Live from San Francisco, extracting the signal from the noise, it's theCUBE, covering Oracle OpenWorld 2015 from Studio C, brought to you by Cisco. Now your host, Brian Grace Lee. Welcome back to Oracle OpenWorld. We're here in theCUBE, here down in what we call Studio C. Right in the middle of the solution center, 60,000 people here in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld. Really excited to have Bruno Messina, marketing manager for Cisco UCS. Welcome to theCUBE, first time on theCUBE. Thank you, thank you Brian, it's great to be here. So, we were talking earlier, you live and breathe Cisco UCS. I do. You talk to customers, you're working with partners. Give us a sense of what you work on and what really makes you passionate about UCS. Boy, the second part of the question is really interesting. I do product and solutions market in the outbound marketing for UCS servers and UCS integrated infrastructure, which is our servers, plus our Nexus, which is plus UCS director, which we call UCS integrated infrastructure. Take that as a whole, plus our storage partners.  So, that's what I work on. The thing that really makes me passionate about UCS is, is it was an amazing innovation. Now, you're getting licensed. What Cisco saw, so, if we take a step back, in 2005, Cisco began this work. They saw this transition, and the transition was unified computing system, but what it is, it is hardware, right? We have E3, E5, E7 processors. Like, we have the same DRAM, we have pretty much the same disk as everybody else. The genius of it are two things. Cisco Single Connect, which is unified fabric, and the second thing, which is even more revolutionary than the first, is UCS manager. And what Cisco did was, instead of looking from the server out, they looked from the network in, and they were able to manage servers from the network, and they're able to take into account everything about the server. In that network, in that network switch, we call it Fabric Interconnect. There's a UCS manager. It has objects in it, software objects. These are called service profiles. They have attributes. These attributes in software now represent everything you need to provision and deploy servers. Hardware's not the right word for UCS. It should have been called software abstracted hardware because you provision and deploy hardware and software, and that's what makes me passionate because it entails a whole lot of possibilities in all kinds of benefits. And when I first heard it before I came to Cisco, someone described it to me, I didn't believe that they could do it. That's what makes me passionate. Yeah, no, that's fantastic. One of the things about Cisco, Cisco's always been a technical company. They've spoken to their users. Their users want to know how the technology works. You obviously know the product inside. Now it's got to come across and how you market that to customers. That's got to be a lot of fun. Take the things that get you excited. Somewhat is from an engineering part of your brain and turn that into things you're communicating to customers. I love that. For example, let's talk about those service profiles, right? One way I describe it to people who don't understand it or like to a non-technical person. It's like going from piecework to an assembly line, right? The way servers used to be, or in many cases, people who do it in the traditional sense, right? You put in a nick, you put in an HPA.  You go into the firmware, you go into the BIOS, four or five different managers.  You know, in a day, maybe two or three days, you have a server up and going. What do you do with UCS? With UCS, you plug in a Blade or Racker, M-Series server. The Fabric Interconnect recognizes it. When it recognizes it, it doesn't have any state. It doesn't have a UUID, a MAC address, worldwide name, worldwide. All of it's given to it in software. So now, you go from an inconsistent, slow, error-prone process of provisioning and deploying compute hardware to something that's consistent, automated, and timely. And then there's all kinds of add-on benefits because everything is software. Yeah, so you're essentially, you're bringing the fabric of what cloud computing providers do and people are doing a demo. You're bringing that right to the infrastructure. Yeah, exactly. When you talk about the cloud, right? You're talking about massive scale of servers. That almost demands a software approach. And think about it. Say I have thousands of servers and I have to do a firmware update. Can you imagine going into each server? So what do you do in UCS? In UCS, they all have the same service profile. You can have an updating template. You change the firmware there. You instantiate it on all the servers. You bring them back up and they're all at the same level. You eliminate configuration drift. I mean, it makes too much sense. Everybody has to do this because it is the right way. It's obvious. That's what excites me. Well, and that was the thing that really shocked everybody. Cisco doing servers and Cisco doing software. People went, wait a second, that's not what they do. They do hardware, they do networking. That was really the innovation. That's what drove it. Let's talk a little bit. You're in the middle, you talked about you work with VersaStack. You worked with Flexpod. We've had a ton of the storage partners on here. You're not just working with Cisco. You get a really broad view of the ecosystem. You get a really broad view of customers. Give us a sense of how is the ecosystem evolving around UCS and how are customers liking the fact that you give them so much flexibility in deployment options. That's a great point. So we address almost all storage. So you have UCS, which is really software defined in infrastructure. You combine it with Nexus and the UCS director. Now you can manage storage as well and the hypervisors. So UCS director handles the UCS, the Nexus, and the storage and the hypervisors through orchestration and automation. So you have flexibility and choice. You have automation. You get all the benefits of the automation of UCS. And we have things called CVDs, Cisco Verified Designs. So we give you best practices, do the engineering so that you can deploy your entire infrastructure even faster. So it's almost like we've taken the Intel standard, we've standardized it, and then we've standardized it again at a higher level with our storage partners. It's all building blocks, but it's all in software. It's really incredible. So I was going to say, what you're doing is very, very interesting. But when it first got started, people were skeptical. And it was a different model. When things are different, people have to change. They have to change their thinking. You're in marketing, so you're getting feedback from the market, from customers. Do you think customers have grasped the power of what UCS can do? Do they grasp what's really possible yet? Do they understand it? Do you get a sense of that? I think when they hear a certain analogy and they understand that the hardware is, you can provision it, for example. I can give you a number of different use cases. Oracle Rack, right? Say you have a four node cluster, shared nothing. All nodes see all storage. One of them goes down. In the old days, one of those nodes goes down. That server goes down. It'll take you three days to bring that server back up. It was that piecework that I described. With UCS, you just instantiate that service profile on a spare blade, and it's up in 10 minutes. And it's an exact copy. So it's these kinds of use cases that really, when people get it, they get it. And it's so revolutionary that maybe they can't switch for whatever legacy reason, but they understand that it's the next step. And it is, it just makes too much sense. But the incredible thing was Cisco started doing that. It's not slideware. By the time I finished talking to you, people would have provisioned and deployed probably 40 or 50 servers around the world because we have 48,000 customers. We've gone from zero, none. We didn't have server customers in 2008 to 48,000. Because of this, it's software-defined computing. Yeah, well let's talk about it. You talked about an Oracle use case. You talked about Rack. Just give us a sense. Give us some interesting feedback from your customers, some data points around UCS plus Oracle applications. I heard something today at the show. Four node, and this is, again, Oracle Rack. Four node Oracle Rack cluster, right? They had to go from M3 blades, or already UCS customer, to M4. In the old days, it would take you two or three days to bring up this one server. And then you bring it into the cluster, you bring one down, you'd have three of the old and one of the new. Okay. Then there would be triage. This would be out of sync. You'd get a lot of garbage files. And it was a hugely painful process. Then they'd do it with the next node, and they would have all kinds of server admins, hardware people, software people around to do this. On UCS, they had the four M3s, four M4s. They took most of the service profile, changed it a little bit, had it ready for the M4. They took this down and instantiated the M4. It was a near exact copy of this. It came right in in 10 minutes, 10 minutes, and they were three old and one new. Nothing happened. They're still querying it. No problems. Same thing with the second one. Same thing with the third one. Same thing with the fourth one. You've totally gone to new hardware. Nothing. You've essentially done what virtualization does, but for bare metal applications, and there's still tons of bare metal applications out there, especially here around Oracle. Let's talk a little bit about cloud, right? Yeah, sure. Lots of talk about cloud. Where do you see your customers using the UCS system for cloud, whether it's private cloud or with service providers? Where do you see some people interested in those applications? Well, we have the inter-cloud fabric for when you want to leave a UCS, but many cloud providers are based on UCS. And it's for the same reason. It's like you can stamp out servers. You don't, you eliminate configuration drift. And these are the downstream benefits, right? In order for Cisco to do this, remember now, the management lives in the network. It has visibility to all the servers. Then you also have central that can be a manager of managers. So you can, since everything's abstracted in software, all the hardware is in software, you can query it. You can monitor it granularly. You can automate it. So then you can actually, with Cisco UCS, there are communities of scripts that are available on developers.cisco.com from other UCS customers to automate these different tasks like query and different hardware levels that you could never do. You're bringing the community to your, the community we've seen these communities build around open source. You're bringing communities from your customers to help other customers. That's powerful. Yeah. It's an amazing product. And now we've taken Jim McHugh's folk about this earlier. Now we can bring compute to the edge too. So we can manage geographically dispersed instances. We have hardware that's tailored to the edge. We have UCS Mini that can tailor to Robo. If you have 5,000 stores, right? And something happens to a store in Canada. And that Canada store is, or near Canada, but it's serviced out of the Albany branch office. In the old days, you drove from Albany to Canada, replaced a blade. What you do with UCS is you have a spare blade there. You just drop a new service profile on it. And on Monday morning, you're going to replace it. I mean, think about it. It's all software, but it's hardware. For folks who aren't here at Oracle OpenWare, there's a lot of energy here. There's a lot of, give me a sense of what you're hearing from customers just from this community about what they're interested in from UCS. What are they telling you about? What are they pushing you? What kind of challenges are they saying, I want this next? I think the basic fundamental goodness of it, the differentiation is there. I think there are smaller things that they want us to keep up with the latest generation of Intel. And we're doing that. They want us to maybe do a CVD in an area that we've not already done. And we're filling all that in. But there's a lot of use cases. There's a lot of permutations. There's a lot of combinations. But most of it is there. And those are the areas where we're being steered by our customers. And that's fantastic. You're listening to your customers. You're driving innovation. We had Intel on with Jim earlier. Great partnership there. Last word, give me a great example of a customer that's doing something that a couple years ago you'd have thought there's no way that could be done without UCS. Just what are your favorite customer stories? I have to say my favorite customer stories. All right, this is my favorite customer story. We had a customer that has a huge volume of UCS. This customer, so with UCS, remember, each blade has no state or rack. So you just plug them in, you cable it up, and then you don't have to recable it again because it's a unified fabric, a single connect technology. The UCS manager recognizes that you put blades in. So this guy had four new chassis, 32 new servers. They just cabled up the chassis, put in the power, put in the 10-giggy interfaces, hooked it up to the FI. He slid in the blades and went home. The next day, he was watching a football game and he provisioned and deployed 30 servers in the half of a football game because all the service profiles were set. It's just like an assembly line. You just instantiate them remotely as he dialed into the UCS central and just instantiated it on the blades. That's the power and the beauty of what Cisco did. Now, that's great. I'm gonna wrap up on that note. UCS has given people time to work on their fantasy football team. They can work on it from home. It's a fantastic story. Bruno Messina, I love the passion. We love when we get people to come on here and just absolutely passionate about the products they work on. You obviously have a ton of passion around this. Thank you so much for the conversation. Folks, we're gonna wrap this one up here at Oracle Open World 2015, here in San Francisco, 60,000 people, great energy. Bruno, thank you for being on. Thank you for watching.


