Module 1 - Discussion

By Stephen Downes
Oct 15, 2021
Transcript of Module 1 - Discussion

Unedited google transcription from audio. It's pretty awful in places.

Are you able to hear me all? I can't hear you. I wonder why because I muted. Well, that would do it. So few more clicks. Yeah. So as you can see, you heard the only one here. This is not the first time that's happening. No, but I was counting on birdie to make it the biggest groups so far.

Yeah, me too? Or someone anyone, when let me run yellow, my neighbors, I'll be right back. I was thinking about that we because, you know, the especially the live participation has been limited to say, the least, although I've got now more than 120 people, subscribe to the newsletter. And it occurred to me.

That probably right now, there's more alternatives for people to attend online meetings conferences, sessions webinars than there's ever been. Before you have it and though these size of the audience is probably grown somewhat, it probably hasn't grown nearly at the rate of the size of the offerings. That's my story and I'm sticking to it and I think that's I think, that's right.

Yeah. I also think it's a holiday week. This week in the US. I'm not sure. Yeah, not so much not so much. Okay. Yeah, Columbus Day is become very contentious so for some, it's more of a holiday never. But for the majority they just yeah, do they get unless you're Italian?

Yeah. Do they get the day off? That's a good question. It's a federal holiday. I'm not sure, I'm not sure about that. I'm not a state employee so I'm yeah, I know. Yeah. You know, on all the sanctions holidays? Yeah. Don't think so, but I'm not sure. And I guess also, with so many alternatives available to people in their own time, zone people in Europe in Britain, you know?

And and points east I guess. Don't really feel the need to stay in after work and keep working. Yeah, well, plus, you've got them right at the end of their day, right? Yeah. They're in transit. Probably. Yeah, either that or evening supper, it depends on whether they work at home or not.

Yeah, so and I see your hat. That's the LA Dodgers hat. I assuming not the angels hat so you must be pretty happy right. Now, I am I have to say, beating the giants and having two teams with one with a hundred and six wins and one with a hundred and seven men.

I know was the truly me. Yeah. And, and it's kind of, you know, now the doctors have to travel to Atlanta. Yeah. The team with 10 less rims. Yeah, it's evil. So there's a problem here. That's kind of weird. Yeah, I'm a bit surprised well because the doctors were the wild card, right?

Yeah, exactly. My team first time in the Giants ever played for the Division. Really? Wow. Yeah. Because usually ones out right. Yeah. Right. So yeah. Yeah. First I believe I heard them say it was the first time I don't spend a lot of time on it anymore. Yeah, I believe it.

Yeah. I mean there have been some classics with the giants and Oakland and the Dodgers and Oakland. But and yeah this is the first time, the cross. All my giants friends are all whining about the called third stride. He swung it was too out. One on shares are pitching.

I don't think it changed the outcome. No, never no. Absolutely. Not in my mind. You know? I mean the way to look at it is if you're blaming a called third strike for losing the game, you probably haven't gone enough during the game to win exact. So that's always been my position.

Yeah. You're complaining about the calls, you just haven't scored enough learning. Yeah, that was my concern with the doctor and still is well, shut up, because you can't squeeze out. One, run bunch of millionaires. Can't squeeze. Yeah, I know it. Yeah. So yeah, I'm happy today. Tomorrow is a meeting.

Yeah, you're happier than I am? Well yeah, but you live in Toronto. So you're almost like a customer. Hey we well I guess they won series but we won the series twice back in the 90s. Not quite as bad as it and we have a fun team to and always kind of like the A's.

I've always thought. Yeah. New James Bond. One of those is fun. Hey, we got nothing on these. Kind of the exam and we got 91 wins and finished. Fourth. Yeah, that's a tough division. Yeah, yeah, I lot of teams and one individual with 89 days. Oh yeah. That's Well with the West 107 106.

Yeah, sure. That's a person that's up there. Now, I think it is. Yeah. Yeah, that was crazy. Yeah, hate to be any of the other teams. Poor, San Diego. All that money. That was their result. Get to be almost as good as I supposed to be second. Second team.

Yeah, didn't happen. Oh well, so I have one big question. Yeah, I tried to install grasshopper in 2018. You're not alone. Grasshopper last week and failed and put in a ticket to recline. I know the guys at recliners. Yeah. You know, in Virginia and nobody answered like, oh yeah, that's surprising that nobody answered because first time yeah I've been with them for years and always get intermediate response.

