 So this session is now being recorded. The recording will be made online and we'll circulate it to all of our attendees as well via email, and if you could just refrain from sharing any screenshots of any personal information, things like names in the chat, that would be great. So this is what the webinar will cover today. We're gonna have a brief review of Seamult first of all, just for those of you who aren't too familiar with it. We'll just run you through the basics of Seamult. We're gonna look at the benefits of Seamult in FE with our three guests, Sammy, Rachel and Lynn. And then each of those guests are gonna talk about their experiences of Seamult in FE as well. And then at the end, we're gonna have a discussions, FAQs and Q&A session. So we'll get started with an overview of Seamult. Sorry about that, I lost you all for a second. I don't think you could hear me. Hopefully I'm back now. Can someone just confirm you can hear me? We can hear you now. Oh, yes. Thank you. So I'll start again with an overview of Seamult. So Seamult is our peer review accreditation scheme. We have three strands to the Seam, Associate Seamult, Seamult and Senior Seamult. So our candidates register for the strand that they want to do. And you can see from the screen here that we've got different requirements for each of the strands. So Associate Seamult is for people who are early into their career or people who maybe just have a small amount of learning technology involvement within their job role. And then regular Seamult is for more of an established learning technology professional. And we kind of recommend about three years experience or more for regular Seamult. And then we've got Senior Seamult which is for a more experienced learning technology professional who has some sort of management leadership or strategic responsibilities or can demonstrate an equivalent level of impact. So those are the three strands that we have. And once our candidates have registered for their chosen strand, they have two years to complete a portfolio of work. So the portfolio follows our four core principles which you can also see on the right hand side there. So I'll just give you a second to look at those. So you can see we've got a commitment to communicate and disseminate best practice, commitment to explore and understand the interplay between learning technology and empathy and willingness to learn from colleagues and a commitment to keep up to date with new technologies. So all of those are our Seamult core principles and the criteria that we follow to assess our portfolios are all based around these four core principles. So the criteria that we use are all followed by our team of voluntary assessors. So all of our assessors are current Seamult holders who volunteer their time to assess other new candidates to make it appear assessed scheme. And in terms of Seamult in FE, currently we have around 300 Seamult holders but a very small percentage of those are actually in further education. So we're really keen to encourage more people in the further education to come and represent that community within Seamult. So to delve further into Seamult in FE, again, I'd like to introduce Sammy White, Rachel O'Hona and Lynn Taylorson who are all gonna talk firstly about the benefits of Seamult in FE. So I'm gonna introduce you three. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not sure who's going first. Is it just a nice fair fight? I don't mind. Go ahead, Lynn. Are you sure? See, by speaking first, I kind of semi-volunteered you, absolutely certain. Are we not going in a kind of associate or Seamult or senior order? I think the slides are me next, I think. Yeah, that's what I thought, Sammy. Go for it. Yeah, so morning, everyone. My name's Sammy. I am an associate Seamult holder and I achieved my Seamult. It feels like a long time ago now, but it was a couple of years ago. It is almost due to be renewed. And I think for me, one of the most powerful things about being in FE was finding that wonderful humans like Lynn had already gone through this framework and had already received recognition. And I think one of the biggest things is that we do a lot of devaluing in FE. We do a lot of devaluing of skills and we do a lot of devaluing of pathways and we're very much the poor relation of many sectors, but this was an opportunity to celebrate the work that we had done as a team and a few of us explored it as a pathway as well and celebrate how the journey we'd taken with technology as well. So I did add a cheeky slide as well. So if you could just pop it on one more slides for me, that would be great. Because what I wanted to really draw out here is, and I know Fiona's just done a great job of explaining this, but associate Seamult is the pathway for you if you are an early career professional or just moved into a learning technology related role. So if you are just starting out on your learning technology role, now would be a really great time to think about an associate Seamult, to think about how you can reflect on the decisions that are happening, the processes that are happening, how you can reflect on how you're finding your feet in this technology related role, how you are developing in these technology related ways, what decisions are happening and what is the impact of that? When I think about the core principles of the portfolios that we assess against and one of the great privileges is once you achieve an accreditation, you are asked if you would like to assess future submissions. And when I think about the core values and how you connect with colleagues, how they interplay between technology and colleagues and communication and education and pedagogy layout, if you are just starting out in a learning technology related role, this is a really great time to take that moment to reflect and to evaluate those skills because they'll be developing. It's quite a rapid learning journey when you start out in technology and it's really important to set good foundations for what's going to happen for you going forward. And also one of the biggest things for me about being an educator or in education is we learn best when