That's not really got much to do with my presentation. But it links to a theme of the findings that came out, which we'll talk about in a minute, but I just like this one. I'm Rosman, I'm an e-learning manager at Manchester Met. I'm going to talk a little bit about some research that I carried out for the Faculty of Health, Psychology and Social Care on one of the online programmes at Devon. Yn ymddych chi'n gweithio yn bwysig y bwysig gyda'r bwysig a'r gwahau'r ystod yn ddod o'r lleswn ymlaen. Yn ymddych chi'n gweithio, mae'r program eitha'r MSC, yw'r program eitha'r psychologi, i'r program 12-month, a'n ddweud i'r program eitha'r psychologi. Yn ymddych chi'n gweithio, mae'r gweithio'r busg wedi bod yn ysgolwyd gan ysgolwyd, maen nhw'r gwirionedd, yn fwy ffordd yn bryd, a'r pwysig o'r ffrind i'r bwysig a chyfodol, i'r amlwg am ymddiannau, a'r cyfathlu er mwyn ffwrdd yn ymgyrchol ar y ffwrdd y dyfodol wedi'n gwyfun ar y bwysig sy'n bwysig yw'r progran. Felly, dwi'n cael ei gwirionedd o'r pwysig iawn, sy'n fod yn ymdill ystod i'r ffacolau i'r pwysig iawn, ond ond yr ysgol yn dweud o'r progran o'r pwylliant. A gynnyddio hynny, roedd y ffyrdd gynhyrch o'r program yn 2015, a'r rhan o'r rhan o'r rhan o'r 13, oherwydd yn y piler, o'r rhan o'r 100 o'r studen. A'r hynny'n gwybod yn ddod i'r eu hunain yn ymddangosol o'r hyn o'r ddiwedd, o'r hyn o'r hunain. Mae'n ymddangosol o'r hyn o'r thysgu, o'r hyn o'r stryd, Rwyf wedi'n gweld y cyfans, y cwm, gwybod y byd. Rwyf wedi'n gweld ddyn nhw, rwyf wedi'n gweld ddyn nhw'n credu o'r ddylamu waith ar y pryd. Rwyf wedi'n gweld ddyn nhw, mae'r prydau'n greidd. Nid ym mwyn hwnnw i'r rau'r rhaid, ddiddordeb ar y ddioghusol. Mae'n ddiddordeb ar gyffredin nhw'n ddiddordeb ar y ddiddordeb mewn hamlion. Mae'r adolau iddo ar y tro, ddim yn ychydig honno ar gyfer y dyfodol, ac mae'n gweithio gweithio gweithio'n cyffredinol, nag rwy'n lle rhoi bod gyntaf eich gweithio'n ei wneud yn y gyflawnu'r language o arnyntio yang fydd y gallur o'r gwneud gweld. Nid yw gweithio'n digwyddion cyfgareddau wrth gael mae'n gwneud cyflawnu ar 300 ydal. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio, a'r gweithio arall arall ar y prywodau. Mae'r adeg y gallwn 350 eu cyfraeg yn eich prifesu. Mae'r rblwysgrwy Arun 40%. Rwy'n deall yn fawr o'r theores. Fe ddim yn amlwg i'w pryd o'r drafod dda'r rydyn ni, efallai yn ni'w cofio'r ddeugel ym spices. Ond, fydd y fath nhw'n meddwl i'r ddwynt gynnig ar hyn. Rydyn ni'n gweithio i ddweud gweld ein fath ym mhwyl iawn. Dwi fydd iawn o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r griffurau ondi. A wedyn dweud i'r sgwpeth i'r sgwpethói'n gweithio ddim yn y program. Ac mae'r ddaeth amser ac mae'n gwreiddoch yn ôl. Rydyn ni'n ddweud yne? Fyddai'r ddweud ar y ddechydd ym Mhwyllydd? Fyddai cael ei ch carb y Gymraeg? Mae'r talog i'r ddechrau sy'n dweud a'r ddweud chi'n gyfnodol Meidai Llywodraeth, ond drwy ddweud ym Gweithio Ielodau yn dweud o'i ddweud o'r dweudio i'r ddechrau i'r ddweud. How can we look at this and build on the commonalities where they are and if there's disparities, look at what the causes are behind this, why are staff thinking about certain aspects different to our students thinking about. Before I do go into the themes of what came out, the overall themes, I thought it would be interesting just to break up the session a bit and ask for what you think might have been important on this. Obviously there's going to be a lot of people with the experience of either being a student or teaching online programmes and blended programmes. But I thought rather than asking questions at this point, just on the me too thing, just ask maybe put a few comments on things that you think might have been important. Maybe then we can just have a look and maybe compare and contrast with what I thought, what we found on the study. If I just give you a couple of minutes just to do that and I think hopefully that will... So if you can just put up on the screens the comments, that would be really good. If you maybe if you just talk to the person next to you or just put up some comments. Again just from what you think from a student perspective of what was important, what things are important to consider or from a staff perspective what are important aspects to taking into account. And also if you see a comment that's particularly pertinent, give it a like and then hopefully we can get those ranked and the ones that are most popular will show up on the screen. So there's quite a few comments around community which I think always comes up, this is always an important part. Time obviously, I think time both from staff and student perspective that's something that always comes out. I think some of the comments are coming through the generic comments that you would assume for a student, any student but they're amplified for online students. So things about not being able to submit online or not being able to submit at all. I think those kind of things, those anxieties really are amplified when you're online because you don't have anybody to talk to of a physical space to be able to kind of drop something in. I'll just put that up there. Now these are the things that students said that was important for them and a lot of them have been covered here. But I think one of the interesting things there about a community that it did come up in the findings but it wasn't a distinct theme in itself. It was always in relation to possibly things like interaction or wanting to feel that social presence. But the community itself, I think because these guys were working full-time and loads of them had families and busy lives. I think some of that took a back seat and the thing that really focused their attention was I need to get my assessments in on time. I think sometimes a community thing didn't play as big a part as you might do for an undergraduate course where you really need to feel that sense of a community study. The time one is something that we're going to come back to in a few minutes. But yeah, I think particularly from a staff perspective that was something that really came out that staff didn't have enough time and that needs to be acknowledged of the amount of time that goes into developing an online programme. But what I thought I'd do now is just go through a few kind of mini case studies of some of the findings. Obviously it wouldn't be possible to go through all of them but these are the overall kind of findings of what the students found important. Again, I think a lot of them are covered here, things like support, academic support, pastoral support. That covers things like timeliness of communications, which I think was one of the comments here as well. Interaction of learning. Again, the interaction with peers and students. I think with a room like this some of these things might seem obvious in common sense but I'm in an institution where some of these things aren't very obvious to certain people. So I think part of this conversation needs to be that the right kinds of people need to hear this information, I guess. And that's something I'll talk about in a minute. So the first thing I wanted to talk about was the individual unit areas. So students talked about the fact that they were getting inconsistent units within each one of their learning spaces. They were having inconsistent information, it was labelled differently. Sometimes assessments were located in different spaces. And because these guys were time poor we all know that you don't have enough time to be able to get your assignments in on time. Never mind, search for contact details or kind of find the weekly activities that week. And that often meant that important information was sometimes missed. But from a staff perspective they kind of countered that by saying well there was a lot of information that staff had to give to students. Things around exceptional factors or the elective units or all that kind of information had to be given to students. And because they were in online and they were in that week they had to kind of give all that information in one go. Another interesting thing was about some of the cheaters talking about the fact that they felt constrained by having to have this consistency with other units. They weren't able to teach in a fluid manner as they might be able to in a face to face environment. So some of them relied on this kind of almost serendipity of when you're teaching some of the things just kind of the penny drops. But you weren't able to kind of build that into an online session some of the cheaters felt and having to kind of front load all your resources at the beginning of term really made that difficult. Now from my perspective trying to take a neutral role in this it was really obvious that all of the staff comments were relating to their own unit areas. And that thing that that's kind of carried over from the way that it's taught in a face to face environment. But in Moodle each unit area has each his own unit leader who has ownership of that unit. But they take care of their own unit but they don't necessarily think about the whole programmer as a whole. And we all know students see a single program not individual unit areas. So my role was to kind of think about that whole program level thinking. And I did that by kind of incorporating Moodle template to try to bring in that consistency across the different unit spaces. But also leaving them flexible enough for different tutors to be able to kind of build on their own kind of style of teaching into it and make it easy enough for their own subject matter to be incorporated into those templates. This idea of just enough information and just enough time to stagger the information to say OK well you don't need to know about assessments on your first day or Harvard referencing or whatever it might be. And we picked points in the term where we thought this would be more pertinent for the students to be able to access that information. And obviously make it available and signpost to it but not to bombard them with all of that information at the outset. Now these kinds of things that have happened here, their ongoing issues, inserting a template is not a quick fix. You can't just say everything's done now. Templates can be broken. They can be ignored. You can imply a consistent template inconsistently. I think it's an ongoing thing of being able to kind of work with the tutors to say well this is what's working here. That's not what's working there and that more iterative approach. And similarly with that idea of just enough information, just enough time, just coming different things to different tutors. So again just working with them really to get that overall cohesiveness to the programme and really thinking about what the online journey should look like for the student. Feedback on formative activities. So students talked about not having enough personalised feedback or wanting to have that kind of validation of their opinions and just making sure that they were understanding the material correctly as they were moving through the programme. As you can imagine staff were concerned about the amount of work that would be required responding individually to 80 or 90 students on a weekly basis. And they also talked about the fact that some of these students were carrying over their experiences of undergraduate studies over to level 7 masters level and where they needed to be a bit more independent in their approach. But I think ultimately what's happened here is that students, well staff were in a situation where they knew a group of students, very intimately 13 students. And then that same pedagogic model was used for a group of 100 students where it was unrealistic for them to be able to know them kind of students very well, being able to engage with them in the same way. And I think that really speaks to the people who are in charge of resourcing the programme. So the scale-up of it really, it was assumed that staff would just do more of the same. The programme had been set up in the first instance, the