Hello and welcome to OEG Voices. OEG Voices. OEG Voices. OEG Voices. A new podcast bringing to you the voices and ideas of open educators from around the world. OEG Voices is produced by Open Education Global, a member-based, nonprofit organization supporting the development and use of open education globally. Learn more about us at oeglobal.org. There's much to take in at a global level. We hope to bring you closer to how open education is working by hearing the stories of practitioners told in their own voices. Each episode introduces you to a global open educator and we invite you to later engage in conversation with them in our OEG Connect community. Welcome to OEG Voices. I'm Una Daly, the director of the Community College Consortium for OER, a regional note of Open Education Global. And I'm really thrilled to be here with two open educators who are passionate about open education and particular open pedagogy. And first up, I'd like to introduce Alexis Clifton. She's the senior instructional designer at SUNY, State University of New York, Geneseo. And she's also a member of the Open Education Global Board of Directors. Hi, everybody. Great to be here. Wonderful. And next up, I'd like to introduce Cynthia Orozco. And she is the librarian for Equitable Services and an associate professor of library science at East Los Angeles College in California. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for having me. I want to give you each an opportunity just to talk a little bit about where you're located and what's up right now. Maybe we'll start with Cynthia to reverse the order. Of course. Of course. I'm in Los Angeles County. I work at East Los Angeles College. Part of the Los Angeles Community College District we're one of nine colleges. We're an incredibly large community college system in the greater Los Angeles area. I am also living out here. And right now, you know, we're dealing with the buyers. Luckily I'm not too close, but we do have some other librarians and library workers in the district who are dealing with the fires, which is just kind of an added element to this whole COVID situation. So yeah, you know, it's the second week of classes and things are somehow have gotten a little bit more tough. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia. And Alexis, I know you're on the opposite end of the country. Tell us a little bit about what's happening out in your neck of the woods. Sure. So I'm my home, my home office these days is right outside of Rochester, New York. So upstate New York. And I live in a pretty rural area, which is fantastic for me. It's well suited. I've lived in urban areas and happy to be out here and with more deer than people neighbors. And the school I work for SUNY Geneseo is also a pretty rural campus, a liberal arts school as part of the State University of New York system. So we are in week two of the fall semester and we've had one active case and then we've had to shut down a couple of fraternities and sororities for parties. But so far, so good fingers crossed that things are proceeding pretty well. Yeah. Thank you for that update. So this summer there was quite an amazing publication called Open Pedagogy Approaches. Alexis was the co-editor of that collection and Cynthia Roscoe was one of the authors. And so I wanted to ask you about that. But first I thought maybe we'd check in and hear how did you get started in open education and what calls to you in open pedagogy? Sure. So, you know, I think I kind of happened upon OER work just in general at ALA. I was on a committee for the American Library Association for Information Technology and we had a guest speaker and she talked about OER and I was like, wow, that sounds really amazing and kind of just had it in the back of my mind. And then it really wasn't until I came to East Los Angeles College and I was in a position where I'm kind of directly more involved with students. And I thought, wow, you know, this is actually a really good opportunity for us to talk about OER, our students. You know, I think about, I can't remember the exact numbers but we have a lot of students who struggle to pay just the $46 per unit that is the tuition cost in California Community Colleges.  And so that's kind of how I got into OER work. And then with Open Pedagogy, I think I was taking the Creative Commons Beta Certificate class with David Wiley and, you know, he was talking about his concepts of like the disposable versus the renewable assignment. And I can tell you that as a learner, I've had a really difficult time in education where a lot of times I just wasn't feeling it. So writing a paper at the end of the course just has never really kind of motivated me. It hasn't inspired me. But when I thought about what a renewable assignment could look like, something that really kind of resonated with students, something that they could take outside of the classroom, I think that's when I really was like, I want to explore this concept of Open Pedagogy and what it could look like in my classroom. And I teach a one unit library science class. Wonderful. And Alexis, how about you? All right, so huge shout out to my buddy Quill West, former CCC OER president and just huge OER community advocate because she was the one that totally introduced me to the whole concept. She started a job at Tacoma Community College about a year after I began at that school where I was an English composition faculty at the time. And I was already not using a textbook. I was just, I was teaching mostly online. So I just threw a bunch of sources in there and turned everybody loose on them and students were helping me find, figure out what the right ones were to use. And it was great. Quill comes along and says, Hey, did you know what you're doing as OER? And I said, No, what is that thing? And so a lot of continued conversations and refinement and projects we worked on together. And so she got brought me into the larger open community in the US. And so through her, I got to work on a couple of projects that involved David Wiley and others who started Lumen Learning. And so I ended up working for Lumen Learning for a couple of years and got a great exposure to projects, both OER and open pedagogy across the country. And so really engaged. And so take that with me, whatever I'm doing from here forward, definitely. Great. Well, so how did you decide to publish and be the editor of this new press book publication, Open Pedagogy Approaches? Great question. So pretty soon after I started the position, I moved to New York and to Geneseo for, I was the original executive director for SUNY OER Services. And so I did a lot of OER work all across our system, but also a lot of guest speaker positions and just kind of got to know the local area community. And so there was a librarian who used to work at SUNY Geneseo, but then transitioned to a job at University of Rochester, which is a private university in the city before I started at Geneseo. And so she heard through the great rhyme what I was up to, had me come up to the school. They had already had Robin DeRosa on their campus to speak about open pedagogy and got people excited. She got really excited about the concept. And so she and I kind of kept having conversations like Quill and I did. And so she is a librarian. And so I'm not primarily a faculty member anymore, but I still consider myself one. That's kind of the mentality I approach and so we got interested in that how it actually works between the library, faculty, partnership when you're talking about course design, including open pedagogy in that project, in that process rather. And so we had a couple of examples. She's done some really fun things in the past. I had some great librarian collaborations at every school I've worked with. And so we thought, well, you know, these are kind of unique projects, but they probably fit into a much larger pattern. And so we wanted to understand what the larger pattern was between how faculty and librarians could work together and are working together to really implement open pedagogy in their schools. She really took the lead. She's fantastically organized and fantastically motivated. And so she put together an editorial board of other librarians and one or two faculty members and a couple of students that were involved at different points at the University of Rochester. And then I was a non-Rochester person to come on board on the editorial team. And so I had done a lot of work with press books. I'd done a lot of work with Lumen and various open textbook projects, but I'd never actually put together a book of my own before. So that was really exciting to approach it from that side of things. And so we put out this call for proposals. Kim, did I say her full name? Kim Davies Hoppin. So she kind of, with the editorial