 First of all, for anybody who, Joe Thierston, who is, used to be the head of connections, was supposed to be co-collaborating with me on this briefing, he did not be able to counsel. Those of you who came to see Joe, sorry, you're out a lot of fatigue because he's not here. But the focus of this really is about helping to look at OER and one specific slice of OER in terms of how we as a network of schools, mission-driven schools are really going to use OER as an opportunity to further our mission as well as the concepts behind OER. So this is about the work of the Judgement Virtual Learning Academy and how it supports the network of secondary schools across the country and around the world. One of our, for those of you who don't want to think about the society of Jesus, the leader of the society is the superior gentleman. So Pedro Rubin was one of the former societies and he talked about education, he talked about our schools which is a pretty significant aspect of schools and he talked about it in terms of, you know, if our schools perform as they should, they will live in a continual tension between the old and the new, the comfortable past and the uneasy present. And the reason that I really like that quote is because he said it back in 1967, right? And when you look at those words, you think to yourself, wow, that's really applicable to what's happening today, right? And so I think if we as educators are really serious about what we do, we need to really think about it in terms of how are we pushing the end of it. And I think Josh spoke to that earlier this morning about that as well. So what I want to do real quickly is talk a little bit about my personal view on the context of where we're at today from a decision maker's perspective and how things are happening in our schools and our network of schools might be different from your experiences. And then I'll talk a little bit about the work of the Judgment Virtual Learning Academy and how we're using OER, okay? So in terms of decision making and the perspective and again how I see it, decision makers in our schools generally speaking at the presidential level, they're not educators, they're not technology folks. And the way they see things is it's really in terms of, it's a world that's in flux, it's education that's in flux, funding mechanisms are in flux and technology is continually changing and at a pace that makes it hard for non-technology people to really grasp what's going on in the space, right? And so what does that lead to, right? I mean it leads to this, right? It leads to gridlock. And so basically in our schools, again speaking from my particular context, in our schools and our network of Judgment schools, there's a lot of people not doing a whole lot, okay? Really struggling to figure out what's next. How do we engage, right? The good thing is our schools generally speaking in the communities in which they exist are considered to be leaders in their communities in terms of the education that their students receive. But in terms of really moving forward, we're not really pushing very hard because we just really don't know what to do, okay? So just a tiny bit to get a little more closely aligned to OERN, right? This is obviously from UNESCO. OERNs will not be able to help countries reach their educational goals unless awareness of their common potential can rapidly be expanded beyond the communities of interest that they are already attracting, right? This is why we're all here, right? In terms of trying to figure out how to make this go. And really there's two approaches, right? And you can think about whether there's three approaches. But so you can take this from a top-down perspective, right? And really go and talk to those leaders that I was just talking about in terms that are really struggling with what's going on in the space right now and having a hard time understanding exactly how to go about making sense of education in a broader sense and how it fits in, right? And understanding funding models and so forth. So you get the top-down approach. And in general, speaking with top-down approaches, with the right direction, what do you get? You get compliance, right? Okay? So you can make that happen. You can get compliance. Then you've got the bottom up, right? You're wearing, you know, it's a groundswell. We try and get the teachers attached. And we do all we can to really help those people in the bottom. You get introduced to OER, get those systems and structures. But it's a one-man. It's getting grabbed in that person and grabbing that person. Hard work, right? At that level, though, you get buy-in, right? And that's really probably more important to this particular system than the top-down approach. Somewhere in between is hopefully what we're trying to do in terms of creating an ecosystem that helps support our network in terms of OER, okay? So that's hopefully what the system and structure that we're putting in place is. Starting, most importantly, with our teachers, okay? Because we're going to start more in the bottom up, but with an ecosystem that includes administrators, okay? So they can see what's happening in the space, all right? But what do we know about teachers? We know that they're busy, right? We know that they're busy people. At a secondary level, there's a lot that's on their plates where they're being asked to coach. They're being asked to do all sorts of other things. You know, how do you get teachers out of their foxholes, right? Hard to do, okay? So that's something to consider. We talked about barriers yesterday. I don't know if for those of you that were in the... Steve Harding did a presentation. We talked a little bit about barriers. And there's a lot of barriers attached to OER and these types of things, not the least of which is the fact that it's really not free, okay? It's not free for teachers, okay? Because there's a tremendous investment in time attached to OER, both in terms of use and selection as well as production, okay? And so that's as important at least to the secondary teachers I know. That's as important as anything else to them, okay? So it's not free, particularly when a publisher can come along and drop in your lap a whole series of resources that you can just pick and go right into a classroom and use, right? So what we're really asking to do is to fundamentally think about the ways