resources had been created, now we can just let it run. And really when you scale up a programme from 13 to 100, you really need to either increase the staff resource appropriately or you can choose to change the pedagogic model to then fit the resource that you currently have. But mechanisms like discussion forums, if you're using that with a group of 10 or 15 students, that's unrealistic that you're going to be able to use those kinds of same mechanisms on a bigger programme with the same staff resource. So I think that was one of the issues that, so ultimately the approach was taken to kind of modify the way that the programme worked to introduce more automated ways of feeding back. So things like quizzes where you had that personalised feedback for students, but also workbook activities where you had that focused interaction with a piece of reading. But importantly, expectation management, both from students of what it takes to come on a programme, what kind of interaction you can expect for staff as well. So this is what online learning looks like, particularly for those outside of the department who are unfamiliar with this type of teaching. There's sometimes that assumption that, well, you can just put it all online and leave them to it, or that it's a cost-earning exercise. And again, I think one of the big draws of this programme was that you were able to reach students who previously couldn't have come to university full-time and studied on a programme like this. And I think treating it as something where you can say money or time I think is probably not the best way to look at it. So those kinds of messages need to be articulated. And just very finely, webinars, this was part of the overall interaction theme. But things that have come out in some of these comments as well to do with the social aspect of learning, and students talking about the fact that they weren't able to, they felt sometimes isolated from the university. And these webinars were really, really good tools. They loved the fact that they could see other students. They could talk to them in real time and really had that human interaction. But the fact that they didn't go far enough or some of them weren't as interactive as they would have liked. And staff talked about the fact that there were a lot of students, that they weren't able to have those kind of interactions as personalised as they would have liked. Sometimes there were students who would dominate discussions which made it difficult to again have those very interactive kind of discussion type sessions. But ultimately this speaks to the same point in the fact that you scale up the programme and then you need to kind of deal with the fact that interaction needs to change. You can't have the same kinds of interactions based on a previous pedagogy model. And also the fact that the other thing that came out of this was that staff acknowledged that these webinars sometimes weren't as engaging as they should have been. But they didn't have the time to plan, so I mean you need to have a session plan, you need to plan for these kinds of interactions. And if that's not acknowledged by the powers that be of what resources required for delivering this programme, then you can't expect them to plan these sessions in particularly for those who are new to this type of delivery. So staff development sessions were put on and we talked about how we might be able to deliver webinars to larger scale numbers. But again, if staff don't have time to either attend or to implement that, it's questionable whether there's any merit in delivering those staff development sessions. One of the things that we did do was to develop more webinars around assessments. That was to counter the fact that some students felt quite vulnerable online, they weren't able to engage if they felt uncomfortable with the fact that the knowledge of these webinars being recorded and their lack of understanding as it was to be broadcast to the whole group. And so if they were talking about something that was more personal to them and they had more experience around, they'd be able to open up a lot more and facilitate those discussions in a more engaging way. So just very finely, some of the lessons that we took away from delivering this programme, that overall programme level thinking is key I think, and my role in that in putting those templates together, working with academic staff, trying to sell the idea that these templates are a good idea, and also selling them in a way that's beneficial to staff as well, so we are saving staff time. You don't need to populate your moodle areas every single year. I think that's an important aspect of it, trying to win the hearts and minds of people you're working with. As I think Lorian had mentioned as well, it's not about imposing anything on anyone. The scaling up, again, is that option of having either you maintain that staff student ratio and you scale up or you fundamentally change the pedagogy model, and it's unrealistic to be able to scale up without having one of those two options. And the misconceptions, again, the workload is always a concern for staff, but as long as it's understood what online learning is, then that resource can be built into workload models and how we want this online learning programme to work. If it's just going to be a case of putting all the resources online and leaving students to it, then essentially you've got another version of a MOOC, and that's not what I think a lot of people want, and you're going to eventually get the drop-off rates that you might get on a MOOC as well. I think that needs to be articulated for the people who are in charge of resourcing these areas and these programmes to articulate what an online programme looks like and this is the resource that's involved. Hopefully that's been useful, that brings my presentation to a close, and I'm more than happy to take questions. Thank you so much, Osmond. I've spent most of the last 20 years working for the Open University and so much of that was familiar, but I think you've got some really helpfully articulated comments both from staff and students, and it really ties in with what Amber was saying in her keynote about we keep talking about this stuff because the practice is continually evolving. Do we have any questions in the room? I'm looking hard at my former Open University colleagues who must have something to say about this. They're all hiding now. This is an interesting one at the top that resonates with me from my experience. Why did they have to have it already at the start? Was that due to students having to be able to self-pace their studies? Yeah, I guess so. I think part of it was their conception of what online learning was, so it was sold to them in a way where everything has to be ready beforehand. That was carried over from the way that they taught this programme in a face-to-face environment and where they already had all the lectures in place. There's no reason why it had to be ready week on week, but I think that idea of consistency ties in with the fact that things are organised in a certain way. If you had certain weeks that were certain unit areas which did have all their content ready together, then it was assumed that every single other area would have to do the same thing. What changes would you make to the pedagogic model and might students be able to cope with that? As I mentioned, we introduced a lot more automated feedback, but we also made use of the forums where discussion was happening, so they had another personal professional development in which they were split up into their peer learning groups. We directed a lot of discussion there, so although we made some of the communication a bit more didactic in terms of question and answer, some of the other forums that were actually being used, we shifted some of the discussion there, so I think it's dangerous to say, well, we can automate all feedback, because I think that's not going to be possible and we don't want to do a problem like that. I think it's to make use of those areas where discussion was already happening to introduce and say, well, this week's topic was on XYZ. Maybe this week we can have a separate discussion forum within your forum group to just highlight some of the issues or some of the things that we've taken away this week. So I think that's one of the things that we did. The webinars, again, I think people love that real-life interaction, so as much as possible, we had things like having intro videos. Again, it sounds like a small thing, but just having a face and a person saying, hello, welcome to the new unit, this is what we're doing. I think when you're online, I think it helps a lot more bringing a bit more of a human feel to it. So there's another question related to that. Did other synchronous models come up, such as Skype Chat or Google Hangout, to encourage free conversation? So we ran our webinars through Adobe Connect, but the students had their own groups as well, so they would be communicating with each other in social environments, things like Google Hangouts, where they would arrange their own meetings. But apart from the webinars and the kind of formal program committee meetings and things like that with student reps, we didn't have any other kind of synchronous communication. And I think that was probably more characteristic of the student body than anything else because we had people in different time zones, we had people who were different word shifts, so I think it was very difficult to try to get everybody together in a synchronous way. We've got a couple of questions about peer-to-peer engagement. So was peer assessment considered and are online students more resistant to peer feedback? So in the dissertation unit, we introduced an informal peer assessment activity where you could look at each other's proposals. And I went down really well. I think some of the issues where they were probably that probably weren't particularly individual to the online delivery was more to do with the students who were comfortable with the fact that they were giving other people their access to their assignments. They weren't sure about how to assess it. But equally we did get some good feedback about people being more comfortable with the assessment criteria. In terms of their resistance, I don't think they were any more resistant and I would have expected to do this. Okay. I think you mentioned that you were working in a particular discipline. So is there a kind of template you had from that scalable to other areas? Yeah. There are now a few online programmes in that faculty. This was kind of seen as the template in terms of how delivery was worked. So, yeah, I think this, the original model was really heavily based on these weekly formative activities. And I think that was unrealistic given that resource. So it was tweaked, although there was some version of that. It wasn't kind of a direct discussion forum and a webinar every single week. And I was tweaked, but a version of that is now being rolled out and used on other online programmes in that faculty. Okay. So, that was a model of the Jelly Salmons E-tivities model. Was that relevant, helpful, used? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I talked about that staggering of information, that was one of the key drivers of that. So really in that first week, we just focused on getting them online. Whereas previously, in the first run of every kind of looked at, this is all you need to know about assessments, this is all you need to know about everything else. Whereas reflecting on what Jelly Salmons is like, getting them comfortable with engaging with those. We're going to look at how to communicate. This is the emails that you need to know and really make sure they're comfortable online and then moving over to the academic side of things. And I think that's reflected in Jelly Salmons model as well. So it's come up at quite a few sessions over the last three days about getting senior management teams on board. So someone has asked how were your key points received by the leadership? I had a really good relationship with them. I think a lot of people probably have a similar role in terms of being a learning technologist. And I think one of the things that is a good thing to have in your toolbox is that good will that you have with a lot of people. Because you have so many people, so many things, so when you are in a position where you articulate something that might be a bit of a difficult conversation is taken in the right way. And you're not kind of there to add anything, but you're just looking at things in the right perspective. But yeah, I think it's always a working progress, even if people do acknowledge it there's always a port that comes in at some point. But yeah, I think and as I mentioned, the program did increase and that part of that increase was because it was supported and it was kind of acknowledged that the visibility of the workload that staff were putting into this needed to be addressed. So that was acknowledged to some extent. The last question has just come in. I don't know if you have an answer to this. Are online tutors born or made? Well I'll have to say made because I think it's quite a blessing I have to say born. Yeah, I think online tutors are now no different to if you can hold a good teaching session I think it's a very few manner tweaks that need to happen for you to do that in an online space, so a good teacher will be able to facilitate a room and facilitate discussions. When you do that online obviously there's some technical knowledge that needs to go into it but essentially it's the pedagogy which is leading it so I think with the question probably could be are tutors born or are tutors born or made because I think the online side of things is a very small step once you acknowledge and understand what the online space is like. I think that's a perfect place to finish so thank you again for your excellent talk and thanks again to Donna and Laurie so you've now got a half hour refreshment I'm John Wilson, I'm the CEO at Agenta we're a technology company that focuses on education and learning we build, manage and operate platforms for education and social collaboration. Externally we prefer to work with what we feel as ethical industries, obviously education teaching, learning, healthcare we feel that we can really contribute to these industries by creating exciting platforms easy to use platforms secure platforms that people can utilise what we feel is one of the most important things for Scotland to boost economic growth is investing in rural areas by investing in broadband local areas, we can attract more talent we can attract more companies and we can drastically improve the delivery of education and learning within these schools, within disparate regions within Scotland.


The federal government says its expenditure on road infrastructure rose from 18 billion in 2015 to about 400 billion in this year. Minister of Works and Housing Babatini Fasula announced this in Abuja. Fasula made the disclosure of the firm to explain the activities of the ministry in the past six years of the current administration. According to him, the federal government's investment in road-building and infrastructure development have been impacted in various economic activities nationwide. He said that increased investment in infrastructure by the government have brought profitability to all actors in the economic valley chain. The minister said more wealth and job opportunities have been created with 850 contracts awarded at 13,000 kilometers of road and bridges under construction and repairs across Nigeria's federal highway.


For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. There is no end in sight to the COVID-19 pandemic as the number of cases and the number of casualties continue to rise. Along with this, the fear among people is also increasing and economies worldwide are falling as people are staying home in government-imposed lockdowns and self-isolation. While self-isolation is an important and necessary measure for containing the spread of this highly contagious virus, it is not a measure everyone can afford to take, especially in these precarious times. It is also not a sufficient measure by itself. Left parties and organizations across the globe are calling for governments to take steps that ensure the protection of people, particularly the most vulnerable sections, and also ensure that people are prioritized over profits, wherein power-left governments have enacted extensive measures to ensure that people and their livelihoods are protected. The most striking example is of China's, where as of March 20, no new domestic cases had emerged since three days. One of the most important measures called for is scaling up of testing so that free tests can be availed by all those who needed. In countries where healthcare systems are largely private and insurance-based, left groups have called for free testing of everyone, regardless of whether they have an insurance card or can pay for it or not. To do this, governments will need to allocate resources to the public health sector immediately and ramp up production of testing kits. The capacity of public hospitals also needs to be increased to accommodate the rising number of COVID-19 patients and provide them with the intensive care that they need. Many left organizations are citing the example of Spain, which nationalized its private hospitals in order to deal with the crisis. They are calling for a similar step of a partnership with private hospitals to provide free treatment to everyone in need. Similarly, organizations such as NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, have also called for abolishing of private healthcare. There is also a need for setting up temporary quarantine centers to house people, showing mild symptoms so they do not infect more people. There are also calls for strengthening the pharmaceutical industry to increase manufacturing of sanitizers, medicines and other necessities. Apart from the general population, the medical staff needs to be armed with all the necessary protective gear, as they are in the front lines fighting this battle and they are the most likely to get infected. Moving on to the matter of social distancing. Governments across the world have recommended social distancing and self-isolation as one of the first measures of defense. But what is also being recognized is that social distancing is a privilege and not everyone can sustain themselves in quarantine. Workers who work for a daily wage or hourly wage, workers in the informal sector and gig economy workers mostly do not have the kind of benefits that will allow them to stay at home. They mostly do not have sick leaves or paid leaves. They also have very little savings to be able to afford time off. Gig economy workers like Uber or Lyft drivers and delivery persons are also at greater risk as they come in regular contact with the general public as part of their work. And as this health crisis spreads, their earnings will be reduced further. In these conditions, these workers will be forced to continue working even in sickness and if infected, they will only spread the infection with them. These workers are among the ones at highest risk right now and need to be protected. Left organizations everywhere have called for protection of incomes of workers. This can be informed of direct cash transfers on ensuring sick paid leaves and unemployment benefits for all. Trade unions have also called for a moratorium on bank loans to small enterprises and credit lines for affected people. In Italy, workers in factories went on strike demanding that employers take measures to make the work site safer. They demanded that the work site should be reorganized to ensure social distancing and that workers should be provided with protective gear such as sanitizers. Across the world, social movements, organizations and trade unions have set up hotlines and made calls to workers to denounce violations to their labor rights such as forcing them to go to work, retaining pay, arbitrary firing etc that many workers, especially in the informal sector, are facing right now. Another essential requirement for self-isolation is a safe space or a home to stay in. To ensure this, left groups have called for freezing any rent, increases freezing evictions and banning all four closures. There is also a call for giving homes to the homeless. In the US for instance, there are 17 million vacant homes according to the party for socialism and liberation. This is more than enough to accommodate the 500,000 homeless people. And of course if people are to remain in their homes, governments also need to guarantee them a steady supply of food and other health needs. Left parties have called on governments to increase the ration limits for poor families and use national food reserves to meet these needs. In many countries where students get food at schools, organizations have called for this food to be delivered at home. Children will be even more dependent on this food right now as their parents' livelihoods are compromised. The Indian state of Kerala, which is governed by coalition led by the Communist Party of India Marxist, has also delayed deadlines of water and electricity bill payments. They are also working on laying down new lease lines to increase the bandwidth of internet as consumption is predicted to increase with more people being at home. Other organizations too have called for ensuring that no utilities are cut at this time. It is also important to enact measures for populations living in vulnerable environments. This includes the homeless living in crowded shelter homes, this also includes refugees, migrants and other displaced persons living in overcrowded camps. These can become centers of outbreaks if adequate care is not taken to protect the inhabitants. Incarcerated populations are also at risk. For instance, the Palestinian Prisoner Society reported that four Palestinian prisoners had contracted the virus in an Israeli prison, but they are not receiving the required care or treatment. The only measure taken by the Israeli authorities is a ban on visits by family members and lawyers, which is only worsening the ordeal of the prisoners. Left groups have called for the release of elderly prisoners and petty criminals. They also have called for the release of persons being held by ICE, that is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a freeze on any new arrest. On March 18, prisoners at Lapicota Prison in Bogota, Colombia mobilized inside the Penitentiary Center to denounce that the prison authority has not taken any measures to improve sanitary conditions, and that the severe overcrowding, lack of water and other proper conditions poses a severe threat to the lives of the incarcerated population. Social organizations in Colombia have called for strict sanitary measures to be adopted by prison authorities, as well as the humanitarian release of prisoners accused of nonviolent crimes, a measure that has been adopted in several countries in light of the pandemic. There is also a call for ending sanctions on Iran, Venezuela and other nations. These sanctions have made it difficult for these countries to procure the required medicines and health equipment worsening the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the many flaws in capitalism, which is in no way equipped to deal with the crisis of this scale. The end of this crisis will only increase the already existing inequalities in society. Socialist countries and governments are right now able to control the spread of the virus and at the same time ensure that people's needs are met. Not only are they dealing with the crisis in their countries, but the socialist governments of China and Cuba are also extending solidarity to others by sending in medical teams and equipment. If we are to find our way out of this global health crisis, their example will need to be followed.


