, watch, absorb, and then decide, take up informed decision on which is the candidate that you would want to give your vote for, right? Thank you, thank you guys. You guys have been an amazing audience. And for the hands that didn't go up earlier, I'm hoping that we'll all go out and vote this time. Thank you. Thank you.


Hey you guys Kevin here a quick video show you how to put the storage clips on Canon and If you did not do correctly you might break this tab Let me use the big black as an example and then we do another color one and just to make sure that you got it This is the front and this is the back So you're going to loop this one through and the pay attention to To this tab so you want this edge all the way go to go to the bottom So you can you kind of you kind of rotate it if you find it hard to rotate and just push it to the bottom little bit more this tab is Directly above This bar So they all line up and you should feel like they rotate pretty easily Here's a mistake that most people make so if you just to start rotating here What you're doing is that you have creating lever you just break this one apart So you have to have pull this all the way to the bottom now you're ready to push So it's not it's not gonna be easy push is a kind of hard push That's that's because you want to seal this iron head So push it down and this one's done and let's do a do a cyan Look through okay, and now let's try to push. I Hope this is helpful visit us at www.bch technologies.com. Cheers


Down through the ages, in all cultures and all countries, the belief has persisted that certain men are able to transform themselves into wild animals, into werewolves and were-tigers, that they prey upon domesticated stock and even upon other human beings. Like Anthropy, the scientists call this phenomena, and the mere fact that it has acquired a technical name would suggest that it is based on something more than primitive fantasy. But there is even better evidence than this. The witness, for example, the strange affair of Captain Schott and the elusive Hyena. He was a hunter and an adventurer of this Captain's show to the order of distinguished service. He himself, in October of 1918, sitting in a hut in a village of far off Nigeria. Nor, since he was known and trusted by the natives there, is it surprising that their leader should confide in him the misfortunes that were afflicting the village. Rating hyenas, eh? Yes, Captain, or perhaps one hyena. He steals among us at night. He destroys everything. He has the body of an animal, but the brain of a man. What? You see, Captain, he is a man. At night, he transforms himself into a hyena. We know. We have followed his tracks and always they lead to the next village. And always, just before they reach the village, they turn into human tracks. Yes, I'm sure they do. Well, whatever is my friend, tonight we're going to get him. That night, in the company of the tribal leader, Captain Schott set out to hunt down the hyena. When the two men reached the outskirts of the village, a bright moon was shining. They made their way cautiously through the treacherous swamp lands. For more than an hour, they walked thus, their every sense alert. And then suddenly, look, there he is. Lord, what a brute. Some distance away, an enormous hyena was flinking furtively across a clearing. His great hulking form silhouetted in the moonlight. Captain Schott took careful aim. Come on, hurry. The two men rushed toward the clearing, but when they reached it, the hyena was gone. Oh, I could have sworn I hit him squarely in the head. There is blood on the ground here. What's that lying in the middle there? Oh, it looks like a... Fine, George, it is a jar bone. Come along, let's follow his tracks. An easy trail to follow, for it was marked at regular intervals by great splotches of blood. It led directly to the neighboring village, and then it stopped abruptly, exhausted and disappointed. They accepted the invitation of an aged villager to spend the night in his hut. When they awoke at sunrise, their host had vanished. He returned a few moments later in a state of great agitation. What has happened, my friend? It is Barno. Barno is dead. He was my neighbor. He was wise man and mighty hunter. The goons have cursed him with the sickness, sir. No, he was not sick. He was killed with gun. Someone fired it in his face. His jar bone was shot away. After that, the monstrous hyena never again was seen near the village. Nor did anyone ever learn the identity of the man who had killed the native Barno. That the animal and the man should have been one and the same creature is, of course, inconceivable. But what other explanation is there for this baffling story? A story incredible, but true.


Okay. Good morning all. It seems we've got a smaller group than, well, actually probably about the size I was expecting, but here we go. My name is Jonathan Dieter. I'm the System Administrator for the Lebanon Medical School. We're located on the outskirts of Beirut. Our school has about 1,600 students from the age of about 3 to 18, and yeah. We have been, we, I started working at the school in 1999 and in about 2000 we started investigating possibly using Linux in the school. And I, over the next year or two I started using Linux on my personal workstations, but it wasn't until 2005 that we put Fedora on some of our servers. And it wasn't until 2008, I don't know how many of you guys remember this, but Fedora 8 that we started using Fedora on our workstations in the school. We've kept on moving along up until nowadays where we're running Fedora 23. Hopefully at some point this summer we'll get to do an upgrade to Fedora 24. If not, it will happen sometime at about the time Fedora 25 comes out. Yeah. What I want to look at today is I want to look at the three things. First off, why use Fedora in the classroom?  I'm gonna talk a little bit about why we're doing it, but do feel free to, to contribute extra ideas, extra reasoning that one might use. We're gonna also look at some of the tools we use as we teach Fedora in the classrooms, and then we're gonna look at the curriculum, the things that we actually teach our students. So first off, why do it? Well, the first question I always get, the first thing I always get is why not do it? Whenever I'm talking about the fact that our school is using Fedora, I have people saying, well, isn't this a problem? Isn't that a problem? The first problem we have, I don't know, I think this is more of a problem in Lebanon and in other parts of the Middle East, is that local expertise in Linux in general is actually quite hard to find. Finding somebody who can install Windows on a computer, set up Active Directory, make everything work is a piece of cake. Finding people who are comfortable even going through the install process, and it's not like it's all that difficult, but they just look at it and they're like, it's different. It's hard. I don't get it. So this is probably the biggest problem we have. For our school, it's not a problem because I'm the system administrator and I do get it, but for other people, I know this has been a reason that they have not wanted to switch to Fedora. The second reason I often hear people saying, why do we use Fedora? And this is very specifically Fedora. It's the update treadmill, the fact that you've got a release cycle that's good for a year. You've got new releases every six months. Isn't it a lot of work to do the changes? Isn't it a lot of work to keep everything up to date? And one of the things I've found is that it's actually not all that hard. It's gotten easier as the years have gone on. We skipped Fedora 22. We went straight from Fedora 21 to 23. And using Ansible, I was able to do the upgrade in a few hours, maybe about a day's worth of work. So the update treadmill all of a sudden becomes a whole lot easier if the updates, if doing a whole system upgrade is not all that big of a deal. The final complaint that I get is it's different. Why on earth are you teaching using Fedora? It is different. It's different. It's not what we're used to. LibreOffice, what the heck is that? We use Microsoft Office. Isn't that the be-all and end-all? Isn't that the most important thing in the world? It's what everybody's using. Why would you use something different? And so it's a complaint. I don't think it's a very valid complaint, personally. But it is a complaint that you hear. It is something that people say, and we're going to look at some of the reasons why I don't think it's actually all that valid. So why do it? First, most obvious reason that we switched to Fedora is viruses. Now granted, we made the switch back in 2008 when we were still running the brand new operating system called Windows 2000. It was time to make a change. We needed to change somehow. And again, we were getting so many viruses, even with antivirus software installed. It just wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth trying to keep it in. Crashes, we got tired of them. Now, being honest, when we switched to Fedora back in the day, the crashes were not all that cured. Maybe individual crashes were, but we would get updates that about once a release, we'd give an update that would bring our entire system to grinding halt. However, in the last probably three or four years, we have not had a single update do that. And I honestly have to give credit to the QA team in Fedora. And obviously he's not here, but Adam Williamson, I think was when we started pushing that stuff. And they have done an amazing job. Again, Fedora has been rock solid for us over about the last three or four years because of the work that they've done. And I really appreciate that. I know a lot of people don't like the whole voting and the feedback on Fedora, but I think it is actually hugely, hugely beneficial. Licensing fees. Lebanon is not well known as a place where money is flowing. At least not when it comes to things like spending money on licenses. So one of the things we found is that we can either steal the software, in which case what the heck are we doing teaching our students how to do what's right if we're not doing the right thing, or we can spend a ridiculous amount of money. And at that point, yeah, we could be spending it on better things. So what we found is obviously using Fedora, we get to bypass both of those aspects. We are teaching our students to do the right thing, and we're not spending a ridiculous lot of cash on something that isn't worth it. And finally, there's the control. With Fedora, I am able to specify what my students are allowed to do on the school systems. I'm allowed to decide what applications are available. I am able to control what the systems are like. But with that, that gives me the freedom to actually open up our computer system. Our students are each issue the username. Every student from about the age of eight on up is issued a username. And from about 11 or 12 on up, they are allowed to come into school before school, after school, during the breaks, they're allowed to come into the computer room and use the computers. I may not be there. The computer room is open, and they are allowed to use them. The computer system is we have an open system because we are there, we're keeping