You're welcome to class everyone hope you'll had a good Refreshing weekend and ready to face another week Okay, were you able to go through the notes? Yes, no You're able to go through the notes. I can't hear any response Okay, sort of okay Okay, so We began a last class Okay, by looking at the importance of ministering To children and then we began looking at the biblical basis and the mandate Mandate means an order or a command for children's ministry We also looked at God's plan for children that God has a plan for children at his plan includes Family okay that they're part of the family life the importance We saw that God plays in teaching children from scripture We also saw that the children were an integral part of the Covenantal community of the Israelites. They were part of the corporate worship They were part of praising and worshiping God prayer and fasting Repentance also the public hearing of and reading of scripture and also salvation So we see that you know today's children are also part of the Covenantal community And when I mean coming Covenantal community, I basically mean the church. So children are An integral part of the church of today and hence They should be included in various aspects of church life and should also be trained and taught How to meaningfully participate in various aspects of church life. So that is what We saw in class one We'll continue today. We'll look at you know, the ministering to children was a priority for Jesus and We'll also look at some more reasons as to why children's ministry is important Okay, so we'll begin by looking at You know that the ministering to children was a priority for Jesus, so Was it a priority for Jesus? Yes, no, and if it's an yes, how can you establish the fact that yes, it was it was a priority for Jesus If it was no, why do you say so? Can anyone share your thoughts? At least a yes or no was ministering to Jesus Priority or importance to him. Yes, it was Okay. Yes, it was. Okay. Erin is also saying yes. That is saying yes Thank you. Why do you say yes? How do we know we can see the incident when when the kids came to Jesus and the disciples were stopping them and Jesus said let them come to me for for the kingdom of heaven is Of children, so we can see Jesus a late mother minister to children Yes, thank you, Dave So we see this in like Dave rightly said, you know in my to chapter 19 we read that People or parents bought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and to pray for them But the disciples rebuked them Okay, the disciples did not think that the children should be ministered to but we see that Jesus did He made time to minister to children and hence we see that You know, let me just point out to those Slides Okay, so we see that children are precious in Jesus sight. He loves them He wants children to be brought to him and we read this in Matthew chapter 19 was 14 so can somebody read Matthew chapter 19 was 40 I've put the scripture versus on the slides so you can read it out from there, please Anyone can read Matthew chapter 19 verse 14 Jesus said let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as this Yes, thank you And can somebody else read Matthew chapter 18? Worst three unless you become like almost Yes, go ahead and Unless you come like little children, you never you will never enter the kingdom of heaven Yes, so here we see, you know Jesus saying that You know, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven Belongs to such as these and he says unless you become like little children You will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Now. What did Jesus mean by saying this? What did Jesus mean by saying that unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven So should we become small and act immature? Like children I think about that. I think humbling ourselves Thank you. It's humbling yourself. Okay, like little children It's basically Jesus is valuing a childlike nature and Character, you know, what is a childlike nature and the character of a child is they're basically very vulnerable that means they you know, they're they're so prone to You know their weaknesses to difficulties and they're so dependent on their On their parents and they totally abandon themselves the trust and the care of their Parents and so, you know, Jesus is saying that we need to have this childlike Faith and trust and total dependence total surrender to our heavenly father totally just Abandoning ourselves to him trusting him depending on him at all times and being led You know by him and so here Jesus is upholding a childlike approach to life as an essential quality for all Believers now just like parents felt that the children need Jesus so also Children of today need help in learning how to you know navigate in today's world They need more of Jesus because you know, they have Long life ahead of them. They have so much of life ahead of them and also they're living in very difficult Times, okay, so today's children are faced with war terrorism Divorce of their parents, you know crime rape the pandemic itself is so Difficult for them abuse. There's pressure of friends pressure of the world Social media that's telling them so much. They're so confused with what is right and what is wrong And they have so many other different anxieties and hence children of today You know need the touch of Jesus in their life. They need the help of Jesus They need so much of Jesus in them So they need his help to cope and they need his help to deal with the situations They face just as we adults also do we need so much of Jesus We need so much of his help his guidance and the same way children also we think sometimes, you know The children don't need Jesus as much as we adults do but they do need Jesus So when Jesus gave the command To preach and teach the gospel The great commission and to baptize people he did not specify just one particular age group or He it was not a command just for one People group it was a command that was across all ages and for all people groups and we read this in mark chapter 16 verse 15 and also we read this in Matthew chapter 28 verses 19 to 20 so some can somebody read mark chapter 16 verse 15. It's on your screen, please And he said to them go into all the world and fix the gospel to every person Thank you. Can somebody else read Matthew chapter 28 verses 19 to 20 Oh, therefore and make disciple of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit Teaching them to the observe all things that I have commanded you and I am with you always even to the end of the age. Amen Yes, thank you. So here we see that, you know, Jesus is giving this command to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature It's not just Specific one people group or it's not specific just one age group But it's also spit. It's it's you know mentioning You know preach the gospel Teach the gospel to every creature and this is inclusive of children as well So we need to preach and teach to children and the great commission Here it says go and make disciples of all nations Baptizing them in the name of the father of the son of another holy spirit Okay, so here also we don't see any specific age mentioned So even children are inclusive of this. So we need to teach them make them disciples baptize them And help them and teach them to observe all the things that God has commanded us to do Okay, and we also see that the promise of the holy spirit is You know is also for people of all age groups So can somebody read acts chapter 2 verses 38 and 39 please And the Peter said to them repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and your Will receive gift of the holy spirit for the promise for the you and your children and for all who are Far off everyone Whom the Lord God calls to himself Thank you. So here we see that the promise of the holy spirit Is for you that is for adults and also for your children and for everyone who are far off Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself That means all of them who receive Jesus Christ and accept him as their lord and savior and receive Salvation so hence we see through these scripture passages that it was Jesus's priority That children be ministered to The gospel be preached to children and adults as well That children also be baptized and they receive the promise of the Holy spirit. Okay, sometimes we think you know Should children be baptized and we think no they Wait for the baptism, you know for them to be baptized because they won't understand But we have for children, you know, I know children in third standard in children's church You know, they're very eager to be baptized. They tell their parents they want to be baptized So the parents came and spoke to me and we said we'll have a class and The parents also took a step forward and took the child when we had a baptism At church to you know to just listen to what pastor is saying to see how you know Baptism is done and also to make sure that their child You know has accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior And I'm just so glad to say that so many children In our children's church are baptized recently a couple of Sundays back, you know We had a baptism and I think four or five of Of them where children from our children's church, you know, so children can be baptized We can share salvation. We can lead them to the Lord, you know, and also You know, teach them about the holy spirit the person in the work of the holy spirit And also get them to be baptized in the holy spirit and move and flow in the gifts of the spirit Now since children were such a high priority for Jesus They should be for us as a church as well By this I mean that you know children's ministry in a church should be well planned It should be well executed. It should have a team of committed and trained teachers The children's church also should have a relevant Curriculum that is relevant for children in today's time And in today's age where it is, you know matching to their intellect To the standard of what they are learning in school how much they can grasp how much they can understand You know and present it in a way that You know Is equal to how they are presented in in social media and other platforms Okay, and also have a good worship team And activities and programs Not just for them to have fun, but you know in all of these things to enhance Or help them to grow and mature in their relationship with God And to grow in the things of God, okay So since children were a priority for Jesus It might have not been for the disciples But it shows us that children should also be a priority for the church today And we need to focus on developing the right curriculum And teaching the children and taking them just beyond some stories into deeper theological Truths and I will just Talk on that in a little further as we move on in the Class, okay Now we look at a few more important reasons why ministering to children Is important, okay Why ministering to children is important? We look at a few more points The first thing we look at is children are the greatest Mission field, okay, what do I mean by When I say that children are the greatest mission field Of all the people that have made a decision for christ 85% did so by the age of 18 So these are teenagers children You know teens adolescents So basically 85% of them who made a decision for christ This is statistics that show that you know It was before the age of 18 and hence It's so important to for us and as a church to invest our time and resources Where we will see the biggest harvest and the biggest harvest is Children, okay, when when children, you know when they are Attracted to