Sean:
[0:18] Hello and welcome to teaching python this is episode 24 avoiding the summer slide for teachers my name is Sean Tibor I am a coder who teaches.

Kelly:
[0:27] My name is Kelli Schuster Fridays and I'm a teacher who code.

Sean:
[0:31] Yeah so we're trying out some new Brandon cuz we've we're in the year to now it said so for Kelly and I were we've now crossed the threshold now we are
well on our way to next year and we're in the middle of summer right now so how was your week been going Kelly.

Kelly:
[0:46] It's been going well I actually I'm a little bit hesitant about the teacher who code the time I think I'm a lot.
A lot more than a teacher just starting to code so it's somewhere in the middle someone can come up with a great idea to an adjective we are adjectives.

Sean:
[1:02] I'm going to I'm going to use a silly word I'm going to say hogwash.
I would I would give it to you but you've earned the title you have worked really hard over the past year to learn how to code and you've been making remarkable progress so you have officially in the title a teacher who codes so.

Kelly:
[1:21] That sounds good sounds good actually gray I did take a week off of coding for a bit and so I'm
in full force today I went to a conference so it was great and I'm going to say that cuz I might be my one of the week and so how about you how was your week been.

Sean:
[1:39] So for me this is it's been a good week I'm
into my second week of summer camp this year so I'm working on stem Camp I teach the computer science portion of our summer camp here at Pinecrest this week were focusing on balls and sports and games and so today we
spend some time with these really cool
things called game balls were they have a little accelerometer built into them and you can get data about how fast they go how high they go how long they hang up in the air and so we're going to gather all that data and use it as our observations to create video games,
using scratch cuz I've got some younger kids that are going to tackle the problem of how to make a video game and make it realistic with some actual physics in it they're going to use the data they gathered today
to make some real video game.

Kelly:
[2:26] Sounds great that sounds like there's some sort of when's going to happen this week with that for you.

Sean:
[2:31] I might have to save that for next week but so far so good.

Kelly:
[2:34] So it's your kind of weird because this is probably when our first week without being with each other and working side-by-side and we get to explore different passions this week so if you want to just tell me about your win of the week.

Sean:
[2:48] It might one of the week actually had nothing to do with school but it had a lot to do with python
so I am part of a local synagogue here and one of the things we've been doing is trying to get information about our membership and what they're looking for in their attitudes and behaviors and everything so we recently completed a survey of the membership
we got a lot of data a lot of answers and so my job has been to help segment that data and look at it in the number of different ways and I've been using python to do that and it was really a great experience I learned a ton
using a lot of pandas I tried using Seaborn to do my visualizations a library on top of matplotlib that helps your visualizations come out a little bit
prettier in a little bit easier so I pulled it together over the last couple days last week and really came up with some interesting insights and things that we.
Had suspected for a while but didn't have the data to confirm it and now we do so I think it's going to really help us make some good decisions about where we go from here and who were going to try to help out,
the most with our services as a as an organization.

Kelly:
[3:55] That's awesome that's a lot of things and it's just kind of like almost I can automate the boring stuff kind of activity for you know with a little bit more of non boring things.

Sean:
[4:05] I mean this is my past life in my current Life coming together I've done a lot of work in marketing analytics and consumer insights over over the course of the last couple of decades actually but
what's been really cool about this was the ability to,
really feel like I had the freedom to slice and dice it however I wanted that it wasn't limited by the software is really just how could I use Python to do this and how can I use pandas to do it
it felt like it was really freeing as in.

Kelly:
[4:34] Excellent my window the week I just.
It's been a long Winds of of a of a long week of when's I should say I just returned from Napa American Canyon and Sonoma where I spend a week.
4 of the days working in a conference or attending a conference and making lots of connections I'll hold off on telling you all about,
my conference later but I think the biggest win is just meeting so many people one of my,
leaders of the conference Christy Lathrup her husband is a data scientist in Python I was talking about the circuit playground to her and she was so excited she couldn't wait to tell her husband.

