Hey guys, I am Ken Ross here. I'm a business consultant that specializes in reducing costs for businesses by looking at their essential expenses And today I am so excited today because I get to continue my series on financial times, right where I speak to Experts in the industry for financial health for businesses and Kelly is no exception. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Ken. How about yourself? I'm doing awesome Really, thank you. Thank you and appreciate the time we can have today.  Tell me how long you've been in the industry and what it is that you do Absolutely, I've been in the industry for 23 years and that is human resource services and Hero HRIS software for organizations Awesome awesome and and tell me a little bit more about that right you said HRS Now that's something I'm definitely familiar with but but maybe some of my audience is in I'd like to like to kind of break down What that is, right? What's the accurate? Absolutely, so human resources is covering everything from the minute you have a job opening to Hosting that a job opening sourcing candidates interviewing hiring Along with hiring onboarding and with onboarding comes the employee handbook the necessary forms that you have to have on your filing system for compliance reasons such as the W4 and the i9 and management so management of that employees lifecycle at the organization, which would be I would imagine training training as part of that too, right? Absolutely. So training onboarding reviews 30 60 90 depending on what kind of reviews your organization does any sort of performance review for raise or a merit increase, etc to really fully offering benefits to the employee and workplace perks and and then one day retirement or maybe it's to promotion so really I go into an organization and help them with every step along that way and HR services is a really critical part every step along the way of the employee lifecycle Now more than ever especially with the great recession and so much changing on a daily basis in each state with compliance and the trainings that have to be deployed for employees in organizations and ensuring not only the organization's safety, but also the employee's safety and livelihood Yeah, absolutely. And I can imagine with as much change like you said that's been in this industry with a lot of people working remotely A lot of people deciding their own destiny and saying, hey, look, I don't want to do this job anymore. I want to do this HR services is definitely something you could you could spend a lot of money on But what you're offering is something I think really would help a business owner do business, right? And so that kind of leads me to my next question Financial health is something I always value What are some of your philosophies to stay on how to stay on the good side of financial health? When running an organization just staying on top of compliance is first and foremost because even the smallest compliance reach can really cost an organization a lot of money even the What seems like the smallest lawsuit can cause an organization a lot of money So ensuring that you're working with a partner a trusted partner like a sure To help manage the steps along the way Hey, here's what we need to stay in compliance with for payroll and payroll taxes For example, you just mentioned employees, you know, the way they're working is different today and a lot of employees are working from home It's a hybrid workforce or they're in another state With that being in another state brings along more compliance and different compliance than where the organization is located So ensuring that as a business owner or as an individual running a corporation you have compliance metrics in place for Everywhere that you're located Multi-state you call multi-state jurisdiction not only on the tax and payroll standpoint From an HR standpoint, it's you know as well. For example, if you hire employees and have them working in california new york There's some mandatory first day of hire training that need to be done such such as sexual harassment And with that we can um fill that gap or that void For the employees by bringing in our people. We could also help You know recruit and hire four positions that are open here at assure So so that is financial help to me as knowing here are the laws Here's what we need to make sure we have covered And you know getting those things in place even the HR handbook Awesome and and it sounds it sounds like you're delivering that expertise in this area and you've done it for quite some time So you you're definitely aware of that and I would think as a as a business owner Even if you're aware of certain aspects of HR you're not aware of all these My new details, especially when you mentioned the multi-state thing. I think that's that's really important, especially in this time um, and yeah, I love it. I think I think I I I can't think enough Right now to to even say look, I have a good handle on it Which is why I would think someone like yourself would be valuable to a to my team, right if I ever Wanted to be a global brand. I I definitely would have to have Uh a team of people could be a part of that and it sounds the biggest thing that I have access to our resources So do I know everything? No way Yeah, do I have resources that are studying employment? And the rules of the road with employment every day? Absolutely And for example our HR consultants here at assure all of them have over 15 years experience in HR And they're all shirms certified And have worked in the industry for a long period of time and are constantly staying current on what they need to know and keeping up with their You know quarterly and annual curriculums our tax managers are also in the same boat with the same amount of tenure The same amount of experience and also continuing to study We do as a firm have access to You know our own right legal counsel. So we know Okay, here are the rules we must follow and then as a consultant for sure And a sales really a sales executive I constantly go through trainings and educate myself as well And stay current with what I need to stay current with to bring my Clients piece of mind that I'm continuing my education. So like you mentioned earlier, let the business owner focus on I'll use the word strategic initiatives while we take care of some of those more tactical and very time consuming laws It also sounds like you're doing a little bit of consulting too, right? Can you talk a little bit more about that and you really give me a good background on what assure is Which was my next question, but I'm going to kind of get a little bit more into just give me a little bit about the consulting part Absolutely. I think that's my Intuitive approach to it. I've been doing this role for 23 years And with that, I've always looked at myself as taking a very consultative approach And what I mean by that is no two companies are the same and every company is is different from the other Whether it's a matter of culture or whether it's a matter of industry state I'm originally from Chicago And it's very different than Denver and being able to acclimate to the different personalities So with that every company is different. And so I really take a fresh sheet of paper to every appointment I go into with no Preconceived notions or expectations on what their needs are And I get to know what is working really well at the company from a software management standpoint and people management standpoint and then what Could be improved. There are clients of mine that Are all set on payroll and they just need help with HR I'm going to help them with HR and we can do that here Here it is. Sure. We're very out of heart and able to customize our solutions depending on who we're talking to You stole my thunder a little bit I was going to salvo into the the next question Which is why it's so different and and you kind of already clued me into that because I love to save money Right, that's one of the things I help businesses do is save money on their essential expenses but You you seem to to understand that that model very well too like it's an a la carte business for you Kind of explain a little bit more about why you're so different than other HR providers often first and foremost our team is amazing and stellar and I can truly say that um the VP of our HR consulting team is the best I've ever seen In the industry in all 23 years that I've been in it She really takes a nice strategic approach to the organization. She's working with and her team ripples that same demeanor and expertise Therefore, I have a lot of peace of mind when I'm coming up with a solution for my clients and my potential clients Our software is our own software Which means our response times are going to be faster. It's The ability to be more customizable is there for my clients and that's something that in the past I didn't have The luxury of talking about before sure. There's a lot of security behind what we do And so I really love the fact that you know, we have about Maybe a little under a thousand employees Yet we have about 80,000 clients on our platform So our numbers are pretty impressive, especially with how long I've been in the industry to be able to have These numbers to speak of yet Still have that main street feel to the day-to-day communication with my clients and my internal team is Is reassuring Awesome. Yeah, and it does sound like there is Like you like you said the team aspect of this this very passionate group of people that can get together and really serve businesses Um, do you have offices all over because you're based out of out of Denver? Right? That's that's where you're based out of but are there offices in other places too? Yeah, I am in Denver I work with clients, you know all over the u.s. Wherever I am referred And with that our corporate headquarters is in austin taxes and we are located throughout the u.s We are helping a lot of clients around the country with everything from employer retention tax credit audits to You know employer handbooks All the way to multi-seat payroll tax jurisdiction Last thing I want to talk about very quickly here You and I know each other from from various spaces. We've talked a lot. There is no assertive relationship here I don't get any credit for hey Talk to kelly, but how can people reach you and and and what is it that that you're open to for businesses? Because I really feel like my audience and people that that find this on online They should they should talk to a HR specialist They should talk to some some of these things right because these are very much Things that people overlook. I love it and you're right.  