Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the highly respected leader and president of Punahou School. He is President Mike Latham, and today we are going beyond education. Hey, President Mike, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Pleasure to be with you, Rusty. Thanks so much. President Mike, you've done such an amazing job being the leader of Punahou School through the pandemic, and so many people are impressed with your leadership. And I know that you graduated Punahou in 1986, but can you tell me about what you liked most about attending Punahou?  Of all the institutions I've been a part of, this is the one that I think had the biggest impact on me as a person. I certainly was very challenged there, you know, academically, athletically, which I really enjoyed.  And that was certainly the case for me. So I'm very grateful to my Punahou teachers. I look at the student that I was when I entered the school in seventh grade, and the kid that I graduated as six years later, and it just made a world of difference. So I really very grateful to them. Punahou, as I know, they have so many great teachers and coaches. And why do you feel Punahou is such a special place? You know, it's a great question. I think it's kind of remarkable that there's this community of people from all around the world who have come to find a home here. And they come from many different walks of life, many different races, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds. And they've ultimately decided that this is a place they're going to contribute to and really come to value. And over the past 180 years, you know, that has just continued to develop and to grow. It's remarkable that this is a school that ultimately educated to presidents, Barack Obama and Sun Yat Sen. And that's that's really kind of amazing. But I think a lot of it does come down to the people and those interpersonal relationships. And really, I think a deep commitment to the whole student, we've always been about academic excellence and our students go off to attend the best colleges and universities in the world, which we're really proud of. But at the end of the day, we really are interested in the development of the whole student. We want to graduate students with terrific academic skills, but we also want them to have self confidence. We want them to know how to navigate uncertain social situations. We want them to learn how to manage stress and anxiety, how to continue growing as people. One of our trustees used the phrase kindergarten through life. And I really like that. I think that reflects a lot of what we do well. Oh, I completely agree with you, President Mike. And I know that you're having a full renovation of the Cook Library, how you how excited are you about that? We're very excited about that. It's it's the first major capital project in the high school side of the campus in over 20 years. And libraries have changed a lot. You know, I think libraries used to be a place where only a couple of things happened. Students learned research skills from librarians, or they studied quietly and independently. And those two things still happen, of course. But libraries have also become the places where students are doing a lot more collaborative work in teams. They're much more technology rich. They've become kind of the intellectual center of a campus, a space where students are ultimately doing a lot of more project based learning, where faculty are having informal conversations with students outside the classroom, where students are sharing the knowledge that they've produced with each other and publicly. So we're really excited to have the chance to develop a facility that's going to support that. So that's a great thing to have on the horizon. I'm excited for all of Punahoe as well. And President Mike, what what are some qualities you expect your Punahoe graduates to possess? You know, that's a really great question. I think, you know, there certainly are what we would describe as classic liberal arts abilities.  They're things which have been important to us for many years. Alongside them, I would add another set of capacities, which I think are really a reflection of the fact that the world of higher education, the world of work is radically changed because of global interconnections because of technology. And so I would talk about, you know, your ability to collaborate and work together in teams, your ability to draw knowledge from multiple sources and apply it to an authentic concrete problem, your ability to navigate different cultural environments, your capacity to have meaningful and productive disagreements with other people in an empathetic way. You know, I think those are skills which, you know, sometimes mistakenly, I think we sometimes refer to them as soft skills. I actually don't think they're that soft. I actually think those are kind of the key leadership skills, the kind of skills which anybody really needs to thrive. And they fall sometimes into that realm of emotional intelligence. But I think they're really crucial and I think they can be taught. So that's a big part of what we're trying to do. Well, I love hearing your insights, President Mike, and I want to know what are some of your challenges that you deal with leading one of the country's most, I mean, largest independent schools?  Sure, sure. And COVID is an interesting example. You know, I think that if you look at that situation, we had something we had to react to very quickly. And, and we were looking at a situation in which I think our employees, our families, there was a pretty wide degree of risk tolerance. You know, we certainly had some folks who said, gosh, I really wish we didn't have to take all these precautions. Can't we just go forward? Can we move faster?  