[5:17] I met a senior lecturer at from Exeter.
And in the UK who was telling me all about what she doesn't engineering and Entrepreneurship and should teach at Kirkland's design just.
Amazing people and I was of course telling everyone about teaching Python and the things that we do
add a matter of a few computer scientists who were there at the conference with me so it was
just an amazing time of meeting people outside of our field outside of our community and a different setting student teachers from,
low income schools in South Carolina and Georgia.
Professors from Puerto Rico you name the place we met we had a group of Australians in my class about 11 of them and they were all administrators and head curriculum district-level people it was just a lot of fun
try to find some of the huge when I love talking to people and putting myself outside of that comfort zone of getting to know other people.

Sean:
[6:19] Yeah that sounds like it like it was really great I was following you on Twitter all week you all the different things you were posting and you know several of our colleagues were there with you and it was really great to see how they were able to view somebody's pbl techniques this project based learning towards there
concrete learning objectives that they have for their classes and it was really great thing to see that all come together in
different subject areas to be able to see it come together and pieces it was really a fun thing to watch happened even remotely.

Kelly:
[6:50] Yeah it was great night and on the plane ride home I listened to our last episode with Meg Ray and cuz I wanted to refresh my mind about how she was using pbl.
Kind of in her designing of the creek elem.
It's been it was what I was on the Forefront of my mind the whole time where I was there of how I'm going to use the Fantastic Teaching Standards that they provide us and how we're going to implement those standards into teaching our curriculum next.

Sean:
[7:17] Awesome you know that kind of gets us into you not thinking about
and we're not really they're not going to next year yet I mean I was looking at my summer schedule it doesn't feel like I have much time left before we're back in the classroom teaching again but what are things I want to talk about with you is
you know how do we use our summers and this is my first summer as a teacher so this is my last
and not my last first but this is one of the big first of being teaching is my first summer off cuz I don't really know how to take the summer off I want to keep doing things I want to keep trying things I want to keep learning and exploring
and the nature of it has changed so instead of grading and attendance and the day-to-day operations of being a teacher there is more freedom to explore and try new things
and I was curious and this is where our topic came from how do we best use our summers
in a variety of different ways not just to accomplish things but also how do we
relax and refresh and refocus ourselves in the best way so that we when we come back we're ready to do it all over again.

Kelly:
[8:18] Yes most people think that teachers we just go all summer and we just sit at the beach and do nothing and have a complete free time and we just let our minds go and I.

Sean:
[8:30] Yeah hold on hold on that's two frozen drinks please.
And if you could extra lime this time.

Kelly:
[8:39] Yes we're not recording on a beach at all not today anyways it's a little bit rainy in South Florida so
it's been rainy this week but it's not really that time we've even if we are sort of not in the classroom not in the building
I kind of feel like it's our 20% time opportunity ourselves you know that Google philosophy where 80% of the time we're working so hard throughout the year,
and we have a 20% of that time left for us and it's just it's a time to devote to our cells for professional development.
Free of work distractions not life distractions but definitely work distractions.
It's just that time to make us become better teachers more effective teachers give us something to do to keep our brains from my guess what you said sliding sliding into that summer slide.

Sean:
[9:30] That's something that we have seen with the students right that they leave at the end of the year maybe they're a little burnt out but they've been learning so much throughout the year and then the.
In the fall that where did all that knowledge go
what happened to what do they do over the summer and we spend a lot of time building them back up again helping them recover some of what they had lost over the summer and that's what many teachers have termed the summer slide
right where they slide from one to the other and lose along the way loosen that knowledge and some of that
even study skills and habits in the the extra pieces of being in the adult learning mode over the summer so.
Kelly you found something that was for tips for avoiding the summer slide for kids and we thought it might be fun to see if those tips apply for teachers as well.

