 So I'd like to introduce my cohost, Winnie Dang, and our two very special guests, Akinksha Batnagar and Ethan Sinak, and so I'll let them say hello. Hi everyone, my name is Winnie, like Winnie the Pooh. I work on the conference team so you'll be seeing me around today. Akinksha. Hi everyone, my name is Akinksha. I use your pronouns. I'm calling in from Ottawa, Canada. I was going to say Edmonton because that's where I'm originally from. And I've been on the Open Ed Steering Committee and this is actually my third time attending as a student. Awesome. Hey everybody, I'm Ethan. I use he, him. I am based in DC, but I'm from New England originally. And I am an old hat when it comes to open ed. But this is obviously my first virtual one, just like the rest of y'all. So I am excited to be here. Well, we are so happy to have both of you with us today. We're going to talk about, we all brought our mugs, so we're going to do our show and tell on our mugs and we'll talk, we're going to talk a little bit about our mugs. And then we'll go through and talk about a few things. Akinksha is going to talk about her student leadership and her Canadian federal advocacy, and Ethan is going to talk about how to have hard conversations and how to navigate them. And he's going to talk a little bit about his plans for a social event later. So we're going to start by showing, we'll all show you our mugs. And I, we're learning how to use the webcam. Not sure if you can get a clear picture. I'll start mine says, I don't sweat I sparkle. And this was actually a gift to me from my lovely sister in law, because she knows that I like to run. And so one of the crazy things that I did with with the pandemic as I started running every single time, which is something I never thought that I would be able to do. And so it's, I joined a virtual race. And the first one I did was the great virtual race across Tennessee, and I had to run 635 miles and three months. And some of it was walking, some of it was walking. But now I'm doing a circumpolar race around the world. Of course, this is virtual, right. These are all virtual, where I'm on it. I'm on a team with 10 people and together we're going to run 30,000 miles in 18 months. If we do it in 12 months. I know right. If we do it in 12 months we get a gold medal, but we're just doing it for fun. So, so yes I sparkle. Wendy, which month did you bring today. So I brought a double our diner mug. My boyfriend is a huge Twin Peaks fan, number one show for him. And he got me to watch all of them we started dating. And so for one year I surprised him as a four trip to the actual diner, and then we bought this one. So it was it was a awesome experience and a mug that reminds me of an amazing trip. And a shout out to all the 80 children who remember Twin Peaks. Alicia, do you want to tell us about your mug? Sure. So my mug is this little like gold plated elephant mug. So elephants are my absolute favorite animal. I recently got a stick and poke tattoo actually of an elephant that was inspired by this one. But the reason I got it is because I used to work at Starbucks many years ago, and they used to do things called partner discount so every single day you get 30% off but there were some days where you got 50% off. So I got like every single mug usually that was there so I got this one. There was another one of a giraffe and then there was another one of the map of Africa the continent so it was really beautiful and now I just like only wash it very carefully and it's just so hard to go into Starbucks now and not want to get all the mugs but I don't get the discount so it's less exciting. Ethan, what about your mug. I don't have so I don't know because it's white. It's going to get blotted out but my mug doesn't have much of a story but we usually do a like white elephant of mugs only among my friend group here in DC. And this was a white elephant mug, and it is a rainbow unicorn that says bitch I'm fabulous and hopefully nobody is offended by salty language this early in the morning. And you are fabulous Ethan. Thank you. Absolutely perfect. So, when he's going to tell us a little bit about. Sorry. We're going to have today as part of the program. Yeah. I'm going to be connecting at tea time at 130 EST so that will be with some plenary speakers. And then I'm also really excited for a 530 to 830 a three hour long social programming if you're up for it of dungeons and dragons. And I'm going to read off really quickly the storyline that they've set. So for decades, Alaria Fae wing known as the master of Merriam bow has trained and mentored groups of young adventures and exploration magic and fighting. When you and your friends completed your training and paid a let Alaria Alaria farewell just three days ago you didn't know that you would be her final students. She died in her sleep that very night but she left you a message in her will. It appears she has one more task for you. They'll be using role 20 if you want to join and check out the description to get set up beforehand. Awesome and when you do you know do you have to be like a veteran. Like a D player or can you doing like level one characters and they all I think they'll have some characters available. If you want to, sorry if you want to create your own character you're going to have to sign up for role 20 as soon as possible. But they have some pre