And, and I think we had to figure out how to communicate really effectively and clearly to a very broad constituency. And, and I think that communication piece just becomes really essential. In a school this large, where people are deeply engaged, you have to do a lot of listening. You have to be willing to take information in from many different areas. And you have to recognize that sometimes what you thought was going to be the right path actually turns out not to be. And you've got to be willing to readjust. And I think that that's one of the things that I'm constantly reminded of. That too, you're kind of walking a line that also is, you know, at the end of the day, you're going to have to make a decision. And you're going to have to make it with the best information that you've got and explain it as clearly as you can. So I think a lot of it is trying to communicate well enough to be collaborative, to acknowledge when you make a mistake, to be willing to change course, but also when when called for to go ahead and lay out what you think really is the right course and to explain why as clearly as you can. I like what you said right there about, you know, having to make a decision and then to clearly explain and communicate why you made that decision. I mean, there's so many leaders out there that make decisions, but then, you know, they don't explain why they made that decision. And can you share more, President Mike, about what you feel the greatest leaders do beyond communication? You know, I think ultimately really strong leaders build very effective teams. That's one thing that I think is absolutely crucial. They're very good at ensuring that the people that they work with feel deeply invested, feel that they're valued, that they ultimately can contribute in a meaningful way. I think that's really important not only for people you would think of as sort of senior administrators or senior policy makers, but I would say throughout an entire organization, you know, whether it's, you know, at Punahou thinking about folks who work across the entire campus in all kinds of different roles, everybody needs to believe and to recognize the truth that they are making significant contributions to the broader mission of the institution. And I think that's really crucial. So I think really good leaders are quite skilled at trying to have that kind of engagement. I think that really good leaders also are willing to invest some time and some energy in ensuring that their team continues to grow and develop. I think that's also very important. To give a specific example, sometimes I've heard, you know, leaders of independent schools say things like, you know, well, my job is to hire really great teachers and then just get out of the way and let them do their thing. And that's always left me scratching my head a little bit. You know, it's actually deeper than that. I think the job is certainly to hire the best people you can, but then you want to give them the chance to keep growing, to keep learning, to keep improving. We all want to get better at what we do over the course of our careers, over the course of our lives, and great leaders help provide an opportunity for people to do that. And I think that's really essential. It applies not only to school settings, but to really any kind of professional setting. This idea of growth, of continuing engagement, I think is really crucial. It's been fascinating and troubling to me actually to see in the past year or so, certainly in the wake of COVID, what some folks are referring to is the great resignation, you know, people deciding that that's it. I'm done with this career. I'm leaving. I've had it. But it makes me wonder about the extent to which it becomes really crucial that people have the chance to continue to feel fulfilled by their work, to derive a sense of meeting, and to continue to feel like they're growing and learning. That's crucial for schools in particular. We're all about teaching and learning. Everybody on the campus ought to be learning, not just the students and the teachers, but on a good day, people like myself, administrators. But I think it also parallels into many different forms of forms of life and forms of work. You really do need to, and good leaders will provide those opportunities for people to grow. I absolutely agree with you. I mean that, you know, personal growth is so important because the better every individual gets, the better the team gets collectively. And I mean, the entire Punahou school gets better. And President Mike, you have both of my books, and I want to ask you, what are some principles that stood out to you in the books? You know, Rusty, I think your broader emphasis on character and your broader emphasis on what it takes to build a team. You know, I think that yourself is a very successful coach. And in the experience that you've had working with young people, trying to help them achieve, trying to be at their very best when it counts the most. I think that one of the things you've reflected on is the extent to which you're really trying to build an environment in a team in which character really counts. And that's not just about perfecting a serve or figuring out how to handle a volley or when you should move closer to the net and where to position yourself. It's really about how you take setbacks. How do you learn from experiences which are really hard? How do you continue to grow when you face a disappointment for a loss? How do you respect the people who challenge you? Because at the end of the day, you need to respect in athletics, you need to respect your opponents because they make you better. I think there's an extent to which your approach centering on these questions of character is really important. I think there's a tendency so often, and you see this certainly in the way professional sports gets covered, to sort of glorify the people who win at all costs and to pay attention only to the bottom line and the final outcome. But I think at the end of the day, people who succeed and win oftentimes do so not so simply because they're technically strong, but because they have that deeper reserve of character. They know how to respond to setbacks. They respect the people they compete with. They recognize each opportunity is a chance to grow. I think that really matters, and it's one of the principles which I think flows out of the coaching and work you've done. President Mike, when I first became head coach of the boys varsity tennis team, that was when I decided my number one priority was going to be develop champion athletes of character first and then great tennis players second. I think that's what going beyond the lines is all about. Like you said earlier, Punahou is all about giving students opportunities and really trying to make them as well rounded as possible. Now, what do you feel in terms of like, I know that what's a great thing right now with you is you're also teaching a history class, right? And advanced history, is that correct? Yeah, I teach the, I'm one of a few teachers who teach the advanced placement US history course. Yeah. Now, how does that help you keep in touch with