Kelly:
[10:19] Yes and I'm trying to think of we can relate them sort of definitely I try to do this for our kids my kids and our students but the first one they were talking about his read read and read again
Burkett and I think our school really really highlights that I know I got I have.
Stack of books that are bought and I've gotten through one but definitely read have you done any reading.

Sean:
[10:46] Yeah I should have been doing more recreational reading I kind of needed some of that quiet time to just read some fiction and some things that I like that I enjoy
just some quiet time to relax and get lost in a good story for a few days or a week or so has been really helpful for my own kind of piece of mine but when it comes to reading things for professional development
it's been a lot of in a python coding and not so much teaching stuff I've been learning to be able to do some stuff this summer so my reminder my takeaway is I maybe need to dust off some of those books about how to be a better teacher,
this summer as well.

Kelly:
[11:21] Why had a head start on my summer reading I did I read the how to raise successful people I finish that book starting on making thinking visible.
I've read a couple pages in there I kind of like to float in between a couple of books and teach students how to learn but I too have taken your advice and I have
embarked on the pleasure reading and I got a book and I think as I was reading it I was like this is a book for Sean it's called a i apocalypse and.
I don't know what have you read it.

Sean:
[11:52] No no it's great it has everything I loved it has artificial intelligence post-apocalyptic dystopia like it's perfect.

Kelly:
[12:00] It's fabulous actually I meant I'm halfway through I couldn't put it down the concepts built around how everyone has switch to mobile phones now there is an AI I'm not going to give you too much of the information I did Skip book 1,
of the singularity series I just thought the AI apocalypse was going to be more interesting it's so far well written especially for educators and computer science because it's through the view.
Of some under 18 year olds and some professionals in the field.
And that's all I'm going to say about this but I've been reading it thinking that I'm going to be finished and giving it to you.

Sean:
[12:37] Excellent excellent why everything I have right now is on the Kindle so I have to figure out how to loan that to you digitally.

Kelly:
[12:42] Okay so number two on the list is exploring Vanessa's for kids again was help them explore their Fascination just to promote learning.
So how can we spend that for teachers how can you explore the fascination for you.

Sean:
[12:58] For me that's not too hard right I have a list of things that I'm just fascinated by that I love doing I love working on and tinkering on so I always feel like I have this backlog but I think if you're searching for something
and you're in the space there are so many cool things coming out right now and I just today they announce the Raspberry Pi for so the new version of the Raspberry Pi it's
way more powerful that's all this Hardware video decoding it has more memory so maybe there's some machine learning in it sometimes just getting a new piece of kit
write a new piece of gear to try out can prompt some Fascination what can I do with this how can I make this work how could I explore it so I've been
Ian have obsessively checking the Adafruit new product list I've been looking at and stuff from SparkFun I've been looking at some low-cost micropython boards to try to experiment with and of course I keep tinkering my pool sensor project,
this just this ongoing sense of what can I do how interesting is that how does it work and I spent quite a bit of time last week when I wasn't
in summer camp just exploring those and enjoying the ability to sit down for three or four hours and just dig deep into something and see where it led without a specific goal in mind.

Kelly:
[14:12] And limes been guess a little bit promoted by my own Fascination and a lot promoted by what my kids,
want to do and also to help support.
Myself when I go to teach the little kids at the end of the summer like you're doing right now so I have been that's a kind of a Fascination for me,
last year I had purchased some canvas and some acrylic paint and my kids and I painted some photos and paintings for our house and we're going to do it get that again,
and it's just something that has been come up Summer hobby for me so that's one of the things and it's a nice
turn off from Attack cuz I tried to avoid staying on Tech the whole time with my kids around because I get hooked on this udemy course and I'm still taking with cold steel
and I ain't get lost in it and the next thing I know I've been on the computer for three hours and I try to get up early in the morning so that's kind of like where I'm.
Balancing on tagging off Tech a lot at home.
Explain my creative side with painting and just doing a finishing up my courses.

