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Since September 2014, KS2 students and staff from the WOW Zone out of school learning centre in Wythenshawe have participated in the Global Partners Junior programme. The programme, run in association with the New York mayors office sees students from over 30 global cities meet weekly to collaborate on a shared curriculum that encourages learners to use technology in a creative way. Students from the WOW Zone have completed over 50 hours of learning based around this years central topic of sustainability. They have researched, discussed, designed and created action plans around this theme to directly impact upon their local and global communities in a positive way.

As part of the project, students have designed sustainable homes using the Home Design 3D App, explored and built worlds using Minecraft Edu, assessed their own impact on the environment using Commit2Act and pledged to make changes to improve their impact score. Students have been lucky enough to communicate and collaborate with peers from around the globe including those from Toronto and Sydney via web chat, FaceTime, Skype and letter. All of the work created has been shared using a password protected website meaning that students have not only learnt more about their own city but have been able to draw comparisons with others too.

One of their biggest successes to date saw students presenting their ideas about how to make the building that houses the WOW Zone more environmentally friendly. They created Keynote slides showcasing their research, suggestions and plans to the manager of the centre regarding recycling and measures they would like to see implemented. As a result the centre manager has pledged to purchase recycling bins and encourage all staff to ensure that they contribute positively to the centre’s sustainability.

Along their journey, students they have used Apple Macs and iPads to creatively record and transform their ideas. This technology has enabled them to adapt the curriculum and really be creative! Their multimedia presentations and other examples of their work can be found on the WOW Zone YouTube channel.

Students are currently researching urban gardens and are looking forward to visiting a local Geo-dome before the programme comes to an end in May 201

In the Beginning
It all Started with a phone conversation.
“Mr. Boll.”
“Yes?”
“This is Tanya, Dr. Koerschan’s secretary.”
“Yes?” Oh gosh, am I in trouble again?
“He would like to meet with you to discuss the most recent Horizon Report and how it relates
to technology at Concordia. As one of the Middle School Tech Coaches, he assumes you
have already read the report and have some thoughts. Can you meet right away?
‘Yes, of course.” I fibbed.
“Mr. Boll, one more thing.”
“Yes Tanya, what is it?”
“Dr. K is the head of school.”
“Yes, Tanya, I think I already knew that.”
After that conversation, I ran off to figure out what this whole Horizon Report was all about. It was very new to me and I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about.

THE HORIZON REPORT
In sum, the report finds twelve emerging technologies recognized across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving international school leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.
The international school version is found here:
http://www.nmc.org/publications/2014nmctechnologyoutlookisa

The Horizon Report teams consists of 40 or so subject matter experts from the various schools and organizations who contribute to the report. We are led through a contribution process via a group wiki ( http://isasia.wiki.nmc.org/Horizon+Topics ) where we review, add ideas and comment on the current trends put up by the Horizon Report editorial team. This is the heart of the process and by far the most interesting. We all waded into the world of digital strategies, enabling technologies, consumer technologies and their relationship to education.

Bringing the Horizon Report To Asian International Schools
After preparing for the meeting and discussing the report, I started exploring the idea of becoming a subject matter expert. Turned out one of our Concordia colleagues, Michael Lambert, was already a member of many years. At his suggestion, I decided to see if I could bring a Horizon report specific to Asian International Schools. The “I” quickly became a “we” when NIST International School in Bangkok, Thailand jumped on board. Ivan Beeckmans, the digital literacy coach there, took the lead for his school.
Thanks to our combined efforts, we managed to pull in a total of eight international schools and four organizations to be part of the process and contribute the brains needed to make it all happen.

The process concluded in the summer and a set of forecasts and predictions was set forth.

The table below highlights the specific predictions and compares them to the predictions of other Horizon Reports from other areas.

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Time to Adoption: One Year or Less (Cloud Computing, Gamification, Makerspaces, Mobile Apps)

In China we find cloud computing to be challenging. While there is access to local cloud servers in China, many of the cloud storage systems, such as Google, are blocked. This puts us a bit behind other international schools in the rest of Asia.

Gamification is starting to emerge more in the classroom. Website, ipads and other connected devices frequently offer gaming as part of the learning process. Students greatly value the instant feedback these games provide them.

