I was honoured to be asked to present at The Immigrant Education Society's event Celebrate e-Learning with TIES: Innovation + Inspiration in the Nonprofit Sector. It was a day of online talks designed to inspire and engage on the topic of e-Learning in the nonprofit sector.
My presentation was called So you’re teaching online - how are you sharing your work? and focused on exploring how to get the word out/promote the great work language professionals are doing not just to Newcomers, but also to other sector organizations. Kind of a two-fold approach - reach Newcomers as clients as well as self-directed users of your work, but also share with sector colleagues for a number of reasons - knowledge sharing and mobilization, creating something that would be useful for their clients, sharing what works so others can use or build on it and share it back to the sector.
I grounded my presentation in the ideas from the the Open Working Toolkit, "a toolkit to help charities, funders and other organisations share their work openly" which I've written about and shared in this article, We’re moving in the wrong direction when it comes to professional development, communities of practice, and knowledge sharing.
TL;DR? Just start sharing. Small steps.
You have digital content. Take one item a week and commit to sharing it.
Repurpose or create something that would be useful for your clients.
Share what works so others can use or build on it and share it back to the sector.
Below I've embedded my presentation video and slides below as part of a playlist of all the presentations, and included a transcript below. The rest of the presentations are insightful and interesting and I encourage you to find some time to watch them all.
Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.
Whitney Loewen 0:11
Okay, everybody, welcome back. Welcome to our third presentation of the day. This is Marco Campana. I'd like to share my introduction of him here. Over nearly 30 years he has provided communications and digital services to the newcomer serving sector. From frontline client service to the first settlement.org content coordinator. He created and managed the settlement at worksite launching OCASI's learn at work online learning site for sector workers, and has participated in a number of efforts to enhance sector knowledge mobilization. He led digital and social media strategy work at maitri, and currently works as a freelance consultant helping agencies harness technology in client service delivery. His current focus is on digital transformation, demystifying technology and social services and social change, immigration diversity and inclusion and He's based in Toronto. So welcome Marco feel free to take it away whenever you're comfortable to do so.
Marco Campana 1:03
Thanks very much and and thank you for having me. Like others, I want to acknowledge that while I'm in Toronto, I'm on the traditional territory of many nations including the hoed nashoni, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the credit. This land is actually also part of the dish with one spoon territory, which is a treaty between the hoed nashoni, Confederacy, the Anishinabek and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the land, its waters and all of the biodiversity in the Great Lakes region. And in this unique system, law, society and nature are considered equal partners. And each plays an important role. So as someone living on this land, I acknowledge my responsibility for honoring this treaty in a spirit of peace, friendship and respect. So what I'm going to talk about today is is about promoting and sharing your work, mainly a focus on sharing, but really, the idea of so you're doing interesting work, because we all are and you're all content creators, you're creating curriculum, you're creating materials and useful resources all the time. So how can we get better about sharing that? So I'm going to provide a little bit of some sector context when it comes to knowledge mobilization, why we should care why we should share our work, why it matters. And what are some small steps, some actionable steps for you to take next, because it can be a little bit overwhelming to to try to get, get get your work out there. So some sector context, many of you have been part of some of the a lot of the conversations and the research and consultations that have been done over the last couple of years, which really culminated in the national steering committee on technology reports launched this April that looked at what are the priorities for our sector. And this is, this is a broad definition of the sector. So I come mainly from the settlement side, but this is inclusive of the language side as well. So ESL instructors and organizations were included in these conversations, not just settlement, and it kind of expanded from there pre arrival, you know, private sponsors, government assisted refugees, sponsors, and some of the things at the bottom, when we talk about mobilizing knowledge, which is a lot of what I'll be focusing on today is what I consider a kind of the inclusive umbrella that impacts the rest of the priority. So by mobilizing knowledge, we can enable innovation, by mobilizing knowledge, we can strengthen what is becoming defined as a hybrid service environment, or I think in the language side, it's been known for years as the blended delivery. We also by mobilizing knowledge and sharing our work, we can ensure and build on high quality and inclusive settlement services. So these are the priorities that we're working on, that we've come to as a sector that we're hoping will start to get operationalize as soon as possible with IRCC and other funders support but they're also not new themes. And that's important to recognize, as other presenters have talked about. Digital is not new, our foray into digital is not new. And we've learned a lot over the years, which is really again, kind of captured in the conversations, literature reviews and additional research we've done, where it dovetails is where IRCCs vision is. And this is something that came out of a presentation from about a year ago, their vision for digital settlement services. Now, their vision is aligned in many ways with the sector's vision, but the language is interesting. So for example, clients are able to access high quality settlement services and can opt to complement these things with in person offerings. A lot of folks in the sector would like to actually flip that language and talk about high quality settlement services in person and can opt for online offerings. And so we really have to kind of talk through these kinds of priorities and negotiate that with with with our sector funders. But the reality is, is that they are looking to support the continued digital transformation and to look at it from from the lens of improved client outcomes and program effectiveness. So last year, they committed to doing some homework over this year and next to build an evidence base and a lot of that is going to come from service delivery improvement or SDI projects that they funded where they're experimenting, they're doing research projects. Some of you are working on some of these projects or have been part of the previous cohort of projects. There's a lot of a lot of knowledge that will come out of those projects that we can apply to to our or work. And part of that is identifying these things like best or promising or good practices in particular, when it comes to digital literacy, cybersecurity and privacy. And their goal, although these conversations, to my knowledge haven't totally happened yet in public, but the sector are to develop some guidelines and standards leading up to the next national call for proposals, which will be in 2024. So there's some big work that needs to be done. And part of the way that they want to be doing that is around this notion of knowledge mobilization to really look at how do we build the capacity at the sector. So it's important that all the work that we're doing on digital is kind of framed within our own context, and also the funders kind of vision for this and where we where we intersect with that. But let's focus on what why and and where you should share your work. So why should you share the work that you're doing, and you're in elearning?