an eye on what's going on through logs and again, through the accountability we get with them logging in with a username that we can then track. And so that that level of control allows us to give our students an extra level of freedom. So what are some of the tools we use? There are there are actually more than these. But I want to look at the forming tools here three of you will have heard of when you want to that's fine. The first tool we use is free IPA. And it has been a major blessing for us. By the way, these are not real user names and not real names. So it's all been properly sanitized. But this is it's a beautiful way of being able to take care of my son like Donald Trump. It's beautiful. Okay. Sorry, guys. It is a really lovely way of of being able to sort your sort your users organize your users and just keep track of what put users you have that we've actually got some plugins that even allow us to tie individual computers into the system via DHCP using IPA. I love it. It means I can have my assistance reset a password without having to go to the command line. But IPA also has a great command line interface. And that's what we use for all of our scripting. The next tool we have is IPXE. I'm sure any of you guys who've ever been installing operating systems on more than one computer at a time, you will remember the joys of going from computer to computer with a CD or a DVD or God forbid if it's that old floppy disks and having to install software one computer at a time. Okay. The beautiful thing about PXC most pretty much every modern computer allows you to boot off the network. With PXC with IPXC we are able to boot off the network to a pretty menu that then allows you to either boot from the hard drive or start doing some admin stuff like installing Fedora and what have you IPXE has a built in HG. Well, you have to compile it in but they've got a HTTPS module that you can use which then allows you to make certain disk images only accessible by certain user names and passwords. So just because the system is booting off of the network does not mean that every person who is able to reboot your computer has full access to a system with passwords and stuff like that. The third tool we use is something called lesson. Now lesson is a system that I started designing about 10 years ago. I would be the first to say it works really well but please I beg you do not look at the code. The code is on GitHub it's under the GPL you're welcome to look at it if you really really want to mock my coding. The only excuse I have is this was not originally intended to be the massive project it has turned into. It started out as a way for me to be able to keep track of the marks of my students and has turned into over the last 10 years has turned into something that actually runs the marking, the grading, the reports, attendance, discipline of our school. Think of it as it would kind of fit in with Moodle but where Moodle is geared towards lesson like a lesson plans and stuff like that this is geared towards actually running an entire school. And the final tool we use is Ansible. What can I say about Ansible? It rocks. Okay. Back in the old days before I knew about Ansible, I set up a Koji instance. Okay. And I stored configuration for our workstations in Koji well in RPMs that I would then build in Koji which meant that if I was going to make a change if I wanted to do a small upgrade or small fix, I would have to go fix it in the spec file, build the source RPM submit the source RPM to Koji which would then go and build the full RPM and then I would have to wait for it to go and regenerate the repo. We were looking at about a 10 step process that would take about 15 or 20 minutes because of the underpowered hardware we had at that point, it would take about 15 or 20 minutes for me to make a small configuration change. And that was just to be quite honest, that was just really, really annoying. So when I found Ansible, it's beautiful. I make a change in one small, one small configuration file, and I'm able to push it out to all of our workstations. Every new workstation that we that we set up runs the same Ansible playbooks to, to make it run like every other workstation we have. And the beauty of this is it gives us automation. We I am not sitting here having to configure each system separately. I have one configuration for most of my systems. And if there have to be exceptions for one or two systems, I can rig that up and Ansible quite easily. So the teaching tools, those were the admin tools. Let's look at the teaching tools pretty quickly. I'm not going to spend a huge amount of time here because most of you guys are well aware of these, but if there are some that you guys have some questions about, I would be quite happy to answer them. First one is LibreOffice. I'm assuming all of you guys have used it at some point or another. It's what this, what this presentation is on. You've got your documents, your documents, your spreadsheets, and your presentations there. The GIMP for photo editing, it's, it's actually quite useful when we're wanting to teach the students how to work with pictures. I have not used Photoshop in probably about 15 years. This is what I used and it does everything I need. Yeah, for simple text editing, when I'm teaching programming, when I'm teaching HTML, this is the most common tool that I use for those things. It's simple. It's easy. It works. Blender. This is one of my favorite tools to use to teach. We have one, one section, what we call grade nine, we what about 15 years old, where they spend about half the year doing 3D modeling. And it is, again, one of my favorite things to teach. Scratch. Was it Radislov? Is that his name? The previous speaker? Yeah, he talked about this briefly. I've, you've got Scratch and then you have Scratch too. He kind of mentioned this. Scratch one is what we have in Fedora right now. It's actually Scratch 1.4. It's a nice bit of software. We ran into a problem though, where some of our students were creating things using Scratch 2 at home, and then unable to use them in the school. And so, despite the fact that Adobe Air is not supported on Linux and hasn't been supported on Linux, I somehow managed to, and I'm not even sure how I did it. It was long enough to go. I somehow managed to put together an RPM that includes, and it's not redistributable, but I would be happy to share the spec file I've got. But it basically uses, combines the air runtime and the Scratch air project to create a system that actually works. So we have Scratch 2 set up on our school computers, and the students actually really enjoy it. Python is the final tool that we use when we're designing, and sorry, that we use for teaching. Very useful. It's a great programming language. Most of you guys, again, I'm sure are already using it. So with all of that out of the way, this is what I consider the meat of what I want to talk about today, the curriculum. How do you actually go about teaching using Fedora? Now, as we heard in the previous presentation, there's a lot to be said for we are not wanting to sit here and make our students memorize. There's this whole concept of memorization versus true comprehension. Memorization is an easy way to teach. If I'm a teacher and I want people to understand something that I don't really understand myself, memorization is easy. All I have to do is get out of the book, read the words on the book, you guys get to memorize it. And wow, we're all bored, but hey, we all know the same thing, right? Comprehension is different, though. Comprehension takes work. Let me let me give you guys a quick example here. Okay, how many of you guys remember this? This is word 90. I think this is 97, though, it might actually be 95. This is Microsoft Word 95. When I was in school, when I was in high school, this is what we were learning to work processing on. Now, I want you to picture a second that you're in a class where they're teaching using memorization. So they go through, you've got a book and it has all of the menus and all the items and you are taught. This is how you are going to learn Microsoft Word. Okay, to do columns, you do insert up here. This is actually a screenshot, so I'm not going to actually be able to click on it, but you go to insert columns and you choose the number of columns. Okay, and that is how you memorize it. And you've learned all the other subjects like that. You've learned all the other things you're meant to do. Insert columns, for a file, page setup, all these different menu items to do the things you want. And your class gets through quite a bit because, hey, you've memorized these things, right? You've gotten down. On the on the quiz, there's a question. How do you change the number of columns?  On the final exam, the exact same thing. So you've passed the class, got a wonderful score because you got it all down pat. You come into the office on your first day of work. It's a few years later, I don't know, maybe you had a time machine or something. And this is what you come into. This is Microsoft Word 2016.  You need two columns. You're like, I've got this. I've got this. I studied this. I know how to go to calls. Insert it. There is there's insert. But when you go to insert, you find that the columns is not there. Okay. That's not so great. It turns out that in Word 2016, the columns thing is under the layout line. They've changed it. What does that mean? That means that all of the things that I have memorized are completely and absolutely useless.  And so this brings us back to comprehension. Comprehension is different. Comprehension means you're not just looking at memorizing the steps to do something, but you're understanding how to do something, why you do something. It's going beyond just a let's do this, this and this, but you're actually learning the steps that it takes. Sorry, you're learning the concepts behind why you're doing something. It's harder. You have to know where you've been. You have to know where you're going. Okay. But it is far, far, far more effective. And once I have students who have learned using comprehension rather than memorization, they can use Word 95, Word 2016, Google Docs or Libre Office. And you know what? They'll work out how to do the columns. Okay. They'll work out how to do what they want to do. The exact software doesn't matter. So with that said, sorry, moving on, I want to look at what they what we look at from our teachers. We look at a passion for teaching. We want our students, we want our students not to be bored out of their schools. We want them to know the teachers love what they're teaching and thoroughly enjoy it. When I was in university, I studied, I wanted the sciences I studied was geology. I don't care a thing about rocks. But my geology professor loved teaching geology. And so I took a class with him because I had to. And then when I needed another science class, I'm like, I'm going to do another geology class because this guy loves teaching geology. He loves rocks. And you know what? It was really, really interesting. We look for knowledge. We want teachers who actually know what they're talking about. Okay. It's great to have a passionate teacher. And I would say passion is probably