board, we kind of came up with four big buckets of what we considered open pedagogy to include. So things like MOOCs, things like transitions to open textbooks and what that looked like and that process of transitioning into it. And then single student course projects and then whole course designs. So we had those kind of four buckets. And we asked, we put out the call for proposals. We got really involved with Rebus and the Rebus community. So they helped us broadcast CCCOAR and Open Education Global. Definitely helped us put the word out as well. And so we got a huge response. And every step of the way, we put out calls for peer reviewers, for editors, for copy editing. We got a lot of response and it was really just a really engaged community all the way through. So I probably over answered there, but I can circle back to whatever I want. But super happy that Cynthia's here to talk about her chapter, because I think it's really a core component of what the whole book is doing in one little nutshell. Yeah, that's pretty exciting. Yeah, why don't you tell us about your information literacy course and how you heard about the call for the open pedagogy approaches. Yeah, so like I said, I teach a one unit library science course. And traditionally it's eight weeks and it's very library research centric. So how to use databases, using keywords, using subject headings, all that good stuff. And more recently, you know, how to evaluate websites. And those are kind of the main themes of the class, but I found it really important to talk a little bit more about what scholarly communication kind of looks like just really broadly. When you're at a community college and I come, I previous to being at ELAC, I was at four-year universities. So getting to a community college campus, my first community college campus, I was just really shocked at how little institutional access we had to things. And so I went kind of four-year to two-year, but our students mostly are doing transfer or have plans to transfer. So I'm thinking, okay, they're going from kind of this information scarcity to being in environments where they have a lot more information. And so I kind of wanted to talk about that phenomenon with them. And also, I kind of feel like being in this kind of information scarce environment, you really value open access more because you just don't have access to as many things as your four-year counterparts. And so I, within the class, scaffolded information, literacy, and scholarly communication concepts, including open access. So just like, what does it mean to publish an article? What's peer review? How do publishers make their money? Et cetera, et cetera. And so I kind of sprinkled all this open access OER work within the class, and then at the very end, students have to write an annotated bibliography. That's their course learning outcome. I don't really like annotated bibliographies. They're useful, they're practical, but in terms of like really capturing what students have learned, not super inspiring to me, but it's kind of just, it is what it is, and I have to do that. But the more exciting final project in my mind is building this course zine. So a zine's just kind of the self-published bit of information around whatever you want to publish, and we published about the class itself. You know, the concepts we learned in the class, and we positioned ourselves as a student group to say, okay, if you had the chance to tell other ELAC students how to do research, what would you tell them? And so we made a Google doc and we kind of divvied up the work. So we had a lot of students who were very athletic and very loosey-goosey, whatever the class really wanted to do. And so they came up with their own title and they voted on a title. We decided like who was going to talk about databases, who was going to talk about keyword searching, who was going to talk about plagiarism, et cetera, et cetera. And then students were able to pick which Creative Commons license we used for the zine. They were able to establish their own authorship, and they were able to do that too. So when students create things, I want them to know that they do have copyright and they do have inherent rights whenever they're creating any kind of work and to kind of know what copyright they do have.  Some students were first name, last initial, and some students were like, you know, I'm happy to participate in this, but I don't want my name associated to this at all. And just kind of a fun side note, I think what I was really inspired by when I was an undergrad student in the early 2000s, I had this terrible Zanga, it was an early online blog, and I just put my life out there. I just didn't know how, like, what an online presence looked like. I mean, it was early internet, but I was just thinking like, wow, I would be mortified if some of my really early online work was available online. And so I kind of thought some students might be like that. So gave them multiple ways to participate and make their presence known. And like Alexis, I'm not sure if I over-explained but happy to elaborate on anything in there. Yeah, that was amazing. And I, you know, I loved two points. And one was I loved how you used the framework from ACRL to maybe you can explain that better than I can, but the information framework, and you really use that with your students and you got feedback from them on it so that they actually understood, because I know often these frameworks that are written for faculty and librarians and so forth, they're not in language that students can really understand. So you gave it to them in a way that they could really respond to it and kind of rewrite it in their own words, which I thought was wonderful. And then also the fact that you explained to them what their rights were, and that it wasn't just, you know, we're going to all publish something and, you know, here's what we're going to do. And are you in or you're out, but you really gave them a lot of choices. So if I can, I want to echo both of the things that you just said, Una, which is really the using the ACRL framework. I have heard it floated around, but I'm, you know, that's not a framework I've ever used personally. And so a lot of the chapters that ended up being included in this book make reference to and explicitly quote from and talk about how that shaped the project that they did. But Cynthia's chapter did a beautiful job of actually explaining each of the six core components. It is six, right? Yeah. So the each one of the core components is actually a structural piece of her chapter. So again, that was what part of why the editorial team of the book put it in the introductory framework for the book because it really does an excellent job for our dual readership. You know, the librarians, the reading this book probably are familiar, deeply familiar with it, but faculty or other staff or students that are coming to this book probably are not. And so it's just a lovely way to introduce both the framework and how open pedagogy fits inside of it. So, but yeah, please do explain more about it because clearly I'm not the top of my game what it is and how it shaped your call. It's so funny that both of you kind of remembered the information literacy was a huge part about my chapter and I just kind of started talking and I didn't engage at all. So that's kind of horrifying on my part. So yeah, as a librarian I think or in any field you really kind of take things for granted and make assumptions and I just forgot that, yeah, my whole chapter is framed around the six frames of the ACRL information literacy framework. So those being, and I had to pull this up, I'm sorry, ACRL, I haven't memorized them. Authority is constructed in contextual. Information creation has a process. As a process, information has value. Research is inquiry, scholarship is conversation and searching is strategic exploration. So in a lot of the frames, I won't dig into each one, but there's a lot about centering students as information creators, getting students to kind of see this like greater information environment that they're operating in. Scholarship as conversation is one of my favorite things because it just shows information as not being static and it's a conversation that they can absolutely be a part of, even as undergraduates. And also just carving out that space to think about where they might be in the future. So okay, I'm planning to transfer, still figuring out what my major is, but how can I engage with the field? How can I connect with professors? So we talked about social media and a lot of times students will say, you know, I know Wikipedia is a bad source or I know Twitter is a bad source and it's like, no, no, no, that's not necessarily true. Let's think about how this information was created. Who's