Makerspaces are becoming more and more common and schools are discussing redesigns to their existing structures to accommodate learning and design centers. Ironically this type of hands on learning was common place in the past with auto shop, woodshop and other similar programs. It fell out of fashion, but is now returning with the emphasis on how tinkering and hands on work contributes to great design.

Mobile apps are very common already and will likely continue to be so.There is a proliferation of mobile apps and at this point, many of us find the choices overwhelming. In time, winners will emerge and the selection may narrow. However, the barrier to entry to create a mobile app is so low, innovative ideas will continue to bubble up.

Time to Adoption: Two to Three Years (3D Printing, Learning Analytics, MOOC, Personal Learning Environment)
Many schools have 3D printers, but they are often rudimentary in their uses. Simple designs such as characters and symbols are the norm. Software support is fantastic, but the more
sophisticated printers are still expensive. This will surely change as prices come down and we find ourselves going from printing cute toys to printing more sophisticated items with moving parts inside.

Learning analytics and personal learning environments are exciting and promising opportunities. Teachers are limited in our ability to truly understand how well each of our
students is doing in more than the broadest sense. A handful of services, such as Khan Academy, provide our students with an adaptive learning experience based on learning analytics. Other apps, such as Exit Ticket allow us to capture student impressions and
thoughts and display them on a dashboard interface where, over time, we can spot trends and patterns with how students engage with assignments and more.

Do you MOOC much? Many of us have heard of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course); at the outset it seemed as if they would take over education. That reality has not happened (yet?), and the MOOC narrative now talks of very low completion rates. However, with classes
sizes in the hundreds of thousands, MOOC’s do fill a niche and even at an 8% average completion rate, that is still a very large number.

Time to Adoption: Four to Five Years (The Internet of Things, Virtual and Remote Labs, Virtual Reality, Wearable Technology)
Many people, not surprisingly, are not sure what the Internet of things really means. It refers to items such as a thermostats, coffee makers, etc., that will have a connection to the Internet. From a remote location you can tell your heater to turn on, your coffee pot to start, or your child to be less grumpy. Ok, I am kidding about the last one. While I agree this will be a reality, I struggle with how it will be used in the classroom. I am confident, though, people Far smarter than I will find wonderful uses in the way these devices connect.

A remote laboratory would be fantastic. Being able to join a doctor during a surgery or an archaeologist during a dig would bring unforeseen benefits to our students and how they relate to the material they are studying.

We have all likely heard of and thought of virtual reality. Star Trek fans think fondly of the Holodeck that allowed characters to visit any type of location and environment. Taking our students on virtual field trips and viewing reenactments of historical events as if they were there is too exciting to imagine!

Wearable technology is already here and getting better. Smart watches are becoming more popular and the data we can pull from it is awe inspiring. Already we can see uses for it in physical education where they gather data about student heart rates. With wearable devices, instructors will access a dashboard in front of them loaded with data about students. Imagine the potential to adjust lessons to fit individual needs. So there you have it, a rundown of the Horizon Report targeted at international schools in Asia. We learned so much from the experience and I now feel confident talking to my current head of school should he call me into his office and ask what this Horizon Report thing is all about.

Interested in becoming part of the next version? Contact Michael Boll
( Michael.Boll@concordiashanghai.org ) to express your interest.

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In my experience learnt helplessness is particularly prevalent in Computing/ICT. In the last three years I have taught nothing but computer science in six primary schools, over 1200 hours and have seen learnt helplessness in varying degrees in all of my schools.

In this article I will look at what learnt helplessness is and how it will manifests in computing lessons. I will also suggest reasons as to why pupils have learnt this strategy and offer ways to promote independence, resilience and problem solving. I will also look at how learnt helplessness can also manifest in teachers and teaching support staff and suggest ways to help them move on.

Learnt helplessness is a strategy for getting other people to solve problems for you. In the classroom, for pupils, these others may be the teacher, LSA, classroom assistant or other pupils.

