Below is a blog post by DBC/IMpress author George Couros author of best-selling books Innovate Inside the Box and Innovator’s Mindest. George talks about how to write start a blog and write consistently, which is a great habit to start in 2020!

As many educators are either on their summer break or about to enter it, I know many are looking for great books to read.  This is great, but as we hope for our students, consumption should not be the only focus, but creation as well.  If you are looking to read, how will you connect the information you consume and dig deeper?

For this, blogging is a great tool not only to synthesize your learning but to also catalog it into a type of library.  Going through the process of writing “The Innovator’s Mindset” and finishing my second book, my blog was invaluable in finding great information from others that I had placed into my blog that I could reshare in a book. To find it, it was a simple as searching “George Couros + Search Term.”  For example, to assist others in their journey for blogging, I just Googled “George Couros Blogging” and found these old posts that may be able to assist you on your journey that I wrote previously:

3 Ways Blogging Has Helped me Grow as a Learner

3 Ideas to Help You Blog

5 Reasons Your Portfolio Should be a Blog

(For more articles, you can check out my “blogging” tag.)

But the process of blogging can be daunting (for many reasons) so how do I start?

Here are some of my suggestions for people that are either new to blogging or dusting off an old blog and want to recommit.

---

1. It doesn’t have to be a college essay.

I guess that most of my blog posts are under 500 words. Some aren’t,’ but that is okay as well because sometimes I need to dig deeper and I use blogging to not only share my learning but blogging as a way to learn.  But many get stuck in the idea that blog posts are like college essays and have to have a certain length before they are considered valid. I love short, quick blog posts, and to the point, but I also like ones that are longer and take a deeper dive into ideas — both work.  Sometimes when we focus on writing for length, it stops us from writing altogether. My rule; if I have something to write that doesn’t fit into a tweet, that’s a blog post. It doesn’t have to be much more, or it can be a lot more.

PS…It can be tweet length as well. Don’t get caught up in the idea “I haven’t written enough.”

 

2. You can reference other work or articles in your post and share a few short ideas.

When I read an excellent article or see a video I like, I want to commit the idea to my library of learning further.  Blogging about it not only “bookmarks” it for future use, but it allows me to process and better understand the ideas.

As in point one, it doesn’t have to be a long post to be valid.  Recently, I wrote the post “The Unbucket List,” which is a term I had never heard of before. It consisted of the following structure:

– Intro paragraph
– Quote from article
– Four more short paragraphs

That’s it.  That’s a blog post.  Not only did I get to highlight the work of someone else and a great idea, but the idea of the “Unbucket List” also will never leave me because I took the time to archive it in my blog, thus securing it in my brain.

 

3. Focus more on consistent release times, not on blogging all of the time.

This is a suggestion I have shared with many people looking to start a blog.  You may read this post and think, “I want to start this!” and then write five posts this week, and then not another for six months.  The lack of consistency is not beneficial to you, and in all honesty, does not help you build an audience.  Yes, I write for myself, but I do appreciate that others read it as well, as I think most people do.  I love this quote from Clive Thompson:

Here is a simple tip. Pick a day (or days) of the week that you will “release” a post. For example, I am going to release a post every Monday afternoon.  This will not only help you commit to reflect consistently, but it creates some accountability to yourself, just like going to the gym “x” times a week.  This is an appointment with yourself.  If you commit to every Monday afternoon, this doesn’t mean you have to commit to writing every Monday morning. Although I am writing this post on a Sunday, I am scheduling it to post on Tuesday afternoon as I commit to posting on Sunday morning, Tuesday afternoon, and Thursday afternoon.  You might want to post once a week, once every two weeks, or twelve times a year. Whatever combo works for you is the one that works for you.

Making a schedule with ourselves helps to improve consistency in the process.

 

4. Find a blog buddy.

I have several people who send me their posts when they are published.  Not only does this help them have some accountability to themselves, selfishly, but this also helps me grow as well.  Reading other people’s posts on education helps me grow personally, and I love what they share. People that share their posts with me consistently are Mike Washburn, Kat Goyette, and Annick Rauch. I assume they are learning through their process, but I love what they write, and their experience and wisdom help me grow as well.  Find someone to help you in the process as it is mutually beneficial.