made characters ready to go and it's kind of just imaginative. And you go with what so if you have a big imagination you should definitely definitely do it. And at times yeah that sounds like an amazing event. You know and I wanted to also recognize that that is a holiday and many countries, and we want to recognize those who are honoring this day, and also those who have served, and who have given their lives. We wanted to, to, to, to think about this day as we're going through our, our, our conference programming. Okay, so, so I don't know if y'all heard, if you tuned into the late show last night, but it snowed in Denver yesterday. And this is big news for me because I live in Houston where I'm not kidding you and when he to when he's in Houston. It is 80 degrees today. It is hot and humid, and we would have loved to have been in Denver in the snow. So I feel like we're missing out a little bit on on that part of attending open ed. But we were also chatting a little bit about how wonderful it is that we are virtual. And that it's really created a space for more inclusion and a lot more people to participate and so we're grateful for that. And my funny thing happened this morning. A couple of us showed up in these red shirts. And then we, we had some quick wardrobe changes. Is there any my, my special guest or co is going to talk about that a little bit. Well, I think essentially we wanted to send a throw down challenge to the folks on the late show to show up and be in matching uniforms. So, you know, it's also I just think we should take a moment to appreciate that it's not even just all red. It is all the exact same tone. Yeah. Which I think is, which is very challenging to accomplish. So I think we get, I think we get major props for that. Yeah, so this is a challenge I know Emily is here so this is a challenge for the late show come as coordinated as this. All right. I have to say it's it's been a struggle for me. I've been working remotely for six months and I've been using that as an opportunity to wear all of my favorite t-shirts and you know I've been rocking the work mullet where I have my nice you know I've got a little bit of a presentable shirt and then I have my sweatpants on. But you know so it's been a little difficult like I I forgot like what do you what do you wear to to work anymore like what do professional clothes look like. So, yeah, I'm already out I'm gonna have to figure out something for tomorrow. Okay, well, I we would really love to hear from a kink shot. She has a lot to share with us today so. Well, I just want to talk quickly about like I just think that it's never too early to talk about advocacy, and talking about you know, things that you can do to better the open movement but like I always say to my friends that advocacy is a lifestyle and so I just wanted to touch on what that kind of looks like and feels like as a student so I mean when I first attended open ed, I like did not know about all of the open stuff that was going on I was just like here because this is an affordable option and students are always coming up to me being like I don't want to pay so much for textbooks and I was like, I agree. I can't disagree with you. I've been for student government and the role of VP academic it just literally made sense for me to care about open and the more I've learned about it the more I've been genuinely interested about how open can change a lot of the world. So I've been introduced to things like open access and open data and so now the work I do with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, which is a national lobby group for students in Canada is working with formerly the try to make Canadian research granting agencies on things like open access and trying to find ways that we can actually streamline the process for making manuscripts and making data more publicly available to people. For anyone that is Canadian on the call you'll know that Canada acts in a certain way and then Quebec doesn't share a lot of their data so that's been really interesting to deal with when it comes to just doing research on a variety of things and doing research on the cost of tuition, for example, those things are actually really difficult to find, because there isn't people pushing for centralized databases for data, or centralized areas for universities to publish so I found it interesting and I just wanted to know if anybody else had an interest in that and to just reach out and because I think that, you know, from the Canadian perspective, and I'm sure that Ethan Winnie and Amy have heard me say this a thousand times is we just don't have organizations like Spark or like OpenStacks or like any of the above that are, you know, a conglomerate that does open education work. Right now it's a bunch of provinces doing their own work, Ecampus Ontario or BC campus are doing incredible things, but being from Alberta, we had the Alberta funding program, the AB OER program that was funding for just three years and then as soon as things got really great and people were starting to publish work, the funding ran out. And then all of that work had just sort of, you know, been put on pause. So I gave a lot of respect for a lot of the open education work that happens in the States but trying to find a way in the like federal environment in Canada has been really really difficult and