more important than knowledge. But knowledge is important. I've had computer teachers who are passionate. They love what they're doing. And they don't have a single clue how to do it. So we need teachers with knowledge. And the final thing, and I would say this may even be the most important thing is compassion. If you're wanting to teach at all, you need to care about your students. We have had teachers who are great communicators. They have the knowledge they need and the students hate them because they know that the teacher does not give a toss about the students at all. And so we try and make sure that our teachers are going to have that level of compassion, that level of care, that they will actually care about their students. So what do we actually teach at our school? We teach touch typing. That is one example of where I think memorization is important, except it's not even memorization. It's actually more of a habit. And I believe that is one of the few places it is. We teach databases. We teach hardware. One of the things I love is when we're teaching the students how computer hardware works, we're not, we don't have any books. In our computer department, we do not have a single book. So when we teach hardware, we actually get a computer out, get a screwdriver, take the thing apart and start passing the pieces around while telling them what the pieces do. And so they learn what a hard drive is by actually holding the hard drive. And yes, we're telling them what it does, but they're holding the hard drive in their hand. And they're saying, okay, what is this? Okay, it's the long term memories. What keeps the information even when the computer is turned off? And then you pass around a stick of RAM. See this? This is fast memory. It's a whole lot faster than the hard drive, but you know what? When you turn the computer off, the information goes and you go through all the different things. I normally use an older computer because as they're sitting there touching the CPU pins, sometimes accidents happen. But the beauty is they're actually getting to do it. We teach word processing. By the way, everything you're going to see from this point on out is actual student work. None of this is mine. I have sanitized it to make sure that there's no personal information going out. But this is all student work. So we teach word processing. We teach, we actually have two different sections on that. One for younger students and then one for older students, where we do advanced stuff like working with styles, working with tables, working with columns and working with drawing objects. We do image editing, where we teach the students, excuse me, how to go and change a picture. We don't just show them how to change a picture. We talk about the ethics of changing a picture. What is considered an ethical change? Like for example, if I'm changing the contrast of a photo, am I changing the truth of the photo? No, not really. But if I go and put Batman on the top of this airplane, I'm now changing the truth of the photo. So we talk about the ethics. When is that okay? When is that not okay? What is acceptable? We talk about, with some of this, we also talk about licensees. When are you allowed to use a photo that somebody else has created? When can you not use their photo? What are the steps you have to go through? And at this point, we then talk about creative comments licenses and the requirements that you have to follow there. So we're not just talking about the go-to-the-gamp open, you know, use this tool to do this. We're talking about, we're going beyond just the how, we're also talking about the why's. We do spreadsheets where students are learning to put together whether it's a simple, man, I've forgotten the word now, invoice. That's the word I'm looking for, a simple invoice. We teach the students how to put together a simple grade book as well. How to work with formulas, how to work with absolute relative values. Just the stuff that is universal to every spreadsheet everywhere. We do, we do HTML. We teach the students how to work with web pages and we're doing it down at the HTML level and then we teach them how to work with CSS, how to work with styles so that they can create a website that is universal. The last thing they do in HTML is they get in a group and with their group they are creating a website on a subject that they care about. This group did a website on video games and so they came up with, yeah, they came up with a number of pages. This is just one of the pages but they came up with a number of pages all tied together. You use CSS to give it a consistent look and came up with something that actually looks really nice. Blender, like I said, this is my favorite thing to teach. With this, what I love about Blender is you're getting students who may struggle with some of the things that we teach. They may struggle with spreadsheets, they may struggle with HTML, but they really, really like drawing and they get on Blender and they're like, wow, this is really, really cool. Now, I'll be honest, of all the things that I teach, I love teaching this, but this is probably the one I'm least knowledgeable about. My background is in programming, my background is in, yeah, my background is more programming. The first time I taught Blender, I was literally two weeks ahead of my students. I was sitting there studying the stuff and I had students who were pulling ahead of me and you know what, that's fine. As a teacher, I don't have to know more than my students. I do need to know what I'm talking about, but I don't have to know more than my students. One of the things I've tried to make sure I do is that if students are way ahead of me, this year I had a student who's been working on Blender since he was in grade six. He's been on that about three or four years, working on it, doing pretty seriously amazing stuff. And I told him, we're going to do Blender, I want you to do stuff, but you don't have to pay attention to a single word that I say in class because you already know more than I do. What's the point in having you sitting there watching me getting bored out of your soul?  And so then you end up with stuff like this. This is if you were actually to visit our school in Lebanon, this is what a classroom would actually look like. This student took the trouble of actually setting it up complete with the whiteboards, the speaker on the wall, the desk that looked like our desk, the teacher's desk there in the front. The detail that they learn when they're working with Blender is actually seriously amazing and I look at it and I'm just blown away. They learn to do animations and apologies for the jerky video, but here you have a student and what I love about this one, this student who created this, yeah this is the Titanic, the student who created this is actually one who I don't think has really enjoyed computers up until this year. Like she's been, when we did spreadsheet, she wasn't really into it. When we were doing presentations, they weren't really into that, but when it came to this, she's like wow, that is cool and this is what she came up with. We do programming and Scratch. We have the, in the end we have, so they learn to put together program Scratch is a graphical based programming language where you're basically taking, you're putting together the program using graphical blocks. It's easy to use, it's, I believe it's totally complete, but it is not what I consider a very powerful language, but it is seriously cool in that you can put something together very quickly. And then what we do is at the end of the year, they, sorry, at the end of the Scratch section, they, again, getting groups and they put together games that they've designed and then we go and break them and vote on that. And part of their group's grade depends on how well their classmates liked their game. It's one of these things where you're trying to get them to work together as a group, we're trying to get them to, yeah, to just be learning how to work together and, again, how to understand what it is they're doing. And when they know that their work is going to be made public, that where anybody can see it, notice this is an external website, you guys can check it out, I'll have links at the end, you can see the last three years of Scratch programming that the students have done, and they know it's public, they know that anybody can see it. Finally, we end, we end one of the years with Python programming. And this is, it's after they've already done some work in Scratch and they're getting to go a step further, they're getting to learn about how to use functions, how to make sure you're not writing the same code over and over again, that's where Scratch can get really frustrating. But with Python, they're able to go and learn how to do functions. We unfortunately don't have enough time to get to classes, I'm hoping to revamp our Python curriculum a little bit so that we're able to start teaching them about classes a little bit sooner. But the end of that Python section is them learning how to design a very simple AI. I've created a game framework here and what you have here are two bots that are trying to shoot each other and they're scanning each other, the yellow is where they can see each other and there you have one bot actually winning. The idea here is that they're taught the rules, they have to write a function that tells the bot what to do for each turn and then it's up to them to go and pit their bot against other bots and see how well their bot actually works. It's fun, it's a game and it's something that some of the, again, some of them aren't going to enjoy, computers is a mandatory subject which means you always have students who are looking at you like why are you teaching me this, I'd rather be playing football or whatever else, but it is something that most of the students actually quite enjoy. So, what's our goal? When we're teaching computers at our school and when we're teaching using Fedora, what our goal is, is we want our students to understand the theory of how computers work, but we also want them to understand the, to truly understand what the applications are doing that they're using. We want them to truly understand how to work with an application, not how to work with Word or Ryder or Google DOS, but we want them to truly understand how to work with word processing, how to work with spreadsheets, how to create a web page, how to work with pictures, and we want them to be able to use whatever tools they find most comfortable and be able to do that. One of the things I'm very careful of is when I'm taking assignments in, for example word processing assignments, I do not expect them to give me an ODT file. I tell them I'm going to mark your homework in LibreOffice Ryder, but you can give me a .doc, you can give me .x, you can give me whatever Google Docs gives you, whatever you want to give me, you can give me, I'm going to mark it in LibreOffice Ryder, but I do not care what tool you use, because my job is it to teach them to use specific tools. My job is to teach them to understand the importance of what it is they're actually doing. The tool isn't nearly as important as the concepts behind it. And why do I use Fedora? Going back to why I'm using Fedora in the classroom, why am I using that? Because for me, Fedora is the best tool, not just in how it works. It is the best tool in how it works, I think, but it is also the best tool in teaching the students about ethics, teaching the students about freedom. And that is what Fedora is about. The final thing we do care about and tying into that is the ethics. We want our students to understand not just what they can do with computers, but what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing. We want them to understand the importance of making right choices, whether it's having to do with pirating software, whether it has to do with hacking, the number of questions I get about can you hack into this or can you hack into that? It's like you're totally missing the point.  