the vibe and pulse of really what's going on on the front lines with the students? Yeah, I love doing it. I'm a historian myself. My PhD is in American history and I was a history professor for 13 years before I became an administrator at the college level. And for me, it's very satisfying to be in that environment with really bright, engaged, curious young people. I think it reminds me also why a school like ours exists. At the end of the day, and maybe this is analogous to your work as a coach, I certainly hope that my students will remember some of the key things that we're talking about with respect to the Constitution or why this element of the civil rights movement was so important or how these changes in demographics have affected politics in the US. But at the end of the day, I also want them to remember that this process of engaging with the past, trying to make meaning of it, contributing to it, that that's something that citizenship requires. And it's something that they can do, and I hope they feel empowered to do that. I also hope they walk away from a class like that with the ability to make an effective argument to learn from other people, to write beautifully, to think analytically, and that those things endure. But it does really remind me of why we're doing what we're doing. It also reminds me again of that social and emotional dimension of education. Whether I'm running a class discussion, if I'm running a class discussion, it's my job as an instructor to make sure that every student in that room feels that they're confident enough to contribute, that they're going to be valued, they're going to be listened to, that they can really add to what we're all learning together. They need to not only learn, but they need to feel good about doing it. And part of my job is to create an environment and a culture in which students can do that, even when we're talking about something that's controversial or difficult. And it also reminds me finally that ultimately these are teenagers. They're going through all kinds of really significant personal growth and challenges. And you've always got to be with that in mind. And so for me, it's been really interesting. For most of my career, I taught college students or graduate students. And now I'm teaching a younger population of Punahou School juniors. And that's really been exciting, very eye-opening. Well, President Mike, I'm sure they're really excited and really fortunate to have the president of Punahou be an instructor to them. And I want to ask you about the Punahou Carnival. The carnival is so, so popular. But why is it such an important community event? And where do the proceeds go? Yeah, so Rusty, the carnival ultimately creates revenue, which all goes to support student financial aid. And so all of the proceeds from the carnival go to provide the financial aid that students need to be able to attend the school. And that's really important because alongside the donations that our alumni and friends of the school have given to us, the carnival provides funds that help Punahou remain what we call need blind in admissions. That means that at the time that we're admitting students, our admissions office does not have any idea about whether or not that family actually has the capacity to pay for a Punahou education. This means ultimately that we could admit students of real promise and real potential, regardless of what their family circumstances are. And that's really important. It creates a kind of level playing field for us. And then we do our very best to meet the full demonstrated need of every family that we enroll. And so the carnival has really been a crucial engine for that. The other dimension of the carnival, in fact, there are a couple of things I would point to, the other two things I guess I would point to beyond the financial aid that it generates, is it really does enable our entire community to come together in a meaningful way. So you have parents, teachers, staff, people, alumni, friends of the school, all working shoulder to shoulder on behalf of this cause that they really care about. And that's really exciting. It bonds our whole community together. I know when I've been standing in the line making malasadas talking to parents, that's been really great. I've really, really enjoyed that. And finally, you know, it's really an event which is largely student led to the junior class at Punahou is largely responsible for carrying out the carnival. It's a chance for the students to take on real leadership. And in the past couple of years, you know, I think given the way in which we had to adapt carnival to unprecedented situations in the environment, you know, those students had to be really creative. They had to be innovative. They had to do things that kind of went beyond what was already sort of in the book, which would be normally given to them. So they did really creative things. We had driving movies on middle field here on campus. We had live music performances. We used much more of the campus in ways that we had never done before. And the students really came up with that. So I give them a lot of credit. Well, you know, it's I love everything that you shared right there.  I mean, and how it affects everybody in our community. But President Mike, I like that Punahou offers such a wide range of sports and activities to their students. I mean, I think that that's a huge positive for the students at Punahou. How important is it to you that, you know, these students being exposed to these sports and various activities might possibly be able to find their passion and pursue their passion while they're at Punahou? Yeah, your point is something really important, Rusty. And I think students find that sense of passion and meaning and value in lots of different ways. And for many of our kids, that does happen outside the classroom that happens oftentimes in athletics. I know, you know, I ran cross country and track here for a number of years was fortunate enough to be a part of some teams that won state championships. It was really meaningful to me. You know, I really became very close to my teammates, to my coaches, that sense of confidence and resilience and discipline, which I developed there, skilled over into the rest of my life. And I remained very grateful for that. It's been interesting to me to watch the extent to which students find and develop that sense of meaning in lots of different ways across the school. Some of our students do it in theater or in dance, in visual art. Others do it in a different sort of organization, whether they're working on the yearbook or the school newspaper. But a lot of students develop and discover a talent that even though they possessed, they find something that they really enjoy and derive a deep sense of meaning and support from from their fellow students. And they make lifelong friendships, which is, which is really amazing. I mean, to this day, some of my very closest friends are people I either competed with or in some cases competed against. And we've just become really, really close. And I am forever grateful for that. Well, I love hearing all of that, President Mike.  