creating it? Is this good or not? Like what are our values and how do we perceive this information? It's not just good and bad. So students really get to test their kind of information literacy skills and their own kind of world frameworks and also kind of build like, what does it mean to have good information? I wonder if you, do you have a specific student in mind, maybe who went through the class who kind of had some deep insights or, you know, maybe could share something like that. I have two students that come to mind and they're on the opposite spectrum. One was a student who talked all the time in class, had lots of opinions and the other student literally never spoke to me but I feel like both of them had good experiences. So my first student, you know, he turned to work late, he came to class late and at some point I think in halfway through he said, you know what, I like learning but I don't like school. And that really, and again, like that really resonated with me. A lot of times it's like, what is our why? And I think a lot of times when students are doing work, that's very, what it's a good word to say it's like, I keep using this word but uninspired, like, okay, we're just going through the motions. I don't really know why I'm doing this, but we're doing it. And so I think for me, the biggest thing talking to this, the student was having students know what their why is, why are we learning this? Where does this fit into the larger context of my life? Not just professor telling students to do this because it's good for them, but what am I getting out of this? So I think about him a lot, you know, I like learning but I don't like school. So it's like, how can we facilitate learning in exciting ways? And then the second student, and this gets to a point that I kind of forgot to mention, he's very quiet, sat in the back, literally never spoke. And he also is one of the students that didn't claim authorship. He didn't want to be involved or have his name listed on our final zine, but we had this met a cognitive element of the canvas course that aligned with our in-person course. So every week, students had to articulate, you know, what they were learning, how they were learning, what they wanted to do after the class, and just kind of just keep their learning in check. And in those met a cognitive exercises, he always just had really fully fleshed out ideas and you can tell the wheels were turning. He was learning and he was having a good time, even if he didn't show it in person. So I think that shows that sometimes our in-person dispositions also don't necessarily align with, like what's actually happening. So he taught both of those students taught me a lot and I think about them all the time. So I'm going to go into further brag on Cynthia's chapter. If you're interested at all in how she put this assignment together, she shared all that with us openly, which was, again, a big part of Kim's and my motivation for putting this book together, especially publishing it in an open platform the way that we did. Kim and some of the other editors had experienced publishing more traditional, I believe through ACRL, I could be wrong, more traditional edited books. So we consciously chose not to do it that way, to do press books, to use the library instance of press books at Geneseo so that we could make the chapters as long as they needed to be and include all of the materials that people wanted to share with us. So, and Cynthia's chapter, we've got the full assignment and everything in the book is CC by, if this is exciting to you. And she does a great job of coaching you through how this could work in any kind of class, not necessarily an information literacy-specific class. So thank you for that gift, Cynthia. I appreciate that. Yeah, I think it's interesting coming from a four-year university where I used to have like a research component to my work. Now I really don't have to.  But I think there's a lot of really interesting work happening. So, you know, I think, Alexis, you for letting me even be a part of this publication. I actually, you know, I always have that imposter syndrome that I put in a proposal. I'm like, I think this is cool, but I hope they think it's cool too. So it was, it was really kind of just great to be able to share this with everybody. I think sometimes there's this work that's happening that no one really knows about and I'm always happy to connect with people. You know, you can send me an email and send me a tweet and I would be happy to discuss with anybody further. Cynthia, you mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago when we were setting up this time, you said, well, I'm reviewing it to teach it a little bit differently this fall. Did you want to share a little bit about how you might be doing it differently this fall? Yeah, that's a really, that's a really good thing that I should probably be thinking more about. But, you know, living in COVID times, doing this class completely online. Actually, you know, for the most part, it teaches class online. So that's, it's interesting, like this whole distance education thing in COVID is not equal to what distance education normally is. It's like I said, when I first, we first started, you know, so many of our students are dealing with just COVID stuff, you know, racial unrest, the fires in California. I know, like I've picked up a lot of duties that I don't normally have. So everyone's just kind of living in these, these weird times, these really challenging times. So I'm kind of wondering if it should even be like around a topical area, like how to, you know, how to survive COVID, how to survive fall semester around information because it's still an information literacy class. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just, I'm just maybe reframing around our, like it would be silly to just ignore the times we're living in. So it's like, how could we kind of figure out an, because the zines are meant to be consumed by students after the class. You know, it's not, again, it's a, it's a renewable assignment. So what might be useful for the campus. And honestly, maybe that's not a question that I'm going to answer, but something that we figure out as a class. It's a little bit harder in an asynchronous format, but not impossible. So I might have to just get back to that. That's perfect. And so Alexis, is there any thought about a second version of the, of the collection or. So that's a great question. I definitely had it in the back of my head the whole time we were putting the book together. So we started on this book about a year and a half ago and actually like, okay, this is going to be a book. And so most of the way through was in the before time, before COVID. And during that period, I really was envisioning turning this into an open journal. And since then my position has changed. So I'm not dealing with or not, not working as close with open pedagogy projects. It'd be a little bit harder to justify running it myself, but I would fully support handing it over to someone that was interested. So hit me up. Let's talk further if you're interested. But I think we got a lot of submissions that were great, but weren't quite in the scope of this book, but could be further fleshed out or things that people proposed that they were going to do, but hadn't actually experienced yet. So I'd love to know how those came about. So there's definitely an ongoing conversation there that I hope we continue. And Kim and I will be presenting about this at a couple of different places, including the open education global conference in November. And we're going to include some of the authors, but also some of the peer viewers and copy editors. One of my favorite parts of this book is the student involvement all the way through. And this book itself actually became an open pedagogy project because there was a copy editing course at the University of Rochester that helped us copy edit several of the chapters. So there was students, you know, all of the layers of open just kind of unfolded beautifully with this project, but there there's definitely ongoing conversation, but no concrete plans. Thank you. And I'm really, yeah, I'm really glad to hear you'll be presenting on this, but the upcoming a week global and other conferences.  