Yeah. So it's been a busy week. So I'm in a circle back. Yeah. It's a good you know, Tim's right there. Jim's. Yeah. Italy. But he's yeah. And I'm assuming they're gonna help me fix it. But I just wanted to say I may be asking more questions about basketball.

Yeah, that's no problem. And clearly there's time to do that. It's not like you're interrupting other people asking about ethics. If they wanted questions about ethics, they should have joined the chat, but which way did you try to install it? Just as a cloud looking doctor or okay. So what I should do.

Yeah, that's a lot more reliable. Especially the, the PLE got like, there's two versions, right? There's the PLE version and the course version the PLE version is more advanced and I've got various instances of it running even now. So it's should install without too much difficulty. If you install it, using the cloud and have you gone to the, you've probably gone to the GitHub site, right?

Yes. Yes. Right downward. Yeah. So there's instructions there on how to install it using cloud using doctor and just so yeah I hear you. Yeah. And you know, especially, you know, I mean I'd say from experience, you know if something goes wrong it doing it in. The cloud is so complex.

It's really hard to figure out what went wrong. But when it goes right, it's beautiful because it's a one, clicking stall. Well, not quite one, click, but virtually a one, click install, and then you're up and running the way I recommend people do it is to use the doctor cloud environment, they have.

It's some, I think it's just cloud. Got I'm not doctor cloud environment. The reclaimed cloud environment. I think it's just cloud. Got reclaimed.com. So you'd need to get an account there. Okay. All right. That's a thing. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, I've tested it on reclaim dozens of times.

So, I'm pretty confident with that installation. Still not perfect. There's no wind to the bugs that can crop up, especially people do something different, but but it's working a lot better than I did ever. And is a lot more reliable than just trying to install it you know, in in a typical instance like on a typical web server.

In fact, the the login function won't work properly. I can tell you that right now and at least not on reclaims sea panels sites. And it's because one of the requirements for encryption doesn't install properly on the reclaim site and I don't know why it reports that it's installed, but then when you try to run it, it says I can't find it.

So but I really felt, you know, I felt that it needed better, you know, just better security on the login, you know? 2021 security is supposed to 2001 security. Yeah, big difference. Yeah. So, that's what I did and I'm happy, I did it, but it really means, you know, you're working with, you know, you have to use the cloud.

I plan to migrate all of my stuff to the cloud and even this course. And and the idea will be that people just be able to install a cloud version of this course in any doctor container that they want or more accurately, any doctor cluster of containers that they want and I'll never know.

They took it. Yeah. That's that's interesting but but apparently necessary. Yeah, yeah, but it's fine with me. I mean, in the background, I've got to presentation coming up next Tuesday. At the open learning conference. And the title is what does it mean to enroll in a course? And the thesis is that if you want it to be open, then you shouldn't have any sort of registration.

And but what does that look like? And so in this course is meant as the example of what that looks like. And I'm discovering some things. And I'm discovering, it's, it's hard on the ego because you don't really see the people who are in the course, and I assume people are there.

I mean, there might even be someone watching on YouTube right now, and I just have no way of knowing it and unless they're chatting in the YouTube chat, but I'm not seeing that. I'm seeing us here. So me, slip over to YouTube and see if there's any layer in the chat.

Although so I'm still seeing yesterday's try to reloading the page. That's the here in the activity center. Yeah, I think I got there out of activities. Yeah. And it's still showing yes. Everydays. Let me start over. Yeah, that's weird because it shouldn't be. And okay, so let me reload shoulders and then go to, it's yesterday's.

Oh, you're I see where you are. Go back to the homepage the course homepage.

And then in the upper, right? Right. Below course, newsletter is activity center. Oh, there I am. Okay, I thought that's how I got here but you know it was already open from before. So, okay. Yeah. So now I can go to YouTube and nobody's in the chat. No, it says two watching now, but that might be the two of us because I just went there.

Yeah, probably else. Yeah. But you know, tell you my interests. Mm-hmm. Of course since I have this unique opportunity. Yeah, so well, you know, what was a three, four years ago and then pooping down? It's you know, it's seen as it seems like it was just to be a year ago to.

