You can engage us across all our social media platforms at Y254 channel. Engage me at Faith Mzoely across all my socials. Btw, in quarter year of 2020, a study was done by Kenya health information management and it was found that at least 11,000 girls were teenage girls were pregnant In the county of Nairobi and Kakamega county came in second and then Machakos came in third. So to demystify all these facts we have in studio our guest Tracy Molo. Welcome. Thank you very much. You can introduce yourself, tell us who Tracy is and then your social media handles please. My name is Tracy Molo, I'm a 21-year-old girl passionate about women and girl child empowerment. You can get me on my socials at Tracy Molo across all media platforms. So I'm a co-founder of the Village of Hope, a foundation whereby it's basically humanitarian so we talk to widows and orphans and get to offer them help where we can. Then I'm the program coordinator of She-Rise at Young Women Leaders Connect. Young Women Leaders Connect basically is an organization, a youth-led organization where like-minded women came together to try and combat all these issues that I can hear you talking about. So what was the motive? What pushed you into starting such an organization? Basically I will say we had women who had gone through the same issues like teenage pregnancies or women who had people who had the same experiences so we decided to come together, put our minds together and try to see what we can do in order to combat all those issues. So when we talk of teenage pregnancies it takes two to tango. There is a boy, there is a girl.  You see when you talk to girls only the problem is not solved because like you just said it takes two to tango. So at first our organization mainly dwell on ladies and all that but with time we came to realize that we need to talk to the boys also because they are part of what happens they are part of the teenage pregnancies. So we had other men on board as mentors too. So you see when we go out to the field and talk to such people when the boys see other boys coming to talk to them they can they understand what's happening. Yeah they understand better what's happening. Alright. So the girls that you talk to what do they tell you that there are some of the issues that push them to the level of becoming mums when they are just patins? Most of them I will say Pavati because most people feel like I come from a background where my parents cannot afford something A something B so there's a guy out there who's like ah if I sleep with you I can give you this I can provide you with this so they decide ah why not let me go and do this and get money maybe to get my family out of such a situation and at the end of the day you find that they are pregnant and like we all know at times you get pregnant and there's no one to take care of you after that so they become teenage mums. Exactly. So when we talk of Pavati as a reason why most girls are getting pregnant when they still teens Pavati comes in a sense that these girls can't afford even sanitary pads.  So do you also give them like sanitary pads do you engage them in that? Ya as an organization YWLC that is we went to schools different schools like Ayane Primary in Kibera and we had programs or should I say clubs where we signed in different students so we partner with sanitary companies like always ya so when we gather sanitary towels from the companies and we also donate from our pockets we go to the schools and give them out and do you reach out to schools do you reach out to schools and talk to these girls or you wait for them to get pregnant first and then you meet them in your organization like do you randomly do it going to schools and talking to teenage girls and boys Ya maybe let's say in a month we try to go to like 3 schools and talk to them give them sanitary towels give them the help that we can in terms of mental health issues reproductive health giving sanitary towels life skills ya it's all round speaking of life skills what are some like they are teenage girls who get pregnant they get ashamed of going back to school so when you talk of life skills what do you do to this girl who is pregnant why going back to school as a teen mum what do you do to them to just improve their future life because they just don't want to go back to school first of all we try to reach to the parents or the caregivers and provide awareness to them because you know most of the people that make these girls ashamed are part of the society they are part of their families their friends so for them not to feel ashamed the caregivers the ones that we can reach to and the ones that we cannot reach to we just talk to the girls make them feel at home make them feel like we are their sisters we are their mums ya do you do vocational training ya we do vocational training for people who are maybe old and older to go back to school or people who are not willing to go back to school like the normal 844 system kcp ya so in the recent past there's been a norm like the law comes for the boy I'm sure you were the law comes for the boy when the girl gets pregnant what's your take on that personally I don't know if it may go with everyone but personally I feel like if you're above 18 or even below 18 the two have consent they give consent for them to do whatever they are doing so that they could get pregnant so I don't feel like it's really right for them to come for the boy inasmuch as girls are fragile and all that ya you know it's easy very easy to convince them but I feel like both should take accountability for their actions exactly so these girls as you talk to them and try to engage them on several issues vocational training for them to accept to go back to school how do they perform after being teen mums and they've gone back to school ya I'm so happy to see for the few that we've taken back to school they have been performing well because we've been going to their school from time to time to check on how they are performing and most of them are performing well though there are some still lagging behind but with time they'll catch up ya and so where do they live their kids like do you mind where they are kids before they go back to school because they have to be in school full time ya like I said before for most of them we talk to their caregivers their parents or their guardians ya so when it's time for them to go back to school we go and talk to their families maybe they can help take care of their kids as they go to school ya exactly okay so and what of stigma in school do you engage the teachers before they go back to school ya obviously if someone has gotten pregnant as a teenager like we all know I think there's that stigma when you go back to school everyone is laughing at you so we try as much as possible if maybe we've gotten hold of the information that the kid is pregnant and the students don't know yet we try to encourage teachers not to rub it off to other students that there's someone who is pregnant in our school or all that so by the time maybe they're coming back to school very few people know about it but in the same case there are people who live in the same environment so obviously they'll know such and such a person who is pregnant so we try to also give awareness to the teachers to be able to talk to the students and tell them that in as much as it happened we try to still embrace the girl it's okay to give them a chance to still work on their future okay and when they are in school this girl has gone back to school do you use them as let me say motivational to others like they go around telling others that you can still go back to school even if you are a teenage mum ya why not even if I was in school maybe I was pregnant and I'm in class then someone comes in and they were in the same situation like I am and after like a few years in school they've made it, they've become a lawyer they've become a teacher they've become whatever they want to be I feel motivated enough to work hard to be like them or surpass them in their different capabilities okay and they have a teenage mum has a son or a daughter how do you follow up the relationship between the mother the parents or the guardians back at home to just know if they are doing fine following up on there is a parent who cannot be so much into the daughter getting pregnant some of them might be chased away so do you like home them those who do not have a home after getting pregnant because there is just that parent who can't take a teenage kid being pregnant being pregnant okay as YWLC glad to say we have very empathetic people in our organization so some of them who are very able we've had one case of someone who was able at least she's working and all that the girl who was chased away by her parents and this woman in our organization decided to take her in until the time she finished school okay so in your organization you you provide that chance for them to have another life even after getting pregnant even after being teenage mothers and so if this teenage mother she has this kid but cannot feed the baby so do you even take care of the baby or it's none of your business okay why WLC is voluntary for most people so most of the time when an issue arises we just come on board as a group we contribute money wherever we can we call for partnerships and we go and help wherever we can so do you have partners yeah we have a few partners and still open for partnerships okay so you'll find that in most cases the teenage girl she's pregnant she has no home she's being home somewhere else and then they are just these sponsors let me say for lack of a better word who takes in this teenage girl out of his desperate situation and then ends up using her again have you encountered such situations before not at the moment but I think if we found ourselves for one of our girl in such a situation like we say before we take them back to their families and all that there is counseling there is how we talk to them to carry themselves about an issue so when I feel like when they get to certain situations they are so free to call us any of us in organization so when the issue is brought on board we can discuss and see how we can go about it okay so when you're talking to these girls about teenage pregnancies how they can avoid teenage pregnancies what do you tell them first of all we really really talk about abstinence because as a teenage I feel like it's not right to engage in sexual activities but in this generation things happen people engage in sexual activities in as much as we talk to them about abstinence we also talk to them about contraception the different types of contraceptives and how they can use them unable to counter that so you follow up on each and every girl a teenage mum you follow up each and every one of them and know how they are doing even in schools that we go each and every one of them we don't have so many people that we are how many are they how many teenage mums do you have so organization so organization is based in different counties so in different counties we have mentors there so there are different schools we deal with schools so in Nairobi we have like Kibera Ayani primary where we offer help in terms of education in terms of mental health and all that so we have like 15 girls in Ayani in Migori we have like 20 girls in different schools there are different number of girls so we divide ourselves all right I saw that you are a Tuba are you a Tuba suri yeah so what do you do on YouTube my YouTube is mainly on lifestyle first of all remind our viewers your YouTube channel you can find me on my YouTube channel at Tracy Molo so what do you do on YouTube mostly lifestyle real talk okay what do you talk in that real talk we've just started but I want to focus on maybe motherhood and issues affecting mothers are you a mother alright so lifestyle so what do you talk about lifestyle on your YouTube channel how to live around in this era ways in which we can deal with certain issues in life like depression and all that okay but there is so much competition on YouTube so how do you go around and just make sure that people are subscribing to your YouTube channel first of all I looked for a team editing group in terms of editing I make sure my work is legit good so like the teenage mums or rather the teenage girls who get pregnant don't you think that it would be educative if you put such content on your YouTube channel yeah I had that plan in place for my friends that I know who are mothers and maybe the women out there I wanted to have a segment called motherhood where I would involve different women to come and maybe give their life experiences and how they tackle the issues that they had in order to encourage the other ones so you said you're talking to boys too about teenage pregnant so what do you tell boys okay we have different things that we talk about but mainly we try to ensure that they reduce the rate at which they get into relationships while still at their teenage ages because basically basically we know that when a boy makes a girl pregnant at teenage he does not even have enough fans to cater for the kid most of them even run away they don't take responsibility so most of the time we have so many single parents and you know how hard that could be alright so I'll give you a chance to remind our viewers where they can find you on social media and then what you do and then if you want any partnership with any companies on the Teva sponsor and you can go ahead and okay on our social media platforms you can find us at Young Women Leaders Connect on Facebook Young Women Leaders Connect on Instagram and my personal accounts Tresimolo on all other platforms and Village of Hope on the same all other platforms and as Young Women Leaders Connect and Village of Hope we are open to partnerships in any form could it be mentorship financial anyway we are very open to partnerships alright sure you have learnt one or two things just like I have and they say that a home without daughters is like a spring without a source that is food for thought so find me on social media at Faith Musoli across all my social media platforms my name is Faith Musoli and goodbye


