If you're interested in the slides, if you're like me, when I was at school, I really hated the fact that I didn't know what was coming next. If you're the type of person who's like, don't get on with that. I want to know what slide comes next. You can have a look. So go to bit.ly forward slash mn-mootieuk19. That should work on all of your devices and you can have a sneak peek and then either listen or not to what I've got to say. Just if you want to tweet, then my username is at djbellshore and the hashtag is as usual mootieuk19. We've also got a very original hashtag for MoodleNet, which is hashtag MoodleNet. Okay, without further ado, this is my team at Moodle. So we've got myself. I live in the northeast of England, just north of Newcastle. I work four days a week for Moodle. We've got Mayel de Borneo, who has just moved from Athens in Greece to France, and he's a technical architect. He works three days a week. Alex Costano, and you'll start to notice the theme here, who has just moved from Barcelona to Andorra, because he loves skiing. He works full time at the back end. And then Ivan Minotillo, who has just moved from Naples to Rome, and he works a couple of days a week on the front end and on the design of MoodleNet. Martin told me and told all of us that we should have the Sustainable Development Goals in our presentation. So here we are. I think MoodleNet particularly focuses on quality education, obviously, because that's what we're doing at MoodleNet. But also I think sustainable communities. That's what we're trying to develop with MoodleNet. And if you haven't come across MoodleNet before, let me explain in a bit more detail. I want to develop, I want to, like, just get into three different things, because I've only got 20 minutes of your time. I want to talk about where we've been. I want to talk about where we are now. And obviously I want to talk about where we're going next. So in terms of where we've been, any kind of project gets lent magic pixie dust if you put a picture of Mary on there and quote her. So that's what I'm doing here. You can also see this on the blog. I'm not going to read this out, but you can see in the bottom paragraph she talks about the existing MoodleNet, which is kind of built into MoodleNet. You can search MoodleNet right now at the moment for MoodleNet content. And she talks about how the fact that we have useful content uploaded, but wouldn't it be great if we had more educators sharing more resources? So back in January, I pulled up the data and actually Gavin helped me with this and Mary as well. And just asking about all of the courses and the things we've had uploaded to MoodleNet between November 2010 and January 2019. Now, if we just put a bit of context here, we've got what over 100 million users of Moodle worldwide. These are not spectacular numbers. These are not fantastic numbers by any means. There are people sharing things on there, but it's not lots of people, lots of the time. You know, if you look at the number of courses, that's like one course every other week being shared on MoodleNet. So we need to do something about that because we know that the Moodle community is all about sharing. And so we're obviously doing something wrong with the tool. So the way that MoodleNet works at the moment is that it's all focused on individuals. It's focused on resources like courses and is focused on searching like a transactional experience. That's what MoodleNet is built on. So I just want to talk about where we are in terms of how we're trying to conceptualize MoodleNet with a capital N, which I'll try and emphasize when I'm mentioning MoodleNet instead of MoodleNet and just how we're trying to differentiate with that. So MoodleNet, as you saw Martin talk about this morning, is all about professional development and open content. And it's a social media platform. It's all about being social. It's not a transactional individual experience. So it's about communities. It's about collections of resources, not individual resources. And it's about discovery, which I hope to tell a bit more, tell you a bit more about in a moment. This is the plan. This is, you know, a standard kind of plan for how you develop these kinds of things. You conceive what you're doing and you plan it out and you develop and iterate and test and launch. So I want to use that as a kind of a way of structuring what we've done. We've done loads of stuff. And if you go to blog.moodle.net, you can read a post that we've put on there every single week since the Moodle last year actually. So MoodleNet is content agnostic. And what that means is that if you want to create a collection, that collection could contain 10 courses, 10 Moodle courses. It could be 10 PDFs, it could be 10 links. It could be a mixture of all of these things. It's content agnostic. You can put pretty much anything you want in there. It's focused on communities and collections. It's not focused on individuals. It's not a popularity contest. It's not like Twitter or Instagram or something like that. You're part of a community and you are acting in a professional context to curate collections of resources. It's open source. It's actually AGPL, which you can have a nerdy conversation with me about afterwards. But basically means that someone can't just take this code, run it on a server, and then not contribute the code back. It's going to be federated. I'll talk more about that in a moment. And also we're working on Moodle Core integration right now. So when we did our research around MoodleNet, what we found is that people are proactive and reactive. I'm an educator. I taught history for many years. I've worked in higher education as well. My wife's still a teacher. All my family teach. When I talk to people, not just anecdotally, but as part of the research process from MoodleNet, we found that people broadly do two things. They are proactive. They go out and search for things. But they're also reactive. They join social networks and they follow the right people so that one person says it's like waiting for treasure to arrive. So they follow the right people and they wait for resources that they didn't even know they were looking for. But when they arrive, that's exactly what they wanted. So Martin, as you can see, bought a lovely shirt actually when we did this design sprint. A lovely silk shirt on the street where Outlandish are. Outlandish are a co-op based in London. Last May we did a week-long design sprint and we had a prototype ready by the end of the week. And that really put some rocket fuel under what we were doing. It was actually Mayel. You can see him there on the left, second from the left. It was his first day. That design sprint was his first day. So a bit of a baptism of fire there. And Brian Mothers, the tall guy in the previous slide, drew lots of stuff and continues to draw some stuff for us. And we were kind of thinking about personas. The Open University was talking about this before and trying to really get under the skin of all the research we'd done and some of the people within the Moodle community. People came along. So Andy Field came along, Miles Berry, Jess Gramp. Arvario and Mary came along to do some user testing. At that point in time it was Martin, myself, and Mayel along without Landish in May 2018. We did some prototypes, some mock-ups, that kind of thing. And then we got Alex on board. And Alex is a back-end developer. And we made the controversial decision to build MoodleNet in elixir, not in PHP. And that's because elixir is very scalable. And we can have a neurodeconversation or that later on as well at the party over drinks. So we started doing some work around this. And then we got Ivan on board. And Ivan is a very expressive, very creative kind of guy. And we started thinking about what this could look like. We finished our work without