Marco Campana 5:51
I talked about knowledge mobilization, but in the eLearning, and education sector, the there's the Open Educational Resources idea, the idea that you're creating resources for others to be able to build on and I think that's a really important foundation to be able to build on with when you're doing elearning work. The idea about we're completing and not competing, right? This comes out of Alberta, actually, with the Immigrant Services, Calgary where they've been working on some projects where they're looking at working more collaboratively across the sector. So instead of competing, as agencies were completing each other's work or building on each other's work, we're making progress. We're not anticipating perfection in the work that we do. But we're sharing with each other so that we can build on that. And so you'll hear terms like open education resources, Creative Commons, crown, copyright, public domain, or open licenses. And the idea behind all of these things, is that you can share your work, still retain ownership and control over it, but give people different kinds of licenses in order to reuse, adapt, remix, and reshare. That that information. So there's a foundation across the elearning sector and a foundation across our own sector about about sharing work. And one of the the models that I quite like is coming out of the UK, it's called the Open working model. And they've created an actual toolkit that really breaks it down into actual practical steps. So the first step is to just start sharing, right, you don't have to share a lot, but you have to share consistently, the format that you share doesn't need to matter, we don't want to get sort of tied up in should I do this on a Google Drive, Should I do it on, you know, in teams, or in zoom or a webinar or a conference presentation, the point is to start sharing what you're working on, and to get it out there with other people and to protect the vulnerable, right. So when you're sharing, clearly, we're not sharing client information or names or private information, but is to start sharing the work that you're doing tend to be intentional. To build, we build trust by what we're sharing, to not feel like you have to become someone else online. A lot of people are intimidated by sharing online because they're not confident in their, their the materials they've created, they're not confident in their speaking ability. We see that in a lot of communities of practice, for example, in our sector, where people who work in the secretary who are previous newcomers themselves whose first language may not have been English are not necessarily comfortable sharing. But let's share anyway, and let's be open and and authentic with that and be reflective. And as I'll talk about later, reflection takes time. And we don't always have or given that time. But it's being intentional about reflecting on the work that you're doing as well as you're sharing it. And as we've seen and talked about throughout today is building relationships. So an opportunity to be on a live call like this is to connect and share with others. But we also have communities of practice like to tell her like Avenue like settle net.org across the sector, where you can share to get input where you can share ticket information where you can build on other's work, and we're getting input from each other as we're building. And again, that is a difficult thing to do in our sector. Because we we tend to be competitive, we tend to only want to share something when it's it's done and perfect and been polished. We don't share, you know, a half baked idea or a half baked model, because we're afraid that we might get criticism, we're afraid that it might not be seen as complete enough. But asking for input is a huge part of open working. There's a lot of trust involved with that. There's a lot of relationships around that. But the benefits of that is that you don't necessarily have to feel alone. And you also don't have to create something that has been created before. So the stand on the shoulders is the idea of replication to avoid duplication. So maybe if someone has already been working on this, and if I share my half baked idea, they can say, Oh, we've been working on that for a while. Why don't we have a conversation and see how your work can continue or complement the work that we're doing leveraging each other's work, reusing work from other people, as well as other people reusing work from from us so you can get access to again, all of these links will be sent to you through the the the PDF of the presentation but there is a an online toolkit that you can kind of work through. There's also information here for funders about why they should fund Open working. So I'm a true believer in the idea of information wants to be free. And so that anything that the government funds should be made available to everyone in the sector that it funds immediately after, with Creative Commons, whether that's research, practical toolkits, entire videos, you know, you name it, no passwords, no, no nothing but but available immediately. And so it also walks you through some really simple steps about how to create an open working model for your own work. And your organization, for example. And I think that that can making that commitment of open working can only benefit us as individuals as organizations and the sector as a whole. And we see that time and time again, we're somewhere in BC, we'll create something that somewhere, someone in Nova Scotia will realize we have something complementary, and if we, if we don't share it out in the open those, those matches will never happen. And instead, duplication happens, which doesn't serve the sector at all.
Marco Campana 10:56
So here's an example that I've come across. This is an ESL instructor in Edmonton, I honestly don't remember how I got a hold of her newsletter, but I subscribed to her newsletter. It's a weekly newsletter, it's my Canadian English, her name is Shona. And it looks like this. This is literally what she sends, it's a PDF. I don't always recommend sending PDFs, but whatever, she sends a PDF that includes a couple of links that take you to her YouTube page. And on her YouTube page, you simply see the grammar lesson in this case of the week, right, and she's made videos, they're shareable. And what she's done, as well as she's created a website, my Canadian english.com, where all the videos are organized and easy to access. Now, what's neat here is this, you'll notice the site immediately changes. So my Canadian English redirects to a Google site. So there's a couple of things happening here. She's posting on YouTube, which is free. She's hosting on Google Sites, which is free, she's created, she's she's probably paying 10 to $15 a year for that, that URL, my Canadian english.com And then just set it up to redirect. So she isn't paying any website hosting fees. For her videos for her website itself. She's simply sharing information on a free on a free spot, subscribe, new videos every week, etc, etc. She's got a library of different videos here. So every week she's adding something she's categorizing them. She's got her different lessons, she's got a certain kind of categorization in the work that she does. So like Linda had mentioned categorizing your work, right, so basic vocabulary, Canadiana, adult literacy learners, things like that. And then she's, she's got new videos over here. This takes a while to load because what she's done here is embedded a series of YouTube videos over and over again, basically. But what's interesting as well is when you think about subscribing to her mailing list. Similarly, she's she actually isn't using mailing lists software, she simply once my computer connects will eventually link you to signing up for a mailing list takes you to a Google form, which is yet another free tool and all she's doing literally sending emails out where she's blind carbon copying BC seeing people now you could there's free versions out there of MailChimp and and other simple email newsletters that you can create. But what she's done is everything is tech low, right? She's using technology that she probably uses as a teacher. So Google Sites, she's using videos on YouTube, which are free to upload and easy she's creating. When you look at the videos, they're narration over to over slides. So she's either