Sean Tibor: Hello and welcome to Teaching Python. This is Episode 81, The Holiday Gift Guide for 2021. My name is Sean Tyler. I'm a coder who teaches. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: My name is Kelly Schuster Pertz. And I am a teacher teacher who codes. And I don't know why I'm giggling already. I was laughing. Sean Tibor: I think you're just laughing at the fact that this is what, the third year that we've done a Holiday gift guide, we have I know it's becoming an annual tradition, and I kind of like that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Me too, especially since a lot of these presents are already for my kids. Sean Tibor: Yeah, between Kelly and I, Kelly, celebrate Christmas. I celebrate Hanukkah. So I've already seen some of these presents being deployed to the children and they've been well received. So I'm excited to share this week. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Me too. I'm very excited. Sean Tibor: Well, before we get to that, why don't we start with the wins of the week? And, Kelly, I'm going to make you go first because we have no guests this week. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I was thinking about this the other day. I'm really excited and I feel like we've got this win going on with teaching functions. Functions was, if anybody is a long time listener recalls, function was one of those things that was really hard for me. And I had an AHA moment, probably about a year and a half ago about it finally clicked and I was able to develop metaphors and images in my mind of what a function was. And this quarter we've been teaching. Well, this year we've been teaching functions in depth with the 7th graders and really having them understand the difference between return and print and parameters and arguments and passing and keyword arguments or quarks. And yesterday we were teaching it and it was a really good conversation where we had made this function and it was printing a value and the kids were reading the trace back and they're like, but I don't understand why it's a value error saying that none can't be subtracted from a daytime. And we sat there and we talked about it and we came up with some ideas and some metaphors and images for the kids to understand what the functions were. And I felt for the first time that moment of teaching functions with the students was something that took me a year and a half took them a class here and they were like and a light bulb came on and it was a really good feeling of just having them see the difference and why that was a value of none from the print statement and the function that we made versus the return statement. And we were able to have a great conversation. And again, these are 13 year old kids. So what took me so long to learn it? They got it. And it was a really good moment just because you're a really good teacher. Oh, you're so kind. Sean Tibor: I agree. I think that's been something that's tough to teach. And it's not because the concept of a function is particularly difficult, but it's one of those things that you don't see until you use it, and you don't see it until you start to run into some of the issues that arise when you start using functions. I think for most middle school students, if they're just coding along for learning and for fun, there aren't that many reasons for them to use functions. They can write pages of spaghetti code and it'll do what they want it to do. But it isn't until you start to explain these ideas of modularity and reuse that they start to see, like, why would I want to use a function there? And what we found as we've been teaching this is that the concepts, this idea of passing arguments to a function and having it return values is not something that's immediately accepted by the students. They don't immediately get it and have it sync and go. Okay, I can see this. I can see how it works. And so we've been practicing lots of different ways of teaching this, lots of different methods of sharing the information, trying to get them to conceptualize that in their heads. And we've tried everything from the ice cream shop metaphor, like, you go to an ice cream store and order an ice cream cone and you do your thing to make the ice cream cone. You return the ice cream cone. To me, the differences between prints and returns has always been tricky, because oftentimes the example of a return value is, well, this function returns a value, and then we print it out to see what it is. So what's the difference, right? They don't see that. So I agree. I think the win this week has definitely been refining those techniques. And a lot of those techniques have come down to having the student be the function and asking them to work with some data that you give them and return that data back. And I love the example that you gave, which is having the student write down the answer on their whiteboard and then not say anything. And you, as the teacher, can't use that information because you can't see it on their desk. You can't do anything with it. They have to tell you that information that's the return. And I think that really clicked for one of our students. And it was funny. We were teaching it and he said, just wait, he's processing. You could see it sink in. And then he had that. Now I get it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. It's really