Do you have thoughts about how open education is helping during this time? Maybe either you personally or your students or perhaps faculty who you work with has, you know, open education, not only content, the open textbooks and so forth and open courses, but also open practices to make this situation better as we transition to just an education is going to be different after this. I actually have lots of opinions on this. So it's interesting. So at my campus, we don't have a big OER program. We don't actually have really, we don't really have much that is very official. It's very unofficial. I'm more like de facto OER librarian. So I get invited to do things. That's fine. But a lot of times when we're talking about OER these days, it's because we're in COVID. And it's because we don't have in person, you know, library reserves. We have to use OER. I'm like, okay, that's not, that's not true. So it's a really great opportunity to talk about the affordances of OER and how this can really be a sustainable future for us. And I'm really hoping that administration takes note of just the climate that we're in that we can't ignore that textbooks are so prohibitively expensive that sometimes they can, that there maybe isn't even an e-book alternative right now. So that's, that's something, what else was I going to say? You know, when you have so many thoughts and you can't think of like two. So there's that. And then also because I've been teaching students open access and OER for a while, I think that I'm just more motivated to teach students about OER and open access and getting them involved in the conversation. So I think that when we open pedagogy or open informed pedagogy, what I call it is that students just know that this exists. I think when we talk about OER or when we use OER and it's just like, here's a free textbook, students are like sweet free textbook. But when students kind of understand the greater OER open education movement, they're really kind of in a position to advocate for themselves, whether it's here right now in a specific class in a program on the campus, their transfer universities. And so it's really cool that I have some students who have been around for a while and they know that OER is a thing because they've been in my class. And so one of them is an associated students right now. And I reached out to him and I said, you know what, you remember OER? I would like to talk about it with the associated students. I want to make some noise. I just want to, you know, let's do a social media campaign. Let's make administration listen because you deserve this. And I don't have to explain it to him because he did the whole unit and he was in my class for eight weeks. Great. And do you also see some connection with social justice and anti-racism issues? Oh, absolutely. And you know, we're at our majority minority institution. And we have a lot of low income students. I think actually the majority of our students are on fee waivers. We do have book vouchers and things like that. But I think if we were really real with ourselves, we're always talking about student centered, that we're talking about equity. We're talking about guided pathways. OER is literally one of the solutions to all of these problems. It's like getting students to be successful in class as a librarian. I can't tell you how many times a student is like, I can't afford the book. So I'm going to get the free version for 14 days and do homework for two weeks. And then I'm just going to wing it. And hopefully I'll do okay. Can you imagine what students, how students could perform if they had access to the book all the time? All students. So, so yeah, I absolutely think it's a social justice issue. And at a campus like mine, I think it's especially important. And I'm just hoping that COVID might be a catalyst for further OER considerations. I've definitely seen a different take on that. So I've definitely worked. My own teaching experience was at similar institutions to yours, Cynthia, but at Geneseo, it's a much different atmosphere, both on the faculty and student side. And there has been, I think this level of assumption or comfortable assumption about. Oh, students are, you know, they have these resources. They have this knowledge and know how they can navigate this world. And then so this COVID area has kind of ripped off some of that veneer a little bit. And so I think everybody across the campus is forced to acknowledge some, some painful truths that they had been kind of maybe lost over. I don't think anybody was actively ignoring or, or, you know, I think everybody's heart was in the right place, but it was easy to overlook or not see some of those issues that are more evident now that students are having bandwidth issues.  Our faculty are having trouble, you know, we don't have the best internet connection in the rural area. So we've got several that have to drive places to give class or whatever the case may be. When you start looking at it from that perspective, everybody's much more open to how do we make this easier and accessible and keep us all engaged. I also want to be very cognizant that everybody's doing a whole lot that they never anticipated that they would be doing right now. So I don't want to add to anyone's burden, but I think open answers some questions or answer some challenges in much more seamless ways. So it's easy to have a conversation where open is the answer. Even if I'm not going into it saying this is going to be an open conversation or a conversation about where we are, open pedagogy. So it's kind of fun how that kind of organically evolves. Yeah. And the only, thank you both for sharing that. The only thing I would add, I guess, is I think with the open pedagogy component, it also can help elevate voices, I think that aren't heard. I hope that that that co-creation between teachers and their students, I think, can be really powerful for looking beyond just affordability. Absolutely. And there's some good chapters in the book, in addition to Cynthia's that address that more directly. There's an, let me go look at the table of contents because I won't remember off the top of my head, but there is a chapter specifically that talks about a Black Lives Matter movement at another SUNY institution, SUNY Potsdam. There's a really nice one from Texas. I must have the school, Texas Rio Grande Valley, the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley, that's talking about expanding the state standardized test to include more people of Hispanic background and Latinx background in the question banks. So they're having education students help create those questions and do the archival research to do that. So there's some fun models. And again, it's meaningful work. It gets everybody engaged and it also expands who's in our academia. Wonderful. Any closing comments? Yeah, thank you both. I know I've started the book. I mean, I've read Cynthia's obviously, and I did see the Black Lives Matter when I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it's a big collection. Yeah, there are 24 content chapters. Yeah, there's a lot going on in there. And the discipline range is wide, which is exciting to me. And the scope of types of institutions is really wide as well. There aren't as many community colleges represented as I would have liked, but that would be, again, a follow-up project would be really nice there. Yeah, so I have opinions on that. I think that part of it is because one, we're not required to publish. So a lot of people just take that and that's fine, right? I'm not getting paid for this. I'm not going to do it. But I do think there are people who want to share this information, but because it's not part of our work, or maybe people haven't published before, it's scary. So I wonder if there could even be, and I would be happy to maybe do something. It's so funny because I'm like, stop accepting things, do less work, but I keep doing it. I would be happy to say, like, you know, if you want to talk about publishing, if you just have a good idea and you want to get your idea out there, I'd be happy to help you with the proposal, and I'll help you with writing the actual paper because we don't really have that know-how or infrastructure to do it. Yeah, when I was a community college faculty, I presented a lot, but I never wrote anything up. And yeah, that kind of mentorship would have been very valuable to me. So thank you for offering that. Of course. Yeah, it's like, even me, like, when I put in the proposal, I'm like, do I have time for this? But I'm in a PhD program and I wrote a similar paper. So I was like, okay, I could just make it more useful and less theory-y and it'll be great. That's interesting. I didn't know that. That's cool. Oh, I made it a secret for two years because I wasn't sure I could do it. I'm still not sure I can do it. Yes, you can. That's what my students say. And I'm like, okay, I'm glad everyone else has confidence. Thank you for listening to this episode of OEG Voices from the Open Education Global. Our featured open licensed music today is Vast by OpenOcean, a Creative Commons licensed music found on SoundCloud. You can find this episode at our site, voices.oeglobal.org, and engage and follow up conversations at oegconnect, connect.oeglobal.org.