Landish and started working with Ivan. And we started prototyping and started putting things out there of what we could do. So version 0.1 went out there right on the last day of January 2019, mainly because Martin had said, this will be ready by January 2019. So that went out on the last day. And we started testing. And some of you in this room started testing with us. Thank you for that. We tested it with about 100 people in English and about 100 people in Spanish. And we quickly got feedback from what they liked and what they didn't like. And people said things like this. I can certainly see a use for it. It encouraged me to think about being more serious when I'm collecting and curating my own work. And the simplicity and ease of use made it better than my current system. And the social aspect is something I appreciate. So this is version 0.1. So we kind of iterated from there. At the end of the first cohort, so three weeks from the end of January 2019, this was the question that we asked after the first week. So seven days into MoodleNet being a thing. And over 50% of people said, yes, they definitely would start using MoodleNet, about 30% saying maybe and 11% saying no. And then cohort two, which was more like the end of February, by that point were up to 64.5% of people saying, yes, this is definitely something I want to use, which is great. And so when we asked people, well, could you describe MoodleNet? How would you describe this to a friend or colleague? And you can see some people are saying that it's a resource-centric social network, hence the image you saw before, a learning community management platform, all the kinds of things which we hoped that they would say after we tested it. So we moved on. We started iterating MoodleNet. And in March, early March, because Martin again kept on telling us that we needed a mobile site, we prioritized that and we made sure that it worked well on mobile and it continues to work really well on mobile. So we've got that in March 2019. And then, oh, I need permission to view this video. That is rubbish. That's because I'm not signed in. I probably should have tested that before I came on stage. Never mind. Well, I'm going to... Oh, what should I do? I'm going to come back to that. I'll show that at the end. But basically what I want to show you there, oh, I know I can do. Mm-hmm. The wonders of the open web. There we go. Thank you very much. HTML5. Hello. I'm going to turn the sound off. And I'm going to talk over my own rated video. Here we go. So this is version 0.9, which we pushed out yesterday. We're calling version 0.9 alpha. We're not going to get to beta until we get to federation. But basically what you've got now is home feed.  So you can see what everyone else is doing. The other thing that we've got is we've started thinking about how people are going to use this platform and the kind of discovery nature of this. So for example, if you wanted to see Emma has joined the MUA, you'd click on that and find out more about it. So lots of feeds and timelines and that kind of thing. The other thing that we've done when I wait for my own video to catch up with myself is that we've started implementing more of the Moodle color scheme. We are working in an agile way as possible and we've got some theming going on now. So we've got a dark mode. This is going to make it really easy for you to theme MoodleNet however you want. When you install MoodleNet in your institution, you can make it look like your institution colors and you can change that theme really, really easily in the CSS. So MoodleNet is built on communities and collections. And so you've got communities curating collections of resources. We've changed the UI so that all of the stuff is happening at the top instead of in the sidebar and you can follow collections and you can see what's going on. This here is the profile. So you can see that you can see everything that I've done on MoodleNet recently and then the same happens for anybody that I'm following. I can go to their profile and I can see what they've been working on recently, the communities that they've joined, the collections that they're following and when we have liked resources, we can start seeing that as well. So if I'm interested in Matthias and I click on H5P for Language Learning, I can start seeing that community.  That's the whole point of it. So I'm going to stop that there. Okay, there's lots more. If you're interested in that, then you can come to the workshop tomorrow. If I can go back to that one there. That was slick, wasn't it? Right, so in terms of where we're going, well, we're not even a version one yet. We're still in alpha and we've got lots of things that we need to do before this is something which you would use in your institution. The three main things. First of all, the search. Obviously you want search because you want to be able to find that resource that you're looking for if you're in that kind of like hurried, just let me find that resource kind of mode. But we want that to be found in context. We don't want people just to have a transactional relationship. We want them to see that this resource exists in the context of the community and maybe start interacting with the community and finding all of those wonderful people just like you do on Moodle.org. The other thing which is being worked on now is a Moodle Core plugin. Obviously there's two elements to this. I've found a resource in MoodleNet and I want to put it in my course in Moodle Core. And I want to share something from Moodle Core and put it in MoodleNet. We're focusing on that first use case to start off with because we think that that's going to be what people do most of the time. Take something from MoodleNet and put it in Moodle Core. So you'll go into Moodle Core. You'll search MoodleNet from a file picker, preview the resource, and pull it straight into your course with the attached metadata, not only where it exists on the web, but also where it exists in terms of the community on MoodleNet. Now the thing which I talked about last year, which I want to talk about this year as well, because it's not an obvious thing, it's a federation. And this is the ability to have multiple MoodleNet instances which are all sharing resources together. So your institution, instead of it being a silo where you share resources with other people at your institution, you not only do that but also share them with the world. You might have seen this a couple of months ago. Facebook have said that they're going to integrate. I don't know if they've done this yet, but they're going to integrate Instagram Messenger and WhatsApp. And that's great if you use those particular products because it means that you can start sharing information between your Facebook products if you didn't know Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. So that's wonderful, but what happens if you're a user of Twitter or WeChat or Snapchat or LinkedIn? You're outside of that world garden. And that's in the exact opposition to something like email. But email works everywhere. My email address is dugupmoodle.com. If I email your hotmail address or Gmail address or whatever, I don't have to wonder whether that's going to work because email is built on open standards. The kind of thing that Martin was talking about in his keynote this morning. This is infrastructure. So the kind of infrastructure you want to build on, and if you at my presentation last year at the Moot, you'll have seen me talk about this, is ActivityPub. ActivityPub is basically an inbox and outbox protocol, which is a W3C standard for social networks talking to each other, not just the ones which are owned by the same company, but all social networks. And you can go and find out more about it at ActivityPub.rocks. So the Free Software Foundation, our friends, because they're