 momentous day at Reclaim Hosting because we are actually getting ready to launch or have launched it's live on the website. Reclaims instructional technology offering and it's kind of an exciting day. Lauren, can you tell us more about what it is? Why, yes I can Jim. Thank you. No, I'm super excited. This is a big day for Reclaim in a lot of ways actually so I'm really excited to be doing this chat just to kind of record where we are in this moment of thinking and time. I think for a long time now coming up on 10 years Reclaim has been really focused on the technology supporting the infrastructure for educational institutions to be able to bring web hosting digital tools into the classroom and that has been really awesome and now as of today we are launching the idea of instructional tech which is to support the educators that are using this infrastructure. So in short you know I think instructional technology at Reclaim Hosting is simply professional development for instructional technologists, professional development and a sense of community. Those are the two big I think cornerstones of what we're trying to do here. So it's a subscription that our institutions can sign on to and as a result you get access to a ton of calendar events and also a really centralized community hub to talk about these events while they're happening but then to also have a place to congregate without events too you know so in between the events and that has always been a challenge for Reclaim in the past is you know we'll have these community moments in our conferences or workshops and we want to keep that buzz and that conversation going afterwards but it's hard to capture it and to keep people in a space that they can come back to and rely on and so you know we've been doing these workshops for a while now we've had conferences every couple years you know and so we're good at those it's the work that we're doing but we wanted some structure there and you know events that people can rely on so we have consistent workshops now for Domain of One Zone and WordPress Multisite and hopefully more to come as we build and have capacity for more. We'll also have very regular flex courses so every month we're going to be tackling a different topic like gravity forms, docker containers, ghost, discord you know you name it, OBS, streaming services, all of the above and just tackling those each month and that's also included in the professional development subscription and then finally and probably my favorite part is the community component which we are doing in Discord and so when you sign on for the professional services we're going to be doing an assessment with each school to get a sense of why they're here what they're hoping to learn, what their goals are and then we'll be partnering them with like-minded schools so putting libraries together in a similar cohort or schools that are you know geographically in a similar space or you know all kinds of goals like that and pulling them into Discord we'll be having live chats but also asynchronous conversations, hangout spaces, channels for different events all of the above so I'm really excited for those and I'm also really excited for what's to come the growth or the the flexibility that we've built into this idea so as we have capacity for more we can always put more on the calendar you know but you will always know what's coming up to a year in advance which is something we haven't been able to promise or do before it reclaim so I'm really excited that we can say to folks now hey mark your calendars and plan for these you know next spring the dates are already on the calendar and you can count on them and that's not something we've been able to do so that's probably more than you wanted for right in this very moment but I'm super excited for what's to come it was a quite good overview I'm like I mean well done and I think like one of the things hearing you say and like reflecting on the process of getting to this is interesting for me because you know reclaimed today is always about kind of us documenting the moment where we are how we got here and maybe where we're going and for me it's unique and we can talk about adding pilot and tailor to the team and what that's imagine because that's been amazing but even several years ago when we first thought like could we do ed tech or instructional technology as part of what we do at reclaimed hosting like it seemed impossible we were knee deep in support we didn't have the kind of capacity in terms of people but also we were thinking about it like we would do dedicated work with faculty to kind of offload from instructional technology groups so we would kind of stand in as in that instructional technologies and I think that was the wrong approach and it's not until we all kind of started kicking around the idea and in fact with the hire of tailor we really kind of kick this into high gear because in your interview which is more like a chat you were like I really think there's a place for us imagining a way to support folks on the ground at various institutions who are doing the actual ed tech and in some ways that was a real shift for us imagining what it is we could do and I think a lot of that was built on the platform of what we had done as part of the conference for the OER conference which was called OER by domains 21 and then we kind of parlayed that into a virtual conference but that platform in many ways is the basis of kind of what we're planning and how we're rolling out instructional technology and we're still using the tv and we're still playing with the idea of community broadcasting but the idea now is to really bring that community together and kind of harness it for educational technologists to share and communicate with each other so for me it's an interesting road to have gotten here it wasn't the way I thought it would materialize but only being in conversation with all of you did it kind of come to be in that way and that's the beautiful thing about any of this yeah I'm I'm really excited about it as well as you kind of mentioned when I started at reclaimed this was something that I kind of immediately started asking about and talking about because I felt like there is a niche that