church or they're they love children's church. They love coming to church You know, they automatically will a kind of Pull their parents or their older siblings to church Now if a if a child has to come to church, then one parent has to bring that child to church So we see that many times, you know, we've seen that children Love coming to children's church. They don't want to miss even one Sunday And because of that the parents are forced to come to church And so, you know, even if they are forced to come to church and this they sit and they listen to God's word We know God's word is powerful. God's word will work in their lives. So we see that, you know Younger children when they're attracted and they love to attend children's church Or they learn about more about the love of God. They want to know more about the love of God It'll have an impact on attracting Older children their older siblings and adults as Well, okay now Barnas research on faith development and discipleship has found that the moral development of a child Is complete by the age of nine Okay, I've already mentioned this and you know moral development means what is right? What is wrong? What I understand as truth what I believe as truth what I accept what I don't accept Now all this kind of moral development, you know, kind of comes to Not a full completion, but a kind of completion when a child is at the age of nine And hence we see that it is so important for us to ground children in the truths in God's word So it would be the foundation on which, you know Child will build their moral values and standards now Just imagine if a child does not come to children's church Then you know their moral values will be based on what their friends say What the world says or what social media says and so It's so important for us to teach children at a very young age and ground them in the truths in God's word The principles in God's word so that the foundation on which these children build their moral values and standards Will be God's word and nothing will shake that. Okay. It was Said, you know, uh that D. L. Moody the famous evangelist, you know, um, he just finished a revival meeting And when he came back he reported that two and a half people were saved Now whoever was talking To D. L. Moody replied saying do you mean it's two adults and one child? And D. L. Moody responded.  Just imagine a child as a whole life To live and a whole life to share and talk about Jesus a whole life to build the kingdom of god compared to an adult so When you save a child the child has a whole life to impact and influence others In the kingdom of god and hence we see that, you know, children are the greatest Mission field the next thing is that children Need a firm Foundation children need a firm Foundation now can somebody read a proverbs chapter 22 verse 6, please Proverbs chapter 22 verse 6 Anyone's ready proverbs 22 verse 6 Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it Yes, thank you. So it says train up a child or direct a child on the right path And when they are older they will not leave it. Okay. So, you know, childhood Is an important time And the time we spend with children at a young age Impacts the rest of their lives because the things that Are instilled as a child won't be forgotten when they grow older. Okay And so we see that children's ministry allows us to pour out these core Values into children while they are still growing so that when they grow older They will know these values and as we teach them bible verses to remember They're able to recall Those later in life and in times of trouble not just bible verses, but you know Even as we give them life examples Even as we talk about missionaries even as we talk about various characters in the bible You know, we see that the holy spirit will bring back to remembrance all that they have Learned so we see that children's ministry gives a firm foundation in a child's life wherein, you know It allows us to pour in godly values You know and scripture and The love of god the grace of god the mercy of god the goodness of god Even when they are small so that when they grow old they will not depart from The values that has been taught to Them okay, and the next thing why children's ministry is important is because there's a season In a person's life when they are most Open to learning what it means to trust god. There's a season Okay in a person's life When they are most open to learning what it means to trust god Okay, and this season which i'm referring to where in a person in a person's life where they're most open to learning and to trusting god is A season between Age four and fourteen years old, you know when a person is four years to fourteen years old So basically we're talking about people. We're saying children who are four to fourteen years old They are easily moldable and they will you know Whatever we instill into their lives. It will be Make a lasting impression for a lifetime and during the season of life is when children are Forming their understanding of the world of relationships of love of god And so it's a season where children are easily influenced as well And we should be very very intentional about ensuring That they get the right impressions And they learn the truth and also we need to be very intentional in targeting these This age group because this is a season where You know, they are building up their basic foundations on various things on various aspects and We can be intentional about Ensuring that they get the right impressions and they're learning the truth And I say learning the truth the truth of god's word And their relationship with god and god's love for them Okay, the next thing white children's ministry is important is because what is rooted in the heart of a child Is almost impossible to uproot in the life of an Adult, okay So when god said for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven We read this in ecclesiastis. I think he really did not he really did mean Everything Okay, hence it is during this season When a child is four to fourteen years old When we need to focus our efforts on helping them Place their trust in jesus and have a personal relationship with Him and people call this a season as the four By 14 window it's a four by 14 window And what we do during this window or this season or this time frame or this time period Maybe the most important thing a church does in the life of a Person and why do I say that now, you know, how many adult problems would be solved If when they were a child, you know, they left their primary section You know When they attend in Sunday school or children's church with this deep assurance that they have a heavenly father who Loves them, okay How many adult problems will be solved if when there were a child in maybe the junior level They left children's church or they left Sunday school knowing that they can place their trust in jesus for in every area of their lives Okay, how many of our adult The problems that we are going through the difficulties the challenges that we are going to Can be solved or resolved or we can have this confidence if you know, if we went through high school In children's church and left knowing that you know, that we have a place in god's story and We left making a lifetime commitment to serving Christ so what i'm saying is you know Uh When children in any age group, you know, when they are grounded in god's love and in You know in their relationship with god and they know that they have the heavenly father who they can trust They can depend on who holds them who never leaves them No forsakes them who is not just god But is their father their savior their helper They have this relationship with the holy spirit Who who they know is their guide their counselor their helper Somebody who teaches them guides them, you know, uh What a different approach it would be when they grow into adulthood and they face more difficult challenges and circumstances They can face it better Because they're grounded in the truths because they have taught this and grounded Uh, uh when they are Children, okay So what if everything we did for children focused on winning them for? Christ saving them and them having a personal relationship with Christ the next thing is, you know, why children's ministry is important and also what children ministry is not Is that children's ministry is not? child care Okay, children's ministry is not Uh, child care. Let me just present that Children's ministry is not a child's care. It's a ministry Uh at the most critical time in a person's life in the early years that are the most Formative, okay So when I say children's ministry is not child care. What I mean is, uh, that you know, uh Children's church or Sunday school is not just about Telling stories to children or teaching them some action songs giving them some Sheets to color And then send them away. No, no, it's not just child care But it is about teaching them truths or more theological truths deeper truths in God's world and that is what we ensure and that is what we do in Children's church at apc. So even if they are Adolescents or even if they're you know in grade one and two we ensure that you know The story is not just communicated to a child But you know a deeper truth about God about You know about his grace his love About salvation is taught to the child And children will understand and that's why I said you know last class that When children come to grade two or standard two, uh, you know, they are taught the children's church curriculum Which is all basically comprising of the courses that we teach in bible college So a child in grade two is learning about Covenants the holy spirit doctrine of God You know, uh, it's it's learning about prayer and various other topics So we are making sure and ensuring that you know, uh, children Uh are taught deeper truths in God's world not just give them milk But also give them solid food and meat. Uh, so what do I mean by this? I'll just give you an example Uh, now for example, we're teaching them about telling them on a rating Zacchus's story to them We can just you know, narrate Zacchus's story and stop and we can just say that you know Jesus loves us very much or we can get into deeper theological truths What do I mean, you know Saying that you know, um Now why did Jesus go to Zacchus's house? You know, nobody liked Zacchus. Zacchus was a sinner. Nobody liked him Zacchus was cheating everybody He uh, hence nobody, you know acknowledged Zacchus But why did Jesus choose to go to Zacchus's house?  