we reflect on practice and Seamult is a really great way to do that. So it's not just if you're starting out but if you've got less than three years experience which very often I think there's, we change roles quite often in FE so you might only have three years experience and there's a really valuable three years that you have lots to share. But the biggest thing I wanted to just flesh out is if you only engage with learning technologies a small part of your role. So perhaps you are an English as a second language tutor but you use technology in your classroom. Associate Seamult is for you if it's not your main bread and butter. If you are not that technology person you are still that technology person if you are using technology. I think we think that we can't be that person because we're not that person in that role but actually Associate Seamult is for you if you use technology and it's a smaller part of your role and I just wanted to really draw on that. When I became accredited it was really powerful for me internally at work because it meant that we could recognise the journey that we've taken but externally the community with ALT is quite spectacular. There are so many incredible humans and you almost then get this, if you're old, file a fax, if you're not old you won't know what that reference is of contacts that you can ask questions to and be like, oh, I'm trying this. How can I do this? Oh, I'm trying this. How can I do this? And you gain that when you join ALT so it's a really important thing to be recognised but I think the added benefit is that you become friends with lots of amazing humans as well. I'll stop talking now and I think it's Rachel next. Thank you, Sammy. I was starting my mic and at the same time typing that I still have a file a fax and I stopped using it about two years ago when I became confident with my online calendar that I've got one that actually worked. How about that for a bit of a dinosaur that turned completely digital? Thank you, Sammy. So yeah, thank you very much to ALT for inviting me to speak. I felt very privileged because I'm quite a newish holder of Seamalt so it was lovely to be asked to do this. And if you don't mind clicking the next slide, please be owner. I thought what I'd do is I'd just sort of like talk to you a little bit about the benefits because that's what we're here for really, isn't it? To talk about the benefits and for me there've been loads. There's been absolutely loads of benefits and I completely echo what Sammy has said about being part of a network of some fantastic individuals. And I also have to thank Lynn as well because when I was thinking about taking on this journey, I gave her a call and we had a chat and she shared some wisdom and resources and sort of, yes, gave me encouragement that I was doing the right thing because I feel like many and I think Sammy's alluded to it as well. You can often doubt, you think, well, am I actually sufficiently good enough to do this? Do I use digital learning technologies enough to do this? And I think that's something that we do. We self-doubt a lot, I certainly do. But anyway, three benefits that I took out from this and I thought the first one was to really think about stronger, sorry, that was my Siri on my phone, if you heard that, gaining stronger recognition for learning technology skills and experience. So I'm freelance basically, although I do work with lots of different organisations to support their provision. And I really wanted to demonstrate that I have up-to-date skills that are valued by the sector. I think that's really important to be current, to be not just an expert in your field, but have current knowledge when you are talking to people and encouraging them to use digital learning technologies that you know what you're talking about basically. And I wanted to show that I held sort of high professional standards really in digital pedagogy. So just as a bit of a parallel, a couple of years ago, I gained ATS that some of you might be familiar with from the Society of Education and Training, it's advanced teacher status. And that too was a rewarding process which allowed me to critically reflect really on my own practices. And the aim of ATS is quite broad and ends with validation of your skills as a teacher in FE. But I wanted to go a little bit further and I wanted to really validate my journey as a teacher who embraces digital technologies to improve my role and that of my peers, those that I help support within the organisations. And ultimately, of course, like we all do some outcomes for learners really. So yes, ATS was that journey indeed. Second point there is to demonstrate my commitment to the importance of learning technology. So demonstrating that commitment became really, really important for me. As a teacher trainer, which is what I dedicate the majority of my time to, I've been able to support teachers to use digital ed tech wherever they can really in their classes. And I don't want to just advise, as I said before, I want to refer to the practices of others as well. I want to show the good work that's happening in the sector and be able to sort of showcase that really. So I talk to people as much as I can about new tech and I try and demonstrate its use firsthand. So as Sammy says, digital learning technology is pedagogy is very, very important and it has been for some time, but actually with this sort of fast moving digital ed tech sector that we work in, and of course, I'd have to mention the incoming force that is AI, it's necessary that we really prepare our learners for the future. So overall, I wanted to show my commitment by gaining that high standard accreditation, which is really respected within the sector. So I was delighted to start this whole process really. So thirdly, I wanted to develop transferable skills, as it says there, which can be applied across all education sectors and industry. Now, this is one is really, really important to me for many reasons. The first would have to be that whilst I work a lot with mainstream FE colleges in my job, I've actually never worked for one and I've worked in lots of other settings. So I've