in which they can... You know, they need to consider how to change their perspective on these items. The other thing that's happened, and I think you probably all know it as well, is that technology 20 years ago was different than technology today. And for teachers, we're 20 years ago, there wasn't a whole lot of tools and there wasn't even a whole lot of content available online. Now there's too much, right? It's almost a disincentive for teachers to engage in the use of technology because it takes too long to find the right tools and to find the right resources to using your traditional classrooms, okay? So those are the issues that I see them, okay? Later today, there's going to be a whole thing on cognitive surplus, right? We're going to spend the whole afternoon, the whole thing about cognitive surplus. And I'm a huge fan of Clay Shurkey and you're going to see his name a couple of times in the presentation because what Clay Shurkey talks about as it relates to cognitive surplus is the need to be effective in this space is the need to build a culture of generosity. Okay? That's where I think we win. That's the Network of Jesuits secondary schools. That's why I think a mission-based approach, whether you're talking to Jesuits or anything else, if you can connect to mission in a real meaningful way, you have an opportunity to use this culture of generosity as a way of moving the New York forward, okay? So, a little bit about the Jesuit Virtual Learning Academy. We founded in 2008 and the idea is it's really to harness the collaborative capacities of the Network of Jesuits secondary schools, okay? Talked a little bit about that. We do three things. Coursework for students, a professional development, and then what's next is really this building of this collaborative technology infrastructure, okay? I want to talk a little bit about the Network just to give you a sense of it, okay? We're talking about right now the Jesuit Virtual Learning Academy. We primarily focus on our schools here in the United States. There's 59 Jesuit secondary schools during about 50,000 students, okay? This is the World Play Network. 700 schools, okay? This is the Network of Jesuit Universities 200, okay? It's a large network. And the neat thing about it is it's not just about the numbers, okay? It's really, we share something that's palpable. If you've ever been on a Jesuit university or Jesuit secondary school campus, the sense of mission is palpable, okay? We share a history of 450 years, mission, vision, and values are the same. You can walk on the inner campus and hear the same language being taught. Men for others, men and women for others talked about the graduate of graduation, all sorts of common lingo that makes our school special and unique, right? Instructional pedagogy that is unique to Jesuit secondary schools. We share a spirituality, a common spirituality. We have a corporate structure that is built around regions and organized around postulates like secondary education, university work, the Jesuit refugee services, and so forth. And then, most importantly, there's a deep collegial respect among our network of teachers. They like to be with each other, okay? They like hearing what's happening on the other school's campuses. Even though each of our schools literally is its own independent school, they're tied together by this and it's real, I mean, it's felt. I think that's really what we're trying to take advantage of. So, what's our approach to OER? How are we going to talk about it? How are we going to engage our schools in it? And how are we going to support it in our network of schools? How are we going to talk about it? It's an appeal to mission and it's an appeal to our history. For those of you who don't know a lot about Jesus, early on they were pioneers. They sent the Marquette, even in here in the United States you can think about Marquette and those were judges, right? So, the Jesuit educators, the appeal to being a pioneer, the appeal to collaborators in mission, and lastly that concept of servant leader, which is really embedded directly into our mission of service. Service to others, it's foundational in our work. So, we can appeal to each of these areas in a real meaningful way and talk about OER as it relates to what it is we do. Okay? And so, what we're really working to do is to talk about OER as a humble gift. Okay? And when we talk about it in that perspective, because I think some people every once in a while you kind of get in that discussion about going back to our network of schools but we really have in our network here in the United States and then even abroad we have of the 700 schools half of them are traditional college prep kind of upper crust schools really well-heeled schools and the other half are mission-based schools. Okay? And so, what you could do this as as, oh, I'm here to help you, right? That's really not what we're talking about here. We're talking about being able to develop and to use our network to distribute gifts, right? And to share in this. And there's two sides of it, right? There's the giver and then there's the receiver. There's the gratitude that makes you want to give back, right? And so, that's really what we're talking about here, because as we give back we add deeper context particularly when we're talking about our worldwide network and the ability to gain perspective from others outside of your particular region by using our network. David Weil talked about knowledge can be given without being given away, right? We talked about it as a spirit of generosity compelled by love. Two presentations in a row where the word love came up, right? So Mother Teresa, you can do something I can't do I can do something you can't do together, let us do something beautiful for God. Okay? Next. Innovations now to play shirtly piece about innovation and really he talks about from a technology perspective any innovation it doesn't become a game changer until basically everybody's using it, right? It's kind of the 80% world, right? And so what I want to do now is to show you the technology infrastructure pieces that we're deploying and you're going to go wow there's nothing special about that that's the point, right? Our teachers are comfortable with the technologies we're going to be introducing, okay? So the three pieces of technology that we're using you're probably all