No, Jesus did not narrate or You know, uh spell out all the bad things that Zacchus was doing the way he was cheating people and people were Waiting when Jesus will Confront uh, Zacchus and tell him all the bad things that he's doing and teach him a lesson But Jesus does not say anything So we can also teach children that you know, we have God we have a father We have a God who's very loving who's not waiting to You know condemn us not waiting to punish us not waiting to judge us But he is longing to correct us so that we can change And we see that Jesus does not Say anything to Zacchus But what happens, you know after sometimes Zacchus Realizes all the bad things that he has done now How did Zacchus realize all the bad things that he's done? They didn't he realize it before didn't he see that as sins does doesn't he see that as things that It was not pleasing in God's side. Now. Why did Zacchus all of a sudden realize was he acting? Oh No, he wasn't because he said Jesus you stay here. I'll go back and give back Everything that I've taken From people Now why why did this sudden change come about in Zacchus's life when Jesus did not confront him Did not tell him of the sins that he did So we can you know bring in a theological truth saying that very Presence of Jesus in Zacchus's life or in Zacchus's home changed Zacchus Okay So telling the child that you know when You have Jesus in your life when you accept Jesus into your life The very presence of Jesus if you Will change your life will transform you So we can go on to tell the children that you know Many of you are trying not to disobey your parents back answer your parents tell lies use bad words And you're trying but you're failing and you're wondering why you're not able to Overcome this sin You know be good, you know, we cannot be good on our own Zacchus could not be good on his own But the very presence of Jesus in his home changed Zacchus the same way the very presence of Jesus in your life Can change you now see this is very It's a deep theological truth that we're bringing about but we're saying it in a very very A simple way for a child to understand and we're Telling the child that it is important for him or her to have Jesus in their life And we're also telling the child what is the importance of having Jesus in their life that you know having Jesus in their life will really transform and change their life so I hope you're understanding what I mean by saying that you know, uh, we Uh children's church or children's ministry is not child care. I've seen this in many churches, you know Often, you know, the teachers don't come or the person who's leading is late the children are on time They're waiting for the worship team to come they're waiting for the leader to come and start And the person is 10 15 minutes late or the teacher doesn't turn up and you know, we just That narrate a story or show them a video put it on our mobile show them a video And give them some old coloring sheets and get them to color or give them a plain sheet and ask them to draw something and color But the children's ministry is not child care. It's taking them deeper into God's word. Okay. Any doubt so far? Any questions you have? any comments Anything I want to share Yes pastor. Uh Yeah, I have a question So, uh, yeah once I was uh, it's a three years back. I was uh helping in Sally school teaching the students but uh pastor most of the Students are not from a Christian background Uh, most of them many of them are from Muslim background in hindus So it was very difficult for us to teach those stories from the bible so Yeah, how can we reach out those? You know those background Yeah Good question. Erin. So Erin is asking that You know when she was teaching But these children used to come to Sunday school Erin Yes, they they used to come every Sunday. Yeah, that's so nice Okay, so they're from a hindu and a muslim background So what I would suggest is to have a separate class you know for Children from a hindu and a muslim background and a separate class for children who are You know already being taught in the sunday school who understand You know God and his word who've also been trained But for uh, you know, we also have something called Catalyst APC school outreach ministry where we minister to children in schools and basically all of these children are Uh from hindu background and for muslim background and uh, you know, we teach them You know We tell just tell them them stories in god's word and also like I just narrated these truths To you I've I even thought the same thing to Children in school and they're able to understand that you know when god is in their life God will help them god will help them to change So yeah, we can use basic simple bible stories and then move on to uh, you know more You know bigger Narratives in the bible where we can teach them and I am sure children Will understand because even as we minister In schools we You know, we also talk to children. We give them the basic Truths who god is first our first You know segment That we have first section is who is jesus? So we teach them that jesus is a creator. We Teach them about jesus that jesus tells the storm. Uh, what jesus created on each day that jesus is our Healer he's our helper You know, so various aspects of jesus and then we move on to sin salvation right attitudes wrong attitudes Where we talk about various old testament and new testament stories. So yes children Uh, you know can understand but basically ground them in the basics and then you know Lead them into salvation and talk about salvation and all of those things and they will understand. Yes Okay, so children's ministry is not child care We'll move on to the next one. Children are not the church of tomorrow. They are the church of Today Okay, children are not the church of Tomorrow they are the church of Today, okay, so we see that you know churches comprises of families and individuals And when you say family it's a family is made up of parents and children sometimes grandparents As well So, uh, you know since children are also part of the family and the family of the church They're part of the communal community We need to involve them in the life of the end of the church in different aspects of the Church, okay, uh, children are also the Now generation Okay, they are the now generation can somebody read Sam's chapter 78 was four, please Sam's chapter 78 was four. Can somebody read that? Can somebody read that it's on the screen We will not give them from our children We will deal the next generation about the Lord's power in his great deeds and the wonderful things he has done Thank you. Uh, you know, we often call children as I refer to children as the next generation and here also we see that You know, the bible says that we will not We will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, but if children's ministry can equip children to see their calling On their life and make a difference now Then we can see the children as the now generation. Okay, where they can make an impact for Jesus Be influencers be impactors in God's kingdom now in the present So what an impact they would make, uh, you know in the church at school and among their friends if we Give them this mindset that you know, uh as a child. They are not to just, you know Just learn stories and keep it to themselves But you know, they are also involved. They can also be involved in evangelism They can also share about Jesus to others. They can also You know, uh, he pray for healing for others Flow in the in the gifts Release prophetic words, you know, can children release prophetic words? Yes, they can You know how many children release prophetic words many children laying hands on others and praying In faith and you know, uh, the holy spirit works through them God hears their prayers and answers So we can train children basically children's church is a training place to train children in evangelism and You know In them identifying their gifts their talents and how to share the gospel with others And also how to flow in the gifts of the spirit and how to minister to Others so children are the now generation. Okay Um They are just as much as the Belong to the body of christ as adults Do and if they know jesus as their lord and savior, uh, you know, they can make an impact for the Kingdom of god and that is why jesus even said the kingdom of god belongs to such as These of course in a different sense But also that you know, uh, children can also do the work of the kingdom They can minister in the kingdom of god and they can impact the kingdom of god So as you look at the greatest command And uh, you know, what is the greatest commandment? What is the greatest commandment? Yes to love the lord your god with all of your heart soul minus trying to love your neighbor as yourself And what is a great commission go the world and make the disciples Yes, um So the greatest uh commission is in matthew chapter 28 versus 19 to 20 Where says go therefore and make disciples of all nations Vaptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy Um spirit. Okay. So we read in these two passages of scripture Uh, uh, and we also see Uh other passages in scripture concerning the church where we read in roman's chapter 12 That you know Though we are all in christ We are one body and each member belongs to all the others In verse six of verse 12 of chapter 12 we read we have different gifts according to grace given to each of us So if your gift is prophesying then prophesy in accordance with your faith Verse seven if it is serving then serve if it's teaching then teach if it is to encourage then Give encouragement if it is giving then give generously if it is to lead do it diligently if it is to show marsy do it Uh cheerfully and if you see this A passage in roman chapter 12 if you read this passage in roman chapter 12 And also the great commission and the great commandment We see that no one is excluded You know all age groups are included in this Um first quarentines chapter 12 where it talks about the spiritual gifts We we also see that no one is excluded that everybody is included in this that even children are included And you will not find degrees to which this is happening based on age or any other criteria But we have the holy spirit who works in all of his power In in an adult in the same power. He will work in the life and minister through a Child okay, uh, we'll move on Children are the future leaders of your church now the values we instill in them now Will spread on for a lifetime and allow them to raise up the generation after them as they grow Older so these children could be the next Children ministers or the next children leaders. So it's important to give them a good basis for that from now on Okay, the next one is uh, children need to feel god's love. Okay children's ministry may be the only time where you know They will where we can teach them about god's love where we can instill in them god's love Where they truly will experience god's unconditional love and just accept it and just believe it as As a truth. Okay. So it's so important to raise up a generation of children that know They're worth in christ jesus know that they are loved And so important for us to instill this in them because we do not know the background That each child is coming from What are their difficulties? What are their pains? What are their anxieties? What are their worries?  He's their savior He's their father. He cares for them Uh by just doing this, you know, uh grounding this truth Will just help them in their future to be assured Of who they are their identity in christ That they are loved by god and they will do everything Or their life will reflect the love of god and everything that they do will be based on Their relationship their love relationship with God, okay So we'll stop here. Uh, do any of you have any questions? Comments doubts anything you all want to ask or say Any doubts any questions? No, yes Okay Okay, fine. So we saw the importance That You know that Children's ministry the importance of children's ministry how important it is for us to minister to the children the children and you know that The truths that are instilled in them at this young age will help them The life to come and we can also build them up. Um, you know at a very young age to To build god's kingdom To share the good news with others and also to impact People around them other children around them and to impact the kingdom of god to build the kingdom of god Okay, we'll stop here if you all don't have any doubts Um We'll end plans Okay