But anyway, where we met at? Some open governments are not eventually and my main. Well, I have two main focuses. So I've been going to Victoria for the digital humanity summer institute. Yeah, learning about digital units as you know so that umbrella for my digital transformation from a glass floor.

Definitely not in my main. Focus is eportfolios for adults the document. They're informal learning to be able to present it as evidence of prior learning for college. Credit sure, right? So kind of like followed kind of the Scottish model with their further education, you know, catering to what I call taxpayers, some people call citizens.

Yeah, you know, since we pay for all this without access. So, back to access, we ought to have access to, and I made a presentation to Abel. AAEBL. Never remember what with all that stands for but they're the import volume people several years ago saying that it would be helpful if ePortfolio people had an ontology or whatever controlled vocabulary or their public ePortfolios, so they can find each other and I got a big shrug.

He's, you know, whatever. But I kept added, and joyed the group about technology and kept presenting, and they were busy on there, adding e-portfolios, as the 11th high impact, practice on the AAC in US. And they told me, well, when we get that done, definitely doing this, okay, and then code, right?

So I really haven't called. Yeah, So that's why, that's why? So that's all to say well I didn't so that's one part three, two parts. Third part. I'm hoping to be able to use something like Omega, you know, Mecca, free and open source, software that libraries and museums use how that being spilled MECA, OMEKA.

All I have seen that. Yeah. Yeah, and it's by a reputable group on the East Coast. That does several free and open source software around journalism and libraries and things is find. And then based on my digital humanities work and thanking a flat website of just pages. But then there's a big struggle with Hugo or, but that's when to have this equal, polio be just flat pages, right?

So, it's transportable and archivable. And all of that based on a graph graph storage, mmm, right? And I've taken some seminars from Neo4j and now, tiger graph. I just feel seminar with that love webinar but I'm not a program you know I'm not a computer scientist so I just want to use this stuff right?

Yeah, but so putting all that together. Why would hope to do is have my own graph of my own learning and then be able to using a control vocabulary. Be able to share that with other eportfolio people. Yeah, we have a graph database or not. Whatever. And then I'm piloting this at a university Minneapolis Minnesota Los Angeles, right?

But they're going to give me credit for the stuff I post on the other website. So it's a long complicated story, but there it is. And and that's why I'm here, just to learn more about open were and then just some hopefully solve some like that problems and increase my learning.

Sure. It's the other thing is finding other people who know more about the stuff. There are other people I see. Now from the course activity center that there are some people watching this video, so it's not just us. But what you say is really interesting to me because part of what I have in mind doing is creating a graph of a lot of the concepts in this course using grasshopper.

For example, we're moving into. After this module, we're moving into the module on applications of learning analytics. And, you know, I've been collecting examples of different applications for several years. Now, I've got a big list of examples and I, I've kind of categorized them, but I'm sort of curious to see how other people would categorize them.

I know I I'm not necessarily fixed on the idea of a controlled vocabulary for these but I am kind of curious, you know, you know, how would we group them? So basically what I want to do, I don't know if I can do has put what I want to do is create the list of applications and one column and a, create a list of categories in the other column.

And then have people just draw lines between the applications and the categories. If they match now, there's a practical problem right there, like, dozens, and dozens and dozens of applications, and potentially even dozens and dozens of categories, although I don't have dozens of lessons. So I I'd have to show subsets of these to make it manageable but that's okay.

Yeah. You just go through several screens of this. It can be a fun thing. That's one of the things that I've been thinking about doing during one of the live sessions. One of the Friday sessions. You know how people do that and I look at the results, of course, we'd need people.

But but but, but all of that aside, you know, we may well get more people this course continues. But you know and then the the week following is the ethical issues module. And now things get pretty interesting because doesn't depend so much on how I organize things. Right. You know it's an application.

If it exists, it's an issue. If somebody's raised it as an issue and I don't need to sort them out but I can just have a row of issues in a row of applications. I have people draw a line between the application and the issue. Not see what that turns up and the idea here and and this is always been my thinking about using graphs to understand any of the stuff is that it's more interesting to create and look at the graphs that people create as opposed to create.

And look at the graphs that machines create, which is what most artificial intelligence does. Now, you know, and that was working on a personal learning environment project years ago and I had graph people and even a high people and they just all wanted to take raw data and analyze it and they didn't want to look at the graphs that were out there in the world.