worked in adult community learning, I've worked in work-based learning for independent training providers and I've worked for a few years in prison learning as well. So each one of those settings has got really different priorities and constraints, if you like, within digital technology. And I had a special focus within my CMAL journey of focusing on prison learning and also ESOL, which is what I am mainly accredited for as a teacher, which is English for speakers of other languages. But don't just think about prison learning for a moment. The most challenging of all settings to embed digital technology. So I could say that probably the word digital for most teachers within prison was at once. And for some still is a bit of a bad word really. It's a challenging area to go in. Of course, there's limited digital learning technology for both learners and teachers. But the teachers are still expected to improve the digital skills and digital literacies of their learners. So as part of this CMAL journey, I was really, really happy to sort of work alongside some prison tutors as well and look at how they can improve the digital skills and literacies of their learners without necessarily having all of the tech there at hand to be able to use. And yeah, just to really, just to try and embed, as I said, the digital skills improve the outcomes for their learners and their confidence really. ESOL I mentioned is another sector where traditionally teachers have had low tech classrooms. Learning a language is very much hands-on auditory work, very kinesthetic and low tech, I suppose. But there's so much out there and during the pandemic there was a huge surge in digital skills within ESOL, but the teachers needed a lot of support and certainly the old process gave me even more confidence to support my peers in embracing this new technology and in using it effectively, should I say, which is a big word, doesn't it? And it promises a lot, but not just use technology for the sake of it. Let's just have a PowerPoint here and a quiz here and okay, I've embedded technology, it's looking at it and looking at how it's actually linked to the wider learning aims, how you're actually increasing the skills of learners and as yourself. So yeah, I've really enjoyed the process, being able to share, it's been incredibly important for me. And yeah, just the next slide, they're just to reiterate what Fiona said at the beginning, the Seamolts really likely for you to be for you, if you are an established learning technology professional or practitioners such as myself, you've got three or more years experience and you engage with learning technology throughout most aspects of your role, but you're not leading on it as such, but it infiltrates most of your role really. But yes, I would advise anybody to do it because it's a really good journey. Okay, I think I've banged on enough now as well, so I'm gonna hand over to the lovely Lynn. Thank you so much, Rachel, thank you very much. Yes, I have the misfortune of just following two people who've kind of pretty much said it all because that was brilliant and thank you both. So I'm bringing up the rear here. Before I talk about senior Seamolts specifically, I'm just gonna just talk about the whole thing in general. I think Seamolts is absolutely unique. I mean, Rachel's already touched on the fact that as FE teachers or digital practitioners, I struggle with learning technologists because I think to a certain extent we all are. So we might be not student facing or student facing, but anyone who's using any element of digital pedagogy. I kind of think nowadays having worked in an ILT team at Heart of Worcestershire College a few years ago, but it's actually pretty much seamless and teachers are working so amazingly with people that we might have viewed as not student facing that nowadays, you've got ILT staff, we might call them creating things like quizzes and collaborating in VLE paths for different learners to follow and things like that. And it's all that all of those boundaries are blurring. So I don't know if we need to come up with a new name for what all of this is because we're all learning technologists now, I think. But I think the reason that Seamolts is unique is speaking from an FE practitioner, a lecturer, an educator, a supporter of learning perspective. There are quite a few options for us for professional recognition. Rachel's already touched on the fact that through Society of Education and Training, you can do ATS. We've got the chart at College of Teaching if you're more HE facing, we've got HEA, there are lots of options, but only Seamolts recognizes our digital educator identity. And I think that is absolutely so important because perhaps increasingly since lockdown, it's become a phenomenally important part of our pedagogy and our practice. And it's very rare to find an educator that isn't using digital in some way. And I think for whatever part of their journey, as Sammy has already touched upon, for whatever part of your journey, you can be capturing your expertise and there really isn't another professional education, professional accreditation rather, that actually captures that part of the professional portfolio of a digital educator or whatever we might call them. And I think it's such an important part to put forward for if you're looking for progression routes or anything like that, these are the kind of things that employers, education providers are going to look for the proof of your skills and your pedagogy with digital. And for me, it's absolutely unique in terms of that. The thing that I like about senior Seamolts is, and again, I'm not sure what else we would call it, but it is not really some hierarchical thing. Oh, I was just a part-time lecturer, one of the phrases I hate, just a part-time lecturer, so I will do associate. Oh, I'm a newish lecturer now or working in some kind of newish learning technology role. I will do Seamolts. Oh, I've been here for 10 years and I've got a higher title in the company hierarchy. I will go for senior Seamolts. It actually isn't that simple. It may work like that, but actually senior Seamolts is for you if