Hello, you are watching People's Dispatch and today we are going to be talking about cryptocurrencies. Now this is following the bust in many of these cryptocurrencies, a massive decline in their value over the last month. A lot of people wondering what their future will be, we heard terms like Terra, Luna in addition to the usual ones like Bitcoin and there's been a lot of criticism off late especially about the whole model through which they function and talking about why they are really bad for society. We have with us to talk about is Baba Sinha who is written a very categorical article which says with the title why cryptocurrencies was dying. Baba, so first of all let's go into the context, like I said one of the main factors that happened to place last month was the crash of Terra and Luna which are two cryptocurrencies. So could you maybe take us through that and why that was one of the factors that caused this panic? So the panic was all across the cryptocurrency space, right? The biggest one of the cryptocurrencies has been Bitcoin which fell, which is fallen by about 55% but there were two of these cryptocurrencies from, there is a single organization called the Terra Foundation and they issue two cryptocurrencies. One is called Luna, the other one is called Terra USD which is a stable coin and both of them collapsed and finally collapsed all the way to zero. So between the two, their combined market cap at their peak was close to 50 to 60 billion dollars, right? So almost like over a weekend 50 billion dollars evaporated and which obviously has its impact across the space. So that's really the context. Now why they collapsed is interesting. It's interesting because why they were worth 50 billion dollars is the real question. They are just a classic Ponzi scheme, there is really no other way to describe them. What they are, Terra USD is a stable coin. So what is a stable coin is that it guarantees a peg to the US dollar. So one Terra USD is equivalent to one US dollar, at least that was the promise that the Terra Foundation made. Now when such pegs are done, there's typically some, you need to have some asset to back that peg, right? But incredibly, there was no asset backing the peg. It was supposed to be done purely algorithmically. And so there are two coins and what they promised they made was that the Terra USD would be inter convertible with Luna at $1. So that the Luna Foundation would exchange one Terra USD for $1 equivalent of Luna, right? And so, I mean, as ridiculous as it may sound, it's like I, let's say, say that, okay, I'm going to give you two chits of paper, like a blue chit and a yellow chit. I'm going to say that I will guarantee that the blue chit is for, let's say, worth 100 rupees, each of those chits. And I'm going to guarantee a inter convertibility between the two at the rate. That is a blue chit and the yellow chit, right? And I'm going to say that with the blue chip at 100 rupees, right? So that's the guarantee. Now, if I were to make this guarantee and then how does it work, right? So if it goes, let's say, the blue chit in the open market starts selling for 105 rupees, then people will, what they will do is they will take the yellow chit, they will come to me and say, oh, convert it for blue chip at 100 rupees and then sell it in the open market for 105 rupees, make up 5 rupee profit. And so if enough people do it, the supply of blue chits will go up, the price will go down to 100 rupees, right? And the reverse is true also. But you have to wonder why would the yellow chits be worth anything or why would I mean just me saying that this is worth 100 rupees doesn't make it worth 100 rupees. But that was what the Terra Foundation was doing. Now, as long as enough people were buying into this, it worked. Now, once people stopped buying into it, it just collapsed, right? Why would you want to invest in something which is going to be stable, right? The whole point is it's fixed to $1, right? So why would you want to hold something with the stable?  Well, you were incentivized to do this because there was yet another scheme they launched which was called Anchor. So you could take your Terra stable coins and put it in Anchor and they were giving you 20% return, guaranteed returns. Now, think of it in a global world where getting any yield is kind of difficult, right? I mean, in a developing country like India, you were getting like 5%, 6% FD rates in the US being close to zero and the Europe you're going to close to zero. And suddenly somebody comes and says we're going to give you 20% guaranteed yield, that has an attraction, right? And there are a lot of people, unfortunately, who fell for that. But the question is if somebody is promising 20% yield, there is some way for them to make it up. Now, with the way they were making it up, the Anchor protocol was basically a lending scheme. Clearly, this is- So this is basically an interconnected web of promises which are not really backed by anything. Which are classic Ponzi and as long as everybody believes in it, it works. So the basic model was that there was a hype built around it. People started investing money based on that they kept fulfilling their promises. And then at some point, the investment stopped and then everything crashed. That's what it basically sounds like. That's what all Ponzi schemes work. How do Ponzi schemes work? If I say, okay, I'm going to give 20% returns to everybody. That's an attractive return. Every people start putting that money in. So then I take money from the new investors, give it to the old investors. And as long as I keep on getting new investors, the scheme works. The moment the new investors stop coming, I don't have enough cash to give and write the whole scheme collapses, which is what happened in this case. Right, so Vapa, this is a very complicated scheme backed by nothing. It's all air, no substance at all. That's what it sounds like. But is this just something that Terra and Luna were doing? Or is this generally a theme of the whole cryptocurrency system itself? Because there's so much hype and all that. That is what it looks like. I mean, to a large extent, this is based on hype and Ponzi schemes and fraud. Terra is still a relatively smaller stablecoin. The biggest stablecoin is called Tether, right? Now, Tether claims to have real assets backing it up, right? But look, when somebody says I'm pegged to a dollar, it's like a mutual fund, right?  That's what mutual funds, fixed deposits, that's what, not mutual funds, that's what fixed deposits do, right? But fixed deposits by law in various countries have to disclose what they're investing in. Now, incredibly, Tether claims that it has actual real assets backing its Tether coin, but they are held in trust in Bahamas and they have not disclosed what those assets are, right? And that's the biggest stablecoin in the crypto space.  Is that also a fraud? Who knows, right? I mean, the problem is that there aren't enough regulations. Like if you open a fixed deposit, if a bank gives a fixed deposit, there are banking regulations. If you do a security, you do bonds, stocks, whatever, mutual funds, there are regulations in every country which enforce a certain level of transparency. Now, because the crypto space is new and the governments have been slow to act, there is no regulation in the space. And effectively, what they're trying to do is, they're trying to replace the traditional functionality which these older asset classes provide. They are trying to say that, oh, we have this great technology and we will provide it to you cheaper, whatever, more secure and all that. But with no regulations, it's basically, it's crazy what's going on, right? Then they pretty much- Wild West, so to speak. But let's come back to that point you're talking about in the sense that the promise of Bitcoin initially when it came out and all cryptocurrencies for that matter was that it would be a decentralized system, like you said, that there would be peer to peer as in you and I could have an interaction without some kind of third entity which is monitoring our transactions, etc., etc. And there would be a democratic financial system which is not under the control of the big banks, where individuals could have more freedom. So that was the argument that was posed to all of us, many people bought it. Many people benefited as well. But what is the flip side of this argument? Does the argument actually work? Is it a practical argument, especially when you scale it up? Is it something that can actually replace the traditional financial system? Right, now, so we need to go, I think we should look at what basically a currency is, right? Now, traditionally, currencies have been either backed by a hard asset, right? Like gold usually. Like gold, earlier used to have gold and silver coins. The coin itself would be worth like a $1 gold coin or a 100 rupee gold coin would actually work that much of gold, right? Or very close to that. So that was the hard asset backing it, right? And later there was a convertibility between the government notes. So when the government's initially started issued notes, they would be backed by a hard asset, right? So the note would typically say the government promises to pay you so much, right? And the promise was because they are a hard asset. At some point, they changed it that they didn't need to have the full hard asset, but they needed to have a percentage of that, right? Eventually, like over time, the countries got rid of the hard asset. It was just a promise from the government. Now, so what does that mean? That this really what is backing the currency is the sovereign. It's the state which backs the currency, right? Now, if you are then saying that, okay, you don't like the state or you don't trust the state, so you will have effectively an algorithm back the asset, back the currency. So one, there are no assets backing the currency. And there is no sovereign or no state backing the currency, right? Then is the currency, what is the currency really worth, right? And who then is responsible for creating the currency? Now, the thing is that we may not like states we live under, but at the end of the day, the state is the sovereign, right? The state is theoretically supposed to at least represent its people. Now, if you take the power of creating the currency and controlling the money supply away from the state and give it to private entities, you have effectively given up even a pretense of independence, a pretense of like your sovereignty to private hands and then they then control your currency and your money supply, which I think is far more tyrannical than any tyrannical state controlling you. Yes, but isn't the cryptocurrency argument also that it's not a private company or a corporate which is doing that but it is peer to peer or in the sense that there is no, it's ultimately between like for instance, if you and I are having a transaction, it is between you and me as and without a third person. So where does a private thing come in? Well, the thing is that one is, yeah, me and you can exchange currencies, but how does the currency come into existence? The currency comes into existing through a process called digital mining. Now, what does it mean to do digital mining? Effectively, it means solving these cryptographic problems using a huge amount of computing power, which means having big computers. And then you need electricity to power these big computers. Now, the more powerful your computer is, the more electricity you can afford to spend, the more mining you can do and the more Bitcoins you can, or any crypto coins you can create. Now, that necessarily means that the more powerful people will have a monopoly over this money creation and also people who are the early movers. So the people who got these Bitcoins or Ethereum or whatever for cheap originally and they're hoarding all these coins, they then suddenly have all this wealth while the masses of people have nothing. So it's effectively a kind of this feudal system where you have a very small set of people who control all the wealth and the vast majority of people have nothing. Now, if you come back to the more basic question. So one is this question of, it's a political question, right? Who controls money supply and who controls currency? But for the other talking points about Bitcoin or any of the cryptos was one that it's a store of value and it's a transaction medium. And it's a hedge against inflation. Now, we have seen that all of these things have not been met, right? One, as a store of value, its prices have fluctuated so dramatically, right? It's like, for example, Bitcoin in the last, whatever, from the start of the pandemic, let's say from March of 2020 to the end of 2021.  