Minnesota leaders have approved a lease agreement with a company that intends to complete construction on a pellet plant in another facility on the Iron Range to produce high-grade iron ore. The Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State and State Auditor approved the agreement Monday with Chippewa Capital Partners. The deal gives the Virginia-based company and its investors until August 31 to secure at least $850 million in financing. The deal revitalizes a project that stopped when SR Steele, Minnesota, went bankrupt in 2016. SR Steele broke ground on a new tachanite mine and pellet plant in 2008, but the India-based company struggled to raise the nearly $2 billion needed to build the facility and the company declared bankruptcy. DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr says the projects in this new deal will provide short-term opportunities for construction workers and long-term promise in what will be produced once it's up and running. Work on the pellet processing plant in Nashwak must begin before October and finish by December 2019. Construction on a separate production facility on the Iron Range would begin in 2018 and end by 2022. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Derek Rackley here at the Emory Sports Performance and Research Center just steps away from the Atlanta Falcons Training Center and today we're gonna look at how proximity and technology help the Falcons training staff diagnose injuries in record time. That we are literally about 75 yards away from the Atlanta Falcons training facility that's literally right across the street. They can go have an injury or the coach wants to take a look, the doc wants to take a look, they can walk over have it done and be back to practice in 10 minutes. So the difference in this MRI and every other one is they can actually move around. Why that's important? Sometimes we have like a concussion, we can have a disruption in our brain and our motor control. We want to measure that at a very precise level so we know when to return athletes back safely. So Derek now we're getting a picture of the athlete actually performing his test. If you look at this, this is his real-time biomechanics. So as I told you, you're normally supposed to lay still but we're measuring the brain.  Here you can see if you look over here, you can see some of his brain measurements being done in real time. But what we're also doing is looking at the structure of the muscle and the muscle morphology. So looking at how that muscle looks, how the structural quality of it, and importantly asymmetries, are there any residual deficits from that prior injury? We think we're going to be able to identify athletes at high risk of injury, but most importantly what we care about is preventing that injury. That wraps up our series on the intersection of medical technology and football. Be sure to check out our videos on VR recovery and skeletal tracking on the Atlanta Falcons YouTube channel. Thanks so much for watching.


Hello students! In this video we will be looking at topic sentences and there will be a final reminder about assessment one. So, what is a topic sentence? Well, primarily it presents the main idea of a paragraph. It often uses some words from the essay question as you want to try to link back to the essay title. So, the topic sentence is not only unifying the paragraph, it also helps unify the whole essay. Topic sentences are very important in writing. Essays, reports, emails, all types of writing. Having clear and effective topic sentences will make your writing easier to understand and importantly for you mean a higher grade. So, where would you usually find the topic sentence in a paragraph? Pause the video and have a think. Okay, I hope you got it right. Topic sentences are usually found at the beginning of a paragraph. Right, so next some example topic sentences. These examples are from an essay on smartphones. Okay, so you can see the question at the top. It's a problem solution essay about smartphones and health. The first topic sentence is from the first body paragraph. Key words are in red and yellow. The harmful effects of radiation on the body is one of the possible issues caused by mobile phone use. Okay, so from this topic sentence we know that the paragraph is discussing a problem of mobile phones in relation to health. The text in red tells us that it will be about the physical problems caused to the body. It links back to the question with the words in yellow caused by mobile phones. In the second paragraph we have apart from radiation another impact. This means it could be a second problem paragraph and then smartphone linking back to the question applications could be a misunderstanding of health issues. So, this paragraph is about social factors rather than physical impacts. For example, getting wrong information from the mobile phone. Looking at the third sentence could be countered means a solution. So, this paragraph will be looking at solutions for mobile phone use. The words brought by the routine use of smartphones links back to the question again and smart devices to help the public monitor their physical health means the content will be about checking your health using a smartphone. The final topic sentence on the screen, the fourth body paragraph has another feasible solution. So, we know it's another solution paragraph. The promotion of behavioral and psychological health is another feasible solution to excessive smartphone use. So, it's about a push factor to encourage healthy living. For example, monitoring how often you look at your mobile phone or to eat healthier food. So, these are all effective topic sentences. They are good models to follow. Okay, some practice. We have a question. Discuss some of the health issues students face at university. What does it mean? What would you write about? Well, in a problem solution essay you might discuss what health problems students have and also the possible solutions to solve these problems. You can see one possible body paragraph on the screen with key words in yellow. What could be a possible topic sentence for this paragraph? Pause the video and write down your ideas. Okay, so here's an answer. One possible solution to the various health issues, linking back to the question students face, is to make physical education a required subject. Physical exercise is certainly beneficial for one's physical and mental health. Okay, this has two sentences and notice it mentions both physical and mental benefits. So, that's an example of an effective topic sentence for this paragraph. But what is the paragraph missing? What should the paragraph also contain? Which you also need to include in your academic essays? Yes, it citations. You need to provide evidence for what you're writing. What are the physical and mental benefits of exercise? You need evidence from academic journals to support your claims. Some advice about topic sentences. Make them short, simple and clear. Make it easy for the reader to understand what you're saying. Use phrases such as these to introduce your topic sentences. One of the main reasons for, one of the major factors in, one of the strongest arguments against or in favour of, one of the main advantages or disadvantages of, disadvantages of. These phrases can help you to structure your topic sentence in the essay. Okay, some reminders. Assessment one is a problem solution essay. For draft one, you have to write between 300 and 400 words. While for the final draft, assessment two, you have to write around 900 to 1000 words. Please check Blackboard for the due date for the assessment or ask your teacher. Remember, you need to submit the assessments on Blackboard via turn it in. Some further reminders about assessment one. Draft one should include a narrowed essay question, two to three body paragraphs analysing the problem, and you need at least two in-text citations and a reference list. I hope that you're making progress. You should have your topic and title found ideas with supporting evidence, and you should have made notes on suitable sources. Now you need to be writing your first draft so that you can submit before the deadline. Okay, that's it from me. Remember, as always, enjoy your time at PolyU.


