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http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/08/thoughts-on-social-nerworking.h Going on as I do these days with regard to the value of social networking tools practices and the implications for collaboration in learning, which you may well have picked this up from a number of posts in this blog. As its summer now and there are no classes, its given me time to start thinking about trying to see if I can extract anything at all meaningful from the exercise that I encouraged my year 1 level 3 students to carry out at the start of their course in September 06. In fact I did a couple of blogs on this which you can still get to from here and to save repeating myself they are:-
Tell And Post, Thursday, September 14, 2006
Social Networking So Far, Sunday, September 24, 2006
Essentially the idea was to start them off by using Moodle as a social tool and see if this had any impact of the likely emergence of online groups and ultimately outcomes. Just recently, during the summer, I have been dipping into SNA (Social Network Analysis) this is a methodology for mapping and measuring relationships and flows in a system; this can be human or even data itself. Now being a software person, my first reaction was to go looking for some tools, free ones anyway and I found Agna, a superb little piece of Java freeware. I used Moodle reports to produce a student-by-student activity for the Social forums throughout September 06. Then using their names, though for this exercise I have replaced these with numbers, as the node values in the Sociomatrix; see below.
 For this simple Binary exercise I simply recorded a 1 at the intersection of contact between two students.
I carried out the exercise for two groups, who I shall simply refer to as A and BMy next stage was to use the Agna Network Viewer to produce charts.
I shall let you make up you own mind on the level of social networking taking place here, but just establish for you that the arrows indicate the direction of communication.
Well what do you think? Is any of this likely to influence outcomes for later on the course? I will reveal all a week today, on Sunday 12th August.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80887&parent=36 by Julian Ridden. Sadly there isn't an OZ moot this year 
Good news is that there will definitely be one in Oz next year. Looking like it will be in Brisbane. Some things to still be confirmed before official announcements can be made, but just keep an eye on this forum for news.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80887&parent=36 by Mark Drechsler. Excellent news - look forward to hearing more about it.
http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=19&rid=989
Type: Web article
From: Emmett Dulaney
Published: 18 June 2007
" I'm constantly on the hunt for examples of technology being implemented in ways that make me have an "Aha!" moment. I like it when someone does something that no one else has thought of, or uses a particular expertise (be it an operating system, an application, a piece of hardware or almost anything else) in a key way. When that solution happens to be open source, it makes me take notice and think that there truly is a sustainable possibility here. Such an "Aha!" moment came to me recently when I started delving deeper into a tool I first heard about around a while ago: Moodle ( http://moodle.org/). [...]"
Emmett Dulaney is the author of several books on Linux, Unix nd certification, including the Security+ Study Guide, Third Edition. His blog can be found at http://edulaney.blogspot.com and he can be reached at edulaney@iquest.net.
Keywords: buzz, moodle, news
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77887&parent=36 by Scott Gerrity. I'd prefer Boise in the Spring or June. We'd bring a number of people from the University of Victoria, BC. Something in the Northwest would be ideal.
Scott Gerrity
University of Victoria
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/08/social-networking-outcomes.html  If you had read my previous bog to this, where I presented two Social Networking diagrams, produced from the Sociomatrix data processed by Agna, then you will no doubt have been having some thoughts about the likely final outcome for the two groups. If you recall group ‘A’ displayed a very low level of social activity and group ‘B’ a far more impressive set of connections. Well here are the results. Of course it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions from a single trial, more are needed and more will now take place, but certainly the outcome even to a casual observer produces a clear enough impression. The less well-connected group ‘A’, have between them achieved results that are skewed toward Pass and Merit, while the more active network of group ‘B’ displays a skew toward Merit and Distinction. I must say that I was more than pleased with this outcome, as it does at least on the surface appear to support the case for a more socially oriented model of learning.
One more small and possibly insignificant point is that group ‘A’ would seem to have double the amount of late assignment submissions.
