 Thanks for being here today and it's been some great presentations, so thanks to everybody that's presented before us today. It's been fun learning about the different pieces that have been happening around Moodle. So I am Linda Wright and the Director of Distance Projects. We're a nonprofit and we provide free online distance learning opportunities for adults in Ontario to assist them with upgrading their reading, writing, and math and other essential skills. We did celebrate 20 years of online learning this year as well. It was exciting to hear Moodle also celebrated their 20th year as well. We are funded by the province of Ontario through the Ministry of Labor, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development. So our target audience is working with Indigenous communities, organizations, and individuals to identify and meet their learning goals in our flexible online learning environment. In Ontario we have a number of communities that are fly-in only that are Indigenous communities in Northern Ontario that we also work with. When learning with GLA our courses are 100% online so oftentimes we never meet our learners. Ontario is huge, I don't know if you've know much about it, but you can drive 24 hours and you're still in the same province. So it's a massive area to cover. Our courses are all free to adults across Ontario and we offer a combination of live and independent online options. We've been using Moodle for about 15 years to develop our own curriculum and currently we offer about 30 courses. We know that Moodle Moodle is often a love fest to Moodle so why we love Moodle is it's open source. Again, being non-profit that's very cost beneficial to us. We're managed by contact north so all we really have to look after is looking after our users as well as instructing as well. When you talked about 700 users in one course I just about how to panic attack but anyhow we build our own curriculum and it's great for us because oftentimes we can't find a curriculum with an Indigenous content in it especially when we're talking about essential skills. We've added H5P activities which we love because it makes it more interactive and when we use the main Moodle tools it's often easy to update the courses as we need to as content changes. A wish list for us in case there's anybody out here listening is a really good easy to use text-to-speech tool and a preferred name option that continues through the whole platform which we're also looking at as well. But why corrections in literacy? Well we know that a lot of those that are within corrections facilities and I put on stats for the numbers people but are one of the barriers is education and that offenders typically return to prison due to education being one of those factors. For us the government Ontario started a corrections literacy initiative about five years ago and my year started to listen for it a little bit and why it's important to us is because we're the Indigenous stream for literacy in Ontario as part of the e-channel program and there's just a huge over representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system in Canada and this is only increasing over time. So we're located in Thulecote, Ontario and the closest corrections facility is Canora and it was estimated that 89% of the inmates there are Indigenous and 90% of them are presumed innocent. Many of these are coming from northern communities. It's maybe sometimes the first time they've left. English is often a second language and there we saw this as an opportunity to connect with those clients while they're in the corrections facility and perhaps introduce them to good learning anywhere and opportunities within the education and when they go back to their community they could continue with us. We know that digital technology is important but when you're dealing with corrections they're really caught between really legitimate security concerns and Canora there was a riot and one of our guards was taken prisoner during that to come in and say hey guys we want them to use a computer while they really are fearful for situations that are quite serious. We really have to work with the facility to ensure that we're taking their concerns seriously and understand where lies within the priority but also express to them that digital literacy is really important. So an example is one of the first I'm going to give you some examples that we've worked with but just an example of some of the things that when we go and we talk to a site is that there was guaranteed absolutely no access to the internet in some of our youth systems which makes it a little challenging when you want to do online learning. There was no camera or hardware on any of the material or any of the hardware that we were using and that it had to be educational content and that had to be very independent to use for not only the client but also the staff. Oftentimes something like this a project like this is downloaded to someone who has already a gazillion pieces that they're trying to work within the system and so it had to be very easy to train very easy for them to use because they were the ones that were also being asked the questions. One of the issues we do have this is just examples of one of the youth justice systems is across Ontario we really don't have one guiding voice over what that education looks like within a corrections facility whether it's a youth system or the provincial system. I'm getting there I had my first meeting with one of the higher ups in the provincial so we're talking about that and what that looks like and they're looking at an LMS and I'm pitching Moodle very hard to them but it's so every time we talk to somebody it's usually the newest person that's walked into the facility that's all fresh faced and excited they're gonna they're gonna make this happen and then each system has a each each corrections facility has different rules they have different ideas of what they want and so each time you go somewhere you're really starting brand new and you're educating not only them but what what is going to work within their facility. So these are some of our pilot projects we've worked with John Howard Society and Thunder Bay was a really one of our first introductions to corrections and we started having Super