At this time, we would like to acknowledge the staff and management of this station, as well as the regular listeners.
I hope you will pardon the seemingly controversial nature of this production,
and hope you will perceive it not as a frivolous form of entertainment,
but rather as an important and educational social documentary.
[thunder]
Music, in your face.
Hey, hey, moms!
[thunder]
Music, in your face.
Ow!
Hey, hey, moms!
Ow!
The hits keep coming.
Ow!
The hits keep coming.
Ow!
[thunder]
Music, in your face.
Excuse me!
Ow!
[thunder]
Music, in your face.
Ow!
In your face.
Ow!
In your face.
This is real classic rock.
Real rock.
Real classic rock.
All rock.
Classic rock.
TRU's LT and I team.
DS-106 Radio.
And this is LT and I Radio, rocking the retro airwaves.
LT and I, we are a learning technology and innovation team at Thompson Rivers University.
And we do things our own way.
Not always the most fashionable way, not always the most cutting edge way,
not always the most expensive way.
But we love the open world.
We love running our own apps.
We do a lot of things with WordPress and Press Books and Mattermost.
We like to do things homegrown and open.
We like to share what we do.
And, yeah, maybe that's old school.
Maybe that's behind the times.
But it's the way we rock and roll, people.
So DS-106 Radio, over the next hour,
we're going to share some sounds of the classic radio waves.
And we are also going to share some stories about what LT and I
and one of our special groups within LT and I, the TRU Open Press,
are doing here at Thompson Rivers University.
Thank you for joining, and thank you for being out there, DS-106.
This is Real Classic Rock.
TRU's LT and I team, DS-106 Radio.
And it looks like we've got another call coming in on the DS-106 Radio hotline.
Who am I talking to?
Oh, this is Jamie Drosda from the Learning Technology Team at TRU.
Jamie Drosda.
Are you ready to talk some open web?
I think so, yeah.
Yeah?
You got a favourite project or anything like that you want to share with the group?
I do.
It's a project I worked on a couple of years back, but it's still one of my favourites.
And it is titled "Websites in Your Course."
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Absolute banger.
It is.
And it's super exciting because the reason --
I think the reason why it's my favourite project is because of how it came about,
which was during the pandemic when some social work students couldn't go out on their practicums,
but they needed to do their practicum course to graduate.
So the practicum course became a projects course.
And the instructor reached out to research, LT and I, and the instructional designers.
And what we came up with was getting students to do their projects online,
so building a website as a place to share their research.
And these students and the instructor had never even heard of WordPress before.
So they had absolutely no idea what was going on, what they were about to adventure on,
and how it was all going to play out.
So I think -- well, I know why I'm excited about it is because they were all super curious
and super eager to try something new, which made my work a whole lot easier.
And it was so successful, these projects, that is why we decided to create "Websites in Your Course."
And "Websites in Your Course" has the faculty stories, the student stories,
and has a faculty how-to section so that if other instructors ever want to embark on this process,
they know where to go and will have a much easier time with their projects.
So again, you know, like a lot of people think you've got students doing stuff online or building websites.
I think a lot of people get really locked into the idea it's got to be an e-portfolio,
or it's got to be, you know, attached to someone's identity, or that kind of stuff.
And that stuff is cool.
>> What I love about these projects, Zara, is that these are essentially defined research projects
that could be done by anyone, including fully tenured professors.
>> Absolutely, yeah.
And these students, even though they are students, but this could be a tenured professor,
they link to their Instagram bios, all their social media.
They put these sites on their resumes when they're looking for jobs.
And the instructor recently has had someone from the community reach out to find out the authors of one of the sites.
That is amazing.
That does not have to just be done by a student.
>> And if you're looking for forms of assessment that feel authentic, or you can't just do in ChatGPT,
I think this could nail it.
>> Oh, absolutely.
>> The work put into these sites and the knowledge the students gained and shared with their communities,
there's nothing else that a student could do to get that result.
>> And so, like, what are some of the kind of sites that -- do you remember that some of the example sites that we have on the -- to give an example?
I think there was one, for example, on body image, for example.
>> Yes.
>> And that site is called Mirror Mirror, so mirrormirror.truebox.ca.
And there are pamphlets that teachers in the higher ed in the K-12 program can download and work through with their students.
So let's say, like, a phys ed program or something, just to get students thinking about body image.
>> And other sites.
There's one on Consent 101, demystifying consent, caregiver fatigue.
>> Caregiver fatigue is huge and has been used in the community and shared widely.
>> And a resource for being a single parent, a household assistance for single families.
>> Yeah.
>> Awesome.
>> I mean, can you imagine?
Like, I just can't imagine what the students -- they just put so much effort into this.