Do you believe that success happens because of creative ideas and different solutions? I do, I do.  The challenge for a school like Punahou, I think, is to innovate from the position of strength.  We're in a really strong position. But innovation needs to go forward here still with a strong sense of urgency. We have to be continually asking ourselves, what are the things that we do really well? What are the things we're really proud of, we feel good about? And where are the areas where we think we have an opportunity to grow and to improve? A big part of that too is also measurement. You really do need to get serious about trying to assess and figure out how you measure where you think you're succeeding. How do you know if you're actually doing what you set out to do? So that's really important too. And some things are fairly easy to measure. Other things are really challenging. And teaching and learning and learning in particular is not always easy to measure. You can use things like standardized tests, but ultimately you want to get things that are deeper than that. You want to get a sense of why students are motivated to study. What excites them the most? Where do you see the highest levels of engagement around students? So that I think becomes really important. So I really think a school like this one, we need to stay hungry. We need to continue to innovate, to look forward and to figure out how best to serve our students. Now, what are your thoughts about how quickly technology is advancing and changing? And what is your vision for the future? That's a really interesting question. I think these rapid technological shifts are both at once a challenge, but also a huge opportunity for us. The challenge of course is one that we read about and continue to hear about, which is that more and more kinds of professional work, more and more tasks are capable of being replaced by increasingly sophisticated algorithms and technologies. And so artificial intelligence in many cases has continued to grow and expand in such a way that a lot of theorists and people looking at this predict that there are areas of employment today which will become in some respects obsolete. I think the opportunity though, honestly, is to begin thinking more and more creatively about the things that employers can't teach and machines cannot do. And increasingly, a lot of that turns on these questions of originality and creativity and your ability to draw connections across different areas. It's been exciting to me as well for us to harness some of these tools. We do a lot of really interesting work on campus using artificial intelligence as a teaching vehicle. We use it, for example, in math teaching. Students work through a set of problems and we can work through a system that helps identify the specific areas they need further growth and then push more challenges of that kind toward a student. We're also using a lot more things like virtual reality technology or augmented reality technology, giving students the chance to actually build environments. You know, if you're studying something in the past, maybe you're studying Ancient Rome, well, we can't go visit Ancient Rome. You can see some of the remaining structures, but students could build Ancient Rome and they could build it through VR and they could explain why they're building what they're building and you can sort of conceive of a different world even if that world no longer exists. So harnessing that creativity and using it in an entrepreneurial way is something that we'll see more and more of our students and graduates doing. And I just find it amazing that, you know, how Punahou continues to be on the cutting edge of innovation. And President Mike, what do you feel is the best advice you ever received? You know, when I was in graduate school, I had a professor who was really brilliant. Her name was Joyce Appleby and she was one of my American history professors when I was doing a PhD at UCLA. And I remember at one point I was working on a paper and I felt like I was just sort of stalled out and becoming increasingly frustrated that I just couldn't really sort of figure out my argument. And remember, I went to go talk to her and visited her in her office and we had this great conversation and she looked at me at one point and she said, well, Mike, you know, remember, thinking is what you do when you don't know what to do. And I really liked that. It was sort of a very gentle way for her to be saying to me, you know, there are times when you just have to wrestle with the uncertainty and thinking can be hard and dealing with that sense of uncertainty can be hard, but you can't be daunted by it. You know, you sometimes just have to recognize that's what you're going to have to do is go out and think some more. And I think sometimes, you know, we tend to expect the answers to come easily and we get a little frustrated if they don't come easily. And that was for me a really good reminder that, you know, sometimes thinking is just hard work and it takes time and you have to allow that time. Go talk to more people, think about it some more, see what you can learn, see what you can come up with. Today, a lot of people refer to that as kind of a growth mindset. You know, you're trying to ultimately recognize maybe you can't do it right now, but that you will be in the future and you have to remember that. President Mike, I think that was great advice from her. And I really want to thank you for taking time to join me on the show today. Thank you, Rusty. It's really a pleasure to be with you and really excited to have the chance to talk. Thanks so much. Thanks, President Mike. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that President Mike and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.