you've got any kind of role in leading teams. So you might be working within a curriculum department and you're not the curriculum lead or faculty lead, whatever you might call it, you might be the digital champion. And if you are in that capacity, helping others to use learning technology or perhaps you're looking at appraising the way that the current technology is working, then you can be doing senior Seamolts. And I very much like the fact that when it comes to the senior Seamolts, we've got people at all stages of careers in all different roles saying, well, yes, actually, I do have some leadership capabilities, some leadership responsibilities for what I do with learning technology. So I think, you know, we'll probably go into this in greater depth in a while. There's some nuance in terms of which one you choose and it isn't as simple as, oh, I've been doing this for 10 plus years, I must be senior. So I think, you know, before you choose which one is for you, it's very good. And one of the things that significantly helped me because I did do my Seamolts before moving on to senior Seamolts is that out of so generously made many example portfolios available. So what you can do is go online and look at all the wonderful creative people who've done it before you. And when I was doing my Seamolts and senior Seamolts, that was absolutely invaluable to look at some for instances of what kind of evidence gets drawn together. So I think we'll probably circle back round again to talk about the portfolio itself. So I'm not gonna necessarily go into incredible depth there, but hopefully that's given you an idea and debunked some ideas of who senior Seamolts might be for. So that's me. I'm not sure who'd like to pick up next if we're gonna go in and sort of talk about questions or people would like to hear a little bit more about the portfolio itself, but we'll be guided by you. I think maybe if we pick up on the portfolios for now, while people are gathering their thoughts. Great idea, yes. I really love the register of portfolios that you can go through and you can look at. And you can filter by FE and you can filter by associate or Seamol or senior Seamolts. So you can see what someone has done before you and it's not that you're gonna replicate their work in any way, shape or form, but you'll be able to go, oh, that does sound like me. Oh, I do do a bit of that. Oh, yes, that is something that I look at as well. So I think a really great source of inspiration is probably to explore those portfolios as well and then identify which pathway speaks to you as well as what we've shared on here. And what about you guys, Rachel and Lynn? When you mentioned Rachel, you looked at Lynn's as well. I think we all looked at Lynn's, the original. Oh, no, we all looked at Marin's. Marin was very much the original. But this is it. We are all inspired by the people, but perhaps there may be something about how long does it take to put it together? How did it feel when you were putting it together? And Rachel, do you wanna go first? Yeah, sure. First of all, I really liked the flexibility that was around there with you being able to put whatever format you wanted to the portfolio. I like that. I think because I like being creative. I think my neurodivergent self there goes into the fact that I find it sometimes quite hard to be restricted to certain kind of formats. But yeah, Padlet was the one for me. Most people that know me know that I'm a little bit freak of Padlet. And indeed, Lynn, you had done yours as well in Padlet as well. So that was a good guide. But as to how long did it take? Again, because it is an organic document that you can keep adding to, it didn't feel particularly like it was an onerous task. I felt it was really enjoyable and something that was flexible that you could keep going into an amending and adding to. So I did my C-multiply over a few months. I'm trying to actually remember. I can't recall whether it was something in the region of about nine months or something like that to put it together. And yeah, even whilst it's being sort of assessed, you can even sort of like refer to it and as long as you tell your assessor, you can keep adding to it because there might be some valuable evidence that you're putting together right at the last minute. But yeah, it was easy in that respect. It wasn't onerous at all. So yeah, I certainly enjoyed that part of the process, the creativity. What about you, Lynn? Yes, thanks Rachel. Yeah, that is it for me. I have to say that the real clincher about the enjoyment of C-multiply is the portfolio flexibility. And Sammy, thank you, has just posted a link to the portfolios there which, as she says, are filterable. So you can have a look and see which one you think might apply to you. I'm like Rachel. So I did my first portfolio and Padlet and then for my senior portfolio, I wanted to actually get to grips with WordPress because it had been many years since I'd done any kind of that, any of that type of design. And a few of my students were using it for things like blogs. So I actually used the senior C-mult as an excuse to get to grips with WordPress. So I was actually learning a technology whilst putting it there, but putting it together. But I think I don't want to name any names but some professional accreditations are an absolute straight jacket. And it is so good that all of the C-mult routes just say to people, bring us your evidence. It can be a Google doc, it can be Padlet, it can be some sort of blog or website. And that gives you, you know, Rachel's used the word creativity, it gives you absolute free rate to show how creative you are. That is the wonderful thing about it. And that opens the door for you being able to use such a richness of evidence. So I'm sure that Sammy and Rachel will help me add to this. But typical evidence that you might have, you might share a learning resource that you've put together. You might share some planning documents anonymized, obviously to make sure that we're keeping things confidential. When you're setting a project, you might actually, if you're doing a senior C-mult, follow a project through from inception