And these sites are -- they're forward-facing.
They're not just a project that they turned in in the learning management system and never looked at again.
They're keeping these sites up to date.
They're sharing them with the community.
And, like, the learning that's being shown here is -- I don't think you could match it.
>> So, again, that -- if you want to see what Jamie's talking about, it's websitesinyourcourse.trubox.ca.
And, again, this isn't just a showcase for incredible student work on the open web.
There are a lot of good resources that you can use to not only convince faculty in your own place that this is worth doing.
So we got testimonials and interviews that people talk about the value of this.
But lots of really good downloadable resources that people can use on things like how to set up the tech, how to arrange the copyright, writing for the public, things like that.
>> Yeah, it's definitely -- I think definitely one of the most robust projects that I have worked on so far.
>> It's fantastic work, Jamie.
Thank you so much for calling in to DS106 Radio.
>> You're welcome.
Bye.
>> Hey, hey, my, my.
>> Learning on the open web can never die.
DS106 Radio.
[ Music ]
[ Singing ]
>> The hits keep coming.
>> Hey there.
My name is Brad Forsyth, and I've been part of the Learning Technology and Innovation Team at Thompson and Fergus University for about four years now.
First as an e-learning technician building the learning environments for our online and distance education courses.
Then as our learning technologist and most recently as a coordinator of educational technologies.
So I've had quite a bit of experience developing content and supporting faculty with the development of their content on platforms like WordPress and Pressbooks.
But my first meaningful encounter with open education, and I'm using that term broadly here, was actually as a student.
And that had a really positive impact on how I approached this topic in my professional practice.
So I thought I'd share a little bit about that experience.
I think like most millennials, my undergrad consisted mostly of in-class note taking and assignments being submitted either in person or within the confines of an LMS to be viewed by my instructor's eyes only.
Returned with a few comments, and then eventually lost in a recycling bin or on a folder somewhere on my computer.
My graduate degree was a very different and refreshing experience.
It was done completely online and heavily relied on platforms like WordPress and other open educational resources for both content delivery and student engagement.
The use of the institution's LMS was kept as minimal as possible.
Many of the courses hosted all the course content, including all of the modules, readings and assignment instructions on an openly accessible WordPress site.
This meant that I could preview a course or even read through it if I found it interesting, but couldn't fit it into my schedule.
I could also refer back to the course site after I completed it instead of losing access after the semester ended.
Much of our course discussions took place on openly accessible WordPress sites as well, and we were either encouraged or required to make our individual, team and ePortfolio project shareable with our fellow students and the public.
This honestly made me pretty uncomfortable at first. I was so used to my instructor being the only person viewing my work.
But once I got over the initial unease, I quickly realized how much it positively impacted my learning experience.
I was learning just as much, if not more, from my fellow students than from the course itself, and I hope they were learning from me too.
The creation of ePortfolios helped me synthesize and reflect on my learning.
I was able to develop valuable digital skills and create digital artifacts that are still available and I often refer back to, or I've even repurposed over the years.
I'm still getting comments on YouTube videos that I uploaded years ago for class projects, and some of them are even nice.
Ultimately, I felt like my work finally had real value. It felt like I was contributing to public knowledge and not just chasing a grade.
Now I get to work with faculty and students on a regular basis to promote and support open educational practices.
This includes developing OER through Pressbooks, working with faculty to create courses on our recently launched open version of Moodle,
but mostly through Truebox, TRU's shared WordPress platform.
Our team works closely with faculty and students to create custom sites for everything from course sites to research and professional sites,
student ePortfolio projects, and a wide variety of special purpose sites.
We've developed starter templates for a variety of purposes that can easily be cloned and customized.
It's really rewarding work, and I think faculty and students value the hands-on support and personal connection that we're able to provide.
I think everyone on our team realizes that teaching and learning in the open can be nerve-wracking for teachers and students alike, for a number of reasons.
It's difficult to put yourself out there and open yourself to scrutiny.
Our team promotes these practices because we believe in their value, and I really don't think I would have valued it nearly as much if I didn't get to experience it as a student.
TRU's LT&I, rocking the old school with new school tech, rocking the open web revolution.
This is a gold record from the latter part of 1973, certainly one of the top hits of the year.
This is from Helen Reddy. This is called "Leave Me Alone."
Coming in at number four on our Moribund Music of the '70s countdown, this is "Ram Jam" going back to 1978.
This is "Black Betty."
From your Moribund Music of the '70s countdown, this is number six.
Stay tuned to your Moribund Music countdown. That's the number three song is rated by you.
That's "Saturday Night" from the Bay City Rollers. Also, "Ram Jam" with "Black Betty" was at number four.
This is real classic rock.