cool. I think if you're listening and you're saying, yeah, but it's easy. Like you said, you can write functions and you read it a lot in these books. And I think that's what was one of those. I remember that moment clearly when I figured it out a year and a half ago, I could write functions. I could use functions I even wrote a blog about this. It was not a big deal. I could copy code, and I kind of got it, and I could teach it, and it was like, yeah, you have to do this and you have to do that. And I remembered the things that I had to do, but I didn't understand the deeper meaning of it. And really what was happening inside. And for me, I can't move forward off of that topic until I really can see it and visualize it. And we've come up with a lot of metaphors. And I think that's something that is a lot different than other places I've read or heard in computer science. We don't really care if they can write all kinds of different functions or libraries. We want them to understand so that when they switch to a different language or a different code language, then they will understand it. And the concept is going to stay steady with them. It was good. It was such a good feeling. It was just like, finally, so long coming. Yeah. Sean Tibor: And my win is actually related to that. This quarter, I'm teaching a longer unit in coding with Minecraft. So my 8th graders are using Minecraft to learn to code, and we've gone through the first day or so of it, and seeing some early wins with it because students love Minecraft, even if they're not very familiar with it or it's not something they do right now. Most kids of this generation have played at least some Minecraft. It's rare that you run into someone that doesn't have a doesn't know how to move around or they are in there, and you start showing them how to do these coding examples. And for some kids, it's like the first time you show them turtle, they're like, this is amazing. I can make walls. I can do stuff. And what I'm hoping for related to this idea of functions is that Minecraft being so visual gives you the opportunity to create reusable bits of code as functions. Like one of the early tutorials in Minecraft Education edition is building a wall using this little agent robot that you can send commands to. But once you build the wall, then you can turn that into a function and say, okay, now build a wall that's these dimensions do some sort of parameters. You can also create functions that will inspect for blocks and dig in those directions. And all of this sort of useful functionality that you can reuse as functions is something that I hope to really get into over the next week or two. And I'm already starting to see the early indicators of that with my students because they're now starting to look at other code. And I've got some examples that I gave them where it will build a railroad track out of an Oval, and I use functions to build each step of it. So these ideas are things that I hope to work with Minecraft, to be able to see and show the kids these examples of modular code that functions are really well suited for. And my second one that's kind of like pending. It's almost here. We spoke a few weeks ago, actually, a month ago about Colab and how their age based restrictions have essentially killed it for our students. They can't access it because of some complications that were put in place with age restrictions on Google site. And it looks like those restrictions are going to be resolved where your Google administrators can enable collab for students under the age of 18 within your organization that hopefully should be here by the time you're listening to this podcast. So if you've been paused on collab like we have, hopefully we can unpause in the next week or two. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I got to decide if I'm going back. I just transferred everything back into a Word Doc and then back into Google. Sean Tibor: I think I would keep it all in the Word Doc, but then let them use Colab as their editor. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, definitely not sure about going back to type it all in again, but, hey, we always do so much work on top of everything else. We always rewrite everything. Why not? Sean Tibor: Any significant fails this week? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Not yet. We are soldering tomorrow, so you never know. Sean Tibor: Yeah, there's going to be some Burns. Hopefully nothing too serious. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: We're okay right now. It's only Wednesday, so we're good for me. Sean Tibor: My fail was really just biting off more than I could chew on an exercise with students and trying to combine date times with file reading and parsing at the same time. And it's sort of working. But if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: You're circling back. It's coming there. Sean Tibor: Yeah, we'll get there. So that's my fail. Like maybe being a little ambitious with the lesson plan, but, oh, well, live and learn, live and learn. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And sometimes some kids can take it, and some kids can't. So you just have to play with it. Sean Tibor: Exactly. So that brings us to the Holiday Gift Guide. So many things that we can do this season with gifts. And one of the things that Kelly and I are both big on is having gifts that are both fun and engaging and interesting in ways that help our students and our own children learn from their toys. And just to be clear, I said our children, but Kelly has her children. I have my children. We don't share any children in common. All right, so, Kelly, what's your first toy on the list? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It's hard to choose. I'm going to start really small first, and this is probably the least teaching, but I love this game that would play with my kids. And my kids are seven and eleven, and it's called Shut the Box, and I think it's a really old game. It's just a wooden dice game. You roll the dice, you have a bunch of numbers one to ten, and you try to eliminate as many blocks as you can with the die. And it's just a really good creative kind of problem solving game. And I like having these problemsolving games with my kids, because I like to get that way of thinking going now early on, because sometimes in school we just kind of get right to it, and they're writing and everything. And with the shut the box game, it allows them to build this confidence. It gives us a creative idea of what numbers do I flip? Because if I roll a one and a two on my die, I can either flip the three or I can flip the one and two. And the idea is to try to clear the entire blocks and to be the winner or have the least amount of numbers. So it was just a fun game. We play it a lot, usually at a pub, but I bought that for them, so I'm excited to have that at home. Sean Tibor: Nice. Well, the first one that's on my list and I have a couple of games, but I'm going to save them for later. The first one that's on my list is actually a USB microscope. And this is one like I got mine for fairly cheap. And I think right now it's on Amazon on sale right now, but it's great. It's just like a webcam, but the focal length on it is designed for magnification, so it's got a lens on it that will magnify dozens or hundreds of times, and it just plugs into your computer like a normal webcam. We actually use this a lot in the Zoom days when we were doing a lot of distance learning because I could use this with our microbits and our circuit playgrounds. But right now it's like $40 on Amazon. Maybe it's $60 at full price, but you can use this for just about anything, and it works really well for taking videos. You can do screen captures. You can take photos with it in a lot of ways. I think it's even better than a full size microscope, like an optical one, because you can take it anywhere. It's very portable. And the reason I thought about this for the gift guide was because my daughter got a bag of kind of break your own Geode stones that she could crack open. So the first thing out of all the other things that she received for Hanukkah, she wanted to go crack open the GEOS. And so we sat there with a hammer and we busted open GEOS, and they were like quartz and really cool and everything. And the USB microscope is perfect for this because you can look at all the structures of the crystals. You can see the geodes up and up close, and you can put on a TV, you can put on a computer screen. You can take photos of it. It just makes it really easy for kids to be able to see the details. And it works really well for electronics too. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Very cool. I love the one that we have here. It's great, especially if you want to show kids connecting things with the breadboard. And you want to show that the specific hole that you're putting into so that they understand the in and out pen and the resistors. It's super cool. Sean Tibor: Yeah. And you can even do this with like a NeoPixel. So I got an RGB light. If you Zoom in on it with a microscope, you can see the individual LEDs with the wire traces and everything. So the clarity on it is great and it just makes it helps foster curiosity. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I remember my first microscope. I still have it, couldn't see much with it. Alright, so the next one on my list, another quirky one. And don't ask me why, but I'm so looking forward to my kids playing with this. One of the students came by our classroom to show it to us. It's called an atomaton. It's a Japanese electronic musical instrument. It's not quotable. And I'm really sorry most of my gifts aren't quotable this year, but they do have purposes. My kids are really into playing music. And ever since one of our listeners sent us the Ear Sketch Library from Georgia Tech, I have been addicted to making music, and this little fun toy is a hit and a rave all in Japan, and it's like this little musical note and you can move the mouth to make the pitch of the sound change. And then you can also use it as a slide instrument. And you can use single notes. You can have like a long effect. If you move the top of the note around, you can vibrate it to make a sound. So you're really having this tangible manipulative in order to make music. And when you have two, which I did buy two. I actually bought the three pack and I haven't decided if I'm giving it away or keeping the unicorn one for myself. But you can play it as songs and music at home. One of the things I like about this is we all know, and from some of our favorite listeners, music and coding really goes along. So I think any type of music and understanding how things