part of Free Software and Open Source Movement, say that Federation means that different nodes can talk to each other using the same protocol like email. So there are already lots of social networks which are using this. Some are very, very small, but awesome, like Miskey over there. If you haven't tried Miskey, it's a Japanese social network, and it is crazy but awesome. But there's also one which is actually quite large, which is Mastodon. Two million users, 1,500 instances. And when you go to joinmastodon.org, it's not a binary like are you on Twitter or not on Twitter. It's, well, which instance are you on? And so there's one for academics and for artists and for musicians and for activists and all different kinds of people, but they all federate together and you can follow people across different instances just like you'll be able to do with MoodleNet. So why are we doing all this? Well, it's because we're trying to develop stronger relationships around the world between educators and between the Moodle community and educators more generally. I'm going to skip that one for the moment because I haven't got time because Mary's giving me the two-minute warning. But this is kind of where we are at the moment. We have a single instance of MoodleNet and a staging instance for testing. We're doing, we've been doing some testing and once we've got federation sorted out which is an extremely difficult thing to do for the kind of resource sharing social network that we're building. Once we've got that sorted, we're going to be looking to work with Moodle partners in the first instance but also organizations, individuals, people who want to set up a MoodleNet instance so we can test that out and then start building what is going to be potentially one of the world's largest social networks to be an extremely exciting thing to do. Now if you want to know more about this if you want to get your hands on MoodleNet you can do that but the only way you can do that at the moment unless you're an existing tester is to come to the MoodleNet workshop tomorrow at 2.30pm and I've also suggested quite rushly a badge as well. So if you come along, not only will you get a MoodleNet account but you'll also get a very rare badge which you'll be able to display on your Moodle.org profile. Please do bring a laptop or a smartphone with you if you're coming along to that and if you've got any questions then I'm not going to answer them now and I'm going to answer them in the workshop tomorrow or you can email me, dugoutmoodle.com or you can tweet me at DAJBallshore. The canonical link for MoodleNet which will change in terms of the website it redirects you to soon is Moodle.com forward slash MoodleNet it currently redirects you to the wiki but it will redirect you to a home page at a subpage of the main Moodle.com site. Thank you very much.


What's up guys, I'm Brian Sakawa. You're watching He Spoke Style and today we are talking about the latest release from Géger Locult, the Polaris Date Limited Edition. So this watch is a new addition to the Polaris line. JLC reintroduced the Polaris back in 2018 at SIHH and it was a phenomenal reboot that has been extremely well received. It filled a big void in JLC's lineup in terms of sports watches and the watch we have here is a tribute to that success. If you're familiar with the Polaris that was reintroduced in 2018, this watch is going to look very similar, though this one is inspired by the 1970 Polaris II. We have a 42 millimeter case and stainless steel. There are two crowns here. The one at 2 o'clock will rotate the bezel and the crown at 4 o'clock is for setting the time and date. Inside we have the self-winding JLC caliber 899A1 power reserve of 38 hours and a rubber strap and a deep navy blue. Save the best for last here, which of course is the dial. First the basics. We have the hour and minute hands plus the sweep seconds hand at 3 o'clock. Not something everyone will enjoy but there is a date window. Arabic numerals at 6, 9, and 12. Trapezoidal hour markers all with loom including the hour and minute hands and then the amazing finish of the dial. It's all hand lacquered with the signature three finishes, sunrayed, grained, and opaline, and then we have this blue double gradient which is unique to this model and one of the most striking features. You know, when you turn the watch there's a shimmer and color change which is just amazing. The caseback is closed and contains four special engravings including the scuba diving insignia, the JLC crest, the phrase 1000 hours control which means it's gone through 1000 hours of testing before leaving the manufacturer, and then finally the words limited edition one of 800. This is a special watch and on the wrist it feels the same way. From a styling perspective I have to say that I did find this watch to be a little tricky. It kind of sits in this balance point between casual and elegant. On the one hand you have the amazing finish and the beautiful dial both hallmarks of the brand and then on the other hand you have the more sporty blue color and the blue rubber strap. Thinking about styling this I really consider this as a luxe casual item and that is what I attempted to capture with each of the three outfits that I put together for this watch. First up is kind of a nod to the watch's somewhat nautical history. Simple, a little preppy with some luxe elements. Pants are off white chinos by ring jacket. Up top I'm wearing a nautical striped long sleeve t-shirt. This is from the Nordstrom 1901 collection and what takes this look from a very simple look to something that has a little more luxe feel is not only the watch but also this suede jacket by Valstar. I think this particular piece is such a perfect match for the Polaris. It's sporty and casual but has a very elevated feel and one thing I really like about this look is how the color of the loom is almost a perfect match to the color of the pants. It's a simple thing and very subtle but I think it helps pull the entire look together. Now a nautical look like this would not be complete without boat shoes. The ones I am wearing are by Jack Irwin. Now for one of the looks I wanted to challenge myself to do something suited and I knew with this watch that I couldn't do suited the way I normally would so as you will see momentarily I came up with something that captures that casual but elevated style that this watch has. So here it is. This is a double-breasted suit that I am deliberately wearing unbuttoned. Suit is by Ring Jacket. Simple micro-striped shirt is by Michael Andrews Bespoke. No tie. One more button unbuttoned than I normally would and all of this the lack of tie the unbuttoned shirt the unbuttoned double-breasted jacket is to capture that casual sporty but elegantly nonchalant feel of this watch. Two final details to keep it more on the dressed up side of things. Black leather belt and black leather wing tips. These are the McAllister by Alan Edmonds. Finally the most casual outfit of the bunch but still keeping it a little more upscale. On the casual side are my faded jeans by J.Crew 484 Fit. Up top is a gray cashmere cable knit sweater by Luca Folloni. If you haven't seen my try on and review of Luca Folloni check that out. And then a great kind of fall transition piece the informale and craftsman clothing linen safari jacket. Now the Polaris is for the adventurer and I love how the safari jacket gives a little nod to that.  As I mentioned the Polaris date is a limited edition of 800 pieces. It will retail for $8,250. I'll put a link to the JLC website and all of the outfit details down below in the description. Leave your comments and let me know what you think about this new piece in the Polaris line as well as which outfit you liked best. Thumbs up, hit that subscribe button and until next time thanks for watching and stay tailored.