Hello my name is Jackie and welcome back to my channel. I'm an aspiring writer and Camp Nanorimo is coming up so I thought I'd do a quick video with what my plans are this year. If you're not familiar with Nanorimo and Camp Nanorimo, basically Nanorimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It is in November of every year and a bunch of crazy people from all around the world attempt to write a book in a month and by a book I mean 50,000 words. So depending on like the genre of book you're writing that's probably not going to be a complete book but it's a really good writing goal and the community's awesome and they always have a whole lot of like special offers for writers and it's a lot of fun to be part of. Camp Nanorimo is the same community in the same organization but it's less formalized than Nanorimo. Nanorimo is very strict 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. With Camp Nanorimo you can choose your own goal and choose your own project so for your own goal it could be a lower or higher word count goal, it could be a revision goal or an editing goal rather than a writing goal, it could be a brainstorming goal, it could be a time goal so how many minutes or hours you want to spend on your project rather than how many words you want to write. The other thing is that you can choose your own project so National Novel Writing Month is supposed to be around writing a novel. For Camp you could do a screenplay or a poetry collection or a short story collection or a non-fiction book. Basically whatever your heart desires you can set up your own Camp Nanorimo goal. Now Camp Nanorimo starts in April and for me that timing is a little bit awkward this year because as I mentioned in my last video I think I'm actually going to be working with a book coach soon on my YA Superheroes Meet the Russian Mafia book Powerless and I need to get that done in time to send it to her so I need to send it to her in the first week of April so that makes it a little bit awkward for starting a new project just because I'm going to lose some time to this old project so I thought what would be a better goal for me would be a time one that specifically time spent on writing and writing related things so my goal is going to be 45 minutes a day six days a week the reason it's six days a week is because I think it's good to have a day off the reason it's 45 minutes is because every time I've tried to do an hour a day I've failed and that's become particularly true in my current job which is a little bit more demanding than my last one so we're going for 45 minutes six days a week and we'll see how it goes I don't actually know how many minutes that is for the month so bear with me so according to my calculator that is 1170 minutes for the month and I'm not I'm not sure if that's going to be achievable to be completely honest just because this year unless I've committed to doing some sort of like challenge for a week I have really just been writing on the weekends however the past couple of weekends that since I've been working on powerless again I have been putting in quite a lot of hours like two or three hours a day almost so yeah it might not be it might not end up being spread over six days a week I don't know I don't know how it's going to go to be completely honest I don't know how realistic it is for me to get time done during the week with this job just because it hasn't really worked for me since I started this job but there is still the potential of reaching that target we're just focused work on the weekends so we'll see how it goes when it comes to what I'm going to be working on there are a couple of things on my to-do list the first one is obviously preparing powerless for my book coach now the deadline for her is the 5th of April I believe I'll probably have it done a little bit earlier than that because I do work on the weekends in fact I might even have it done before April just because at the time of filming this I'm already 40 of the way through and I've got another weekend before April starts so we'll see but if I haven't finished it before April the first thing will be preparing powerless when I say preparing powerless that is rereading addressing beta reader feedback trying to make some character motivations more explicit and build up some relationships so they don't feel so insta-lovy and there's also one scene that I've never been happy with and none of my beta readers actually commented on it I realized as I was going through it but I've never really liked this scene and I would like to crack it but it's proving difficult so the first project is the chunk of time that will be spent on getting powerless ready the second chunk is I actually want to start querying powerless and I didn't know if it was going to be ready but as I've been rereading it over the past couple of weeks I've just really enjoyed it like I've been going through it going oh my god I love this story so much it's so much fun so even though yes it's not perfect yet there is room for improvement part of the publishing process is working with an editor and getting feedback and getting it improved so I thought you know if I still like it this much why not just have a try so another goal for April is going to be doing my query letter and I've already got a spreadsheet of agents but maybe doing a little bit more research my list is very US centric at the moment and I'd like to be querying in the UK as well so building out my agent list especially for this book because it's a tighter niche than the general fantasy project I was working on as well as doing the dreaded query letter which I'm not looking forward to so that's another benefit of having a time goal instead of a word count goal if my goal was word counts and I spent the whole month just trying to get my query letter right I would definitely fail however it is possible I could spend over a thousand minutes on my query letter if I do I hope it ends up being a good one after that I have two options one is to go back to my fantasy hot mess which has been the major