Oh my gosh, how do I navigate this thing, man? Woo! Bihun! This is even better than the last time I got this on Gailong Road. This is one of the best chicken sates I've ever had in New York City. Chili crab, are you ready for your examination? You see this? I'm using the head as a bowl. Hello, uncle. Okay, uncle, what do we got here? Mr. Fried Rice, uncle. Thank you. Good job, man. Thank you. Adi, uncle, hey! Adi, what's up with that? Chicken rice! Chicken rice, Adi! What started just as a dream of the late Anthony Bourdain has now become a reality. There's an authentic Singaporean hawker center in New York City. I'm talking about chicken rice, skate wings, chili crab, beef rendang, satay, Singaporean aunties and uncles cheffing it up.  Well, I'm gonna eat at every single spot and hopefully I'll find out. So hit that like button and let's go. All right, everybody. Before I show you the best hawker food in New York City, I'm gonna give a big shout out to our sponsor G Fuel. It is not just for gamers and it is not like every other energy drink out there. I personally like G Fuel because they have so many different crazy flavors. Also, they're sugar-free. I mean, if you look on the back of this can, it's made with green tea extract, turmeric extract, tart cherry, blueberry, broccoli, kale. That's a super food. And on the back of the powder tubs, you actually have real fruit extract. I'm talking about pomegranate, pineapple, apple, orange, grape seed, grapefruit, raspberry, strawberry, watermelon, lemon fruit, melon, cantaloupe. There's cantaloupe in these. Currently, right now, my favorite flavor is Yuzu Slash. That's the one I'm drinking. However, after I showed the Miso Ramen one, the Miso Ramen one on my Instagram and TikTok people were going crazy, so I'm about to try it right now. Naruto Miso Ramen. Yo, they really made it taste like ramen. Arigato gozaimasu. Radioactive lemonade. I highly recommend this Radioactive Lemonade. It's one of my favorite G-Fuel flavors I've had so far. And lastly, my favorite thing about G-Fuel is that we have a 30% off code.  That's a pretty generous discount. All right, everybody. So go on the website, browse through all their flavors, use our Fungbros code for 30% off. Personally, I like the can when I'm on the go. Of course, it's easy to carry and already premix. However, the tub powder is pretty cool when you have it at home because you can really adjust the amount of caffeine that you want in your drink and you can make up to 40 servings out of this. So, hey guys, thanks so much for watching and back to the video. All right, so there are 17 vendors here, but we're gonna try as many of the top dishes as we can and then we're gonna let you know which ones are our favorite. Hey, starting off, you know we gotta start at Hainan Jones for the iconic chicken rice. All right, here we got the steamed Hainan chicken. Woo. All right, you know the rice is gonna be flavorful. It's very juicy, very Singaporean style right here. Oh, that is super good, man. I gotta pour a little bit of hot sauce on there. All right, here I have the roasted chicken and rice. As you can see, man, this has the brown skin on top. That is the mark of a good roasted one. They make it good here. As you guys may have seen in other videos, I do love chicken and rice. It's one of my favorite dishes. I could eat this three, four times a week and this one, man, they made it to the tee. It is juicy, just like the Singaporean style and just to have an authentic version in New York, that's amazing. All right, our second spot, we're about to be trying the Hokkien Prawn Meat at Prawn Aholics. Listen, I gotta be honest. The Prawn Meat is a dish I've had in Singapore, but really only once or twice in my life. And this is a lot of pork and seafood, which those are two ingredients that usually aren't in the same dish. Yeah. High quality seafood, high quality pork belly. I'm excited. This is a very, very authentic Hockerstall dish, man. And it's very hard to find around America. If you guys have never been to Singapore, trust me, this is more of a deep cut dish and you guys gotta try it here when you come to Urban Hocker. Put a little bit of Singaporean hot sauce on there. All right, for our third spot, we gotta get the original Bihon, AKA rice noodle here at White Restaurant. Here I have some authentic seafood, Bihun. Bihun is actually Hokkien dialect for meat fun, which is rice noodles here. And guys, this is a very much a cafe style food in America, when you think of cafe food, you're thinking about avocado toast, but in Singapore, they take it to the next level. Seafood noodles, baby. Woo! Oh, that's an everyday noodle right there. Egg, rice noodle, nice, creamy, kind of starchy, milky, murky chicken broth. And if you wanna know how to say like hao chur or good eats or ho-sik in Hokkien, it's ho-tia. And for our fourth spot, we're about to be trying the authentic sambal stingray here at Mr. Fried Rice. That is Mr. Fried Rice right here. That's the main himself. Oh! The last Singapore stingray, yeah, some part of the queue, just like. Guys, the last time I had sambal stingray was at a hawker so I think it was an old airport way, maybe. This is the dish that everybody has been talking about. Mm! Yo, that sambal sauce is kicking, feeling all the spices. Mr. Fried Rice, uncle, thank you. Good job, man. Thank you. Woo! Authentic, delicious stingray in Manhattan. That's kind of crazy. Chili crab, are you ready for your examination? What you guys are looking at is an authentic chili crab from here at Urban Hawker, guys. Like they said, they got black pepper crab. They got white pepper crab. But this is the classical style that everybody goes to Gey Long Road just to get. I've did this several times in Singapore. I'm telling you, it never disappoints. I was super surprised to see this, Andrew. Are you surprised to see this? Yo, in a hawker stall just across the street where you can get satay, you can get chicken rice, you can get everything here. Guys, I'm gonna crack this open. Dave, I gotta give you some of this crab juice right here. Because I'm gonna use the crab head as a bowl. Put the rice in there. No, I'm telling you, Andrew, everybody here that works here is like straight from Singapore. And this is like something that's almost unbelievable. It's almost like a cultural food museum because you're gonna get an authentic Singaporean hawker stall experience in the middle of Manhattan. We're talking about, like, we're smack dab in the middle. Let's just say the top is 100, the bottom is zero, where we're at in the lower east side, we're at the fifties right now. I would say that this one is just a notch spicier than the last one we had in Singapore. That's why I do appreciate it, though. Oh, the flavor's picking. And we have the fried mantou. This is oftentimes a traditional thing. You'll eat with it. It is the fried white bun. Just gonna dip it in that. David, this is super hot. Look at that, sauce on the mantou. Let's go. This is even better than the last time I got this on Gailong Road. Yo, where is Ronnie Chang? Just come to Urban Hawker for this. If you just came here and got this in the chicken rice, that would be a fantastic A-tier start to your Singaporean hawker stall, like Cyclone Journey. You see this? I'm using the head as a bowl. That's what I do after I defeat my enemies. All right, guys, I think that Urban Hawker is an excellent place for lunch. If you're just a tourist or obviously if you work in Midtown, this is gonna be a great like dope little escape from your office into Singapore for 20, 30 minutes, an hour you get back into the office. But obviously for dinner time, Andrew, this is gonna be a great opportunity for friends to come check out all the things.  Now you're trying 14 things. What I love about hawker stall food is that it's never short on flavor, but oftentimes they can make the food light enough where you can eat it for lunch. It's not going to slow you down. Obviously chili crab is maybe more of a sit down dinner but man, it's just cool to have everything all in one place in New York City. All right, so for our sixth spot, I'm outside of Ashes Burn It and here I got the Roti John. This is a traditional kind of egg omelet on a roll. And then we also have like a brisket sandwich here. All right, so this single Roti John is actually a curry beef egg omelet. They're eating it around Singapore. I've actually seen this before on Instagram but I've never had it in real life. So this is like all of those Instagram videos come to life. That's what I love about this. Ooh, that is so good. That curry's coming through and it's egg and it's warm and it's soft and I love it. Here we got a really interesting item. This is the Rendang Beef Brisket Sandwich. Now, as you guys know, Singapore was like a British colony so it has a lot of like Western influence already there. So this is one of those Western influence items that is actually from Singapore though, sort of like a Hong Kong cafe type style of food or maybe like a Mosburger where it's like an Asian version of something American. And I love beef Rendang, so I'm excited. Authentic Rendang flavor. You know beef Rendang is one of my favorite dishes and with the better fries. Yo, something I never thought I'd have. All right, so our next spot is a Filipino restaurant. It's not necessarily a hawker stall but still Southeast Asian we're about to try the Crispy Pata. Yo, Chef Anton here is bringing the Crispy Pata. Did I order the Uber XL? This is the escalate of Crispy Pata's right here. Yo, this is crazy. Lock it in here side by side and with alongside the Singaporean of hawker vendors. Oh my gosh, how do I navigate this thing, man? Right here, this we have the Crispy Pata which is normally the front ham hawker of the pig. So this one guys guy is braising for four hours then we deep fry it for about 12 and no, not about exactly 11 minutes. All right, should I just do it with my hands?  