doing a screen capture, or she's using one of the many tools that are out there. But the point is, is that she's taking her information and she's sharing it really quickly and easily. Okay, Donna says that you've collaborated with Shauna on a few projects. Yeah. So she's, she's out there. So people know about her, which is what's neat about it is that the work that she's doing is, is is immediately shareable and possibly useful, not just for end users, but also for teachers. So for example, if I'm looking for some video on grammar lessons, categories of grammar, if this video works for me, I don't have to recreate it. Now I don't have to build that video, I can simply reuse it, I can embed it into an LMS. And what you'll notice is well, on her homepage, there's two things one is it's on YouTube, and if it's freely available on YouTube, you can embed it wherever you want. But what she's also done is she's made her work licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you haven't seen this before, if you click on the link Creative Commons domains, again, you maintain the copyright but but under this license, you as a user of her materials are free to share. So copy it anywhere. So take your YouTube videos, slap them into your stuff, and you can adapt so you could download that video, re edit it, but you have to give credit to her. And you have to put no additional restrictions. So for example, you can't then turn around and sell the videos you have to use the same license that she's used here for example, So what she's done is she's made it freely available for everybody to use. And it's just again, it's part of her work, she's already doing it. And she's created a way for people to access it, that doesn't put a lot of resource onus on her, in fact, very little in terms of cost. She's, if she's already making those videos for the work that she's doing, there's no additional cost to host them on YouTube, for example. So the idea is that technology has made it easier and easier to share, right? So we can make it easy to access on all devices. So if we look at Google Sites is is
Marco Campana 15:35
mobile, mobile friendly, so that mobile responsive, so if you resize this site, it'll resize based on the device that you're looking at the videos on YouTube Play on all these kinds of devices. So she's made it easy to access on all devices, she's choosing the tech and tool that makes sense for her and for the people that she's sending it to. So we heard this a lot from from Allison, and, and from, from Linda and choosing technology appropriately to make sure that it fits the needs, and it works on all these different kinds of devices. And again, it can be as simple to get it out as as an email, BCC like she's using Oregon, you can set it up, I use, for example, for my, my, I have a newsletter, I use tiny letter, it's actually created and owned by MailChimp. But creating on here is much less onerous than going through the steps on MailChimp. It's a scaled down version of a an email newsletter. And so it does a little bit more than a BCC to things with when you're BCC and through email, if you have too many people, you might get tagged as a spammer. And here people can actually sign up without having to go mad, you don't have to do anything manually, they can sign, they can subscribe, and they can unsubscribe manually through here, plus, you can actually end up with a with an archive, let me just see if I can remember. I'll figure it out in a sec. So that people can see previous previous messages that you've sent before, for example. So again, it's really easy here, you your design, your subscribe page, all of these kinds of things. So yeah, you end up with a with an archive of
Unknown Speaker 17:13
of your previous you end up with an archive
Marco Campana 17:21
of your previous messages as well. And so it's a little bit easier than sending them just to your email. But BCC works as well. So she's she's decided that's the way she wants to go. But the idea is that technology isn't the barrier anymore. It's about time time to create time to reflect time to create exists, because you're already creating information that's out there. So why does it matter? There's a couple of reasons why I think sharing matters is to reach two categories of newcomers, but also with sector colleagues and peers. So when we talk about newcomers, we're talking about the newcomers you're already working with. And by sharing with them in an asynchronous way, they become self directed users of your work. So if the format allows, for example, if you're creating videos, they can come back to the materials, they may have gone through something in a live classroom, and a recording of that is accessible for them after, but if you share publicly, you can also reach clients who are not necessarily aware of your work or unable to attend any of your classes or work. And it can scale and serve a broader population. Right. So shown his work is on YouTube. It's it's it's on a public website, any ESL or English learner can access those materials without restriction and can benefit from those materials by accessing it there. So even if they're never interact with her, or take any of her classes or pay for any of her services, they access those materials, and they can learn from the other side is sharing with sector colleagues and peers. So I'm going to start with newcomers, and give you some examples. So again, her her site is an example. But ties has some great examples of materials that other people have created. So these guides, my understanding is that they're submitted by volunteers. And then they're categorized. So these are simple guides to a variety of different topics that are out there. Now you are creating, like elearning people are creating this. Teachers are creating this all the time. You have all of these guides, you have all of these materials. Whether your volunteers are creating it or you yourself are creating and adding it to a website, whether it's a website that has dropdowns, or a simple Google Sites website allows you to create content that people can access and make use of in really meaningful ways. There's also the idea of when you create something based on one project. So for example, Ty's created a series of modules to introduce newcomers to online classes. But sit here as Matt CLB, three and above. And what they've done is they've made it available for students who want to take the course they can register, but they've also made them available as open educational resources free for other agencies to use. So I worked with a client. Well, we contacted ties Downloaded the the modules because we're using Moodle as our LMS. And they've now put that into their system to use with their clients, why should they create an entire new curriculum to introduce their clients to online classes, when Nico has done it. Now, the benefit of some of this as well is that they can create whatever additional context they want to around that. So in some ways, it's like copy and paste into Moodle. Right. Now there's a there's a, there's a series of modules in Moodle that they can access. But because it's in Moodle, they can also customize them as much as they want, maybe they want to replace one of the videos with their own video, maybe they want to add some some text at the beginning to provide a different context, maybe they want to add module six at the end, they can do whatever they want with it, because it's now theirs in their LMS, for example, and there's a huge benefit to them, because they don't have to create this, it's gone through a rigorous research and development process and be created by someone else. And they can make use of as much or as little of the materials as they want to in their own LMS in their own work. So it saves them tons of time, and potentially make some connections for them with a group like ties who they may never have interacted with before to do further work in the future or to say we want to do you know, Nico, version two. So we're gonna go to the funder, and we're going to ask Ty's to, to come in on it with us, because they're clearly the developers of this, but we have identified a need. So instead of trying to replicate or duplicate something, they're now leveraging what has been created, use it and build on it on in future work as well. So those are some examples of using with with newcomers.