---

Blogging has been one of the best, if not the best thing I have done my professional (and sometimes personal) growth in my career.  It makes me think about what I do and share, and it does not only help me dig deeper into ideas, but it archives those ideas for future thinking.  I hope that I have provided some advice that might help you on your journey, but remember, it is your journey. Do what works for you. The best part about blogging for me is that the process is my own to grow as it will be yours as well.  Find what works for you.

Below is a blog post from IMPress author A.J. Juliani, co-author of Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning. 

It is a simple question, but one that leads to all kinds of reactions: “Did you ask the teachers?”

Often times in a search for innovative ideas and programs, we miss a ridiculously important stakeholder: Teachers.

I know it sounds crazy, but after working in three different school districts (as well as interacting with thousands of teachers and hundreds of schools in the last few years), it is more common than you might think.

I remember the first time I made this mistake as a school leader.

We were rolling out open education resources (OER) for a new Math curriculum in our elementary schools. I was excited about the possibilities for revisiting curriculum that was dated and out-of-place in many respects. We put a new five-year cycle that had touchpoints each year for revising and improving the curriculum to make it more of a living document that was not set in stone.

I truly believed that we could use the precious funds currently used for buying programs, to actually help pay teachers to develop the resources and curriculum.

Everything was ready to go.

Then we had our first committee meeting (more on why I dislike committees in a moment). The committee was comprised of principals, a few teachers, coaches, and some central office staff. We even had a few parents and students in the group during our after-school meeting.

The conversation was wide-ranging and “in-theory” everyone agreed on moving forward with the OER process. Most of the folks were pumped about our next steps.

We started a few OER curriculum projects in the high school that were going well, backed by a few teachers that were content experts and ready to shape the process. They wanted to go in this direction.

Then in our first writing meeting with Elementary teachers, I could sense something was off.

No one was talking (except me of course). The room had a sense of doom in it.

Towards the end of the hour, I finally asked the question, “Is there something I’m missing?”

The silence was palpable.

Then one of the veteran teachers spoke up. She said, “I understand what we are trying to do here. And I appreciate moving away from our dated curriculum and textbooks, but…”

She paused for a moment.

“Did you ask the teachers?”

The question caught me so off guard, that I couldn’t answer for a moment.

I swore I would never be the administrator or school leader that forgot what it was like to be in the classroom. And, here I was, asking teachers to do something, that I had never even asked if they wanted to do, or believed was the right path forward.

I stumbled through a few sentences referring to the committee (which was K-12 and only had two elementary representatives) and then stopped.

“No, I’m sorry, we never really had that conversation. I never had that conversation.”

The teachers were great, and I asked if we could set up a follow-up meeting to discuss how much time (which they didn’t have) and effort/research (which would take a while) it would take to develop their own curriculum and resources.

In the following weeks, I didn’t just meet with that group, I spent time meeting with every elementary teacher in our school district who taught math. I wanted everyone to have a say, and committees did not provide that opportunity.

In our short small-group conversations (we met with grade levels at each school for 15-20 minutes) so many great insights came from our teachers.

While their perspective was varied, there was one consistent belief: It would take a lot of time to write their curriculum, let alone developing/choosing every single resource. They didn’t believe a textbook was the right way to go but creating everything in-house also seemed improbable for an entire K-5 Math program. 

They were right. I was wrong.

It wasn’t about OER (we had very successful OER projects run by teachers in our district). It was about the process.

I was wrong for not including them much earlier in the decision-making process. I was wrong for not asking a simple question, “What do you think we should do?”

I learned this lesson the hard way and have tried to include as many teacher voices, opinions, and ideas as possible in these decisions since that wake-up call.

THIS IS A BIGGER PROBLEM THAN I REALIZED

The Hechinger Report recently shared an interesting piece on the U.S. Education Department’s $1.5 billion “innovation” stimulus:

As part of the federal recovery effort to boost the economy after the 2008 recession, the U.S. Education Department suddenly had a big pot of money to give away to “innovations” in education. Since then, more than $1.5 billion has been spent on almost 200 ideas because Congress continued to appropriate funds even after the recession ended.

Only 12 of the 67 innovations, or 18 percent, were found to have any positive impact on student achievement, according to a report published earlier in 2018. 