to evaluation with the kind of assets like, you know, Gantt charts and meeting minutes, testimonials from people. But, you know, nowadays with the amount of richness of evidence we've got, you can have, you know, a manager or even learners. It would be wonderful to have learners contributing to talk about the value of your digital pedagogy via video. That's something that can be done. So you've got this complete freedom about the platform in the widest sense that you use, but also the evidence that you bring along. And I think that the exemplars that are up there really show the types of things that people are using. So other than projects beginning to end, student and manager testimonials, examples of the learning technology tools that you've been using, have I forgotten anything? Oh, I was just having, you know, I think on mine, definitely I put some examples of maybe some digital skills sessions that I've delivered to my peers. I put examples of my social media and how I was using social media in a different way. I think a bit like your WordPress example, I created my own website. If you'd have told me if you use, create my own website, I would have laughed, but I did. It's amazing that I did it. It was such a proud moment. So that had to go at the top of my CMock portfolio. But yes, just sort of, you know, links, anything. If you speak at an event or a staff meeting and you highlight, you know, the use of a new digital learning tool, anything that you feel that has made an impact to your practice and an impact to those of your peers, then it's worth sharing, isn't it? And it shows that your confidence is growing also. And that's really, really important to share, I think. Yes, absolutely. And a community, that's another thing. So if you've participated in something like a UKFE chat or you've been promoting your work maybe at a conference or you've got, you know, those online dialogues, then that's also a great thing to bring to the party to establish that you're part of a wider network. Yeah, I particularly love it when I'm assessing portfolios and I see an email of thread, of a context of something that happened, you introduce something and then this happened and then this person tried it and this person tried it. And I love the evidence that we get in the richness of that in that it's not just a one and done on my favorite saying a sheep dip. It's a consistent, supported approach to building technology into practice. And that's the biggest thing for me now assessing portfolios is I'm looking for how have you supported other people with taking this to the next level. I almost, I'm almost willing you to have someone who's more of an expert than you at the end of it. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for some new inspiring other people and I'm looking for how does that technology change the narrative? And if it doesn't, what did we learn from that? And I think we learned so much about when things don't play out the way we wanted. I once assessed a portfolio and they'd gone all in on a tool and then the setting couldn't afford it for the next year. And so there was a whole section of reflection from the candidate about how that played out and what they tried, what they did and all. And it was a really wonderful thing to read as well. So it doesn't always have to be successful or throw in as well. No, I think that's absolutely right. It's a real space for critical reflection. So we've gone, I think we've gone large on all of the wonderful evidence you can bring right now. And of course the portfolio is not just a repository of evidence. Probably the most important part is the reflection that follows it. So what have you been doing? What went well? What didn't? What have you learned? What will you do next time? And I think it is a very safe space for you to reflect. We all have some horrors and some disasters. Sammy beautifully just described one that was not the candidate's fault at all. We've all had that kind of thing happen. And you can reflect on that and what might I have done? So it is a really, really excellent space for that reflection. The one thing that just occurred to me is that also with the richness of the portfolio, it is lending itself to use in wider ways, I think beyond Seamalt because I could see looking at some of the amazing example portfolios out there. Many of them could be dissected and turn into an amazing blog. Many of them could be dissected and turned into something particularly if it's an accessible sort of WordPress site. A show reel if you like. So if you are going for a promotion or looking to raise your professional profile, you could make some or all of them public. So I think because of the versatility and the creativity and reflection that you're encouraged to bring to the portfolio, there is a potential life for your portfolio beyond actual Seamalt. I don't know what you think about that, Sammy and Rachel. Yeah, I think that's really true. And it also shows your commitment to sharing your knowledge, which is one of the core values we're assessing in the portfolio as well. I think one of the things when I achieved a Seamalt was that I felt there was, people weren't really talking about what was in their portfolios as much and people weren't really sharing as much because it was early days and the things were moving and we were in quite testing times back then as well. And I think now we're in such a collaborative space as a sector and as an old community. It would be really wonderful to see show reels that just sounds exciting to amplify the work of some people. And I think that would be something that the sector would really benefit from as a whole as well. And it would be really nice to talk about in your recertification in how you lived the values past your certification as well. Exactly. Because the portfolio has a section at the end of it where you have to actually sort of write down some of your future plans. Just reflect on, as you said, which is something that we're encouraged to do through any kind of professional formation, of course, that we're doing at the moment. But being able to set yourself an action plan, a target