You will no doubt have guessed that I have been keenly showing these results to just about anyone that will listen, and the response I must say has been very positive. Apart that is from one senior manager, who will of course remain nameless. But who pointed out somewhat reasonably, that had the outcomes for the two groups been reversed, then we might have been able to build a case for blocking access to all these Social Networking sites! And what if any are the intrinsic suggestions here I wonder, that entertainment wins out against education, perish the though.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80887&parent=36 by Tabitha Roder. Don't know if you have seen it yet, but I see we have already started discussions on NZ Moot 08! We are real keen here, and I can see some great benefits to having NZ and Australia moots spread out across the year so we get two occasions for some collaboration and social networking. It was great to meet some Australians at the NZ moot this year and I will be keeping an eye open for the Australian moot dates. 
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77887&parent=36 by Tom Wilson. I'd be happy to help out. I have a virtual counseling center based in Boise, in addition to our brick and mortar counseling center. I've been moodling since 2003.
Regards
Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson Counseling Center
Boise, Idaho
(208) 368=9909
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=82239&parent=36 by Sean Keogh. Apologies for the late appearance of this announcement here (it has been displayed elsewhere for a while). As far as I am aware, they have twenty places remaining at time of posting.
===========================
The Open Schools Alliance will be holding it's "Success in Education" Conference in Liverpool, UK on October 19th.
Martin Dougiamas (Founder and Lead Developer of Moodle ) will be there, as will many other luminaries from the Open Source Education area. I'll be there too 
The conference is free to attend (lunch included), but numbers are limited so please register early to avoid disappointment.
More information from http://www.openschoolsalliance.org/education-event/successful-floss-in-edu
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/10/rise-of-networker.html  What is that can make one years group of students so different from another, you have no doubt asked yourself this question and so do I, and this year is no exception. If you have been following this blog, then you will have picked up on the Social Networking exercise I devised for my 06/07 group as an icebreaker, that would eventually serve as a means of comparing final outcome. Well I ran the same exercise this year 07/08 and have finally got around to looking at the figures for September; this is the month on which outcomes will be compared. To my amazement the number of Forum postings has increased nine fold on the previous year! That’s right 900%. I have no explanation for such an unprecedented increase, the opportunity was presented to them in exactly the same way, no mention made on likely impact for outcome. Can it simply be an early indicator of the growing perception and influence that Social Networking is having on our expectations for life style, as we come to increasingly live in an online world? Comments welcome.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77887&parent=36 by Lori Cheezem. Thanks Tom! I'll let you know how things progress.
Lori
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77887&parent=36 by Jared Stein. I'd definitely drive to Pocatello for a Moot. Probably to Boise, too.
Early June is out, as we're holding our TTIX conference June 5-6 in Orem, Utah.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=586&parent=1451 by OpenLearn Admin. The OpenLearn website is celebrating one year since its launch on 25th October 2006. In the first year the website has provided free access to educational resources to over 975,000 learners and educators around the world.
The website launched with 900 learning hours of study materials from Open University courses. This has risen to over 3700 hours in the LearningSpace and over 6500 hours in the experimental LabSpace and covers a full range of subjects from arts and history to science and nature. Thousands more hours of material will be made available in 2008.
New courses made available in the run up to the 1st year anniversary include two introductory study units, Introducing the Environment and Starting with Maths, and Minds and mental phenomena: an introduction, a 20 hour advanced study unit.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77887&parent=36 by Lori Cheezem. Thanks Jared! I'll keep those dates in mind. I presented at TTIX last year and hope to attend again this year.
Lori
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=83228&parent=36 by Peter Sereinigg. You will find some pictures from the moodlemoot 2007 in GB here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8604364@N08/sets/72157602722370129/
Thanks for this conference!