“It’s only a handful,” said Barbara Goodson, a researcher at Abt Associates Inc., a research and consulting firm that was hired to analyze the results of the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund for the Department of Education. “It’s discouraging to everybody. We are desperate to find what works. Here was a program that was supposed to identify promising models. People are disappointed that we didn’t come up with 20 new models.”

“That’s the dirty secret of all of education research,” Goodson added. “It is really hard to change student achievement. We have rarely been able to do it. It’s harder than anybody thinks.” She cited a prior 2013 study that also found when education reforms were put to rigorous scientific tests with control groups and random assignment, 90 percent of them failed to find positive effects. 

When I read this story, I dug a bit deeper into the programs and ideas. Looked at the funding and also how the research decided what had “positive” impact or ROI (as the business-world calls it).

Turns out there was a big missing piece to many of these ideas, programs, and initiatives.

No one asked the teachers what they thought. Most hadn’t even included the teachers in any form of discussion prior to starting the program/initiative.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my time as a school leader, it is this:

New ideas started from the ground-up (with unwavering support from the top), are much more likely to have a positive impact than any other kind of initiative.

So, if this is true, how do we build this type of culture from the ground up? How can we empower teachers and students to share their ideas, to be creative, and to make sure they are valued?

IDEAS FROM TEACHERS, SUPPORTED BY ADMINISTRATORS

One of the best at this is the High School Principal at William Tennent (the district where I work). Dennis Best has seen what happens when he supports and helps to grow teacher’s ideas.

He valued our teacher’s ideas for an innovation program and supported CentennialX, our home-grown human-centered design program where students work side-by-side major companies and organizations to solve real-world problems.

In addition, our partnerships with companies, organizations, and institutions have grown with teachers and students working alongside people from:

• The Character Lab (Angela Duckworth’s team is doing action research in our schools and working with our teachers and students around grit and character)
• Drexel University (our students go to Drexel Med to work on real cadavers)
• The University of Pennsylvania (our biology and psych students work with lab rats and we recently built a lab with real rats in our HS)
• St. Joseph’s University (our students work with undergrad students who are performing neurosurgery)
• Fox Chase Cancer Center (the TRIP program and our Genetics of Cancer course)
• ShopRite (we have a Shoprite store in our HS where students work at and the community shops at)
• Eli Lilly and PRA Health Sciences (sponsored student challenges for our design teams to solve real medical problems while in school)
• MIT Cycling Team (our students developed a new cycling performance sock for the MIT Team during CentennialX)

Amidst all of these innovative opportunities, the teaching and learning continued at WTHS. There was not a huge reform movement that had to stop everything we were doing to start something new. The change happened from within and took place while life went on.

Recently WTHS took this approach a step further with their Teacher Innovation Pitch.

First, Dennis and his administrative team identified the areas of innovation, growth, and success at William Tennent High School. They noticed that many of these areas were started by staff and supported by the administration.

Yet, they were still in pockets and wanted more teachers to feel empowered to have ideas and try something new with their students or in their own professional journey.

Enter the Teacher Innovation Pitch.

Last spring, teachers had the opportunity to pitch their ideas to their colleagues and administration.

The goal is to further empower our teachers to:

• Take instructional risks and feel free to make mistakes and get better.
• Innovate as you might see fit given the current constraints.
• Develop and leverage partnerships to provide opportunities for students to participate in authentic, real-world learning experiences.

The question I keep coming back to again and again is: “Did you ask the teachers?”

And why wouldn’t we? Teachers are with students every day. They see things from all kinds of perspectives. They live in the practice of teaching and learning, not just the theory of teaching and learning.

When we included the teachers in the decision-making process, or better yet, started with the teachers for ideas to teach/learn better, it now became a team initiative. Everyone was involved, and everyone wanted it to succeed for our kids.

It sounds simple, but might just be the most profound thing we can do as leaders. Ask a teacher, see what they think, and then give them space and support to create something worth doing.

Below is a post from Katie Martin, IMpress Author of the incredible book Learner-Centered Innovation. We are also excited to announce that Katie’s book is coming out on Audiobook in 2020!

A few years ago at the San Diego Equity Symposium, I got to hear Liz Murray tell her story about growing up homeless to graduating from Harvard. Through her incredible life story, she highlighted that the experience of an individual isn’t black and white. She shared many struggles of growing up with parents who were addicts but also the love she had for her family. It is easy to put people in a box- “low performing” “low socioeconomic status (SES)”, “Gifted”, language learner and so many other labels and categories that we use in education but fail to tell the story of the kids in our classes.  There are strengths and opportunities that exist alongside great challenges for all of us.