In computing/ICT learnt helplessness can be seen in various ways. Sweet helplessness often manifests to the teacher as a pupil putting on a sweet helpless voice and declaring they are stuck. Aggressive helplessness manifests with a cross tone and the implication that they think the work is ‘stupid’ or they don’t get it. Being stuck is never a problem but if you ask what they are stuck on and the pupil cannot tell you or describe the problem or they give vague indications that they are stuck on everything then there is a good chance they are using learnt helplessness to get you to solve their problem. Similar strategies will often be used with their peers, tailored to make the problem solver feel valued, superior or pressured into helping.

The problem is that many teachers and pupils will respond to this strategy in Computing/ICT by solving the problem for the pupil. Often excellent teachers, who wouldn’t dream of doing work for pupils in other areas of the curriculum, will jump in and solve the problem for the pupil. The fact that so many pupils use learnt helplessness suggests that it has been a successful strategy for many.

Getting someone else to do your work for you would be an issue in any subject, but it is the antithesis of computing science with its emphasis on problem solving and debugging. In fact to solve a problem for a child is to deny them the opportunity to debug code or fix algorithm and as such is debilitating.

How has it become so prevalent in computing/ICT? I suspect that it has grown out of teacher fear or unfamiliarity with the subject material coupled with a belief that pupils know more about technology than adults combined with an emphasis on the finished product rather than the process. All of these factors lead teachers to fix things for pupils rather than steer them to find solutions for themselves.

If we recognise this as an issue, how can we counter this and encourage resilience and problem solving?

1. Recognising that this as an issue is the first step. We can’t effect any change without recognising that something needs to change.

2. It helps to know that this will take time both to change your own practice and move pupils onto better strategies. I estimate it took me several months to change my own practice and about five weeks to change pupils in KS2 where learnt helplessness had become a way of life.

3. It is very important to establish a positive class attitude towards problem solving. Computing science is very useful in that it calls errors bugs and finding errors debugging. Although all bugs are caused by humans, the language is much more impersonal than mistakes which imply blame or fault. Using bug and debugging language is helpful. It is also important to let pupils know that mistakes/bugs are a normal part of computing, that they are to be expected, that professional programmers write code that have bugs all the time and that you will not be cross or upset if their work has bugs/mistakes. This for me is a mantra for new classes for the first few weeks and once they know I mean it there is collective sigh of relief!

4. Alongside this I also promote the idea that it is not my job to fix their algorithms or debug their code. It is my job to promote useful strategies that they can use to fix things themselves. So when they come to me they know they are looking for strategies to find and fix things themselves.

5. For those pupils transitioning from learnt helplessness to useful problem solving they need to see what they are doing. I have asked pupils; ‘are you trying to get me to fix your code?’ ‘Are you trying to get me to solve the problem for you?’ In the same way that we couldn’t move on until we recognised the issue, some pupils won’t either. Of course good teachers do this tactfully and with regards to pupils known issues but an element of challenge is inevitable to identify the issue.

6. Encourage the class to join you in this by putting a ban on doing things for other people. They can describe what to do but are not allowed to do it for them or give them a full solution to programming solutions. As you model this they will reflect this attitude to their peers. Having a ban on touching anyone else’s mouse, keyboard or touchscreen is a good start. I often compare this to writing in someone else’s maths or literacy exercise book.

7. Move pupils away from language that personifies digital machines. “My computer hates me,” is typical. Miles Berry describes computers as deterministic which means that if all the inputs are the same you will always get the same output. Personification encourages pupils to think that an answer might not be available due to the capriciousness of the machine, an attitude that is anti problem solving and frankly incorrect.

8. Don’t neglect the other adults in the class, all your good work could be being undone by your LSA or classroom assistant. Train them to help using good strategies and hints rather than solutions. If you are providing training on the new curriculum don’t neglect your class room assistants, they are important.

Finally you may notice learnt helplessness in teachers and learning support assistants. Is it worth the hassle to challenge this? As a parent I know that my children don’t do what I say but what I do. I lead mostly by example or lack of it as my wife will testify. This is just as true in the classroom or computer suite. Of course we need to be tactful and recognise the good practice of teachers and the excellent problem solving strategies in other curriculum areas, but if we don’t identify the problem, nothing will change. I have found that talking about my own struggle to change has enabled others to do likewise.

This corner is allocated to an inspirational person who has contributed to the educational technology community to tell us about themselves. Please meet Katherine Childs, Educational Technologist who works for Derbyshire Primary Schools in the UK.