TRU's LT&I team, DS106 Radio.
Who have I got on the line?
Hi, it's Brenna from the LT&I team and also the TRU Open Press.
Brenna, a long-time listener, many-time caller, one of our favorites here.
Thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's really fun to be somewhere talking about open things.
That's like so not cool anymore, so it's great.
Oh no, we are playing the hits of yesterday as if it's today.
And isn't it today? I don't even know anymore.
Amazing. Yeah, no, it's really fun to be in a space where the whole conversation isn't maybe necessarily about AI.
So, exciting.
Well, our only artificial intelligence is the intelligence.
I don't know what that means, but yeah.
You bring so much to LT&I and we could talk about all sorts of hits that we've put together here over the years.
But I don't know, since I got you here on the line, I would love to ask you about the TRU Open Press.
Oh yeah.
Lay that on our listeners.
Absolutely. So, this is a relatively new initiative.
Like many things in the open world, it came about because there was a big gap and we were looking for money to fill it.
And so, out of a funding sort of pool of money, Marie Bartlett and I applied to establish a press at TRU that would be open first and digital first.
So, giving people a space to publish not just OER, but any kind of educational or learning materials, research, data, whatever you need published in whatever kind of open format.
That's the goal is for the open press to do that.
And we have an amazing team.
We have a fantastic editor.
We have a fantastic production person.
And we have a great publications manager.
And we have a team of amazing co-op students.
And they've all worked to do some pretty incredible stuff in the last, well, year.
I guess we've only really been funded for a year.
So, if I'm an instructor at TRU and I want to get in on this open press action, how does that process work?
Like, what am I in for?
Yeah, so it probably starts with a conversation with ideally Danny Collins, our publications manager.
So, you can talk to anybody on the team, but Danny has a really great sense of sort of the workload of the team, scope, project capacity, all that kind of good stuff.
And then there's an application process for funding.
But really what we're looking for are projects that can be fully openly licensed with some exceptions.
For example, you know, we don't force like Indigenous knowledges to be open.
So, there's absolutely negotiation space around those kinds of projects.
But then they have to be serving a community that is either a big population of students or an underserved population of students.
So, an example I often give is like our Esther Learners at TRU have traditionally been really underserved by the open movement.
So, if you have resources that are ideal for a group of students like that, then it doesn't matter that it's a small cohort because that's an underserved cohort, right?
So, the goal is to serve as many students as possible, to involve as many students in the work of developing the project as possible.
And yeah, then hopefully we can fund you to build something amazing.
Amazing.
And now, you know, obviously the open press isn't the first time you've hit the open web and done some things.
And you've done a lot. You put a lot of your work out there.
And if people search your name, they're going to find you and they're going to find a lot of your work.
I'm just wondering if I can ask you, like, what are the vibes on the open web that appeal to you?
What draws you to the place?
So, I'm a big believer that I make a salary from public education.
And so, the work that I do in that space belongs to everybody, right?
I don't really feel the need to kind of protect or hold on to anything I build or make.
So, that's like the philosophy that underscores it.
But I also just really like talking to people about projects.
So, for example, when I was up for tenure and promotion, putting my portfolio online and making that a resource that other people could use
was hopefully useful to other people, but it was also really useful to me.
Because it meant that people could take a look and ask questions and, you know, help me flesh out the portfolio itself.
And all of that is really reciprocal.
I've never put anything out in the open and not gotten more back than I put out.
And I think that that's a good enough reason to want to share our work.
And I know that when you do that, like we've seen, like when you do things like the Podcasting Masterclass or things like that that you've laid out on the open web,
you know, we end up getting people involved and working with us from other places.
It's not just the TRU community.
And now, for some people, that's like, "Oh my gosh, those are free students taking Bachelor of Space."
But, I mean, in my experience, those people, you know, they bring way more than they take.
Well, it enriches the conversation for sure, whether it's the Podcasting Masterclass or something like our annual digital detox,
where we often have open conversation sessions.
It just gives more context to the conversation.
Often, we forget, I think, that our work is embedded in the systems that we're part of.
And so something can just seem like the way it has to be because that's the way it has to be in my context.
But when I talk to somebody at a different university or working in a different system, somebody in the private sector, somebody in K-12,
suddenly I can see different ways of approaching a problem that weren't apparent to me when I was only talking to the people in the room who I always talk to.
So I think for that reason alone, getting out of our silos and into bigger, broader, more open spaces has a lot of value.
Wow, that's just fantastic.
Now, you've already shouted out your people on the open press, and I'm putting out a call in the DS-106 radio airwaves that if we got any open press pals out there that they call in,
maybe join Mr. Good Vibes here on the radio.