list of things that you're going to continue doing, for me, was really important. So I think that that part of the portfolio is really, really beneficial to narrow down exactly what I wanted to keep doing and increase, really. So overall, I think that the portfolio guidelines are very, very clear and the way that it's all lend out. So yes, as an instance of evidence, reflection, how you communicate and work with others. You've got to certainly in the CMOLT pathway, you've got a section in there where you can detail your specialist areas as well. So if you want to go down that route, really think about, as I mentioned, there's a couple of specialist areas that I focused on. And that's just, yeah, just really beneficial to guide you down a pathway because you might think, oh, there's just so much ed tech. Where do I start from? Where do I go? Put a nice plan at the beginning and decide what your professional pathway is. Yeah, it's very, very useful. I wonder if, oh, sorry, Lane. Go for it, Sammy, go for it. I wonder as well if it's just worth spending two seconds talking about how the assessment process works as well. So you submit your wonderfully reflective portfolio. That comes into two assessors who assess it. Semi-blind, we have to know who you are just to check there's not a conflict of interest. But we ask that everything's anonymized when it comes into your portfolio as well. And then we'll each assess it separately and we won't know what the other person's assessed it as. And then we have a really interesting moment when Fiona sends us the other person's assessment. And we have a really interesting moment where we look at whether we've agreed or disagreed separately first. And then we have to get together and collaborate and agree a grade. And that grade could be a referral major, a referral minor, a pass, and a super pass. It's got a proper name, but I call it a super pass. But just to say it as well, I think it's probably okay to share that I was a referral first time round. Oh, no. So was I. So was I. You do on both of them. So yes, took two referrals. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's important to know that it is a reflective journey. So the reflections that you make on that referral are really important to draw out when you have your second go at it, which quite quickly comes around and you can have a second submission. And then we will reassess, ideally with the same people who saw your portfolio first time round, but if not one of them and another person will assess it for you again. So it's a really robust assessment process. And we do try and give feedback that's really constructive, really detailed and really draws out what we liked and what we would like to see more of in there as well. It's a little bit like having your work proofread for grammar and spelling, isn't it? It's kind of like you can read something over and over again and not realise that you've got a spelling or a punctuation mark. It takes somebody else. And I think the referral actually was really positive because it was kind of on the lines of, I don't think you've sold yourself enough here or I don't think you've given yourself enough information here. It wasn't the kind of sort of feedback that just made me feel demotivated and not want to go on. It was positive and I could see why, it was very clear what I'd been referred. So I wouldn't let, if you are, one of those 70% of you who's just put into chat who are referred, I wouldn't let it put you off, really. Yes, thank you, Fiona. I didn't know it was 70% but that just speaks to I think the robustness of the process. But yeah, if I can just sort of second that the feedback, I had two minor referrals online is just so tremendously supportive and very detailed. We've all had referrals in the past or we've given referrals to students and thought, gosh, that really wasn't, didn't have the specific nature that I needed to really hone in on. And I mean, I think I turned around the referrals probably in about an hour because it was so precise what the additional evidence needed to be. I think one was an additional piece of evidence and one was a more detailed reflection, a more critical reflection, but that was very, very clear in the feedback. And I think that we are busy people and a referral is always something that you just think, oh no, look how much extra work have I got to do? And I think you can be confident that if there are any little bits and bobs of extra work, you will know precisely due to the excellent assessors exactly what you need to do. And I think I've probably mentioned at this point, I've done quite a few associate simul assessments recently and there is a real trend in what I'm giving as feedback, which is this is a really good example, but you fail to tell me the impact of this on other people and how this is played out and what that conversation looked like. And because we weren't in the room, we can't see how that conversation happened. So it's really up to the candidates to articulate, how did that conversation happen when you were sharing the new technology or you were inspiring the learner or what happened and all that richness, you were in the room and you remember it. And so it's just a plea to really make sure you articulate that down and reflect on that for us when we're assessing. And because that's the good stuff that we're really looking for. Yes, good point, Rachel. I think we've come around to a natural point for questions on any of these things. Or thoughts, yeah, reflections as well as questions. Feel free to take yourself off of mute or pop something into chat. Yes, absolutely. If one hates typing in chat, so please do. Ah, oh yes, good question. Do you want me to cover that question, Lynn? That would be super, thank you, Vian. That would be brilliant. Yeah, sure. So thanks, Frances, for your question on the process. So how it works, you sign up on our website. You choose the strand that you're interested in, associate or senior CMOLT. And then once you've signed up, you have two years to complete your portfolio. So obviously we don't recommend it takes two years, but you've got the two years time to