My first encounter with computers was playing  a game called Hunt the Wumpus on a BBC Micro computer. My dad was a Maths teacher at a secondary school and he used to bring the departmental computer home in the holidays .  I then went on to code my own simple games  in BASIC from books and learned the hard way that the code was stored in RAM when we had a power cut and I lost a game that was 75% complete!

Computers were always something that my generation did as a hobby though – and gradually school subjects took over. Studying Computing in school wasn’t an option, and with no Internet connections in homes or schools (can you imagine life without the internet now?!) there was no one to talk to about computers either. So I followed an Arts path, studying Music and Foreign Languages.

It was only when did work experience and subsequently had a job that I realised that I had a knack with computer systems. I tended to pick things up more quickly than other people, and while I didn’t understand everything, I was the go-to person for technical queries . The company I was working for paid me to do a degree in IT & Computing, which was a complete change from what I had done before. I worked full-time and studied part-time with the Open University, learning programming languages such as Smalltalk, C++ and Javascript, and graduated with a first-class honours degree.

I have to hold my hands up and say I’ve never coded anything of importance though – and I think that’s because the link between education and application in the real world was never quite there. But now, with the new Computing curriculum, children have the opportunity to learn coding from a young age. The collaborative nature of coding means that it has a cross-curricular appeal. You can’t code on your own – even if you write all the code on your own, you still need someone else to test it. Coding also offers a unique opportunity for creativity that I don’t think can be found anywhere else in the curriculum, except for maybe music. When you have a piano keyboard in front of you, what you create with the notes is up to you. When you have a coding environment, you have the tools to use, but how you put them together is again your choice.

On St Pancras station concourse there are a couple of pianos which any member of the public can go and play. When I arrived in London this afternoon, one of the pianos was free so I sat down and played some music by Adele. I was feeling pretty happy about that – until I then walked up the concourse and found the other piano being played by a gentleman who had actually drawn a crowd of people stopping to listen to him playing some Liszt! As a child, I stumbled around with coding but never had the chance to learn it from anyone else – I see my role now as passing on the baton to the next generation of children who are getting fantastic opportunities to create, collaborate and code. I’m sure they will soon overtake me and become the coding equivalent of the concert pianists of their generation!”

by Lisa Whittaker, teacher at the WOW Zone

Placing emerald blocks, crafting tables and using a furnace are not ordinarily things that you would associate with primary-aged children. However, on the October 27th MinecraftEdu workshops hosted by The WOW Zone in Wythenshawe, this is exactly what over 30 young people did!

The WOW Zone is Wythenshawe Community Housing Group’s learning centre that works with local schools on a variety of exciting, creative, technology-based projects. The WOW Zone team aims to raise children’s aspirations and equip them with the knowledge and skills to enter this modern age of computing. The feedback from this event, from both children and parents, proves how relevant an event like this really is. Mark, a parent from Wythenshawe, said:

‘Athena and Zanthe enjoyed the Minecraft workshop immensely. It’s great to see such forward thinking ideas that will introduce kids to the world of code, whilst allowing them to socialise and share ideas.’
minecraft2The event, run by TeacherGaming, was part of their European tour, and saw children working collaboratively to navigate through the virtual world, build houses and program turtles. Mikael Uusi-Mäkelä, Learning Designer at TeacherGaming said:

‘Compared to all of the other places I’ve been on the tour, the room was very well equipped and the group actually worked well as a group, as opposed to working individually.’

Construction of a virtual house is much more complex than you might first imagine. Initially, student’s inventories were bare. They had to ‘mine’ for raw materials, and combine those materials to create new ones, thus learning about manufacturing processes and skills. Approaching Minecraft in an educational setting, using structured guidance, enabled the children to be creative without being destructive.
Daniel (aged 11) said:minecraft1
‘It’s fun, it’s great and it helps educate!’
Primary school teachers are now expected to deliver programming and coding sessions as part of the new Computing Curriculum. MinecraftEdu covers objectives linked with coding in a discrete way, so that children don’t even realise that they are learning. The sessions highlighted the children’s natural affinity to the language of code.

Chris Jones, Computing & Solutions Expert for over 20 years, said:
‘They [children] take to it like a duck to water. I’ve never seen kids so excited and enthusiastic about anything before.’