Tuesday so it's a transition house and we go in and we cook soup with them and then also we'd say and how about you learn a little bit about digital technology and we had what I'll talk about a little bit more is a roomy tablet but they did have access to the internet there and what we were able to do is actually run the Moodle courses that we had on the tablet and they were able to would you like some soup please take a course too so we were able to kind of combine those two things and started to learn a little bit about corrections and what kind of courses were needed and the kind of support that was needed. We then worked with a youth justice system in southern Ontario and again they could use our regular Moodle courses on the computers and then they had the tablet for offline use. Our newest one is with the federal government what we're finding with the federal government is there is more of a consistency across but again it's been very hands-off on any access to technology for inmates. If you're in the federal system you're in for five years or more so I'm going to talk a little bit about that one because I'm most excited about that what's happening right now is that we haven't got any funding for this project it's really been James and I connecting through a session like this talking about what we could do and they were looking for some literacy and indigenous curriculum and so what we've started to do is download our courses from Moodle and then we send them to the core can which is basically the educational training group in the federal system. Unfortunately they're not using Moodle I'm still pitching it hard but the staff work with inmates which is really kind of neat because we're getting coding experience as they take these courses and they make them D2L compatible and I don't know if D2L is a bad word here but it's what they're using so it's what we're working with and they're using it a whitelist environment so any of our courses that have external links they're having to take that and find other solutions whether it's a screenshot or they're recreating that material but the staff which I think is really neat is we're working with the inmates to do that so then they have the inmates that have been piloting them they're getting really positive feedback and so at this point we started telling the higher-ups of what we were doing and we're getting some really good support on it and so now what's happening is the staff there is supporting the registrations they send them to us and as they finish a course it's automatically alerting us that a course has been completed and then we send a certificate to the client again because it's corrections that's really hands-off for us we have to rely on the staff there and the systems that they do have in place again they're expanding across Ontario which is fantastic we're only supposed to be servicing those people in Ontario they're looking at going across Canada and so that's something we're trying to figure out how a provincial organization is going to have our courses across Canada so now we're getting into the red tape of it but it's been exciting to see how far we've been able to go so one of the biggest issues we have and the question I get is well that's great but I don't have any internet so how do I access your courses and this has been something that I've struggled with over the years and I've basically been said I'm sorry I can't help you again living in northern Ontario living in a remote community or being in a corrections facility they still need digital skills and thanks to COVID even more so now so we've really been looking for a solution for that in Ontario one of the things that came out the ministry wanted has this corrections literacy initiative and to me the words that jumped out with this was digital skills again when you're in the corrections facility and especially in in smaller ones like canora there is no access to the internet so how are we getting digital skills to these clients so I was at another conference and somebody came up instead of you heard of the roomy tablet and I said no but it was actually a tablet that was being used in third world countries that content was being downloaded on to and but it's more like a library wasn't very interactive so you could download apps you could download youtube videos you can look download pdf but there is no interactivity or no learning that was happening however we've been using these for five years within the canora facility and I put that picture in because I told Nikki I'd bring her to Barcelona so that's our our crew from the canora facility which none of these projects would work without somebody on the ground the people on the ground are fantastic in what they do but often I think the presenter before was talking about not a lot of technical skills sometimes and those people that are delivering the courses or even handing over the tablet and they're in canora and I'm in Toronto again we're in Ontario for me to go to drive to them it's 24 hours so I also have to be able to train them at a distance too because I really don't like getting on the little puddlejumpler planes to go see them so it has to be extremely easy to use so we have been using it for five years the hardware roomies no longer using the hardware and we were using these tablets to use the Moodle with internet so we're looking for a solution right now to replace this because they're coming end of life right now what we did like about them is we could curate material for different groups on it I could have different libraries so in canora we also have a we did have a women's floor and so we were able to curate specific curriculum identified for indigenous women as well so this was just again we moved through and each project that we do we learn more corrections is kind of like this a sometimes people look at me and go why why do you do this but it's also just this kind of closed room where you have to get in you have to build trust they don't want just anybody coming in and and trying to push stuff on them so you've really had to do it so now we're looking at okay we've been able to do a few things in facilities we've played around with offline roomy has the tablet has been fairly successful and now what's up for us so our next steps are to continue