is sort of being unfilled broadly right now I participated in the OER by domains conference and that was my first domains conference I wasn't able to make it to 19 and I didn't I didn't even know about domains at the domain 17 but I remember coming out of participating in that conference which you know you all organized and happened primarily over discord and with recorded conversations and I remember coming out of that conference being like this is a type of professional development that I'm looking for as a person working in ed tech that I'm not finding a lot of other places there there's some good resources and and you know courses and programs and and stuff like that for folks who are more on the design side of of ed tech and there there are a ton of things that are sort of general IT like trainings and stuff like that that's a huge obviously like industry on its own is that type of training but there's not a lot for folks that are trying to bridge that gap and piece those things together I think there's that and to me that's the work that's interesting obviously I think that that's this is what I do but but I I don't know that there's a lot feeling that sort of technical meets you know working with faculty on the ground working with students and I think there's a lot of stuff that that there's a large gap there that that we could potentially help fill so I'm hoping that this speaks to others obviously we're all hoping that this speaks to other the other folks too and that they they might feel similarly that this could be something beneficial to them and you know as well as the courses and and and things and workshops that we're hoping to offer I really am particularly excited as as Lauren mentioned but about the discord community just I really hopefully I'm really hoping that this can be a place where people can kind of share more frequently and openly what they're working on I'm hoping that it's by making a little bit less formal that we can really encourage people to just talk about what they're working on because I find that fascinating and I mean sorry go ahead pilot no you go okay well one of the only it was just a comment that I wanted to make Taylor about what you were saying just with regardless of what background you have or the types of experiences you're coming to the table with I think this could be valuable for all you know I see this as something that branch is just beyond reclaim hosting services so yes there would be training for domain of one's own or WordPress multi-site because that's what a lot of our institutions are using but I could see this being helpful for outside of those services even if you don't have that you know I want to come and I want to learn about gravity forms or something you know you don't have to have domains to learn about gravity forms and so being able to come to the to the discord conversations or to these flex courses you know just with whatever background you have I think it's going to be really fun and I'm excited for that part too because I definitely don't have you know a super it background but I'm also you know not starting out either so I'm somewhere in the middle and it's hard to find training for that type of person sometimes so I think this will be valuable for that hopefully yeah I don't know how directly well I'm not really sure I don't know where that was since was going but the idea of what you're saying Lauren where you don't have to have WordPress multi-site domain of one's own to not all of the trainings they'll be centered on other things in addition like gravity forms you mentioned Ghost and PeerTube and Jitsie we were starting this off is I think really useful and I remember we've had a couple of times in the community chats or on Twitter people have said hey so you know this has been really great but if we could maybe do something on this which is not quite domain of one's own but it's related or you know I'm getting started with uh Reclaim Cloud and I don't really know or I know what I want to do but I don't know how I'd even start doing it or gravity form seems like a really cool tool that I'm very intimidated by and the idea of this lets us listen to what people are saying and not just I'm okay I'm sorry it's in the background not just uh hold on I'll do it well that's going thanks Jim I think everything's fine now but the idea of the idea of being able to say yes you have this and we want to support you consistently and throughout domain of one's own WordPress multi-site we want to help you administer this and grow your skills and learn more and even beyond that if there's other stuff that you don't know that you don't know or that you have had on your back burner for a long time and say hey I'd love to check that out this lets us listen to that and develop a way to have people talking about that and learning from each other it's back somebody else gets to talk about it's interesting I mean based on what you said and both Taylor and Lauren like one of the things that it's ed tech falls between like situations whether it's IT or whether it's pedagogy right like it's not always clearly defined and in that regard there's not a lot of professional organizations that support it in the U.S. and Canada and there are some but like it kind of falls between the wayside and I always like that about ALT is ALT did a good job of supporting instructional technologists in the UK and so this kind of presents you know a possibility for educational technologists to kind of do that but also this kind of like focused community endeavor on a monthly basis to dive into something and to learn it as you can like whether it's containers which has been very interesting in terms of just infrastructure or gravity forms or WordPress multi-site management but not just thinking about okay here's the plugins and themes but what are you trying to do like what is the kind of program because as an educational technologist you're not just a technologist right you're also trying to understand pedagogy you're also having to do a lot of project management right like there's a lot of different skills that come to this and a lot of people come to educational technology from different fields which is what I love about the field is you