It presents Ruth Hussie and Frank Lovejoy which will network in cooperation with Family Theatre presents Old Friends starring Frank Lovejoy and now here is your hostess, Ruth Hussie. Thank you, Tony LaFranco. Family Theatre's only purpose is to bring to everyone's attention a practice that must become an important part of our lives if we are to win peace for ourselves, peace for our families and peace for the world. Family Theatre urges you to pray, pray together as a family and now to our transcribed drama Old Friends starring Frank Lovejoy as Bob. The only way you'll ever be able to see my point of view on this is by knowing what I was up against. You can kick around show business for a long time and get absolutely nowhere. In New York you can go sit in cobies and stretch a cup of coffee for over an hour or stand around the bar in one of those spaghetti joints near Shubert's Alley nursing a warm beer hoping you'll meet some big operator and you can do the same thing in Chicago or Hollywood. I wish I had half the money I've spent in spots like that buying lunch for the wrong people. The point is that for jobs and show business they don't run ads in the classified section of your local newspaper. You've got to go out and look for them. Well I knew this and Kenny knew it. This Kenny Lewis he was the one who taught me eight years ago so now I've got a little house in Glendale and I drive to work at the studio and afford convertible and things are looking up and then one night a few months ago the phone rings and Patty answers it and I get on the wire for a while and oh brother oh you bet yeah you bet Kenny so long kid holy cat is he out here he just got off the train an hour ago. Well I thought you said he was teaching dramatics in some little college in Michigan.  Does he have any prospects? Yeah me I'm his prospect. Oh Bob. Oh he saw the movie adaptation by Robert Ballinger he thinks I own the studio. Well you will. I'm not laughing. Why is he here? Oh the big chance you've read his letters. He still wants to act. He's got three hundred dollars he's going to give it six months. The funny thing is that he's good. He was very good and he helped me. Where's he staying? No way yet a hotel I'll stir him into a rooming house. Bob. He helped me baby. I know. Eight years ago he helped me. I can't pretend he's not here. I didn't get away from the studio until almost one the next afternoon. I played it a little big with Kenny I said I'd meet him in the Hollywood Derby. Outside in the parking lot I checked my wallet nine bucks and some change. That'd make it if we didn't go crazy. Kenny was waiting for me in one of the booths. He'd taken on a little wait. Who's the best writer and radio? Robert Ballinger the best actor? Kenneth H. Lewis. Oh you look great Robert. And hungry and ain't at the truth. How's Patty? Oh she's great and this time you'll meet her. I'm looking forward to it. You look fine really but where's the suntan? It's no place. That's a gag they have in this town. What's that? Well if you're brown you haven't been working. Really? Yeah. Well what about location? Everybody wears hats.  Oh I feel okay. But seriously is that bad having a suntan? Well I know one guy a director. He goes swimming every morning off Santa Monica. Winter, summer he goes swimming. Well? I think it's pennants. Is he brown? Yeah yeah but it doesn't hurt him. Everybody knows he's a director. That's the trick huh? That's the way it looks. You ordered yet? No no no I'm not very hungry. Kenny this is Bob. When I was strapped you bought the strudel. Well that was eight years ago. I got just as hungry then. Well we were kids. Oh everybody in this business is kids. An adult couldn't stand it. Now are we friends?  Oh you sound fine now stop worrying. Look if it wasn't for you I'd still be knocking myself out trying to be a two-bit actor. You were good. I stunk. You were the guy who told me. Right. So thank you. Now what do you want a steak sandwich? Okay. I had a boy. Now stop worrying we'll get your work. Well are they pretty busy out at the studio? And it stays open. My uh well my deal is with just one producer but there's plenty going on. Merrill. Yeah. He's a fella that did that thing you saw my name on for the adaptation. Oh I thought it was great. Really? I mean seeing your name up on the screen. Oh that really did get a kick. How'd you like the picture? It was good. Good. I was a little surprised to see your name on a western but I guess there's a big demand for that formula stuff. Well I'd hardly call a western like Shane formula stuff. Let's face it Bob this wasn't Shane. Oh you guys from the campuses if it doesn't have English subtitles and a downbeat ending it's not odd. You're from the campus. Yeah a long time ago. And Shane didn't have English subtitles. You know I'll bet you didn't know whether to like it or not until you read the Saturday review. Oh. Oh now let me give you a little advice Kenny. You know most of the people out here think they're doing a pretty good job. I think most of them try to. Yeah okay. And they've heard of Escalas and Shaw but they're not in business to please the literary crowd. And the literary crowd is well aware of this. Hmm. Well that might have brought down the house at the last faculty dinner but out here it would lay an egg. Uh huh. It would lay an egg with you. Well we're not talking about me we're talking about someone who just blew into town with three hundred dollars and a gleam in his eye. All right but look do I have to pretend I think this is the cultural center of America.  I'm not quite sure what it can give me. Well I can sum it up for you very quickly. Oh excuse me gentlemen have you decided what you want. Yeah two steak sandwiches. Well that was the way it began. I got Kenny signed with an agent and he started making the rounds. The first month it was absolute murder he got nowhere. He kept thinking his agent should get him work and I had to explain that agents aren't like that. You get the work and then they argue a little about price. As often as not they lose the argument but never the 10 percent. So agents. Well anyway about six weeks ago the man I worked for Billy Merrow bought the movie rights to a novel it was very hot. He told me to read it and start work on a screen treatment which I did. Also what I did was get a great idea. I sprung it on Billy at the next conference we had. Well as this guy got any film. No no he's brand new out here I met him in New York. He's great friend of yours. Yeah I know his work and all of a sudden he pops up here. I think we ought to give him a try. Yeah well this this role of the lawyer is pretty big. In the novel. Yeah yeah but the trial's about half the picture. Well the time during the trial yes but you would be in that courtroom ten minutes. All right I don't know about him. Well you don't test for the role anyway. Oh Billy you want to give him a chance. What's his name. Kenneth Lewis Kenneth Lewis. Well OK get a hold of it. I called Kenny and he came out of the house that night so excited that he couldn't see straight. After dinner we sat in the living room and went over the courtroom scene over and over. And a funny thing happened. Let me try it again. All right now let's go from the middle of page seven. I'll read the witness. You know that's what's wrong with this thing the witness. Well I don't claim to be a female impersonator. Oh no no I mean the way it's written. Well it's right out of the novel. But it's wrong it's wrong the girl is supposed to be in love with the defendant. She's supposed to fight the prosecutor. Well there's no fight here. Kenny those are the sides that you're going to have to do. But nobody in the world can bring this scene to life. Well you know that and I know that but this is how Meryl sees the scene. Now go fight Cindy Hall. Nevertheless somebody ought to tell him this just doesn't work. How would you two geniuses like some cough. Oh great honey thanks. Now Kenny. No no thanks Petty. You know it just doesn't work Bob. Look do yourself a favor. Memorize the scene come in tomorrow and play it for all its work. Oh don't you worry I will. And don't try to rewrite the picture. That's my department. What. I'm the guy that tells Meryl when something doesn't work. That's what he pays me for. The next day Kenny did his screen test. Kenny and three other actors. That evening after Meryl and I looked at the test in the projection room we went back to his office. And I tried to help him make up his mind. Well I. I don't know I think those first two birds are completely wrong. Well they're too old. No no no. Look like the FBI. Every time you tell an actor he's going to be on the side of the law he. He drops his voice in octave and puts on rimless glasses. How'd you like Kenny Lewis. Well him. Well he's different. He played it kind of strange though. Well that's what made him different. I don't mean that he. But he didn't play it the way it was written he he fought the girl he fought her all through the scene. It sounded real to me. Yeah well that's what's got me worried it was wrong. But it was real. The guy's got a quality he's genuine. You can tell he doesn't work by any book. I told you he was good. Yeah. I wish I could use it. Well he's yours if you're interested. Yeah. Well I I'm going to get Tony Milo for the part. Milo. Well his agent says he's free. But you didn't even test it. I can get him for a price kid he's a name. Oh Bill. Now look this this movie needs some protection. You've got a potential bestseller. And it stinks. Who's kidding who. And stars you got two stars. Yes I'm going to tie on as many more to this as I can and then fix the story. That we can fix but we haven't yet. So in the meantime it's got to be the names who make it look good to the backers. Well it is some Milo yet there's no rush I can get him. I think you're making a mistake. It won't be my first come on kid I'll buy your lobster. Every place Billy goes on Sunset Boulevard they all know him. It's a Haya doll here and hello baby there. So when we got to this chintzy restaurant I had plenty of time to make a few phone calls. Fatty said Kenny had been trying to reach me since six o'clock and that he'd left about four different numbers just prowling around town holding his breath. I finally got a hold of him and I told him what to do. Fifteen minutes later Billy and I were still standing at the bar waiting for a table. Kenny came in. Kenny what are you doing chasing me. I wonder if I know where to look Billy you met Kenny Lewis. Of course I'm glad to see you say I want to thank you for the test today. Not at all a waiter. I'd be flattered if you had decided on me but in a way I hope you haven't. Excuse me waiter as you like Johnson party or I'm here. What's with him. It's me Eli Johnson is that the Eli. Oh