Sean:
[15:17] Nice that sounds great I really like that unplugged Fascination to just even looking for something that is not a tech digital,
sort of project that can let your mind working different ways for a little while this is a really good thing I have some stuff I've been working on for you for later in the summer cuz I think you have the Under the Sea theme weeks at summer camp.
And so I was at the beach a few weeks ago with my wife we picked up a bunch of shells so I set some of them aside for you so you can make some digital jewelry with the shells.

Kelly:
[15:48] Oh that's that's going to be great.

Sean:
[15:49] But that process of collecting the shells and sorting through them and cleaning them up and getting them ready has been a really great unplugged activity it was just really relaxing to go walk along the beach and look for sale.

Kelly:
[16:00] This is kind of flows into two number two but four parents they suggest don't underestimate what these kids can do learning to be messy and full of failure we often surprised ourselves by just trying,
what things have you been trying that are messy and have been surprising your learning.

Sean:
[16:16] Well I guess I mean look at middle of like building a 3D printer right now so it's a mess on the workbench here but I think the more important thing is not so much the messiness aspect of it doesn't have to be messy but you should go on trying to fail at something
this summer go out and try something that you don't know is going to work some of that has a bit of risk to it and will probably not work out
because you might surprise yourself that it actually does that it could actually be something kind of cool or difference maybe it's like launching that blog maybe it
introducing a competitor podcast to ours I don't know what it Whatever It Is find something that
it gets you outside of your comfort zone it's a risk and something that maybe you've underestimated yourself and what you can do see what happens and try it try something new.

Kelly:
[17:02] I think there's a lot of new things that are coming my way my kids have been telling me that I have to start doing hack the Minecraft with them
avoiding Minecraft but we're talking about building some world in Minecraft is going to get messy because there's actually a Minecraft 6 weeks of Summer.
Going to be launching actually today June 24th where Minecraft is teaching about biodiversity
true the the world in the realm so that's going to be really interesting that's going to be a messy learning opportunity for me because my kids have been building worlds and Sport complexes and,
houses that I couldn't imagine a five-year-old could build an eight-year-old so that's my massive failure,
coming up tomorrow.

Sean:
[17:48] Nice and then there's a good chance I get totally won't work but you're going to learn something from it right and what better opportunity than trying now over the summer when there's not a whole room full of kids staring at you watching it not work.

Kelly:
[17:59] Absolutely and you know eventually I can hack in Python in pipe Minecraft so that's my ideal for learning.

Sean:
[18:06] I'll be fun.

Kelly:
[18:07] Phone number for a tow and this actually applies a lot to us I mean but they suggest for parents to tell the kids embrace the math the core of Science and Tech we do that all the time right.

Sean:
[18:22] I mean maybe maybe it's time to try something new to one things that I want to work on over the next few weeks has some stuff with geometry and turtle Python and just sharpening up my knowledge of the math behind that
coordinate systems in Direction and plotting and everything so maybe maybe even if you do spend a lot of time
with math maybe find some new things to try or some different things to see what you can make work.

Kelly:
[18:45] Exactly when I was talking to the professor and Exeter University she was discussing about training the the Math teachers
at the University and how could python be brought in to make the way of math teaching the way of math a little bit different and more exciting and so we had a lot of a great conversation is about
how perhaps an entire
curriculum or at least definitely a course in engineering with python could help a new wave Craigslist so it was a lot of fun things so yeah that's opportunities to embrace that mess as well there.

