No thanks, Steve. And I'm glad to be here today and talk about this. I know a lot of you might be working with these populations, and I wanted to give like some context and changes and things going on in this digital equity issue with incarcerated youth. But as Steve said, I run digital responsibility. We serve 10s of 1000s of students, parents and teachers and digital citizenship. We also have a contract in the state of Utah working with juvenile offenders on digital literacy and digital citizenship as part of their college and career programs. So this digital citizenship, we love to work. There's this intersection with digital literacy and digital citizenship is, let's be ethical and safe and responsible, but let's also know how to use the tools and have the skills too. So we love working in this space, and I love working in this digital equity space. And I found myself inadvertently having to deal with a lot of digital equity issues, moving from like on what's I work part time with Salt Lake Community College. We serve about 30, 40,000 people across Utah. And then I found myself working in a prison where all sorts of things are different, if you've been in that setting, and how to navigate all of these issues, with these big concerns around digital literacy and getting them transitioned to workforce development. So there's this big need to get these offenders when they come out, and get them trained, to get them skills. But there's a lot of barriers to that. So I wanted to share a little bit about what's going on in that area here for. You. So I wanted to hear your stories as well, with some challenges and some opportunities, and I put a little I have a little link right here. Yeah, love to talk with people working in this in this space as well, but let me share my screen and and chat with you. So I wrote this piece for Inside Higher Ed, partly because I just like you passionate about digital equity, and I didn't feel like I was seeing much on this topic about this prison education is growing across the country, but we still have all these technical issues to be in it. So for students and background, I was in a pilot program in 2018 and they had a one laptop that did not connect to the internet. That was like from 1995 that was locked away and no one ever had the key like I just basically taught in a cluttered room with the whiteboard and printed everything. And I'm still often printing everything too in the more updated facility, but you I've had students that have been in there for 20 plus years, have never had a phone. They've never they don't know how to type. They are severely lacking any of these digital literacy skills. And I've had a number say they're scared of when they get out. What do I do? This is, this is, like, overwhelming, if you can imagine, it's almost like you're in a time capsule, and then you get out of the time capsule, and the world is, like, moved on, and you were like, what is happening in this world? So my students tell me they have this need for this kind of thing, but there's a major security issues and concerns and all of that. So we'll, we'll talk about some of that, but I'll share some stats and stories there too, but just Yeah, think of a every prison is different in every state. And you also have county and state level and federal level prisons. You have sometimes private entities working within the prisons or like, they're more privately run versus state or publicly run. So you have a wide range. But overall, like this is an issue you're going to find anywhere with around Internet access and access to computers and all of it. But this is especially present in which I'm glad to have to have this conversation, because in 2020 Pell grant funding was restored to incarcerated students. So this was not available for 30 years. So it the number of prison education programs was like five in 2005 there was just like a handful, and now we have over we have over 400 roughly. I mean, the stats are kind of hard to find, but like, there was over 1000 programs running in the 90s, before the Pell grant funding was taken away, and it just, it just decimated it. So in some ways, the last few years, prison education programs had been rebuilding across the entire country because they there wasn't funding for the students to take the classes. They do not get these classes for free. They pay it, just like any other college students, but they don't have the money. I mean, we already know, you know, high poverty rates in prison. So now this has really opened it up to to more students. So this, this need is growing. And of course, as we know from all the work we're doing, the digital literacy need is growing too. So roughly about four, over 400 programs, if you want to dive into what's in your state, what's in your county, what's your area, there is a national directory of higher education and prison programs. This can vary widely. Some of them just have a, literally, a few students, like five or six students. Salt Lake Community Colleges runs actually one of the largest ones. They had over 400 students, which is one of the biggest ones. They've actually shrunk it down because we're going through an auditing process. There's a lot of rules. When you have federal funding, right? There's a lot of there's Title Nine you have to follow. There's all sorts of things. So they've shrunk the program to audit it, and they plan to grow it again, but they offer multiple degrees right now, and some of these programs don't offer the full degree. Maybe you're just taking a few classes. So it's a wide range of programs, but there's definitely that that need. So every semester I can say I work at this Utah State Prison. There is a huge waiting list of students who want to get into these classes, but there's only so much space. They have to be on their best they have to kind of be on the best behavior in terms of, like, points, levels, credits, whatever you're going to use it for. There's a lot of demand right now. Roughly the Department of Ed thinks close you know, 750,000 students could qualify for these Pell grants. So even if you qualify, that doesn't mean there's a program in your institution, even if there's a program, that doesn't mean you can get enrolled. So there's some barriers in terms of access. That way, they can apply for FAFSA online. If they can get online, they can do that themselves. But you also run into the issue, and this is what's happened in in our program, is they don't know how like and it's hard enough to fill out forms. I have student loans myself. I don't know if you have student loans. FAFSA is difficult, like, it's confusing. So if you have someone who hasn't used the internet that's trying to apply for Pell grant funding, I mean, that's like, that's like, PhD level, digital literacy skill there. Is what I'm saying. So you have a lot of need for digital navigators in this space too, because what, what we've learned through teaching at this program the last few years is you have to guide them one by one to get set up, to enroll in a class, to have access to those materials. And these are things that are kind of, you know, different and not not things that they're they're focusing on, but more higher education is jumping in. There is this the demographic cliff of more college age students. There has been funding that's been cut. So this is an opportunity that more higher education institutions have looked into. But I can say from working in it, it there's a lot of there's some barriers, there's some bureaucracy. There's some challenges to it too. I mean, a big thanks is the is communication. And I have to say, too, I am not advocating for internet, free, unfiltered Internet access in the prisons. I do not want my students having my personal information to contact me that this is safety issue. There's concerns about that. There's there's so there's this balance of like getting them access, but also the safety and and, and typically prisons, in my experience, safety, safety, safety is the number one thing. So if I want to bring in any content, any video, I have to put it on a thumb drive. I have to download it all. I may have done things on torrent. I shouldn't, but I'm trying to get these videos because I can't just find a link in a classroom, and I have to get that approved. They have to go up a multiple chain. It can take months, sometimes to get some of this approved. They're very strict about phones and things that you bring in inside. There is a computer lab at the savers and I work at it took about two years to get that going, and they have to be highly monitored, and it has limited access. There are some types of, maybe some of you have seen these. They're like, small, kind of, like, heavy duty little tablets that they can access. So the students in the program that we have, they do have limited access that they have a certain amount like TED talks, databases, some research materials that they can do, and they can contact the Prison Education Coordinator, but they cannot contact teachers directly. So that's how they had set up. But that is an issue. I've had to build in extra communication time in my classes, because they can't reach me during the week. There's also some issues with typing skills and being able to turn in papers and do some of this. So there's these, all these challenges in terms of approval and safety. There's also digital equity challenges in that you have a wide range of abilities in one classroom, so you're trying to train with people that maybe have had nothing, like literally nothing at all, versus someone that got in there a couple years ago that might have some experiences. So trying to teach this in this environment that's focused on safety and security is an issue. So I just want to pause for a second and pull up the chat if anyone wants to add anything, if they worked in the space or challenges that they've seen,