actually complete. So we've got three submission windows per year. So we open submissions in January, May and September and you can submit in any of those windows throughout your two years of being a CMOLT candidate. And then once you have submitted, obviously you go through the assessment process and you get your outcome back within a few months of submission. So like the ladies were just discussing, you can often get referral, sometimes a pass first time. If you get a referral, then you have plenty more time to complete your second submission. It doesn't need to fall within that two years. So if you've submitted at the end of your two year window, then you can do your resubmission after that two years. So you don't have to do both within that first two years. So I hope that helps, Frances. Great, thank you. Does anyone else have any questions for Lynn, Rachel or Simon? I suppose a question to everyone else is, because I'm guessing that people who are attending today are thinking about doing one of the pathways. I just wondered is what you've heard today, has it sort of helped make your minds up, I suppose? Or I guess you're going to go away and reflect a little bit more, but have we covered anything that maybe was holding people back and preventing them from putting an application in? Well, what are your motivations as well? Do let us know in chat what your motivations are for doing it. That would be a good one. Simon, you've got your hand up, I think. Yeah, hi there. Thanks for that. That was very useful. I'm brand new to this because I've just signed up. I've just started my digital learning design apprenticeship. So this is all very new to me and it's all very interesting. So that was really useful for me. And it's just sort of, it's just helped me sort of get a little bit of understanding around how things work and a bit more background information on what the community is like, things like that, really. So it's, yeah, it's all incredible in you and I'm just finding my feet, but it's all really interesting. So I just wanted to say thanks for that. It's been very useful. Well, it's a pleasure. And I think the first step, I think, is, we've already been just so complimentary about them. Go and have a look at the sample portfolios that you can do. Get on there and just have a look at the variety because I think one thing that you can take comfort from, I've done accreditations where I've been scrabbling around, shall we say, for evidence, you are likely to find that you have got an embarrassment of riches when it comes to evidence. And there are many, we all do such variety in terms of community and creation and collaboration that you will doubt us have the evidence needed for this. There's no doubt about that. Can we just turn to something from Francis, which was a really, really, really great point. It will maybe help me push back against managers who aren't keen on technology use in learning. So Seymour, as a political lever, I find that very interesting. You can pop your microphone on, Francis, and tell us a little bit more about that if you'd like. No, well, I'm currently learning and development coach at Sheffield College. During lockdown, my role was obviously really focused on coaching all my colleagues with technology. And since then, we've kind of taken quite a few steps back and I've just got a new manager and his big thing is introduce a paper exercise book to show progress and I'm kind of really fighting against that because it's not how I see things developing in the future. So this could be really one way of helping me to demonstrate and show and prove and help me, I think. Oh, that's wonderful. I mean, I think we are going to see more of this. We're seeing some go backery following lockdown ending, but also the incredible moral panic, a lot of the professional development I do for teachers is around AI and the push for, we'll know that evidence is authentic if it was written down with a biro is going to be huge. So we actually do have quite a battle on our hands here with people saying, well, this needs to be robust. We will get them to write it down and they won't use digital because chat GPT or whatever. So I think that's a really, really powerful point you're making there. Thank you. Yeah, so Simon's saying he has briefly looked at the portfolios and found it reassuring. He's done some similar work that looks a little similar. Yeah, as I said before, it's organic document when soon as you start putting stuff in you think, oh, yes, I can add that to it too. And it's a little bit addictive actually to keep adding to your portfolio. Well, I mean, why wouldn't you actually? Because we've mentioned briefly that after three years, you're going to re-accredit. So why not keep it as a living document? You could do a different sections for this is the evidence after it was first passed. I love Emma's comment here. It's Emma F rather than Emma P. New team members recently employed, I'm considering whether CMOT might be a way for us to do these things that are different levels to actually get a CMOT learning community, sort of co-mentoring and supporting each other. That sounds wonderful. I think as well, I think if we think about FE, let's take a college setting, we have centralized teaching and learning teams that have elements of technology to their roles. And then you have teaching and learning people who have technologies and main part of their role. So I think it would be quite a natural fit to have a CMOT community within an FE college and give some accreditation and time to reflect. It almost becomes a badge that I've had time to reflect and time to reflect on practice as well. And it shows that you're committed to your own personal development as well. And I think that time to reflect is the most critical part that all three of us drew upon in our discussion today. And what better way to celebrate a teaching and learning team in a college setting? I can't think of one. No, absolutely. And I can picture it as colleagues at different levels of experience on their journey in the organization by having some team at CMOT happening and looking at each other's evidence. You are by