to explore the Moodle off app offline again it has to be I've been taking our courses and putting them into the app and looking at it I've been testing it out with the people you saw from canora and at this point it's not as user friendly to be able to use it to be able to just kind of hand it over a lot of our course content and this is what happens this is where I get caught in time two worlds there's some really great tools and every time we hear about something and you guys said that people get all excited about them and I love when my instructors do this because then I have to go and learn something too which is pros and cons and they throw in a new tool but all these fun little add-ons to it when you take something and then you're going to try to download it and put it into a different environment don't work and so we're right now we're going through our courses and seeing what does work and doesn't work well in the app offline to try to figure out okay do we have to just rebuild entire courses that are offline or can we take our content kind of like they're doing in the federal project and just rebuild it we are looking at ways to make navigating the app easier for staff and clients as well I have I have clients within the system that are a grade two reading level English as a second language and maybe have used a cell phone and so that needs to be very easy for the staff and it needs to be very easy for the clients we need to be we're going to continue to again look at those building those courses that can be used offline and in those whitelist situations as well and we're going to explore partnerships to whitelist Moodle with sites instead of having to go over to D2L so I'm going to meet with the province and really try to see if we can work something with them to to be able to build something that can be then put down into the system rather than build each individually in each system and then build up so I think I'm a little bit early Mary but this is my contact information if you have any questions about or any ideas for me please feel free to reach out to me I love people who finish early I was the thing is I almost warned you when we arrived I was a high school teacher for 28 years before I started working for Moodle and I absolutely insist that everything goes on time I used to know even instinctively when the school bell was going to go for the next lesson so if you can finish early that's good right and everyone has been really good with time so far and we only have one presentation left but I've said if you were late I was literally going to push you out of the way and move on to the next person fortunately for you that hasn't happened but it is good because it does mean we now have some time first of all for some questions so I'm sure you've got lots of questions about this initiative so I'm going to pass back to Linda and if you have a question make sure that the microphone gets to you first um are tools like Starlink improving connectivity in these areas is that going to solve some of this problem for you that's a great question um so actually it's been great for some of our staff our staff is located all across Ontario as well um and in some of the communities um and actually in some of our my parents live about two hours away from me and they're actually just getting internet now that they can watch Netflix on um we have communities in northern Ontario that are flying in that actually have an um internet infrastructure to it the problem is having the people in the community that know that this this was unplugged or or like keeping the internet going within the community is one of the struggles we have when we're working on remote projects um so Starlink I don't know if it'll help it's definitely not going to help within the facilities because it's more an administration issue in the aspect of um so in January I had somebody contact me and say they'd really like to have one of our exploring First Nations courses within the facility I said that's great how can we do this we brainstormed a little bit so we recorded one of our live classes in a clean recording so there's no other instructor there's no other students there was no identifying um information about the instructor and we basically took that recording and sent it to her it took her over six months to get the permission to play that in a classroom and there was no internet connectivity so when we're dealing with these projects it's almost it's almost a no all the time to get internet connectivity and it's more in the aspect of they have it within the facility for administration but they're not allowing um clients to have it because again public safety we don't want perhaps somebody that's in a facility to have full access to the internet so trying to do that safely is what we're working with them now but yeah Starlink's in in Ontario and it's a great thing but yeah well this is not a question it's more a comment so my name is Juan Leyva I am the multi-labs probe manager so we would like to see what you are doing with the the tests you are doing with the mobile application to check how it works offline so we are downstairs so if you can visit us and yes have a conversation about that we would love to see what you are doing and how can we improve them how can we improve the app and help you if you need help okay that's great thank you very much yeah I was also just going to comment that we had a great deal of difficulty even in North Carolina the United States with internet connectivity particularly during the pandemic so we do have some remote areas but even more so we had situations where students were home with their brothers and sisters mother and father and somebody streaming a video and whatever and we actually had a number of students fail as a result of that right so it's a serious issue we really saw our numbers change during the pandemic in the aspect of our metrics we saw a lot of those people that had multi-barriers like they're on Ontario Works or ODS Ontario disability those numbers really significantly dropped and we identified it as a lot of the centres that they would usually go to access free internet or use hardware were closed and we saw a lot more people or those people who had one computer so you had to choose whether your kid or you