I'm just starting to think about what that can actually look like now. So I'm honestly just like love talking about advocacy, it is a lifestyle but I've just been finding it really difficult as a student to find the ways to like really connect it on a national scale and I've just being on the open at steering committee or attending open conferences about how it works in different states and the countries and I've just found that, you know, Canada could be so much better than it really is because there's always so many Canadians doing this work but there's no real way to connect them. So I've been really lucky to do this work federally, but also locally at the University of Alberta. And that's basically all I wanted to say was that I feel passionately about this but I'm also frustrated that there's nothing in Canada that's happening at this level, especially like now that we have digital learning becoming the number one thing a lot of people are talking about internet and broadband access, but on top of that we could also be talking a lot about the world of open and how helpful that could be for not only just universities but government agencies and, you know, all of the above. Well, I can't show what you're inspiring to so many of us. Um, I'm just curious. Do you feel that your, your work with open ed may have provided some direction for you in terms of what where where you think you're headed next or what you like would like to do when you're, I always say when you finish like finish and quotation marks. Do we ever build a lead school? Yeah, I mean, I absolutely think that open ed has been like one of the most influential things for me to actually understand like how vast the world of open is. And I've made such awesome connections here so if I'm ever confused or want best practices I often go back to the people that I met at the open ed conferences, just because it's been just an easy community to get to know and that's one of the first things I noticed was that the community is actually super nice, which I mean it shouldn't be shocking but like it kind of is shocking like I've never gone to a conference, met people and then actually genuinely kept saying that they're like genuinely kept talking to them. Um, and so it's been really great to have attended the conference and learn from a lot of people and I don't think I would, you know, have the concepts I would had it not been attending a lot of weird sessions at open ed. But last year I focused on not going to student sessions, not because I wasn't interested but because I was so curious about how we can frame this for librarians or how we can frame this for faculty members or senior administration to be able to use like their own language to them when I go and, you know, talk to them about these things so yeah. Wonderful. So there is a question in the chat. I'm not sure if you want to tackle it but if you want to. Can you discuss how you would interpret the different emphasis between open textbook work and we are versus we are more aligned with open courses. I think that the biggest differentiation for students is that they only connect it with textbooks because that's the number one problem they're trying to solve. So the problem is that textbooks are too expensive so the solution isn't a we are. But I think that the way that we sort of tried to tackle that is talking about different aspects of open that are a little bit outside of education so open data is one of those things where people are like oh there's actually more to this so it's kind of like we're showing them one world, showing them another and then reintroducing them to open courses, which has just been a lot more interesting and by open courses I just mean like courses that are run. Not free because I mean with accreditation and everything it becomes very complicated, but just with like free course materials and are running an entirely open online manner. So I think that the differentiation, like just has to happen because students are specifically connecting things with only one problem that they're seeing, because the connection of open courses hasn't necessarily been made to them because like we're just like hardwired to believe that you pay for a course as property or tuition and that's how you get a degree, right there's not this like conversation yet about how like money does not equal a degree to some extent so a lot more complicated of a problem but hopefully that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think there's definitely that default of thinking you know like growing up in public school system, at least in the United States, you use Pearson McGraw Hill these standard textbooks but they are free. So when you get to college your assumption is the only text I can get is from those kinds of textbooks those are the only ones that exist to me. So it really starts pretty young and then in college, you're like well this is just the norm like I have no idea. What is a free textbook even mean. Right. So, absolutely and I think I think we might hear a little bit more about that this afternoon in the January when we hear from our. We have a state policy representative and we have an US national representative and I think that that will be an interesting conversation right I think you're right right when we talk about an independent school district making a bulk purchase. That