But before I say goodbye to you, Brenna, I just wonder if there's anything else you want to say to some of the denizens of the open web that might be hearing your voice right now.
Well, it's just good to get together and have these conversations.
Remember that we're still here, we're still doing the work, and the work is still super relevant, right?
If there's one thing I think we've learned from all the different trends in education in the last 20 years, it's that open is super resilient.
And I'm just glad to have a chance to chat.
Thanks for calling in, Brenna. Keep those good vibes glowing, huh?
Take care.
GRU Open Press
Mixing Vintage Vinyl with Open Web Wonders
And the terms said, "It's open source, do it, do what you please."
And they dadded, "Donate here" buttons, and I gave a few bucks happily.
Then I put it up on my own server, and I made up my own little terms.
They said, "Everyone take what you need, live to share, and feel in five."
Oh, terms, terms, everyone's terms.
Life of rest and ownership, let's all attest my words.
Buy this, don't blink back, can't you read the terms?
The hits keep coming.
Morabund Music
We're in the midst of a Morabund Music of the 70s Top Ten countdown,
as compiled by you earlier in the morning between 2 and 5 a.m.
And we heard Amos Moses from Jerry Reid, a Top Ten song from 1971,
and another Top Five song from Sister Janet Mead at number 9, that's "The Lord's Prayer."
DS-106 Radio
We will, we will rock you.
And it looks like we've got another call on the line. Who am I talking to here?
Hi, Brian, this is Danny Collins. How are you doing?
It's Danny Collins, and you are the manager of the TRU Open Press. How are you tonight?
I am doing great. I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller.
Well, you know, we just love having you joining us on the DS-106 Radio network.
And, yeah, I mean, do you want to talk a little bit about the Open Press? You're in a pretty good position to do it.
I'd love to. Yeah, I'm really enjoying the show,
and I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk to you about our team,
our amazing Open Press team. I am so just in awe of the team that I get to work with every day.
Lay it on us.
Yeah, well, I guess maybe I should talk to you a little bit about what I do.
I'm the Publications Manager for Open Press, and basically I get to work with these good folks,
my production team, but also with faculty and setting up the contracts and working with our advisory board to select new projects and that kind of thing.
So I sort of get the ball rolling for people and get them set up.
And then we get to assign the work to my team. And let me tell you about my team.
So when I started, my team was already hired, my base team, and that is my copy editor, Caitlin, and my e-learning technician, but so much more, Jessica.
They are like a dynamic duo. So by the time I started, they had already come up with a website.
They had already learned all about some standards for doing the press books, creating open educational resources in press books and WordPress.
They're already doing some really dynamic things and really creative things with some projects.
Just pretty much anything that we could think of, and then some, they've just been on it.
So I came in and I really lucked out because I have a great team. I was involved in the hiring of Caitlin, but really I think, you know,
Marie and Brenna were really, really eager to find people that sort of had the skills and that were really eager to learn.
And we have that in spades.
It really is. And it's been cool having the Open Press team hanging out in the same space as LT and I.
We're kind of pees in a pod here.
Oh, for sure. You know what? The one thing that I really think was really cool is, you know,
part of the proposal for this ISP initiative, Open Press, is that we have all the centralized knowledge and skills in one place so that we don't have all these silos happening.
And, you know, if we don't know how to do it in our team, we'll either learn how to do it or we're able to access some of the expertise and sort of share knowledge and skills with your team,
which has been hugely, I think, beneficial for all of us.
So you've got your ongoing staff, but you've also got, we've got some up and comers as well on the Open Press team.
Yes.
So I have got three amazing co-op students.
You know, so one of the mandates or I guess the objectives, purpose of the Open Press,
one of our goals is to involve as many students as we can, not just in the projects themselves with open pedagogy sort of initiatives, but also hiring students.
So we help faculty hire research assistant students for some of the projects.
But most importantly for us, we've actually been able to secure these three remarkable co-op students.
So we've got two co-op students that are e-learning technicians that work with Jessica, and they have been doing some amazing work with what we have a huge project in plumbing.
So they've been helping with that and really trying to figure out, you know, we've got a little bit of some limitations with plug ins and that kind of thing that are just the tools that we're using.
And these guys have the knowledge and go, you know, go get them in spades.
So they've been helping us figure out a lot of things.
We've also got another co-op student, Ananya, who is, sorry, I don't know if I mentioned the other ones are Greg and Riley.
They're fantastic. And our co-op student Ananya has been with us since, well, last winter.
And she's been helping us to write some impact stories.
So as the projects are being completed, she's doing interviews, recorded interviews with our faculty developers and talking about things like, you know, working with the open press, what that was like for the developers.