And then from that point to now, in a matter of six months, it has dropped by 55%. So if you bought Bitcoin at 64,000 and sometime in end of 2021, you have lost like 55%, that's no store of value.  The assumption is that I'm getting an equivalent value in return, which then I can use to buy something else. But if that thing fluctuates so much, then I mean, it doesn't work that way. The other problem is that in terms of the number of transactions it can do, right? So all this is really to, I mean, you can't really hold bitcoins. These are not physical things, these are digital things. So really the use of them is to transact digitally. Now, but the problem is like, for example, Bitcoin, the number of transactions it supports at a global level is like less than 10. It's like four to seven transactions per second. Now, most of the credit cards which have existed, I mean, the credit cards in the US and the West have existed for 30, 40 years, right? They can do tens of thousands of transactions per second. So if this is the next, the future of currency, you can't have a future of currency which is incredibly inefficient. It hogs electricity like anything, like Bitcoin alone hogs as much electricity as a mid-sized country or a few small countries. And it does like many orders of magnitude less than what systems which are 30, 40 year old support. That's not going to be your transaction medium for of the future, right? And then the third thing is inflation hedge.  And so we need something which will hold on in presence of this massive money printing. Well, since the pandemic, the central banks have printed like crazy, right? And yet in the last six months, Bitcoin has gone down by 55%. It's like, forget about like hedging, like keeping pace with inflation. The nominally it has gone down, so it doesn't even work that way. And see, these are not just rhetorical points being made. This is not like theory. There are people to whom this was sold, right? And vulnerable people in countries with high inflation, like relatively developing countries, Argentina, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the people who invested their life savings because they were given this promise, their inflation hedge. It's an investment vehicle and all. And they have literally lost everything. So it has very human consequences. Absolutely. And upon that case, final question, then what really is all the hype about? Why is it so celebrated even despite all these massive crashes that we saw last month?  We haven't lost hope. Various agencies and institutions saying that, you know, we're not, we're still sanguine or okay about it. So what drives the media or the cultural aspect about it so to speak? So see, I think like you should look at it over a fairly long period of time, right? Over 10 years, you've tracked the history of this. It started around the 2007, 2008 time frame when the 2008 financial crisis hit. And with that, there was a crisis of confidence in the banks because like pretty much the entire banking sector of the West had collapsed, right? And it needed state support to revive. And it needed huge amount of money printing by all the big central banks to revive, right? So that collapse in confidence of the banks and the collapse in confidence in the central bank basically had people thinking that, okay, we need a currency where the banks are not involved and where the central bank is not involved. But this is also driven by a very like almost an ultra-right viewpoint, right? A libertarian viewpoint where the state has really no role other than maintaining law and order and enforcing private property, right? So where money creation itself has been now outsourced to private entities. So it is that which the like lot of the initial movement was driven by these hardcore libertarians, tech libertarians who adopted this. Then we get into this phase when the hype was driven by this crazy run up, right? Bitcoin went from like just in the last 20 months before the current crash. It went up by 16 times. Some of these others like Luna, which went to zero, had before that gone up 1000 times and like Ethereum had gone up some 50 times. Like all these had like so that kind of drove a lot of attention to it. A lot of people invested and made tons of money. So that was the kind of the second phase. Once this happened that lot of people made tons of money, after that the institutional money moves in, right? Which is the hedge funds, the venture capital funds. And they see this as a vehicle for making quick bucks. Now if you look at it like, if you look at the evolution of finance, right? So initially when you look at finance was meant to fund industrial production, right? Now then the West kind of got rid of its industries. They were shipped to East Asia and then the finance became a means to itself, right? So you would do stock deals, you would do bond deals. You would have these big banks doing all kinds of esoteric products, right? And that would generate huge profits, much more profits than production would. But even those things have regulations, right? And especially after the 2008 financial crisis, there was an attempt in the West to regulate banking, right? And so some of the wild speculation in the banking sector with the mortgage crisis had been curtailed. And so then you move to this tech boom, right? So you invested in this tech IPOs and they became big. And initially these were like really companies which were which had which were providing which have which had revenue flows and profits, right? You move from there to companies which were had no revenue or no profits to speak of and they were going IPO.  Now, look at crypto, it's a perfect market. There's no regulation, you can make your investment and you have all these people who will pump up your crypto coins.  It was like, okay, this is so ridiculous that we will make a parody coin and that went up ridiculously in value.  You can pump in money, get very quick returns, no regulatory oversight.  And that's what drove the institutional money in. With the collapse of Luna and Terra, there has been a shock and a loss of confidence. We need to see that going forward, do people get suckered back into this? Or do governments step in for that matter? Or do governments step in for that matter? And some governments have, right? China has stepped in and banned all crypto, both mining as well as transactions. India for a while toyed with it, right? But then backed off, because there are powerful financial interests which are entrenched in this space. And then backed off, now India is talking about regulating it and taxing it and all that. We will see where it goes. The other aspect I think to think about is there are central banks which are now, like for example, the Chinese central bank has said that they will introduce this digital yuan, right? The Indian central bank has announced that they're looking into creating a central bank reserve currency and many other central banks who are at least looking into that. Now that, there is a really a confusion between that and the crypto space and really they're very separate things. This one is backed by the central bank digital currencies. They're backed by the state, right? They're fully under the state control. And the central bank really acts as the intermediary. So they can then support far more transactions. They're not electricity hog and all of that. And that may very well be the answer to the problem that there is exploding increase in digital transactions. And you probably need new innovations in that space. And the central bank digital currencies probably could fill that space in a more, in a way which is politically more palatable to us. At the same time, it has a central bank. And safer also. Safer also. I mean look, one of the questions I think we should ask is if, like we've discussed so many like drawbacks, right? Now what are they good for? Well, they're good for if you want to do money transaction without being tracked, right? If you want to do, they're great for tax evasion, for money laundering, for funding drugs and illegal weapons and for collecting ransom. It's great, right? So for all the, there are many of these ransomware attacks where the attackers wanted the ransom money paid in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency so that it can't be tracked. And so that is a great use for them. And I mean really, that's why my article was, Why Crypto Must Die, it serves no useful purpose. It's been used for illegal activities. It's an electricity hog in times of great climate crisis. It needs to go, right? Thank you so much Vapa, you've given your verdict once again. So that's all your time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch for more such interviews and news on important issues.


The towers collapsed. What do you mean, the towers collapsed? Your eyes almost could not believe what they were seeing. I knew that this was a question mark that was going to linger over America. Are we going to be all right? New York, are we going to be all right? Can we recover from this? It was an average New York day, except that it was election day, primary. When I walked past a store, everyone, their eyes was glued to the television set and I looked over their shoulders and I saw a smoking building. One of the towers was struck. Immediately, I thought terrorism could not have been an accident. New York City was under attack. I knew it was time for me to make my way to my command at the time. It was the 88th Precent in Brooklyn on DeKalb Avenue. As I walked across the bridge, it started to see people come over that was just terrified. When I went down to Ground Zero that night watching the ground smoldering military personnel, police personnel, firefighters, first responders, all covered in soot. And just looking at a sight that I've never witnessed before in my life of total destruction. It was as though New York had the wind knocked out of it. The most remarkable moment for me was September 12th. On September 12th, we got up. It was a symbol of the invincibility and resiliency of New York City and in the country. Fast forward to today. As the mayor of America's city, I have the awesome responsibility of looking at these crises and seeing us through the crisis. But as my mother's told me as a child, a dark place can be a burial or a planting. And we're not buried, New York. This is just a planting. We're going to come back bigger, better and stronger than ever. And I believe that all we have to do is look towards each other and stand up for each other. And we'll get through this just as we did during 9-11. As long as you remain focused and believe there's always going to be a September 12th when we can get up.


Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us to learn more about MTSS today. We will be talking about research-based interventions. I'm Steph Lundgren, a PD coordinator at ESU 8. And I'm Tony Earhart, the MTSS and peak coordinator. Welcome. Here's our contact information. Feel free to reach out to us with any questions about the things we talk about today, or just generally the MTSS process at your school, or if you need support at a meeting or, you know, anything like that. Yep, definitely let us know. This is our agenda for today. We'll really talk you through selecting interventions, some resources to make good choices, some guidelines for implementing and selecting good interventions, questions to ask as you plan out and some tools to review research-based practices within that intervention. And then we'll share with you some of the supports that we can offer. This graphic is that MTSS pyramid that we oftentimes show to kind of give that visual of the process. And whether you're working with academics or behavior, we start with tier one in that those core supports that we offer to all of our students. Some students might need tier two supports, which are extra interventions layered onto that core. And even fewer students might need some intensive supports. And so that would be, you know, more intensive intervention with those students. And as you work through this process, you're also addressing the A-Quest tenants. Nebraska MTSS has a wonderful website that offers lots of resources for you to use. I'm going to go ahead and move our pictures so that we can see that better. Clear to the right, if you get to the MTSS website is a resources tab. And there, you know, as we think about our interventions today, you can do a program comparison. And within that, you can select either math, reading, writing, oral language, behavior, and even some COVID-19 resources to compare programs on. And if you don't see the programs that you're using or that you're interested in using, you can request that a program be reviewed by UNL. So they've been a really great partner in MTSS to make sure that, you know, we're picking the right things. We're using the programs that are research-based and proven to work. And the website is linked on here also. Yes. And there's also a link at that tab to Ed Reports. Now Ed Reports is kind of like the consumer reports of instructional materials. And they've also gone through and reviewed their alignment to standards. So why is it so important that we use research-based interventions? Well, you know, it's just really important that we focus on things that are proven to work, right? So if we have a limited amount of time with our kids, we want to make sure that in that time we're using it as wisely as possible. We're using it with programs that are shown to have success for students in any of these different areas. So this goes along right with the why. So why is it essential? Evidence-based practices increase the likelihood that students will have on positive outcomes. So if your school isn't really looking into programs and not using research-based practices, you may not have the gains that other schools may have that are using research-based practices because this research is done for you. So that's why we're having this presentation now, is so that these schools take the time to really look into these intervention programs because we want you guys to see the best results with students that you can. So we want to give you the resources to use to look into those. So we really want you to use these EBPs, which are evidence-based practices. And according to the Nebraska MTSS, this comes right off their website. This is one of the essential elements of the any MTSS process. So it's the third one down. We would like you to use evidence-based practices in curriculum, in your intervention and your assessment. So it's an important piece of the elements of MTSS. And there's more information on this also and some documents if you want the survey. There's some questions on there so that you guys can evaluate how you're doing with getting research-based interventions or even your curriculum also. Intensive interventions are necessary for students with difficulties in academics and behaviors or behaviors. Here are some guidelines to follow. So a few guidelines I want to know are usually interventions meet for a minimum of four days a week. So if you think about if you've ever have days off of school, that's important that in order for it to be an intervention, it should be a minimum of four days a week in order for that student to receive that intensive intervention time. It's usually 30 minutes each time. But in order to figure out how much time is needed in an intervention, we recommend that you look at the guide or the handbook on that intervention on how much time is needed per day in order to catch that student up to grade level. Based on your tiers of where those students fall, that's how you'll base your minutes off of. And this may be found in your decision rules also. So we often see in tier two, 20 to 30 minutes per day with each student. And in tier three, it needs to be a layered support so that intervention should be more intensive and you may need additional time plus that 30 minutes. Interventions generally have a placement test so that it can show you where the students at. And we always want your strongest instructor with the highest need of students, your lowest student should be with your strongest instructor. Interventions also need to be trained in that intervention. So please let us know at the ESUA how we can help you get that training. If we don't have it, we'll look for it or maybe we're offering it. You can go to our website and see right now which ones we have available. And I think this is really important now is to ensure you have fidelity checks on your interventions. Fidelity checks ensure that your interventions are doing it accurately. You want your students to get the best results from those interventions and the intervention needs to be doing it accurately in order to get the best results. And intervention should be compatible with their core programs. Some interventions don't mesh well with other core programs and we really want them to be compatible compatible in order for those students to see success. So these are just a few intervention guidelines that we suggest at the ESUA. If you have any questions on these or you're not meeting them or need help meeting them, please reach out to us. Here are some questions to guide your selection in getting research based interventions from any MTSS. There's just a few questions that you should look at and I kind of went over a few of what the ESUA expect on the previous slide. So just give you a few minutes to look over this yourself. And you can always come back to this also. But these are going to help you reflect on your current practice and determine future steps. Okay, here are some tools for reviewing evidence based interventions. We've shared these before but these are the websites that we recommend if you're looking at new interventions or even curriculum. If you want to find out more on these websites, this will help you base your information when choosing interventions off of research and not just opinions or if you like it. So we really want you to base it off the research and also use the website from what Steph said earlier on the program comparison chart in addition to these. And the link to this presentation if you want to access all these links will be in the description of this webinar on YouTube. And here's some more tools for reviewing the evidence based interventions also. And these are linked these subject links so you can definitely hit those links when Steph has that in the description there for you. And we're always here available to support you and your needs. We want to base your support on what your school needs in MTSS. So there's different ways that I can support you as the MTSS coordinator. I can offer professional learning and come out to your district and help you in your professional needs with the PD team also. There's classroom coaching that I can provide along with other coaches at the ESU 8. I can provide fidelity checks and come out to your district and make sure that there's fidelity to your core program or interventions or help train others on fidelity checks. And lastly, I'll always be here to collaborate and support you and your team, however, through email phone. And then steps here also is the PD coordinator and she supports many things in MTSS especially in the reading core area and interventions. And we offer MTSS days now at the ESU 8. We had our first one last year and we saw many success stories from that and schools really appreciated our information. So we have developed a five year process with two days in each year. We first start at the core and then you build your interventions from that you of course keep doing the things that you're doing now, but you pick the area of need, whether it be reading math or behavior, and then you work through these years. We also offer onsite coaching with these days so we'll come out and help ensure that these things are being done. But we feel like this is a way to help you in your MTSS process and guide you in the things that need to be done in order in order to have a successful process. If you have any questions though please reach out to myself or step on this. Absolutely contact us anytime and thanks for your time today. Yes, thank you.