And so, yeah, we want to make sure our students leave the school with a firm understanding of computer ethics as well as everything else. These are the links to the to the different things. If you want to take a shot of that, I will be posting the slides. They haven't been posted yet, but I will be posting the slides with all that information. And I will take any questions you guys might have. Why Fedora? Why Fedora? You want the honest answer? The question, sorry, for the recording, the question is why Fedora? Did we try another distribution? The answer is this. I was using Fedora when we first started looking at this. We did, when we, at the very beginning, we did briefly look at Ubuntu, and I just looked at it and I said, you know what? Because I'm more comfortable with Fedora, and because I'm the one who's going to have to maintain this, I'm going to stick with Fedora. I stand by that. I think that Fedora, with Fedora, we have managed to be on the cutting edge where we're always running the newest software, but without being bleeding. Again, especially in the last three or four years, we've not had a single major failure. And actually, I can't even think of any minor failures in those last few years. So, Fedora was what I was comfortable with, but again, the ethos, the mindset behind Fedora is one that I really stand behind. And so it allows me, as we talk about it with the students, especially when we start talking about open-source software versus proprietary software, we can really get into the whole freedom thing, if that makes sense. Okay, that is a really good question. We, the technical answer, hold on a second, the technical answer is probably about between 30 and 50, but no, probably about, probably closer to 60, but about 35 to 40 of those are multi-seat systems that have four seats on each system. So you're, we actually, this is something I mentioned briefly a couple years back, which probably isn't very useful here, but we've used SystemD's ability to do multi-seat systems and to sign devices and the ability to plug multiple GPUs into a computer. We basically, about two years ago, we started buying more expensive motherboards, slotting three dedicated GPUs into them, and then with those three dedicated GPUs and the integrated one, we now have four seats on each system. So we're in, if you're talking about seats, we probably have about a hundred, I would say, I would say about 100 to 120 Fedora seats available. Any laptops that we provide, most of our teachers bring their own laptops to the school and use them, but any laptops that we provide are also running Fedora. Yes? The ages of the students, they were in Asia, they were in China. Okay, for the, that's actually a great question. In the school, we start at three years old and we go to 18. The, I want to say they start having computer lessons in labs using Fedora at about four, but they're not actively in the, up until about nine or ten, they're not actively learning about computers, they're using the computers to learn other subjects. Okay. At about nine, yeah, but we call on Fedora, it's all on Fedora. At about nine or ten, we actually start teaching computers, and of course that's also all done on Fedora. Do you see any students like, it's like putting out an O or? Well, normally they come to me and ask me to put it on their computer, and it's not a lot, but yes, I have students, maybe a few each year that come to me and ask me to put it on their, on their systems. I, one of the things I'd like to do, but I never seem to find the time to do, and I really should be doing, is actually I, I am very careful not to put pressure on anybody to do it, but like, I don't want to be, you need to do this, you need to do this, but I do need to be giving them opportunities in a way that I've probably not been real good at up to now, of saying, if you, because I tell them, if you want Fedora, bring your laptop to me, and I'll install Fedora on it, no problems, but I probably need to actually set up some install days, you know, once or twice a year, bring it to me on this day, and we will install Fedora, but with just the bring me Fedora, and sorry, bring me your laptop and I'll install Fedora, we do maybe about two or three students a year, who actually follow through on that and bring me their laptops. I'm described that if you install Fedora, you will have to work as a thing or support for that for the rest of your life. You know what? Here's, here's the deal, I'm, I'm a, I'm already, our computer department is small enough that I'm already at risk of being technical support, okay? So the question is, what would I rather support? A system that I know works, and I know is reliable, or a system that comes down with viruses, and the thing to understand in Lebanon, pirated software is so prevalent that viruses are everywhere on, on Windows systems, so I have to make a choice, and I figure I'd rather be, I'm willing to support Fedora. The support, honestly the support is not all that difficult. Supporting something else is a whole lot more difficult, so yeah, I'm quite happy to do that. Okay, so how, how easily directed about do you think is what you're doing? I mean, I absolutely love it, but first question, like do you think that you could like spread the word and motivate other people to do the same? Or if you left the school, do you think they'd carry on with what you've been right now? Do you think it established process, or do you think it would crumble? That is an excellent question. Honestly, I would say it really depends on the people. Let me, let me, let me first answer your first question, how replicable it is for others, and then I'll answer kind of the related one about if I left the school. For, for other schools, if I think it takes somebody who actually has the passion to get it done, okay, if you can find somebody who has some knowledge of Fedora, who's willing to put in the time and effort to do this, it's definitely replicable. We have released every bit of software we have that I've written, every bit of, the configure, heck our Ansible scripts are sitting, all of it's in a GitHub repository for the school, publicly available, okay, obviously passwords and stuff are not, but the configuration scripts and everything are publicly available, and anybody who wants to go and create a workstation that is identical to the workstations we use is free to do so. Going to the question of if I left the school, that would depend on who is there. Right now the, the IT department is myself, my assistant, someone who works with the, there, our school is actually two separate buildings, and there's a guy who works with the younger students in the other building, and then our principal who was the head of IT before he became principal, which believed me, makes my life so much easier. Working with leadership who actually understands where things are at is, is great. The, my assistant is the one who would be most experienced with what it is that we're doing, and I think she would, I, I'm, but I don't know whether she would feel she has enough experience to keep fedora, she'd probably keep going for a while, but I don't know if she would feel like she's at the point yet where she could keep it going indefinitely, going through the upgrade cycles. I, I think she could do it, but I don't know if she would feel she could do it. My goal would be that if and when there comes a time when I, well obviously at something I'll retire, but by that point I would hope that whoever is coming after me will be trained up enough that they can do that. Yes. Okay, I've got, I've got the, for like the installation stuff, we have Ansible Scripts. So in that sense, that's documented in that it's, it's written down how we do it. I do not have, and this is where I'm a bit ashamed, no I'm quite ashamed to say this, I do not have proper documentation. My assistant has the, the curriculum that we use, like she wrote it down when she was observing me teaching the classes. Like I said, we don't use books and so most of what I teach is actually just straight out of here. You know what I mean? She's written it down. We need to get it properly documented. What I would like to do is properly documented and either put it on GitHub or put it on the school website. We've talked about releasing some of our curriculum and a number of other things as well. That is one of my goals. Because in my country, there are laptops for students and for students. I don't know if they need them, but usually they give the laptop with a room and so on that the students usually go back to, to Windows when they go, when they come and start something, they say, no, Windows, look at this is too old. Right, right. So it's a bit, when they're younger, it doesn't matter, but when they grow up, when they're teenagers, they start compiling and, and it's really old and they give you the system. It's not so you can't, you cannot update it. Update it, right. It's always like, it doesn't do what they are or system do. Right, well one of the things to, when I originally made the change, now remember we're not actually giving laptops out to the students. We do have laptops out to the teachers. We don't give them out to the students. They are coming into a lab and I'm making sure that that lab is at most one release behind current Fedora. Like right now it's 23 when we have 24 out. That's the most I will let it get behind and even Fedora 23 is still, whether it's Blender, LibreOffice, what have you, it is still relatively up to date. I'm totally with you.  I want the students to appreciate what it is that they have available and you know what they do. They do appreciate it. We've got time for maybe one more question, yeah. Other any events locally in Lebanon that are more current for educators or even able to share this kind of thing or? No, at least not that I have, not that I've had an opportunity yet. The open source community in Lebanon is relatively small. It's, there are a number of people there who are very passionate about it but even, I mean even the Fedora community pretty much insists of me and a couple other guys. So it's, it's tended to be pretty small. What about maybe like a non-open source specifically? Just an educational thing? There probably would be stuff like that. I would need to look into it and see because you know what that would actually be a good thing to to share with. Okay, if that's it, thank you guys very much. Enjoy.