But also things like how they think their projects will impact students, you know, where their projects or resources that they've developed, where that might be used, not only for their own courses, perhaps, but also at other institutions or, you know, here at True and other courses.
So it's really been like quite an eye opener to do these interviews.
And not only that, but Ananya has also created some impact stories.
So she's summarized those experiences and the impact for students and really, you know, the ideology behind some of these projects and the passion really is coming through from those developers.
So it's really exciting to see those stories.
And Ananya is a very gifted writer.
So you can see those stories at openpress.trubox.ca.
And Danny, thank you so much for laying those smooth grooves on us.
And let's keep those good vibes rolling here on LT&I Radio, DS106 Radio.
Ciao.
Ciao, Brian.
Keep to the mic or step down.
Oh.
Speak to the mic.
DS106 Radio.
Marvin, Music of the '70s.
Listen, I got a question.
Was he really stoned or something?
No, he's not stoned.
It's just there's lots of technical problems and Mr. doesn't seem to be too thrilled.
But I'm not sure of that, of course.
Good for you.
What sort of technical difficulties?
Oh, I don't know.
He's just having lots of trouble.
He's very anxious about this.
You know, he's worked on it, you know, for so long.
Well, anyway, I know, but it just, it sounds fine.
Brian pushed the wrong buttons.
And the levels are way off.
DS106 Radio.
You're telling me more and more.
Try to sell me some integration for some bullshit application.
That ain't got no signification.
I can't get no.
Attribution.
No attribution.
Why?
Oh, baby, why?
Why?
- Guys, you're cranking out the hits here at East Band.
- Turn up the volume with TRU Open Press.
Your gateway to open knowledge.
- DS106 radio, LTNI radio.
And it looks like we've got another call on the line.
Who am I talking to?
- Oh, hello, this is Marie Bartlett
calling from Open Learning at Thompson Rivers University.
- Marie, longtime friend of the show
and a key person with the TRU Open Press.
How are you doing today?
- I'm doing well.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
This is fabulous.
- Fantastic.
What do you want to lay on our listeners here today?
- Oh, I wanted to share a very exciting initiative
that we have embarked on about a year ago.
It's called the Open Press.
And I would like to highlight a specific project, Brian,
if that's possible.
- Oh, that's fantastic.
'Cause yeah, we had Brandon talking about the project
a little generally just before.
So yeah, it'd be awesome to talk about a project
that's been working on.
- First, I wanted to say how difficult it was to pick one
because we have so many exciting projects.
They're all open.
They're all benefiting students.
We have had the most amazing groups
of subject matter experts and people working
on those projects.
But there's one that really is a great example to highlight
because of the different elements that it displays.
And also it's just a great demonstration
of how our team works together.
What do you think?
- I can't wait to hear it.
Lay it on us.
- Okay.
So this is one of my favorites.
It's called Essential Chemistry for Biologists.
And I remember Natasha, the subject matter expert.
She is a biology professor here at Thompson Urban University.
And she approached the open press
and she put in a proposal saying,
"You know, we have so many biology students
in the first year that just struggle
with about a good number of chemistry concepts.
And I am losing time in class trying to get them up
to speed and wouldn't it be wonderful
to create some resources that would help them?"
And that was just such a beautiful idea
that would help so many students succeed
in their biology classes,
make the transition better for them.
And those resources can be shared widely
and adapted to multiple contexts.
So we said, "Oh yes, this will be fabulous."
So the first thing that we started talking about was how.
How would be the best way to communicate those concepts
that the biology students need?
And we decided that we would do it
in as many different ways possible.
So Natasha was going to create some videos.
We were going to transcribe those videos
for students that prefer to be reading.
And then we decided to also create resources in H5B
for students to check their own understanding
of the concepts because you can kind of watch a video
and it's like, "Okay, I get that."
And then you take a test and it's like,
"Oh, maybe I should review that again."
So that was kind of all in the plan.
And then it was just so beautiful
to go through the creation process with Natasha.
So John Fulton, our media colleague extraordinaire,
he has a light board.
I thought maybe this would be a perfect use case
for the light board and Natasha agreed.
The nice thing about the light board
is that you can create videos with,
and this is especially important in visual subjects
like chemistry where Natasha needed
to demonstrate certain concepts by drawing.
So whether it's molecules or whether it's highlighting
different things on the periodic table of elements,
the light board allows Natasha to talk to students
about the concepts, draw whatever she needs to diagram,
whatever she needs to draw, but not on a board
where people would be looking at her back,
but retaining eye contact with her audience.
And also John is able to put images on the light board
that then Natasha can point to as she's talking.
So we created 20 videos that each video
is focusing on a specific chemistry concept
that students usually struggle with
that is not helping them in achieving
their biology goals in their courses.