Marco Campana 21:33
Why does it matter with sector call? And again, there's tons of good examples of these kinds of free and open sites that are out there that make use of this, the question is around, pulling it together and not doing that kind of duplication. So sharing matters with sector colleagues and peers on on a number of different levels. One is to share for example, like Nico, the kinds of curriculum that you've created. So E skills has created an entire downloadable courseware related to cybersecurity, right, if you're using Moodle, you can download it, if you're using D to L Brightspace. You can download their materials. If you're interested in helping people understand security, protecting their online identity browser basics, advertisements versus content, you once again, you can get their materials, put it into your Moodle, and then customize it however you want. You don't need to recreate it. Similarly, NorQuest College has created websafe as a SCORM modules, I believe. So these are modules that you can actually access right here. So if I want to access this as a course I can simply provide this link to, to my learner's Welcome to web safe. Start the course. And I'm off and running. Or as it says here, you can, you can contact them and get the package itself and add it to your to your own LMS. So similarly, I did this with my client as well, we got access to all of these units. And we said which are the ones and how do we want to introduce them, because maybe module 123 is too much. So maybe we create course, one course to course three. Again, you can you can lay it out however you want. Because it's a it's a SCORM package, you can also surround it with as much or as little additional context as you want. It's something that's been created already. You can take a look at it right here. If you're if you're helping people find a job online, why reinvent the wheel? Right? Why not take what someone else has created and is making available? For people again, it talks about newcomers that CLB four plus so there's some there's some nice wayfinding there to help you understand where it would be useful. So other organizations are creating materials and they're making them available for you. And you can do the same and Where where are they sharing them. So to tele and Avenue are great examples. So I like to look at to tele I shall look at in the next the next slide to tell is a great example. A lot of people have mentioned it already where people are sharing. It's your community of practice as is Avenue and I know that they're working more closely together now. But learning events like this conferences are another great place to showcase and talk about the work that you're doing. Like the presentations here. There are many, many types of conferences formal and informal. And because we have the technology, there's nothing stopping you from simply saying, I would like to share what I'm working on, send out a zoom link to 15 people and say meet me and let's talk about this. I have a regular monthly meeting with a number of people doing interesting work on digital literacy. We have a small email list of 35 people and about 10 to 12 of them show up every month and we have a one and a half hour conversation about the work that we're doing. Does anyone have a call or a need for participation is anyone want to go in with someone else on funding etc, etc. And what it does that we just informally get into the rhythm of sharing with each other. There's no pressure of presenting at a conference. You don't have to have slides but you can if you want to but you regularly just throw out a link and say to people, let's have a conversation. Or maybe you just do it formally in your own networks, for example, even more formally are some of the the journals that are out there. So Tehsil, Canada, the computer assisted language learning journal, and sites like learn it to teach who manages Ave also maintains a bibliography of learning. So you can come here and look for the latest research. You don't need to be curating or finding this research yourself. You know, they're looking at adults settlement, blended language learning bibliography. So every now and then, you know, in September 27, they added a new a new, a new, interesting article, the computer assisted language learning. I love this because this thing has been around since 1990. Okay, if we, if you look back at all, all volumes and issues, scroll, scroll, scroll 1990. This is not a new conversation. I love this one. I clicked on issue one, the very first article, exploiting information technology to develop language and life skills, not a new conversation, right? So lots of really interesting thoughts. So maybe you collaborate with with with an academic or a researcher, or you simply use this to learn what's happening in your field and to build off of what's there, and then connect with people who are doing this kind of similar work to say, hey, we're actually working on something similar. So if we went to the latest article, let's see what's happening just off the top of my head. How does emoji feedback affect the learning effectiveness of EFL learners, you know what we're looking at some of that in our so I'll comment I will connect with these researchers to find out more. What it helps you do is to find other people doing similar or interesting work from a research perspective. So onto to tele. So just at a quick glance, one of the things around replication that you can see right away is there's 267 h5 P resources, there are 780 scoring resources right at a glance you can you can further those themes. You can you can look at different levels. But what it gives you and I know that you know this already, but I think it's important to reinforce so for example, oh, I'm doing a unit on Canadian on Canada's indigenous peoples. I wonder what's been done here. So this has been created by funded by IRCC created by the Toronto Catholic District School Board, three modules with a guide. And because it's in an M phi h five p format, you can download and you can replicate this right away. So just to sort of play with it. See if I can find where I left it. Sorry, one second.
Marco Campana 27:31
Yeah. So here's an h five p on so I took that h five p and I put it on my website. Right. So now I've put it on a blog, this is not that you can put it on an LMS. It's a no brainer. But you can put it in other places as well. And then as I've written here, I can put some introductory material framing the topic, how to navigate this, what this is all about. And then I could maybe put a poll or a survey or a Google form, or I could ask people to reflect on it. So I can surround this with my own materials within an LMS or elsewhere. I can also put it onto a Google site. So this is it embedded on a Google site. Now what's nice here is with Google Sites is this is just a preview, you can see it's showing what it looks like on a large screen, what it'll look like on a tablet, and what a look like on a smartphone. So it renders nicely. It's it's it's mobile responsive. One of the things that I saw when I was editing, when I did it on the large screen, I hadn't made the box around this large enough so it got cut off. I'll show you what I mean by that. So on if you haven't used Google Sites, you can sort of see this looks fine here. But when I preview it looks fine on my large screen, it looks okay on my tablet, but that gets cut off on my phone. So which tells me immediately they have to scroll not just on the page, but within the h5 P as well. So all I have to do is come back here, click on it, expand this a little bit.