Best Regards
Peter Sereinigg
Austria
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/08/so-long-intranet-welcome-dsace.  This week thanks to some major groundbreaking efforts from my fellow Moodle VLE administrator Clive, we now have our DSpace content repository accessible through common authentication with Windows Active Directory via Free Radius server. If you have been following this blog then you may recall the posting
DSpace Content Repository - Tuesday, April 12, 2005, where I reported that the system was now fully installed and rolled out for user access. Well to be honest, that turned out to be somewhat optimistic, because apart from myself, Clive and couple of other brave souls, not very much has been happening. But now that can all change, because through Clive's efforts this week not only can we offer users a common Windows Network, Moodle, DSpace login; you may like to keep up with his blog on all this. DSpace will now only allow authenticated users to access the actual content, in other words, the Meta Data is visible and will continue to be Harvested by OAIster, but only Bromley College staff and or Students can access the content. This of course overcomes one of the major concerns from staff, that their material will be open to all, regardless of Copyright or IPR. Naturally the next big bonus is that DSpace resource are now available from within Moodle; you just have to login in once at the start of your session. So goodbye to dupliacted Moodle resources, network drives, incomprehensible folder structures and ground fills of orphaned documents, from now on may DSpace and Meta Data rule.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/07/handouts-to-videos.html  Well its that time of year again when following the upgrade of Moodle to our test server and tried out all the features that I need to star thinking about updating the Moodle course notes for the new version. This usually means I check each page of the notes with the new version and apply changes as they occur. This year however I have decided to reduce the actual Moodle training notes in their printed form and deliver the rest as a series of short video clips that can be run on demand by users as and when they need them. The impact of this will be to reduce the time needed for initial training, while at the same time ensuring that during the training, which does tend to be a bit hectic, given I only get 2 hours, I can spend more time looking at specific curricula issues rather than Moodle features that I have come to realise many will not come to use. So how do I intend to breakdown the content into printed and video formats?
Printed format
- System settings and administration
- Labels and headings
- Editing facilities
- Managing files and folders
- Linking to resources
- Moodle Assignments
- Course presentation
Video Format
- Using Forums
- Using Chat
- Creating Glossaries in Moodle
- Managing the calendar events
Once I have these completed these I will make them available through this blog, so feel free to give them a test-drive and get back to me with any comments.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/06/one-more-for-constructivist.htm  For those of you who have been following this blog, you will recall that last academic year 05/06 I ran a trial with my HND Computer Systems Engineering students where I used the VLE to investigate the delivery of about 20% of the course material based around the Social Constructivist model. The particular framework that I chose for this was the ‘Community of Enquiry’ from Garrison, Anderson and Archer. Well as I said then, results looked promising but it needed more data and so here are the results from this years trail 06/07 for both percentages and grades as measured against 2002-2005. I think you will agree that it does look more than encouraging and I shall be featuring these outcomes in my Camel presentation at the college on the 2nd of July this year.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/06/self-evaluation.html  If like myself you are deploying much of your full time course delivery over Moodle , then you will no doubt also be realising that while there are many advantages to this for everyone regarding administration, are there any similar enhancement to outcomes? Well I have to say probably not, after all, good teaching, good notes and resources are exactly that whatever the medium you deliver them by. If you have been reading this blog then you will know that I have been trialing methodologoes such a 'Communities of Enquiry', with some success. Even so I still find myself trawling round for some realistic model for self evaluation, and thats when I came across this article that I find myself getting somewaht enthusiastic about. Of course the test is going to be can I implement this through Moodle in some way, well stay tuned for that one.