A truly fortuitous and unexpected find. Stay with me. This is an audio book on cassette that I found as I was looking for stuff to listen to on my 53th tour last fall. And boy, what a find. These books were written for children. They're about medieval mice defending their castle from evil rats. It's written by Brian Jakes, who does the narration. Matthias cut a comical little figure as he wobbled his way along the cloisters with his large sandals flip-flopping and his tail peeping from beneath the baggy folds of an oversized novice's habit. Speaking of which, the voices in this production are tremendous. You'll never bend red walls to your evil wills. Good will prevail, you'll see, Clooney. We are tied up, but our minds are free. A touching little speech wall, but you rung me. I don't want to capture the spirit of red wall. I mean to kill it. The villain is a horrifying rat named Clooney and the actor providing the voice for him is terrifying. Take a listen. Get me meat! And a young red meat.  There's a lot of charming stuff going on in this production and a lot of terrifying stuff, too. Now, see, these books are obviously written for children, but I think a proper children's story, a proper children's adventure story that's going to have lasting power and that's going to stick with children as into their adulthood has to have horrible stuff happen. It has to have truly horrible villains and this book has it. There's three cassettes here, each with their own little packaging. It looks like four, but it isn't. They actually went to the trouble of putting a piece of styrofoam in a box to make it look like a fourth cassette. That's a dirty trick, guys. But anyway, red wall by Brian Jakes and it is pronounced Brian Jakes. He pronounces it that way himself. For me, really good stuff. I recommend it. Please remember to press that like button. It helps my videos get seen. And then subscribe so you can come back next time. I do science fiction book, TV and movie reviews all the time. And please consider becoming a patron. There's a link in the description below.


This review examined the challenges faced by neonatal abstinence syndrome, NAS, children when it comes to accessing outpatient care and utilizing it effectively. The results showed that NAS children face lower rates of outpatient appointments and are more likely to be lost to follow-up than non-NAS infants. Additionally, they experience higher rates of emergency room visits, hospital readmissions, and early childhood mortality. Furthermore, intensive multidisciplinary support provided throughout patient weaning programs can help increase healthcare utilization and may serve as a model for other healthcare fields to improve the health of this population. This article was authored by Adam Van Horne, Whitney Powell, Ashley Wicker, and others.


Turkey has just announced a military incursion into northern Syria. Turkish President Erdogan is saying this is to clear what he calls a terrorist corridor. The Kurds are raising alarms about a humanitarian catastrophe. This is the latest. I'm Mona Yagubian. What led to the U.S. decision to withdraw from military posts on the Syria-Turkish border? The decision came after a late-night phone call between President Trump and Turkish President Erdogan. There had been a long-standing attempt to secure some kind of security mechanism along Syria's northern border that would satisfy Turkey's security concerns but also protect Kurdish interests and allow the U.S. to continue its partnership. It seems pretty clear that those talks have broken down and that precipitated the decision to pull back the U.S. special forces from the border. What are the major risks associated with Turkey's incursion? Turkey's incursion creates a real dire situation inside Syria. First, there's the potential for a new conflict between Turkey and the Kurds. The incursion also risks the long-standing counter-ISIS mission. We rely on our Kurdish partners to guard ISIS detention facilities. They may now be pulled up to fight the Turks in the north and that risks prison breaks and other instability in those areas. There are also significant humanitarian concerns that come along with any conflict. Hundreds of thousands of people could be displaced from their homes. This is in an area that has been relatively stable up until now. What does this mean for U.S. policy in Syria moving forward? Well, we're at a moment of great uncertainty at this point. The most important question really will be the fate of the U.S. presence in Syria. Without knowing how far and how deep the Turkish incursion will go, we could face the situation in which the U.S. is forced to withdraw completely. If the U.S. is forced to withdraw from Syria, it will send a negative signal to our allies about the U.S.'s reliability as a partner. A U.S. withdrawal would also open up a vacuum that could be filled by adversaries such as Russia, Iran, or the Syrian regime.