That's what makes it so cool with that I would say that I would talk With someone like myself or myself as soon as possible If you're thinking about running a business if you've opened your doors Even if you've been in business for five years because there are a lot of things out there that you could potentially Save money on or even get some money on like employer retention tax credit Through the carers act employers are able absolutely. That's a really big chunk of change Yeah, really big one. Yes employer retention tax credit. I heard all about it. I told a lot of people So yeah, absolutely. So it's going to be an educational experience and speaking with Myself or someone who works like myself at the end of the day I'm just looking to share some knowledge and be a resource to my clients assure has many free resources for our clients we have a weekly webinar where we have really skilled professionals talking about topics like Affordable care act what's changed um ERTC why you need an employee handbook different topics We store all all these free webinars on our website We have a free blog that you can access on a weekly basis new one each week and we have links to the other states You know important forms that you need to have whether it's State unemployment form that you need to fill out for your organization to ensure you have that number and that experience rate or just an i9 w4 form Staying current with 2022 and these are free resources. So when you talk to me, I'm going to show you where this is I'm going to point you in that direction And I'm absolutely going to ask you some questions about your business But at the end of the day I have a good feeling you're going to walk away with something you didn't know and I know I will too Because I'm going to learn about you Absolutely, and I'm all about education So I'm going to do my best to put in this this video the description of this video ways to contact you Maybe even link to some of those resources before you get a chance to send them to it So I would really appreciate Um the opportunity to do that for for my audience here as well And I really do appreciate you taking the time out today And sitting down with me and talking about finance or health. I think HR services is definitely something People overlook Initially and they think oh, I just got a higher employee. They got to do some some legal things, right? And and we'll move forward. It's a constant education a constant process and someone like you is definitely A valuable asset to any team when you're trying to grow a business. So thank you for your time today Thank you so much. And I to lose share my phone number in my email All right. Well, stay tuned everyone. I have more people like kelly Gear it up for my financial times series Would love for you to stay tuned to this series as well as see any of my other videos if you want to subscribe to my channel I would love it Hit the subscribe button share it with your friends and visit my website I am ken ross calm until I see you next time. I'll see you around. Thanks kelly


Hey, Ben, how you doing? Rich, I'm good. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. Long time no speak. How are things? Things are great. Thanks. Super busy. Very good. Very good. So let's talk about it. Pure Extracts got its sales license from Health Canada. We did. Can you please let the viewers know what this means for the company? That is huge news. Congratulations. Yeah, we're super excited about that. So it means that we can sell directly to the provincial entities, like we're in Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan and Ontario. And we sell through ABBA Medical Sales License. So we rent, effectively rent their license. So we no longer have to pay that fee to them. So we get to keep all the margin, which is always good. And sell directly to the provinces. So it speeds up our route to market. And in some places they didn't have a relationship with the distribution network. So we can go direct versus going through it intermediary. Definitely helps from a sales perspective and just speeds everything up for us. That's huge. And I know you guys are working on sales in Alberta. Can you give us an idea of the market size and how much of the market cap you think you can capture? Yeah, Alberta is a great market, to be honest with you. Ontario is probably the biggest market built by Alberta. So we're pretty excited about that. We think we can capture a large part of the vape market plus a substantial amount of the gummy market. We signed a deal, as you know, with Fireball from the state. So we're using their formula under the pure chews name because Alcantara will allow us to call it Fireball. But same formulation. And we're using some proprietary packaging. So that will be in-market in Alberta in two weeks. That'll be on shelf. It's on shelf in BC. So we're pretty excited about that. We think we can capture a nice portion of the market with the flavor profile. They're in five states and they're either number one or number two in those states that they sell in. We're using the same, obviously, flavor profiles and whatnot. So three different flavors will be coming out and then two in CBD products. So we're excited about that. So in our vape products is in market already. They're selling quite well in Alberta. We're doing a half gram, one gram coming soon for the people that want a little bit of value for if they like the product. That's where I think the market is going to. So we're actually producing those now. So those will be in market in all four provinces for the end of August. Great. Wow. You guys are really evolved since your IPO in November. So it just seems like every time we talk, you guys just continue to have news. You guys continue to grow. You guys are continuously moving forward and that's a great sign. Now, other places you're working on sales is British Columbia, where I'm at, and Saskatchewan. When do you believe you'll have a good foothold in those markets? You know, I guess, you know, we're, we're shipping product as we speak into both of those GEOs. So it'll be in market. You know, we do education through Canoval, our agent that goes in and educates the, but East is in the, in the dispensaries. So they go to every location, give them a sales sheet, you know, talk with the product, with them sample the product if it's allowed in the, in the province. Some, some provinces are different than others and getting them up to speed. But our product, especially in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, because of the formulations we're trying in the illicit market, we have a lot of crossover folks that have seen the product before under its former life. So we're having good pickup from those people that have tried it before. A lot of those people used to run illicit dispensaries. Now they're legit. So we're getting good sale through from that perspective. So Ontario obviously the biggest, the biggest market today and the most stringent from taking on new products. So we have a few listings there and we've submitted like nine more to be reviewed. So that'll be, that'll be a good area for us.  We should be able to sign the definitive agreement with the MSO and then we'll start production, you know, in that way, November or December we'll be up and producing in the Michigan market. Wow, that's incredible. Can you tell us about the medical platform ABBA that you guys are working on? Yeah, so ABBA Medica is the folks that we use to sell through from our license for the provinces. So their business is also dealing with a lot of the vets and the government helps fund their cannabis use. So they have a medical platform in kind of like shoppers and they carry several different brands and their slant on their business model is they really deal with high volume users, a lot of, you know, the Canadian vets that were in the military. So we've joined them beyond their platform in August and mid August the product will be on shelf. We think that they have profiles and the, the, uh, the policy profiles that they have picked lend themselves to what the vets are looking for. So we're pretty excited about that. And we're working on a couple other hard scale medical platforms to list the products on in September. Very good. Now you've mentioned Michigan. Can you give us an update on Michigan right now? Yeah, Michigan is super exciting. So as your viewers will know, Michigan has really taken off as one of the states that, uh, has been, uh, has been crushing it for a, for lack of a better word, they're doing 180 million dollars a month in recreational sales. And it's, it's more than Canada, right? So they're in Ontario and BC put together. Um, so per user higher than Colorado and California. So, you know, Michigan, I guess in the winter is a pretty bleak place sometimes. So I got to find something to do. So it's taken up a big decision, but, um, it is really taken off for sales. There's 400 dispensaries in the state already. So really quick, really quick, right? So we're barely at 400 in Ontario, right? So we've been at this for a couple of years. So, um, traction has been great. We have a really good partner that we're working with that does extremely well and dried flower. Um, and want to enter the extraction business and really didn't want to have the, uh, the learning curve to get an extraction business up and running. And that's where we came in. Um, so, uh, Vapes and gummies represent, I think like over 50% of their sales might be a little bit more in the last report that I saw. Um, so their, uh, state is moving through the normal pace of dried flower at first and Vapes and edibles and whatnot and then drink. So, um, it's, uh, it's a super strong state. We think we can penetrate quite well. We've had good success with the formulations in, uh, in, uh, Canada. So we'll be pouring those into the US market and then producing for that MSO and then other MSOs, uh, as we moved out and, and they really sell it. Gummy sales in, uh, in Michigan sell out within two days on shelf. So, you know, there's, uh, there's a shortage of good quality edible products and vape products. The price of cannabis is coming down there. So they have the, uh, the, uh, that a shortage like Ontario and everywhere else did when, uh, when we started at this one legalization. Now the ground was catching up to demand and they're probably overproducing, which is great for guys like us. So we can, uh, buy some, uh, inputs a little bit cheaper. So, uh, we'll be able to retain their margin and you can charge a little bit, uh, differently in the US, you know, there's not a cap. And the, the provincial enemies cap you on premium product or whatnot. So the market can flow naturally to where it should be for the quality of the product. So, um, you know, we're pretty excited that, uh, people will recognize our quality in our vape and our chew product. And we're going to do some live resin down there also is another product we're bringing in. So, uh, we'll have a live resin vape and whatnot, uh, entering the market and then we'll actually bring that into Canada at the, uh, quarter one, two, uh, 2022 in Canada. Wow. This is a huge update from Ben Nikoleski, the CEO of pure extracts symbol pull in Canada PULL in America, PR XTF. Now I want to talk a little bit about Tilray. Tilray just reported huge numbers. And the stock is doing really well today. It's up over 20% seems to be bringing the entire cannabis sector up with them. Do you think that this could be the beginning of a trend reversal for cannabis stocks? Because it seems as though we've had like a huge retrace across the board for the whole sector, despite the fact that Biden was very pro cannabis and, you know, was one of the keys to winning the election. And to be quite frank, since he's, since he's been in, in, in power, there's really been no change. Like nothing has really moved forward with legalization of cannabis in the United States. Do you see a trend reversal coming for cannabis? Because the numbers that Tilray reported were huge, like over 140 million for the quarter. Now, obviously that included Afria numbers for the first time. So that's obviously why it was such a big number, but still for Tilray to report 140 million for the quarter, that gives them a run rate of about 560 million a year, half a billion a year. Yeah, we were the first ones to talk about Tilray pre IPO like a couple of years ago. So to watch Tilray go from, I guess it was $17 when it went to as high as 300, then it came all the way back down. And before today, it was trading at around 15 bucks in Canada. I know it hit $20. I'm not looking right now.  But what do you think about that? Do you think that that could be a catalyst for the entire sector? Yeah, absolutely. As you know, I sold my previous business to Tilray. So, so we have some insight. What about an insight into the way their model works, especially with the deal with Afria?     