So, welcome everybody to this session on blogging tips, how to be a great blogger. My name is Theresa Cochran, I'm in the communications team at IED in the UK and in my job as in the communications team, one of my roles is to edit the blogs that come to me from our researchers. So, I have, yes I've got lots of experience of having edited hundreds of blogs and what I want to share with you over the next 30 minutes is some of the tips that I give to our researchers when they're writing. So, it sounds from what I've heard that some of you have blogged or are thinking about blogging. What I'm going to share today are basically going to run through some top tips on getting your blog read and ways for it to have the most impact. So, we're going to look at some questions that you need to ask yourself before you even start writing your blog. We're going to have a look at the structure, some top tips of how to structure your blog. Again, it's really useful if you can think about what the blog will look like before you start writing and then some tips on sort of writing itself. So, looking at sort of the language and the tone and that kind of thing. So, I'm going to kind of make the assumption that you all are relatively familiar with blogs. I'm just trying to forward my slides here, might just take a second. So, a blog is an online article written either for personal use or to fulfil business needs. So, that is a kind of, I mean, there's very, very, there's, blogs are very wide and varied. There's lots of different types of blogs out there, but that's just a sort of basic definition. But what I would like to know from you all very quickly in the chat box is why you would blog in the first place. Any ideas from anybody about why you might blog? Please be bold. We've got, we're under not much time here. So, any quick ideas on why you might blog? Change the world. Change the world. That's pretty ambitious, yeah? If you get your blogs to be so excellent, they can certainly have really big impact. Any other ideas? I usually blog only when someone forces me to. It's because someone's making me do it. Okay, so you are, this is like they're an output for delivery. That is often the case and that can happen in IID as well. But that's a nice one to share success stories or lessons learned. That's a really nice one. Yeah, so blogs are really short snappy reads. They're really popular. And they are a quick, easy way of sharing information. That's why I would say that you might want to blog in the first place. They're really short, easy and popular. There's also lots of flexibility with blogs. You can do anything you like with them. You can write about research. You can write about a project, an event that you've been to. You might have tips that you want to share. You might want to start a discussion. Lots and lots and lots and lots of flexibility. So that might be a reason as to why you blog. But one point I make, and this might sound really obvious, but I'm going to make it anyway, is because you've got something interesting to say. And yeah, I come across lots of blogs. And you've got to remember that we are in a kind of situation, a kind of an information overload, almost, when we've got not only lots of information out there, but lots of blogs, lots of people are writing blogs, lots of people are reading blogs. So that means that you are sort of competing with lots of stuff out there. So ask yourself, really honestly, before you start writing, have I got something interesting to say here? Is this really interesting? And if it's not, what can I do to make it more interesting? So almost sort of being really honest with yourself about whether people are actually going to want to read this. But actually, one point I make is that even though you might have something interesting to say, that in itself is not enough to make sure that your blog is going to get read. You have to be more strategic than that. You know, they are short, snappy reads, they're popular. But yeah, just because you think you've got something interesting to say, it's not enough. You need to ask yourself some questions and any ideas from anybody on what those questions might be in the chat box or on the microphone? What questions might you need to ask yourself before you start writing? Any ideas? Okay, I'm going to kick you off with the first question that I ask. Who is the audience? Charlotte, that's an excellent one. That's actually second on the list. Who is the audience? Any idea? Well, I'll kick you off with the first one. The first one is the what. Like what is it that you want to share? Is it research findings? Is it tips on the back of a field event that you've been to? Is it a story that you want to share? Are you looking to start a conversation? So what very specifically is it that you want to share? And what I ask researchers for before they start writing blogs is to sort of say to me in one single sentence, what is it that your blog is going to be about? So my blog is about, say for example, my blog is about sharing research findings on the importance of climate information for CBA. You should be able to tell me what your blog is about in one single sentence. So get really, really focused. The second point is the who. Indeed, Charlotte, who's the audience? So you're not just thinking about what you want to say, but you're thinking about who you want to say it to. So who is that out there? What do they need to know? What do they want to know? You're not sort of thinking about necessarily everything that you know about this topic, but you're thinking about your audience and what it is that they need to know. And another question sort of attached to this is what do you want them to do? So are you looking within any type of communication? It almost falls within sort of two major categories. So there's sort of the push and the pull. You might be familiar with that.  So both of them are completely viable. So but what are you trying to do with your blog? Are you trying to just sharing information or are you trying to, do you want them to get in contact with you? Are you looking for feedback? Are you looking for them to collaborate? So thinking, who is the audience and what do you want them to do after they finish reading your blog? Any ideas on the third key question that you might ask yourself before writing? Anyone? Where or how? Yep, why? These are all, yep, they're all good. So on the where is your blog particularly relevant to a particular region? Why I think that's good that I imagine is potentially covered by the what? Like what are you writing? So what, why is this important? Platform, we're going to talk about distribution towards the end. That's good. But one question I would ask is when? Like why are you writing this now? Why is it important? Is there a particular reason? Is there is there a policy dialogue that's happening at the moment? And that's what's prompted you to write this? Is there an event happening? Is there a particular sort of moment in time? So, so the reader knows upfront, you know, this is all very well, but why are you telling me this now? So and if there isn't a particular kind of peg for your blog, try to sort of think of one, look on the horizon and see what's happening out there, what social media discussions are happening that you could use to make your blog more relevant because so say for example, if somebody who is not connected with CBA, for example, is writing about their research findings, if they can link what they're saying to this big international online event that's happening, those discussions are already on already sort of underway. So you can kind of piggyback on what other people are talking about. So thinking about the when is also a really, a really good thing, a really good question to ask yourself. So if you can answer what, you can answer who and you can answer when you have got, I would say the really, a really good grounds for for writing a really good blog, really good strategic blog with impact. If you can't ask any of those answer any of those questions, I would tell you to go away and do some more thinking about it. So to get really focused is all clear so far. I'm going to crack on. What are the key ingredients of a blog? In the chat please. What is it about blogs that make them different from other types of communication?  Key ingredients for a blog. What are the key characteristics? Photos, simplified terms. Yeah, excellent. We'll talk about why it's really important to have photos to bring your blog to life. Simplified terms, absolutely. I'm going to tell you why it's important to keep blogs short in lots of different ways. In fact, we'll kick off with that. So the first thing about blogs is that they are obviously, they are online and that they are supposed to be sort of short, easy to read pieces. They're sort of written to be read on the go. So key is keeping it short. And so by short, I mean short in length. Any ideas about how short a blog should be, no number of words, anybody? So I would say a good blog in length is about 600 to 800 words. We're thinking short in terms of short language, short words. So you're keeping the language really simple and general and easy to read. You're thinking about short sentences. So if you imagine when you're reading text online, even two sentences can very quickly turn into a paragraph. So it's really important to keep your sentences short and your paragraphs as well. So really, when it comes to blogs, less is more. People are not coming online to read blogs, to read sort of long analytical discussions. And we know that when we're reading online, we read it in a very different way than we would do with print, sort of in newspapers, newspapers or other printed matter. You read it differently. You're scanning information. You're looking to extract information quickly. So people will not want to run through 2,000 words of text. They're looking for short answers and they're looking to extract information. Easy to read. This is also really important. It's important that you have a clear argument and that it flows. So again, you know, making sure that you are doing, you're doing all sort of the work with the blog writing. You shouldn't be making it difficult for your reader to sort of think, what are they trying to say here? You know, it should be very easy. There should be a very sort of clear structure that's easy to follow and that your points are easy, are sort of well made. I think Charlotte, you have said it is usually, you are writing it. It's usually by your, you as a person rather than an organisational thing. Absolutely.  That's why people are reading your blogs. So it's an opportunity for you to make your voice heard. So it's not just the research, for example, that you're writing about or, you know, the event that you've been to that you're sort of reporting back from. It's what you thought, what you think about that research, why that event was relevant to you. That's interesting. So really, really use this opportunity to sort of get your voice across. Our next point is that is on the tone. Blogs are very informal, they're conversational. So I would sort of say when you are writing your blog, write as much as you can, write as you would talk. You know, there's a short, there are ways of sort of starting conversations. So keeping it in the first person. And I've also put that another key characteristic is links. You will see that blogs are often not packed full of links, but they're often sort of a gateway to other information. So that's a characteristic that you'll often see. But I said to use caution. Anybody, anybody, any ideas on why you shouldn't overstuff your blog with links? Anyone? If you have lots and lots of links in your blog, what do you think might happen? Distracting. Distract the reader. Exactly. I mean, what you want to do is enhance your blog with more information. But what you don't want to do is send people off in another direction. So if you're sending, if you keep sort of putting your reader into lots of different places, the danger is that they will leave your blog and go somewhere else. So you're looking to sort of include information to enhance what you're saying, but not sort of overdo it. Thank you very much. Okay. So we've got the checklist so far. We have established that we've got something interesting to say. We have a certain that we know what we want to say and who we want to say it to. We've checked that it's timely and relevant. So we've asked ourselves about the when. You've got your key characteristics in mind. So you're remembering that it's online. You need to keep it short. You need to keep it personal. You need to keep the tone conversational. What next? So I'm just going to give you a quick run through of the advice I give on structuring. I've got just 10 minutes. Gosh. Okay. Thanks a bit. And I've got just 10 minutes left. I've got so much I want to still share with you. Okay. Quickly through planning your structure. So obviously blogs are very different in nature. But this is quite helpful if you are just sort of if you're if you're struggling to get going