saga of 2020 basically a lot of writing and rewriting and getting nowhere I'm thinking that maybe in the second half of the month because by then I probably would have had about a month's break maybe then I'll feel fresher I'll be ready to go back to it with a new perspective maybe not we'll see if not then I'll be looking at starting a new project and I have no idea what it is yet so stay tuned so those are my plans for Camp Nanarimo 45 minutes a day six days a week or 1,170 minutes over the length of the month and that's going to be spent on writing related things so preparing powerless my powerless query letter and either fantasy hot mess or maybe a new project now I'd love to hear from you are you going to do Camp Nanarimo this April and if so what are you going to be working on actually one what are you going to be working on and two what's your goal for the month please let me know in the comments below if you want to be friends on the Nanarimo website also let me know what your Nanarimo username is and we can connect there and I will see you next time bye


Finding your way around. How you navigate around a Moodle site will depend on the administrator's settings, your theme and how up-to-date your version of Moodle is. Our Learn Moodle site uses the latest version of Moodle and a theme called Boost. If your organization's Moodle site looks different, ask your administrator to help you find a set of tutorials from our Moodle HQ YouTube channel that will fit your version of Moodle. Let's log in. Often when you log in, you're directed to a personalized customizable page called your dashboard. Here, you'll see an overview of the courses that you're enrolled in. Over on the left, you'll see a navigation or nav drawer with useful links, for example, to your site's front page or site home. Perhaps your administrator directs you to the site home when you log in, in which case you can access the dashboard by clicking the link in the nav drawer. This nav drawer also allows you to see the courses you're enrolled in, so you can access them either by clicking the link in the nav drawer or the link in the course overview. The nav drawer can be collapsed or closed by clicking the hamburger icon top left to free up more space. You can open it again by clicking it again. Over on the right is a user menu, also with useful links. For example, in your preferences page, you can edit your profile, change your password, select the language you want Moodle to display in, and decide the text editor you want when typing in text. As with many modern websites, you have icons for messages and notifications. Clicking the messages menu, you can read new messages, add new messages, mark all as read, and from the gear menu, select how you want to be notified of new messages, email or via your mobile. Notifications works in a similar way. You can be notified of forum posts, assignments that need to be graded, mark them read and access your preferences. Let's go back to the dashboard, and now let's go into our user Sam's practice course where she is learning how to teach with Moodle. We can either click the link in the nav drawer or the link in the course overview. Once inside the course, notice that the nav drawer links have changed to reflect what's happening in the course. There's a participants link, a badges link to see which badges are available, grades, and the topic numbers here offer sections within the course. We'll look at how to edit and explore these in a later video. Further down again she can access her dashboard site home and other courses she's enrolled in.


What's up guys welcome back today's Thursday. You know what that means take a tip Thursday. Oh, yeah Exciting stuff. We've got lots and lots of great things to talk about today. So let's begin We got a question today from Joslyn Hernandez Joslyn Hernandez says I might be late But if you read this I have a question Well, I got an answer if I continue my tickets and the refund window closes and the event later on gets canceled Will my money be lost? Excellent question Joslyn. Let me tell you all about it very simply when an event is canceled The answer is very very simple.  Let's use an example Shall we all right? So a couple months back you bought some tickets. They went on sale. You got some great seats awesome Yadda yadda yadda find out the event has actually been postponed. It's been postponed It now has been officially rescheduled as well. This is your mission. Should you choose to accept it? You have to make the following decision refund or keep the tickets this message was self-destruct in two seconds So what are you gonna do? You have to make a decision. You decide you want to keep the tickets fantastic wonderful excellent all amazing options So now we get to hide a few more days weeks months all this time final events actually going to get canceled Unfortunately.  This is terrible. This is horrible. What about my money though? Very simply you'll always get your money back What is that be doing? Oh my? It's massive very simply if an event gets canceled regardless of whether it's before the 30-day window after the 30-day window Any time at all if an event gets canceled you will always get your money back Caveat if you're buying it through Ticketmaster, you'll always get your money back by the Stubhub Vividseed Seatcake or these other resale markets It really depends on their policy Stubhub and others they've all now begun adopting a credit policy instead of a cash policy Unless you live in certain states, so go ahead make sure you take a look at all that I'll put a link in the description below to see if your state qualifies or not each website each venue each place Where you buy your tickets from they work a little bit differently if you bought them from a box office directly Sometimes they might issue you a credit. They might issue you a refund. They might issue you an exchange option There are a few different things every venue every location is a little bit different Ticketmaster though very simply if an event gets canceled Bam gonna get your money