And I want to look at the graphs that are out there in the world. Um, I've got again, hundreds and hundreds of resources, which I'm just going to load into the system as links. And then these links all Mac to applications, are they map to issues or whatever. And I'm trying to think of a way to make that work again.

Not an automated system, you know because I could do it by keyword or whatever but that's kind of artificial and it's kind of me picking winners. If you will this keyword matters that keyword. Doesn't this issue matters that is? She doesn't, but if I can find just cases where people actually or people where I actually refer to a specific resource in the context of a specific discussion or whether other people do that with their own blog posts.

So somebody writes a blog post about an issue. If they're referring to a particular resource, there's a line that can be drawn. And ultimately, you know, there's this big, huge graph of resources, people organizations, issues applications, and then I can just use a simple, say, JSON format or I've also, there's a graph markup language that I've been using that.

I think that's Matthias Melcher's language. But I'm not sure whether he got it from somewhere else. I want new that, but I've, it's now months in the past, so, but it's there, it's defined in the system and so that would, you know, getting this all together would make grasshopper a system for doing that kind of thing.

And then sharing the result with other people and building giga, graphs, if you will or comparing grass, whatever, you know, I don't know. I don't know how that would work out, but I think it would be interesting. So that's what I have in mind. And that seems to mesh pretty well with what you have in mind.

Yeah. It sounds like you know but again you have a lot more tactical knowledge. I come at it as a student than the user. Yeah, so that's extremely limiting on my end. So yeah. So I'm searching for a solution and, you know, immediately I guess a container. Yeah. All the appropriate software that could be easily copied.

Yeah, would be the solution apparently well, and that's my thinking that you shouldn't need all this technical knowledge to be able to work through material and create these graphs and be able to look at the output and draw your conclusions. It should be a lot easier right now, it's totally not.

Well, we're on the leading edge. Yeah, you know, so it will get easier, you know, and then I think that the whole graphing of implies a controlled vocabulary, right? Because the engines, you know the connection has to be rationalized both for us and from the machine but it could be your hand.

Yeah. You know, it could be a harvested ontology where people gather what everyone call it? Yeah. That could be, you know, organic and growing but as long as there was a place where people go and say oh I should be using that keyword, you know, because then it makes easier for everybody to find it, you know.

So it's not a top down. I'm not thinking of it as a pop down, I'm thinking this bottom up. Yeah, we're depending, but yet, you know, helping for discovery and and machines are going to be in there. I mean, this is, you know, I can't get rid of them.

So I'm with you that it should be organic should be human created but then use the machines. You know do we help that seems like the right credit approach. Yeah. See, for me, take the meaning of any given term and you know, a controlled vocabulary will limit it. I'll just represent that with the circle.

That is not a symbol of whatever, it's just a circle. I have to be careful because the this hand gesture has been appropriated by not so nice groups. And this is not that. And what I think of it as is, it's really like overlaping circles. Multiple overlapping circles Vickenstein used the expression family resemblance, when he was talking about defining words in this way, like the word game, there's no set of necessary, inconsistent conditions to define a game for any definition.

You offer. There will always be something that is included in the definition but it's not a game or something. That is excluded from the definition but is a game. So really the concept of a game is a bunch of overlaping concepts and you can't really nail it down and it varies from context to contacts from person to person used to use.

And to me that's okay because what it says to me is that a word any word but a word like game isn't a simple concept. It's a complex concept and the meaning of that concept is much more precise than we can express using words. And this meaning is captured by it's placement within the graph.

So we don't need to worry about defining the word or even using the word we just take note of when the word is used and what that use occurs in association with, you know, and it's to me, it's interesting because when somebody uses somebody uses the word game, the first question people ask is well, what did you mean by these word game?

And they may know or they may not know, they may know more or less precisely but even they themselves probably to my mind. Couldn't articulate exactly what that means. So we have to determine what it means. Empirically, where was it used? How was it used? What was the context English?

It was used you know what seems to follow from something being a game what seems to lead to you know you draw these connections. You basically, I think it's probably a t-step process where you map out all the connections to create a graph and then you try to do again analytics on that graph with respect to a particular term in order to form hypotheses.

But what that term means is similar to the way. We might try to explain why an artificial intelligence made a decision about something. Why did the AI say that this action was illegal or why did the AI fail this paper, right? There's not going to be a simple precise definition of pass and fail, but if we analyze the graph that produced the fail result, maybe we can come up with a story that we can understand about what failing means so far.