convert you know that that's part of the conversation right and how is that different from then okay now you're a student and you're on your own and you're responsible for buying your course material. Yeah, fantastic this is all like to chime in here. I'd like to chime in here on that topic. Because one of the things I was going to bring up is the issue that K 12 is not really represented at this conference. Very much, I searched through the list to see if I could find somebody else that was generally generally referenced to K 12 and really couldn't find anybody. And so I've been working in this area for many years and primarily in K 12. And I'll just add that textbooks in K 12 are not free. They're really not free at all they're very expensive. The difference is who pays for them. And, and for us to have really open thinking about open education. I would suggest that we open our framework to consider a broader, a broader network. And also to consider the future. So who will be the future students in higher ed using open textbooks, and who will be the future teachers in higher ed, assigning open textbooks. Well, they're the people that are currently in K 12. So if we want to grow this movement, the place to grow it is not with little niches in graduate programs here and there. It's with K 12. And it's a huge market, but what's different is, and when he pointed this out is the economics of it. We, we have to address state departments of education and school districts as opposed to the individual purchasing decisions of students. It's a little bigger lift. I can assure you it's when you try to talk to departments of education. It's a kind of a complicated conversation. On the other hand, it's, it's, it's where we need to be in the future. So I'll just throw that out there. By the way, I'll be presenting tomorrow a K 12 solution in open education, where we actually combine open content, open apps with open source learning management systems. So there is, there is a way to do this. And it also will get at some of those differences between open access and open educational resources. And the way the way to really get at those, from my opinion, is to apply the five hours to each of them. If you do that, you, you come up with a pretty clear sense of where each belong in their categories. So I think this, this would be a great topic, I think for the discord to, I don't see a channel on the K 12 like on for K 12 folks yet so I think this would be a good thing to put a channel about in the discord and we can try to pull together some of the folks that are in the K 12 space and who are here and talk about strategy for sure. Yeah, Ethan, it's really perfect that you're here today because I know that you also work in the K 12 space. And we have one minute left before we have to everybody to concurrent sessions but I'd also still really like to hear from you and your comments on having these very hard and difficult conversation. Well, I just wanted to share one quick resource for everybody. The, you know, we have a lot of sessions these days, sort of challenging hard topics in the open education space, the role of invisible labor, the, you know, challenges with building a, you know, inclusive community in the open education space and I think you know some of these conversations can be hard and can be challenging. And so I wanted to just share one quick resource that I turned to in in moments like that where I'm feeling particularly challenged or I know a hard conversation is coming. I just posted it in the chat. Just a few quick tips. It's particularly around like receiving critical feedback but I think the tenets of it are super applicable. Sort of regardless of whether it's feedback or just a hard session or something like that and I wanted to share that and encourage everybody to go take a look at it. Thanks and do you want to we're going to go over just a little bit do you want to tell everyone about your social event that you have planned for us this afternoon. It's really sad to be competing with D&D because I would also love to be there. But if anybody is familiar with this like super trending party game called among us. I'm going to try to coordinate a bunch of different servers this evening and everybody can, everybody can give it a shot if you are interested. So that'll be during the social hour tonight. Thank you all so much for being here. I can't believe how quickly our time went by and it's already time to say goodbye and send you off to the concurrent sessions. Don't forget that we do have a plenary today at 1pm central 2pm Eastern, and this will be with Harrison Keller who is the commissioner for the higher education, I'm sorry the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and Sharon Lou who will be joining us from the Department of Education and so we will be talking a lot about policy. And after Maha and Mia's excellent plenary I know that the bar is very high so we're we're super excited to have you all in these sessions and to have all of you with us. And, oh, join us tomorrow because there's still so much more we have to talk about and I hope a lot of you will be able to make Dan session on K through 12. And we can talk about how to have more participation from that space and that perspective. So, have a great Wednesday and I will see you all at the late show with Emily Reagan and Hailey Bab.