Liz shared a specific story of how a researcher tried to convince her that she had suppressed her anger because she chooses to not to blame her parents. After listening to him and his research. she responded, “You can read and research anything you want but it doesn’t replace my experience.”  Her point, that is important for all educators, was that just because the trends in research tell us that groups of people tend to act a certain way or experiences will impact us in a certain way, or even that specific strategies are better for learners, there is no substitute for getting to really know people and all their complexities to determine the best way forward.  We can learn so much by trying to see the world through our student’s eyes and understanding who they are and who they want to be.

Here are 4 things that are important to consider as you get to know those you serve this year. 1) check your assumptions, 2) ask questions, 3) believe in them and 4) meet them where they are.

Check Your Assumptions

We can’t assume that we know individuals or understand their experiences because we have read the research or they fit into a specific category. The truth is we all belong to many categories and have vast experiences and circumstances that make us unique. We are consumed with grades, test scores, and data but we have to remember that they don’t tell the whole story, and they rarely inspire learners to wonder, create and do work that is meaningful and relevant to them and of service to others. To go beyond labels, and to cultivate a sense of belonging and purpose, we must create the opportunities to get to know learners, their passions, their challenges, and their goals.

Our brains make generalizations to make sense of the world but when you want to build relationships and get to know individuals you have to be careful with this and check your assumptions. Sometimes it is simply assuming you know one student because you had their older sibling or know the family.  Too often, we judge people by how they look, how they talk.  When we have data, we can falsely assume they tell the story of an individual. When students don’t do homework, act out, or are apathetic in class, we can assume they don’t care.  Even from well-intentioned educators, I still hear too often, those are the “bad kids” or “these kids don’t care.” Instead of assuming that students don’t want to learn, could we ask, What might be preventing students from learning in school?

Seek to Understand

If getting to know the learner’s strengths and challenges is the goal, I would argue that sometimes the most valuable data you can gather is through actual input from students. Seeking to understand others begins with asking questions. Beyond asking, we need to make sure we are listening to truly understand the complexities that make up the stories to understand the experience of those we serve. Here are some questions I suggested in a post, Why we should stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. These would also be great questions for administrators to ask teachers.

• What are interested in?
• What do you love to do?
• What makes you happy?
• When do you feel like you are successful?
• How do you like to work/play with others?
• What do you want to learn more about?
• What is important to you?
• What makes it hard to learn/ do you work?

To add to these, here are some great questions from Pernille Ripp to ask families and guardians, too. Beyond asking the questions, fostering relationships among the community is also powerful. Create opportunities for students to ask each other questions, ask you questions, ask the community. We make a lot of assumptions about what others want and most of the time it’s just better to ask.

Believe in People

If we really want to create learning environments in our schools where all learners are valued and seen as capable of achieving desired outcomes, we have to begin with the belief that they can.  When we believe that people can do something we act in a way that makes that outcome more likely. We need to believe in our students and help them to believe in themselves and see what is possible.

In 2013, researchers conducted a study on feedback in middle school classrooms. They found that there was one phrase that improved student effort and performance so much that they deemed the following phrase “magical.”

I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.

When students received this feedback they chose to revise their paper more often that students who did not (a 40 percent increase among white students; 320 percent boost among black students) and improved their performance significantly.

Meet Learners Where They Are

It’s important to have high expectations but you also have to recognize that people will need a variety of supports to get there.  Having taught middle school, I have heard every excuse and quirky young adolescent drama possible.  I would love to say that all changes as we grow up but having taught many graduate classes for teachers, I have yet to have a semester where I didn’t have multiple teachers turn in work late, they often need accommodations, were late for class or struggled with assignments.  I always try my best to meet them where they are and support them to meet the expectations.

I know some of these same teachers demanded homework on time and didn’t allow students to make up or revise work. Think about how often we hold kids to expectations that we can’t always meet as adults. Life can be challenging and you never know what is happening in someone’s life and how powerful of an impact you can make by empathizing with their situation and showing them some grace.  If they need a paper or pencil, why not just give it to them. If they need more help, more time, or just someone to talk to, consider the impact you can make by meeting them where they are.  Hopefully, someone will do it for you when you need it, too.