Is that AI is concerned. So so I don't worry about a restricted vocabulary. And actually, I've designed grasshopper that way. So, and because I think everybody will use these terms differently. So, each person uses their own instance of grasshopper. So we don't have to share our vocabularies, each person defines their own list of entities, their own properties of entities, whatever.

And then shares that and they just share it in this unstructured. JSON format, which basically says this is a thing, this is a property of a thing. This is the value of that property, keep it as basic as possible. I'm then allow people to import other people's graphs and apply whatever sort of processing to someone else's graph that they want to do to it, to integrate it with their own.

Right now, I would use a set of rules to do that. I have a in my RSS harvester, there's a section in the processing with some predefined rules that allows that to happen. And I want to apply that to JSON imports as well, or they could just take it and blend it in.

However, it blends with their own system because it will blend and it may produce confusing but interesting results. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So that's that's a higher order that I was. Yeah, imagining and you think the AI can do this without without a controlled battery without obvious interventions just using texture or analysis that well using maybe graph analysis.

But you know, I don't know. And I'll be really honest about this. I don't know what the AI can do with the sort of data structures that I mean trusted and creating so experiments are fine. Yeah, yeah to me it's the data structures themselves are inherently interesting and we don't really have any practice you know, as as a culture as this society as as a species in working and creating and working with these data structures you know the best we've managed really up until very recently is you know relational databases and even that is a pretty big step forward from where we were say 30 or 40 years ago.

So you know, this is all new. Yeah and then I just have the hesitate, you know Chris Gilliard's work. No doctor. I always I always bought them. You should be sure to say doctor for this bill here never does. He teach them any college around the Detroit and he works on what he calls digital deadlining.

Oh okay I'm familiar digital redlining for sure. Yeah well that's I think that's his turn but it's not he's out in front. Yeah. In fact he's a Harvard fellow right now. So okay yeah. So there's just that, you know, in the back of the minds, this trust of the algorithms, but then it's just a matter of who controls it and is.

It is it open? Is it editable by the user? But then again, how many users have the capacity to review our analyze announcement? You know. I don't I know anything. Yeah, no exactly. I'm just typing a link from Chris Gilliard into the chat and the activity center. I just looked it up quickly while you're talking sure.

Yeah, it's helpful. As long as the check is saying there's always that there. Yeah, yeah. Well, it does. Yeah this is me right? Everything gets saved. Yeah. You know I wish I'd believe that but I keep losing so I don't know. Yeah, I mentioned in my blog post, I'm still on I guess it worked.

I guess it's hardly I've been traveling. So I just got in a couple days ago so I can settle in. Yeah, but I mentioned that back to open, you know, me a doctor me as Amora in New Jersey, she works with Alan, Levine her writing classes have been opened to the public where I think three years now.

We're there they're a standard state university course but then she allows the overlay of open participation. Yeah like that. Yeah, I do too. So I think she's on the cutting edge and then she did a course with the digital pedagogy lab. That's a university, right? You know. Yes, one else thanks and all that.

Yeah, this summer, she did a course, sort of a feminist duty of care. Cause right with Dr. Mahabali from Cairo, right? Who I know as well. So that's, you know. So that's the pathway that I've been on currently that was just a couple months ago and now here I am open to continue on.

Learn more about that the efforts of care and learn more about the algorithm and how we can make sure that it's opened to ethical adjustments, corrections, what I would. Yeah. And and those sorts of considerations are what lead to this course, you know. And, you know, we're gonna go back and look at the duty of care and where that came from.

And and but, you know, we have this mix or there's blend of of graph or network and open or care. And, and all of that together and it's not at all obvious, how it shakes out? At least not to me, go. This is definitely an experiment. That's yeah, that's why I'm so interested to see how this.

Yeah, let's goes now that I'm home. I can reach out to Chris and on, and Mia and just give my heads up. If you hear the disco going on, it's you know, see if they want to drop in or whatever. Yeah, be great if they did what. Yeah, wouldn't it?

Yeah. And so it's Tuesdays and Fridays are these open generally? It's Monday and Friday. It was Tuesday this week because Monday was a holiday in Canada. Yeah. So Monday's Friday. So all alerts under that. Yeah. And ask them to drop in and maybe a couple other people like think of, you know what could they?