Remember a hallmark card when you carry enough to send the very best The makers of hallmark cards bring you a true story for the life of leaf Erikson On the hallmark hall of fame here's our distinguished host Edward Arnold come to the hallmark Hall of Fame Tonight our true story is transcribed from the life of leaf Erikson To most of us that name has a familiar ring We'll recall it from our history book somewhere in the vague past However, few of us realize that leaf Erikson discovered America more than a thousand years ago Almost 500 years before Columbus tonight We are going to tell you the true adventures behind that remarkable expedition and the little known story of what happened to it Now here is Frank Oz Here's the timely reminder If someone you know having a birthday this coming week if there is and you'd like to make a happy day even happier Then send the hallmark card at the fine stores that feature hallmark cards you'll find the widest selection of new birthday cards and you'll find one that just seems made to order for the person you Have in mind whether it's a child a relative or a close friend and the card you send carries an added compliment For it has the hallmark and crown on the back the symbol that you look for when you carry enough to send the very best And now Edward Arnold brings you the hallmark hall of pain The little king known as Harald the fairhead He was a man of strong personal ambition and he ruled his fellow Norseman in a ruthless manner Many of them rebelled against his tyranny Some of these Vikings left Norway selling westward in small square sailed ships without compass guided only by the sun and the stars One such expedition arrived on the shores of America and it's this incident with which we are concerned at this beginning of the new year The discovery of America by leaf Erikson The Vikings were forced to shore at what we now know is Marvel's vision That looks or I before it falls away. I haven't seen any the women see that the relations are secure quickly quickly They are secure relief, but perhaps they should be loosened. I hear waves breaking on rocks We may be blown on to them cannot leave the women tied to the ship hold your tongue They cannot untie them until we're certain keep the lashes secure The wind is favoring us mother stay on that or we need everything we can muster the state of the wind Quickly here for the killer quickly. I haven't laid under under you, too. We need all the stink of the killer Quickly Untie the women highly tell them each to hold on to the rope You look at the work hold the end of the rope Tell me to look at the whole the end of the rope with one of the cast so you can stay up. Oh That's nice as you look around this peaceful Sunlit day now I'd indeed leave But then the sea always has been full of tricks in degrees. Yes last night was one trick we could have done without yes Well, I have staining preparing the wood for fire. I must go see to it about there. Yes But it had not been for you at the helm none of us would be alive Baldi the strong present and waiting the time has gone quickly since we came ashore as time does when one is busy Well, let's let's get to it then But often yes, Lee We have to get back to Iceland. We will have much to tell of the council I think they would be glad to hear that we followed the procedures of the alting that men should govern themselves. Yes, but But I was thinking of this beautiful land. We find food and shelter so easily. Yeah, I'm afraid no one in Reykjavik would ever believe us You'll find the council has encouraging things to say the fifth meeting of our council is now in session Thorfinn. Yes, Lee. Who is the first to speak y'all? John yes, please You've been in charge of building the cabins. I have nothing to speak of leaf except results The three cabins are almost completed and we are ready for the snows. Were you not to build a palisade around the cabins? I have talked to other members of the council and some say they think it unnecessary, but we agreed in council to build a palisade Please Yes, Danny We feel it to waste of time and men Leave yes, Magnus. I have something to say that has been worrying many members of the council. Yes a ship Vikings must never be without a ship Maybe the natives here will prove hostile We never know We must have a ship Call the road those in favor of building a ship answer. I those opposed nay Hey I You're Mulder. I'll say you thought nay, I Answer the council has come to a close Yes, Lee Why did you vote nay? I Want to have no excuse to leave this beautiful land Excuse for what do you need? Lillia your wife Lillia is going to have a baby They need to be a very dry wood so often has been felling trees They shouldn't need to dry too long even in this cold. All right. We're ready for the snow. Yes, just in time We're lucky Have you watched him and all the way he swings the ax he doesn't look right his face We'll see what is the matter.  Maybe we'd better go and come so many friends over the holidays Don't you wish there was an easy way to keep in closer touch with these good friends throughout the year? So many of us are inclined to put off letter writing Often to in our busy lives. There isn't time for long letters Well at the fine stores that feature hallmark cards, you'll find the ideal solution boxes of attractive hallmark decorated note papers These note papers are both decorative and so convenient to keep on hand for all those occasions when you want to dash off a newsy note Your friends will appreciate hearing from you more often and these handsome hallmark note papers have a warm personal air about them Each one will seem like a little visit from you You'll find many occasions to use these hallmark note papers to their ideal for invitations or thank-you notes for instance So get several boxes this week You'll find many beautiful designs to choose from including a lovely array of floral patterns And you'll be surprised to find these distinctive note papers are remarkably inexpensive Only 59 cents one dollar or two dollars a box and each note you send will complement the receiver Because it carries the hallmark and crown on the back the symbol that you look for when you will carry enough to send the very best And now Edward Arnold brings you the second act of our true story from the life of Lee Ferrickson To have settled in on the east coast of America the snow fell steadily on the cabins of the tiny colony of Norseman and It's happened so often in the affairs of men at their height of happiness and joy Disaster had struck with suddenness and with no warning The Vikings adventurers that they were a little understanding of sickness But with the determination that had carried them across uncharted waters halfway across the world They faced each other in counsel to assess the disaster and to see what could be done I know that deep sorrow rests in your hearts as I speak to you None of us knows what happened to these men. What is wrong with them what we can do to help them get well Except Magnus who has already joined his gods leaf Yes, Balder. It must be a plague leaf It must be that to have stricken them the five of them almost all at once you're likely all right Balder I think it is the plague Thorfinn has something to say about plague say what you have to say Thorfinn What I have to say is most difficult leaf, but it must be said We have already taken the first step in putting them together in the big cabin. Yes The rest of the colony must be kept away from them We knew of plagues in Europe. We knew that those who were sick should be kept away We must keep those who are well away from the sick, but who will tend them and care for them We will discuss that in a moment Balder. The first I must reassign the tasks Father just leave you will take over Magnus's task the ship the ship The men will all be at your command Send half of them into the woods for timber each day and keep half of them with you at the seaside to assemble the timbers I leave Thorfinn your task will remain to find food for us. The women will continue to cook And Thorfinn Ashley twice each day you will bring a kettle of broth to the clearing by the big cabin Leave the broth there You must not come within 30 paces of the cabin Leaf those men can't get their broth from the clearing.  I must not do this. You must not Do not expose yourself to the plague leaf the colony needs you remember brave Grimler Do you think we do not want to see you back to health the risks too great? Too great for a leader there Grimler. Let's not have any more talk. You need to rest was Mognus leaf Mognus died Grimler away. What a way for a Viking I am land leaf to tie on land. What is that? We're with the sea our lives are with Grimler Grimler My back and be easy as easy as you can see leaf I want to die at sea my Grimler You must not speak these thoughts of dying see you know, you must not think his ready leaf No, Grimler the ship is not ready now Rest about the baby coming the luck of the gods. Oh, boss. I Need no bra. We're dying on land. You You must promise a Viking shoe Grimler we have no ship the test of the flames reef to send our souls to Valhalla Couldn't see you leave this placing the kindling against the cabin. How is he five of our strongest and ablest men lie dead in that cabin I Made a promise to the last one to die to Grimler But they would be given the full honor of a Viking funeral But the flames would carry their souls to their gods in Valhalla with this torch Full bill They died good Vikings with me Balder. I have something to talk with you about highly nearly ready nearly It should be ready for the sea by the time the snow has gone Well, the weather has been breaking fast the snow should be gone in a matter of days. Well Yes The ship will be ready good Thank You Balder Good night. Yes, who is open the news from your one to your ordeal and the cabin was over news. What news My son was born last night Our ablest men has put the colony in danger Your counsel has decided There's nothing to do but sail home brice land The ship is ready. The weather is ready Someday we may return in better fortune To what we have found in every way to be a land of bounty a land of promise Where we have sufficient number there's no doubt we would remain here But the sickness to care of that Let us hope that in the future Vikings will return to