Our second lightning round speaker this morning is going to talk to us about accessibility audits in academic libraries. Sounds like a very daunting thing, but I'm sure you will make it much more fun towering book stacks and heavy doors. So, Abby, go ahead and take it away. Introduce yourself and tell us about how you're doing this at your library. Yeah, great. Thank you. My name is Abby steam and I am the research and scholarship librarian at Dakota State University. RFT is around 2000 or so. But yeah, recently we've been having a new look at the library and that we're trying to make it more accessible, acquire new furniture and stuff that just makes it again accessible for any and all students. So I also had performs an accessibility audit during my time as a student at the University of Iowa, where I was the president of the UI students for disability advocacy and awareness. So I have that hands on experience as well. And I just today I will just be showing you some of some basic stuff about accessibility and just some some tips and ideas to kind of get thinking about how you can make your own library more accessible, even if you don't have the budget to do so. So to start off, I want to go over the priorities for accessibility, named by the ADA. So this is basically the stuff that you have to have, according to the ADA. So, as you can see, forming points, accessible approach and entrance access to goods and services, access to public toilet rooms and access to other items such as water fountains. So these are, this is a good checklist on just for a general approach to things. So just when you, whenever you look at a room or something in your library, just ask the question, you know, can people access this. Basically, the question is, can they get in and if they can, can they access whatever's inside, right? But at the same time, it is pretty vague and it doesn't really help in more specific areas, especially when disabilities, especially when you get introduced into the broad range of disabilities, and especially when some disabilities go against others in that, like, for example, low site people or low vision, people with low vision, they might prefer brighter lights while people with sensory issues might prefer lower lighting. But to help with that, we can look at the universal design principles. These can help us narrow down things. So the first one, equitable use, the design is useful to people with diverse disabilities. So think of that small little ramp in the sidewalk. People usually use it when they're biking to get onto the sidewalk from the road.  It's useful to anyone and everyone. The next is flexibility and use. So it accommodates a wide range of preferences and abilities. You can think of like a dimming light switch where you can adjust the brightness of the lights. So if someone, if the bright lights are too much, they're able to dim it. But if they're not able to see, they can up the brightness, you know, it accommodates any reason or ability in that case. Low physical effort. One main issue when I was a student at the University of Iowa was that the doors to the library were super heavy. And so it took a bit of extra, extra umps to get the door open. And that can be exceptionally hard for people, whether you're, whether they have like mobility aids or if they're carrying a lot of things, or if they just aren't that strong for whatever reason. Or they don't have all that good stamina that just makes it more difficult. So make sure the design, it just has that low physical effort. You can just do it and not waste an extra breath on it. Simple intuitive use. So the design is easy to understand regardless of the user. Basically, like, say if you have a computer that patrons come in and use but it needs to have all these certain buttons be hit in order for it to turn on in the first place. That would not be really a simple intuitive use. So just think if can a patron just walk in and start using it and knowing how to use it on their own. Perceptible information so the design communicates necessary information effectively to the user. So this one can be is very important for to use with things like signage. Does the sign tell the patron what they need to know? And does it do so accurately? So the sign can say this is the library. But if the sign is in a building across campus, that's not very effective, right? So making sure that it is able to communicate that information but also do so accurately. So that sign, for example, should be placed in the library and then it'd be more accurate and effective. So tolerance for error. So the design minimizes hazards and adverse consequences. My biggest pet peeve is when I hit my hip on the sharp edge of tables. Oh, I still need bruises from that. Yes. Yes, so much. And it's the smallest thing but it hurts a lot. And that can be even worse for other for other individuals depending on the disability as well as even for kids, you know, a lot of households. They'll put in the edge guards so that if their kid hits it by accident, they won't get hurt. So that's one of the things you should look out for is just to make sure that if there are any hazards possible that they're at the bare minimum. And then size and space for approach and use. So a big issue with any library is book stacks, right? There's not. That has been an ongoing conversation. I don't have a definitive answer to that. You know, we all have a lot of bookshelves filled with a lot of books. They're very tall or you either where you have to stand on some stools in order to reach them or you have to bend down in order to grab them. And there's very little space in between. Ideally, you'd be able to kind of open it up a bit, add some more space in there. At least two people can be happy in the same book stack aisle comfortably, right? But again, I understand that physical space is very limited. So this is one that requires a lot of creativity to think about. But so in my experience, I've come across some patterns. And so here are some kind of helpful tips just to think about. For example, curves, arranging spaces and smooth curves and sort of like sharp edge boxes. This is a very helpful just in creating that extra space as well as minimizing hazards. And then versatility. So getting furniture that allows patrons to transform the space to fit their needs. This is very one of the greatest, a great thing to get is like tables and chairs with wheels that way that they're light enough so that they're able to be moved to whichever part of the room. And then you can redesign the room to fit whatever group of people are in that room for that time being. And then you can easily put it away once again. Also, signage label everything. It might come across to you. You might think, Oh, no, this is this is into this is pretty basic like you'll get it. Even if you think that label it anyways, it's never it never hurts to have everything labeled. And ideally, it would also have label with Braille at the bottom. But again, that is that can be dependent on your library and your budget and services. So placing the reference desk near the entrance and offering helpful items and services those items and services can be like noise canceling headphones, lockers to store things. Having a book pickup option near the front door. This helps in just this helps in preventing a disabled person from having to struggle throughout the physical library building. And only to find out that they're not able to fit into the book stacks or they're not able to get access to this one book or to this room. Instead, they can have they'd be able to just go in and at the front and get the help they need right there at the center at the door. And since I have a little extra time, I want to show you these pictures I found. These were designs created in this report published by the Library of Congress. It's in it was from 1989 so it's a bit outdated but the designs are still very much applicable today. As you can see here with the receptionist desk it's right at the entrance and you can see the curve of the desk and how that offers quite a bit of room, especially for wheelchair users so they're able to turn around and better move themselves within that room. So that's what I mean by designing with curves instead of straight edge boxes. And here that there's a quite a quite a few ideas going on here but so for example, doors, having power sliding doors so that automatically open doors. That's always great and fantastic for bathroom doors. I know there's the maze design where you walk in and then you go around a wall in to enter the bathroom instead of actually opening a door. All those are great accessible door designs. And then a change in the flooring to define different areas. That's great, especially if you have a, especially for like young, younger patrons for children. You can say here's the play area if you go outside onto the wood floor here you know you can't like run around anymore, you have to kind of be quiet and walk. You see curve walls so that you're, you can feel your, you're able to feel your way around it instead of heading straight into another wall. Handrails, and my favorite part of it is the textured needlepoint artwork. We've all kind of, we've all had like a painting that we want to reach out and touch. And they generally say no, don't touch. Exactly, no, don't touch but having that artwork that is specifically designed so you can touch. That's just fun for everyone, you know, and for people who are blind or low vision, they'll be able to participate in it too. And that's just, it's just a good reminder that this isn't doesn't have to be this like a kind of monotone dole thing to do, you know, following regulations and everything it can be fun and you can have end up with a very beautiful library by the end of it. So here are some those resources I used in the accessibility audits, the ADA checklist. This one the planning barriers for free libraries is where I got those those last two images and the universal design principles as well so I'll send that to you so you can share it with everybody but So are those links in the slides those are those are actual links to those documents that those are actual links. Yeah, they're okay, perfect. So that is all I have for you today. Okay, yes. Thank you so much. Go ahead and leave that slide up there so people can see that all that up there now we do any questions. Does anyone have any questions you want to ask about anything more information want to know about anything. Has anyone done one of these kind of accessibility audits audits just scary word for some people. But it's not that kind of audit you don't get in trouble. Well, there is a day that you do need to be, you know, depending on you know your public space for things available. Yeah. I have a question about the resources yes so these resources don't want to know resources basically how do you you know if you you are the staff person and you know this is something important. Do you have any and you said you had done this they want to give any tips for convincing admin or people in charge that this is something that needs to have effort money, whatever put into. If you had done this before. So, is that how you, you know, convince them saying, I've done this I know we should or do you have any tips for people on how to make. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, I've been lucky in that the people I've worked with have already been like wanting to be more accessible and just above ADA compliancy so I've been lucky in that. But yeah, that is hard, depending on the person you know but if if you have these checklists and these mark offs on what to do. And then just coming up with your own ideas and having something to bring to the table so it doesn't seem like, oh that's a lot of extra work we need to do. Because I know the work is done it's right here. You know, for example if you're getting new bookshelves and you want to make them more accessible. Go ahead and like research and find bookshelves that would be ideal ideal for your library and also accessible, you know, just kind of, as you're going through it. Sorry. But as you're going through working on how to propose this stuff to admin just really just have those ideas up already. And having those checklists saying, look, we've already done some things it's already here but right better. There's all these boxes we haven't checked. Right, exactly. Okay, but it could be better. Exactly. And there's someone actually a comment here that just came through is great comment. Having had a coworker who was wheelchair bound I am much more content conscious of accessibility. I think you might narrow space between bookshelves is a huge pet peeve. I mean, even as a non, you know, someone who doesn't need to have any issues with that. Sometimes those are just way too close for comfort. I oftentimes will stop and go around a different way, if I unless I absolutely have to go down that particular aisle, but you definitely need to. And then you can't access those books and so it's like, yeah, that one, that one is a bit tricky because it's just not everyone can do can say, oh, we have a digital library we can build up the digital library because not all patrons have access to the digital library either, especially with, you know, our small, small town libraries, a lot of page patrons are in rural areas and they might not have internet access or solid internet access so again, that's just a lot of this is just really brainstorming and finding, finding like that perfect furniture as well, and just moving your what you have around a little bit, it can just be the placement of a chair, you know, placing it in a different corner to make some more open room that can make a world of difference. So we have another question, I think to be the last one we'll take down so we do have to get on to our last lightning round speaker. Someone says I work in an academic library as well oftentimes ADA compliance is an afterthought for our designers and administration. Sadly designers I mean I get admin might be not aware but you think someone designing or construction would. Yeah. But for example we had all new light fixtures put in and they're extremely bright and there's no dimmer switches. So I guess the same kind of questions the previous person had suggestions and tips for having conversation with administration always conscientious of this other similar ADA issues. Do you think in some cases it's more of a, do we need to, I don't mean to be rude about throw the legality of it at them.  Yeah, and who you have coming into your building you could have a lawsuit or some PR that you just don't want. And it's that is definitely is sometimes it will have to come down to that where you do have to bring up the ADA and say you've got to do something about this. Honestly, they should have they should have already thought of it beforehand it shouldn't have been an afterthought so that is ultimately not to not to place blame but it is ultimately on them if they have to redo everything. But for so. Yeah, and that can that can always be tough and definitely intimidating. So I also recommend having people go with you or be with you when you present this information and also to don't be afraid to reach out to like student groups as well, because students are also very much a part of the library and are very much using it. So, if they are definitely bothered, you know, by the light switches as well because I know in my libraries, quite a few students are very bothered by how bright the lights are can be. So just bringing them along as well to kind of have that extra push that it's, it's a pretty good space for and they're not happy. Exactly. Yeah. All right, thank you so much. This is great very useful and I got some comments coming because it was great. Thank you. Totally, totally awesome presentation. Thank you. All right, great. Thank you so much.


Hi, I'm Kinsey Grant. I'm here with Walter Johnson, the Chairman and CEO of Acme United. So, Mr. Johnson, can you tell me a little bit more about what your company does? Sure, Kinsey. So Acme United is the largest scissor maker in the world. We make about 60 million scissors a year. We also make pencil sharpeners with special coatings for non-stick. We also have a very large first aid business, particularly industrial first aid. And we've been having record years time and again. I think we're in our eighth year of record performance now. Okay, wow. That's impressive. Eight straight years. So, can you tell me a little bit more about how a company focused on scissors and first aid is kind of operating or responding to this, you know, Amazon age, the boom in e-commerce? Well, this is a big opportunity for us. Five years ago, e-commerce was less than one percent of our business. Today it's 14. Our online business for the last three years has grown at 100% or more a year. And as we're moving now into 2018, we see the opportunity for really it to be a breakout year because it's now of enough size that it makes an impact on our overall business.


Hi, this is Christian from Swim2Fly.com. Today we're gonna run out to swim confident and independently in the water to become water safe. So the first thing to remember when you run out to swim, it's to be comfortable and relaxed. Swimming is actually very simple, so it should not be stressful at all. The step one would be to be able to blow your bubbles 5 seconds consecutively, looking underwater and being completely relaxed. The step number two would be to learn how to float and to fly on the surface of the water, blowing your bubbles during 5 seconds. The step number three would be able to use your hands like a tiger to take a breath on the surface of the water and to use your feet to stay horizontal. You will have to learn how to relax completely, blowing your bubbles 5 seconds, and continue to swim nonstop.


Hello, good afternoon everybody. My name is Diego Ojeda and I am part of the facilitation team of the MOOC Open Itwining on its second edition. First of all today we are thinking of a neighbor country and we would like to give a word of condolence and support to the British teaching community who are shocked today by the Manchester attack. Our solidarity and courage to all who have suffered this tragedy more closely. And having said that, welcome everybody to this live video chat organized by Aprende in Peth. Let me introduce, let me introduce our guest speakers today. Diego Rojas is a member of the Itwining National Support Service in Spain and also with us Paola Argrini who is an Italian Itwining Ambassador and an experienced Itwiner who is currently working here in Spain and has been and is already taking an active role in this MOOC as part of the facilitation team. Welcome and good afternoon Diego and Paola. Hello everybody. Good afternoon. Away from the camera, but with an important role too, there is, we have Yolanda and Julian from the facilitation team too. And who are ready to give a hand at any moment we need it. And also I would like to say hello to the team of INTEF who have organized and prepared this broadcasting. And hello to Maria and her team of Visión Líquida who give the technical support of this event. Welcome and good afternoon to everybody. And having said that, let's talk about the place where our dear projects are going to live for the next weeks or next months. We have been working with them, we have designed them, we have improved them, we have already have them almost ready and now we have to take them to life. And this place, this country where they are going to live for their life in schools is the Itwining Network. The Itwining Network, the biggest school system in Europe is a place with many possibilities for you and with many things perhaps have not been discussed in deepness during the MOOC. And now we'll have the opportunity to discuss and talk about them. Before going on, I would like also to remember, to remind you that there is a chat window just below the broadcasting window. You are watching us from the Directo INTEF site and you can use it to leave questions or comments live during the celebration of the video chat. The colleagues Yolanda and Julián basically will be making us taking these questions, these comments to the guest participants in the chat. We also remind you that this chat will be recorded and published on the MOOCs blog, so you can visit and revise it at any moment. Alright, and now to start Diego, I would like you to tell us something about those things, those aspects of Itwining we shouldn't miss in any way. I mean, what are the first steps I should take when I go for the first time into the real platform, not inside the MOOC, but now when I want to take my project to life? What are these steps? Okay, to start with the first important thing that you have to do is not to do something. I mean, just very important, just do not panic. Okay, Itwining offers you, offers teachers a lot of possibilities, not only for projects, also for networking, socializing, professional development, etc. So what you have to do is just calm down, relax, do not try to understand or to grasp everything at once. So step by step and enjoy the experience, that's all. Okay, so this is not something you have to do, but more an attitude you have to take when you're joining Itwining. And then about specific things, when you join Itwining, let me talk about some boring formal aspects of that. Itwining is based also on safety and security, and all the identities are checked by the national support services. So when you're registering Itwining, it's very important to use your real data, your real personal details, and also your school personal details. So please try to use email accounts that you actually use, because you are going to receive important notifications there. Just try to check that the email of your schools you are using in your registration actually work, and they are actually used by your headteachers, principals, administrative team, or whatever, be very cautious with that. So use real data, just try to put working accounts, because we are going to check it. So this is the very first important step. And now you have to get to know more people, and I think that Paola is quite more experienced than me and that. Okay Paola, so some more essential elements after registration. We have to make registration and take our personal details. But is there any hint, any tip you would give us to make our registration and our profile more attractive? Registering Itwining, you should take care of your profile just as you take care of your social profiles like in Facebook or in Twitter. Because there you can upload, you can show, you can post all the things you are important for your professional life. And it's very important that as Diego told you, that as inside the Itwining, all the people inside are certified, are verified teachers and schools. You have to show that you want to projects or in community, or in the groups that are inside Itwining. So it's important that you show what are your interests, what do you like to do, what do you like to do with your pupils at school. And so if you platform, surf around the people's profile, the other teachers, so you