Yeah, and I so as a student or discipline person you know I signed up for this when I saw the announcement and everyone's ago and then it's sort of pops up. It's seems to me that you need to run these regularly. You know, once you are twice a year, right?

Yeah. And the whole promotion. Yeah, that's I know, I know. So let's say that I would be willing to volunteer some time in the six to four weeks before you run the next one, okay? Just to try to write because it would it would be a lot more fun.

Yeah. Three or four or five other people. Yeah. And again if it was regular whatever that means but yeah would build a note? Yeah. Also if it was regular it wouldn't have to spend so much time to beginning of the course making sure all the software works, right? It's tricky to do something.

Get the facts of the community. Yeah. Both the technology and networking. Yeah, yeah. So I mean I just, you know, because I I got frustrated that, you know I again I thought it was like last year was 2018. Yeah, I know. So it's three years. Yes, been three years.

You know, when I got frustrated, I couldn't get the grasshopper installed. Yeah. And something else came up and you know there, I totally know. Yeah, you know, I have a series of videos called Steven follows instructions where I tried to follow somebody else's instructions to set up a project and nine times out of 10, they fail.

I know, and I'm one of the few people, I know that will stay up late at night of this camera. Way out of it. Yeah. And, and even then items. Yeah, yeah. Usually, you can kind of get it. The work that. Yeah. God anyway yeah, it should be that hard and again back to I really want working class people.

You know, people with fans you know. Yep to be able to sit down at 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock at night. Yeah you know and do 45 minutes work documenting something that eventually accumulates to enough to get college credit. Yeah that would be wonderful. Nobody's gonna go through all this.

That has a job. No, now it's called, it's got to be easy, it's got to be accessible, you know, all of these things are part of, you know, open, if you will, you know, I'm not, not just making it available. I think, I think we've learned that. I hope we've learned that, you know, and we do throw up a lot of barriers in front of what we think is open and they're not just subscription, barriers situation, fee barriers, the ease of the software, the accessibility of the content, all of that place roll.

Yeah, I'm working on having opportunity to rent an office space for Walmart and I want to set up a little digital center just a couple weeks at the Mexico. You know. Joe Lambert digital storytelling center? Yeah. On a Berkeley. Yeah he just he just got an opportunity to move to Santa Fe to Mexico.

That took it. Yeah. So you just ran this first in person workshop, and almost two years. And my mom was from New Mexico and I got to go to San Diego. I'm one of those facilitators. Okay. Yeah, so I, you know, so I've been working on online with them.

Yeah, it's lusably the last couple years, just it just hang around help people with technology and you know, that's really cool. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So so I just did that and so I have this idea that I'll set up a little local center for the digital learning.

I don't know yet, I can't figure out what's call it but I think there's a market local center for Jason. Yeah. Well actually I have a URL right spot? Really like that a right spot. Yeah that's pretty good. That's short. Yeah there's a little private college with your college and then I met this little village a town area.

Yeah. All small businesses and I know every small business I walk into I just stand there in just amazement at their 15 year old computer and employee that can't even. Oh, I know. Yeah. And so I'm just one of a little spaces says, hey, you know, drop in. Let's talk about it.

And, you know, I promote Google. I mean, you have to pick one evil empire. So not microsoft because at least Google's kind of free. I mean, you're the, you're the product but you don't have to pay that. Yeah. So it's like remote that then I work with some educators.

And so I figure if I have this little center so kind of a hybrid thing, right? I can run online court jobs so I do that. You know I had tried it just help people use the crap they have. I mean it's just that's simple, you know, completely user-based.

Yeah. Workshops. So and I could, you know, they're online. Eventually I'll get organized and they'll be on a website and they'll be free mostly, you know? Yeah. And then do something to pay the rent. So that's what I'm kind of working on. Just have a little center and then you know, I know some writers that I know teachers and there are a bunch of students in this area so that one place where they could drop in.

No yeah so that's that's what I'm working towards this winter. I hope to get that better organized if the below market space. Absolutely. That's right. Yeah, well, I mean the way things are looking it's, you know, I think office space will be pretty available now. Yeah, maybe not storefront.

Well, even storefront. Yeah, because people are using online. Purchasing more and more. Yeah. Oh there's plenty of available store friends. This is actually just off the main shopping street, all right, literally around the corner. So, yeah, but that's fine for something like what you're describing. You don't need a main street presence.