these shores To build their homes To settle the land we found for them We look forward to our voyage home with hope As we always have in the past the council has decided the journey should be dedicated to the child born to porfin and lilia The first born Norseman on this land Under the saga of leaf Erickson and his colony in America 1,000 years ago The child son of porfin was in fact the first white child born in America The adventure of the Vikings was a failure and it remained for other centuries later to sail the seas to the land of promise It is interesting to speculate at this beginning of the new year what this land of ours might be like in 1955 Had had been settled by leaf Erickson 500 years before our own program fathers arrived Now here is Frank gosh You know earlier we were talking about thoughtfulness and keeping closer touch with friends and relatives throughout the year We often have the best intentions, but we forget and it's hard sometimes to keep track of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends Well the fine stores that feature hallmark cards have a gift for you a gift that's waiting right now for you to pick it up And it's a wonderful memory minder. It's a new 1955 hallmark date book This attractive little date book is designed to fit conveniently in purse or pocket In the front pages the hallmark date book has spaces for the addresses and phone numbers of your friends and family With special places too to list birthdays and anniversaries right on the same line with each name and address And you'll find it a wonderful convenience to have both these addresses and dates right with you Then the hallmark date book gives you a day-by-day calendar with room to remind yourself of appointments club meetings or luncheon dates You'll find other helpful information in your hallmark date book and remember It's a gift to you from the fine stores that feature hallmark cards. It's their way of saying Thank you for remembering to look for cards with a hallmark and crown on the back The symbol that you look for when you carry enough to send the very best Now here's Edward Arnold Wouldn't old Samuel Johnson the English writer who advised everyone to keep your friendships and constant repair Be surprised if you could see one of those hallmark date books Realize how easy it is nowadays to follow his advice with the help of a date book and hallmark cards I'm sure he'd be one of the first in the store to ask for his free hallmark date book Incidentally, I think you'll be interested to know Lee Ferrickson was portrayed tonight by Larry Thor Whose proper Icelandic name was honor for Laura's Thorstensen Larry is himself a descendant of Lee Ferrickson Therefore we not only called upon Larry to portray his ancestor, but to write our script Thank you Larry for both the splendid performance and for a fine drama It's the beginning of another year on the hallmark Hall of Fame And we thought this would be an appropriate time to tell you about the many exciting programs We have a head for the coming season For example next week. We will present a true story from the life of president Andrew Johnson It's a little known story behind the only impeachment procedures ever instigated against the president of the United States It'll be my pleasure to play president Johnson The following week we will bring you a true story from the life of one of America's greatest agricultural scientists George Washington cover it involves one of the strangest congressional investigations in history and It all centered about a plant developed by mr. Carver the lowly peanut On January the 23rd, we will present the story of Charmaine whose centuries ago created a united Europe On January the 30th We will be indeed honored to present a true story from the life of unquestionably the world's greatest living statesman Sir Winston Churchill With the Prime Minister's permission, we are going to dramatize a little known incident in his life that occurred during the Boer war The story of an exciting and amazing escape made all the more remarkable because the man it happened to was Sir Winston Churchill So we hope you will join us next Sunday and each Sunday during 1955 Until next week when we present the true story of the attempted impeachment of president Andrew Johnson This is Edward Arnold saying good night Remember a hallmark card when you carry enough to send the very best The Hallmark Hall of Fame is produced and directed by William Pruitt heard in tonight's transcribe cast where LeBunt Johnson Jack Moyles Barney Phillips John Stevenson William Euler and Tom Brown Next Sunday the Hallmark Hall of Fame on television will tell the little known but exciting story of John Ho America's first mint master This is Frank Goss saying good night to you until next week at this same time When you'll hear a true story from the life of president Andrew Johnson Starring mr. Edward Arnold the following week a true story from the life of George Washington Carver on the Hallmark Hall of Fame


I'm Destiny Parra and I'm interning in the economic development department. I am a high school senior at Everman Josie Bean High School and I want to become a criminal justice lawyer. It's actually my college algebra teacher. He posted the opportunity in Google Classroom and he's like, you should check it out. It'd be awesome. And so I looked at the website and I was like, oh, this seems really important. So I looked it over and I talked it out with my mom and I was like, I think I'm going to apply. And then I was super surprised when they asked me for an interview. So what I've learned so far is how the economic development department works together as a whole. Each of them have different things they each work on and they all come together in the end. I think that's super awesome. And also I'm just here to gain some experience and put it towards my future career. This is a program for you and your benefit. You should enjoy it, have fun and also ask as many questions as you can. They're here to listen and they want to help you.


She thought nobody was looking when the camera caught her in the act. Laura sat quietly during the busy breakfast service, people watching. Peering over her cup of coffee, she noticed a scene unfolding at the breakfast counter that made her splutter. Although other diners were paying no mind to what the waitress was doing, she saw it. But now that she had caught her, she needed proof. She made up her mind in an instant and whipped out her phone. Laura Wolf was a regular at the Waffle House, but she had never seen anything like this before. The waitress was doing something to an elderly patron's food, and when Laura realized what it was, she was left dumbstruck. The waitress looked around quickly to make sure nobody was watching and then began to poke around on the man's plate. But what she didn't know was that Laura had seen everything. At 18 years old, Avoni Williams had been a waitress at the La Mark Texas Waffle House for years. She worked long shifts, scrimping and saving every penny to pay for her college tuition. But some days were hard. Avoni never imagined that what she did that day would have such far-reaching consequences. And she never knew that someone was watching and recording her every move. This particular morning was exceptionally busy for Avoni. With so many people stopping in for some breakfast, the Waffle House was packed on the morning of the incident. With so many orders, Avoni was struggling to get meals out on time. She was working at a good pace at first. But as the pass filled with plates ready to go out, life decided to throw a curveball her way. Adrian Sharpentier was seated at the breakfast counter, but Laura didn't recognize him. She didn't know that he had quite a reputation among the restaurant staff in town. They had even given him a nickname. Laura watched quietly as he leaned over to Avoni and whispered something in her ear. At exactly that moment the cook yelled for Avoni from the kitchen, but she was listening to what the man was whispering to her so intently that she didn't hear him. With trouble brewing among the kitchen staff, Avoni and Adrian remained still, oblivious to what was going on around them. Laura furtively leaned closer to try and catch what the old man was whispering to her. Laura studied the man and noticed that he was struggling to breathe and was hooked up to an oxygen tank. She watched as Avoni leaned closer to catch what he was saying. Then came the moment her life would change forever. The chef was still yelling for her from the kitchen, but she ignored him. Then, the startled look that came over her face said it all. With a strange look on her face, Avoni continued to ignore the yelling from the kitchen and the other diners trying to flag her down. In a bold move, she suddenly pulled the old man's plate of ham over to her side of the counter. Then, she did something to the man's food that sent Laura into a spin. She wasn't used to seeing servers behave this way. She knew exactly what she had to do. Laura was dying to know what the old man had whispered to the waitress, but she could only surmise from Avoni's reaction. Her eyes were down, intent on what she was doing, occasionally darting around, as if to see if anyone was watching her. The expression on her face was slightly fearful, but also triumphant. Laura wasn't the type of person to just let something like this go, though. Slowly reaching down into her handbag with one hand, she pulled out her phone. Laura got all the evidence she needed as she quietly snapped away, making sure that her flash was off. But what she never anticipated was that the photographs would make Avoni and herself famous. Her view was obscured by the man's back, but she could clearly see Avoni's elbows moving up and down furiously. Soon Laura would make sure that everyone would know what had happened at the Waffle House today. The man also watched Avoni's actions intently. Laura watched his breathing quicken when Avoni was done and she slid the plate back over to him. Laura couldn't see the man's face, but she could see Avoni's as she smiled at him slightly.  