Unknown Speaker 28:58
preview it again.
Marco Campana 29:01
And now you can see there's page scrolling. But there isn't scrolling. I was a little bit but you they can see everything that's here. So the other thing about if you're creating h five p resources, there's something at the bottom here write reuse rights of use and embed. We don't always see that on h five p reuse is allows me to download this as an h five p file. Do that every single time let people download your h five p files fill out the rights of use to let them know that this is under a Creative Commons license and they can use it in this way. So for example, in this case, it has an additional share like and I'll show you what simply what that means is that if I let's say adapt and remix it, I have to I have to share it back out using the same license. So let's say I take that h5 P I pull it into Lumi or another h5 P editor and I share it back under my my LMS or something like that. I have to then reshare it either back to two tele or just in general, in different places, you can also make it embeddable so that someone doesn't necessarily need to download it. But as you can see, here, it's pulling it from this website where I did the initial embed the km for us, which is my knowledge, mobilization for settlement, don't worry about that. And now it's in, it's embedded here, because you can't always embed h5 P, but you can use or you can always upload, like, for example, I don't think I can upload an h5 P to Google Sites, but if it's somewhere else, I can embed it through this iframe source into a Google site. So again, the use of the technology and how we are intentional about how we want to share it makes it more or less accessible to other people, in, in our networks, and in our abilities to share. So again, I've highlighted it here, but you know, there's tons of resources, tons of SCORM, modules and and units that you can use and reuse. So we want to look at and contribute to these repositories, instead of necessarily creating so if I was, you know, looking for Canadians, sorry, information, once again, on indigenous people, for CLB, three, four, I would start here, I would see what someone else has created, and then I would build on it. And then I would share it back and let the people know who created the original, how I used it. And how I built back. That's that sort of community part, again, that's building standing on the shoulders of others, but then, you know, replicating and leveraging and building on it. So maybe by the end, there's a resource that has six modules. Because we've all contributed to something together, there was a nuance that I felt was needed. So I added to it. But I didn't have to create the first three of those modules, I could simply build on them. And so the sort of the lesson behind all of this is that technology and content is increasingly becoming complex, but it's also becoming easy, right? It's that sort of YouTube has raised and lowered the bar of expectations for video production. It's raised the expectations because video is so easy, right? You grab your phone, you create a selfie video, you slap it up onto YouTube, but it's also lowered the expectations when it comes to the the sort of quality of that video you don't need fancy little intros and outros and, and special devices, and music and things like that you can simply be a talking head, it What matters is the quality of the content, and that they can hear you in that video, right. And then you can just use h5, P to make it funky by adding you know, things throughout where you're asking questions and stuff like that. But what sharing does is that it helps rise above that cacophony of noise of technology, so that we are not necessarily feeling so isolated, and that we have to create this on our own, but that we're building in a community together. And I think that's something that's really important and really valuable. So what should you do next small steps, right, just start, I'm showing this again, this is the open working manifesto. You all have digital content. So I'm talking to you, I'm talking to people who might be watching this recording, I want you to pass this on, take one item a week, and commit to sharing it in some meaningful way. You don't have to start sharing everything, right. So showing that sense of a weekly email. And there's usually two to three videos. And she says, Here's what's coming up next week, she could send one video,
Marco Campana 33:18
she could be putting you know, you could be putting on your organization's website, you could simply create a YouTube channel, you can create a Google site, you can do something free and easy now with the knowledge you already have, and the resources you already have access to. And you can simply share a PDF of this week's most interesting lesson plan, the one that resonated the most with your clients, you can repurpose or create something that would be useful for you for your clients, you can share that in a meaningful way. And then share that with other people to let them know that you've done that, whether it's in the to tablet, whether it's through an email list, whether it's just with your colleagues within your own organization, or your own personal network, just commit to sharing one thing a week. Imagine, by the end of the year, you'll have 52 really interesting things that you've shared. And it just cascades. And if five of you in your organization do that, you'll have five new pieces of content a week, you'll have over 250 new interesting pieces of content every week that you've shared in some meaningful way. And all of a sudden, we're building on each other's work instead of replicating. I talked about this in the settlement sector all the time, if everyone stopped writing, how to write a resume, and everyone just collaborated on one version of how to write a resume, maybe other people could talk about other labor market kinds of things. We could we could expand and move forward in the discussion, for example, and move beyond what what what we're already working on. So someone mentioned that's the sort of things our funders are also are always asking you to do, which does lead me though to the conversation about leadership. Because the one thing that the funders say is we want you to collaborate, we want you to partner we want you to to share your knowledge, but they do not provide the time to either do that or the reflection time in order to To analyze and figure out what the right stuff is. And so we need to figure that out and figure that leadership out in our own organizations in our own sector, what does it look like? And that's why I'm being really clear about one thing a week, right? Otherwise, it just gets too overwhelming. You know, just talk about the stuff you're doing, as they say, this is from the the open work project, you already are talking about this stuff, it's already something you've created, no one's creating it, you know, predominantly not creating paper based resources, you're creating something digitally already, whether it's a Word document, an h5 P a SCORM, a PDF, you know, no matter what it is, simple small steps is what we need to do, then we need to be advocating within our organizations and with with our funders to actually fund that kind of find ability, the next steps of, if I'm correct, contributing to tele that takes some extra time, right, I have to go into that system. And I have to categorize things, and I have to upload them in a certain way. It shouldn't just be organizations like that, like this project from the Toronto Catholic District School Board, with funding with the expectation that it would be shared here. But it should be everybody is being funded and given the time to reflect, to build on other people's work, and also to share effectively across the sector. So we need to be advocating for that. But I think we can start with those very small steps. It's not too overwhelming. There's a lot of really good work that people are doing out there. And they can share it quickly and easily. And that is my pitch to you. So I'm going to stop sharing, and hopefully we can have a bit of a conversation on some of this stuff.