Liz reminded us during her talk, that our actions, our interactions or lack of them, matter every day. You always make a difference.  It’s up to you to decide if it’s a positive or negative.

Below is a blog post by DBC/IMpress author George Couros author of best-selling books Innovate Inside the Box and Innovator’s Mindest.

Notice the title of the post…”The Importance of Classroom Observations.”

When you hear the term, do you think of observing and evaluating teachers or of the logistics of the space?

To me, the term means something different, and it is more of an evaluation of administration than it is of teachers.

Let me explain…

When I worked as a principal and eventually at central office, I would often take my laptop into classrooms with the permission of a teacher and simply sit in the back of a class and answer email or complete documents that I needed for my work.  I would spend easily 2-3 hours in a classroom, and I would often explicitly tell the teacher that I was not there to observe them, but the environment we helped create in the classroom to support them.

For example, I remember having a conversation with our IT department on how our computers only took two minutes to login. But that “two minutes” with 25 students in front of you and one of them going wrong could turn into 30 minutes, and eventually lead to a teacher not wanting to use them again. You see, the “two minutes” was the time it took a single adult.  When I noticed this, we had conversations on how we would lower the “login time” for technology (we moved to Chromebooks) to remove a barrier in the classroom for all of our teachers so they could see more success in the process.

“Class size” may seem inconsequential until you sit in a classroom for two hours and notice that it does have an impact on meeting the needs of individual students.

Seating in a classroom may seem insignificant until you have to sit at the same desk a students does for multiple hours in a day.

If you are in a role that makes decisions for what the environment looks like in a classroom, you need to be present in those classrooms.  Teaching might seem like a singular responsibility, but if we want to ensure the success of our students, we have to understand that it is a team sport.

Below is a post by IMPress author John Spencer, author of Empower and author of an upcoming book Vintage Innovation (coming out early 2020).

I used to believe that creativity began in the mind. Ideas popped in and people responded externally by making things. I would get frustrated when students came into class having only used technology to consume rather than create. I would beg them to take risks creatively. Make something different. Be bold. Branch out even if you screw up. Just be bold.

However, things began to change when I had my own kids. I noticed that from a young age, creativity was inherently social. It often began by seeing, hearing, and experiencing first. Often, it included copying something that an adult was doing. As the kids grew older, I noticed a similar pattern. Though they were wildly creative, each one of them went through a process of noticing, exploring, copying and finally finding their own way.

It has me thinking about my own experience with creative work. When I first got into drawing, I copied the styles of other artists. When I first got into poetry, I copied the style of my favorite poet. When I first wrote a novel, it was essentially fan fiction — albeit at a time when no one knew that term. I have noticed similar trends among students. They often go through a phase of copying and mash-ups that occur before creating something truly original. As a middle school teacher, I saw this trend in art class, wood shop, in writer’s workshops, and in STEM labs. Now, at the university level, I see this as a progression that often happens as students learn the art of teaching. They often observe and copy before they move into creating from scratch.

The Importance of Critical Consuming

Like I mentioned earlier, creativity doesn’t always happen with a flash of inspiration. When you look at makers, they are often critical consumers of the same type of work they create. Chefs love great meals. Musicians listen to music. Architects often visit new cities and tour buildings to find inspiration. There’s this ongoing cycle of critical consuming, inspiration, and creative work. As they create more, it leads to a deeper ability to consume critically, where they find more inspiration, and the cycle continues.

This is why I reject the idea that students should be creators rather than consumers. Consuming isn’t inherently bad. However, what we want are for students to be critical consumers so that they can become makers. And often, this requires a journey from awareness through critical consuming and then eventually creation. For this reason, I’d love to share the seven stages from consuming to creating that we featured in the book Empower. 

The Seven Stages from Consuming to Creating

I’ve been thinking about stages that I notice as students move from consumers of media to creators of media. I admit that this is not very scientific. There might be a better model out there that explains this phenomenon. However, here are seven stages I see students go through as they shift from consuming to creating:

#1: Awareness

Sometimes this is a passive exposure. You hear a style of music being played in the background and it seems unusual. After a few months of it, you find yourself thinking, “I kind-of like this.” Next thing you know, you’re choosing to listen to indie-fused techno-polka. Or maybe not. Other times, it’s more direct. You watch a particular movie or you see a production or you read a book and suddenly you’re hooked. Note that this is why I will never fully embrace completely choice-driven learning. Sometimes students need to be exposed to new media, topics, themes, and skills. And, the things that initially seem odd become intriguing and that when you move into the second stage.