Thank you, dear Karen, for that lovely introduction and for kind of giving everyone a sense of what this panel is about this morning. And thank you all for being here bright and early, ready to delve into some heavy concepts and ideas. I'm joined here by two brilliant women. First, we have Dr. Chitra Golestani-Magzi, who is adjunct faculty at Valpriso University. She's also co-founder of the Paulo Freire Institute at UCLA and serves as a research associate there. And I could say a lot more about each of these amazing people, but I'll keep it short. And we have Elena Toucan, who is a PhD student right now in curriculum teaching and learning at University of Toronto. And she's very interested in the interplay between global educational policy and local agency. And she's also looking very deeply and very involved in the generation and application of knowledge in community development at the local level. To give you a little bit of background about where this conversation is emerging from, I had the great privilege of being with a group of educators at Bosh Bahai School in Santa Cruz, California in February. And this group was part of a working group in education that arose out of the conference, the ABS conference last year. And many of our conversations really centered around this idea of what is the role of education in advancing the cause of justice. And these questions that came up were very deeply kind of embedded in people's practice, as well as some of the research they were doing in the field of education. And these kind of questions came up and experiences came up again yesterday in our working group meeting in education. So I know there are people right here in the audience who are working in highly segregated schools, for instance, in school districts, and are really trying to grapple with this idea of, you know, how do we recognize what's actually happening? How do we understand racial class-based segregation in schools while trying to be a part of the forces of integration in these schools, while trying to engage in conversations that are very productive and geared towards integration and believe that really integration is how we are going to address some of these problems. We also have other members in the audience who are looking at things like gender inequities in schools, for instance, in Africa or Asia. And so some of the questions that we're going to bring up today in these discussions are really rooted in real experiences of many of you right here in the audience. And we're going to do our best, obviously what we're offering are just two or three perspectives on both education and social justice and the connection which is a very broad topic, but we hope to provide some insights today that can get us in a conversation and to continue thinking about what are some of the current discourses in education around justice and what are some new concepts that we are learning about that we might be able to introduce into those conversations to extend those conversations. So Chitra has teachers, many of the classes she teaches are on the topic of social justice and education. So we're hoping that we can start this conversation with some background about what are some of the concepts that the field is grappling with, what are some of the conversations that are happening, and then perhaps we can move into kind of thinking about, well, what are some insights that we can bring into those conversations. And I should add that one thing we all have in common too is that we are mothers. So we're bringing that perspective as well into this conversation. Good morning, everyone. Such a pleasure to be here and to speak about a topic I'm so passionate about as my colleagues are as well. Everybody can hear me okay? Great. Thank you. Well, I would like to offer just a little bit of background to contextualize where the field of social justice education has been and maybe where we're headed. In the early 1970s, Brazilian philosopher, educator Paulo Freire's book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was translated into English, and many I see heads nodding, which paved the way for critical pedagogy in North America. Many of us know in that book Freire talks about how education is not just about reading the word, but to read the word in order to be able to read the world and thereby read our realities and be able to change it. And that oppression, he says, is not a closed door where there is no exit, but it is actually an opportunity for us to raise our consciousness and create a new reality, basically transform what we see. Now, from the promulgation of universal peace, today it is obligatory for the loved ones of God and their imperative duty to educate the children in reading and writing the various branches of knowledge and the expansion of consciousness that all levels they may go forward day by day. So we see the expansion of consciousness becoming foundational for how we see the world, how we think, how we act, our attitudes, our ways of thinking about research, generating new knowledge, whatever fields we're in, you know, continuously raising our consciousness in many, many avenues is a part of the education that Abdul Bahad is talking about. In an effort to look back at where we've been and the various discourses, I thought I'd start in the 80s because that was a really cool decade, right? Some of you may be familiar with the work of Jeannie Oaks and how she really brought to light the issues of tracking in schools, where from a very young age kids are tracked in low, middle, and high achieving, you know, groups. And how that really limits the access to education for all children. And now we see in the United States how the ramifications of that with the school to prison pipeline, for example, for minorities. We also know that a decade later Valencia talks about how educational institutions will have a deficit thinking model in which students who may not be achieving as well as non-minority students, their families are blamed for why the achievement gap is so wide. That maybe the parents don't value education as much. And they don't show up to PTA meetings, where in fact we have to look at the system. What are the systems in place where parents have to work two jobs to make ends meet. And they may have every desire to be as involved, but may not be able to. And so that enables us to really look at what does asset based model look like and how do we mind those gems of inestimable value that education can alone cause students to reveal their treasures. Even if we were to do all of that, Gloria Latsen Billings brings to light the importance of cultural relevancy. We can have the most brilliant instructional strategies, but if they are not relevant to the realities of the various students, then how far can we get? This framework really gets us to also analyze the color blindness discourse that's taking place now where teachers might say, well, you know, I don't see color and so therefore the dominant curricula continues to be used and minority students do not see themselves reflected in the curricula. And so we're moving beyond color blindness to listen to the voices of the minorities who say, see my color and celebrate it and incorporate it into the curricula. If we were to have cultural relevancy, still we're building on these theories, which is so beautiful to see how we continue to advance. With James Banks who brought forth multicultural education for decades writing in this area and then seeing the limitations of that, of maybe having, you know, different times where minorities are included in the curricula, but it's a tokenism kind of approach and where Kristin Slider talks about multiculturalism having to actually become social activism and change the educational system and really give allegiance to the fact that we are all one humanity bringing forth global citizenship education, which was referred to yesterday in the plenary session so beautifully. I thought it might be a good time at the beginning of the conference to give the definition that UNESCO uses for global citizenship education. They say it aims to empower learners to assume active roles, to face and resolve global challenges, to become proactive contributors to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure world. Does that sound good to you? We done? Should we go home? No, not so fast. Because in our efforts to pledge allegiance to the world and to do these wonderful things that this definition brings forth, we run into some problems. If we are continuing to use lenses which do not take into account the various principles brought forth by the revelation of Baha'u'llah, there are many times that we can have pitfalls. This is brought forth by Vanessa Andreletti. I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but I think she's a Canadian educational theorist who talks about the importance of having critical literacy to examine global citizenship and therefore she calls for a critical global citizenship education. And this is important because sometimes in our zeal to work for social justice, we end up doing things that have unintended consequences that actually hurt those we're trying to serve. One example might be I learned about Muhammad Yunus' micro-enterprise and I want to start a social business and that social business is with a global citizenship lens. And my business becomes successful because I say if you buy one shirt, then another shirt will be given for free to a country that is economically developing. Well then we have to look. If we are inundating a specific place with free clothes or what have you, does that help or hinder their economy, their self-reliance? What are all the implications of our actions? And so critical global citizenship has many aspects and things we can talk about, but there's little time and I'd like to just finish up with a couple more things. This sense of really looking at global citizenship from various angles brings forth an emerging field which is humane education. So Valprasio University and the Institute for Humane Education work together to give master's degrees in education. So I work for both and humane education is quite unique in its development because it's looking at how through systems thinking, human rights, environmental ethics, and animal welfare are all interrelated and what are the root causes of our social problems and how we can foster students' thinking to be solution-based. And so with that, the author, Zoe Weil, who writes the book The World Becomes What We Teach, we really get to look at nurturing this solution-based thinking in students by looking at the root causes of the problems and taking a more holistic approach. Now to end this part of the intro, I'd like to just share that through a Baha'i lens, the injustices we see in the world are manifestations of a socially bankrupt society. And if we are to use all of these wonderful lenses and the discourse that we just briefly took a look at, but don't have spiritual transformation as one of the important aspects to look at, we end up missing a lot. And therefore my colleagues, I'm sure we'll talk more about that, but without looking at transforming hearts as well as minds and solution-based thinking, we may work within existing systems and not pay enough attention to creating new ones. We know that Sharia Fendi says, we cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed, everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life molds the environment and is itself deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and ever-abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions. And so with that, I'd like to turn it over to explore what some of these new realities might be. Thank you so much, Chitra, for that overview. I think one of the things that we in education tend to kind of, one of the theories that we tend to kind of be attracted to is critical theory, is at the basis of many of these discourses, because it allows us to look a little bit deeper at questions of inequity and realities within education. How do these inequities manifest themselves in schools? How are schools in some ways, in many ways, a reflection of the larger society that they're in? How do those systems of oppression, systems of inequities that we see in the larger society actually manifest themselves in schools? So I appreciate that and I know that in my work with graduate students, a lot of times they find these theories and it's very exciting, but then at some point it leads to a sense of hopelessness because you are made aware of the depth of inequities and the realities and then the question becomes, and many of my students ask this question, which is, so where do we derive hope? How do we actually bring about changes? And so I know that part of what you mentioned, Chitra, is that all of these discourses talk about a need to shift consciousness, but they're talking about shifting consciousness within existing systems that are often very oppressive, very problematic and in which issues are deeply embedded. And so I think what we have in the way of inspiration is a lot of the work that we're doing in communities around the world, through the institute process, in developing communities. We're starting to get some insights into how do we actually challenge the systems themselves because I think educational discourse has moved to a point where we realize that part of why it's been so hard to break these cycles of inequities is because they're systemic, that they're systematically embedded. And so I think, you know, Elena, you have this great positioning being both in the field of education, but also being so heavily involved in this community-building process. And so I would love to hear your insights on how do we move from really talking about just shifting consciousness to really also addressing these systems to creating new systems. So as Shabna was sharing some of the words of the kinds of questions that her graduate students ask about where we find hope, I could hear my own questions echoed in those words as someone who's beginning my own path of graduate studies in education and coming up against these many different ways of looking at the systems of education that we have currently and the deeply complex challenges that are within them. And we know as in with any social challenge that we face that to really address what humanity needs at this time requires much more than a surface level reading of reality and requires looking at the very roots of society and of civilization and thinking about what is the civilization that we are working with our friends and as a Baha'i community to advance. And thankfully we do have the teachings of Baha'u'llah to provide that hope, to map the course that we are all aiming to apply into action in the many spheres of influence that we have in our own lives. So I think this is really the starting point in which I come into my own thinking about these questions and this is really simply from my own perspective. But really this question of how do we draw from the revelation of Baha'u'llah to illumine both our understanding and our reading of these discourses in education and social justice, as well as our practical actions. And some of us here are educators as Shabnam mentioned, some of us are academics in this field, some of us are researchers, and of course all of us who are members of a community, who are parents, who are junior youth animators, who are neighbors, we are all deeply concerned about these educational processes that affect all of our lives. So certainly part of our work as members of a Baha'i community is to contribute to the system that exists, to think about these matters of equity that Chitra described so well and think about these pockets of receptivity, these concepts that align with our own conceptual framework and our thinking about matters of education. And many of these insights as she mentioned are deeply insightful. They really look at the situation of the world right now, the dominant narratives as they are and provide very insightful critique and analysis from which we can learn a great deal. But then I think also at a certain point we have to look at the systems we have now and ask the questions of where actually did they come from. If we were to all close our eyes right now and bring to our minds the image of a school, I imagine that for many of us in this room that image wouldn't look extremely different. There would be many elements in common of what we think of when we think of a