Yeah. And then to do digital storytelling workshops, you know it's a cute little town. Yeah parts. There's actually trails just a quarter mile away so that nice photo adventures and you know yeah it's nice and kind of busy and it's only 12 miles from downtown LA. Yeah I think that's like this little Quaker village.

How can you have a little town? 12 miles from LA? I know it's weird. Is it in the hills? Or so, there is this little band of hills that separates. What's called the inland empire? Yeah. Which used to be where they made steel. Yeah, basically riverside. And San Bernardino, all that out there.

Yeah, there's a little chain of hills that separates that from Orange County, right? It's right. Where those hills in 12 miles from downtown LA. That's where a bunch of Quakers. Planted a bunch of walnut trees. So okay, so it's this sunny hillside that faces both south and west perfect.

Yeah, perfect climate. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, it used to be, you know, 10 mile horse back ride and then it just got overwhelmed. I mean, when I was a kid, there was still Orange County was still orange. Yeah. It was something called the Irvine ranch. And I was like, 300,000 acres on by one guy and then that became Irvine and now it's a city basically.

Yeah. And then all the game communities went up, and yeah. Yeah, but I can remember when we had a driver across those orange juice about San Diego, but now that's all gone. And I remember when it used to be be mild right across a better bottom springs. Yeah. Not no.

Yeah, 50 miles of condos. I took a bus once from Anaheim as far south as I could go. And I got to a point where I got to the end of the line and I could get off that bus and get on another bus I didn't, but I could and continue on to San Diego and these are just city buses going through urban areas.

And it's so basically urbanized all the way to the border and then beyond and beyond. Yeah, and the 70s, I used to tell visitors that Los Angeles, was 100 miles by 100 miles. Yeah. Now, Los Angeles is 200 miles quite too long. Yeah, thousands square miles. Yeah. Yeah it's amazing.

I was in the Bay Area for 30 some years but it's just on crazy up there the prices. Yeah. And the gender rotation is almost militarized. They're getting right to the point of militarizing. The saw, my first David communities in California. Was that say, I saw my first gaming communities in California.

I believe they were invented. Well, they were popular. Yeah, yeah, it's disgusting. So, and my little town, really do whatever this is right on the LA Orange County drive out the past nixons old house. So hmm. Yeah. Well, we've wasted another hour. Yes, we have. And I hope that the people watching this, found this entertaining and we did talk about subject, matter related to the course.

So bonus. So and for those watching the video, if you made it this far, the next session of this course, is Monday the next live session. I should say is Monday, October 18. 12 noon Eastern time is still Eastern daylight time, which I believe is GMT, minus five. But I can't swear to that.

So you need to check. So it's probably about five pm and Britain, six pm and Europe, seven pm and eastern Europe and and so on and rediculous. So clock in Australia, New Zealand and in China. But of course everything is being recorded. This video is recorded, it's live stream on YouTube.

The captions are being produced by artificial intelligence, although poorly. So and those will all be available. I've got another recording of the audio, which Google will be transcribing. Probably better. But we'll see and all that will be available on course website. And there are, of course, more videos coming.

There are videos coming. This course, pretty much every day because I've got a lot of stuff to put out there, but also there's the activities in that. What should produce like I say. Hopefully unexpected results. So I guess we'll wrap up. Thanks a lot for joining me. I really appreciate it.

I can ask one more question. Oh, absolutely. Can you tell me about your little village? And from from your address that I see everywhere it sounds like you're in a small village and I am, I'm in a village called Castleman. It was founded by a guy called Castleman who was given logging rights to the area.

And so he in the mid 1800s castle mean is about, well it's it's roughly halfway between Ottawa and Montreal in rural eastern Ontario. It's got a population of maybe, 2,000, give or take. So not tiny. It's actually one of the larger villages. I've lived in. I grew up in a village but a quarter of the size and I've lived in even smaller but it's very it's rural or surrounded by cornfields soybeans and some other crops but mostly corn and soybeans and they're used to feed cows, well maybe not the soybeans but the corn is definitely used to feed cows.

The cows around here are very well fed and there used to produce dairy and just down the road from us is even smaller village of Saint Albert which has a world famous cheese factory. So I go, I biked down there on a regular basis for their cheese and their other goodies.