And so the open press, then John with the open press,
we created transcripts for everything.
Natasha, you should see her in the recording studio.
She had those big pieces of papers,
of notes that she was referring to.
She put so much thought and effort into it.
John did an amazing job editing everything.
We made transcripts.
We have a colleague in the open press, Caitlin.
She is our copy editor.
She put in so much work making sure that the transcripts
and all of the written parts of this resource
are easy to understand for students and just well-written.
And our production specialist, Jessica,
then made this amazing website
and created all of the HRP elements.
And now we can enjoy the resource as is.
In September, biology profs at TRU,
Natasha has shared this new resource with all of them.
They're going to be using it in their classes
with students that may need a brush up
on their chemistry concepts.
So I'm very excited about this.
And to share it out into the wider education world,
we are sharing not only through channels,
but we also created a YouTube channel for this resource
and so that it can be viewed.
And hopefully the demand is there
with students looking for those concepts.
And hopefully they're going to pick up and look at them.
- We will be sharing links to those projects
on the DS106 Radio LT&I Radio Show playlist page.
And, you know, Marie, I was going to ask you
some follow-up questions as you were going,
but you kept anticipating what I was going to say
and you just kept rocking the mic.
Is there anything else you wanted to say
before we get on with the show?
- Oh, no, no, I want to boast some more.
- All right, go, go, go.
- So as I was preparing for this interview, Brian,
I was looking at this beautiful resource
and just marveling how our team made something
that's so valuable for students.
And I must tell you, I was surprised
because we were talking for over the last year
about how to track how our resources are used.
We just went to a conference in Montreal
and we were giving a presentation on the open press
and there was a woman in the audience,
she is a professor out in the East in Ontario.
And she said, "You know, I think that I may be using
a textbook that you made."
And sure enough, she was, and she was using it
in her first year psychology course
for multiple years now.
And we had no idea.
And we were thinking, you know,
we need to know how many people,
how many students are saving money,
how many students all of our resources are benefiting,
because we just don't know.
And it would be a really interesting thing to know
if when we are asking for more funding
to develop more things.
And so I look at this resource, Natasha's resource,
and what do you think?
The team already started an adoption form.
So there is, that I didn't even know about.
They're just so amazing.
So there's an adoption form.
Educators can fill out the form
and tell us if they're using it.
It only takes a couple of minutes.
And not only that, the team is looking into other ways
of how to track these things
and how to then celebrate how many people,
how many students are benefiting from these things.
- Out of sight.
- Right?
- All right, Marie.
I think we got some other calls waiting on the switchboard.
We're gonna move on, but you know,
keep rocking the open web.
And thanks for all you're doing for the TRU Open Press.
- Well, thank you for all you are doing, Brian,
with the educational technology here at TRU.
And I can't wait to talk to you again soon.
- Ciao.
- Morabund, an old term that is fast
becoming a household vocable.
Utterback's 21st century collegiate dictionary
defines it as being in the state of dying,
approaching death.
Now your favorite hits of the '70s
are being brought back fully to life
in the five-hour retro media extravaganza,
Morabund, music of the '70s.
♪ It's a conference late last night ♪
♪ Oh, suddenly I had a fright ♪
♪ Yeah, I looked down the hallway ♪
♪ Surprised what I saw ♪
♪ There were vendors and booths ♪
♪ Dancing with CIOs ♪
♪ Oh, right now ♪
♪ Yeah, vendors and booths ♪
♪ And you gotta believe me ♪
♪ Yeah, I saw it, I saw it ♪
♪ I'm telling you no lies ♪
♪ Yeah, vendors and booths ♪
♪ And you gotta believe me ♪
♪ Yeah, I saw it, I saw it ♪
♪ With my own two eyes ♪
♪ Oh, right now ♪
♪ Real rock ♪
♪ Real classic rock that rocks ♪
♪ Classic rock ♪
♪ Yeah, it's a conference late last night ♪
♪ You, you ♪
♪ Feel like a ♪
- DS-106 Radio.
- Okay!
- Kicking off another long stretch of continuous classic rock.
- That rocks.
- Okay!
- DS-106 Radio, it's LT&I Radio,
where the open web lives forever.
Got another call coming in.
Who am I talking to?
- Hey, this is Greg from the open press department at TRU.
- Greg, how you doing, man?
- I'm doing well, thank you.
- And you're listening in, you got anything to say?
We'll delay on our DS-106 listeners.
- You know, I wanna talk about something
a little bit different.
As a developer, I can't speak enough about open source.
You know, the benefits that we get from open source code
on the internet is enormous.
You know, we can really quickly get our projects
up and running.
We can take code that already exists.
We can manipulate it, make it do something else.
And the limits are endless from open source code.