school. But we also have to be aware that this idea of a school, the systems that we have currently have their own historical processes that are rooted in humanity's earlier stages of development. So as we progress at this time in a stage towards humanity's long-awaited maturity, how might the relationships between individuals, communities and institutions also evolve? And to be characterized by and find their proper expression in the context of the principle of the oneness of mankind in working to build a civilization that is materially and spiritually prosperous. What kinds of systems of education would be needed? So as Baha'is we contribute to the systems and the discourses as they exist, but we're also working to broaden the basis of these questions by learning how to bring into being new educational structures and system that directly contribute towards the processes of transformation and building of a new civilization that is spiritually and materially prosperous. If we were to think about the elements of this system, we might think about these individuals, the communities and institutions, all of these elements of a community that exists. So what might be some of the qualities, attitudes and skills of such an individual who can labor for the well-being of their communities? What knowledge and skills would an effective educational process have to build in these individuals? What conditions facilitate the emergence of a culture and a community that reflects the principles of unity, justice and equality? How would the school be or this educational process be so deeply embedded with the community that it would be directly related to its needs and exigencies of the time? What would be some of the characteristics of the organizational and administrative structures and institutions that harness and channel the initiative of scores of individuals and communities and raise this capacity? So these are just some of the underlying questions that might come to our minds as we try to broaden the basis of these discourses. So perhaps in order to learn about some of these questions, it is helpful to first take a step back and consider some of the ways and we might think about the fundamental purpose of education in the light of the teachings. So as we are today, society expects a great deal from its educational system and some of these expectations are stated more explicitly than others. So in North America at least, we expect students to come out of their educational processes able to participate in society economically by getting a job, by sustaining their livelihoods. So for example, when we're talking in broad policy terms about the success of a school, employment rate or graduation rate might be some of the indicators that we would look at to measure the so-called success of a given educational institution. But at the same time, society also expects education to help students to become good people, good citizens, to participate actively in society, to be kind to their neighbors, to be parts of this organic whole that we consider to be a healthy society. So these questions about the fundamental purpose of education that are being asked in more and more spaces as Chitra mentioned as consciousness broadens creates a lot of receptivity for Baha'is to think about this question alongside them. How can Baha'is help deepen this conversation? What insights from the writing but also from our experience as a worldwide community can we bring? So we are fortunate in fact as a worldwide Baha'i community to have been contributing to the advancement of many educational processes that have given great thought to this question of purpose and nature of education. The educational process that is advancing the junior youth program for example is driven by a twofold sense of purpose that impels individuals to take charge of their own spiritual and intellectual growth and simultaneously to contribute to the welfare of society. This purpose has all of these aspects that we would hope for an educational process seen as rather than in conflict with one another as part of a single integrated whole. We've seen in so many of our communities and I know that for many of us here many examples come to mind of educators, parents and community members who as they come into contact with the junior youth program or their children's classes or these different educational processes in their neighborhoods or among their networks of friends and acquaintances are likewise inspired by such a breadth of vision that avoids the separation of the individual and social requirements and that quotation from the Guardian that Chitra shared about how inseparable the individual and the society are to their mutual progress resonates deeply in these conversations with these friends. So I think that those are just some very initial thoughts and of course there's many more things that we can think about and we'll continue to discuss this morning but we can think of this conversation about the purpose of education as maybe just one example of the kinds of conversations that we can have as we try to broaden the base of our contributions to advancing these questions of education and social justice as members of a worldwide community. Thank you Elena. I think Elena what you shared is something we can all connect with given our involvement at the grassroots and this idea of really reimagining the purpose of education and therefore starting to address some of these systemic issues what does this look like when the purpose of education is really defined at the grassroots based on the needs of any given community is very different from what we see in our education systems today which are very prescribed and very static and motivated by competition and we know there's a culture of testing and so on that very much kind of goes against this idea of learning as being very collaborative and really geared towards empowerment and change so I really appreciate that connection. I also appreciate going back to Chitra's earlier points and I think one of the huge shifts in educational discourse that I appreciate is this understanding that part of the reason why we haven't been able to address social justice issues in education is because we've been approaching these issues from a very deficit based lens we see marginalized communities as lacking certain things and therefore not able to participate girls as lacking certain things and therefore not able to achieve as well as boys, indigenous communities so on and so forth so this new kind of evolving of a very asset based perspective many educators and scholars are talking about that we need to be approaching educational pedagogy, practice and research from an asset based perspective is one discourse that I feel we can connect with because it really brings this idea of the nobility of human beings and recognizing that and the gems and recognizing those gems and learning how to actually bring those gems to bear in their educational process so I'd love to know we believe it or not we only have about 15 minutes and so as we kind of wrap these ideas and continue them I know there's a group meeting at lunch today to grapple more with these thoughts and then with the working groups what are some very concrete ways in which both of you are participating in discourses on education and bringing some of these insights from the revelation into these discourses well I thought I would offer one personal example and one professional one the personal one is quite easy I grapple with the discourse in my household with, you know, an almost teen we had to ask ourselves what does social discourse among 10 to 12 year olds look like and what do we want it to look like so there's an over-reliance on technology as we all know and if this were my device or phone and I came into a social setting instead of having social discourse with others I would just be focused on this so sometimes you can walk into a room of youth and they're no longer looking into each other's eyes they're looking at the screen but that's not all because when they're looking at the screen there's so many apps and so forth that for example one of them is musically where they're doing this all day long and the focus becomes the perpetual self how do I look in this