Kenny knew him in New York is he out here. I wouldn't know he's supposed to have that new Anderson play maybe your friend got lucky. Well he figures to he's good excuse me waiting for a power sure sure. Eli Johnson yes I didn't even know he was out on the coast he called me this afternoon I understand he's doing a new Anderson play nothing official. That's why you said you hoped I hadn't decided on you for the prosecutor. Well I'm not supposed to talk about it Mr. Meryl OK OK but what if I had decided on you. Well I don't know that would depend on what the money no not entirely there are a few things about the part itself. Say Bob yeah see what's holding up our table sure be right back be right back. I never should have left but I played the old school tie right down to the end. I went into one of the pay phones and I called the bar and I got Kenny on the wire and right in front of Billy Meryl I gave him a chance to tell Mr. Eli Johnson the big theatrical producer that he was sorry that the latter couldn't make it for dinner and oh yes he'd see Mr. Johnson the first thing in the morning. After I hung up I went out and I gave the headway to the hurry up but by the time I got back to the bar the damage had been done. That's the way it seems to me. It's difficult but in the writing the part is improperly conceived. The whole thing it's it's out of balance. The headway to says it'll be another 10 minutes Billy. Oh I want you to listen to this one. Kenny just got a call he's having dinner with us. Yeah Johnson's tied up I'll see him tomorrow. Oh it's too bad. Listen to this he's got an angle on a story we didn't even see. The way the thing is written Bob the prosecutor's relationship to the girl the heroine she doesn't fight him enough. Well that's why Kenny's tests look real he fought her. Well he ought to fight her we've talked about this. But we didn't do anything about it. Well Billy you wanted it the way it was in the book. Bob I wanted the flavor. You wanted the scene. I wanted the scene to retain the flavor of the book. It doesn't mean I wanted to fall flat on its face. You don't want to change it any more than I do. Now what's your idea. Tell him Kenny. Oh well actually it's it's a simple thing. It's so simple I'm a little worried that you didn't see it. Or maybe I did. Well just on the off chance that you didn't please listen. Maybe you learned something. Go ahead Kenny. I did what Billy told me to I stood there at the bar and I listened. I listened to Kenny give a classroom lecture on the function and the nature of drama. A lecture of the sort he'd given the undergraduates at Michigan sub normal for the last five years. Then we went in and we ate the lobster and the lecture continued and Billy Merrill aided up in great big mouthfuls the lecture and the lobster. There wasn't until the following morning at breakfast that I realized I might have to stick a pin in somebody's balloon but purely as a matter of self-preservation. Understand what he thought he was doing. Well he thought he was increasing the value of his stock honey and he was. Well he couldn't have been trying to hurt you. Well all I know is he did hurt me. It wouldn't make any sense. Well Kenny's been hungry for a long time. He learns pretty fast. You mean you think he's after your job. Well let me put it this way I think he'd take it if Billy offered it to him. Well Billy wouldn't.  You know I don't know how you've gotten to be such an expert on what Billy would or would not do. Oh Bob this has happened a thousand times an actor tries to impress a producer and he goes a little old. Hello Robert. Oh hello Kenny you're up pretty early. Yeah I wanted to catch you before you left for the studio. I think I did last night. Oh you did great. I was just telling Patty. Yeah Meryl seemed to like me. Oh he loved you. And that was a great idea you had about Johnson as Billy really took the bait on that huh. Hook line and sink it. Bob is anything wrong. Well now that you bring it up yes a little. What's the matter. Well I didn't exactly appreciate the way you plowed it at my story treatment in front of Meryl. Yes yeah you know whether you know it or not that didn't do me much good. Well you catch I wasn't knocking your treatment. I was talking about the novel. Well I wish you'd been a little more explicit. Listen oh good grief Bob I was just trying to to to justify the way I played the scene in the test. Yeah I know I wouldn't do anything to make you look bad. Kenny I'm sure it wasn't intentional. Holy cats no if it weren't for you I wouldn't even get in the front gate. Yeah I know that. All right now from now on if you got a beef about the script give it to me first will you. Oh sure. Oh my God you know Billy is a funny guy. I won't open my mouth again. All I wanted is the part. I wouldn't be surprised to see you get it. Oh really. Yeah Meryl is pretty hot on you. Well thank you for this. Well don't thank me until your name is on the contract. Listen I'm late now give me a call at work about noon huh.  So long kid. I didn't expect Billy to get into the studio much before 10 30 but when I got to my office my secretary told me he'd been on the lot since nine o'clock and wanted to see me as soon as I came in. Come in kid come in. Oh yeah yeah it's the olives. You should switch to onions. Have a seat. You look chipper. I'm bursting with health health and inspiration. You and me boss. Seriously kid. I had an idea about your friend Lewis last night. Are you going to give him a part. I think so. I came in early this morning and ran his test again and you were right. I always am. The reason he's different in that scene is that he plays it wrong. Oh hello. Or to be more accurate he's right in the scene is wrong. That sounds familiar. There was a flood in what he said last night about the treatment. Well I had the feeling that he was talking about the novel. No no kid we can't fall back on that the treatment's not right. Well OK then let's fix it it won't take much. That friend of yours has a good story since you know he turned out to be quite a fine. Well he may at that. Has he ever done any writing. Kenny. Yeah. I don't know I don't think so. I was thinking it might not be a bad idea if you two boys work together on the treatment. I don't believe that there's that much left to do on it Billy. I disagree. A couple of things he said last night got me wondering about the whole line we've taken with this story. You and Lewis are old friends you'll be able to work together. It's not a case of being able to work together it's a case of kid. I'm going to use him in the picture anyhow and well he can pick up a few extra bucks working on the treatment with you might look like a better opportunity to him than going back to New York with Johnson. Well that's the thought. What kind of money do you suppose Johnson figures to pay him for a thing like that. I look down at the rug and Billy's office pretending to be lost in thought the shoes on my feet were ox blood Brogans that cost twenty seven dollars and although I hadn't paid for them yet the bill had committed the end of the month along with a few other bills. I looked up at Billy and I scratched my chin. What do you think maybe three three fifty a week. Yeah maybe. Why don't you phone Johnson and ask him he's in town he'll give you the dope. Good idea. Where's he staying. You know I'm not sure. Why don't you call that celebrity outfit they know where everybody is. You can guess the rest. Billy got hold of the celebrity service and they told him that Eli Johnson hadn't been in Hollywood for the last six months not fixed it. Billy knew he'd been taken so there wasn't any job for Kenny Lewis because Billy is the kind of a guy who doesn't like to be taken. I finished the screen treatment single handed Milo got the part and Kenny hung around Hollywood until his doll ran out. I had dinner with him the night before he left for Michigan to see about getting his old teaching job back but it wasn't the derby this time. It was a little pizza place near his rooming house. Well at least I gave it a try. I'm sorry things didn't work out a little better kid. The break some make it some don't. At least I came close. You came closer than most. Only thing about Merrill deciding to check on that Johnson gag we cooked up. Yeah you know I think I figured out what it was Bob why he did it yeah yeah I made too big a hit with him made him like me too much. Well what would that have to do with it. Well I'll bet he called Johnson to see if maybe he couldn't do me a favor you know work out some arrangement so I could have both parts the one he wanted me for in the picture and the one that he thought Johnson was going to give me in the New York play. Well that's possible. Funny what's that made him like me so much I cut my own throat. I wouldn't be surprised if that was it Kenny. Well thanks for the dinner and thanks for the entire forget it forget it tonight. I don't know what your financial situation is. I've got enough to get back to school with. Sure there won't be any trouble about the job. No no no they'll want me even more now. Now I've had Hollywood experience. Well even so I want you to take this. Oh no come on take it. No you'll never see it again. Sure I will. Look when I was strapped didn't you buy the strudel. All that was a long time ago. Come on I'd drive you home.  