can meet any one person and they have a completely different background with the literature science right social sciences most it's like it's it's it would it's very it's like rare for someone to be like yes I studied I'm not you can and people do but like most people don't come with this with like an undergrad in like a directly you know related thing that's just not often the case in fact I wasn't muted in fact I actually think that's one of the joys of edtech but it's also why it gets kind of missed right because it is very much a hybrid role even just in your professional knowledge not to mention dealing with virtual spaces so it's super exciting to think that we could help our community directly but even possibly beyond our immediate community think through possibilities with educational technology it's a new like endeavor for us I think we are branching out and with that means bringing people on and trying to support it and for me it's a dream come true because instructional technology has been my home and the kind of work I've done since you know 2004 it's it's what I know I will say though Jim you know in some ways it's new because it's you know it's got a new page on our side and it's a new offering and that you know we're making it formal and it's something that people can sign up for and the discord's new and that stuff but in a lot of ways this is work that we've already been doing we just have structure behind it now you know we've been doing the workshops we've you know I think people come to us and always congratulate our support services because they're they're not just oh we reset your password and be gone now you know it's let's talk about your workflow here how are you logging in you know this is the your best practice here's what you should consider going forward you know we're teachers first and I think now we have structure to do even more of that and I'm really excited for that also you know if I put on my sales or account management hat on for a second you know because I've been in that space at reclaim for a couple of years and when we onboard a new school into domain of one zone or WordPress multi-site you know a lot of it is saying okay here's your keys to the kingdom here's the infrastructure go forth you know and I think we have tried to build out support documentation we do a couple of trainings for domain of one zone in particular and then of course we were getting into a routine of workshops before everything went virtual for COVID but you know now being able to say you know not only are you going to get that onboarding workshop or that onboarding training but look at all of this and you know that we can now do for you so that's where I have a lot of personal excitement because it you know we've been hearing this feedback for years now you know people are looking for more ways to engage with the community more ways to get training about these tools and just be on the basics right you know you know how the tech works now what like how what are people doing with it how are you know what's the potential of where this could go and those types of conversations will now have a home and a place at reclaim so I really like that I'll tell you one of the things that it makes me think of is you know reclaim hosting is ed tech by ed techs right like the company itself was derived and built by an ed tech group at UMW that then resonated with other techs all over the country and beyond and I think that is for me the dream of of the reclaim ed tech space is that one of the things that I was very proud of at the work at UMW is ed techs kind of took it into their own hands to build the reality they wanted with a variety of tools on campus and I think that comes out of a community supporting and sharing what's possible and I think we're trying to intentionally build that and the reason why it's hard to build apart is because it takes a lot of time takes a lot organization it takes money to put people in that situation to support and it's cool that reclaim hosting is in a situation now to do that and like do it but do it right because I think we have proven that like we can not only support the people but we can now build these kind of loosely joined small kind of I think groovy environments where people can do this work and that's what's so exciting because we're actually doing the ed tech work that we're kind of inviting other people to communicate around that's going to build the thing that we're sharing with like there is a certain amount of like meta to the whole process like we'll talk about peer tube I'm sure extensively and jitsie and all the other things we'll be doing discord but like there is a there there to what we're talking about it's not an empty thing it's a real totally I think one of my favorite things I'm hoping to get feedback on as we move with this is sort of the offering itself and the tools used for the offering itself and these delivery methods that like because that that's the that's the ed tech stuff right or to me that's the core of it is like what are you using to do what those two questions hitting each other right and saying like like we've talked about a little bit already like hey we're gonna have a discord community and discord is an invention a very intentional choice like we talked about like we want something like this should we be using discord should we be using matter most and hosting it ourselves or or some other tool and you know we went with discord for specific reasons around like oh well we can make you know uh nuanced spaces inside of it and we can use that so that people can sort of have access to certain areas in discord and we can we can organize it in a way that we were really excited about and we can link discord with some of these other tools that we're going to introduce and so that was a very intentional choice but I would absolutely want to hear from folks as we go along about like well what's working here and what isn't like what should we change because that's I think how this I mean that I'm I'm hoping that that meta aspect becomes a value add right and in conversation around that because this is in some ways going to be directly applicable right like if you're I mean I I in previous roles I had um I