#2: Active Consuming

In this phase, you are more likely to seek out the works that you are consuming (whether it is art, music, food, poetry). You aren’t yet a fan, but you start developing a taste for a particular style and you find yourself thinking more deeply about whatever work you are consuming. Notice that the term “consuming” is pretty loose here. A student might “consume” by playing suddenly getting into a new game they learned in P.E.

Sometimes this phase is more focused on the aesthetics and sometimes it is more focused on practical utility. A student might think, “Wow, that’s actually pretty fun” or she might think, “That’s actually kind of useful.” Either way, they are actively seeking out and consuming in this phase.

#3: Critical Consuming

Here, you start becoming an expert. You see the nuances in both form and functionality. It’s in this phase that your taste becomes more refined. You begin to appreciate the craft involved in making what you are consuming. You are able to distinguish between good and bad quality. When they are consuming media, this is a phase when they are truly becoming adept at how to find accurate and useful information.

#4: Curating

After becoming an expert, you start picking out the best and commenting on it. You collect things, organize things, and share your reviews with others. In this phase of curation, you are both a fan and a critic. curation goes beyond simply collecting items online. The best curators know how to find what is best by immersing themselves in a niche area while also making surprising connections between ideas in seemingly unrelated worlds. Curators find specific excerpts that are relevant at the moment but also timeless. They can explain the purpose, the context, and the necessity of what they are citing.

#5: Copying

This is the part that drives me crazy as a teacher. After developing a level of expertise on a particular work (or artist or style) students will literally copy it. So, a student who is an amazing artist insists in drawing, line-for-line, a manga work. A student who geeks out on bridges decides she wants to make an exact replica of another bridge. A student gets into food and never deviates from the recipe. Until . . . suddenly something changes. A student branches out and modifies the copycat work. There’s this spark of creativity that happens as they start to think, “Maybe I could try something a little different.”

This, in turn, leads to the next stage.

#6: Mash-Ups

Sometimes this looks like collage art. Kids combine elements from various favorite works that they have curated and make something new. Sometimes this looks like fan fiction. Other times, it might mean taking an idea from one area and applying it to a new context — which can often look incredibly creative. So that kid who is copying manga begins to experiment with a few styles and adopt a visual style from multiple sources. That writer whose work seems derivative starts to borrow structures from multiple authors in unique ways. Over time, students begin to find their own unique voice and it leads up to #7.

#7: Creating From Scratch

This is the stage where students start taking the biggest risks and making things that are truly original. While the ideas are often inspired by the previous six stages, this is where a student finds his own voice. It’s the stage where a student grows in confidence to the extent that she is able to take meaningful risks.

The Journey Varies from Person to Person

So what does this look like in a classroom? When I taught middle school, I had students explore and critically consume video games. They debated which games were the best and why. From there, they moved to copying examples of games on Scratch, then doing modifications and mash-ups of games. Finally, they moved to a place where they created something new on their own.

I admit that these aren’t lockstep stages. For example, when he was younger, my middle son got really into Pokemon, and went from the second stage (active consuming) into the third, fourth and fifth stage simultaneously. It wasn’t incremental. It was more of an “all at once” thing. Similarly, people sometimes begin at the second stage by intentionally seeking out a new form of art to consume (second stage) with a critical eye (third stage).

Other times, people skip stages. Someone might go from falling in love with a novel (second stage) to creating fan fiction (sixth stage) without ever copying anything (the fifth stage). On the other hand, I have almost always skipped the mash-up stage, preferring to move from copying a particular style to jumping out and finding my own voice.

This isn’t a formula so much as a general framework that I have used to help me remember that the jump from consuming to creating is more often a journey than a jump. However, the key takeaway is that students need time and opportunities to consume critically and walk through these phases on their own.

Listen to the Podcast

If you enjoy this blog but you’d like to listen to it on the go, just click on the audio below or subscribe via iTunes/Apple Podcasts (ideal for iOS users) or Google Play and Stitcher (ideal for Android users).