So I think this is a really good turn of events for the Canadian cannabis business. And I think you're going to see over the next month or two, you know, a run up in those equities of because I really think that, you know, as Biden didn't move, I think the market always won't, you know, hopes for things to happen overnight. And I think that, you know, obviously, you know, Biden won, as you said, the one of his platforms he won on was the legalization of cannabis and he's moving towards it. They got the banking kind of sorted out so they can bank in the institutionals in the US pretty much or they're getting there. So I think I think everybody's now saying, well, they can hold their own in Canada.  So I think you're going to see the Canadian equities now start to turn. Yeah. And I think like I've been talking to people within our trading community and our members in our trading club about the fact that typically, especially for small caps, September until January seem to be the best time of the year. So we are going to go into the best time of the year for small caps and historically cannabis stocks have always done really well between September and January. Yeah. So that seems to be the time when we have really huge growth and then for some reason it's always really slow in the summer. Typically, typically from the spring to the summer, we have a slowdown in the cannabis sector. It seems like it's been like that since the beginning. I feel like we're setting up for that again. You know, everybody knows that.  Investors are just looking at stocks again. Maybe that's when they start coming back in aggressively and looking for price appreciation. What do you think about that? Yeah, you know, there's definitely been a trend to, you know, if there's value in the equity, the traders are going to trade it. That's the way I look at it.  There's definitely been that fall to winter trade for sure.  I think we've got, you know, a long way to go to be where we should be. But definitely, definitely, you know, started, you know, generating some revenue and a lot of the smaller caps have started to do the same. They're, you know, the folks that shouldn't be there are no longer there. And the companies that have real business models will flourish. But that's the nature of, you know, Bay Street and Wall Street. People go to the Hamptons.  It's not necessarily top of mind. This is where a lot of my investors are shopping, to be honest with you. There's great value right there. You know, us being one of them. But just in the sector alone, this is when, you know, you start building in July and August, your book, and then hopefully by September, you have your position set near a way to the races. So, you know, we've seen in our clubs, you know, a lot of people, you know, moving into positions because it's just, you know, they're kind of languishing around. So, and that's, you know, we saw a bump in our equity because of some of the U.S. trades, you know, it was, we're undervalued for entering, obviously, Michigan, you know, even at, you know, 40 cents. You know, that's not even the value of a Michigan trade, right? For the whole company. So, you know, there's definitely, we're never going to see a good market, I think, in, you know, come September. I think, you know, us personally, we're going to continue to see appreciation in our equity value just because of the sales that, you know, we went from, you know, non-revenue producing, you know, in, in March to, you know, now we're signing every province that we can, we can ship to, you know, as with you. So, you know, we're worth it. No, I love it. You know, I don't look at much, like some people look at the stock and they think that, that tells the whole story and sometimes it does. I like to look at the fundamentals of a company and I really believe that that is the true secret as far as being a good investor. You have to be able to understand the fundamentals of the company. Your fundamentals are sound. You guys have a tight float company. You guys are growing your revenue. You guys are expanding like you said in major markets and when you look at your stock and we can talk about it right now, like your IPO was around 40 cents, 44 cents. I remember like it was yesterday was in November. We broke it first. You guys went to about a dollar, which was huge return for investors. Everybody was able to double their money, great return for investment. And then like everybody else at that time when you hit your highs, it was kind of right when the market was at its peak, you know, mark was at its peak. I would say in February of 2021. And then we saw small caps specifically small caps start to kind of slowly bleed down slowly, bleed down and they've been doing that ever since. Now some stocks have made some sneak attacks. You guys included you guys went all the way down to 20 cents where you were very undervalued. And since then you've pretty much doubled in price with incredible volume. The volume has been incredible where you were trading like five to ten times daily average volume. Yeah. You explain where that came from. Do you know where it came from? Is it just investors saying like you said, you know, this is too cheap. Let me get in. Is it institutions saying it's too cheap. Let me get in. Or were you wondering where that came from? Just like me. Well, you always wonder where, you know, it came from some days, but part of it was US buying. To be honest with you, there was a lot of US investors in small institutions that have been looking at us and said like a 20 cents, you know, this thing is definitely a buy. It's way undervalued for what they're doing.  So they, you know, they, they woke up from the switch in the big day, you know, from those big day of trading and said, you know, if somebody is going to give it away at 20 cents, we're going to take it. Right. So that was a lot of that.  You know, you never, they never, a lot of them didn't do it. Right. So a lot of people got frustrated on, you know, we did a lot of stuff during COVID, which, you know, hats off to my management team without my folks. We can never get here. So it took a little longer.  So it just takes a little bit more time. So I think there was some of that. There was the kind of frustration selling where, you know, people get frustrated in the trade. But, you know, the large volume came from investors waking up saying, at 20 cents, this, the math doesn't work. We got over small and we did some financing along the way.    We didn't know that it would show up all, you know, in a relatively short period of time. But that goes obviously, you know, my, we have a lot of great investors, you know, we have, I think, 7,500 investors the last count. Wow. So, yes, a lot. There's a lot. So, we, we're super happy with the distribution, lots of, you know, multi geographies, both Canada, the US, you know, we have a German listing also. So, we're super happy about the distribution.  So, you know, we think that there's, there's a lot more gas in the tank for what we're doing. Once we can divulge who the MSO is and we start generating revenue in Michigan, that's a game changer. You know, there's not, there's not a lot of Canadian guys that can say that they're in the, you know, the hottest market in the US from an extraction perspective. So, that to me is worth, you know, my view really doesn't matter what it's worth. You know, the market will dictate that, but it's worth my market cap at least, you know, to be able to produce in Michigan. If we look at Michigan producers, I think the cheapest one out there is red, white and blue. And I think they're like 100 million plus market cap, right? So, they're really, they're not really even producing yet in the Michigan market, right? So, they're just getting going. So, you know, we're a known entity, we're producing in Canada we have revenue and we're at 40 cents, right? So, I don't care how you split the math, still, still a buy. So, we'll see what happens. But that's, that's the way we look at it. Well, another thing that I want to talk about is I'm a huge fan of cannabis, but I'm also a huge fan of psychedelics. I love disruptive sectors.  In every way you look, it's undervalued. What about psychedelics? We've just seen Mind Medicine up-list to the NASDAQ. We've seen Saibin announce that they're going to be up-listing to the New York Stock Exchange. Field Trip just announced that they're going to be moving up to the Senior Exchange. That's three companies now that are all psychedelic companies that are going to be on a Senior Exchange. You have any updates or any news on where you guys are at with your psychedelics out of your business? Yeah, absolutely.  Obviously, the functional part of the business is picking up steam. We sell on Amazon our functional products under pure mushrooms. That's been going really well for us and it gives us the ability to do development on non-psychedelic mushroom-based products that we can then use in other products. So, we signed a LOI for a clinical trial with science, with a P that also out of there in Canada and in South Africa. So, we're working with them on a clinical trial with a major university. So, we're still working on fast-acting agents for depression and anxiety in the psychedelic part of the arena. So, we're still working hard in that area because I've seen some of the changes that go on when a patient takes psilocybin and the effects that it has on people, it's amazing. Like 100% from a medical perspective, it changes these people with a week, two weeks worth of dosing. It really reprograms the brain in a lot of people and it's an amazing product. Super happy that we're involved and we're doing some clinical trials and as we we're perfecting expression capability. We apply for a dealer's license, as you know. So, we're ready to go to finish that space within the facility. So, we're continuing to push that forward. We're going to release some more functioning products next quarter in the marketplace. So, we're super excited about that. Yeah, I'm excited about it as well. If you had anything left that you wanted to share with the audience to your 7,500 investors that won't get a chance to see this video, what would it be? It would be stay tuned. You know what? We're a disruptive company. We like to develop you know, new innovative products both on the mushroom side and on the cannabis side. And you know, that's that's something that my management team spends a lot of time on product development and bringing new innovative things to market. You know, our chicklet packed gummy first in Canada. You know, we developed that. Gummies were all over Canada. Everybody's putting a cheap pouch. We said, you know what?  So, you know, look for more products like that coming to market. And then obviously on the on the psychedelic side, you know, we're doing some pretty neat stuff in the clinical trial area. And that'll be, you know, pretty pretty many it can't be too much about that, but we're definitely pushing forward on that area. We've got some neat stuff coming. So stay tuned for that. Well, thank you for joining us today. Ben Nikoleski, the CEO of Pure Extracts symbol is Pull in Canada, P-U-L-L. We are XTF, a company that I believe is undervalued, underappreciated, underexposed, growing in Canada, growing into the Michigan market, a company that's in the cannabis side and the psychedelic side and still priced right around 40 cents in Canada. So I think that this guy's a limit for you guys. And thank you for joining us today, Ben. Rich, thanks for having me. Love being on the show and if any of your investors, you know, have any questions or whatnot, you know, info at PureExtracts.com, they can send their questions in. We're happy to respond to them. Thank you for your time today, Ben. And for those of you guys that are watching, you're not winning, you're not watching, we bring you the winners and we bring them to you first. If you like the video, please smash the like button, comment them below, share the video everywhere and subscribe. And a quick disclaimer, Rich TV Live is strictly for information education purposes. Please do your due diligence. Do your research. You know, we do before you invest in anything that we talk about here in Rich TV Live. In saying that, I think this is a great company that is undervalued that has a great future with a strong management team, tight share structure, growing revenue, doing all the right things. And I believe we'll see you again soon, hopefully with a higher share price or revenue and more big news. Love to invite you back anytime you have big news, Ben. You'll see me soon. All right, all right. Enjoy the rest of your summer and hope to see you soon. And for those of you guys that are watching, have a nice day, everybody. Thanks very much.