familiar with connections and particularly speaking what we're interested in there is the lenses so we've developed a lens program with the connections. Moodle is what we use to deliver our coursework and it's also what we use to deliver our program for faculty so anything that we're really connecting kids but also when we're doing professional development. What's tying it all together is that piece at the top it's a tool called Kinenza and that is a closed system Facebook for lack of a better way of talking about it, okay? This here is an artificial structure that's being imposed on the system itself and it's introduced in Kinenza and what it is is an Academy of Excellence infrastructure that builds academies within this around arts and letters, major philosophies science and knowledge engineering, math and real studies people have a hold, right? It's your professional learning community, okay? It's our way of being able to connect common people around combination alright? So with that what I want to do is to just to take you real quick to it if I can see what I'm doing so here it is there's not a whole lot to it really it's pretty simple, it's Facebooky, right? So what we have is an opportunity to push out various content pieces we've got the things that people find that are important about this, this is actually not deployed yet, we've introduced it to a series of schools but what this enabled us to do is to connect people to movements like OER which I'll show you how we're doing that but also it gives us an opportunity to build on mission, right? And to really help people to gather around what makes us special, okay? So we have the opportunity to do the three minute retreat, we have opportunities for folks to do book retreats on spiritual formation pieces, all sorts of things that really speak to our mission but then also obviously connect people around what their primary work is and that's educating young people, okay? So what you have here is you know, groups around the specific disciplines that we talked about earlier you have a forum area again around those specific areas you've got the capacity to do events, groups and so forth but what I want to do is just to show you this resource page because this resource page is really where we're talking about giving people, giving teachers an opportunity to start engaging technology in a meaningful way giving them resources that they can start with, okay? And so you can see there's four general categories that we have in place, these aren't they end all to be all but it begins to starting point for folks. Down here under this tool here is a series of free or low cost tools that people can use to get the game of technology and so it's things like voice thread and Skype basically introducing teachers to easy tools, okay? And then building professional development programs around it, okay? But this finding learning content piece what I wanted to do is just to click on this to show you how we're really using this piece to move our engagement in OER as well as introduce other repositories to folks, okay? So within this structure here you're going to see our Lens Program so a link directly to our lenses on CNX okay? So it takes people directly to that but on top of it down here below are little screencasts and so forth that talk about why CNX how to use CNX how to use our lenses how to be a part of the community okay? And so it's kind of an introductory piece to it as well okay? So it's not just dumping people in there but it's helping them understand how to use it, okay? And I could take you through more but I think you probably get a picture as to what we're trying to accomplish in using this because what I want to do is to talk about this next piece which is about Josh hit on the nail on the head when he talked about access it's not about access really it's about it's about engagement, right? So it's what we're trying to do in this system is to give people an opportunity to do something, okay? It's another clay shirt piece where he talks about you can get all the pieces in place but then what? Right? And you got to just start doing stuff and see what happens, okay? So anybody know this remember this football game? 30 years ago anybody know why this is important? This was a football game you'll remember it once I can tell you what it is it's a football game that had no announcers televised football game, they went without any announcers and it was a disaster right? So they tried it it was a guy named Don Olemeyer okay? and Don Olemeyer was the producer of the first Monday night football game produced three Olympics has 16 Emmys and is in the Broadcasting Hall of Fame he took a big chance here went down in absolute flames right? and in fact this is what Brian Gumbel said before the game started okay? on national television we were just moments away from the kickoff today, he just golfed off in the game and he telecasted figures to be different the fact that we're trying something different and there too has been greeted with almost every kind of reaction from good nature to your work to applause to some surprising anger, right? I think that's really what we're that's what we're up against, right? no matter what we try if we have to risk and so what we're trying to do within our structure is just to tell people it's okay to try something okay? we're going to support you and that's because I'm going to talk about next is how do we support our people? how do we support people who are interested in helping? okay? so the people part of it is you know I talked again about that infrastructure that our official infrastructure the Academy of Excellence infrastructure what we have actually done is we have teachers in our network that are employed part-time by the Jesuit Virtual Learning Academy whose only job is to support those those areas, okay? and so it's it's not just saying here this is an open space for you go after it, right? it's actually having people attached to it who are going to start connecting people and start connecting ideas and saying hey you're really good at this I need your help and I'm going to attach you to this guy over here at this other school because he's really good at it too and what we're going to end up with is something really special okay? we need people to do that people love to be invited people love to be recognized, right? for their talents