The WOW Zone are proud to have been the North-West host on this tour, and will continue to deliver high-quality MinecraftEdu sessions as part of their unique offer to schools.

by Yasemin Allsop

I am aware that the computer science aspects of the new computing curriculum creates extra work for some teachers as they need to learn many unfamiliar concepts. I know this can be challenging and time consuming, but I think we are very fortunate because there is a vast range of free programming environments /apps available for teachers to use for teaching computer science elements to children. What we need to remember is that the program itself doesn’t just make children develop computational thinking, the context we use, the pedagogical approach we employ shapes the learning experience of our students.

On the next page I have shared a simple activity which can be used as a main task or as an assessment task at the end of a coding session. The aim is to support children to design solutions for a specific purpose by selecting and using correct blocks in a sequence. These activities can encourage them to think in logical steps which is the main foundation of problem solving skills and at the same time provide opportunities for peer or whole class discussions.

Before this task there are some hands-on activities that you can do with children that will help them to design and use algorithms, which is a key element of programming. You could:
1-Ask the children to design their own dance routines in small groups on paper. Then let them try out each others dance algorithms. Remind them to use functions such as ‘repeat’, ‘If’, and ‘forever’.

2-Download the vector version of standard Scratch Blocks created by Paul Heather from the link below:
http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/vector-scratch-blocks
Print the cards and laminate them. You can use these cards to practice specific actions with the children before moving onto the on-screen program. The children can work in small groups to give instructions to each other using the Scratch cards.

An example solution for the dance task can be seen at: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/43629216/

Click here to download the ‘Let’s Dance’ task in pdf

GOBO 1

The first teachmeet in the capital of Norway took place early in January, in the University of Oslo. Forty teachers and some representatives from ed-tech related businesses and startups attended, many more watched the live stream. This is part of a strategy to bring teachers and developers together in an ed-tech cluster, and a decent way to kick off a new year.
A teachmeet is a good way to meet other teachers, share practices and get updates on educational technologies. There is an abundance of excellent ideas and relevant technology out there, but content in school does not change by itself. Enthusiasts and professionals need support and motivation to keep up their good work. Distances in Norway can be difficult to overcome. The distance from Oslo to the Russian border equals a trip from London to Istanbul, and since there are far less people living there – they seldom meet.

The teachmeet in Oslo was organised by Digitalpedagogene, the Norwegian answer to CAS and similar organisations and companies who train teachers in technology and pedagogics. There are two different types of teacher educations in Norway, the Universities and the “lærerskole”, academies who are less oriented towards research. Both Universities and Academies are having a hard time keeping up with the development, and this is one of the reasons why private companies like Digitalpedagogene are in demand.

Building an arena for ICT in schools is important to the Oslo region. Every year, swarms of Norwegians seek out the BETT show in London – to get new impulses from abroad, but first of all to meet other Norwegians who are interested in school and technology. Some are there to sell, some are fierce network builders, and some are just there to hang out, but in the end, they are all part of a movement who agree about one thing: there is an urgent need for change in education, and ICT is bound to play an important role. The emerging coding movement, “Lær kidsa koding”, has also had an important impact.

norway1

First, there was an interesting introduction from a local celebrity. Professor Sten Ludvigsen, head of the advisory commission working on “framtidens skole”, the future of Norwegian schools, presented his views on what direction he would recommend to the politicians. A short resume: Cross- curriculum and problem based learning, self-regulation and collaboration – everything normally associated with the 21st century skills movement – is the recipe to success and innovation. It remains to be seen if politicians will choose to listen to Ludvigsen, one can only hope.
Norwegian schools have a tradition for being progressive and student centred, but the last ten years have been different. Old fashioned governance of schools and increased focus on teach-to-test has cemented the contents in schools, forcing teachers to take responsibility for school development themselves. The national authorities have also delegated responsibility for schools to a communal level, which has led to bad investments, confusion and increasing differences. As a result of this system failure, teachers went through a bitter strike last year, and the wounds between school leadership and teachers still need some mending.