Once you have your group set up, you can actually carry out your experiment or your experience, however you would like to say that. And now you're going to collect data. Data collection is prescriptive. It's steady. You have to be perfect.  You have to be very careful to collect good data. And the other thing you have to be careful of is you have to make sure that you are collecting observations. Observations which are, I don't know, objective. You can't argue about them.  And that's an objective observation. That is an example of data. As opposed to, let's throw in a big red x-arama. Inferences, these are observations that you might, these are conclusions actually that you might draw based on your observations. So you might say, oh, the protein diet is totally working based on your observations. You have to be careful that you're not including inferences or conclusions in your data. I bring this up because it's actually something that students get confused and do. So you might be thinking, dude, why would I ever do that? I don't know, but students often do. Once you have your data, you need to do an analysis.


presentation, video presentation on memory organization of microcontroller 16F877A. Myself Mr. Vipul Kondekar, the learning outcomes of this video session are at the end student will be able to differentiate between Harvard architecture and one Neumann architecture for microcontrollers and then you will be able to identify describe the program memory organization as well how stack operates for the peak microcontroller and third outcome will be student will be able to describe the data memory organization for the peak microcontroller. These are the contents in this presentation, Harvard one Neumann architecture we will see then we will go for understanding how program memory is organized how stack operates and then at the end how data memory is organized for the peak microcontroller. Now let us try to understand what these two architectures are Harvard and one Neumann. So if you look at this block diagram here you will find that in this image you got CPU and memory and that memory has program as well as data present. So program data is available in the memory itself and it is interface to the CPU through single bus and then if you look at Harvard architecture you find that CPU is there but the memory which is separated into two parts one is called as program memory another is called as data memory and then to separate bus connectivity is available between CPU to the program memory and CPU to the data memory. So now what you can achieve with this architecture called as Harvard architecture is you can have parallelism you can have pipelining of the instructions where you can have overlapping between the fetch and execution cycles and that is possible in this Harvard architecture where it expects that you should have a separate program memory and data memory. So you know the block diagram of peak microcontroller they will find that program memory and data memory is separate. So the architecture used for the peak microcontroller is Harvard architecture and hence let us try to understand how program memory is organized for the peak microcontroller. You recall how much program memory we have got for the peak microcontroller in the features we say it is 8 kilobytes 8k into 14 is the program memory available. Now how you can access that program memory so basically there is one register called as program counter register. So that program counter register is a 13 bit wide register 13 bit or 13 bits are sufficient to address 8k locations. So this pc can be used to access any of the location available in the program memory. So program memory addresses are starting from 0 0 0 0 h up to 1 f f f h. So these addresses are again divided into four pages page 0, page 1, page 2 and page 3. So paging is done here and then you find that some addresses are very specific addresses like address 0 0 0 0. So this is what this is a reset factor address whenever you apply some reset signal to the microcontroller. So the instruction which gets executed which is stored at this particular address as well you have got one special address location called as 0 0 0 4 h. What you got here is a interrupt vector as we know there are many interrupts around 14 different interrupts are there for the peak microcontroller. And you find that all these interrupts are vector interrupts whenever interrupt occurs the program execution sequence changes to this particular address 0 0 0 4. It will be very interesting to know if all interrupts are occurring an interrupt vector address is same then how microcontroller will understand which is the cause of that particular interrupt. Now talking about the additional facility in the microcontroller along with the program memory and data memory is stack. So you have got eight level stack available inside the peak microcontroller. It is not part of program memory nor neither program memory nor data memory it is a separate hardware stack available. And then you have got four pages each page is of 2k so 8k memory is there. Now look at how stack operates. So you said eight level stack is available. See stack operates stack basically is used for what whenever you are executing some call instruction or some interrupt occurs after execution of interrupt service routine or any subroutine you want to come back to the main program. So how it is possible you can come back to the main program if and only if the PC contents are stored somewhere. So you use stack for storing the contents of the PC. So when call gets executed or at the end of subroutine when you write a return so this stack is used. Now one important thing only eight stack locations are there inside the peak microcontroller. So if you can push for eight times only. If you try to push nine means if you try to have nine successive calls what it does is that nine push overrides the value that was stored from the first push. So if you are going just writing call instructions and they are storing the contents of PC so eight pushes are possible. But if you go for nine so then that first push address will be overloaded by this push nine. So you cannot come back to the main program in this particular case this you have to remember. So it's like cyclic buffer stack basically this for peak microcontroller acts like cyclic buffer. So as such there is no status bit which will inform you that stack is overflow. So you have to make sure that that stack overflow is not occurring because of your program as well there are no instructions like push and pop. So you cannot access stack from any instruction only that call and return instruction as well that return from interrupts. So these are the instructions which can only result into usage of stack either for storing some data on to the stack memory or retrieving the data from the stack memory. Basically it will be an address and that will be contents of PC. Now let us try to understand how data memory is organized as it is a hardware architecture program memory and data memory is separate. So data memory for the peak microcontroller is organized into four different banks bank 0, bank 1, bank 2, bank 3. Now how we can have selection of bank? So there are two bits available in one spatial function register called as status register RP0 and RP1. These two bits are used for selection of the bank. So data memory is available in four different banks and then the bank selection can be done by using the status register. Each bank is of 128 bytes. You will find each bank is of 128 bytes. One important thing is all implemented bank contents spatial function registers as well as general purpose registers. But you will find that some frequently used spatial function registers from one bank may be mirrored. So you will come to know with the next slide what is happening here. So this is again data memory organization. So it is organized into four different banks. But if you look at this organization you will find that let us look at the status register. You will find that status register is available in all these banks. So why they are done like this? So it will avoid the time for changing the bank because if you are in bank one and if you want to access status register and if it is not available in the bank one then you have to write code so that you will go back to the bank zero. Then you have to access that status register to change the bank select. So repeatedly used registers are mirrored into almost all banks so that if whatever bank you are working in you can use that register directly. Now again in this particular data memory organization you will find it is divided into two parts. One is called as general purpose and another is called as spatial purpose RAM. General purpose RAM and general purpose registers and spatial purpose register. And if you look at just this general purpose register in bank zero you have got 96 bytes then in bank one you have got 80 bytes. Again in bank two you have got 80 bytes and again here you have got this 80 bytes per 16 80 plus 16. So this 96 plus 80 plus 16 plus 80 plus 80 plus 16 that will result into 368. So this is what you say data memory available as a general purpose register is 368 bytes. So that's why in feature we say 368 bytes of RAM is there. But along with this general purpose register you have got some spatial purpose registers also. Now this as your general purpose and spatial purpose registers are the two parts of the data memory. Here we will find that that general purpose registers are directly either directly you can access or indirectly by using the two addressing modes available direct and indirect indirect addressing will be done through the register called as FSR register. Now talking about the spatial function registers as we know that there are so many modules available. So those modules require some registers to control and then for that you will be requiring spatial function register. These spatial function registers are again divided into two parts. One will be called as the spatial function registers which are related to the core operations like status register and the spatial function registers which are related to the peripheral like ADC is one peripheral available. So there is one register spatial function register called as AD con 0 or AD con 1. So these are the spatial function registers which are related to the which are related to the peripheral features. Now this is just overview of how you can have different spatial function registers. So these are the different spatial function registers. These are the addresses possible for few spatial function register more than one addresses you are finding because it is available in more than one bank and in that case again you will find what is the significance of each and every bit of a particular spatial function register. So this is just a summary of few of the spatial function registers available inside the peak microcontroller. These are the different references used for this particular presentation. Thank you.