can just understand, looking at the others, how you can upload things, how can you update your profile so that other people making a project with you and your school, it's a good thing for them. And you can start searching people inside the platform, searching the people in the city or in the countries where you are interested in or people who are interested in the same thing you like to work with, or work with the same age of your pupils or any other interests you can do. Just think that it's a huge community of teachers, the biggest probably in the world. So you can find the inside Itwining who are willing to work with you and just take time, take your time, step by step and go inside to look for something that you like to do, that you like to work with these people and with your pupils in a cooperative way. That's very important. Once you are in, as we always say, Itwining, the problem is to stop to work with Itwining because generally you like that you get addicted to this kind of work. Okay, that's right. Thank you very much. And anyone more advice in relation to the finding partners for my project? Because I think this is one of the main concerns of people and not only that relates to our attractive profile, but something, how many partners are the best? Should I try and find the more the better or should I try and find just at the beginning one or two partners not to make our community too big? We're going to, from tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, it's going to be active sort of notice board on the MOOC on this extra week. We're going to have to allow people to advertise themselves and to make them know in this non-formal or this non-official context in the training of the MOOC. But do you think there is something applicants should know about this step in finding partners that can take the most out of our projects? Inside Itwining, there are two ideas and look at the other ideas. So you can find partners there. To admire it, it's very difficult to find partners there even it's possible because it's huge. You have to read thousands of posts published there. So the idea is to take the first step with a simple project, not with too many partners. Start, for example, looking at the kits. The kits are prepared to show you how to start a simple project with the shown all the things that you can adapt, of course, the kits. And you can choose the one that you like and find a partner who wants to choose the same kit, for example. Let's start about getting to know each other or something about exchange of mails or something very easy that you can start with and you can find partners. Finding partners is quite difficult as we say with the other ambassadors like in real life. So it's difficult to find reliable partners that work with you at the same pace. I would like to comment on that because Pauli is right. I mean, there are so many people that it's difficult just to go to the whole community, pick up somebody and he or she happens to be the partner you're looking for, the partner you need. This is very difficult. So that's what Paula was saying, that you have to find your partner in other spaces, in other environments. For example, you go to groups and then you will find a thousand hundreds of people, but they are all sharing a common point of interest, the topic of the group, or you register in a learning event or in a seminar, and then you find people and you contact them, you get to know them, you talk to them, or you find or you look for projects that are quite similar to the projects you want to do. And then you contact the people who have worked in these projects or you can join a MOOC made by the Spanish National Support Service and then find people working in the MOOC. So this way it's not so difficult to find a partner. But bearing in mind that it's not like going to the partner finder, putting some keywords and just find somebody. It's better to have some previous work and some previous, not work, some previous experiences with that people, with the people you are going to work with. And in general, as a general rule, if you want to start a project with somebody, before you actually start the project, before you register the project to be approved by the National Support Services, just try to negotiate, try to make a good exchange of emails between you and your partner, or partners if they are more than one, and try to have everything ready. Even if you can change anything once the project is approved, but from the very beginning you have to get to reach a concrete plan of action. So these are quite very useful tips to find your perfect partner. But in any case, there are so many people here that it's there. I mean, you can find it. We are all there. Okay. Thank you very much. So I think we already have, we are already going on with our project. We're already inside the screening. We have partners. Remember that we're going to devote this week of the MOOC to work with these using the hashtag TwinParner and using this notice board to advertise ourselves. And we will, but maybe it's been a very interesting discussion in the, especially in the Facebook group about some teachers, some people, some participants on the MOOC that found that they had an interesting project. They were engaged and their students too, but they found that they couldn't take advantage of all the sections of between them because they are not standard teachers. I mean, they don't work in a standard school with a principal and someone to sign the petitions. And I don't know if there is any possibility for them inside the screening or somewhere near the screening. Or if you can tell the masters of screening something that they can do something to help these community, these people who are somehow in the borders of the standard. Okay, first, as we said before at the beginning, safety, security is one of the main concerns in itwining. So to get, to be registered in itwining, you have to be a native teacher in a country belonging to the itwining program because you need a national support service to check your identity. That's a fact. So if you are not a teacher, a regular teacher in one of these countries, you won't be able to register in itwining. Okay, that's clear, that's sharp, but this does not mean that you cannot participate in itwining because there are other ways. Imagine if you have two teachers belonging to itwining, okay, two perfect teachers, two teachers, primary, secondary school, from France, Spain, Italy, whatever. Okay, from two itwining countries, they found a project and once they found a project, they have their own twin space. And in their own twin space, the twin space is like your classroom. Okay, we are all teachers, so we understand the idea quite well. The twin space is your classroom and in your classroom you can invite anybody you want. You can take an expert to your classroom to talk to your students. You can even take other students to your classroom to get in contact with your students. So when you have started a project and you have your twin space, you can invite teachers from other countries. And these teachers can invite their students. It's some kind, I wouldn't like to say a backdoor to itwining because it's widely used. In fact, I can think in some projects with a lot of success with European prices in itwining. And then if you went into the twin spaces you have countries from Africa, from Asia, from America, from many countries. In Spain we have had experiences with Latin America as well, inviting teachers from Chile, Mexico or Argentina to our twin spaces, and they have gone very well. So you can work. Precisely the MOOC is a very good space for these teachers to contact European teachers. So they can enter, they can get in contact and they can enter a project once it is founded. In any case, that's also not a warning but something to bear in mind for teachers. You are also responsible for the security of your classroom. So please, you have to know who you are inviting. You are inviting somebody to share space with your students. So you have to make sure that this person is really a teacher and that he has some students to invite and to work with yours. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I think the idea is clear. There is an interesting question here, whoever writes we are twinning live. And there is about some teachers who want to know if it is possible to work inside the twinning, not just for a project for children, for students, but to work in a project about methodologies. For example, there is a group of teachers who want to do some research or who want to take in common some questions about methodology. What do you recommend, they say, to create a project just between teachers or to make a group in the twin space? Okay. Basically a group is the best answer. So groups are designed to stay. It's not like a project where it will, I mean, a project is designed to be there for a year or two. A group is something more stable. A group is more open to more people joining. Okay, you can do it private. You can have a group with the people you want to, but also if you want to expand your group and enrich it, you can do it more easily in a group than in a project. So a group is the best answer. And even before you start a group, we strongly recommend to have a look at the already existing groups and see if there is a group with the same points of interest you have. And maybe instead of starting one, you can join some successful one. In fact, when you start a group, the starting of the group is not automatic. There is a request sent to the central support service and they check if there is a similar group going on and they advise you, okay, you better join that or it's okay. There is nothing running on with this profile. So the group is all yours. Go on and good luck. It depends on a group. In some cases, but with this special profile, something limited in time and limited in participation, okay, it might be more appropriate to start a project. Why not? The origin of the groups are projects before we had the groups. Teachers started projects like that with 100 to 200 teachers there. So that's why we created the groups. But if you want to make a group for one year, let's say for example for training teachers in between and you know that it's going to be 20 people and in September you are going to finish with that. Then maybe a project will be fine. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Diego. And now there's another question here that seems to have happened to someone. What happens, Paola, from your experience, what can you recommend to a teacher who finds that his or her project has been or has gone longer than expected and it's isn't finished when the holiday arrives. Is it better to hurry up and finish everything before going on holiday or do you think it's a good idea to leave a project unfinished and go on after the holiday, after summer holidays with it? One of the best things in it winning, there is no deadline, there is no structure and it's not like an Erasmus project. You have not to certify what you have done and so it's on you. It depends on the agreement among the partners. Generally, in my experience, you start an it winning project with a very simple basic like exchange Christmas cards. That's quite typical. Children, the pupils like the project so much and they are so involved. Teachers are so involved and you don't finish at June and you let the project go on till the next one. It depends on the school structures. Maybe you have another class on the next year so you have two interests of your group and all the school can be involved in this kind of project. In my experience, projects that start, they grow time and the... So you can go on the next year, there is no official deadline that you can go on as far as you want. Just you have to decide when you want to finish, when you want to apply for a label, for a quality label, for example, you have to decide a certain deadline to show what you have done. But there is no the freedom inside between something that like the teachers very much. Okay, thank you. Yes, if I can insist with that, flexibility is a key word in between them. You start a project but you never know when you are going to finish. It can be shorter or longer, you can do whatever you want, you can have an idea for a short project and then the project expands in time for a year or more and then you decide if you want to continue with the same project or it has changed so much that you close it and then start a similar one. Just summarizing, it's up to you.  