A teachmeet must be both informal, informative and entertaining, but nobody expects anyone to have the qualities of a stand-up comedian and a professor in education sciences at the same time. Still, those attending, got excellent presentations on gaming, Arduino and robotics, the use of iPad in music lessons, Minecraft in kindergartens and how to use fan-art as a learning method. There was enough content for several teachmeets, and there is hopefully still more to come.

This was the first teachmeet in Oslo, and there will be many more. Once the word spreads, and more teachers loosen up to the concept, there might be hope that a new tradition has been born.

On 18th October Staplehurst School celebrated Code Week UK in style with our 2nd U Can Too – Mozilla Maker Party.  We saw visitors not only from our own school, but many schools from the local area, as well as schools from as far afield as Snodland, Romford in Essex, and Surrey. We even had two lovely visitors from Korea, who were performing government research on the UK Computing Curriculum.

U Can Too was so busy that we couldn’t register everyone who walked through our doors, but we do know that we had more than 350 who came along and gave coding a go at our event.  We were exceptionally lucky to be invited to apply for a grant from Google, even luckier to win that grant!  Our 1st U Can Too event saw just under 100 people attend, so we increased our publicity campaign and added many new activities; both enabled by the funding from Google.  With such an increase in numbers attending we were pleased that we made the right decisions and thoroughly excited to see families working together to create so many different coding based projects and having so much fun.

Our activities were very varied, including unplugged coding activities, like our giant version of Robot Turtles as well as the more obvious choices, such as Scratch.  We also had activities that we made ourselves with some good old-fashioned wood, these were very popular, especially our ‘Crack the Code’ game and our ‘Sphero Maze Challenge’ both of which our Code Club got the chance to get in on the coding.

Here are some of the other activities that our visitors spent their 2 hours doing: Giant Voice Controlled Human Crane, Life-Size Robot Turtles board game, Mozilla X-Ray Goggles, Sphero Maze Challenge, Sphero Arena, FUZE Raspberry Pi’s, Code Club Scratch Creation – Crack the Code, Scratch programming, Scratch Jr, Looming with algorithms, Zu3D Animations, Soldering, Minecraft, Lilypad eSewing, Electric Paint.  We also had a shop and an eSafety area.

There is more info on our event blog, please find the link below:
http://www.staplehurstschool.co.uk/school-events.php

As well as our U Can Too event we got up to many other activities during Code Week UK.  We delivered training to parents sharing with them several of the programming tools that are available to their children at home, we took our Digital Leaders along to present an ‘unplugged’ coding workshop at Code Week UK’s London event, which was an amazing experience for us all and our Key Stage 2 children presented an eSafety Expo, including acting, singing and debates on a variety of eSafety topics.  As well as all this our Code Club and Digital Leaders had some extra special sessions during Code Week UK.  Code Club were visited by Vicki from FUZE who delivered a fantastic workshop using FUZE Basic to Code Raspberry Pi’s and controlled a robotic arm using the Raspberry Pi.  Whilst our Digital Leaders were visited by Lego Education for a Lego WeDo workshop challenge, our DLs worked in pairs to see who could make their Lego WeDo Motorized Spinning Tops spin for the longest… it was a tie, Samantha and Eleanor v Sam and James.  It was impossible to tell which finished first when both spinning tops stopped in unision!

As you can tell, we had a very busy week exploring the world of coding, and most importantly we loved every minute of it!

Our U Can Too event, was the biggest part of our Code Week UK endeavours.  We are very proud of the success of our event (and the week in general) and attribute much of it’s success to the funding provided by Google.  With this in mind we would like to say a huge thank you for your invitation to apply for it and also your support for our involvement in Code Week UK.  I am still working on creating a video of the DLs review, I should have it done for you by the end of the week.  In the meantime, here is a short review from one of our DLs about our presentation at your London event:

James says:

“CODE WEEK UK on 15th October
This activity was very fun. I particularly enjoyed talking to Ross and Mathew who were computer scientists, as well as teaching grownups our unplugged activity. Ross & Matthew taught me that there are different ways of sorting which are quite exiting. If I was offered the opportunity, I would definitely do this activity again. It was very informative. Personally I think it would be a school trip that all of Year 6 would enjoy, but it would be too crowded. If next year’s Digital Leaders are given the opportunity to represent us again, I would say, go ahead, it’s a great experience!”

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