combine and things work is going to help have that process and the coding idea come together. So that's my hope. I try to do different stuff with it and I can't wait to play it. Sean Tibor: Yeah, I think that'll be really fun. Wondering if there's a way to do something digitally with that or with a microbit to control it or something that could be really fun to do that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm sure there's a way to hack it, but I don't want to break it so you can buy your own. Sean Tibor: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So for me, this is more of a holiday gift for the maker in you. And this is an upgrade that I did earlier this year, and I've really been liking it. So for years I had a cheap $30 or $40 soldering iron that was really just a pen that plugs into the wall and has a little dial on the side, and it worked well enough. Maybe I had it too hot or too low or whatever, but I recently upgraded to a new soldering station from Hacko. I got the FX 888 D and it's a little bit pricier. It's like about $100 range, but it's one that has digital controls for the temperature and a separate power station versus the soldering iron itself. So the soldering iron is a little bit lighter, a little bit easier to manipulate. And I have just been using the heck out of it and loving it so much because it seems like everything goes a little bit smoother and a little bit easier. So if you're looking for that upgrade for your soldering, this is the one I would recommend. It has made my life a lot easier. And as Kelly can attest, I've been doing a lot of soldering and electronics projects lately, and it's come in very handy for that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Very cool. All right. This is something I know Sean is probably out buying as well. Again, another fun toy again, not necessarily coding, but bringing back the idea of the Tamagotchi. They have a new Tamagotchi at Star Wars R 2D two classic. My kids love Star Wars. I love the Tamagotchi. I love the responsibility, the idea that it's a sensor, that you have games and you have to have skills and you have to make sure that you keep your R 2D two happy. My kids keep asking for a dog, so I'm hoping this will keep them away from having a dog for a little bit. But you can take it anywhere. And I got hooked back on the Tamagotchis when I was playing with the microbits and we were making little mini pets with the microbes and faces and you had to shake it in order to do something or pushing a button, push a B button. And I thought, what a cool gift to bring back and also into the classroom and say, this is a Tamagotchi, and let's simulate it and make it with BBC microbit. And let's see what happens. And where do you think this is happening with the reactions and the sensors and what's going on with these conditions? And it's just a great little talking point and a quick hook as what you would say with the lesson plan of how to get the kids connected with tech. So I can't wait to open that too. Sean Tibor: I am ordering mine now. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Seriously, you can't go wrong with that. I mean, it's pretty fun and they have other ones too, but they have like a candy swirl. But come on, R 2D two. Sean Tibor: I know in fact, I'm buying two. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm blue and a white one blue and a white one. Sean Tibor: You're giving me the holiday gift guide, and I'm taking advantage. All right. So for my next one is a toy. And this is mainly just because I'm really impressed with how well they did this. I can't say that there's a ton of learning here, but people who have been listening recently have known that I've developed kind of an obsession with LEDs and Led strips, and so mine is called Little Gleamers, and I'm not sure how available it is globally, but at least here in the US, it's a little thing called the one that my daughter got is the Gloser, and it's like a little like a Lemur so long tail, fuzzy tail, and have a plastic body with big, adorable eyes. But what's really cool about this is they made the entire tail an Led RGB strip, and it's all interactive, so you can turn on the pet and the light lights up and you can actually play games with it. So you can play like there's a ball bouncing game where the light goes from the body to the tail and you squeeze the end of the tail when it gets to you and bounce it back. They even have, like, a sound reactive mode called party Mode, where if you're playing music, the tail will bounce along to the music with the lights. And I just think it was a really great implementation of using a microcontroller, a light, and some buttons in a really cute, adorable, fun way. And so if you're looking for something that's kind of a cool, like, how does this work or how do they make this happen? You can have both the adorable toy and have the conversation about programming and coding this to be interactive and fun and everything. So just from a design perspective, I'm kind of in love with it, and I was pretty impressed with how well it worked. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I thought it was really cute. I wanted to buy one, but I think my boys had the not Yoda, what did he get last year? Sean Tibor: The baby. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And then we also had a lion. So I'm done with the sensor toys at home. I told my son he doesn't have any more space in his bedroom, especially for these hard sensor toys. So we're trying to move him up. Okay, so this one I ordered for the classroom, and Sean laughed at me and rolled his eyes. And you can tell I'm definitely a boy mom. And thanks to Julian and Bob with their newbie bite talking about Transformers and Decepticons, this is going to be a great talking point for our six graders who always spell deception instead of Decepticon. So now I can show them the transformer we purchased. They had Cyber Monday. I'm not sure if it's still on sale, but Cyber Monday was $200 off this T Nine interstellar agent. It's a transformer. You may have seen the Optimus Prime. It was going all over Twitter, all over LinkedIn a couple of months ago. It's sold out right now, but this is the other version. I don't want to say worse or less or anything, but it's a robot with smarts. They say, I don't know how glitchy it will be. We'll find out, but it is so cool. And I'm looking at the way that it was an Optimist Prime. I hope it's going to be cool. So it's an SUV. It transforms into an SUV, and it has a couple of different programming abilities. You can do the control with just like controlling it with your ipad or smartphone. You can do this manual programming where you look at the icons and you can click which moves you want in order to play. You can do this visual programming where you use blocks and you can kind of like a scratch or a make code where you can say, here's the speed here's the movement of the legs. Or they have a 3D advanced graphical programming, which you can actually fine tune the movement of the arms. Now, I might get a little bit in trouble because I did see a video, and they do make a shooting sound. So I kind of told my boss, I'll make sure not to do the gun, but it is so cool. It's got 22 Servo Motors, microchips to control each servo, a microphone, a speaker. It's supposed to be voice controlled. Bluetooth Connection mobile app controlled. You name it. So I got it for $200, and I thought for $200 out of school, I thought, what better thing? Just even Spire about the ability to use robots. I'm really excited if you haven't noticed. I was like, oh, my God, I'm getting this. Sean Tibor: Yeah, that one is definitely very cool. I wish it coded in Python, but you can't have everything. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Some of the things that do code in Python, I'm finding out are coding still in 2.7. So I've given up on looking for the Python thing. I'm waiting for people to hack these robots and make the Python libraries, but, hey, this is the first one. So we'll see the next version. Sean Tibor: Nice. So my next one is actually a book. It's one that my son got, and it triggered a whole avalanche of Kelly. A lot of online orders for me. Not so much for my son, but my son got this book called What Is Nintendo. And it was all about the history of Nintendo as a gaming company. And for some reason, this just really resonated with him because he has played with Nintendo. He's played with a Nintendo Switch, he's played with modern gaming systems and stuff like that. He's six, so he's not no Call of Duty or anything like that for him. But he's played modern game systems. And for some reason, this history of Nintendo and reading through it really kind of resonated with him. And I think it's because it's a glimpse into how things are actually made, like that progression of technology over time. And so he's asking me, hey, dad, did you know that Nintendo made a virtual tennis game in the 1019 and 70s and they lost, like, $40 million on it? And I was like, no, actually, I didn't. But that's really interesting, right? And then he came to me and he asked the question that triggered all of this, which is, hey, did you ever have a Game Boy? And I said, not only do I have my Game Boy or had a Game Boy, I still have it. It's in a bin. So I went and found it. And the screen protector had fallen off of it. And I'm sure that it worked, but not very well. And the case was all yellowed and old and everything. So I made the fateful mistake of looking to see if I could get a replacement screen protector for it. And that turned into a new body for it, a backlit screen, a USBC rechargeable battery for it, a new shell and buttons and everything like that. So now my old Game Boy that I think I got in 91 or 92 now looks like it's brand new works better than ever. The rechargeable battery lasts for 20 something hours, and the screen is all backlit and nice. And so then, of course, I had to do another one. And it's just been a really fun thing. And he's been playing old Game Boy games on my original Game Boy that I got when I was a kid. And it's been really fun for both him and I and my daughter as well. My wife is rolling her eyes as usual. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Her and I are like. Sean Tibor: Right, but it's been a really fun journey. And it all came about because my son had this moment of learning about how things are made and how companies develop and progress that a Nintendo Switch doesn't just happen. It's the result of technology and companies progressing over many years to be able to get the capacity to create something like that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. The best part of that whole Nintendo thing is when you called to one of the students in high school was like, oh, did you see I have a Nintendo? And they're like, those things still exist. You were like, I just dated myself. Sean Tibor: Well, I mean, look, my Nintendo Game Boy is older than all of my students. So it's one of those things that it's not just old enough to drive. It's old enough to drink and pay taxes. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's funny. So the last thing on my list and the most expensive thing I did go from sort of least expensive. The most expensive is my favorite toy ever. And if you are like me, who likes to write things down. And Sean always laughs at all the posters and all the sheets of papers I have. And you like to read things with no distractions because you've also have add and you're constantly clicking and looking at things. Then this gift is for you. Or if you know somebody like that, it's the remarkable. And I've talked about it in the past. I love it, love it. Sean Tibor: So what is the remarkable? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Oh, my gosh, it's remarkable. It is a tablet, but it's black and white and Gray only it allows you to write with a stylist and to take all your notes. The penmanship is amazing. You can write in calligraphy, you can write ten different pen styles. You can save things to a cloud. Sean took it home one night when I first got it and put in all these books that we had on PDF and I can read, and I can annotate and I can put layers on top of the books and just send one of the layers off to the cloud with all my notes. What I just like about it is because I just take notes of to do activity, especially when you have large projects or you're trying to figure out a code and you want to brainstorm the order and you don't want to keep that paper later on. But you just have this nice little tablet and it is always in my purse. It looks like it's really dirty already cleaning on the case. I did get a case, but it's awesome, and it has such a long battery life because it's just plain text, black and white. Oh, and you can send an email to yourself with your handwriting. It's got a pretty nice OCR kind of recognition. Yeah, it's great. I think it's like $500. $600. Sean Tibor: Yeah, I kind of want one. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I know you do. I didn't buy it. Sean Tibor: So my last one and I had a tough time deciding what should be my last one to share. But I think my last one is one we've been using a lot, and it's the Circuit Playground Blue Fruit, and I know it's not on Amazon. It's pretty hard to find. Sometimes you can get it on Adafruit. This is the update, the refresh of the Circuit Playground Express. It runs Circuit Python. It's a microcontroller board. It's circular. You'll see a picture of it in the link from the show notes. But it's a wonderful introduction to hardware using Python. It is designed to be a beginner board, so you may use it for kind of quick projects that you can set up and you can work with, and it'll let you prototype something fast and then maybe you'd use a different board that's more specialized for the actual project, but it's a little bit expensive on $$25 to $30 range, depending on when and where you get it and how much shipping costs. But it has sensors, so it has, like, a temperature sensor and accelerometer. It has sound sensors. It also has a speaker for outputs. It has NeoPixel lights on it, capacitive, touch buttons through holes for alligator clips. And it also now has a Bluetooth radio on it so that you can connect it to your phone and see all the sensor data. You can control the lights with it. So there's an app on your phone that works with it. It's just a really nice upgrade to the standard Circuit Playground Express and even more powerful processor. Now it just works even better. The challenging part has been actually finding the right code examples, because if you just search for Circuit Playground, the original Express was so popular that most of the code samples out there work for that. And not all of them have been updated for the Blue Fruit. It's totally doable to update your code to work on the Blue Fruit. It's not too challenging once you see how it's done. But it can be a little confusing for the beginner to figure out why isn't my code working when it's written for The Express and not the Blue Fruit? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, well, you're going to shoot me because I had another extra. Sean Tibor: Oh, an extra one. Okay, go ahead. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And this is the gift you gave me. I don't know, two years ago away, not for it. And I just started playing with it was the Adafruit. And I'm sure the guys and girls at Adafruit are going to be shocked that I'm saying this, but I actually like this board, and I started using it on day one was like, oh, I understand what's going. And it is sorry. He's so excited for me to say it because it was something he found was the Adafruit clue. It's so cute. Sean Tibor: So the clue. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'll let you explain it. You get so excited about this. Sean Tibor: Kelly, but it's your board. Now. This is yours. You own it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Go ahead. You know more about it. Sean Tibor: So the clue is a really cool thing because the BBC Micro bit that rectangular, little inexpensive microcontroller board was so popular in that design where there are accessories made for it. There's additional clips and all this stuff that's working for it. That Adafruit said, this is a great idea, and we can do more. We can make a Circuit Playground or Circuit Python version of this board, and we'll use the same pins, the same holes, the same buttons, all of the same stuff. But we're going to slap a little LCD screen on there. We're going to add some extra sensors. We are going to put a really beefy microcontroller on it that's powerful and fast, and it will still have all of these connectivity options. And we're going to call it the Clue. But instead of running BBC Microbit Micro Python, it runs Circuit Python for everything. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: What I like about it is one. The write up is nice. All the libraries, I tell you, because again, you have the library folders and examples that Adafruit always provides. But this one in the write up tells you exactly which ones you should have to start up with no searching it's in the documentation. But what I like about it, maybe it's because my brain can process this better, and maybe it's written in the other eight of fruit blue fruit. So please forgive me, Sean, but the accelerometer. I understand the X, Y, and Z and how to access the accelerometer because of the microbit. And then I understand how to display that show the information on the screen. So the concepts go in line with what we've practiced with the microbit, and even with Turtle module is just understanding how to manipulate stuff on a screen when you have sensors or you have objects that have methods on it. So for me, it's been easy. I was going through a couple of the tutorials of moving this dot around, and it makes sense with getting the X coordinates and the Y coordinates from the accelerometer and adding a couple of digits in order to see this object move. So I'm really excited about playing with it. And maybe you'll hear more. Sean Tibor: Yeah, I'm really glad that you're liking it. I have not actually done that much with it. I didn't have time to play with it, but the hardware design is great, and I'm really glad to hear that the documentation side of things is really strong as well. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. So we'll hear more about that. You'll get thermometers and temperatures got little display. I might need to get some glasses eventually for my contacts, because display is small, but I can see the kids when they saw the display board. They're like, what is that? And I'm like, not yet. Sean Tibor: It's like a super microbit. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Super microbit. Absolutely. You got a bonus. Any bonuses? Sean Tibor: There are so many things we could talk about. As one of my friends said that the depths of my nerdiness know no bounds. And I said just because we haven't found the bottom doesn't mean there isn't one, right? But I think there's just plenty of really cool toys out there this year that are fun and interesting. Also, plenty of great tools. So if you're looking for something for yourself to maybe upgrade a little bit or do something new in your maker space, there's a lot of great stuff out there. I think it's the best time ever to get into some of these areas. The biggest challenge right now is supply chain and being able to make sure that the stuff is in stock when you need it. So if you don't get it for the holidays, be patient. I'm sure it will show up eventually, but I think that kind of does it. For this week. We have put all of these items on our show notes as Amazon affiliate links, so we hopefully get a little bit of money whenever you buy something. So go buy some stuff, support the show. Feel good about doing it. If you have that spouse significant other kid down the street, whoever is like, why are you buying that for yourself. Just say I'm supporting Teaching Python. If you have any questions about these things or ideas that you can share, you can always share those with us on our Twitter account, which is at Teaching Python. You can also send us an email through our website at Teachingpython FM. Kelly is at Kellypred on Twitter. I'm at SMTR on Twitter so you can always reach out to us or mention us when you get some of these things. Tell us if they're great. Tell us if they're terrible. My Tamagotchis will show up tomorrow. So you'll see a post about that? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm going to bring mine into. Can I use them before I gift them? Sean Tibor: I think so. Right. Just repackage them. They'll never know. Right. We can use the soldering iron to glue the plastic shell back together. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. And also, if you're on LinkedIn, go ahead and follow me on LinkedIn. I have turned my blog posting mostly to LinkedIn now because it's so much easier. You have a limited character. Sean Tibor: Yeah. Kelly needs to know when to stop. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So it's easier just to write on LinkedIn than to blog. So if you are re, do my blogs switch to LinkedIn? They're quicker. Sean Tibor: Sounds good. Sounds good. So for Teaching 500. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: This is Sean and this is Kelly signing on.