I welcome members to the 19th meeting in 2015 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I welcome, in particular, James Kelly as a substitute for Margaret McCulloch, who is submitted to a repologist to this meeting. As always, I ask members to switch off their mobile phones, please. A gender item one is an invitation to James Kelly in accordance with section three of the code of conduct to declare any relevant interest, please. No relevant interest to declare convene. Thank you very much. Gender item two is a decision on taking business in private. It's proposed that we take items five and six in private. Item five will continue to allow the committee to consider further delegated powers contained within the Education Scotland Bill. And item six is a report on the instruments considered by the committee during the fourth quarter of the Culliment Parliamentary Year. And we agree to take five and six in private, please. Thank you. Gender item three then is instrument subject to negative procedure. No points have been raised by illegal advisers on the Honey Scotland Regulations 2015 SSI 2015-208. Is the committee content with that instrument, please? Thank you. Gender item four, instruments not subject to any parliamentary procedure. Again, no points have been raised by illegal advisers on the Land's Tribunal for Scotland Amendment Fees Rules 2015 SSI 2015-199. Nor the Victims and Witnesses Scotland Act 2014 Commencement No. 4 in terms of single provisions Order 2015 SSI 2015-200. Nor on the Act of the Journal Criminal Procedure Rules 1996 Amendment No. 3 Miscellania's 2015 SSI 2015-201. Members may wish to note, as advised by the Lord President's private office, that SSI 2015-201 is currently displaying an incorrect laying date. The instrument should have specified 26 rather than 22nd of May 2015. It's suggested this could properly be reflected as a minor point, given that 22nd to the 25th. Well, holiday dates and the instrument was made on Wednesday the 20th and laid on Tuesday the 26th. There appears not to have been an inordinate delay in laying. The instrument was laid on the second business day after the day of making and signing. Is the committee content with these instruments, please? Thank you. Which completes the public session. Thank you very much for this meeting to private.


Okay now Chab has asked me to run a poll just to get things going and get a bit of a feel for what people and where they are in their own schools in terms of learning management systems so you'll get a little question come up in your screen in a minute if you could all just basically vote on that very quickly and we'll see what sort of mix we have in the audience. Okay motion to the audience, I clearly have an LMS in place already. Okay I'll close that down and share the results with the audience. Very good, Chab, what do you think of that? Very good, yeah I'm impressed. So two thirds of respondees have an LMS in place, 17% certainly not at this point and another 17% thinking about a revaluating solution so we're all I guess here with good reason this afternoon. Great to meet you all virtually speaking by the way so thanks for dropping by. Look what if we use the chat window just to qualify your response there to that poll if you did indicate that you're using an LMS or you're in fact evaluating various learning management systems perhaps quickly just type that the LMS or LMS is going to the chat window just to give us I guess a more specific feel for the system that you're using or the systems you're evaluating perhaps if we give you 15 seconds to let us know. So people using or looking at Myrtle Scalaris SharePoint gets a mention, Educate I've heard of, Design Alone, interesting, that's Canadian based, IPLS, Schoolology, okay. It's not very happy with investigating options. It's more Moodles, Moodlers and Educate, Educate with a K. Very good, interesting. Well that paints a bit of a picture and then version wise some people being even more specific Moodle 1.9 got mentioned a few times there. So that's perhaps an older version of a pretty popular open source learning management system. All right, look in terms of, this is our roadmap and in terms of where we're heading for the next 45 minutes or so. So certainly when we talk a learning management systems naturally synonymous with that is the Acron M LMS and as we know as educators going to help us facilitate web-based learning. So experiences, delivering courseware and hopefully assessing, tracking and reporting on positive learning outcomes. So I think it's important. This is, as Ian mentioned, an introductory session. It's fairly generic but it is important. If we understand our organization's need for a learning management system and choose the solution that best fits our requirement, we're in a better position to succeed. So we'll kickstart with some online trends. We'll be on data and analytics and sort of what's fresh or current in terms of the web demographic and internet activity. I've found some pretty interesting data to that end. It'd be remiss of us not to have some sort of rationale for online learning or I guess the deployment of a learning management system. We'll consider some arguments for and against online learning. We'll look at, generally speaking, some core features of all good learning management systems and then some examples of, there's a lot of different LMSs and they fall into one or two camps typically and I think from the examples that have just come through you've identified perhaps at least a couple of the more popular solutions. And certainly some things to consider when evaluating learning management systems. There was a pretty small percentage of people who indicated in that poll they don't currently have an LMS and perhaps of some who do you're not happy with the one that you've got and you're looking at alternatives. So perhaps I can give you a heads up. I've been in your shoes as well. I've worked in schools some time ago and used a variety of LMSs so I guess I've been around the traps and seen I guess what works and what doesn't and hopefully be able to share with you some sort of insight. Look, as far as trends go, I did a bit of poking around on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website and there's some data that's come out recently and Nelson Online as well. Incidentally, I've numbered the data and the source that I've used for information through this presentation. I will make it available after the session and there's a reference slide toward the end here for each of the numbers I'm referring to. But if we're going to embrace new technologies for the purpose of education, let's face it a lot of us are pretty serious about technology in schools and optimizing the achievement of learning outcomes. It's really important for us to recognize current trends as far as internet activity is concerned and no better place to look than our own backyard. The ABS is telling us some pretty significant things. I've come across I guess five stats that are fairly silent. For 2011, in brackets after it I guess is the trend from the year previous. So four things, I guess four key words that come to mind are wireless, mobile, broadband and tablet. If you're through in a fifth it would probably be time as in time spent on a mobile device accessing the internet. But you can see there almost half of all internet connections in Australia are now mobile wireless. So that's not talking smart phones, that's talking I guess USB modems to the great extent plugged into laptops for example. So that's 47% of all internet connections in Australia. 11 million mobile handset internet subscribers. So that's talking specifically to smart phones. I think it'd be hard pressed to recognize any mobile phones manufactured these days that don't have some web-enabled capability. And a lot of the plans that the phone plans that we can subscribe to post and prepaid give us the option to bundle an internet data allowance. So 11 million internet mobile plans via the phone, that's pretty substantial. And more to the point, just as a little aside there's in fact more mobile phones in Australia than people, so 20 something million. As far as internet, so I guess it's not just mobile and portable and wireless access to the internet, it's speed of access. And as far as households are concerned now close on three quarters of us have broadband access at home to the internet. And that's defined as download speeds of 1.5 megabits per second or greater. So not jaw dropping by international standards but pretty quick. Now certainly we click a page and something loads of displays in an acceptable period of time. And certainly we'd be aware of the NBN so the national broadband network roll out that's being deployed, it's going to take close to 10 years, it's going to cover close to 97% of Australia's population. So it will be more and more not just about access to the internet and mobility but speed of access. Incidentally the ABS also tells us 68% of internet users have purchased something via the web in the past year. And the most popular internet based activity has been recorded as social networking, 88% of 15 to 17 year olds 86% 18 to 24 year olds. So that's what we're doing. And as far as Nelson's concerned that last point there we're spending more time per week using our mobile device to access the internet. And I just skipped a point I guess the use of tablet devices in the household is becoming more commonplace. So 18% as it stands of households that's an estimate and it's a fair penetration rate was 10% back in 2010. 2013 it's forecast to be 39% of Australian households will be accessing the internet via a tablet device such as I guess an iPad by way of example. So what are your thoughts on that if we just pause for a moment and perhaps unpack a few of those stats with this in mind what do you think the implications are for us as educators I wonder why perhaps comment or raise a point in the chat area I'll just pause for a minute feel free to drop something in there. So as we said it seems to be all about wireless mobile broadband and tablet. Comments there obviously whatever LMS systems we are picking obviously need to be optimised for those sort of platforms and deliver well and have good functionality through mobile platforms for instance it seems to be fairly obvious. If anyone else wants to make a comment just put your hand up and you can save some of the typing. And by the way if you do like stats like the ones Chad has put up I'll chuck the link you know I came across just today from Andrew Churches in New Zealand with a fabulous site with about seven or eight tools for immediate stats all the sort of stats we're looking at and I'll let a look at it now. And I concur with what you're saying there about accessibility web accessibility and designing online learning for model devices. So you know gone are the days where we're bound by time or place so we're not all teaching and learning.  