Unknown Speaker 36:38
Yeah, I don't know if anyone has any questions. Marco. I actually had a few for you. Oh, Donna has a question Donald.
Unknown Speaker 36:45
Hi, yeah. So I work at the at ties and the Literacy Center of expertise. And our whole mandate is to share and develop and create community based around literacy, specifically for literacy learners. But one thing I found when I was a brand new teacher was going out and looking for stuff that was available. It was overwhelming to me. And, and I know they're trying to correct this, but on to tele nothing was refereed. Nothing was dated. So I, as a new teacher look at this and think, Well, it's on, you know, the government funded page, it must be good, I'm gonna use this and find out it's like seven years old and not really following the rules that I'm supposed to follow now. So, you know, these five things a week, who who's refereeing or curating? Or I, because I don't know that teachers really have time to do any of that if, if we're going to look at the role of the teacher,
Marco Campana 37:52
for sure. On to tell, I've noticed that, for example, they've got this green checkmark now that that shows that the new read the resource aligns with PBL, a NCLB. That's based on a self assessment. I know, right? So there is a lot of that, that we have to build in some some trust and professionalism with those expectations. There is a lot of trust when we're sharing. But that's why I talked about the need for time to reflect and the need for the time to analyze, because if you're looking at a resource, you have to be able to have those kinds of they call it crap testing, right? Is this current, reliable, authoritative? And what's the perspective? Or what's the bias? Right? You have to be able to do that really quickly. But the system should be able to to essentially, make that front and center for you. So like you said, is it seven years old? Is it CLB aligned, at least according to the instructor, ideally, ideally, these communities would actually have staff who do those assessments. The problem with our funders is that they believe that communities of practice are inherently self directed. And of course, they sort of are. But there is a role to play for as Linden called a content curation, moderation facilitation assessment evaluation, there's 100% a role for for for that to exist. The ideal to tell it would be that people are submitting materials. And they don't show up until they've been they've met a certain requirements, a certain checklist by the site moderators. Now that requires resources in the interim, until we convince our funders of the importance of that we are self moderating, and we have to self assess, and to be able to do that effectively, absolutely does require time and it was 111 piece of content a week, not a day, just to be clear, because I'm trying to make it easy, right. And so, yeah, there are those sort of systemic or institutional challenges to some of this. And that's why the other part of it is the community, the constant conversation, the ability to say, I created this, and I believe if it works for CLB, three to four, and here's why. And here's how you can use it in your work. So being able to kind of expand, not just throwing stuff onto a site, but the site asking you questions like that, right. So I'm just trying to see So for example in the description on on something like the unit on indigenous peoples, there are places for the the authors to comment, right? So they can say, we created this it with with its with funding that tells me a little bit something about about the reliability, perhaps Toronto Catholic District School Board, what do I think about that institution from an ESL perspective? It's CLB, three, four, you know, there's more information that other people can and then I go to the comments, right, you know, what are other what are people saying about this? Was it crap? Was it useless? Can I give us like, what's the Yelp for content? Right? It needs to be quick thumbs up, thumbs down, but people are making contents, right? Note that for the first activity in slide seven has a small problem. Really useful. But then what's the accountability for someone fixing that now the nice thing is, is because it h5 P, I can download and I can fix it myself. And I can put it back to tell it but that's perhaps a lot to offer. So we have, again, a different number of ways to kind of look at the authoritativeness and usefulness of it based on what the community response might be. But, but But ideally, yes, ideally, we want to work towards a system that actually has some some gatekeepers, but some some quality keepers, if you will some quality assurance. For now, that's us as individuals, and so we can only do the best we can, but it's a really important point. So that's why again, I say try to keep it simple, be self reflective, but be explanatory when you're sharing the materials as well. Astrid. I think in principle, the sharing is really great. Sorry, can you pull your microphone down?
Unknown Speaker 41:39
Okay, sorry. I think, in principle, like the sharing is really great. But like, each thing requires a new tech navigation. And, you know, like in our busy schedules, like, I mean, if you show a model of like a website with videos embedded in it, or even mail out with, I mean, I think it would be good to have if we want to build this kind of sharing community, it would be good to have maybe a central website with tools for how you could share and tech videos to walk you step through step by step through how to build that website to share or how to even YouTube, like what are all the questions for our like, we all have questions as we load to YouTube, is it is it? Do I want to put my videos as public? Do I want to keep them as unlisted? I think if we, if we want to have this sharing community, we need to build a tech resource team for our sector that answers some of these questions, because otherwise we're, instead of, we're sharing the resources, but we're not sharing that tech skill, which we need to share the resources completely, just like that. We can't invent it every time it takes so much time to figure out, right?