- So do you wanna talk, I mean, I know you're mostly working
with WordPress and Pressbooks.
Do you wanna talk a bit about those specifically
and what's cool, the open source elements of that?
Or are there other open source tools you wanna shout out?
- Well, for Pressbooks specifically,
what we can do is we can run all of our system.
We can run all of Pressbooks, download it off of GitHub,
run it on a framework called XAMPP,
which is like an Apache distribution.
And we can use this build to test all of the changes
that we make on our UI before they go into production.
So if we wanna change our catalog page,
but we don't know exactly what to implement
or how it will affect production,
we don't have a space to test these changes.
What we can do is we can install it in our computers.
Because the code is open source, we can get up and running.
We can test what we need and make sure
that we're not gonna break anything and we're good to go.
- Man, so, you know, this is normally
about the classic sounds here on DS106 radio,
the LTNIs, retro vibes, but you're sounding like,
you're sounding a little bit close
to the cutting edge there, Greg.
- Well, I wouldn't go that far.
I mean, we're like the code that's been written,
you know, we can see all of the history
that it's gone through, you know, every developer,
we can see who's making these changes,
what they're adding to the code.
We can even see what future releases might hold as well.
And we can even put our own requests in for that.
And that's all through the benefit of having code
as open source, publicly available repositories.
- So let me just ask you really quickly,
one of the things I see you working on a lot
is you're converting, if I understand correctly,
an old print-based plumbing guide
that's used by literally thousands of practitioners
and you're turning it into an interactive OER.
You wanna talk a little bit about what you're doing there?
- Sure, so we've been given this textbook
that's got all of these resources, all of these materials,
and we've been tasked with digitizing it.
So we're adding some interactive tools through H5P.
I'm sure a lot of people listening in
already know what H5P is.
So we've gone through probably thousands of,
well, hundreds, I'd say maybe close to 1,000,
1,000 multiple choice questions
and for anybody who's used H5P,
trying to manually go in and make multiple choice questions
takes ages.
So one tool we've been using,
whether I'm sure everybody's sick of hearing about it,
but AI solves this problem really, really well
because what you can do is you can provide it
with the questions that you need,
you can provide it with the answers to those questions,
and you can tell it to output an H5P format,
and you can put that output directly
into the textual editor,
and it'll build your H5P for you.
So over time, going through hundreds of questions like this,
we can save ourselves days and weeks of work time
by using this AI tool to,
generate our content for us.
And then we're saving a lot of time
through this repetitive task of just inputting,
manually inputting H5P into these interactive tools.
- So you're taking this new trendy sound
we're hearing called AI,
and you're putting it to work for the classic vibes
that we've always gone for here at LTNI
and on the open press.
- 100%, 100%.
- That is wild to hear.
That is wild, dude.
Thanks for calling in, Greg.
Keep on rocking, keep listening,
and keep doing what you do, man.
- Thanks for having me.
- For seven song from the Moraband Music Countdown,
this is Pilot with "Magic."
♪ Magic, no ♪
- From your Moraband Music of the '70s Countdown,
this is "Number Six."
- My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna drive me to drinking
if you don't stop driving that hot rod Lincoln."
- Moraband Music from 1972,
taking the number six position in our top 10 countdown.
That actually is George Frayn,
better known as Commander Cody with "Hot Rod Lincoln."
♪ So I went to the presidency ♪
♪ What did they give me ♪
♪ He said, "Son, son, you've gone too far ♪
♪ 'Cause the RMP is always down ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
- The preceding 60 seconds were presented
as an important historical and cultural study.
The previously stated product is not necessarily endorsed
by the staff and/or management of this station.
We now continue with Moraband Music of the '70s.
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
- Moraband Music of the '70s,
going back to 1972 for a number one song.
- And we are here on DS-106 Radio, L-T-N-I Radio.
It has been just an awesome hour of music and chit-chat.
And it looks like we've got another call coming in.
Who am I talking to here?
- Hey, Brian, it's Anne-Marie.
- Anne-Marie, long time favourite caller here
on the L-T-N-I Radio.
So how are you doing today?
- I'm good, thank you.
I'm in sunshine, which is a rare occurrence in Scotland.
- Oh, fantastic.
So, I mean, we do a lot of fun things together,
so I can't wait to hear
what you would like to talk about today.
- Well, I hear you've been talking
about some old school open web classics,
and we've had a kind of retro project running
for a few years.
And so I thought it might be cool to talk about that.
- As you are absolutely correct.
In fact, the OpenETC, which you can find at opened.ca,
is one of my favourite things that we do here at L-T-N-I.
We're just one of the many partners
that make the OpenETC such a cool thing.
And yeah, I'd love to talk a bit about it.