Nathan's mentioned blended learning. G'day Nathan the norm in schools or soon shall be. And Richard comments as educators it's easy to see that students are going to want to learn when and where they want. So I guess a more user-centered approach and I guess the flexibility to access learning and online resources anywhere at any time. Nathan you've got your hand up would you like to add to that your opinion on that? After I was just seconded what I was saying. G'day Nathan. I've also noticed I've been tracking the creation of positions over the last five years in secondary schools around Australia. Within the last five years we've seen the creation of such as eLearning, eLearning coordinators and things like that so that's an indication of the seriousness that people are taking these positions and the realisation that they require specific skills in order to effectively utilise the available technology if people concur with that observation. Yeah thank goodness we're starting to see those eLearning positions appear all over the place it's about time to. There's still some that are usually set at about a 50% load or half of third load doing eLearning and then a teaching load although there are some schools that are now saying that if you have a large school that it is really a full-time job and that you need to spend a lot of time training and developing quality online content customisable for your climate group otherwise essentially you're wasting your time and that's my opinion with anyone else that would like to comment to that. Okay Chad back to you Matt. Thanks Nathan for that insight and the other comments. Keep them coming as we said if you want to stick your hand up and actually say something and you're happy to unmute your mic or I'll just drop it in the chat area there and we'll tie in your question or comment as we move forward. But certainly I guess in summary it's for us as educators we need to be mindful of the trends in the web demographic and how we're using and accessing the internet and it's certainly in our best interest to harness that trend in the context of education I guess the challenge being you know we're talking about new technologies and in some respects virtual tools but a lot of what we do and deliver on a day-to-day basis in a school is kind of face-to-face so those things at odds and I guess that's where an LMS might help us bridge the virtual and the face-to-face okay I'll just move the slide forward. Look as far as we've said a stack already about learning management systems or LMS but you know if we had to sum it up in a sentence this is how I would define it key elements being participants who communicate and collaborate they share resources, they share activities and ideas and if it's a really good system meanwhile we can track, assess and report via the web so as you might appreciate the learning management system does these sorts of things and in fact the system more to the point is software and it's not software that has to live on your computer or mine it's generally web based and we don't need to know much about the infrastructure as such it's simply a case of point and click. We fire up a modern web browser, add an address and we can access the learning management system so our teaching and learning in certain respects is accessible to everybody with a modern web browser and an internet connection so to that end if I had to draw you a picture it would look a little bit like this. We've got the learning management system there in the cloud and the cloud I guess is really just a metaphor for the internet the cloud is often used to represent the internet in a technical or network diagrams as a matter of fact but the clouds build upon internet based technologies and infrastructures and the learning management system for our intent and purposes sits in the center of that cloud so it contains resources or it can contain resources such as documents, presentations, multimedia it allows participants to collaborate using various tools so they can be discussion forums or messaging assessment tools as well very pertinent to us as educators, quizzes, assignments and certainly having the ability to track and report Now we as participants we can be teachers or learners and I guess in a truly collaborative environment we ought to be both part of this representation as well and we can access the learning management system via the internet using pretty much any web enabled device, it could be a desk bound computer, a laptop a smart phone or a tablet device So as we've said already it is I guess the whole the mantra for web based learning and learning management systems is learning by anyone anywhere at any time and in essence it can be about anything so we're no longer bound by the constraints of time or place As far as rationales concerned a fair number of you indicated you've already made a decision on learning management system software and others are in the process of evaluating possible solutions or reevaluating it's more than likely you've had to or you'll need to sell the idea to various stakeholders at your school so be it the executive or your fellow teachers students or the parent body I've just knocked up a few points here in terms of I guess points for and against the adoption of a learning management system I think what I quickly discovered is that each point for having a learning management system in a school would more than likely have a flip side argument against it I've left a row blank there perhaps to get you thinking as we talk through these pros and cons and I'll see if you're able to add to the list for me Look as far as arguments for or pro and LMS cost is a big factor organizations of all shapes and sizes trying to do more with less and learning management system software has seen as a relatively affordable solution particularly open source software it does give us the ability to teach and learn outside the typical Monday to Friday 9-3 timetable on the basis of cost and LMS is a very easy sell token it will require an investment in your human capital your staff as you will appreciate any new system in a school will mean changing processes changing curriculum and this will affect staff for better or for worse it will mean that with the adoption of new systems you need to consider software training and support professional development and naturally that translates into time and money cost associated with it probably with the next pro outside of school context more likely less travels perhaps more relevant in teaching and learning situations where participants are dispersed geographically the aim there being to with an LMS to transition from face to face to a more so blended or virtual distant approach to teaching and learning but it is fair to say this does mean learning is less face to face contact less in person interactions with an LMS we use different media to communicate instead of face to face setting it will be eye contact it will be visual audio communication hand gestures and the like you lose a lot of that with a learning management system and you perhaps more rely on things like blogs and chats messaging and forums so you could argue it really does LMS are prone to depersonalized learning in certain respects as far as resource efficiency is concerned LMS is one of its strengths is the ability to eliminate duplication of effort that teaches might go about preparing the same programs the same curriculum the same lesson plans and resources duplicating effort if we can share a virtual or online course across a subject with our colleagues it can reduce that duplication we can eliminate the paper chase and potentially do more with less this will require collaboration on the part of the teachers they would need to work together as you would understand and with that comes the effort involved in communicating cooperating and being on the same page as far as your online learning and programs might be concerned with flexible delivery we've said this already the anyone anywhere at any time so the 24-7-365 not the Monday to Friday 9-3 more to the point I guess learning can be user centric and or self-guided that can be perceived as a good thing but with I guess the limited structure that we can sometimes force in an online learning context does that as I mentioned before does that kind of go against the grains as to what schools stand for and represent we do know that schools are very good at providing structure for education they connect teachers and learners in a formal setting so you could argue that flexible delivery might be good in certain respects might be undesirable on others with collaboration I guess it's not a hard sell here either I think in any way be it in a virtual or a face-to-face context or blended you know we'd all love as educators to have teaching and learning that's rich it's engaging it's interactive from the social construct of a school of thought you want to be on about exchanging ideas helping each other you know we can all in fact be teachers and learners and that's all well and good but with a learning management system in place I guess the flip side there is well it won't run on autopilot the learning experiences and resources need to be well considered well designed for example forums discussion forums have to be moderated assignments well they just won't mark themselves a good thing if they did but always teachers would need to grade them give them feedback and so forth can we add any pros or cons to that shortlist as far as rationale for an LMS is concerned again some of us some way down the road already with the with the online learning journey feel free to jot your thoughts or ideas in the chat area there we'll just pause for a minute so if you've had to sell the idea of a learning management system at your school or in the process of selling what are some of the strong points or what are the down sides that you might need to consider and mitigate against. Jeanine makes a very good point there the system or the software needs to be user friendly for teachers and students that's the thing with your LMS software as you're evaluating as with any good software if you can't work it out yourself in 10 minutes it's probably not very usable software let's face it Richard mentions a better structure of coursework so I agree that it will require staff to think about curriculum and plan their online learning design before they sink their teeth into it have Sal mentions centralized learning and students have no excuse with any time anywhere access any other points in terms of pro or con LMS deployment Jeanine mentions central storage of files where teachers leave Sal I'm recognizing that as an argument