And I picked it because it's in the country, I grew up in the country, I wanted to be in the country but there you know, it's on one of the it's on the railway between Ottawa and Montreal. So, there's a train station here, which serves us poorly, but still serves us to turned out to be pressing it because Greyhound bus sees to operations in Canada and people have been scrambling ever since.

It's also an exit on the main highway exit number 66 and you know if you ever drive down those highways and you always wondering, you know that you're driving some city to city on an interstate, you see people leaving the highway in the middle of nowhere. Any wonder what's it like to live there?

I've always wondered that sort of thing and now I know. Yeah, so it's, you know, it's not beautiful. There's a river, the south nation river, it's a decent size, it's not huge, but it's a decent size. And it was a, first of all, an old sawmill and name more recently, an old power plant.

Now, it's just a damn used to control flooding. So, but so we have the river and a little tiny, you know, riverside park area. But mostly, you know, we've got a big forest la rose, forest north of town and then the river just winding through the area and fields south of town.

As I go, west toward Ottawa, gets more urbanized. Obviously east, there's more farmland until you get to the Quebec border and then from the Quebec border all the way through to Montreal, it's urbanized. It's sunny urbanized. You look at a map, you think? Oh yeah, that's country. But you look at the satellite photo, it's full of houses.

So, it's really quite interesting. So, a little little ranch at two acres by the. Yeah, that's sort of thing. Yeah, just threw out. That little piece of Quebec, that's between the Ottawa and Saint Lawrence rivers. It very much so. And that's also happening around Ottawa, as well. We're sort of in between those two areas.

But, you know, there's sort of beginning the squeeze us in so I might be looking for more rural again. Oh yeah, I like it here. You know, and the funnyest thing and and it isn't funny actually, it's it's actually pretty serious observation because you know I cycle around this area, a lot and around here the important people are the farmers arm and everybody else exists to serve the farmers.

You know, all the stores, all the shops, the dealership's, the roads, the railways, even and that puts me in my place, you know? I mean because you know I work for a federal research agency. I do you know, as you said leaving edge work on technology. I sometimes think I'm pretty important but then I ride my bike around here, pardon not at the speed store, not in the feed store.

No, no. And and and you know and it's and I'm sure it's not true, but I almost imagine them looking at me and thinking, well, there's a person who does nothing productive in society. So, and that's what I like about this area. I put me in my place, it's, you know, it's, it's not beautiful, it's not touristy, although it is beautiful.

You know, it's the other side of it is, you know. Yeah, I'm living in paradise. It's, it's actually, you get out into the country, it's just gorgeous out here, especially, you know, in the fall, the leaves turning. But also, even in the winter and the spring, we got forest trails, rivers fields swamps.

You know, just on the other side while river we have Canadian shield territory Laurentian mountains even ski hills and such, they're not huge, like the Rockies, but they're, you know, a lot of up and down for sure now. So yeah. It's I like it and so I was wondering.

So, you were a hundred percent remote right now. Yeah, I'm I'm at home and I've been at home for the last two years, right? So, so but before that, you would go to some office. I would go to an office in Ottawa and I had ongoing arguments with my supervisors, in fact, as long as I've worked with NRC about whether I can work from home, because I've always known, I could do the job from home, and it always seems silly for me to drive for almost an hour into Ottawa to sit in a room.

That looks functionally exactly like the room I'm sitting in now so. Well I'm just an argument. That's all better argument got soul but that's, you know, I mean this whole online thing was new to a lot of people but I was already pretty comfortable with it. So for me, not a whole lot changed with the pandemic, but but that's also what told me that, you know, a lot of the stuff that people said, now, you can't do online knew you could because I had been doing it, and it was just a matter of people, changing their habits, it was the same for me.

Last two years. It's been no big deal. Yeah, really. I was already at the same desk. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah. And now I have a couple of clients that I worked with and and in the in the broader means so that I have you know, those examples have been broader.

Yes, not a lot of small businesses that realize we really need to rent that office. Yeah, thousand dollars a year and maybe not maybe not. Yeah. So things are just beginning to change. I mean we're not at the end of anything or at the beginning. Yeah, I agree on that, note.

Yep. Well thanks for joining me. Thanks to people watching on YouTube. Thanks to people watching later on YouTube or listening to the audio because this is also a podcast. Until next time, I'm Stephen Downes. You're Mark Corbett Wilson. And thanks for joining me. Let's do it again.

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