You can do it with your hands too and you can do anything you want. Mm. You can hear that crispy skin on top. I might have to shatter it but guys, this is not really hawker stall food but it is restaurant food. And as you guys know, Filipino family parties are like a staple and they're so fun. So this is a party starter right here, man. As they would say in Tagalog, so set up. All right, I'm about to pour a little sauce here. Put it on the rice, make a little bite. All right, so here I got some authentic Nanya laksa with rice noodles and Nanya for those people who are not familiar, it's kind of like an ancient mixture between like Malay and Chinese people, right? Exactly. And what do we have here? These are my grandmother's no-yang meatballs we call them meatballs. What kind of meat is it? Means pork with water chestnut, shrimp, onions wrapped in bean curd skin. There's something crunchy inside of there. Water chestnut. Water chestnut, yeah. Hey guys, I might just also throw it in my laksa too. Anything particular about the laksa? So this is, we cooked it in shrimp broth and it's got light coconut cream, like a light curry, basically. You can see all that seasoning sticking to the noodle right there. Daisy is your mother? Daisy's my mother. Shout out to Daisy. Okay, our next spot is Smokin' Joe and they're actually serving what is called Western Hainanese food and it actually comes from the Hainanese immigrants moving to Singapore and seeing that there's no Western style food so them creating their own style so it's like an old school fusion, not a new school fusion of East and Western flavors. Let's check it out. What I really like about spots like this and food like this is that it really is a well thought out fusion and sometimes when people try to just throw dishes together that have never met before it can be kind of weird but here they've had a lot of time to perfect it so I like it. It kind of reminds me of like Hong Kong cafe style food. All right, so as you may know there are all different types of people in Singapore namely a lot of people of Chinese ancestry, Indian ancestry and Malay ancestry and this spot Mamak's Corner is serving Indian Singaporean food. Most of the Indian influence is from South India so I'm pretty excited to try it. All right, here's the lamb biryani just like it is in Singapore and South India. It's actually not as spicy as I thought but just as flavorful. Let me get some of these pickled. Yo, this is like this really just reminds you how much of a multicultural society Singapore is. Shout out to Lee Kuan Yew. Fresh off the grill. So this is a chicken satin with a plain hot sauce, rice cake and cucumber. All right guys, we're here at Paddy NYC. Is that how I say it? Paddy NYC. Paddy NYC, the Malay spot. Honestly, right now I just feel like I'm over at Newton Plaza in Singapore. Guys, I can tell. Look at the grill marks on this chicken satay man. You kind of need it to look like it's covered with stuff. That's how you know it's good. That was exactly what I was looking for. Oh my God. We can see all the spices on it that honestly do look like a little bit like hair. It's just spices and ginger, don't worry about it. But man, that's delicious and I love how the peanut sauce is chunky and dark and it's got these, I'm not gonna lie, I forgot the vegetable but this white one is very popular over there. This is one of the best chicken satay I've ever had in New York City. All right, we're here at Yum Yubu to take it out of Southeast Asia for a second and back up to East Asia. Here we have the Korean Yubus and this is obviously similar to the Japanese style, the fried tofu pockets, but they do it a little differently. So let me try this one. Yo, guys, the Korean version of this, I gotta say is really, really good and honestly, they're the ones popping up spots that are only serving this item. So it's gotta be good. Salmon Yubu with a little bit of wasabi on top. Great snack if you want something sweet and dense and rice-filled. All right, you guys, that does it for our very first crawl at Midtown's Urban Hocker Singaporean Hocker style experience. I'm telling you, I was blown away by the authenticity. I never expected something to be like this and then for them to bring in so many people from Singapore here to recreate that authentic flavor and experience, it was super dope. I highly recommend it. Yo, guys, given the quality, this spot is actually super, super affordable, also given that it is in the middle of New York City. I mean, that crab over there was only $48 and actually, listen, for a Hocker style dish, you might think that's kind of expensive, but for Dungeon's Crab, it's not. So definitely come here and try it. This is a Singapore sling. This is the most famous drink mix that they have in Singapore. Like I said, guys, nowadays, some people travel, some people are not traveling again, because of whatever happened over the past couple of years. So whether you can, or you can't, or you just want that Asia vibe, come to Urban Hocker, Midtown, throw up the map. Wallawe!


The East Kentucky Dream Center has partnered with the remote area medical clinic to aid in providing medical care and other resources to Eastern Kentucky residents. The free clinic will be held at Eastridge High School Saturday, August 26th. I like to say that we're the one stop shop for hope in Eastern Kentucky and we are. So what better way and what better organization to partner with than the RAM clinic? The RAM clinic provides free dental, vision, and health care. It's coming up this weekend. This year Miss Emily Lee called and said we really need your team and we really need the hands on board. So we were we were grateful to be able to help. It's a blessing to give back to our community. You know there's a term called working poor and it is okay I have insurance but I can't afford my deductible. Most times the RAM clinic people think is just for poverty or those with no insurance no income and that's that's miscommunication. The RAM clinic is for anybody those with insurance that can afford a deductible those with no insurance those with Medicaid or Medicare. Are you ready for a new school here? What better way to start a new school year upright than with a new device on the network that keeps our students and teachers connected Appalachian Wireless. Whether you need a new smartphone, wearable, or an iPad, we have your back to school solution. Visit AppalachianWireless.com or go into one of our 26 retail locations for our back to school deals that'll help you show up and show out this school year. We are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. EKDC will be distributing food hygiene products and clothing completely free of charge in addition to the dental, vision, and medical provided by the clinic. Transportation will also be available. This is one of the first years that transportation has been offered to the RAM clinic. Maribau Missionary Baptist Church has offered transportation for those living in Elkhorn Elkhorn Creek and the Maribau area. So that's that's a blessing that you know we're grateful that they said hey we want to use our church fans we've got personal options to pick people up to wait with them and then to take them home in the evening. So if you're interested in a ride you need transportation to the RAM clinic call 754-3099. Those guys are they're wonderful and they're willing to help. For more information about EKDC and the clinic go to East Kentucky Dream Center on Facebook. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


Thousands of Afghans have waited at the heat outside Kabul Airport, desperate to get on a flight to leave the country. Shuaib, an Afghan citizen who had previously worked with foreign forces, told Reuters he wanted to leave Afghanistan and go to the country he had worked for. He did not specify his job or which country he had worked for. A senior German diplomat said the Taliban have told Germany that Afghans with legal documents will be able to travel on commercial flights beyond the August 31 cut of date after which evacuations from Kabul Airport will no longer be allowed.