Sean:
[19:23] Yeah and there's some really great resources out there I mean I would also put statistics into this category as well.
So just brushing up your knowledge of Statistics there's some really great books out there that will help you
what some of the fundamentals I mean my college textbook and statistics was the cartoon guide to statistics
still one of my favorite books I have I think I bought a copy of it every few years over the over the past twenty just to be able to brush up and have something to refer to it's a really clear,
fun way to learn some very complex topics in stats and then,
the everything is Project Euler Euler will put in the show notes is a great way to solve math problems using code.
So it'll be problems like find the sum of all your numbers that are factor that are.
Factorise by 3 between one and a million and so you try to figure out how to write the code in the trick is to write the code AS succinctly as clearly as possible using the fewest lines so.
It can be kind of challenging and it gets you to think about the way the numbers relate to one another in a Rowenta.

Kelly:
[20:26] Good advice so I'm going to add a number 5 to this what parents can do to keep kids from.
Summer slide and what we can then do cuz this will this will tie in what we've going to be doing I done and you are going to do what is
maybe go to summer camp and our version of summer camp our summer conferences and there are tons of,
summer conferences going on and you're going to go to one next week right or two week.

Sean:
[20:57] Two weeks two weeks I'm going to Syfy in Austin Texas I just tweeted out this morning looking at the session list is both.
Exciting and exhilarating and terrifying because the the science side of it is so incredibly cool people are doing some amazing things with us and I feel like.
I mean I know that it's going to be accessible when I get there I know that the python Community is wonderful and that way they give you the background.
You can always lean over to your neighbor and ask them for help and they're going to like give you the crib notes on how to get through the the talk there's some really cool stuff going on and I am so excited to go learn about it,
so that I can bring it back to our science teachers and help connect some of this python.
And the science is together in a better way for our students so they can learn in new and interesting ways as well as it or maybe our hopefully more effective for them to gather the information God gave the knowledge.

Kelly:
[21:53] Yeah and there are just so many conferences out there currently a couple of our colleagues are at the SD conference right now is seeing 2019 and that conferences.
Barry White's Packer spectrum of computer science curriculum from from scratch the computational thinking to physical Computing I know my Corvette is there right now and.

[22:16] Ada fruits not there but other Hardware places are there and they have AR in VR so there's a lot of learning going on there for a collie and I can't wait to talk to them after they come back from that.
And I just came back from as we said earlier the pbl works.
Conference it's called the pbl world 2019 and it's in Napa that's little bit switch from computer science
it's sort of in the same realm as how we teach I really it's one of these conferences where they take this project based learning and.
It's this vehicle one of the participants in my car in my workshop was saying it's this vehicle and what we put inside the vehicle and take with us is,
another way of doing some great teaching and they talked about building the culture and we rebuild the culture in our classroom all the time they know,
in a project-based learning class that you have to have.
We have to let the kids know that there's no single right answer that we have high expectations that
we have guidelines and voice and choice opportunities for the kids we also design sort of some working parameters for the students but,
they are self-paced we don't have all the answers it's also like a lot of routines that happened in pbl how.

[23:37] Maybe with the kids are developing their own set of questions are figuring out all these soft skills that we we've been teaching
the whole year actually other skills of using project-based learning so there was a lot of things that I brought back from that assassin student learning different ways that we can
figure out if they're getting our python teaching so I can't wait to bring that and have a full,
conversation about that with you when we come back to school and just how to engage him and coach
the kids so so much going on and I can't recommend pbl Works enough it's at the grades conference and a great venue.
Napa.

Sean:
[24:18] My sweetheart is also struck me as we were having this conversation has weird thing about the topic.
Isn't exclusive to teachers and is not exclusive to administrators or anybody else these tips are really great for a variety of different professions and occupations no matter where you are reading is always good being able to have the freedom to explore.
You don't ask to underestimate yourself try things that will likely fail brush up on your math go to summer camp brush your teeth don't forget the floss.

Kelly:
[24:45] Make some friends.