Then, the man said something to Avoni that made tears well up in Laura's eyes. She swiped through the photos she had just taken and shared the best one on Facebook. During her server for the bill and about to leave, she stopped when her phone began to beep furiously. Avoni was now Facebook famous, whether she wanted to be or not. There was no going back. But what Avoni didn't know was that Laura hadn't been the only one recording her actions that day. Avoni had just done what had come naturally to her, she had no idea that she was being watched. Ignoring the kitchen staff and other diners, she knew she had to finish what she'd started. The restaurant's security camera and Laura had caught everything. When she was done tampering with Adrian's food, he had said apologetically, My hands don't work too good. Laura Wolf had felt heartbroken when Adrian said those words to his server. Then, she watched Avoni as she cut up the man's food before moving on to her other duties. Laura was filled with such emotion when she saw Avoni's gesture that she just had to share it on Facebook. But what did netizens think? Laura Wolf's post read, without hesitation, she took his plate and began cutting up his ham. This may seem small but to him, I'm sure it was huge. I'm thankful to have seen this act of kindness and caring at the start of my day while everything in this world seems so negative. Just a short while later, her post had gone viral with 99,000 likes and 47,000 shares. But the public wasn't done with the waitress yet. The post was seen so many times that netizens all agreed that what Avoni had done deserved some recognition. By then, the post had caught the eye of Bobby Hawking, the mayor of La Marque. The mayor showed up at the Waffle House to surprise Avoni with an enormous check. The humble waitress couldn't believe it. The amount on the check would put her through college, it was just what she had dreamed of. The check was for the unbelievable amount of $16,000 and was from Texas State University, a scholarship for Avoni to attend classes there. When interviewed, Avoni explained that she had helped Adrian that day because it had just been the right thing to do, she hadn't expected any reward for it. The mayor handed her the check, and she completely broke down. The Waffle House manager was thrilled for Avoni. He couldn't be happier that it was one of his star employees who had received so much attention for her good deed. But Avoni thinks what she did for Adrian was a small gesture, hardly worth mentioning. But what she did meant the world to Adrian Sharpentier, who had been battling health issues recently. Adrian is also known as, Mr. Karaoke. He explained to Avoni that the past five weeks had been difficult for him as he had been in and out of the hospital. It started with pneumonia, he told ABC News. I can hold a fork fine and dandy, but to cut it looks like I'm going to stab somebody, he said, laughing.  Avoni had known exactly what to do for him. I was just like, sure. If you need help, that's what I am here for, Avoni said in an interview. My cook was calling my name to pick up food I had on the board, but I continued to cut his ham. It's just something I would do for anybody, she added. And Adrian appreciated her help more than she knew. It means a lot. I need help and the waitresses issue it to me, Adrian said tearfully. But it was social media users who couldn't get enough of the post. The young waitress had helped an elderly customer with so much sensitivity and grace. But it was Avoni and Laura who were most surprised of all when the mayor showed an interest in the story. Somebody tagged me and it immediately. It just touched my heart. It's so wonderful that the younger generation cares about the older generation, the mayor, Bobby Hawking recalls. There is a lot of love in LaMark, Texas, and we intend to perpetuate that, he said. And he knew he had to give Avoni exactly what she deserved. The Voni's small but important gesture towards an elderly diner had touched the mayor's heart so much that he wanted to honor the young waitress in the best way possible. Imagine having an entire day named in your honor? Well, that's just what he did. He declared that every year, March 8th is Avoni Williams Day. It is awesome. I feel excited and happy, Avoni said. We wanted to reward Avoni's act of kindness and let her know that good deeds do not go unnoticed, said Melinda Spalding, an administrator at Texas Southern University. She has the character of the type of students we want at Texas Southern University. Now, Avoni's prospects have widened to allow her to study and one day open her dream business, her very own hair salon.


By working exclusively on your aerobic engine or base fitness, which is what I'm going to demonstrate to you today. We're going to go outside, I'm going to show you a practical way. To train base fitness, this applies to both indoor and outdoor riding by working on this area exclusively. You're going to build fitness adaptations that are going to take your cycling performance to the next level. For example, aerobic training is the best training to stretch the heart muscle, to make your heart muscle bigger. It's also going to help you increase your lung capacity so you can bring more oxygen into your bloodstream. You're going to increase your myoglobin stores. You're going to improve mitochondrial function, which essentially means you're going to deliver more energy to your working muscles. There's that and a whole lot more than how to train base fitness that's coming up. So welcome back to the 29th edition of the RCA Training Tips Show where today I have a special treat for you. I'm going to share with you a video that's one of 20 in a brand new online course that I have for road cyclists that are keen to take their cycling performance to the next level, being the up-level road cycling course. Given the fact I opened the course last Friday and I'm closing it in a few days' time, and I'm also offering a 30% discount to incentivize people on joining me in this new course, I wanted to give people out there that are thinking about joining me a flavor of what the content is like. Now in the new course you're going to get some practical videos as you'll see today where I'm going to share with you my three critical factors for base training rides which applies to both indoor and outdoor cycling and the course also includes some whiteboard theory-based videos including a video before the one you're going to see today which explains why we leverage zone two to build our aerobic engine. You see there is zone one, there's zone three, there's also something called sweet spot, not against those. In fact we use them in the course, they just need to be carefully placed in an overall 12-week base training program. Now if you get value out of this video today, please don't forget to give it a like and if you're after more content like this and you want access to 12-week training programs, a private group where I do live Q&As every single month and also support from coaches such as myself, then check out the link below and let's get into it. So welcome to let's go for a base training ride together where I'm going to show you how I and how I believe you should roll when building the aerobic base fitness engine during outdoor training. But before we take off on this ride heading from the magnificent Sunshine Beach area to Maruchidor here in Queensland, Australia, let's reflect quickly on why we're going for this ride together as I commence what will be roughly an 8-10 minute warm-up before hitting my zone 2 number. So by now you should understand the importance of base building training leveraging your zone 2. You should also by now have identified your zone 2 number and you should have an idea of where your base fitness is at from the cardio drift test. However, whether you need to work on your base fitness now or whether you're currently working on a high intensity program because you've already got a solid base fitness engine, base training rides will and should always be part of your training regime. So in this video today we're going to go for a base training ride together. Real world stuff where we have road undulations, traffic, roadworks, you name it. With the idea of this video being that you walk away or maybe you ride away with a better understanding of how you should ride outdoors when training base fitness. And there are three key takeaways I'm hoping you will get from this ride together. Number one, I want you to learn how to ride with consistent or constant pressure. Number two, I want you to learn how to use base training rides to enhance and develop new skills. And number three, I want you to learn to keep an eye on your heart to see where the drift starts to creep in and to learn about variability in your heart rate. So on this screen from left to right you can see the ride duration, cadence speed in kilometers per hour, average three second power, heart rate, gradient and the route which is straight down the beach. The ride today is going to be a two hour zone two ride although I will actually end up doing two hours and 25 minutes so let's not get overly picky. However, what you might find interesting to note is if I'm doing a two hour, 2.5 hour, three hour or whatever base building zone two ride it may be I won't include the first 10 minutes as part of the official ride as that is purely dedicated to getting the legs warm spinning in zone one. I do start the bike computer but I don't count it as part of my official two hour zone two ride. This 10 minute spin should also happen at the end of the ride to help create cellular exchange where metabolic waste that has been accumulated from the ride can start to be flushed out. You'll hear more on this topic when we get to the rest and recovery video later in the course but just know that while zone two won't create as much waste products as high intensity training it's still going to push the lactate system up slightly especially on some of the longer zone two rides and as a result we always want to spin at the end of a base training ride. So because I am warming up for 10 minutes here I like to wait until I'm around the 25 minute mark before I take note of my first heart rate number which will do in a second because the first big thing I want to emphasize for you here is constant pressure on the cranks and if there is just one thing you take away from this online course and I hope there's more but if there was just one thing this would be it constant pressure on the cranks. Here I am