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/06/video-formats-and-storage.html  I received a request recently from a client to produce my Moodle training resources as a set of video files, which does make a lot of sense; I have also been using more video this year on the VLE. If you are finding this emerging trend, then you may like to have a look at a couple of resources for video conversion and storage. At the Yasasoft website you can download a limited free version, it will convert just about all format up to five minutes and its a really nice and easy to use piece of desktop software. I also came across a reasonable online media converter the other day at vixy.net, which seems to be worth having a look at. Of course with video comes the need for storage, and if yours I limited, then why not try storing it with blip.tv, they seem to be making an open invitation.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/05/thinking-about-your-vle.html  If like us here at Bromley College you have been deploying a VLE, then like me you may be wondering after having structured courses with all kinds of content from Word files to podcasts, where the technology is moving and what the outcomes have been. If you are thinking along these lines, then you will be interested in the findings of the JISC funded projects that are about to enter their second phase, you can find the site here. I read a summary in the May 2007 edition of Cilip Update, which seemed to promote the conclusion of student preference for social networking over pure VLE, with the suggestion that educators are becoming concerned about the future of the traditional VLE. For my part I have no real evidence that this is the case, have you, please feel free to post.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/vles-and-poor-attendance.html  I was surprised by the concerns expressed in the recent HE Forum about VLE’s leading to reduced attendance. And so an emailed was circulated to a national list, not by myself I must add, to see if this is generally seen as a problem. The responses indicate the opposite. You will find a link here to some of the responses that you may find useful. The question posted was:- Using a VLE might lead to a reduction in attendance. Does anybody on the list have to deal with this worry? Is it true? How do you counter it? Please feel free to inform us of your own views on this subject by replying to this post.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/project-leon.html  Starting Monday 12th March ULCC are running London's first Online Conference looking at Web2 Technologies supporting 'personalisation' called LEON (London e-Learning Online Network). There are a number of strands to this project,and my own here at Bromley is looking to the potential of Second Life, where students can share a 3D space and presence in real time. The current project features a library with access for individual or group study, links to web sites, pod casts, movies, documents and virtual page turning books. Presentations and lectures can be delivered to groups or individuals using white boards, media players all delivered by the lecturer. The potential improvements for social engagement above that offered by the more usual first world experience of synchronous, asynchronous chat and forum seem boundless. If you are interested in joining us the go to the website and contact Philip Butler for enrollment details.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/vle-project-2-completed.html  Going by the transactions from the latest learning trial using Moodle, here at Bromley I feel certain that I will be looking at another successful outcome. There were 23 students taking part of which only 16 eventually completed the project and between them accounted for over 12,000 transactions in four weeks. For all those who did manage to stay the course, I presented feedback assessment for collaboration, and there is without doubt overwhelming support from them as well as a sense of achievement. However for students who’s engagement / attendance proved patchy before the project, the new approach seemed to be of little positive influence.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/01/learning-in-virtual-world.html  Just lately a lot of my time has been taken up with Second Life, if you have yet to try virtual worlds then let me recommend the experience. My principle reason for the whole venture is to see how this new semi-immersed virtual reality can be utilised for teaching and learning, even as an extension to our continuing work with Moodle. On Saturday 17th of Feb at 5pm I will begin hosting some presentation trials that will be looking at the Linden Script, that’s the language in SL, and comparing it with other main stream computer languages. So if you are free around that time and would like to come over for a short and small class and supply us with some feedback in another reality just click here and I will look forward to seeing you.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/01/video-beats-audio-star.html  At the start of this term decided to try using my PDA to record parts of my lectures, and these recording are in range of 3 to 4 minutes. The particular course that I selected for this is my High Level Programming for level 4 students, and to date I have made about 40 recordings. But I thought I would tryout something of an experiment by making these recording available in two forms, one being a straightforward mp3, while the other would feature a speaking CrazyTalk avatar. Although the speech content of the two media are identical, the CrazyTalk avatar version has attracted almost twice the number of viewings!