I waited while he crossed the street and walked up the steps over the front of the building there was a neon sign that said tranchance welcome. Kenny stood there in the light and waved to me and I waved back and then he turned and went into the house. It was a kind of fade out. I think he would have liked in a movie. All it was missing were the English subtitles. This is Ruth Hussey again. This program recently received a letter from a listener who asks why doesn't family theater concentrate on presenting stories about the nice side of life the pleasant side. There's enough sin and selfishness in the world as it is. Why must we be reminded of it on the radio especially on your program. Well that's a good question. It's especially good when you consider that it contains its own answer. You see family theater came into existence because it's found or recognized and squarely faced the fact that there is sin and selfishness in the world. If there were none but the good things here it would not be the world it would be heaven and we have the redeemer's word for it. This is not heaven but it is a place of preparation for heaven a place where we must struggle with the irony the paradox of life groping sometimes grasping for things that we know will wither and fade and yet which at the time seem all important and in this there can be some evil some selfishness. We are tainted at birth with the sin of our first parents to deny this is to deny the creator and the universe he has made it is to bear false witness but since few men are all good or all evil we are able to hope for the best and obliged to strive for it and a story drawn honestly from life can like life itself be highly instructive without sermonizing the man who injures his neighbor weakens himself and the man who steals picks his own pocket it's there to see a portrait of greed strikes a blow for charity and just in passing a life like if slightly unpleasant story of a home lacking love and faith can be family theater's modest way of suggesting that on the other hand a family that prays together stays together more things are brought by prayer than this world dreams of family theater has brought you transcribed old friends starring Frank Lovejoy Ruth Hussie was your hostess others not cast were Jean Bates Lawrence Dobkin and John Larch the script was written and directed by John T Kelly with music composed by Harry Zimmerman and conducted by Henry Mancini this series of family theater broadcast is made possible by the thousands of you who feel the need for this type of program by the mutual network which is responded to this need and by the hundreds of stars of stage screen and radio will give so unselfishly of their time and talent to appear on our family theater stage to them and to you our humble thanks this is Tony Lofrano expressing the wish of family theater that the blessing of God may be upon you and your home and inviting you to be with us next week when family theater will present the thin red line starring George Nader Peggy King will be your hostess join us won't you family theater is broadcast throughout the world and originates in the Hollywood studios of the world's largest network this is mutual the radio network for all America


We think a lot about goals and resolutions and intentions and that's wonderful but we need to also be thinking about how we take care of ourselves to achieve those big goals. As entrepreneurs we tend to do this thing where we think that we're superhuman and we can do it and just because we have all this passion that's going to fuel us and oftentimes it can until it leads to burnout and the reality is we need to know when we're on fighter flight because that's the place where we can't be creative we can't connect and we can't solve problems as well like biologically our brain shuts down and we're not able to do those things. I would encourage people to take a step back and picture themselves in five years.  When you zoom out and you do this more right-brained visioning higher level thinking you're turning on the side of your brain that actually allows you to be creative and you're not in the weeds you're not in the day to day like when you're visioning into something much bigger you're calming your stress response. If we have the strength to zoom out and ask ourselves better questions for which the answers might be scary there's a really good chance that we'll uncover something about our values that actually sets us apart and then I think the end of the year is a really great moment to stop and have a brave conversation with yourself and reflect and listen to yourself without judgment call out your ego be better do better I think it's a great time for that.


Bonjour à tous. Today, just like every day, nurses and doctors, lab techs and hospital staff are hard at work to keep us safe. They're showing up for us, and we need to do the same for them. Over the weekend, we received new shipments of essential personal protective equipment, including four planes worth of N95 masks. As we speak, workers are unpacking and validating these supplies so we can start shipping them to the provinces and territories as quickly as possible. These new N95 masks are in addition to the more than 820,000 that went to provinces last week. All told, this means that we have 1.1 million N95s ready to be shipped to the provinces and territories with more to come. We have also received millions of pairs of gloves and will be getting new protective gowns delivered from domestic suppliers starting next Monday. In the end of the week, we have received four packages of essential personal protective equipment, including N95 masks. There is also a command for Quebec. These new N95 masks are in addition to more than 820,000 masks that we received last week. In summary, we are preparing to send 1.1 million N95 masks to the provinces and territories over the next few days. We have also received millions of pairs of gloves and we will be getting new hospital jackets starting next Monday. For the tests, we are doing important progress. I think, for example, of the company Spartan Biocent, which is based in Ottawa, and which will supply tens of thousands of pairs each month. Like Dr. Tam said yesterday, more than 430,000 tests have been carried out in Canada. We will continue to increase our capacity and study new technologies to simplify the tests across the country. In the last few days, we have also made progress on testing. Right now, we're moving forward on a range of rapid testing kits, both from here in Canada and internationally. This includes Ottawa-based Spartan Bioscience, who will soon be supplying tens of thousands of kits per month and potentially more as production increases. As Dr. Tam said yesterday, more than 430,000 Canadians have now been tested for COVID-19. Our experts and health professionals are working hard to increase our capacity to keep ramping up tests across the country. Demand for these supplies is going up, and we're going to make sure Canada can keep up. COVID-19 has transformed the daily lives of all Canadians, but it is clear that those who live in the Arctic regions don't have exactly the same issues as those who live in cities. For example, I know that many are worried about seeing the empty streets, and others are worried about knowing if their health care centers have enough space and resources to fight the virus if they spread in their communities. I assure you that we all do what we can to prevent this from happening. Today, I'm announcing that the government is investing nearly $130 million to help Nordic communities fight COVID-19. Of this sum, $72.6 million will be invested in Yukon, in the North West and in Nunavut for their health care system and to fight COVID-19. We also have funds for North Canada nutrition so that food and essential goods remain affordable and to help families stay healthy. And so that food and medical equipment can return to you, we work with air transport workers who work with essential goods in the North. Finally, I know that several businesses in the North are particularly affected by this crisis. We therefore offer help to the business owners whose expenses are not already covered by the other measures we have put in place. Today, I can announce that we are investing almost $130 million to support Northern communities in dealing with COVID-19. If you live in the North, chances are you're worried about whether your local health center has the resources to fight COVID-19 and to cope with cases that might come up. So we're providing $72.6 million to the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, specifically for health care and community preparedness. We're also investing more money to nutrition North Canada. This will make it easier to afford the food and basics that keep you and your family healthy. And to ensure that things like groceries and medical equipment can continue to get to you, we're providing funding for Northern air carriers to transport these supplies. These are tough times, but we're going to help you through them, to set your community up to come back strong when things get better. Because they will. We have to think about small businesses, too. I know entrepreneurs in the North have been hit especially hard by this crisis. If you own a business and your costs aren't already covered by other measures we've put in place, we're giving can or more funding to help. No matter where you live, in a small community or a big city, we're here for you. This weekend, we brought Parliament back to pass the largest economic policy since the Second World War. With the Canadian emergency wage subsidy, we will protect jobs by helping businesses keep their employees on the payroll. We'll be rolling this measure out as quickly as possible. And now, as many people as we've already helped, and we're talking about millions of Canadians, we know there is more to do. You might not currently qualify for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, but you still might need a hand. If you're a student or an essential worker, for example, this week, we'll be talking about how to reach you, while also supporting sectors that have been especially hard hit. At the same time, we're working to enhance the Canada Emergency Business Account, as well as new supports on commercial rent for businesses that are hardest hit. I'll have more to say about all this soon. If you've come back to Canada from abroad, as of today, we are strengthening measures. Now, if asymptomatic travellers cannot explain a credible quarantine plan, they will be required to quarantine in a hotel. This will come into effect at midnight tonight. We're also announcing $20 million for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to strengthen food inspections and keep our food supply safe. This will mean we can build capacity for more overtime and extra shifts for inspectors to fill demand. It also means we can invest in things like hiring and training to get more people on board. We're going through difficult times. Through the country, I know that a lot of people are worried not just about their future or their health, but about their parents and their grandparents. The elderly people are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, which means we shouldn't go visit them in the residence for elderly people and long-term care establishments. To help protect them, we've published new guidelines for these types of establishments. We've established clear rules on the restrictions of visits, personal control measures and procedures to follow in case of infection. At the same time, we continue to work with the provinces and territories to ensure that they have everything they need to keep people healthy. I want to take a moment to speak directly to everyone who's lost a loved one. If you're grieving, know that you're not alone. We are here for you, even through this incredibly tough time. And you remind us why it's so important to do everything we can to keep one another safe. We all need to do our part. We can't let up now. So to everyone, stay at home. And no matter what, stay two meters apart if you do have to go out. When it gets hard, let's remember that we're all in this together. Merci beaucoup.