now settled into the ride at my target zone two wattage which is going to be 240 watts for this ride give or take 10 to 15 watts with road changes and undulations and something I would like to point out here quickly is that I do have my zone two wattage 10 watts higher on the road than on the trainer as my trainer actually reads 10 watts lower for the same output which is very common and something you might like to check yourself. So as you can see here I am riding on a very undulating part of today's base ride which I need to do in order to get to the flat areas which you'll see shortly but what happens with many cyclists when they get to undulating terrain is they will ride hard up the hills typically pushing it out of the saddle and when they get to the top of the hill they will coast down the other side and to prove my point here I have some other footage for you on this same road taken at a different time unfortunately I didn't have any cyclists ride past me this am so let's have a look at this footage and you will see a cyclist up ahead in white. Now I'm going to speed the footage up here at times just so you can see what happens here in its entirety but just note that I am riding consistent constant zone two pressure. Yes there are some variations given the road undulations but I'm pretty much in zone two the entire time and I have constant pressure on the cranks. I'm getting a proper aerobic base building workout in while the man in the white is working who knows what. I'd say a bit of every zone including zone zero otherwise known as free pedaling. He's essentially being dictated by the terrain and momentum of the bike and look I'm not here to bag this rider because if this is what gets him out of bed for some exercise in the morning and he likes riding like this then go for it but if his goal was to improve his performance on the bike then this type of riding leads straight to a plateau where average form will fluctuate and nothing essentially is going to improve and let me be loud and clear here this is the way many cyclists ride their bikes in training all over the place without any consistency or constant pressure on the cranks and that on off nature that you can see leads to very poor conditioning at a musculoskeletal level meaning you fatigue easier because in training you're constantly in this on off washing machine all the time. So here I'm riding slowly but I am on the cranks with pressure in my zone 2. I have obviously slowed the cadence down going up this incline here which is a good way to build muscular strength and create some variation in the workout. Variation is an aspect to our training that you'll hear more about in future videos but just know for now that both slow and fast cadence during base training rides is a good thing and as you can see I'm now headed down the decline but the pressure is still on the cranks and the cadence is clearly higher. The only time I will take pressure off the cranks is when stopping at traffic lights turning corners avoiding traffic or riding down a mountain or a super steep hill. You get my point consistency on the cranks in our zone 2 is key when practical. So let's skip forward here a little to just over the 20 minute mark where I'm about to take my first heart rate reading for the drift score and it's 130 beats or there abouts. I would normally go to 25 minutes but I'm about to hit a little row of shops with some traffic and the slowing of the bike and pedal stroke will start to affect my heart rate so I'm just taking it a touch earlier here. We'll skip forward here again to just over an hour into this ride. I am now on a bike path approaching the Maruti Dora river where I will do a U-turn and as you can see my heart rate hasn't really drifted yet which I'm happy about given current fitness levels and I'm on a bike path which is a great tool to have for our base training rides for two big reasons. Number one they're obviously safe and number two they teach us better bike handling skills and that is one of the other key takeaway points I'd like you to have for this video and that is using base training rides to further enhance and develop new skills. As base training rides are a great opportunity for us to hone our bike handling skills what I'm about to do here is you turn my bike in quite a tight little area. I am then going to ride up a bit further and do it again and I'm then going to do it one more time so three times all up but you might like to do it four five or six times to help develop your balance on the bike and turning skills which many cyclists lack. On the way back to the main road on the bike path I'm also going to practice taking one hand off the handlebar then the other hand and then both hands. So the bike path not only provides a safe riding environment it also provides a safe environment to enable us to practice and develop skills and you could do this on a bike path either during a zone one recovery ride or a base building ride and it's something I would recommend you do on a weekly basis at the very least. What is also happening on this ride to enhance and develop new skills which you can't see is that I'm trying a new saddle to accommodate my change in crank length. It's one of those funny looking SMP saddles but it appears to be working nicely and the point I'm trying to make here is any changes tweaks adjustments to your position etc are best done either during the off-season or during a period where you're focusing on building base. You're much less likely to cause issues or injuries during these periods so use base training rides to your advantage assuming you're eager to make changes to further develop your position on the bike. Just don't make any significant changes and head out for a four-hour base training ride I'm also referencing your one to two-hour rides here. So if I skip forward again now roughly 90 minutes into this ride the heart starting to drift a little but nothing alarming and here I'm practicing riding in the drops. Once again developing another skill or technique during a base building phase many road cyclists never ride in the drops and that's often the case because they simply don't practice it. Getting in the drops will make you more aerodynamic on the bike and it also gives you greater handling given the lower center of gravity. So it's a very useful tool and capability to have up your sleeve and the best way to develop it is to get in the drops say five minutes on five minutes off as an example during periods of your base ride. I'm also practicing some nose breathing during certain periods of today's base ride just purely focusing on big deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Breathing through the nose has been demonstrated in many studies to produce a 10 to 20 percent greater oxygen uptake in the blood due to the way the nose warms and filters air that is being breathed in. Clearly nose breathing at a maximal output level is difficult so the best time to practice this method of breathing is when training aerobically. Lastly on this topic of developing skills I'm completing this ride without any food. I had a small instant coffee before leaving in the morning and a smidge of coconut milk but I won't be eating anything on this entire ride outside of drinking one water bottle per hour. Yes I do have a bar in my back pocket in case I need it but during base building periods this is a great time to complete some faster rides so you can develop your system to better fuel itself with fat and not be so dependent on carbohydrate. So let's now head to the end of this ride and as you can see I'm finishing on a drift of about 10 beats around the 140 mark which is to be expected. I'm only riding two to three times per week at the moment and two of those rides are a 45 minute indoor trainer session so I simply have not been working my aerobic base fitness enough to have a limited drift for two hours. If we now look at my numbers in today's plan you can see the power numbers they're pretty consistent external to some stopping and some little sparks which were probably driven by a few times I stretched the legs getting out of the saddle going up a hill and there was an instance where I had to get in front of some traffic for safety purposes when I was confronted with a road work situation. Overall the power line I am happy with and in terms of my heart rate it started to drift as you can see around the one hour 45 minute mark and ended up as you know at around 140 beats. So that is the final takeaway for you in this base building ride that being let's just always keep an eye on heart rate when we're doing these base building or base maintenance rides. It's easy to do and there are three compelling reasons why you should be consistent with it. Number one we can benchmark our aerobic engine by keeping an eye on when our heart rate starts to drift. Number two we can be smarter about our rest and recovery so if you become intimate with your heart and you start seeing some weird spikes and or elevated numbers before or during a ride that's telling you something maybe you should rest that day or maybe it's even time for a rest week and number three it gives us something to aim for with our base fitness. What do I mean by that? As you know from watching the cardio drift video we want to try and work towards a limited heart rate drift working aerobically i.e zone two for at least 120 percent of the target event time. So if it's a one hour criterion we want limited heart rate drift for 75 minutes or if it's a three hour road race we want limited heart rate drift for 3,045 minutes and if you've got a 10 hour Fondo event let's be serious you're not going to have a limited heart rate drift for 12 hours but you might work towards four to five hours and for general cycling wanting to beat your mates around the block I'd say a two to two and a half hour period with limited cardio drift would be a great target to have and even for those focused on criterion racing while technically it's 75 minutes having a more efficient aerobic engine is going to help with the development of your upper end zones thus having some numbers to aim for gives the base training rides even greater purpose and of course if you love coffee which I do be sure to pop by the local coffee shop on the way home either before or after that light 10 minutes spin down