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/12/using-moodle-to-deliver-self-fi  I am hopeful that Moodle here at bromley College will begin to fulfil a commercial role following an enquiry the other day from company who required a course in Website Design for one of their employees. I have been running a very successful self financing course “HTML and JavaScript for Website Designers” for some time now, however it does require a minimum of 12 students to be viable, with the next one likely to start in January. This timescale was however too long, and I was asked if it could be run as a distance learning package, well maybe if I ran it through Moodle. As this will effectively be a trial, I have given the course for free in return for a comprehensive feedback and review. In fact when the boss came along to lookover the set-up, he signed himself up as well. The course can now run at the pace of the students, they will provide me feedback via the Journal, have access to resources using Block Folders, submit completed exercises as Assignments and keep in touch using Forums and Chat. Hey I may even be able to use Second-Life!!! I’ll let you know how it goes.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/podcast-or-videocast-which-do-y  Do you podcast you lectures? . I have started this in a small way but from the system logs the results were not encouraging. Anyway I started to give the whole idea some serious thought recently. From my own perspective, if am driving or travelling on public transport, then yes I would listen to a podcast, however if was sat in front of a computer, then I would appreciate something more visual. The feasibility of videoing and editing a whole lecture on a regular basis would for me be unrealistic. But do you really need the whole lecture, well no, and all I record usually are selected parts in audio using my PDA. Anyway I decided to pop one of my audio tracks into one of CrazyTalks avatars, the result, good, judging from the Moodle logs, the media is definitely getting a better response. If you would like to take a look just click here. Please feel free to feedback on your own experiences by posting to this blog.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/free-learning-resources-from-ou  free and open educational resourcesIf like myself you are always on the lookout for some quality e-Learning materials, then you simply have to take a look at the Open Universities Moodle site OpenLearn. The resources here are free to use and are of an excellent quality, well done OU.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/time-for-second-life.html  Just recently I decided that the time had come to put my money where my enthusiasm was, so I upgraded my membership in Second Life and bought some land and see how it could be used in conjunction with my work on Moodle. In fact I bought a small island from diddster.com, these are really nice properties and the company extremely helpful. In fact the whole experience was a bit surreal, as I had to leave my wife cruising around Diddsters Daydream island complex, made more stressful for her as she had not used Second life before, looking for a vacant plot and making the purchase. While all this was happening I was watching through a colleague’s avatar at work (Whoops), keep that bit to yourself. Anyway Jinxster of Diddster turned up and gave some very timely advice and we all had an extremely useful three way conversation. I have since acquired a building for my island (Shimmer Island) and begun accumulating some tools; whiteboard and media player, both of which were actually free. If you click on my island thumb nail at the top of this post, you will get a bigger picture.
Anyway I am off to my alternative reality now, but do stay tuned to see how things go.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/value-added-moodle.html  Keen as I always am to make use of our vle for course delivery, I am also very keen to find evidence on its effectiveness with regard to student outcomes. One of the courses that see particularly heavy use of the vle here at Bromley is my BTEC National Software Development. Just the other day I am informed that it has attracted highest Value Added in the country for this course, wow. How much of that is due to the vle, difficult to say, but I was asked to put my views in writing; 50 words! Anyway here is my response. We have an experienced subject specialist team delivering a wide range of software technologies that include VBA, VB6, C, Java, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP and SQL, and find attracts motivated students with an ambition for Software Development.
Our adoption and increasing use of the Moodle vle has further allowed us to explore a variety of teaching methods, that facilitate our students the opportunity for personalisation, to extend their learning beyond the traditional physical boundaries and time constraints of class based lectures.A bit Just a tad more that 50.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/10/second-life-from-dartmouth.html I hav e just looged out of the first Second Life conference for teachers, I think. I got into the conference from a French restaurant in Dartmouth via rather a weak wifi signal, in fact I am Blogging from here still. There were plenty of people and some interesting proposals for future projects, its all looking extremely promising, all in all a great show. Well done Optimus Paul.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/10/google-for-educators.html  This week, I guess with no great surprise, I find that those people at Google, who no doubt have been keeping a watchful eye on our surfing habits, have made an encouraging response by launching Google for Educators. My first impression is that this has the makings of a powerful and valuable resource that already features a growing repository of materials, tools, ideas and stories. I was particularly taken by the invitation that we can upload video clips, a timely offer, given that I have spoken to a few people recently who are showing some concern as to where they can place such materials given the limits that seem to exist for storage in some institutes.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/social-networking-so-far.html  I have some satisfaction and surprises reviewing the way in which my plans for introducing a social networking forum are working out with the courses this year. I have given the rounded figures in the table.