back. No questions asked. No ifs ands or buts, but it brings up another interesting point What happens if an event gets postponed gets rescheduled you decide not to take the money at that point You don't get the refund back you decide you want to keep the tickets and then you find out again later on a couple months down the Row the event's been postponed again. Oh At this point something very interesting happens a new 30-day window will begin Why is that because it's still following the same policy anytime event has been postponed and rescheduled There will be a new 30-day window that will open up giving you the option to request that refund So if you miss it the first time fear not because if it gets postponed yet again You can go ahead and request that refund. No questions asked very simply We'll just go through the same process as before if you're interested in learning how to actually go ahead and get that refund Click up over here It'll be just what you need to make sure you go ahead and request that refund all in all from then gets cancelled to get Your money back unless you bought on the secondary market then pay attention to the terms and conditions and If an event has been postponed yet again, go ahead request that refund if you want it If the new 30-day window that will then open up if you liked this video Be sure to let me know by hitting that like button down below. It's that little one It's nice if you have any other questions or ticket to Thursday Let me know in the comments below be sure to subscribe and leave a comment I can go ahead find you answer your questions make sure you get all the information you need and last see you guys next time


Okay, let's talk about pure educational content on YouTube, or is making educational videos on YouTube worth it. You know pure educational content and sharing knowledge to the other people will get me less views on YouTube and video content in which I'm talking about my experience or sharing my thoughts on some subjects will get me more views. Isn't that a fact? Isn't that a true? You can share your thoughts about this topic in comments down below. But first at all you need to subscribe to my channel and second I need to have more views and more views and more views and is that means that I'm gonna change myself and start to talk in front of the camera about my programming experience and sharing my programming thoughts to get more views. Well, at this point I don't think so. For me it's easier to change habits of 10,000 people that watched me than to change my own habits and to go out of my comfort zone. Of course I'm kidding. This video which I'm now making is a kind of reply on Eric's video is making videos on YouTube worth it. You can find that video in the description section of my video. I'll try to be 100% honest and I will not try to spread negativity. I'm just going to say my opinion based on some facts. These facts showing me that my channel is not at good shape and that it's not in the same position in which it must be. And now I'm going to talk about competition. Today we have a large number of YouTube channels dedicated to make programming tutorials or talking about programming in general. For example we have Codingface, then Program with Eric, Chris Sean, the new Boston, Chris Hawkes, Rosemary, Aaron in Bitta and so on. And I almost forgot. The best one here is Nevsky Programming, okay I'm just kidding. I can say for them that they are my competition. For me every other niche is competitive to all of us who are making programming tutorials. I don't know the exact numbers but suppose that average person spends few hours on YouTube platform watching various videos. One of the main goals of this niche is to try to attract that person to watch this kind of videos more on YouTube and spend more time on our channels. So it's better for me and for everyone that a person spend a time watching programming videos for example on Eric's or Sean's or Aaron's channel because that person will then probably come to my channel and watch my video. Also competition is helping us to make better content, to spend more time of making content and try to be more competitive. At some point in this video Eric said something about same old boring tutorial. In the process of making videos I've found on a very, very hard way that little number of people is interested in watching programming videos. Why? Okay let's again suppose that person who is watching videos on YouTube wants to watch YouTube after coming back from job or from school or from shopping or let's say that person is tired or want to have fun and enjoy watching YouTube videos. That person doesn't want to spend 5 minutes watching any of my videos for example a raise in TypeScript which it lasts just 5 minutes. First of all to be honest it is boring and second that person needs to think and to use its brain so it's ridiculous to watch my tutorial. And because of this fact that is a true fact and because of these channels like mine or Eric's are affected. This is not funny but I don't know maybe it's going to be a little funny for you. I'm actively making programming tutorial videos on my channel last 7 months and I have less than 10,000 views and less than 50 subscribers with Eric's channel is almost the same situation. Why one of the most serious guys as Eric who is making programming tutorials has also small number of views and small number of subscribers. Well at this point he has about 3,000 subscribers but the point is people are not so interested in learning programming and watching tutorials. I'll be honest with you it hurts a lot to have this kind of channel with small number of views and small number of subscribers and on the other hand you have channels that you consider as your colleagues channels that have more views and more subscribers and we all started almost at the same time. Now middle channels has about 5,000 subscribers. I'm currently have 45 subscribers so that is less than 1% of what they have. Also they have about 3,000 views per day while I'm having about 125 views per day. You can see