that's what the purpose of the people is right? and so that's what we're doing to support it okay? and so right out of the gate one of the things we're doing within that structure one textbook one online textbook okay? it's a project but it's a simple project we can engage people in in a small way that gives them an opportunity to start working toward something greater and at the same time if you notice that community that we built is not just for teachers there's administrative pieces attached to it too so now the administrators see what's happening they see the vetted material coming in and they get to start understanding and appreciating how OER works right? it's probably enough it's all to a top down the second piece is really about program and how we actually use program to support this network and it really comes down to professional development people we have to help teachers understand the beast and so what we've done is created what we think is a really solid professional development rubric and it focuses around a number of things and you can see how it plays out from left to right in terms of what you're really trying to accomplish thank you and so you know on the left is really introducing ideas and concepts to people and obviously we can do that all day long right? webinars and all those types of things to give people you can demonstrate how things work right? and that's all good and fun until you really start making your way over here though it really isn't a game changer ok? we've all been to conferences we've all been to head experiences and professional development experiences where you walk away going wow that was actually fantastic you get back to school and nothing changes you get thrown back into your day to day and nothing changes that's one of the beautiful things about online education is that you can take the artificial mechanisms of online education you can stretch an experience like this over an extended period of time right? it's not a three day deal anymore so you're giving teachers time back and you're helping people work through a system and a structure in a professional learning community that gets to an outcome gives them an opportunity to use tools before they actually engage it in real life so get them comfortable with it so the whole thing is really about supporting the teachers in this space helping them understand how to use OER giving them experience in using OER before they actually have to go and do the dirty work of getting it into their traditional classrooms and once they're there though and they have that experience that's the beauty of the community they can report back on the good, the bad, the ugly and really help people grow so that's the idea we're at the very beginning steps of it and I'm here for feedback because this is my first OER experience and you're the professionals any thoughts criticisms, concerns so what would drive a teacher to want to use this like you mentioned I think is it the collaborative statistics book that you're using or you have one OER book why would I say if I were a teacher in Boston want to come what would really motivate me do I have to it's all optional it's all optional and that's the point really the community and the reason why what our focus is is goes beyond just the use of OER but really about mission and so when we talk about that community we're talking about the early studies that we've done in the community we've introduced it to folks put it back out to folks and the three things they liked about it were the directories in other words I can look up people right because they know that trust that's a collegial nature thing that I was talking about the groups I can be with people of common interest and then the third piece was that content piece that I showed you so those are the three things that vetted content piece they want to engage they still don't have so again what our focus is by focusing on mission a kind of an open platform for science teachers for instance what we believe we're creating here the space that people will find to be of unique value to them as judgment educators that gives them the freedom and opportunity to engage where we are in other resources makes sense? I'm just wondering what kind of processes we use for evaluating all this in terms of the personal development of teachers in terms of the use of the system by students and so on is that something that you're giving much thought to? You know Tom as you might have guessed I'm kind of one of those guys I'm more on the action side of things on the back end of the connections I mean on the back end of all of the systems I mean there's deep battle lags so I can the reporting mechanisms on usage of the content pieces on the group pages all those things that leave a whole analytical side to who's accessing what how are they using it all those structures are in place but what we're really trying to do in terms of these early stages is engagement and once we kind of build on that engagement and we get people attached then it really becomes particularly when it comes to the vetting pieces where we really talk about who's got what how are we using things and how does it get lensed how does it get the appropriate lens of the judgment virtual learning academy that's really for the people in those various groups to kind of make those decisions and kind of come up with a rubric is that helpful? I think also just a more informal level it doesn't have to be metrics it doesn't have to be about hits if you like to the teachers like it to do this development rubric or do they think it is a bit mature? well those are good questions and we have polling mechanisms built in and again one of the things I think I mentioned was that I did introduce this over the last couple of weeks to our schools to say now what do you think of it and and the scale was basically at four choices from it's really good in these particular instances these are the things I really like about it these are the things that they're okay these are the things I still don't know about these are things I hate and basically everything has been on the far left at this point but we won't know until we get people engaged in it further and that's the work of the group that's why we have those four people attached to it to kind of help move forward is that helpful? thank you and it looks like it's time