definition finding more about the processes and the wonderful work that the organization is doing by sharing evidence. And if that could actually be cross-curricular, I think it could be even more powerful. CMOT as a cross-organizational CPD tool, it is a very interesting concept. I love Emma's comment that she said about, there was 12 of them signed up at the same time and had meetings and peer support. I did something very, very similar for my ATS journey. We had a group of us and we used to, we had a WhatsApp group. We had sort of writing rooms where we'd all sign on at the same time and be working on our portfolios independently but all in the Zoom room together. And it was just, it was really beneficial to do that, actually, bounce ideas off of each other. Simon. Yeah, what you've just said there, I think is a really fantastic idea because for learners like myself, I'm one of these people that I like to bounce ideas off of other people. And often, if I bounce an idea off another person, they might say, well, have you thought about doing it in this way? And then it gives me a whole new avenue of ideas to explore and to take further because that is very much how I like to work. So that's sort of college where you'd sign up with a number of you there and then you set up meetings and offer peer support. That's, I think it's a really good way to do it. Yet for me, this is such an exciting part of my career because something that we said earlier, and I forget who said it, I do apologize, resonated really well with me because we all went through COVID and at the fire service, we had to quickly adapt our working. So I work in the prevention team and I designed to develop, I designed, delivered, evaluate lots of the prevention training. So we went from pretty outdated methodology really. We were doing classroom based, face to face, chalk and talk and it was all very, very dated and I wanted to progress it anywhere. But when COVID came along, that necessity is the mother of invention and it just made us evolve quickly overnight. And so we went straight away, we got a subscription to rise, we were using Teams, we were using Poly V, Slido, we were using lots and lots of different ways of communicating with our learners. I've got 1,000 or I had 1,118 learners to communicate with across the fire service. And then there was my external learners as well. So social workers, police, housing officers, NHS workers. So all of a sudden instead of going to do these huge sort of face-to-face learning sessions, we had to go to U-Digital Technology and for me, it was the best thing for my career really because it enabled me to bring in the changes that I wanted to bring in. And it would have taken, I don't know, five years but we did it overnight because we were forced to. So because the senior is where I was, I thought, oh, this is good. We're saving money, we're seeing more learners, it's more efficient, it's more accessible to our learners. So we were able to be very positive and promote digital learning quite well. And that sort of stuck around in the fire service and now we're using that to our advantage. So this sharing of good practice and this sharing of ideas for me is invaluable because I really want to push any ideas people can share forward to my organisation so we can really bring on our digital learning. And the thing for me is, I know COVID was terrible and I got long COVID myself and I suffered badly from it but to remain positive, we did learn so much from that horrible situation, that necessity forced us to dip our toe into pools that we would never have normally done. And yeah, long may this sort of evolution continue and I'm gonna be banging the drum where I went to really try more innovative solutions, try more things and do it quicker and better. So that's why I'm so pleased to be a new member of these communities to hopefully share my learning that I can gain from other people with a lot more experience than me. I'm brand new in this area. Reluctantly, I'm brand new and I want to learn so much more and pass it on. So yeah, this is brilliant for me. That's really wonderful to hear. And I think as we touched on earlier, you'll be able to take artifacts from your portfolio and have it in the organization's newsletter. Why not have a learning technology blog, something like that? There are many, many purposes for reusing your portfolio. And I think that can be a very persuasive argument across the organization, absolutely. I'm loving what's going on. Explain to me, Rachel, while we've been chatting, there seems to be some kind of joint Seamart group emerging. There is, yeah, because France has had a lovely suggestion that let's get a group going and do it together. I don't know whether or not that's something that maybe on the back of this could help just initiate, get off the ground and then let people do it. But yeah, no, maybe share initial contact details and set up a group. I think that would be fantastic. So Fiona, I don't know if that's possible. Yeah, absolutely. So what I can do is after this session, I can get in touch with everybody and just to get them to confirm they're happy for me to share their contact details and then we can go from there. Sounds great. And obviously, we're happy to pop into the group. If you invite us and you think it will be useful, we can do that. Fantastic, that sounds great. Absolutely. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much to the three of you, Lynn, Rachel and Sammy. It's been such a great session. I think everyone's got something really useful out of it. It's even me. So yeah, it's been really, really great to hear your experiences and hopefully we can encourage it what it sounds like, we can hopefully encourage some people to come along and take part in T-Mult. So that's really, really great. So yeah, thank you so much for your time. Oh, thanks for inviting us. Thank you, yes. And I'll send the recording out to everybody. And like I say, I'll get your permissions to share contact details and hopefully you can get your group set up. Wonderful. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everybody. Good luck. Thanks, everyone.