Sean:
[24:47] Make some friends all good advice no matter where you are I think the benefit for teachers in our schedule is that,
there is this opportunity window there's this window in most schools in the summer time where you have some Choice over what you can do at least in an ideal situation but if you're not a teacher and you're thinking about how can I apply this
in a pick one of these pick up pick a new book that you haven't read yet.
Pick something that's outside of your comfort zone try something that you think is going to fail but do it in a way that you know maybe if it succeeds it could be really great there's always a way to help improve your own
professional development.
I'm excited because this summer seems to be chock-full of it there's just so many different things to do in to explore I don't feel like I'm slowing down at all I've had a few moments to relax and catch my breath.
I'm really excited about all the different things that I get to do this summer and all the fun I'm having working with kids in summer camp where it's a different.
Payson style trying new things learning failing trying again so far it's been a fantastic.

Kelly:
[25:51] I've got an I think just having those Brain Breaks those change of a routines for us.
It's just a opportunity to become more creative I've already started to notice did the change of my learning the summer and taking in.
Little nitpick things like different methods for dictionaries and how to.
Nest lists and dictionaries together and.
And just a different ways do I pop or or do I not look it up I'm going a little bit blank right now but just going through all the different things of what I could do and I think that's because I changed the pace
it wasn't about trying to get kids to do something it wasn't about my current teaching objective but what what I wanted to do for my learning so,
it's just a fun break for yourself.

Sean:
[26:45] Well we're going to keep this to a relatively Short episode this week so we can get it out or I can get it out the more timely fashion then the last couple episodes if you have ideas or suggestions hit us up on Twitter share it with the community,
you can always use the hashtag python educators,
so that we can keep this together but you can find us on Twitter at teaching Python and you can also find us on our website if you want to send us a note teaching python. FM,
we didn't have a follow-up from last week's episode I think it was last week's or maybe two weeks ago Kelly you were talking about wanting to find a low cost.

[27:19] Circuitpython board that was so terrible that we could just give the students and we got a really great.
Response from John Maus who's on Twitter at amusing moose with underscores between the A and musing and moose John suggested two different boards for us there is an esp8266 board
call the nodemcu.
That retails for I think it's like $7 it's yeah it's on Amazon right now for $6.79 so it will run micropython it won't run circuitpython but I'll run micropython it has Wi-Fi built into it.
And it's enough to get something started you can definitely make some lights blink with it and and get things going if you want something that's a little bit more powerful.
There is something called it's a ESP wroom 32 it's an esp32 baseboard that also runs micropython but it has more pins more power that I should have Bluetooth built into it,
which apparently isn't supported by micropython yet but there is there's two different words are there in this one's $11 so.
Kelly we have some suggestions if you're looking for low-cost boards things that you can programming code there's a couple out there on Amazon and I bet if you look harder you can probably even find some.

[28:35] Out there so John want to say thank you for sending that in will put links to both of those items in the show notes if you're curious about them I know that one of our past Gas Peter Cuz arnoff from I believe it was Portland Community College.
Has had a lot of success with his engineering classes using these types of boards and micropython so it's pretty fun I think I have a,
I've got two or three of them on order to play around with an N test out.

Kelly:
[29:00] Nice nice and if anyone has suggestions for some sci-fi books for me I am trying to,
to expand my reading so I can't keep reading about teaching and learning although that is something I really like I do I kind of hooked on this sci-fi so AI apocalypse
I think you should read it and not plug in this book but go ahead and read it and if anybody has some really good Sci-Fi books that are based on science facts.

Sean:
[29:28] Oh so it's so not not on the fantasy side more on the sides side.

Kelly:
[29:32] You're not Star Wars Ash but you know more of Back to the Future ish.

Sean:
[29:36] Okay gotcha gotcha what you know I think that works really well because we use that in our English classes over the past year to talk about some of the implications of AI in our society so although there's some reading for fun.
There's a very practical nature to the request as well.

Kelly:
[29:53] How did you know that was what I was doing.

Sean:
[29:58] We have worked side-by-side for the past year so I kind of knew where you were going with.

Kelly:
[30:02] Okay well for teaching python this is Kelly.