and the conversations become about how many likes I got on that how popular I am and so what we decided to do is create our own reality and instead of just having friends hang out we had a change makers gathering that we're doing now regularly where everyone comes and they put their phone aside and we watch clips of young people being change makers doing very significant things and then altering the dialogue that takes place after that so just a personal example of how we can create our own change that we want to see even starting very very small this can happen in every one of our professions as well so in my particular example that I'd like to offer is an amazing thesis student that I have who is looking through the lens of humane education at the relationship of boom towns where there's a lot of oil extraction and a lot of young men who are hired with high salaries to work and then what that does for increasing female sex trafficking in those areas for example this particular one is in North Dakota and as we were dialoguing about what her research would actually be there was a lot of talk about what are some of the ways in which pimps for example target young girls and how this great human rights abuse continues in country after country but her particular focus was here how law enforcement could curb this and all of these ways in which this could be contained well we asked the questions of what causes children to be recruited in this way and as she started doing her research it came to the fact that the family structures are not there and the children are neglected so they run away from home and that's where they get picked up a little digging deeper then we looked at what about the demand side what causes men of all ages to demand this kind of services from young children does anybody know the average age of girls who are taken into this modern slavery 12 to 14 years old and so when we look behind these acts our hearts and minds of people and when that spiritual transformation happens and people's consciousness are raised and they are educated as a new race of men in this case we mean specifically then you are truly changing the nature of the problem from its roots and so when we are able to utilize in various professions our lens of spiritual transformation linked in with the science that we use in our professions think we are able to uncover a lot and the research then that's done with students then generates new knowledge and that new knowledge is based in deeper rooted issues with more long term solutions I think similarly this question of how we are thinking or I specifically am thinking about my contribution to these questions also touches as Chitra mentioned on the role of knowledge and recognizing that there are particular things that I can do as an individual and the different spheres of influence that I have access to there's certain conversations I can participate in for example as an academic and then there's other processes that are much beyond what I can do as an individual and so I think about my participation in this worldwide community and all of the insights that we can glean from that so I just wanted to also share a short story that really touched my heart from one of these environments these community building initiatives to advance education in the light of these questions about the generation application of knowledge so in this particular neighborhood there was no drinking water available to the inhabitants homes and even though the government had provided the pipes for this neighborhood it didn't seem as if they were going to be established and installed in the near future so the group of students in this neighborhood along with some of the participants of study circles and junior youth groups and the family members in their community decided that with the community's help they could begin taking steps to provide water to the inhabitants of their community so they began excavating the soil arranging the pipes, connecting it to the homes and this allowed the neighbors to have water in their homes without the daily exertion of going to and from the spring to bring water this act of service, although it's simple in one sense was an opportunity for the students to put in practice some of the things that they had learned in their studies about mathematics, about architecture, about geometry about measurement but it also required the students and the community members to draw on certain spiritual principles about the questions of equity and justice and making sure that everyone had access in this way if there had to be a choice between one family or another who are the ones that really would benefit from this more than others and how can collective decisions about this process be reached together in consultation with the community? So this act of service helped the community to understand that they were able to contribute to solving their own problems to certain situations even those that they assumed were the responsibility of people outside of their community and all of the residents participated and actively contribute to installing the pipes singing and smiling all the while while they generated an atmosphere of friendship and generosity among them. So in one way this is a small example but there's so many profound implications about the role of knowledge, about the potential and even though perhaps it's far from our reality here we can still glean some insights about the role of knowledge in this collective endeavor. So certainly there was some application of knowledge of infrastructure and the use of mathematical skills that were gleaned through the student's studies but there was also the spiritual and social knowledge of creating consultative spaces in which unity of thought and action could be realized. There was knowledge of the power of selfless service and the notion that a community is more than the sum of its parts and it was the application of these principles from both the spiritual material dimensions of existence that the group generated the experience and knowledge that could help to inform and expand the vision of communities that are treading a similar path of education. So I think as Karen mentioned before at the beginning of this session we have so much to learn from the implications of the principle of knowledge and its relationship to justice the participation of everyone that justice demands universal participation of everyone in the generation application of diffusion of knowledge in whatever context we might be so I guess just to kind of conclude my thoughts on this how can we all contribute to advancing our understanding and our application of these principles and whatever sphere that we're in because it's also this experience that we're generating as a community that will shed light on the questions of these discourses that we participate in education. Thank you both so much for those very inspiring stories that kind of demonstrate how some of this work can be done. I think we're always looking for those examples. How do we actually introduce new frameworks that can complement existing frameworks in our fields to extend the work to really challenge some of the problematic structures that are in place that perpetuate some of the issues because many of these issues like was mentioned yesterday we've been talking about for decades and so we're really excited thank you for also connecting it to the work that we're all doing in our communities to really learn anew how to create new structures how to create new ways of being how to build relationships that are based on principles of justice and so thank you both. The conversation again will continue there's a group that's meeting during lunch in salon 3 so they invite others who may be interested in continuing the conversations. We don't have time right now for questions and answers but all three of us would love to engage with any of you that have questions or would like to continue this conversation further and to all of you in the audience thank you so much for coming so early in the morning and for being a part of this discussion because as you can see even with the three of us in our work the conversations are always in progress as we're learning together so thank you very much.