Episode 41: Pythonic Parenting With The Shaws Sean Tibor: [00:00:00] hello and welcome to teaching Python. This is episode 41 Python parenting with the Shaw family. My name's Sean Tibor. I'm a coder who teaches Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:00:23] in, my name's Kelly Schuster Perez, and I'm a teacher who coats. Sean Tibor: [00:00:26] So Kelly, we're joined this week by not one. Not two, but three special guests on our show this week. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:00:34] It's pretty amazing. And they're from down under? Sean Tibor: [00:00:36] Yes. So we have Anthony Shaw and his two lovely daughters who we are calling Jaguar and zebra, and they're joining us to talk about learning Python from your parents, which is pretty fun, right? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:00:50] Yeah. Especially from Anthony Shaw, who wouldn't want to learn Python from Anthony Shaw? Sean Tibor: [00:00:55] I don't know. Zebra, Jaguar, I don't know if you know this, but your dad's kind of a big deal. We actually met Anthony at PI con last year. I think we watched an episode of game of Thrones together. So we've actually met in real life. So it's a really great, we're here to talk about learning Python and learning it at home. And so we have our special guests here and they have questions for us that they've prepared. So I'm really excited for that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:01:20] Absolutely. It's going to be fun. Sean Tibor: [00:01:22] So we're going to start the same way we always do, which is the winds of the week and the winds of the week or something. Fun or cool that we've done inside the classroom, like at school or at home or on the playground or the park that we want to share with everyone. And we've asked Jaguar to go first. She is going to tell us all about her win this week. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:01:42] Well, we went to the bait. Sean Tibor: [00:01:44] Ooh. And was it a nice, beautiful beachy day with good sun and a little bit of a breeze. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:01:50] Did you build any and sand castles or go swimming? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:01:53] Even swimming. Sean Tibor: [00:01:55] Yeah. And you see any fish? Loads of fish. Yeah. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:02:00] The beaches are pretty nice in Australia. That's pretty good. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Win. Sean Tibor: [00:02:06] It's a great way. And zebra, is your win also going to the beach or do you have something different to share? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:02:11] We went swimming for this swimming kind of Hill at school. Sean Tibor: [00:02:15] Ooh. What sorts of things do you at a swimming carnival Jaguar/Zebra: [00:02:18] style races back striking Sean Tibor: [00:02:22] and excellent. Are you a good butterflier? That's a really hard stroke to swim. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:02:27] No, Sean Tibor: [00:02:29] me neither. And I swim for a very long time. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:02:33] I do the dog paddle, so I don't do a butterfly, Sean Tibor: [00:02:38] but that is really great. Do you have like a swim cap and goggles? What's on your swim cap? You could have met her, wouldn't you? Oh, ribbon to ribbons. Yeah. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:02:48] So Bex, Jack and face. Sean Tibor: [00:02:50] Oh, my kind of girl. Those were my two favorite strokes also. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:02:54] Yeah, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:03:01] those are good ones. Both Sean Tibor: [00:03:03] excellent wins. Okay. So Anthony, it's your turn. We're gonna go around the room. So Anthony, something. Fun or cool that you want to share from this week? Anthony Shaw: [00:03:11] You know, I conclude that the swimming was fun at the weekend at the beach. The water's really warm, is autumn here. So yeah, it's kind of the temperature's starting to cool down, but the ocean is still really warm, which is lovely. And also, I did a live webinar in the last week with JetBrains showing some stuff on pie charm, sewing some security. Capabilities in the project that I've been working on, so that's really great. I've been following that on Twitter. And then I heard your interview talking about application security. I think it was on test and code recently, so a lot of focus on security over the last few weeks in the media for you, huh? Yeah. Yeah. That's been the focus of me at the moment, trying to get my book finished. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:03:49] A lot of things going on. Sean Tibor: [00:03:50] Yeah. Excellent. All right, so Kelly, your turn. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:03:52] Well, I think the win is, I have started a project. I'm going to share it. We weren't going to share it, but we're going to share it anyways. I started a little project of building some sort of anchor chart. We've been talking about anchor charts for awhile, and Sean finally, I guess sort of helped me motivate me by starting it and then I started my own and we're making some sort of cool microbit sensors, lights. Kind of anchor chart hopefully to show to have a visual for the kids and the kids are making their own, and we're just kind of playing around with that to see if it works and see if we can get some cool work out of it. And I think that was a pretty good one that I'm actually motivated and been working on that today. Sean Tibor: [00:04:31] That's pretty cool. So zebra, I can tell you might be wondering what is an anchor chart. Right? And it's one of those teacher words that you actually probably have seen an anchor chart all the time. You just don't know that that's what they're called, or that's what teachers call them. But do you have like a big poster in your classroom that tells you like. A multiplication table, or here's some math that you have to remember. Or here's words that we're reading this week that you can learn, and you can see it in your classroom from wherever you're sitting. Oh, times tables. Right? So if you're trying to remember your times tables, or you're just kind of daydreaming in class and you look at the wall, there's a table up there to practice and look at, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Ms. Kelly made. Was one that works with circuits and lights and switches and buttons and sensors and everything so that our students can look at the wall and see all the different types of little bits and gadgets and everything that they can work with programming to do. Cool, fun things. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:05:33] Yeah. And mind blink like pretty color. That's my favorite part. Pretty colors and lots of sounds and noise coming out of it. If we finish it, we'll actually tweet it. Maybe one day. So Sean, what's your one of the week? Sean Tibor: [00:05:49] I think Kelly can guess what my one of the weekends, gosh, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:05:53] we'll have to show you a picture later. Jaguar in zebra. Sean Tibor: [00:05:56] So I've been working on something for our summer camp, so our summer camp starts in June, which is usually good. Cold for you, but it's here. It's very hot. And so during summer camp this year, we are going to be building lightsabers like from star Wars. And so I made a light saber this week. It's something I've been working on for a while, but my lightsaber lights up and it makes noises and sounds and everything and the whole thing. Is coded in Python. So it all runs on a circuit Python board, which is a little bitty, you know, microchip board, and it has a whole light strip of brightly colored LEDs. And every time you press the button to turn it on, it turns to a different color. So when you turn it on, it might be purple or it might be orange or blue or pink. And so it's really a lot of fun. And the whole thing is three D printed and hand-built. And. I'm actually surprisingly pleased with how well it turned out. It's a lot of fun, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:06:53] and again, girls and Anthony, it's lights and sound, lights and sound. That's what makes it fun. So I think these wins are kind of what we're talking about today, trying to get things that are fun. Does it sound like it's a fun thing to do to make some lights and sounds happen with code? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:07:12] Yeah. Yeah. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:07:14] I'm not sure. Your dad makes a lot of lights and sounds with his code. We'll work on it. Cross. Sean Tibor: [00:07:25] So just to talk about this next part. So zebra and Jaguar, your daddy asked us. A month or two ago about some ideas and questions that he had about how you can teach your kids about coding and share some of those fun experiences that you have. And then he told us that you have some questions about learning Python and learning how to code that you wanted to ask us. So what we thought we would do is have a little bit of fun recording questions and answers for each other. To be able to see if we could learn about how to have fun with your parents learning Python. Does that sound good? Yeah. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:08:04] Okay. Sean Tibor: [00:08:05] All right. So do you want to go first with your questions or do you want us to go first with our questions? You go first. Okay, so Ms. Kelly, I think you have the questions lined up there, right? Yes, of course. I do. Right in front of her. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:08:18] I do what we always do. Here's my question. So how much coding do you do at school? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:08:25] We have library lessons every week and every two weeks it's borrowing wakes. So we borrowed our library, like books from the library, and then the wakes in between, make it into the computer lab and the past few weeks. We've been learning about a digital Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:08:52] citizenship that's very important. Security Jaguar/Zebra: [00:08:57] and mrs fi, our library teacher has been away visiting her Dosser in Scotland. So, and. Live bearings coming. His name is Mr. Brown, and he has his long hair and running. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:09:19] That's cool. So with your digital citizenship, do you play any games online Jaguar/Zebra: [00:09:24] doing such a Bassett. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:09:26] Oh, excellent. Excellent. Sean Tibor: [00:09:28] So what are some of the things that you've learned in your research Jaguar/Zebra: [00:09:33] and chickens Anthony Shaw: [00:09:34] and what is that. Should you tell people your real name on the internet? Should you tell people why you live on the internet? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:09:46] Can't pull your office no things, TSL, and he did silly things on the internet Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:09:56] and you're a good citizen. Do you know what it means to be a good citizen? Do you say mean things to people online? No cause you wouldn't want to say mean things to people offline. Right. It looks good. Excellent. Do you guys know any type of coding though? Have you looked at scratch or scratch jr Jaguar/Zebra: [00:10:19] squint and CRE Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:10:21] and Python. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Anthony Shaw: [00:10:25] And what parts of him has he done? Girls that balloon, the balloon thing. It wasn't a balloon thing. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:10:32] The leg, knees. Anthony Shaw: [00:10:36] We made a balloon. And what about the, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:10:39] you guys made a swishy fish. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:10:41] Did you guys make the swishy Sean Tibor: [00:10:43] fish? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:10:50] Did you know that I got inspired by your daddy? Swishy fish and did that in camp? Yeah. Is that the warm that moves. Yeah. Excellent. What does that thing with the cable? Is it a motor or a service? Anthony Shaw: [00:11:07] It's a servo. Yeah. And it's an inchworm, so it just calls along the ground. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:11:11] Very Anthony Shaw: [00:11:11] cool. That was our first project, wasn't it Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:11:14] dad? Where the lights and it sounds Anthony Shaw: [00:11:16] that one doesn't have any lights, and that's the mistake we made, which is what this fishy fish. Was all about lights and sound and trying to recycle. So it was inspired by a project on the ADA fruit website. So they've got a whole range of projects, some of them for kids and some of them for adults, but I think a lot of them need adult supervision for the younger one. And we picked one of those projects and then just kind of worked on it a bit, didn't we? We see what we could find in the band and around the house, and we made. We might have fish. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:11:52] Ferry likes a basket ball, and we put plastic covering over the basket, whooping noise. So I taped it and then we cut the rubbish in half. So it had to have so recycled pings and then we put fairy lights in there. So it'll light up. And Philly, I make a little set here like this, and we made it so that the finished, and when we tipped it, I made a sound. Sean Tibor: [00:12:38] It's a very clever, that sounds like fun. And I love the fact that you use old things that were going to be thrown away. And turn them into something new and beautiful. Right. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:12:51] One of you have a question for us? Sean Tibor: [00:12:54] Yes. Okay. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:12:55] Let's see your favorite laser on the keyboard. Oh, Sean Tibor: [00:12:59] wow. That is such an amazing question. I'm like, well, I'm looking at my keyboard now there. I mean, I love so many of them. I'll go first. Okay, go ahead. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:13:09] Sometimes keyboards are different in different countries, so forgive me, but I like the asterick key. That's over the eight in the U S. Do you know why in Python it means a lot of different things and I can do a lot of things with that one little key. I can multiply. I can import everything from a library. I can do exponents with one little key. It's pretty cool. I bet you I can guess which ones, mr . Sean Tibor: [00:13:42] You know what my favorite one is actually, I have two, but my, I think my most favorite one is the exclamation point because the exclamation point is fun to write when you're writing things for the user. So when someone's using the computer and you want to write them a message, it's fun to put an exclamation point in there. Right. And then the other thing that I really love about it is that you can use it to check to see if two numbers are not the same. So if I have two numbers, like three and two, and I want to see if they're not the same, I can use the exclamation point and the equal sign together. And it says, yep, those are not the same numbers. isn't that fun? But you know what? My other favorite one, my other favorite one is the percent sign. So it's over the five on the keyboard in the U S and it's a very special character in math and in computer science. It's for modulus and it gives you the remainder when you divide one number by another. And it doesn't seem like it does a lot, but I use it all the time for so many different things and it's a lot of fun to find a way to use the modulus operator. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:15:00] And I thought I knew you. I thought you were going to say it's the underscore. Ask your daddy why? I thought it would be the underscore. What's the name for the underscore in Python? Right? If it's Anthony Shaw: [00:15:10] two underscores, it's called a thunder. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:15:14] Why is a double Sean Tibor: [00:15:18] Dunder? It's not a funny word. I love that word. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:15:24] And Anthony, what's your favorite Anthony Shaw: [00:15:25] kid? Oh boy. I'll have to think. I'll have to think long and hard about this. It was a competition between the space key and the enter key, and I think I'm going with the enter key because it's so complete. And so satisfying to press. This is true. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:15:42] That's a great question. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:15:43] My favorite one is the space because it's so big. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:15:50] It's blank. That's a good reason. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:15:53] Do the kids at school like classes? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:15:56] I think it's what I like to say. A love hate relationship. Do you know what that means? They love it because we get to do fun things and it's very satisfying. I actually had a girl smile and scream today with her microbit and at the same time she was like, I hate Sean Tibor: [00:16:17] you. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:16:19] She doesn't really hate the microbit, but it gave her such a hard time to get a blinking light. And with all the connections, sometimes the connections don't connect clearly, so the code can be perfect and the light just won't light, or the code is wrong. We can usually figure that out, but some things make them love pies on. And the other times they kind of. Don't like Python, but when it works perfectly, they love it. Sean Tibor: [00:16:51] And I think when my classes, cause I have a different group of students, you know, everybody's a little bit different, right? Some people like chocolate ice cream, some people like vanilla, some people like strawberry, some people even like butter pecan, right? So some of my students really love Python and for other people they don't like it as much, but they all really like what it can do for them. Because it was them solve problems. It lets them be creative and lets them be silly and make things and what's some tell jokes, right? So it's kind of like one of those things that you can use for so many different things. So even if they don't absolutely love it. They all have something they can do with it that they have a lot of fun with. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:17:34] What projects are you working on? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:17:37] Mr Tiber always has projects. I have to remind him that he has to do more work. Sean Tibor: [00:17:42] Very serious. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:17:44] So a couple of projects. I'm working on my anchor chart and I'm trying out, I have about 32 different sensors for the microbit. Anything from a touch sensor. I have sensors that when you get to a certain distance, I can make sound or something happen, and we're going to be using all these sensors. I want the kids to make their own robot with the microbit without any guidelines, so I want them to develop. Yeah. One kid might make a pink unicorn robot, another one might make a funny arm moving robot, but I want to use this project that I'm making in order to inspire kids to make a robot out of the microbit. Mr Tibor, what's your project next on the list? Sean Tibor: [00:18:31] Well, actually, I think the project that we're working on right now is I'm teaching my students how to make card games in Python, and this actually came from ms Kelly's idea. But right now we're going through and we're taking cards, like a deck of cards, and we're learning how to make card games with that in Python. So kids that may not have someone to play with can sit down and play a game of war or spit or other games against the computer. So they have someone to play against. And it's a lot of fun because I think. You know when you play a card game, sometimes you don't realize how complicated it actually is until you have to try to write it in Python. And so my students are really working hard at trying to figure this out and I'm working really hard at trying to help them learn it in a really cool way. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:19:18] And then we're learning a lot of new games too. Some games that I've never even seen before. Sean Tibor: [00:19:23] We get to Oregon, a lot of new card games, they're teaching them to us, which is a lot of fun. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:19:26] Do you know that was apples to apples or something? Do you know that game? No. Do you know Mao? Yeah, I didn't either. So I'm learning that, so it's pretty cool. Sean Tibor: [00:19:36] We only played two games. One called cheat. Do you remember that one? Yeah. And the other one's patient solitaire. When you stuck the cards up in lines, do you run that? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:19:50] We should make your daddy code? Both of those. Another question. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:19:55] When did you stop teaching Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:19:57] mr Tibor? You go first. I'm old, Sean Tibor: [00:20:01] so I just started teaching last year. So this is only my second year teaching. I started off more like what your daddy does with coding and technology and talking to people in endless meetings after meetings, after meetings. But, but I started off not as a teacher, I was doing something totally different. And I started teaching last year and I really liked doing it. And Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:20:26] I know I look really young, but this is my 23rd year of teaching. I started when I was like six. Sean Tibor: [00:20:39] So that's why I think one of the reasons why Ms. Kelly and I have so much fun is because for me, teaching is really new. And it's something that I'm learning how to do, but I've been writing code and doing things with technology and wires and projects for many, many years. And for her, it's almost the opposite. She's been teaching for a very long time and she's very good at it and learning all of the coding and the technology is new, so we help each other learn how to be a better teacher and how to be a better coder, and it works really well. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:21:10] Yup. Cool. Next question, Jaguar/Zebra: [00:21:12] Dave. Parents like, Sean Tibor: [00:21:15] do our parents like Python? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:21:16] My dad likes snakes. I don't think my dad even knows what Python is, and my mother, she's getting better at using her iPad and Facebook, so probably not. And yours? Sean Tibor: [00:21:31] Well, so for me, my dad was actually a police officer for many, many years, and then when he stopped being a police officer, he went to work as something called an it person. So he worked in it on computers and servers and technology for many years. And I don't know who started first, whether it was me in school, getting into the computer and seeing how much I loved it, or him getting into it also from his work, but for the entire time I can remember. He and I have always loved technology and we talk to each other all the time. So he doesn't actually know any Python yet, but I'm going to teach it to him one day. I think that's, isn't it? So I have a question for you. And this is from my good friend, mr Eric. If you had infinite programming skills like you could program anything you could imagine. What would you make Jaguar/Zebra: [00:22:28] gigantic a rifle Sean Tibor: [00:22:31] like when you could ride around in? Yeah. That's my dream too. I love that idea Jaguar/Zebra: [00:22:39] that you can write the sculling. Sean Tibor: [00:22:41] Oh, what color would your big robot be? Blue. That's a beautiful colored for a robot. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:22:47] Would it drive itself? Sean Tibor: [00:22:48] Yeah. And zebra. How about you? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:22:50] I've got two things, a very big rocket to take me up the space so I can saving and a flying wheelchair. Sean Tibor: [00:23:06] Wow. Those are both really great ideas. Language check. What you use for the meals page are in the sky. She Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:23:15] wants to ride on a cloud. Sean Tibor: [00:23:20] Very practical. So, you know, one of the amazing things about living here in Florida is that not very far from where we live is the launching base for where they launch all the rockets to the moon. Back with Neil Armstrong and buzz Aldrin, you know, many years ago. So if you've ever seen things about the American astronauts, most of them flew out right from here, right in Florida. That's one of the coolest things. And so when you talk about making robots with infinite programming or making rockets that launch themselves into space, there's a lot of rockets that are launching from here that have a lot of programming that go into them. And a lot of people here in the U S have worked. For many years on all of the programming to make that happen. So it's a very cool idea. And if you want to do it, it's a lot of fun. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:24:12] Do you have any other questions for us or you? Good Jaguar/Zebra: [00:24:15] luck that I bought steel Chilton, like easing miced Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:24:20] as, uh, we, our students or our kids. Cause I have two boys and mr Tibor has a boy and a girl. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:24:29] So, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:24:31] so my youngest is six and probably about a couple months ago because it changes so much. He liked, I think it's called Cujo, I think he's the one that has the emojis. So you code them with emojis. He didn't know how to read before when he started doing that. But you put different codes and it has the emoji showing up on his face was really cute. And then my. 10 year old. He loves Legos, everything. Legos, and he can code the new prime because it's a block coding and he just likes to make it, make faces and make Sean Tibor: [00:25:11] noises. Let me get, I'll show them. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:25:13] I'll show them. And then mr Tibor, he codes a lot, so, Oh, let's show them the cool little as, that's the one that Mateo made. It's not coded though. Sean Tibor: [00:25:25] So they haven't coded this yet, but check out this robot. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:25:30] Oh wow. Sean Tibor: [00:25:32] So this is called spike and spike has this brick down here. This is the actual computer part, and this runs micro Python, although they haven't let us start coding it and micro Python yet, and it's got little motors and a little light sensor up here. And so when it's coded, it's going to dance back and forth. They think so it's like the motors turn and it'll do the floss. Yeah. And I probably, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:26:00] I, I took it away from them cause we made it at home and they were playing around with that and they took apart another one. And that's the one that they made because they thought it was cute. It's kind of cute now. Sean Tibor: [00:26:13] Yeah, so at school when we are programming and robots, sometimes we make our own robots out of cardboard and little motors, just like you made your inchworm. So that's really fun because you can make almost anything out of cardboard. And then we also use the Lego robots here at school because they're really fun and easy to put together. And it's at home. My own children are a little bit younger than ms Kelly's and they like it when I bring home the Legos to play with, cause they love Legos too. But my son and my daughter loved playing a board game called robot turtles. Have you ever heard of this? No. Okay. So this is one of the things I love about computers and computer science is that you don't need to have a computer to be able to learn coding. Did you know that? Yeah. Yeah. So this board game is one of those great ways of doing that because you play the game by telling the turtles how to move on the board. So sometimes you have to move forward. A few spaces, they have to turn right, they turn left, and these turtles. Try to get to like jewels and have to go around blocks and mountains and everything like that. And it's a lot of fun to play. So we play a lot of games of robot turtles together to learn about how to give instructions to the turtles. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:27:35] And I'm going to show you guys another robot that we just got and we just started playing with it. Okay. You ready? It's called Zumi. So Zumi is a little AI robot that will actually start to train itself and it runs on Python. And I haven't explored it much. Then making it go forward and backwards cause we've only played with it for two days. Does it look like a robot? You're used to. So when you think of robots, normally you think of the ones that go like, we're on a podcast, I have to explain this. Sean Tibor: [00:28:10] They have like arms and legs or they will click people or something like that. Or they look like RTD to write from star Wars or something. Right? But we actually, there are so many robots that don't look like robots. Some of them look like cars. Some of them look like arms. Some of them look like snakes, right? So one of the things that we really like about robots is that there are so many different kinds of robots out there. Do you have any other questions? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:28:40] Let's a shave it pledget that your students have done in class. Sean Tibor: [00:28:45] Hmm. Ooh, I have one. I don't think I can turn it on though, but let me see if I can find it. Cause this is a good one. And we go, Whoa, hold on. We get sneakers. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:28:56] So we've done a couple of different activities. Sometimes we let the kids design their own projects. You know why we let the kids design their own projects? Because they're more creative than we are. I would never have thought of of a flying wheelchair ever. So this one, they saw this one online, Sean Tibor: [00:29:15] right? So this is another ADA fruit project, and this one is a classic. So it's a shoe, right? But when I take the battery pack and I turn it on, it lights up and all of these different crazy colors. And as you move around. They change colors faster. So, you know, I know that you can go out to the store and they have shoes that light up. My son has a pair that he loves, right. But they actually had to take this battery pack in what's called a circuit playground boards see this round circuit board, right. You know, this one. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:29:56] Yeah, that's it. That's what we use. Sean Tibor: [00:29:58] So we used it here and then we glued on this strip of lights all the way around the shoe so that the shoe will light up as a student walks around. Pretty good for dancing, I'd imagine. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:30:10] Yeah. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:30:12] Let me, we're pulling out everything. Hold on. Sean Tibor: [00:30:16] So one of the things that we have in our classroom that's a lot of fun is that we have a three D printer. Do you, have you seen those at your school? You have one in the library. Yeah, come in the computer lab. And what's really fun about the three D printer is that if you can imagine it and make it on the computer, you can turn it into something real with the three D printer. Right. So Ms. Kelly has one that our students made. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:30:43] Well, this is taken apart because I needed the microbit. But the microbit sat up here and then they had 10 foil around here and they made themselves a little basketball because the kids really liked basketball. They took a a 10 foil metal ball. It's really hard. They didn't make many baskets, as you can tell. It was really small basket. And the idea was they had to shoot the metal ball, and every time it did, there would be a point on the microbead. So that's from a sixth grader. This one I really liked. It's not on. The batteries are dead. Would you see what that is? It's a card. It's a birthday card. So this student made a thick birthday card, put the microbit in, and it says press the button for a special surprise. I've ever had those cards that make sound. You ever had one of those? No. Oh, they sell them for like 1310 to $13 but this one they made. Yeah. So this one's saying happy birthday and then saying a couple other songs. So I thought that was pretty cool. Sean Tibor: [00:31:49] I have a question for you. Do you think it's more fun to make things or buy things Jaguar/Zebra: [00:31:55] because you can be proud of what you've made and. It's fun making them. Yeah. Sean Tibor: [00:32:03] And do you feel like you learn a lot when you make things? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:32:06] Yeah. You and your land is, I know when you make things, cause when you buy things you don't need anything. Just have to came to control them. Sean Tibor: [00:32:17] And what's special about making things with your mom or your dad? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:32:21] He spend time with you, mom and dad and special working together. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:32:29] Absolutely. So for us, a lot of the codes and a lot of the projects that we do with the students, we like to do small, simple things. You know why we'd like to do small, simple things to make it fun. One, make it fun too. It doesn't take two, three, four, five, six days. We can do it in a couple of hours because who wants to sit there inside staring at a computer all day long? Besides your dad? Not me. Not me either. So we'd like to do a lot of small things with the younger kids, with my sons as well, because things that we can complete in a couple of hours, use some glue, put a little bit of code. It gets my son and the other kids interested into making things cool. Yeah. So you have to start small. Think about things like a fish like you did, and think of maybe a stuffed animal. Maybe you want a stuffed animal to have a heart with the light that when you squeeze it, the light blinks, or when you shake it, a red light comes on to remind you not to shake your toys. Yeah. So things like that. Cool. Sean Tibor: [00:33:37] Do you have any other questions for us or anything that you want to learn how to do? What's something that you want to learn how to do next? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:33:47] Make something move. Sean Tibor: [00:33:48] Oh, it'd be fun. So that takes a lot. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:33:54] Well, maybe you can make it release. You can make a paper airplane and you guys can use the things that you learned from the servo. You remember the inchworm? It's just a movement like this. What if you can release a rubber band and make something shoot off? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:34:15] Yeah. Make it play. Maybe it swings Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:34:18] after a while. That would be cool. You could do that. Or butterfly. Sean Tibor: [00:34:25] And you know, it's fun as a lot of these things you can keep in your room, right? So if you make a butterfly that flaps its wings, maybe you can hang that from the ceiling. And then whenever you see it, it would, you know, you could have it flap its wings when you come in the room. Anthony Shaw: [00:34:46] Yeah, we had the fish on the ceiling. Literally. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:34:50] And the fin fellow. Sean Tibor: [00:34:58] So I know that there are a lot of mommies and daddies out there who want to make things with their kids. They want to do things with Python and they want to do coding. What advice do you have. For those mommies and daddies to make it fun for their kids and something their kids want to do. Jaguar/Zebra: [00:35:14] Yeah. Fun, Sean Tibor: [00:35:15] fun thing. So make sure it's fun, right? Yeah. What else? What did they spend? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:35:24] He was just doing fun coding. Anthony Shaw: [00:35:30] Yeah. She took grownups do all the typing or should the kids do the typing? Jaguar/Zebra: [00:35:34] Don't you think. Anthony Shaw: [00:35:37] Kids should, the grownups use the mass, so the kids use the mass kids, much of the grownups to Jaguar/Zebra: [00:35:48] meet help Anthony Shaw: [00:35:50] if they need help, show them what to do, but not do it for them. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. What about telling them off? If they get it wrong, should they get excited when they get it right? Yeah. Yes. We should be happy when we get it right. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:36:07] Yeah. Pretty cool. Do you want to hear some of my advice to remind your daddy and all the other mommies and daddies out there? So step number one, you guys draw it out and design it. What you want to make or what you want to do or talk it out. Some people don't like to draw and write. My kids love drawing and coloring. So that's step number one to do it in small chunks. So pretend we are making a butterfly and we wanted the wings to flap. The first thing we do, we make the wings. One day we make them flap. Maybe later on we want to, when we come into the room, when we turn on the lights. We want the butterfly to flap so we add in something else. So each time you can add in more things to the same project. So that project just doesn't go into the garbage, kind of gets in, you learn more, right. Or you make it bigger or you make it better. Okay. And the other things, there's all kinds of cool games you can play. So it's not just having to make projects. Sometimes the kids like to play games and learn about activities. If I go forward, how do I make it go forward? An animal? Or how do I make a code bubbles? How do I make them go through a maze? So sometimes thinking than playing those games with your parents helps you get more ideas to make cool projects. You wanna add to those. Sean Tibor: [00:37:31] Yeah. So I have a couple of ideas. My advice, there's never a grade when you're doing this right? There's never a test score or anything like that because the point is to have fun. Right. Together because when we get older, right? When you grow up and you become mommy's or daddy's, you're going to think about the things that you did with your dad, right? And how he made you feel, not about a grade and not about whether it worked or not. You're going to remember the giggles much more than you're going to remember the code, right? Yeah. So we want this to be about how we feel together. That's the first thing. And the second thing that I would say is if you don't want to write code should, you have to write code, right? So if your daddy's really good at writing code and he does it and he loves it, he does it all day, but you don't love it. Is it something that he should make you do? No, no. Because again, it's something we do together because we like doing it together and because it's fun and we enjoy it. So it's really more about what we'd love to do together than about what one person loves to do and the other person does. Right? So mommy's and daddy's have to know what their kids like to do and how to make it fun. Right? Because if it's fun, we'll keep doing it. Right. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:38:53] And we hope you have fun. We like doing it. I think the key is, and this is something mr Tibor says all the time to me, when I start going, Oh, I don't want to code today cause I have those days. Coding's hard for me. It's been a lot of learning over the year and a half for me. Some days I come in and I say, Oh, I just, I can't, and he says, what do you want to make? And it always gets me back motivated, even if it's something for me. It sounds kind of boring. I don't know. Maybe it's boring to you or to someone else, but I like to make graphs. And I like to look at data and I like to make things neat and pretty and lined up. So whenever I get bored, I go back and I look at things that do that for me. So once you find what you like to do, then you just keep going back to that for a little bit. When you're bored. And I think daddy should show you turtle Python, because I think you guys would, the light turtle Python. Sean Tibor: [00:39:49] We'll save that as a surprise for you. Yeah. But I think, but if you think about it, when your daddy came to you, he didn't say, let's learn Python. What did he say? He said, let's make an inchworm or let's make a fish. Right? Or let's just do something fun together. Right? So it's not about learning how to code, it's about trying to find something to do. And then. Learning enough code to be able to make it happen. Right. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:40:17] And having fun. All right. Sean Tibor: [00:40:21] All right. All right. So you know what? We are actually out of time because our school day is over and your school day is probably just about to begin, right? Yeah. So why don't we let you go off and have some fun at school and making new projects, and then we would love to have you come back. Jaguar and zebra to come tell us all about all the cool things that you're making and learning how to do in the fun that you're having with your dad. Do you want to come back and record another episode with us someday? Okay. But only if you promise to show us all the cool projects you're making. Okay. So I think with that, we're going to say thank you very much to our guests. Mr. Anthony Shaw. Ms Jaguar, mrs zebra, and of course my lovely cohost, Ms. Kelly. Thank you for teaching Python. This is Sean. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:41:11] And this is Kelly signing off.