Okay, and this may be in relation with another question that there is here because it's happened several times in different spaces of the MOOC and of the social spaces. People ask if there is any kind of official recognition for taking part in itwining. We know there is, in the MOOC there has been discussion about this and it's clear that there is a bond, a digital bond at the end for those people who have passed the evaluation, the assessment. But for taking part in itwining, do you think there are schools or teachers that can have any kind of official recognition? Okay, the main problem with that is that in itwining we are 42 countries and there must be about 67 kinds of official recognition in the 42 countries so it's crazy. There is not an official common recognition for all itwining. You have your certificates on the platform, you have your participation certificate, you have your quality label certificate if your project gets a quality label and you have your European price certificate also if your project gets an European price. For other kinds of certificates, I'm aware that some countries give official recognition for career credit for things like that Spain, for example, give some autonomous communities in Spain to that. The only thing we can say about that is talk to your NSS, write to your NSS because each country is a very specific situation and deals with that in a very specific way. So talk to them, talk to your NSS. Okay, all right, thank you. There is another question here, maybe a specific one but I think from your experience specifically Paola but maybe also Diego. They asked, do you think it is possible to create a room for video calls using the itwining platform? Is it possible to make specific video calls in the platform? It's possible, it's the new feature we have and we all are very happy with this. There is a, you can have a video chat inside your TwinSpace so you open your project, you can set a video chat, children participate and it's very important because you don't have to go to like Skype or the external one. You have inside your TwinSpace the tool that allows your classes and teachers and pupils to stay in contact through video conference and works quite well. Then you have also outside the TwinSpace in the itwining live you can organize a meeting, an online meeting with a video conference and you can there meet your colleagues or other college children it's just for teachers and you can have a meeting for example about your project or you can have a video call about something that you interest or you can follow live events with video conference from other itwinners so you can follow other conferences and so on. There are quite a lot of this live event with video call inside the platform that are only for, it's not for project but only for the teachers. In fact the video tool works very well and the only reason we are not doing this meeting, this hangout in this tool is that it's only accessible for itwinners for people registering itwining but it works quite well and it's very easy to manage and only a small question about the video conference in the TwinSpace so because the concepts of children and video conference in the same sentence used to make parents and principals feel panicked so the video conferences in the TwinSpace can only be started by teachers then they can take their students in the classroom and organize a collective video conference but students cannot start a video conference on their own from home without the surveillance of a teacher so the teacher must start this video conference. So I guess there is no need of special permissions of children to take part in these video conferences because they have already got the school permission to take part in each project there is no need for those. And also they cannot use it as a private communication means a communication, they cannot use it It's something you do in your classroom. That's fine. And talking about classrooms and computers and technology there is another question that is recurrent in some way. Do you think it's essential? Do we need computers in the classroom to create a project? Is it necessary to have computers and a good internet connection and everything working fine? Or do you know of even good projects that have been carried out in another way without digital environment? Do you think it's possible to do well projects in a non-digital context? I can tell you that my very first screening project was back in 2007 and we had I think just one computer in the whole school and we started a project with a school in London I was in Rome and they were studying Italian as a second language so we started to connect maybe once a month lots of drawings and envelopes and something very physical children loved it and then we took photos and we uploaded the photos into the platform and then we had to video chat with Skype and it was so successful that after three years we went to London with a class from Rome to visit our partners and the children were 10 years old so everything is possible. Of course if you don't work at home you have to do something at home with your computer but tablets works fine as well and I think they are improving something that also smartphones can be useful to connect to twin spaces and to the platform so everything is possible the core is not the technology it's about cooperation you can do as you want always with the paper and send postcards to your partners it's more important to have all your limits in mind when you are planning the project if you have in your school a poor broadband a poor internet connection if you don't have many computers just take this into account when you are planning the project and try to adapt to your circumstances as Paula said it started in 2005 and nowadays more than 10 years later I'm still using some projects for 2005 and 2006 as examples of group practice and any school nowadays has more better facilities better connection, more computers than any other school 10 years ago so just try to adapt even if it's not 100% digital school it's possibly much better than the ones started at the beginning and you have wonderful projects at the beginning made with very poor, what now we think very poor facilities or very poor resources there is another concern that many teachers have and make us know about situations they specifically ask if do you think it's a good environment if there are possibilities in training for students with special needs students who have different kinds of handicaps if you think it will be a good idea it will be rewarding for them to take part in the betweening projects there are lots of projects who includes children with special needs I think that yesterday I was at a meeting in Madrid where there was the presentation of some Erasmus project it was a very important project we used the betweening platform too that was for special children and then they are working now they are working with let's say normal schools and special education schools so it's possible there are projects about arts there are projects that are working together with other countries there are lots of things that children can do in my experience in Italian school there is no special school and all the children are integrated into the mainstream education there are not special classes or so on so I used to work in a school in Rome with a high percentage of children with even severe handicaps and they could do a lot of things going into the platform and working with their mates of other countries nothing is possible and it's a very good work with the inclusion of these children and this year is the year of inclusion in betweening so give them a chance, they can do it so definitely the answer is yes and we correct it if I may show you something, yes if I go for example who is that, sorry, I wanted to show you the partner finder if you go to the partner, oh I lost it, sorry if you go to the partner finder and just look for special education needs you will have more than 200 people with these words in their profiles if you look for SEN, S-E-N you will also have more than 200 people or if you go to the forums and write special education needs you will have more than 500 posts in the forums talking about projects with this dealing with this issue so you have a really wide range of opportunities with SEN pupils so definitely the answer is yes and you should try, you should try not only is it possible, but it is advisable there is one more question that I think it's very connected to the moment we are living in the MOOC which is about assessment we are involved in some way most of MOOC participants in some way are involved in assessment to peer any advice, is there any piece of advice for teachers who want to know how to assess between a project, is it better to do an individual assessment to assess them as school work normal standard school work or is it better to include the school community and to do a more different more alternative assessment what is your experience about that when Paula maybe you have both opinions about the topic you are online now Paula is gone she will come back sure it depends it depends on your objectives you have to assess many things it is advisable to assess your project from many different angles and one of the reasons to take some time and effort to assess is that time is saving for your next project and it will also make your next project more efficient first you have to assess the satisfaction of participants if teachers and students have been happy during their work in the project but you also have to assess the impact of the project and when you assess the impact of the project you have to go outside the project as well you have to go to the Itunin community you have to go to other teachers, to parents to families in general to the community around the school it depends on the scope of your project try to assess as much as possible because in some occasions you will get surprised at the real impact of the project I've seen many projects where families were not intended to get involved it was just a project with students and teachers, no families and that but then some teachers started to ask the families and they found out that parents were there the parents were interested in their children they were curious about what their children were doing they followed the project, they saw the project and the project had an impact on them so try to get out of the project and assess the project from the outside as well okay, okay Hey Paola, welcome back Any advice about assessment? What's your experience with the topic? Project assessment inside the twinning Welcome to start at the beginning when you plan, it's better if you have a look of what are the requirements for the evaluation of the project for your national support service for example, it's very important that we work together and that there is a real collaboration because at the end you have to show real collaboration among the groups of children so take care of this and the twinning project is just not in the room and do something and you work there in Madrid and you do something similar and then we upload our work it's something you have to create a new something new that you create together and that's very important starting from the beginning don't worry too much about evaluation because it's not something you have to get marks on this topic it's more related to work than to marks but you have to take care of doing your step together with your partners and plan the evaluation at the beginning so you have to know how your project is going and you have to assess on yourself the needs of an external evaluation but it's better for you you are going well you are going on yes, very so when we were talking about recognition we talked about quality labels which is a recognition that national support services give to some good projects that ask for this recognition the quality label is not a prize for very big or sophisticated or complex projects so it's not a prize it's a recognition for efficient projects from an educational point of view I mean it's a quality project in the twinning it's a project which works that's all we have some very simple, short projects which are really high quality so if you go from the beginning to this quality criteria and even if you know for sure that you are not going to apply for any