If there was a chemical attack, they'll have to know how to mop up, how to conduct themselves in mop gear, and basically survive. How was it? Pretty exciting. Good stuff. We're on the reef.


Hello and welcome to City Updates. I'm your host, Alicia Utsi, Director of Public Relations, Media and Marketing for the City of Columbia. Our February updates include, on Monday, February 1st, the Planning Commission will meet at 5.15 p.m. This will be a virtual meeting and it will be live streamed on our city's website at columbiasc.gov and also the City of Columbia's YouTube channel. For more details, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. On February 2nd, at 10 a.m., the City Council Committee for Environment and Infrastructure will meet at 10 a.m. This will be a virtual meeting that will be live streamed on our website at columbiasc.gov and our city's YouTube channel. Again, you may watch the live stream of this meeting because it will be virtual due to the pandemic. Also on February 2nd, the Office of Business Opportunities will host a leadership resiliency during a crisis webinar. Business recovery from the inside out. This webinar will begin at 10 a.m. and will end at 11.30 a.m. Are you ready to become more effective as a business leader during a crisis? Join us as we help business owners increase their ability to lead their business as they recover from the impact of COVID-19. This will be a virtual webinar and you can register by visiting our website at columbiasc.gov and look for the webinar flyer on all of our social media platforms on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Also on February 2nd, Columbia City Council will hold their regular City Council meeting starting at 2 p.m. that afternoon. This will be a virtual meeting due to COVID-19 and you can watch it on our website at columbiasc.gov and the city's YouTube channel. For agenda details, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. On February 3rd, the Community Development Department will host the Bank on Columbia virtual training session starting at 3 p.m. and ending at 4.30 p.m. This virtual training session is free. You can check our website at columbiasc.gov about how you can register. Also on February 3rd, the Board of Zoning Appeals will hold their monthly meeting at 4 p.m. This will be a virtual meeting due to COVID-19 restrictions and you can watch it live on our website at columbiasc.gov and also on the city's YouTube channel. For agenda details, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. Also on February 3rd, will be the fourth and final session for the community conversations regarding the color of law. The city of Columbia and local partners will present the fourth community conversation on the color of law. The city and local partners have worked together to host three virtual sessions and this will be the fourth and final virtual session. The color of law and forgotten history of how our government segregated America. The fourth and final session will be held on February 4th, starting at 6 p.m. and ending at 8 p.m. The topic will be, where do we go from here? Innovative solutions from today's mayors. In order to register, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. This virtual session is free and open to the public. On February 5th, we want everyone to join us for national Wear Red Day. National Wear Red Day is supported by the American Heart Association and the city of Columbia and celebrated in conjunction with National Heart Health Month. It focuses specifically on raising awareness of women's heart disease and stroke risks. Cardiovascular disease causes one in three deaths in women every year, making it the number one health-related killer of women. The good news is 87% of all heart issues are believed to be preventable, making awareness, education, research and resources vital to the cause this day supports. So make sure that on Friday, February 5th, you wear red for the city of Columbia. Go Red Columbia and make sure you take photos and post them on social media and tag the city of Columbia on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag Go Red Columbia and Wear Red Day. Calling all business owners and entrepreneurs, get ready for February 9th when the Office of Business Opportunities will offer a free webinar just for you. The Office of Business Opportunities will host leadership resiliency during a crisis, a business webinar that focuses on recovery from the inside out. The webinar will begin at 10 a.m. and end at 11.38 a.m. and it is free and open to the public, but you must register. Visit our website at columbiasc.gov for registration information and you can also visit our social media platforms for registration details. Are you ready to become more effective as a leader during a crisis? Join us as we help businesses increase their ability to lead their business as they recover from the impact of COVID-19. On February 10th, the Community Development Department will host their quarterly Columbia All Access Training Session. This training session will be virtual due to COVID-19 restrictions and in the interest of public health. The training will be presented online starting at 3 p.m. until 4.30 p.m. For registration details, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. You can also visit our social media platforms for registration information for the All Access Columbia Quarterly Training Session presented by our Community Development Department. On February 11th, the Design Development Review Commission will hold a virtual meeting starting at 4 p.m. The meeting will be live streamed on the city's website at columbiasc.gov and you can also watch it on the city's YouTube channel. For agenda details, visit our website at columbiasc.gov. On February 16th, Columbia City Council will hold their regularly scheduled meeting starting at 2 p.m. This will be a virtual meeting due to COVID-19 restrictions and in the interest of public health. The virtual council meeting will be live streamed on our city's website starting at 2 p.m. on February 16th. Visit us at columbiasc.gov and you can also watch the live stream on the city's YouTube channel. For agenda details, visit our website at columbiasc.gov. Entrepreneurs, here's an ideal opportunity just for you. The Office of Visit Opportunities will host the next level for micro entrepreneurs. Classes are scheduled February 11th through April 15th of 2021. The classes will focus on teaching self-sufficiency through self-employment. Participants will learn how to choose a business idea, develop a marketing plan, explore financing options, develop a customer service philosophy, as well as other relevant entrepreneurial skills. For registration details, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov and you can also visit our social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as social media platforms for Columbia's Office of Business Opportunities. Well, thank you for watching City Updates for the month of February 2021. For more information regarding city events, meetings and information, you can always visit our website at columbiasc.gov. Also follow us on social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And of course, continue to watch us on our various TV platforms on Spectrum, channel 1301, also on our YouTube channel for the City of Columbia, as well as Amazon Fire TV and Roku. As always, thank you for watching and remember, we are Columbia.