Marco Campana 43:04
Absolutely. Yeah, no, in some ways learn it to teach in the avenue folks, we're supposed to be part of that. In Ontario, there's a group called alpha plus, which works with the literacy community to do exactly what you're describing. And some of the recommendations we've made is for the creation of something like that. Now, I've been in the sector long enough that in in 2000, or actually 9098 99, the Ontario settlement sector was completely connected to the internet and wired. And that's when settlement.org was launched. And what they did was they actually created a system where each organization had someone who was halftime funded to be 10, a Technical Liaison. And that person was responsible for working on technology within the they could be a settlement counselor who just had some tech chops and decided they wanted to split their job, or it could just be a whole new halftime, and they were there for at the time, what was sort of basically technical troubleshooting. And then there was a third party organization that was contracted when you escalated. So if it was out of the the competency of that person, they then would go to that third party. And then there was settlement.org, as a landing place for content to share with newcomers. And then there was an extra net, which is what settlement is today, which was a community of practice. Now what that looks like is what we need today is exactly that funded resources at the organizational level, who can help so the digital navigator, right? You call it a different dif something different the digital assistant, I think, at Mosaic, but this is the evolution of new roles that we see in organizations digital Navigators are required for both onboarding newcomers to technology as well as supporting staff in the use of that technology. Now that doesn't, that's not just something that needs to be a centralized resource that needs to be at the agency or regional level. So some threshold where if you have X number of funded staff or more, you get a half time digital navigator if you've got even more you get a full time on if you're under that then you get a floating digital navigator who goes to different agencies may be supported by local immigration. partnerships, something like that. But the idea that there needs to be and this is sort of, again, that model of where we're heading to for the next call for proposals, what are the new roles that we've seen are essential during the pandemic that can have that have to become essential. So a lot of organizations in particular, in the language side had these digital assistants or digital navigators. In fact, some still do like it. I sense there's, I think two funded digital navigators probably funded by the province, because they tend to get it more, but that that are actually on staff to do exactly what you're describing. Oh, you've got a question. Okay. I'll go figure it out. And then I'll come back to you with the solution. So you can just continue teaching, right. So 100%, what you're describing needs to be put in place. We've seen examples of that, both in our sector and in other nonprofit sectors. And, and we just need to make sure that they're built into the funding in the same way that to talent needs to have a few more people to help with the kind of content curation
Unknown Speaker 45:56
and you need layers of it. It's not just the digital navigator for the students or clients or teachers, but even for us, like if I'm a developer of content I, like there's still like, there's so much Oh, no, it's so much. That
Marco Campana 46:12
yeah, there is. So there's new roles. But then as I as as I mentioned earlier in the chat, like digital navigators, we're all digital navigators. Now in some to some degree, right? We're all these Technical Liaison. So it's teachers or settlement workers are the frontline for the questions a student or a client might have about, yeah, this this, this app, this, this LMS, this WhatsApp, this message is not working for me, they have to do low level tech support, but they have to have someone that can escalate that to either on site or somewhere else. Because we can't expect frontline and or instructional designers or teachers to be tech experts at the same time. So there's its nuances and its degrees of what we need to expect of people in terms of their skill sets, as well as what they need to be able to sort of escalate to within the organization or outside of it. Yeah, there's tons of nuances and all of this in the different roles for sure.
Unknown Speaker 47:05
And as you said, like with the conferences and stuff, and the ability to share and with these tools itself, like this kind of conferences already knew. So I guess it's an appreciation for where we've come to. Yeah, it's not like we've we've come somewhere to write to be able to do this. Now.
Marco Campana 47:21
I'm gonna push back, because it's not new. It's 30 years old, right. People have been talking about and using this technology forever. It's new to us, because a lot of us were forced into it. It's not new in the language sector for sure. It's not new in the settlement sector mosaic talked about I think, 2009 that you've been using technology? Well, I sense has been doing it since 2007. You know, Kosti and Toronto has been doing it since 2000. And what 13 I mean, there's, there's just like so much that's been done. But what we don't do is share it and then replicate it. Right. So if you think about settlement pre arrival online, that is I sands system, on a pre arrival scale scaled across the country with different providers. Finally, we did something right, we didn't just try to reinvent the system, we looked at it and said, Hey, your system works well. Maybe we should replicate that in a few other places and see how that works. It's even even like online meetings and things like that these aren't new, these are new to us in some ways, but they're not new technologically, they've just become easier, right? They've just become faster and simpler and more stable. And I think that that's something that's really important to point out. There's tons of lessons we can look back and learn from, which is, again, what we've done in some of the research. This is a 20 year old conversation in our sector in terms of like hardcore research. And I like to joke that every five years or so IRCC funds, another set of research that says basically the same things, do it but fun to correctly support the sector. And then they're like, Okay, and then five years later, they asked for the same research to be done. Now, pandemic was supposed to be a game changer around this. So in theory, like I showed you, they are talking about now a vision for digital services delivery. We're not sure where that's at yet. But it has to come with investments. And it has to come with baselines, and that's baselines in infrastructure, at baseline and competencies, baselines and abilities as well as baselines in time for that kind of knowledge, reflection and sharing, for example. So not a new conversation, but one that we're hoping we'll finally actually get some steam and move forward with. Because as as your your colleague pointed out, this whole digital thing isn't new just to our sector, right? It's a digital economy. Newcomers are coming in and need to be ready to be able to work in the digital sphere to bank in the digital sphere to access digital and virtual health, for example. And so we have a role to play when it comes to not just sharing content, but digital inclusion, digital equity, all of those pieces as well. Sorry, I could rant on about this stuff forever. But maybe I'll take some more questions instead.
Unknown Speaker 49:47
Yeah, does anyone have any other questions? I have. Jeremy, if you don't mind, Michael is great presentation. I think you described the ideal world of sharing for us, just based on your experience and What is your suggestion? My question is very similar to ask that question. So and have, you know, central website of central database to share the resources. But who do you think need to be in charge of this central shared place finder? As POS or consultant? What is spice?
Marco Campana 50:19
Vos? SPO is of course not going, Oh, God, no, don't give it to consultants. The funders should fund it. consultant should be consulted when necessary to provide whatever is needed, whether it's tech development or other things. But it needs to be owned and driven by the sector. I mean, to tele in theory is your home right now? Right? It should be the place where all of this stuff happens. And if it's not meeting the needs, then that needs to be kind of worked on and figured out. But the sector, you know, in the same way that settlement has been created for the settlement side of the sector as a community of practice. And right now, it's not meeting everybody's needs. So what do we need to do as a sector to move that forward? If we just sort of Hive off into separate communities of practice, all we're going to be doing is that whole divide and conquer approach, right? If you have something that exists and is doing the job, how can we improve it needs to be owned by the sector needs to be funded over the long term and committed to funded by the funder and consultants and tech support and developers need to be brought in when necessary, which in the technology space is, you know, frequently, right? You don't just build it, you continue to develop it, you tweak it, you improve it, you learn from new users, and you you you make it better. And sometimes you switch the technology entirely when when there's new technology that can do what you're trying to do better. And that's, you know, that's a legitimate sort of thing to do. But that, that needs to be owned by the by the sector of I suppose, absolutely,
Unknown Speaker 51:39
God, how to maintain it. So if it's owned, you know, and taken care of by the individual, as to how to get the long term funding is whether
Marco Campana 51:48
or not by an individual it needs to be owned. It's a collaborative approach, right? Obviously, one organization is going to is going to run it, but it needs to have the governance infrastructure to be responsive and receptive to the sector so that it's driven by the sector. Right. So again, I don't know what to tell this framework is, but the subtle net governance structure has, you know, the heads of all the major umbrella organizations and a few individual, large service providers that are driving the governance of that. And so you want to have a model that has accountability for sure. To the sector.