label or for any prize, just forget that I'm not going to apply I don't want to apply for a quality label I don't care just try to have a read this criteria and try to follow them because this criteria will lead you to a project that actually works in your classroom with your students and this criteria will help you to achieve the educational objectives you are posting for your project independently as Paola said it's not a question of Marx okay, forget about that nobody is talking about Marx here about passing or failing this is not much between if I can say but these criteria are a great help this is what we intend to do with them okay, thank you it's clear the topic there is one more question, maybe the last one so far talks about or asks about the possibility of including physical exchanges I mean exchanges home to home inside an betweening project or inside the betweening context do you have experience in this is it possible to do student exchanges they are going to traveling I mean involving traveling children in schools or should they try another Erasmus possible, of course not budget only the problem is you have to pay on your own yeah, there is nobody involved basically, betweening has a very big advantage we have no money that means if there is no money there is no bureaucracy there is no deadline there is no quota of projects so inside betweening as such you are not going to get funds for mobilities what you have to do is to go for another kind of Erasmus activity like Key Action 2 or Key Action 1 for some job shadowing or whatever what happens is that if you are going, if your school is going for Key Action 2 for example the best way of planning, developing and closing a KEA2 action is using betweening that's for sure it's not an extra work it's a save of time and effort to develop all this Erasmus action inside betweening because it will help you to plan all the activities okay, from the very beginning it will help you to find partners it will help you to get ideas from other people it will help you to plan your project at the beginning and to plan your application for funding and then it will help you to develop the activity once the project is already approved and then you will have also a place to keep all the work you have done after the KEA2 project is done so you have planning, you have partner finding you have developing of the project and you have also visibility and sustainability of the project there so this is what we advise, go for betweening because it's more efficient in terms of effort and results but no, inside betweening as such there's no funding for a project okay, now we have the Move to Learn to Move initiative by the European Commission I remind everybody who is listening to us that for projects with students which will be 16 year old by the end of this year and half a quality label they apply for a quality label before the end of May they will have the chance to apply for some funding for the Learn to Move Move to Learn initiative which will give money to buy train tickets and some other help for students to move and go to visit their partners or wherever but this is an exception, it's happening this year we don't know if it will continue next year but now under this circumstances you have participated in an activity project with a quality label or will apply for the quality label in the next couple of weeks and your students will be 16 or older at the end of 2017 go for that and apply for the funding you will have it in the same form that your quality label application we'll put it on the net too, on the network and we'll give the information on Twitter and on the Facebook group too this is as much as we have so far we don't have more questions I don't know if there is anything you would like to add before leaving is there anything you think you wanted to say and I haven't given you the opportunity No, thank you very much for all your questions you helped a lot okay, thank you Paola, did you want to say anything? between the nerds I would like to remind the existence of the groups and there is a special group that is called Virgilio that is in Italian run by three Italian ambassadors and it's about the guides word, so we know that starting between them can be scary sometimes because there is so much to do that you can feel overwhelmed by the things you can do so we started this group and it's called Virgilio you can find the groups and they are to find some friends and some guides to help you in your first steps in betweening yesterday we reached the 6,000 between nerds, so it's quite a large group you can find everybody there not for the opportunity sorry for the bad quality of my audio and thanks for the help you did to us okay, well there is a last minute question there is a last one here I think it's going to be quick is just someone wonders if there is limit we said before that betweening is basically no limit but say how many betweening projects can you have in your school at the same time how many projects is it useful to have yeah, in the same school as many as you want maybe one for class one for groups or just one all together it depends on you it depends on the level one for level common sense is the limit common sense is the limit to remind at least what you are working in in a project or in the other just remind if you can remember the title and the topics you can go on you can go on if you get engaged in too many projects so many that you just can't manage them you will create frustration among your students so just use your common sense with not many of them and then try to spread the word of betweening in your school and go for more and more projects that's all there is no formal limits I guess it happens the same with the number of languages involved in projects I mean there is no limit in saying just two languages or three even if it's a language it's not being studied at the moment at school it's possible to have it involved yes to very young children that can draw there are a lot of projects with so young children for preschool children they don't study any language at all but they can communicate in the same way so no problem with this just communication with the community all right well I think it's time to leave too it's almost six o'clock in Spain, in Madrid and well, thank you very much I think we've had a nice time this afternoon with you and I hope it's been useful for anybody who has been following us or who can read and watch us later in the recorded version of this chat thank you very much and see you in the MOOC okay, goodbye bye


Welcome. My name is Chuck Gordon and I'm telling you something about the Three Futures Holodeck Musical. I want to cover three topics. The first is, it's some kind of personal story, how to wake the superhero inside you. The second is how to help mankind qualify for the 27th century. And the third thing is how to do this with the planet and have fun with it. First, it was 2006 when I looked back to my career which went back to 1990 and I said okay, it was a good time. I had a good career in IT consulting, leading 25 consultants, but is this all I want from my life? Is this all what I'm here for on this planet and what do I do with the next 20 years? And just recently I found a quote from Robert Zubrin, president of the mass society. He said, I am not going to accept myself, doing less than what I have dreamed of doing when I was a boy. And this is pretty much how I felt. So I decided, yes, it was scary, but I decided, okay, I will go for this quest. And it was lots of work, four years. And then I took a professional coach and with her on one day, with lots of preparation, I found my destiny which was its technology and mythology. And I said, yes, this is it, that's great. But what am I going to do with that? Who wants that? Except me. And over the next few years, I developed a way to achieve that. And maybe some of you remember this film. It seems that I've been living two lives. One life. I'm an IT consultant for a respectable software company. I have a social security number, pay my taxes and I am sent by my wife to carry out the garbage. The other life is lived in my Gordon cave, where I go by the name Chuck E. Gordon, trying to save the world with Blender. I hope this life has a future. And I invite you to join the League of Superheroes. Usually superheroes have it on top, but I have it here. If you want to know where to get this shirt, it's a company in Großgerau, Germany, near where I was living. They seem to be the only one on the Internet selling this funny thing. Okay. So, every superhero has a mission and it took me some years to find out, but I want to get to the Blender part, so I'm rushing over it. My mission is to help mankind qualify for the 22nd century and have fun with it, which means fun for mankind and fun for me. So the question was, what is fun for me? And I am thankful to my mother because she kept those pictures. My father took me into the original Star Wars movie when I was 7 or 8. And I'm very thankful and this changed my life. Okay, young guys, you can't have that, original Star Wars. And you see, late 70s, I think, I drew Star Trek, Star Wars and all that stuff. And so I knew science fiction is one of my things that are fun for me. I wanted to produce my own science fiction content. Next, 3D computer graphics is fun for me. I saw a TV documentary, I think it was around about 1985, about Able Studios, the first steps of Pixar and it was so fascinating and I said, that's great. And on the top left you see the first rendering I did in real 3D graphics on my Atari ST. Then I moved on from the 90s to VRML. I did some quite fancy stuff connecting VRML to databases, dynamically producing content, what was later done by Second Life. And then the third image I started using Poffrey. I made a nice walk cycle for this night and some other stuff. And you can do amazing things with Poffrey. For example, I built a telescope in Poffrey and you see through the lens of the telescope pointing to other telescopes. So it was great. And I do this up until now for some business presentation down there, technology monster. So I said, OK, that's so much fun. I want to shift my professional career and I want to create my own specialized animation studio, specialized because when you do things everybody else does, you can't compete with cheap countries. So it has to be something special. Now, and this also took me some years. I developed a thesis how to help mankind qualify for the second century, which is we need to cultivate wisdom and chivalry, so it means nightly behavior, to enter a 22nd century, which is worth living. I think mankind was a wife, but the question is do I want to live in 22nd century if we don't do this. Now, my approach to science fiction and to 3D computer graphics. First, I founded a publishing business. I wrote my first novel, Game Worlds, which is available. You can buy it. And it, yeah, I organized the printing. I planned the sequel, which is called Three Futures. And I had an English translation with professional translator. You can't do this all your own. And I started with Three Futures this year. Then, 2012 computer graphics, I visited Amsterdam, the UNITE, the Unity 3D conference. It was great. And I saw the movie, the butterfly effect. Who has seen that? It is great. It is some Hollywood class animation, short animation movie, but it was rented in real time. And when I saw that and say, okay, for $10,000 you can do this, I said it's possible to do the thing I try to do. And then last year I had the great luck to visit an animation master class with Michael Markowitz from Pixar. And I was such a noob, but it helped me get into that. And I started doing this holodeck musical. When I, the term, when I explained my wife what I was doing, she said, oh, so you are doing a musical for the holodeck. And I said, yeah, that's it. That is what everybody understands. So I had a technical demo at the World Science Fiction Convention in London, which I have here. I invite you later to see it. And now I'm at the Blender Conference. I've made some more stuff. I will show you later. And 2015 I will begin to produce this refutious trailer, which will be one song with great music, great dance, and all you will see later in the musical. And after that, I will start the complete thing. And we shall see what support can get on the way. Probably I will do it song by song. Now, about refutious, what is it? The story, it's an attempt to save mankind with chivalry and wisdom. Surprise. It is a story about utopia versus dystopia over the next thousand years. And I was inspired by some things. Who knows Legion of Extraordinary Dancers? It's a web, street dance series. You can find it on YouTube. It's really great. And it really amazed me. And I said, okay, I would like to include this in my work. I'm inspired by musicals from Tim Burton. I love the 1970s, Animes of Captain Future. This style I like. And who has seen Kick-Ass, the comic scene of the first Kick-Ass? This is where you have a comic and it's in 3D and it's rotated. And I said, yeah, this is what I want to look my stuff.  