Photosynthesis, one of the chemical reactions that is fundamental to your life. You should already know all about the process, but if you are unsure, watch our video on photosynthesis first. In this video, we are going to have a look at the factors that affect the rate of photosynthesis. There are three main factors, light intensity, carbon dioxide concentration, and also temperature. These factors are called limiting factors. Light is essential for photosynthesis, as it provides the energy to split the water and therefore enable carbon dioxide and water to react. No light, no photosynthesis. Increasing the light intensity increases the rate of photosynthesis, until a point, when the rate is at its maximum. In fact, plants spread out their leaves to maximise the amount of light falling on them and to ensure that lower leaves are not shaded by the ones above. Some woodland plants are known as shade plants, because they can photosynthesise more efficiently in dim light than other species. If there is insufficient carbon dioxide in the air, then photosynthesis cannot occur at the maximum rate. However, just like us, plants are sensitive to temperature too. Too hot and they cannot photosynthesise. Too cold and their productivity slows down to zero. This is because there are enzymes involved in photosynthesis, and so above 40 degrees Celsius, the enzymes start to denature, and so the rate of photosynthesis slows down. And then, as it gets cooler, the enzymes move around more slowly and hence the rate of reaction drops. Different types of plants have different optimum temperatures for photosynthesis. Plants that live in colder climates have an optimum rate at a lower temperature. These are the three main limiting factors. However, there are some others such as chlorophyll concentration, water and pollution. Farmers and horticulturists can use the knowledge of these limiting factors to increase crop growth in greenhouses. They can use artificial lights to extend the daylight hours or increase the light intensity. They can increase the concentration of carbon dioxide by burning paraffin lamps, and they can control the temperatures inside the greenhouse. Unsurprisingly, many crops such as tomatoes and lettuce give much higher yields when grown in greenhouses. Another fantastic bonus of photosynthesis is that because it needs carbon dioxide, we can pump waste carbon dioxide from our factory straight into greenhouses. One man's waste is another man's, well, plant's treasure. So from this video, you should know that carbon dioxide concentration, light intensity and temperature are the main limiting factors that affect the rate of photosynthesis. But remember, there is a maximum rate that can be achieved.


This video is called Solve Trinomials by Factoring 1. Now one thing to think about that we haven't talked about yet is when you have a trinomial, when you have a term of x squared, if you were to put this on a graph, you would end up with some sort of a parabola or a u-shaped figure. So keep in mind the x squared always means you'll have a parabola. And what we're going to do is when you have this trinomial with an equal zero at the end, we're not just going to factor it, but it says to solve by factoring. And what you're doing is trying to figure out if you have a parabola, you're figuring out where your parabola crosses the x-axis. Maybe it'll happen in two spots, like my example in red. Maybe it will, or my sketch really. Maybe it'll happen nowhere, like my sketch in blue because it doesn't cross the x-axis. Or maybe you'd have something like my sketch in green where you have one answer because it hits it only once. Let's see what happens here. We're going to go about this factoring how we're used to. Multiplying to give me five and adding to give me negative six. Well, when I make my list of factors, five times one is the only way to multiply to give me five. And a negative five plus a negative one gives me a negative six. And a negative five times a negative one gives me a positive five. So I split up my x's and have a negative five and a negative one. Now if we were just factoring and this equals zero wasn't there, we'd be done. But it is there and we can't forget about it.  Now it's time to simply take my two binomials and set them both equal to zero. Now we've got two equations to solve. When you add five and add five, you get x equals five. So that's one answer. When you add one and add one, you get x equals one. So that's your second answer. So what that tells us is on a graph, our parabola or u-shaped curve is going to cross the graph at one and at x equals five. So if you're going to do just a sketch, it would look something like that. Now the reality is it'll be a lot more exact, but what we found is where it crosses the x-axis. So a sketch at this time is sufficient. Let's try a second example. To solve this trinomial by factoring, I know it's a trinomial because I've got three terms. I know it's a parabola or a u-shape because of the x squared. But before you can get started, I need to get all my terms on the left-hand side of the equal sign. So let's move that 36 over. So you get x squared plus 13x plus 36 equals zero. Now I'm ready to factor because all my terms are on the same side of the equal sign. You cannot factor from this stage. You'll get the answer wrong. It has to be from here. So what multiplies to give us a positive 36 and adds to give us a positive 13? Well, let's go ahead. We can make kind of the skeleton of our problem. I can break down the x squared to x and x. And now let's work on some factors of 36. Well, there's 36 and 1. Gosh, there's a lot. There's 6 and 6. There's 12 and 3. There's 9 times 4. Well, any of these add up to a positive 13. I think it's the positive 9 and the positive 4. So I'll put a plus 9 and a plus 4. Now if this was just a simple factoring problem that didn't have the equals zero, we would be done. This would be our answer. But because we're solving by factoring, we need that equals zero and we have to go one step further. x plus 9 equals zero and x plus 4 equals zero. So when you subtract the 9 from both sides, you get x equals negative 9. When you subtract the 4, you get x equals negative 4. So we have two answers. So that tells me if I was going to make a sketch of a graph, it tells me that my parabola is going to cross the x-axis twice. One time will cross at negative 4. And the other time will cross at negative 9. So again, this is a very kind of crude sketch of what my parabola looks like, but it gives me an idea and lets me know where it crosses the x-axis. The last problem in this video to solve trinomials by factoring, the equals zero tells me that I have to solve. I'll be doing some equations. We're looking to see where this crosses the x-axis. The x squared tells me that I've got a parabola, which is a U shape. It might be a really skinny U.  I don't know. This will help us get an idea of what it looks like. So first thing, ask yourself, are all my terms on the left-hand side of the equals? Yes. Second thing I want to ask myself is, can I take out a GCF? And I think I can divide out a 2, a 2, and a 2. So let's go ahead and fill in what's left over. 2x squared will get me back to 2x squared. 2 times a negative 7x gets me back to negative 14x and 2 times a plus 12 gets me back to 24. I like this because now the numbers are smaller. They're simpler than what I had up here. So what multiplies to give me 12 and adds to give me a negative 7? Well, factors of 12 are 12 and 1, 6 and 2, 4 and 3. Which combo will add to be a negative 7?  So don't forget about the 2. Don't forget about the equals 0. Split up the x. Negative 4, negative 3. So now I've got 3 terms. I'm setting equal to 0. 2 equals 0, x minus 4 equals 0, and x minus 3 equals 0. Well, 2 does not equal 0. So I can get rid of that. So the 2 that I had here and here has kind of gone away. Now I add 4 and I add 4. So I have x equals 4. I add 3, I add 3. I have x equals 3. So these are my 2 answers. That is where, if I was going to graph this, don't leave much room to do that. But if I was going to graph it, my parabola would cross the x-axis at 3 and at 4. So this is going to be a skinny parabola. Remember, it's not perfect. It's not exact, but I'm just starting to get an idea of what 2x squared minus 14x plus 24 looks like on a graph.