that in my statistics and that's about 4% of what they have. They have about 3,000 views per day and I'm having about 3,500 views in 4 weeks. Currently I'm having 180 views in the last 48 hours, weekends for me are always bad. On the other hand we have Eric's channel, Eric is one of the most serious people here on YouTube but he's not getting a lot attention as other people on similar channels. I like to watch his videos but problem with him is almost the same as with me because our channels are educationally based. And I'll be honest it's hurt a lot to have a small number of subscribers and views because I'm thinking how to make or why to make a video. I'm finding out it's great for me as a person to share a knowledge and to show to other people easy and quickly how they can do something, how can they program something. On the other hand I don't have people right there interested in learning something. We can notice that our culture, our newspapers, TV, social networks and so on they are not trying to learn us something, they are just selling us informations. They give us informations, they do not give us knowledge. We're affected with that and we're making a habit that we're hungry for any new information. We need new informations, we need new informations, we need them. So when a person comes to YouTube that person wants information rather than knowledge.  If I'm talking about JavaScript framework I will not get comments but if I'm talking about an actress or if I'm talking about her dress in video then you'll notice then anyone won't say something about that. I will have then 100 comments on that dress is beautiful or that dress is not or anything else. So again educator is being punished by YouTube because educational videos they do not have a lot of comments, few comments, 5 to 10 comments is the top that you will get on your channel. And again I'm also here in a bad position in which I need to tell you my little secret. I wanted to make a channel to help other people to quickly solve some programming problems. I've used different websites like Stack Overflow and so on to find out general problems for example for people who want to learn Python programming language. And on Stack Overflow you can find that an interesting topic has more than 15,000 views so I'm thinking people are interested in solving this problem. I can make two minutes long video in which I'll explain them how to solve that problem. They don't need to spend 15 minutes on Stack Overflow reading all comments. They can find a solution on my channel but the problem is that 15,000 views on that topic on Stack Overflow seems to be 5 to 10 views on my videos covering the exact same topic which is ridiculous and which is very funny because I'm making videos covering very interesting programming topics in less than two minutes and then again I'm having just 5 to 10 views. Then I want to talk about a topic that I will call it number one because no one talks about it. We're facing a problem that tutorials which are obsolete and very old are still on the top positions on YouTube. That's ridiculous, that's a big problem for everyone who makes, not just for the people who make tutorials but also for people who watch them. So for everyone it is a big problem and no one is talking seriously about it. I have at least 50 videos that need to be in the first three or the first five searching results on YouTube but on the other hand you have obsolete videos, old 5, 6, 7, 8 years on the top 5 of searching results and my videos on the other hand are let's say sandboxed, you can't find them anywhere. They are hidden on YouTube like they don't exist at all. I don't know why is this happening but that's very discouraging for a guy who wants to make programming tutorials. Also in the top 5 searching results you can get as results various videos from large channels but in these videos you can't find anything relevant and some other valuable and relevant videos are sandboxed again, no one can find them. That's a pretty serious topic but I don't see that anyone else talks about it. It's not good for a community to have on the top 5 searching results tutorials that they are not relevant or that they are 5, 6, 7, 8 years old. I'm thinking that I need to back to the main topic. For me one of the biggest questions of this video is Eric's channel better than a lot of other YouTube channels? Yes it is but simply the problem is because he is focused on education and people on YouTube they want to hear information and they do not want to learn something. So he is a great educator but unfortunately people they do not want to be educated. And finally he is making educational videos worth it. Well at this point my opinion is that it's not worth but it's worth working on it to worth it something later. We need to stand up and defend our community and to show to other people that it's better to learn something than to watch YouTube videos for fun or for getting non-valuable information. And finally we have two solutions to solve these problems. We have two options. First one is to make more people get interested in learning, programming and watching our tutorials. And that's my winning strategy. And second option is to go with the flow and start making videos in which I'm going to talk about my experience and sharing my thoughts rather than making programming tutorials. And that's my losing strategy. And that means I'm going to be outside my comfort zone. I'll need to show to you my pretty beautiful face. I'm kidding. And I'll be then I don't know some kind of preacher. I want to avoid all this stuff so people you need to start watching my tutorials. Not just my tutorials but also Eric's tutorials and tutorials of other developers here on the YouTube platform. And you need to subscribe to my channel. And if you want to see my face or if you want me to see making videos in which I'm talking something else than making programming tutorials, please let me know down below in the comments section. That's all for now. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video. Bye.