for an LMS it does make lessons substitution very easy if your resources and your learning experiences and activities are online and good to go Neil argues that an LMS drags teachers kicking and screaming in the 21st century but they will on the same token need a helping hand to do so that's fair enough the system or the software is one thing how we train and support and upskill our teachers is another well the points are coming through thick and fast I'm trying to keep up just backtracking for a moment bare with me and I'll try and keep a running commentary before we move forward Richard again mentioned providing for miss classes allow students to revise more easily so that's right I guess the play on demand sort of concept with courseware and activities and experiences some of the tools for communication collaboration asynchronous or real-time and others are asynchronous or can work with a delay Darrell Darrell mentions the need to have good internet connectivity at school and that's a valid point and Craig questions the equitability of access for various literacy standards so I guess with any tool or technology you know there is the prospect of creating a digital divide between the haves and the have-nots and it is in fact I guess with these new technologies a new form of literacy is a techno literacy I'm quite sure what the phrase might be in schools Richard mentioning a con that staff could rely on last year's work more than recreating their work maybe there's the prospect that teachers could be lazy or on the same token it might save them or their colleagues from re-eventing the world for next year's cohort where you can simply refine the work that's been done already Richard could you elaborate on the flipped classrooms I'm a little out of the loop with that and Alicia mentions the lack of facial expressions, intonations and gestures Chad I might just butt in there save Richard typing yep a whole lot of stuff please do the flipped classrooms it's been talked about a lot across all the ed blocks recently it's the whole concept of like Khan Academy where you do a lot of the standard education teaching, delivery teaching you do that as media either audio or video and get the students to watch that war in their own time and then you spend the class time getting more into collaborative activities and explaining the differences rather than just sitting through the lecture style classroom it's sort of flipping it around making the homework where you actually consume the content that's basically what it is understood in everyone's got their own opinion understood very good so we've got a rationale there and certainly it is a sell I guess in a lot of respects we've got a pitch the vision or the concept of web based learning or blended learning I think part of it and we haven't really mentioned here I haven't mentioned and none of the points coming through have but it's certainly more than simply the technology in the tools is definitely we need to be mindful of the teachers and supporting them in using these new tools and systems and technologies effectively that's a big part of it just moving forward look as far as features go generic features in all good LMSs I gave it a bit of thought and tried to categorize the feature sets into five communication, collaboration, assessment reporting and admin so if in the process of evaluating or reevaluating learning management system software this might be the sort of matrix you could work off naturally communication tools allow the communication the tools that allow users to connect with one another in an online learning context so they could be synchronous or asynchronous tools so tools that are instant in real time such as messaging or that have a time delay such as blogging with collaborative tools participants share resources exchange ideas help one another if you're really big on social constructionism collaborative tools in learning management system software is a strong point as far as assessment goes this is a big thing for us as educators we need the tools to measure the achievement of learning outcomes certainly any good learning management system platform should have an assignment type tool learners have the ability to perhaps submit or upload an electronic file that might be a report or an essay or a piece of work that can be graded and given feedback by a teacher it should be such a function in your LMS system perhaps in a less formal assessment sense a quiz might be handy to have as well the idea that learners can revise on a periodic basis what they're meant to know about a subject they get feedback, instant feedback and on the same token teachers can tap into analytics that help them diagnose perhaps the strengths and weaknesses of students in their class with respect to reporting tools we ought to be able to monitor and report on learner activity and progress in an online course context so we need to look for those sort of features in a good LMS and from an administrative point of view we need tools to be able to manage users, their roles within the system the courses I guess is LMS speak for online subjects and enrollments I guess ways to determine who gets into what online courses so very generally speaking they're the five key feature sets I reckon you ought to bear in mind and if you have already made a decision on an LMS it's a fair chance you consciously or not use some of these sort of feature sets as part of your evaluation criteria. I did a quick scoot over to Wikipedia the other day there just to get a handle on the vastness of the learning management systems it had about 40 or 50 so listed I reckon that's the tip of the iceberg but here they are there's pretty much a... Would you be able to make that just slide a little bit bigger? Absolutely How's that coming through now? Brilliant thanks for that so look there's a real dichotomy when it comes to classifying learning management system software as I said this is by no means an exhaustive list but it's a pretty scary one there's two camps there's the open source and the commercial LMS software camps and I've listed some examples of each there some of which you might be familiar with Myrtle got a few mentions there before SharePoint I believe Iscalaris got a mention there's a lot in between as well some are big international solutions others are US centric some are perhaps homegrown thanks and I'll just reduce that a little bit more just bear with me folks while I just play with the resolution yeah it's a good list but a big one don't be overwhelmed by that I think the reality is when it comes to evaluating LMS you probably want a handful of candidates perhaps a short list let's call it when you've cut through all the fluff but more to the point you need to be clear on whether your school needs an LMS and can it afford it in terms of time and cost and ongoing commitment to it Look with the open source LMS software what that open source really means is that the source is open it's free or I guess there's freedom to access the software to download it modify distribute it open source software is often available via a community based model so the software is developed and maintained and built upon a web based community Myrtle's a good example of an open source LMS software there's others there there are any others perhaps if you want to type quickly into the chat window that you might have come across you might have heard of Sakai you may have used Ning by way of example I was speaking to somebody a couple weeks back they mentioned Canvas I'd never heard of it but they were singing its praises perhaps if you want to drop something in the chat window there open source software that you've come across or know a bit about and maybe in a couple further words tell us what you know about it or what you think of it Thanks Ian, Study Wiz I've heard of that and some are targeting I guess specific industry sectors they're designed specifically for the education sector or corporate or government or small or big business Darrell's mentioned My Big Campus but it has a Facebook type interface doesn't know much about it but that's curious and that seems to be a bit of a trend I've noticed in the last few years learning management systems becoming a lot more social not just in their tools and functionality but their interface their design thanks for mentioning that and Janine says Schoolology it's not on the list but it has a great interface Facebook like the students love it and that's the thing they kind of live and breathe social networks and if we can tap into their world for the purpose of teaching and learning it's a win-win really it makes our job easier as teachers and you know it's it's a lot more attractive from a student point of view and Ian's mentioned Ed Motow much the same thing Yep, Ian Could I request that you update your current list with some of these suggestions and send that out to my self work and publisher or something like this to the blog I think? It's nice to have a big list like this Well indeed, well indeed and as a matter of fact if I source it from the original site as I said it's a Wikipedia page some of the LMS software listed actually have links to the original site so that we can do that, not a worry As far as the other camp of learning management system software is concerned commercial or the proprietary, the code is centrally controlled generally by an organization or company it's not so much the cost, pardon me the community based model but more likely a cost per license or perceived type model so user pays Blackboard is a good example of that you can see SharePoint, well I guess Scalaris is another some of you would be familiar with those With the commercial solutions there's typically some sort of software or product maintenance agreement so the company providing the software for a cost under contract agrees to maintain the software so long as your organization, your school is paying for its use so in general the commercial solutions are more polished, more robust but it's not to say there's certainly some shabby commercial LMSs out there and on the same token there's some pretty robust and scalable open source LMS software too naturally I think it's fair to say the commercial list probably is at least twice the size of the open source list, that's no surprise the open source solutions are really driven by the people, the users, the community so I guess the educators and the technical folk whereas the commercial LMS solution are really driven and dictated by the companies who provide them so they're kind of more commercial driven Neil mentions would be interesting to see the list in order of current number of installations it would indeed, I'm not sure if there is any authority on that in terms of I guess each of these Chad can you organize that for us please I might have