supported faculty who use discord for teaching right so um that and there's a million examples like that so I love to hear from other people who know more about this than I do or that we do as a team and can lend some of that expertise as well because I think that's the point right it's we're learning from all from each other totally and I think that's you know we're the flexibility of something like this is really great because we're able to say okay at bare minimum here's what's coming on the calendar however you know I could imagine we get some schools in discord we really start talking about you know what people need what's relevant what are people you know being faced with or challenged with right now okay let's add that you know and maybe there's a couple key players in the community that want to take that and run with it and then suddenly you know there is more content that's just coming out and that's being helpful for folks that you know is just a benefit of being in the community and not necessarily something that reclaimed hosting is running or owning and I think that's also another point too is that with this it's no longer just the reclaimed hosting team that is delivering the professional development opportunities we're working with folks like Tom Woodward for example to help us run some of these workshops and I think that's going to be a goal in the coming months too is to get more experts and specialists in certain fields and you know topics to really speak on some of these you know in some of these categories so I'm excited for that too. I'm also excited to kind of see as we mentioned some of these things will be sort of on the periphery of what we currently support and do at Reclaim and I'm excited because in my experience anything like that you say hey I'm exploring this tool or this technology and it's only kind of related that only ever is true for a very short amount of time typically you wrap that in and it's like oh I actually need this now and so some of the things that we've already talked about like gravity forms obviously like gravity forms runs on WordPress so that's you know not specifically domain of one's own but certainly can be used there we have plans for talking about doing a course on Docker and getting comfortable with that and again okay Docker and run Docker and Reclaim cloud but even if you're not going to run it in Reclaim cloud I think you'll get a lot out of what we're building right now and hoping to the questions we're hoping to answer with that series and OBS I think is another good example right so using a tool to do live mixing a video and make the video that you create even if it's amateur level video making it as engaging as possible with the lowest effort as possible is kind of how I like to think about it but there are other directions you can go super fancy with some of this stuff talking about some of that and I think that's also a pretty good example of I don't think there's a large place to go to find out things about like how do I produce video for education at a low to zero cost or additional cost but make it look good make it not look like I just hit record on my you know quick time on my Mac in you know my basement and there's there's a lot of people looking for one step above that but not a lot of resources directed at people that are teaching looking for that information or supporting teachers so most of the things jump from there to okay well you can bring a crew in and rent all the equipment and it'll be 10 grand you know but what about the between I thought you said low additional cost Taylor you know that's what I'm saying is there's there's not stuff between right or not a lot between right now so hoping to meet some of those I'm hoping to discover some of those needs you know I I really am interested to see ed techs bring things to the community and say this is the thing I'm working on I don't know if anyone else has encountered this sharing you know yeah and that's we see that a lot I can't tell you how many times I get the question what are some plugins that I should be looking at for WordPress multi-site or what are what themes are people using these days best practices for that kind of stuff and I think just having a place to record some of that that's available and helpful you know it's true and like part of what's interesting to me too is like just some like I know when I started as an educational technologist coming from a literature background like there are certain things I just didn't understand like RSS it's magic how does it work right like XML like like I had to kind of come up to speed as a technologist and I know a lot of people coming into ed tech are in that situation like what is headless WordPress like how to JavaScript HTML and CSS integrate like I like the idea that these be places where people come like brown bag launches to understand a concept and then maybe take that to the next level to try and play with and building around it and like the conceptual learning in ed tech is pretty vast because technology has moved so fast and so like working with people to augment what we understand quickly that's why communities are so valuable that's why I think this whole offering reclaim instructional technology or reclaim ed tech came together as we sat intentionally every week for about an hour or two thinking it through and talking about it and like I don't think that's any different with any of the professional development we do like you set aside the time you work with cool people to think through what's possible and things emerge and I think like that's kind of what we're hoping to do for our day job right like that's my dream yeah it's just take the value of the workshops and the conferences and the things that we do once a year or once every two years and make it okay we're gonna capture that and make it an ongoing thing that we can go back to week after week or month after month to just hold ourselves accountable and lean on a community that might know more than us you know so I I'm really excited for that and I know that's been my phrase this whole podcast but you know it's a lot of excitement it's I think a milestone for reclaim but I'm really excited for it to start to take shape