It's a bit of work because I have to create two alien races. Those are the planets. I have, of course, to create their architecture. I have to create two human architectures which is one is some kind of neo-article and one is some kind of dark tech Gothic. And, okay. Of course, I did not do this alone. I have a little help. I have very great artwork from Verity Glass from the UK. She draws comics also for Doctor Who. And I had to help with the unit report because I didn't have time to do this all myself. Cover art and all that stuff. Those mentioned there I can really recommend if you have work for them, choreography, et cetera. You can go there. So I pressed the button. Okay. Yeah, now how to do this with Blender and FUN? It's demo time. I will show you a movie now. And I invite one of you to come here and to have a look and then we will reflect this afterwards. Who would like? So, okay. I think it's set up. Just a moment. Okay. And you can adjust the lenses forward, backwards, in and out. But don't turn them please. Meanwhile, I am looking for the movie. What is what? It's a durovis dive, the pure man's Oculus, which just takes your ordinary phone. And I have a unity port of the stuff I made with Blender. And it just puts the camera in the stereo camera and you can freely look around. But you can't walk. People started walking around with this without seeing anything running into other people. This wasn't good. So where is it? Yeah. Okay. I hope this works now. Do we see? Okay. This is about what you see. What you see is a bit better because in there you just have the static scene and the lady dancing. But I did some, when I said I make a hold, I wanted to have this effect.  I think Yuri Beletsky made this great image. And you can look up. There are stars. Okay. So this is what I had for the demo in London. You may stay there if you want. Thank you. And by the way, this beautiful lady allowed me to photograph her. And it's also done with a, actually later, it's also a 3D stereo scan.  No, of course not. I was aware that this was quite naive but you have to start naively to get to your goal someday. So I conducted a lot of mocap experiments and 3D scan experiments and try to evolve a production pipeline. This is also my golden cave, which is in my basement. I had to move there. And I have, this is my 3D scan studio. I have there a Microsoft Kinect. I don't know how to pronounce. This little thing, there's a 3D stereo camera which takes stereo photos. And important, the chair and the plate, you can put it on and then you can turn a person around and use phabletech 3D scanner to make a 3D scan which is quite good because you don't need to post process. It quite produces very good results. Interesting, you just can use a smartphone when it has an app with a depth field photography which is the Google nexus which has it. And then you can go to this web page, depth.me, upload your picture and it will extract a depth field which you can use in blender to create a 3D model. So you got the picture and you got this depth field and you can use a, what is it meshed for? No, it's displacement modifier I think and you can produce funny results with it. So, but my favorite right now, yeah, I saw this 3D scan iPad camera from Sketchfab Guy which were really good. My favorite right now is to use the Fujire 3D which just makes a strfp of photos and then I use Argusoft, it's a Russian company, a commercial version photoscan but they have a free version, I think it's called stereo scan and you can produce those same results with the free version. It's quite accurate I think but you have the problem, you have those edges that are not clean so you have to post process it but as we heard earlier at the conference, the shrink wrap modifier is not very popular, I love it because you could model a face which should be animatable, just use project with a shrink wrap modifier and you should have something to be able to work with. Has somebody done something like this? Okay, how did it work? Okay, I repeat for the camera, if you take more than one shrink wrap modifier and combine them then you should get good results. Was it right? Great, thank you. No. And then I had a learning dive into Blender. I started Blender 2 with 2.49 which was pain in the ass and fortunately there was a book, the Blender book from a German author which helped me through so I got okay with that but some day I stopped it and now it's much better since Blender 2.5 and what I found was so great softwares, unbelievably great, thank you, Tom and thank you community. Many really good books I found, I found thousands of videos, video tutorials, some of them are excellent, some of them not that excellent and helpful community but those are all very tiny mosaic pieces and when you try to get a fast setup and get fast up and running because you have a commercial interest in, for example, earning your life with this, it was not fast enough. What I had hoped to find was all this because this is really, really great but some kind of top-down graphical overview of a best practice production pipeline blueprint that lets me drill down where I need it not in weeks or months but in minutes to say okay, this is what I want to do and this is a best practice approach how to do it because otherwise I have browsed through ten tutorials and did maybe find a part of that what I was looking for. Now, I wondered what it would look like and I prepared something, I'm not sure if my drive already synced it, we'll try to find it but I would like to ask you, would you think such a thing would be helpful to have an overview where you can drill down, you can say, okay, this is a pipeline for something and for example, I have 3D scanning, how can I do this with stereo scan photogrammetry with some, what is it, infrared sensors like Kinect with some other stuff, depth fields and that, would this be interesting? Yeah. Have an idea how it should look like, you can of course make a diagram, for example, there's a great tool called YAD where you can model graphs and stack them and rearrange themselves and it's really great, so it can be abstract, what do you think it would be more interesting to have it like a village or a factory way of departments and doing things, what do you think? Okay, if you have an idea, I would be glad to discuss this with you later. Let me do a leap of faith and have a look if my Google drive already synced it, which possibly could, okay, we'll try this and maybe it's there some minutes later, meanwhile I will continue. So because of that I joined the Blender Foundation education mailing list and you can find me there, I would be happy to discuss things like that with you there. Now, what have I done so far? I have this whole tech demo, a rough storyboard, the artwork from Verity I mentioned and we did some 3D modeling and I put it together in a small video, which looks like, yeah, this is original artwork from me, I did it with my Android tablet, I bought it for that and I'm quite happy and it gives a rough idea, there's some city with floating skyscrapers and she gets a call, she takes a space bike, travels to the moon and there she has a romantic dance and then some more things happen, which I will not mention here, but from this stage I said I need to take it further to make something impressive out of it and I gave it to my artist and so I gave her, for example, the 3D model of the bike and she did this for me and this is the 3D model and she made the texturing, so this is 2D, which I yesterday ported to Blender and this is what she made from my, you see the contrast of my drawing and what she did and so I said, before I thought, I'm not that bad, but when it comes to that you need a real artist who is able of doing things like this and I said, wow, okay, that's really amazing and yeah, then I did not have personally the time to do this before Blender conference, so I asked the guy who ported this to UniWolts.de to make a camera mapping of that and I just fixed some parts of it and included it into an animation and I had lots of fun building this floating tower, I just put in a background and started working on that and putting all the textures and all the details in there and then now we can have a look at the rendered cloud flight produced out of it until this morning. There are some flaws in it, but this is what was possible right now. When you have a look at the textures right now, you see they start moving and I don't know why yet and this is the 3D mapped scene with the motorbike. This is a Blender render, I had some trouble with the terminator problem so I increased the subdivision surfaces. That's what I have so far. Okay, for the finish I have some great resources I would like to share with you because I did read a lot and a very good book is Blender Production because it contains very important animation pipeline details what to do to avoid pitfalls that will cost you a lot when they appear late in the project. You can buy I think from CG Masters the character creation DVDs Volume 1 to 3 in the lobby and I had three books which I had fun and good contents in it which was Build Your Own Rocket Bike, the Blender 2.5 character animation cookbook and a very important old-born book is the Art of Game Design from Jesse Schell, it's from 2008 but it covers really the basics and gives you a good idea because if you design for a whole deck environment or VR environment it's some kind like a game, I see it rather like a movie where you can freely watch and maybe roam around but you have some similar points and problems so this is a great resource. Summary, I would like to, because I have to build it anyway for my production pipeline to do some kind of top-down best practice blueprint for character animation if you're interested in me feel free to join a discussion at the Blender Foundation Education mailing list with this I plan to help mankind qualify for the 22nd century and have some fun with the three-features holedack musical and think about waking superhero in year two because he's in there and I can tell you this was the most satisfying thing I did in my life thank you very much. When I had a look at the starting time I think we have three minutes left I have one question for you and I'm working on that point with Elling how to create real-time 3D content directly with Blender which I would love to do but actually I haven't seen any possibility so I went to Unity right now. Tom mentioned some possible WebGL viewer in the future maybe this was something. Any questions from you? I think we are out of service. I was just wondering who's writing the music or do you have any samples of the music that will be in the musical? I have some guys in the games industry which produce premium game music and they said okay for the trailer we go with you and write the music but they asked not to be mentioned in the name right now this presentation will be freely available the others for example the choreography you can see the address there so I take professions. I do a bit myself but it's just playing around and if this shall be a success it has to be done professionally. Thank you. Anybody else? One more. Was the VR animation that was all motion capture? That was a free capture which is available from the Carnegie Mellon University they have a large database of I think five or six thousand motion captures which somebody was so kind to port to BVH and I was importing this into Glenda and just trying with that but I also did some mocap experiments and was not amazed by the fact that you have different output formats and you have to think about how do I convert those different formats to my rig and all that stuff you probably know. Last question? Then we are finished on time. Thank you very much. If anybody wants to see this I'll be around here and you can have a look.