take the course today right so we saw that that kind of decline in multi-barrier clients and a rise in people that were like I'm bored I'm going to take a course hey we have four computers I'm going to take one of your stuff so that really changed we're starting to see that as things are opening up back in Canada change a little bit as well so we're excited to see some of those clients come back okay yeah so first is to say I'm really impressed to know that in Canada also there are places where you're really trying to use Moodle app offline because it's part of what we do a lot in some of very remote places in Kenya and I was just wondering when you say it's the app is not very user friendly would you pinpoint like two or three specific things that you'd really like to see in the app in terms of navigation and then the next question is in terms of monitoring of you know how the content is being used by the client as you call them do you have a plan for that to to be able to know whether the content was actually used by the people and if so what kind of tools are you using because one of the things we're really struggling with and I'm really happy to hear there's the Moodle app developer around here is getting analytics from usage of line that's a great question because both of those are things we're struggling with too so the Moodle app the thing I liked about the Rumi tablet was the aspect that there's not a lot well we worked hard with Rumi to make sure that there wasn't a lot of fringe information like it was here's my course or not my course at that point but here's the library here's the content that we could organize that very clearly and there wasn't a lot of navigation that had to happen to get them right into the tablet so when I'm on the Moodle app there's a lot of okay I have to sometimes I have to download this and I there's a lot of stuff that has to happen and I'm looking to see much like when I altered the Rumi tablets is if there's ways I can do that on my end to make it very easy once I present the tablet to the site as far as pulling off analytics I'm really hoping I haven't found anything yet I'm really hoping we could do that with the tablets the Rumi tablets and again what we would do is they would be offline and then when they within the facility and that would happen and when it would come and it would get connected outside the facility and connected it would send us up some analytics again I couldn't pull specific things it was more like time like used on what they were viewing so it helped us decide what content we wanted to further develop or what we didn't my hope is that we'll be able to like in my dream world these these are this is Linda's dreams but is that it would be like learner one would be attached to this client but we wouldn't probably get any identifying information but that that client we would be able to put in some sort of test where it would test their knowledge until they got 100% on the on the quiz and that would tell us that then they could move to the next piece is what I'm hoping is some sort of course that we can design within it so that when we see a course complete we know that they have been able to complete all kind of the knowledge checks within that course and that's how the core can one is doing it the federal one when they're rebuilding them they're just doing that they have to complete it to get to the next activity and when they complete the course they have demonstrated they have the knowledge yeah thanks hi hi uh julie from kenya interestingly but i'm representing a company that's by g so uh product by giz in germany so it's called a tingy and we actually have concept called a tingy in a box which is using raspberry pi and you would have this where when you have access to the internet you have the courses downloaded so if you have the courses that you wanted to introduce that be downloaded there and then you have access to them where it's now offline and it's I think it uses Wi-Fi connection or something like that we can talk about it later what's interesting is that yesterday we had this same exact conversation on how to improve the mobile app in a way that you're loading less or that you're having not necessarily changing the whole product that is model because most users want to access faster but to think about maybe the global south and different areas that we are targeting because a tingy is supposed to help improve employability in Africa in South America in parts of Asia and so it's that was the discussion that was going on yesterday when we were thinking about user experience and can we make tweaks to for example the parts of the code in order for preventing some reloading or do you load everything all at the same time without having to consume so much of the internet and still be able to store this so I'm excited that someone else is following up in this discussion so yeah I will I will be following you thank you that's great thank you I've always said that you know what is that called like Candy Crush or whatever you could play it while you're in the subway and don't have internet connectivity and you can play it while you're at home and it's connected and that was my wish to have something that was that seamless so it's good to hear that things are happening hi my name is Lauren from Moodle U.S. this was an awesome presentation thank you for sharing and just also for just bringing this topic of learning in corrections facilities tomorrow we're going to be presenting on a course that I've recently built for UNESCO for the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and we designed it to be used completely offline in the mobile app as well as printed and in sort of like any kind of learning environment you can think of and that session's at noon tomorrow we designed it to be really practical so I've just like went through all the sort of like course design strategies we used and we kept it really simple so that it's all self-contained in Moodle uses core Moodle tools so little plug for that session but also just wanted to say hi and would be happy to like talk at any point thank you yeah definitely save me a seat there because I think I have that one stored on my agenda so I'm excited to hear that that's going to be talked about so that's fantastic thank you