 A couple of points come to mind for me: 1 by far the most active group is the BTEC National General, but this is a year 2 group, so they already know each other well by now. 2 Though the HND group seem to have shown more activity than the BTEC National Software, in fact less then half, 9/23, of the HND have yet to actually post their own details, does age make you more cautious in these forums?
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/podcasting.html  Last week I decided to start using a podcast approach as part of my regular Moodle material. I have incorporated these as part of my level 4 groups work in Object Oriented Design. The course is delivered as a series of lectures accompanied by detailed course notes and assessed using a portfolio approach of exercises. It’s the presentation in class of these exercises that I have decided to make available as mp3’s. I have installed them all into their own folder and students access them through Moodles Add a resource/Display a directory feature. I decided against the usually highly mobile podcast approach, as I know very few of the students actually own one. I shall be sure to report on their popularity and utility in due course
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/tell-and-post.html  I started three new level 3 groups today and as a first exercise decided they should begin to make use of Moodle by posting lifestyle styles and ambitions to a forum. Postings could include links, particularly if they had Myspace, some did. I then asked them to reply to at least 2 postings, but not if they were already friends; I encourage this in support of the need to establish a virtual presence, after all given the diminishing requirement of funding bodies, students are only actually at College 2.5 days a week, so what happens the rest of the week? Well maybe it can be virtual, lets shall see. A significant proportion of postings were as I anticipated in youth code; medium is the message! I am reassured however given recent finding by Bev Plester and Claire Wood at Coventry Uni. Its early days but be assured I shall be collecting and posting feedback from the groups on these and other online activities.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/myspace-induction.html  The HND course officially started today with an induction. I had an hour to present myself and courses to them. This year has been really different though rather than explain courses in detail with references to handouts, assignments and grading, I talked almost exclusively about the part Moodle would play as a delivery platform in support of the collaborative leaning framework and assessment strategies that proved successful in last year’s trial. Upon ending the presentation rather than give out advice on pre-start of courses reading, I asked them to get a Myspace account, fill out all the categories and be sure to post comments to at least two from others. My plans are that the Social networking aspects of Myspace will not only form the first point for an ongoing trend of collaboration but be the foundation in forming an online presence and identity.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=56471&parent=36 by Csaba Vágvölgyi. And now... the second is almost here:
Hungarian MoodleMoot 2007 will take place in Debrecen, Hungary November 26-17. 2007.
You can get more information on the web site:
http://moodlemoot.kfrtkf.hu
Best Regards!
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/08/thoughts-on-social-nerworking.h Going on as I do these days with regard to the value of social networking tools practices and the implications for collaboration in learning, which you may well have picked this up from a number of posts in this blog. As its summer now and there are no classes, its given me time to start thinking about trying to see if I can extract anything at all meaningful from the exercise that I encouraged my year 1 level 3 students to carry out at the start of their course in September 06. In fact I did a couple of blogs on this which you can still get to from here and to save repeating myself they are:-
Tell And Post, Thursday, September 14, 2006
Social Networking So Far, Sunday, September 24, 2006
Essentially the idea was to start them off by using Moodle as a social tool and see if this had any impact of the likely emergence of online groups and ultimately outcomes. Just recently, during the summer, I have been dipping into SNA (Social Network Analysis) this is a methodology for mapping and measuring relationships and flows in a system; this can be human or even data itself. Now being a software person, my first reaction was to go looking for some tools, free ones anyway and I found Agna, a superb little piece of Java freeware. I used Moodle reports to produce a student-by-student activity for the Social forums throughout September 06. Then using their names, though for this exercise I have replaced these with numbers, as the node values in the Sociomatrix; see below.
For this simple Binary exercise I simply recorded a 1 at the intersection of contact between two students.
I carried out the exercise for two groups, who I shall simply refer to as A and BMy next stage was to use the Agna Network Viewer to produce charts.
|
For this simple Binary exercise I simply recorded a 1 at the intersection of contact between two students.