What's up everybody? Jayce here for jaspyscasebreaks.com 2020 pinion of Donner's Optic football six bucks half case break Pikachu number seven just sold out And again all-card ship guys six boxes of optic hobby football and again We're giving away $250 in break credit and how to get entered into that giveaway is you have to buy two or more teams So if you buy two teams you get one entry by four teams you get two entries you buy six teams You get three entries no Mac to entries of course We'll do that randomizer at the end of the break and again If you do win and are part of the top five at the end of the randomizer will win 50 bucks each for a total 250 dollars and break credit given up to remember if you only buy one team you will not be entered to win But good luck guys And some very sharp looking cars guys as our Donner's optic never disappoints So here's the customer names Turn it out the sheets Walter got the last two actually got the cowboys and I believe the Ravens I'll be down to the bottom. What's up Ryan? How's it going, buddy? And This is our last case back set. I'm back there and live into a room So if we do get any more Won't be able to break any today at least besides number seven and eight that already sold out But I'm sure we'll find more I believe the only other Optic we would have today for group rates. You will be the hybrid edition and we also have hybrid edition available for person Alright, so six on the left six on the right. I roll a one two three. We're gonna go to the left side four five six for the right side Good luck three one two three left side This will be for the next break coming up. Hey, what's up, right? That'll let us know that this is for the next one coming up Behind me and we're at these one box at the time. All right, you guys. Good luck DJ Dallas tonight, and I check a beast and Jordan love KJ Hamler tonight, and I should be a hollow autograph Denver Broncos when Alex Tramondig's Jeff Ocuda Hollow Joe Mixon Bangles going to Matt Mike All right, Delvin cook right here and this little Vikings Juliana Guara hollow Patty Mahomes hollow nice one for the Chiefs and Alex Herbie elite series Coralton Sutton to 299 Denver Broncos Chase Claypool, and we got a Deandre Swift little disco Julio Jones All right next box Brady Kirk Cousins Tonya Gibson Joey B DJ Moore KJ Hamler John Hightower hollow Zadaria Smith to a toggle by law Well, you mean hobby and hybrid Kevin a hybrid you just get mojos red mojo that you can only find in hybrid That's the only difference and no guaranteed autographs in every box So all these different versions and parallels of optic you're gonna see blasters mega boxes cello packs They're all gonna have something exclusive that you can only find in there And then other than that hobby will have everything you're you're looking for if you want an autograph if you want You know the colors and all that Andrew Thomas autograph there Cam Acres number to 50. It's a purple Julio Jones disco Jane the Rigger Dwayne Haskins We talking about Brian Ross Blacklock 209 Coke Matt All right next one guys Colby Parkinson Seahawks Tyler Johnson coke Matt All right, Cooper disco Chase Claypool Kyle Dugger Garmin shoe AJ Dylan For the Packers gonna Matthew to 299 and CJ Henderson is 75 Rader rookie autograph for the Jaguars had a good season last year Jags going to John Wow, that's a gold Nick Abosa for the 49ers going to Steve Wong love gold The taste of it the smell of it TB, excuse me. Zadaria Smith. I don't know you know Michael Pima, Jr. Your life is Gerald Hollow Jeremy Chin Just a base KJ Osborne CD Lam Tom Brady color match Matthew Stafford Shibata now with the Rams Jared Judy and a Michael Pima, Jr. Hollow Indianapolis Colts All right, next box halfway through guys three more boxes Jalen Rigger Tom Brady CD Lam Hollow very nice Darno Mooney had a good season there with the Bears as well when he played Chicago Bears to 299 KJ Hamler We got a Derrick Brown Antonio Gibson 299 Trayvon Diggs Cowboys with an Owl Walt Ham Acres Andrew Swift Jeff Gladney Obi-Wan, what's up, man? The Michael P. Ryan The P. Ryanster Two velocities Marquis Brown Ravens Jake Fromm Andrew Thomas We got a Mike Gasecchi Will Fuller Travis Kelsey Hollow What's about banging autograph in here? Will Fully Jonathan Taylor 3 out of 150 Indianapolis Colts gonna mark Brady Denzel Mims Hollow We got Dalton Keane Blue for the Patriots 2179 Devonasiasi Another one there for the Patriots Gabriel Davis DK McCaff 299 Michael Pittman Jr Redemption AJ Turrell 79 Falcons Karen Jerry Judy Jalen Rigger Nate Stanley J.J. Wall Hollow Let's see who this redemption is, guys. I've only seen a couple of players I've recognized the numbers now, so let's see. Radarookie autographs 169 Brandon Ayuk San Francisco 49ers Steve with that one SF There you go, man. Last box, guys. Good luck. The second half is officially sold out as well, guys. That'll be coming up soon after Eminence. A pack filler, I believe. I got about six orders to go through, so I'm assuming that other breaks are filling as well. NT number three is already down to one left, so how are we going to sell out number three? No, so yeah, just Padres left, and it looks like eight left in NT. Six, seven, that's down to five. New pack filler there. Three left here now, that's good. Yeah, we're not too far off on a couple more breaks, guys. We got Harrison Bryant, Devin Bush to 99, Logan Wilson, a little red. Bangles are going to Mac. And a Jalen Hertz, 17 out of 25. Black Pandora, wow, that's my second Black Pandora, guys. I'm not even kidding, I pulled one of these on Thursday. And look at that, EA.  If I got to break for you as well. The Black Pandora's guys are awesome. You can't really see it from this angle, you see the little squares. They reflect all around the car. It's crazy, that's my second one. I don't remember the, I don't think I took a picture of what the numbering was in the last one I got. Yeah, how funny, I pulled one, it's another one. It's crazy. It's okay, when you're ready to sell this to me, you sell it to me, alright? I'm a big Eagles fan. A.J. Dillon, D. Andre Hopkins, Josh Allen, D. Andre Swifts, Jacob Eason, we got Albert O. Wow, we also have a downtown in here. Oh man, oh Nelly, oh Nelly. And it's Randy Moss. Viking's going to Steve Locke. What a box. Some of these boxes when I was doing it in person, those guys were loaded. Extremely loaded. There you go. Very nice Randy Moss downtown as well. I'm not man, I've been to Philly though. But no LA fan, no LA football team is growing up here in the 90s so, so I got attracted to the Eagles. When I was a kid. Aaron Jones, Brandon Ayuk, and C.D. Lam Hollow, it's like another hollow too in a brick. Jerry Judy Broncos, Gwen Alex, Michael Thomas Hollow. That's funny. That's hilarious. I assume you're probably a little older than me so you've probably seen them win in the 90s and were a fan that way or was it their family to be honest. Well, boss man Mike grew up in Philly. He was originally I believe born in Minnesota as a kid they moved to Philadelphia because his dad was like a journalist and stuff. Worked for the, one of the papers, paper places there. And then Nick, I want to say that he was actually born in Dallas but they moved back to New York once he started working for Tops when Nick was a kid. So I think I want to say, yeah, Nick was born in Dallas but shortly after they moved to New York when Mike started working at Tops. But of course, Mike is a big Eagles fan. I, Randy Moss, downtown Jalen Hertz, Ayuk, Taylor, Nick Bosa to 10, Andrew Thomas, CJ Henderson and KJ Hamler. So there you go guys, no randomizes to do here. Pretty nice hits right here including that Jalen Hertz in the downtown to end it off in the last box. Break number eight is also sold out guys. That'll be coming up soon. Jasby'scasebricks.com.


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