basically, you've got a bit of writer's block. But if you sort of think about a blog being 600 to 800 words, this is how it's basically set out. So a headline of about seven words don't want it to be too much too much longer than that because if you think about how a web page appears, you don't want to you wanted to go over one line. You don't want to have a headline that's running over two or three lines. It's just too long. Your introduction of about 50 to 150 words. The middle is about 400 to 500. And the end where you round things up about 50, 50 words. And when you look at it like that, that can just be really helpful in making in, you know, just breaking it down like that can help. And a great photo. And I have, I think it was Charlotte who mentioned the importance of having a great photo. So it is a bit of a cliche to talk about, you know, a picture speaking 1000 words, but actually with blogs, it is really the case. So while you're writing or before you start writing a blog, think about what photo might go with it to help bring it to life. So you're thinking about something really colorful, something with lots of impact. You want a photo to show action. It might very well show people. So you've got the sort of, you know, the sort of human angle in there. And I'm not going to have time to go through all of these different sections. But I do want to, but I will sort of just tell you, you know, go through briefly what you're trying to achieve with the headline with the introduction and the middle. Because as I say, it's really helpful if you can think about the different sections of a blog and what you're trying to achieve. Right. But before we do that, I'm going to do a, I'm going to focus on the headline because I think a headline is the arguably the most important thing for a blog. And I think this is useful as well, because this basically applies to any type of communication. It applies to a blog. It applies to a policy briefing, to a report, even to a presentation. Having a good headline is really, really important. And the way that we look at it is like, you know, bearing in mind that there's so much information out there. It is essentially your headline is almost like a call to action. It's asking people to invest their time in reading your blog and recognizing that we're very time poor. There's loads of information out there. You have to make that really, really strong. And every sentence counts obviously in your blog. You're competing with so many people out there. You want people to read onto the next sentence and the first sentence, the headline is the most important, important sentence of all. And there's loads of sorts of stats to back this up. So one of those is eight out of 10 people will read your headline. Two out of 10 people will go on to read the rest. So it really, really is absolutely critical to get a really good headline for your blog. So what makes a good headline? Anybody, any quick, quick words from the group on what makes a good headline? Any single words to describe what makes a good headline? Any ideas? Are we thinking sort of long, boring? Are we thinking clever, catchy? Okay. I'm not getting any suggestions from the floor, but what you're looking for really, bring brief, catchy words, yep, absolutely, catchy.  So brief and catchy, that's good. Thanks, Rizai.  Bamboo's by Bamboo. This was a blog that one of our researchers wrote about the risks of the bamboo business to their forestry, the bamboo sort of industry to their forestry businesses. Will COVID-19 leave fuel-rich African countries gasping for breath? So these are kind of powerful, catchy headlines. And here we're sort of playing on the words of using sort of fuel and breath. Feeling the love, that was a headline of a blog we wrote recently about our a server that we did of IID publications. Basically, everybody said that they loved what we were writing. So that was the title there. Creating waves of small scale fisheries. So you can play around with imagery a little bit. A new kind of brew, a small holder coffee and carbon. So, sorry. Yeah, what we sort of talk about is trying to get a balance between clear and clever with your headline. So it's no good having a really kind of cryptic headline. That sounds really clever. But actually, it doesn't really give any indication of what the blog is about. At the same time, you don't want it really informative in a way, but then it becomes boring. So you're trying to find a kind of a balance between something that's going to attract people's attention, but it's also going to give them a clear idea on what the blog is about. So that's my advice. The research is like thinking about a balance between clear and clever. But I have got some top tips for you on for your headline, in case you're striddling. I've got sort of three tried and tested formulas of headlines that work. So first off, we've got the question headline, I call it. I'm just realizing that I can't see the chat anymore, Sabrina. So if anybody has any, how can I see that?  Check back on the top. You say it was coming off from there. Oh yeah. Feel free to unmute Mike's anybody because I'm just struggling to see the chat at the moment. Okay. So the question headline. So with a question headline, can a new kind of consumerism help climate change? What's stopping women working? What is climate change adaptation? So with a question headline, what you're doing is you're constricting a question that you know your audience wants an answer to. You're sort of saying to them, you know, I know you want the answer to this and I am going to tell you the answer if you read my blog. So it's a really good way of engaging people. And we as human beings, we like being asked questions. You know, it's our immediate response. If we're asked a question is to respond, even if it's just sort of in our heads. So by sort of setting a question out in the headline, you're already engaging people by already asking a question. So the question headline is a really good one. The next one is the explanation or how to headline. So how to finance a new climate economy? Why drug prices are rising? Why legal timber matters? So the explanation headline is similar to the question headline. And but instead of asking a question, you're sort of presenting an explanation. So you're telling people how they're going to tackle an issue that they're interested in. The numbers headline, this is also a really nice tip. So let me just so three reasons why pressures on land rights are changing. Five lessons on community based adaptation, seven principles for making farming more sustainable. So we like order. We like organization in our brains. We're very big, we know we're often fans of lists. And with the numbers headline, what you're doing is you're telling your you're telling your reader, I know that you want to know about this issue. And I've already done the thinking about I've already done the thinking behind it. I've already put it into a really easy order for you. So if you read my blog, I'm going to tell you about this topic in very sort of simple logical terms. So that is appealing to people. They know that they're going to read a kind of really ordered list. So there are my kind of tips on if you're struggling for a headline, they are good. There's some sort of tried and tested formulas that work. I'm going to just move on to the other different parts of the blog. So we mentioned that once you've got your headline, then it's your introduction. So these are sort of two or three sentences, 50 to 100 words. When you're really sort of trying, having won your reader over by pulling together a really catchy headline, you're trying to keep the reader's attention. And you need to say, in the introduction, what your blog is going to be about, why is it worth reading this? So you're basically keeping the attention here. It needs to be short. But the idea is if you can keep your reader engaged at the beginning, they're more likely to continue reading until the end. So the introduction is when you're getting your big idea upfront. The middle, so 400 to 500 words. This is where you're really getting into the kind of meat of your argument, or you're getting into the description of what you want to tell people about. You're backing up what you're saying with illustrations and examples. You're thinking here about the what, the why, and the when. So bringing back those questions, like that's what you should be getting across here in the middle. And the end is where you close the circle. You might relate what you're saying in the end paragraph to the introduction. So if it was one of those, it was a blog where you are trying to sort of bring people in, you might end the blog with a question or a call to action, a request for collaboration. So that's what you might cover. So that is my, we're on 12 o'clock now. I'm sorry I have raced through that. I don't know who is, whether you're blogging, a couple of you said that you haven't blogged, but you're thinking about it. I can sort of share any ideas with you, give you some coaching, if that's what you think you might be needing, answer any more questions. But I did just want to end on one point about what you need to do when you have finished writing your blog. After you've put all this effort in to writing your headline, to thinking about the introduction, to thinking about the middle, the ending, the photo that goes with it. My final word, which I always give to researchers, is that your work is not finished now and that you need to share your blog. So quick thoughts. If we don't mind just running over a couple more minutes, ways to share your blog from the floor please, any ideas, how you'd be sharing your blog once you've written it. Social media. Yep, social media, Twitter, Facebook, exactly. Also LinkedIn, if you have professional sort of network on LinkedIn. Yep, LinkedIn is an increasingly important way of sharing research blogs, absolutely. Any other ideas? Old-fashioned email is quite good. There's nothing nice than getting a kind of email from you, the author to a researcher saying, I've written this blog on this topic that I know you're interested in. I'd love to know what you think about it. That's always a good option. You could think about cross-posting as a way of getting your blog out there. So we at IID, we sometimes cross-post other people's blogs. It's possible for you to feature other people's websites as well as your own if you have one as a guest blogger. So yeah, social media, email, all the different platforms, newsletters, make connections with your own networks, see if they've got other ways that they might share.  You've got to go out there and share your blog. Any particular points that anybody wants to raise? I know we're running it over slightly and I know people are very busy. I'm wondering what the best thing I can do. I'm just going to share my email here quickly in the chat box if you have any particular questions that you want to send to me. The session will be available over, the recording will be available and we can also make the slides available as well. Is there any burning questions that anybody has for me? Anything that wasn't clear? Anything that I can sort of quickly go over or are people reasonably happy? I know it's been a very short session. Resai? Yes, I think it was great. Thank you. I think we know it too. So will you be sharing the slides with us or we would have to go somewhere and get it? No, no, I can share the slides. I can share the slides. If you've got, you've got, you can see my email down there. So if you email me, I can reply and share them with you then. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, great. Carl, that's fine. Absolutely. Follow up if you've got any questions. Okay, Sabrina, we're five minutes over. I'm conscious that other Zoom platforms need to be used. We okay to sign off? I've shared my email. If anybody else has got any questions, they can join. Yeah, if you feel that that's fine. Yeah, you can sign off. All right, that sounds good. Thanks everybody for joining. As I say, get in touch if you've got any other questions, if you want to, if you want to share the slides, no problem. All right, thank you very much, everyone. Have a lovely day.


Hi, I'm Matthew Horkin. Hi, I'm Sherleen Tan. And welcome to Croatian Wine 60 Seconds. Today, we're going to introduce Malvazia Starska matured in wood. I love these ones. First we have the Cabolla Unica. It was this matured and large Slavonian oak cask. Immediately you're going to get honey, a little bit of toastiness to go with the yellow flower notes and the yellow peach, more of a fuller mouth feel, but you You still have the bitter almond finish that you get in Malvazia. The Coastal Beach Center Lutia Vineyard is one of the unofficial crew vineyard in Austria. It has notes of lemon curd, orange peel, crazed apple. Do you like it? Love it! Love it!  You get more honey and you also get a note of acacia flowers. The acacia wood is said to go very well with Malvazia which innately already has an acacia flower aroma. And that's Croatian wine in 60 seconds!