Is there anything front of mind for you?
- I think front of mind is probably
some of the recent work we've been doing,
bidding for, fingers crossed,
some funding from the ministry,
who seem to have jumped on our classic open web bandwagon,
that might give us some leeway to put a,
I don't know, what would you call it?
I don't think it's a greatest hits album
out in the next year, maybe like a-
- It's like a super group.
- Remastering of our best work.
- It's a super group.
It's bringing the better key people
from some of the best, most rocking open web practitioners
across British Columbia,
and in your case, beyond British Columbia.
And yeah, I mean, the OpenETC, for people who don't know,
we've kind of been a grassroots jam session,
I would say for the last, I don't know,
seven or eight years, depending how you count it.
And it kind of came to be,
because I think a lot of us were trying to do cool things
on the open web,
but feeling like we're always doing it
off the sides of our desks,
we're able to give the attention we want,
and we thought, well, if we gotta do this,
let's do it together.
And we've had really great participation
from across the province ever since.
But it's safe to say, we've kind of been running it.
It's been a jam session.
It's been pretty loose.
We haven't really worried too much
about writing things down.
(laughing)
And we run things on a very low budget.
And I think we've realized that this is something
that's really special to us,
and we don't want it to be something
that can blow away with a strong wind.
So yeah, as you said, we've put together a proposal.
It's a modest proposal, I think,
but it's essentially to stand up a service.
Do you wanna talk about some of the components
of the things that we're hoping to do?
- Sure, I mean, I use that,
let's torture the music metaphor a little more.
(laughing)
I use that remaster idea,
'cause one of the things that we wanna do
is look at our tech platform again.
And that's not to say that what we currently run,
which is mostly Mattermost and WordPress,
other things have come and gone around that,
and some things might come back again,
but those core platforms, they're solid.
Our users really appreciate them.
They're the things that are the backbone of the service,
but we run them on, well, we run them on infrastructure
that is a number of years old now,
and it's not bad by any means,
but there's newer options out there.
And you mentioned running on a shoestring.
There's newer options out there that are cheaper to run
or we get more for the same amount of effort.
And things like disaster recovery,
like availability, cybersecurity,
these are words we have to care about,
and words that people who use the service care about.
And so we're thinking about how do we represent
Mattermost and WordPress,
and maybe Etherpad on new hardware, new infrastructure
that will kind of just give us another eight years,
basically, and another eight years of solid operation
with a modest budget,
because we also have to look at some of the funding pieces
in here as well.
We've existed on a very small amount of soft funding,
and in part, that's 'cause it's not expensive to run,
and in part, that's 'cause there's a lot of in-kind labor
donated to it from all the partners.
But again, that just needs to be kind of, not shored up,
but just tidied up, because people come and go,
and it would be a heck of a shame if the service wobbled
just because key players moved in and out.
So it's just a great opportunity to,
yeah, we'll use that remaster metaphor one more time.
Like, what we do is really good.
It's about that solidification piece.
- And we've done a lot of good things with a lot of people,
but I think there's been some schools in the province,
they're like, "Oh, we wanna be part of what you're doing,
"but I gotta be able to tell my boss
"that this is where we're running courses
"and putting key websites."
And some of our partners have been comfortable
with the arrangement,
and other people want something a little bit more formal,
and hopefully that's gonna be part
of what we're standing up as well.
- Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I think, you know, we, different,
there are different arrangements in place
in different institutions.
There are some institutions who are super happy
to have their staff use our service,
'cause bluntly, they can't run the service locally.
They don't have the resources to do it.
And in other places, maybe they need it
to look a little bit more like,
like, you know, like buying another service would.
And so we've gotta make it easy for people
to be able to say yes to getting on board.
And there's different drivers for that,
for different people.
So yeah, there's some paperwork.
(laughs)
- We're coming up on top of the hour here
on DS106 Radio, and we got more great shows happening
as part of this year's summer camp programming.
Thank you so much, Ann Marie.
- Thank you, Brian.
- Online learning.
- And working together.
- With the open ETC.
- Free range ed tech.
♪ The LMS is here to stay ♪
♪ It will never die ♪
♪ The LMS is here to stay ♪
♪ Don't need no reasons why ♪
♪ We don't care what students say ♪
♪ The LMS is here to stay ♪
♪ Why ♪
(laughs)
- Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Two, three, four.
♪ The LMS is here to stay ♪
♪ The budget lines approve ♪
♪ The LMS is here to stay ♪
♪ We can never move ♪
♪ We don't care what people say ♪
♪ The LMS is here to stay ♪
♪ Why ♪
♪ LMS ♪
- In your face.
(sneezes)
(explosion)
(crowd cheering)
Six Radio.