a little poked around, I'll be curious I could certainly speak from it would be a great read in some following slides I've got some stats from some LMS surveys but it's a representative sample so it would be really hard and what I was going to say I mean Moodle as an example I could certainly throw some figures out in terms of registered sites and users across the planet but again it's only a representative sample and not all LMS administrators registered their sites either and on the same token with the commercial solutions who's to say they're not inflating their figures to make their software seem like it's more popular than it is, thanks again for the time pointer and we're on track I think we're travelling pretty okay but look with Moodle by way of example Moodle.org has a million registered users there's tens of thousands of registered sites across the planet some of them have tens of thousands of users so there would be many millions of users hard to quantify and as I said in the case of Moodle at least I would reckon only a small proportion of LMS administrators even bothered to register their site so I will look for some sort of I guess leagues table if you like for one of a better phrase but I'm not sure if one exists. Just using Moodle as an example here again simply because I know this perhaps better than any LMS there was a couple surveys that have been conducted in recent years by the e-learning guild it's a US organization it is an authority in the area you know puts out a lot of research and reports and publications and has members all over the planet they conducted a couple LMS type surveys in 2010 and 2008 on its members the respondents were working for organizations of various sizes in industry sectors and as a matter of fact the respondees were using some were using commercial learning management systems others were using open source solutions so there's no agenda there as far as the survey was concerned but you know the findings of the surveys were reported on by the e-learning guild and Moodle come up trumps as a matter of fact in both reports or both surveys if you like as punching above its weight even against some of the commercial players in the LMS market so it ranked first on those metrics I've listed on the slide there so as far as cost is concerned it's easy to install, easy to use if you're using Moodle you could pay testimony to that time to implement its assessment features how it can add value to your business and you know its ability to be customized so it was a winner Moodle was a winner relative to the other LMSs that were responded on in the respective surveys so I think if you're evaluating LMSs Moodle if it isn't it probably deserves to be on your shortlist but I reckon there's no harm perhaps in evaluating at least one other open source solution and at the very least throwing one or two commercial LMS software in the mix as well so you get a bit of a balanced perspective and just as a little aside you know the upcoming virtual PD sessions that we're going to run in the following weeks will feature the Moodle LMS so you're aware and we've put up a demo site for ISQ and it's running Moodle as well a couple points just coming through and please happy to tie these in as we go Jeanine's mentioned that her tech, the tech guy says Moodle needs a full timer to set it up and use, how difficult is it well look I think it's easier to use than it is to install, configure, optimize or secure let's be honest unfortunately Moodle like a lot of that software on that list there before particularly the open source software it's not as easy as downloading it running some sort of executable file in a way you go it does take a level of expertise to get it up and running so it's not as easy as installing a disk or putting toast in your toaster. Nathan's mentioned tech guy finds it least problematic of the software he has to deal with and that it doesn't require a full time tech so it's a case of if you've got the internal capabilities and skills and expertise to get this up and running and to maintain it I would say Moodle at the point it's got to be by very stakeholders it's not just a job for your IT department or you perhaps as the e-learning manager or you know director of technology Richard mentions putting all students in class courses takes a heap of time at least as we're playing with it what software are you talking of there Richard? Moodle thank you as far as upgrading goes Nathan patch or upgrade at the start of the year so that's the thing with this software particularly the open source software where it can be a little bit buggy and needs to be patched as I said perhaps not as polished as the commercial solution that the company providing the software for a cost will likely provide for you and maintain under an agreement. I guess we can talk about LMS software Moodle for example being cheap but you know cheap's a relative thing you know and we're talking of cost in terms of funding or money or time time for teachers or time to learn the software and use it effectively and or time for your technical people to install configure optimize and secure the software Nathan's they're running a tight ship and they're managing to just keep it simple just push the slide forward and I'm mindful of time we're looking to wrap this up in the next five look for those evaluating or reevaluating LMS software and for those who have already you've probably had to consider a range of things we talk about cost as I said it might be more than just a monetary cost to your school we can talk of all sorts of costs associated with deploying a learning management system be it commercial or open source so the cost of ownership I guess that's the total cost there can be hidden costs there that you might not have considered from the get go so the cost of installing the software maintaining it upgrading it backing it up and the costs of the hardware if you're going to host the LMS software internally you're a local area network you're likely going to need a server to do so on the same token if there's not the internal expertise or capability or infrastructure for that matter it might be a case of a cost involved with consultancy or training and support via an external organization outsourcing some aspects of your LMS deployment with respect to maintenance yes you've got to ask yourself the question who owns or who's going to own the project who's going to maintain and administer the learning management system is it your job or do you have a team of people who are going to co-own the initiative or is it something that gets flicked past to the techs and they're going to take care of it in the spare time that they have amongst other priorities with support I think support is something that really we need to bear in mind with the LMS software you decide on is it well documented are there tutorials is there a community is there a web based community that supports this software so you can learn or reach out to a community of users and educators and researchers and technical people when you get stuck or you need an idea also with respect to support I mean you've got to make the decision is your school going to fly solo or are you looking to engage a provider you know an expert or partner with an organization who can give you a leg up and help you fast track your project keep it moving in the right direction with standards does the LMS comply to web standards I could throw a raft of acronyms around things like SCORM, IMS, HTML, CMS you want to be certain your LMS is compatible with these modern web standards with integration it might be a case of ensuring that the learning management system can integrate with school based systems such as your reporting system or your school database or your student management system, record system or single sign on authentication so you want to make certain that is possible so you don't create these technical islands across your school where you've got all of these software and system that they don't speak to one another they're not integrated with respect to hardware and software hardware wise you'll want to consider the server or servers that your school might need to run your LMS software so think of things like the CPU, the memory that might be required disk storage and so forth with respect to software you want to look at the LMS and see what is compatible with software wise what operating systems are supported, what database will you need what web server, scripting language, what web browsers are supported and so forth, the kind of things you will want to bear in mind not all LMS software is created equal so you want to know that your software, the software you're currently running in your school is supported and it can integrate with your systems if that's required and the software also complies with web standards. Feature wise I guess lastly as per one of those earlier slides how do the LMS feature sets compare when you're stacking up administrative features, course management, activities assessment reporting and so forth what I had made available with presentation was the LMS evaluation tool and the white paper so those resources have been linked to this session and they may be a value I guess they go into these considerations in a bit greater detail. We might wrap things up very shortly now that we're right on 4.30 any questions or comments in closure? You can either drop something in the chat area or simply stick your hand up and Ian will unmute you Mike. Just put your hand up and I'll see it. I'll close down the recorder now please still if you do have a question bring it forward I'll just slide a chat now that the recorder is off at the start. Any more questions? I'll just do a quick plug in the for the feed learning forum in the chat window there that I run I think there's some fairly good stuff coming through there so have a look at that. Another quick plug too, Chad if you don't mind us with the NBNES funding that has come through that we've been successful with gaining and keep your eyes out in your schools for the application process for that's going to be a national project with lots of services to be offered to schools running at 50 or 100 megabits per second on the internet. Any final questions to Chad or myself? Chad's still putting up some references on that so that won't make the recording unpersonally. That's fine what I'll do Ian I'll make these resources available on our I guess our demo LMS site. I'll just drop the address in there in the chat window for everybody. Alright if there's any last questions then let's just put a link in there of some kind too, pragmatic for you. Alright Chad I will shut down the meeting now. Absolutely thanks Ian and thanks to everybody today and thank you very much for delivering the session today. Pleasure. Bye bye everybody.