Unknown Speaker 52:21
Yeah. Thank you, Micah. Robert, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 52:26
Thanks, Michael. It's a really informative presentation, I just had a question with regard to content, content development, open source, and kind of being paid for that work or to be because a lot of a lot of the content that that we can share now has, has been created by payment for a different service or for a particular project? And then let's share that now with with our community. So where do you see that balance of if there's content that's required or needed in the community? You know, getting getting somebody to, to pay for that, that content development, and then being able to amplify that share that with the community?
Marco Campana 53:09
Yeah, I mean, most of the content development happens through government funding, or through other other other kinds of funding. And so the organization has to itself and the project people have to themselves be committed from the get go to some form of open sharing, right? Whether it's open educational resources, or creative commons, or whatever the case might be. The funders, also, the funders have to recognize that what they're funding needs to also be shared. So that, you know, you were talking about that conversation with government funders understanding what open working means, you know, in our sector, those investments still need to come from IRCC and other other levels of government, whether it's provincial, federal, municipal, you know, foundations, even crowdfunding, right? If you even if you're if you're crowdfunding, or you're getting corporate sponsorship, you know, again, the organization should be committed to sharing those resources out openly after is what I believe not everybody believes that. But I think that's what's important. Because it's, that's the only way we can move forward collaboratively. So I think that that that has to be kind of a baked in commitment. groups, like IRCC can bake that right into their contracts is that this will be shareable after. So that's, that's kind of a no brainer. At this point. It's it's contractually each possible to do that. If that helps, if that answers your question.
Unknown Speaker 54:22
Yeah. And then how do you kind of keep tabs as to where that content ends up? And, you know, with open source, some of the some of the pushback has been well, other people are adopting it and charging for it and amplifying it.
Marco Campana 54:35
And that happens if you have complete copyright over something already. So that's to me, that's a non starter argument. It's the same. It's the same thing that I hear from the settlement sector, oh, if we gave it all our information away, people will come and access our services. And my pushback to that is one. I can take whatever you do right now, if I get my hands on it, and I can reuse it however I want, and you'll never know about, right? If we as a sector commit to open, we at least are committing to amplifying and you know, I'm acknowledging that you create it and then sharing back how I might have remixed or adapted it. People will always abuse that, that's not a reason to not to do it in the same way that I say to settlement organizations, if the only reason people are coming to you is for a resume template that you don't want to share publicly, then you suck at your services. Right? That's not That's not a service, I can go on the web right now. And I can download 500 Different resume templates, you know, I can get them from anywhere. That's why people aren't coming to you for service delivery, your role is to help them understand the Canadian context of creating that resume, why they shouldn't attach a picture to it or talk about their family or whatever the case might be. And then to move them through a job search delivery process. It's the the additional value add that you bring. It's not just, you know, content. It's why settlement.org never replaced any settlement services, because it's full of content. But people need the next step, which is a human interaction of how do I use this to further my career, get my kid into school, X, find a doctor, you know, all of those kinds of things. So when people abuse things they already do. So I'm personally not quite worried about that. Because in an open system, I'd rather have people sharing, and maybe it ends up somewhere, but you know, it already it already doesn't, I can download a video from YouTube and put it wherever I want, right. The technology to do that exists. It's it's yeah, it's to me, it's I don't mean to be dismissive, but I don't think it's a it's an argument that, that we should be focusing on. Because I think that it's happening already with with actually copyrighted content that, that we're not giving people permission to reuse. And I think that the problem with doing that is if we keep it hidden than we, then we lose all of the other aspects of the open side of things, right. Like right now, there's a conference happening in Metropolis, right? That if you're not there, you have no access to the materials. And you might see some PowerPoint slides after, but you don't record the videos and things like that. That's a heavily funded government funded conference. Everything that happens at that conference should be recorded and shared after it's absurd that it's not. And the fact that we've come out of the pandemic, and gone right back to the way we did things is ridiculous. Right? Like, it doesn't make any sense.
Whitney Loewen 57:06
Well, thank you, Marco. That's hugely inspiring, honestly. Sorry, to
Unknown Speaker 57:10
end on that note. No, no.
Whitney Loewen 57:11
If there was some sort of office we could elect you to I would be I would be sending you right up there. But project for another time.
Marco Campana 57:19
Thank you permission wants to be free. So let's let it
Whitney Loewen 57:21
absolutely yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point to what Metropolis right. We have coworkers right there right now I'm sure we all do. And what is it that they're learning? What sort of stuff will they be able to bring back to us? Like,
Marco Campana 57:31
you'll have a lunch and learn after and you can at least get some of it. But right.
Whitney Loewen 57:35
But that shouldn't even be necessary, right? We should be able to either just dial right in, or it should be something we can do on our own time on the couch and some squats. So yeah, a lot, a lot to think about there. Thank you so much.
Marco Campana 57:44
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, everybody. Yeah, this
Whitney Loewen 57:47
is wonderful. We're going to take just about a four minute break here. Just to let Donna and Jeremy get prepared for their next presentation on hybrid delivery. They're going to be starting at one o'clock. So take a short break and we'll be right back. Thank
Unknown Speaker 58:00
you