Sean Tibor: Hello, and welcome to teaching Python. This is Episode 93 mission encodable My name is Sean Tibor. I'm a coder who teaches. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: My name is Kelly Schuster Pertz and I'm a teacher who codes. Sean Tibor: So Kelly, we're lucky this week to have two very special guests. We have Harry and Anna from the UK joining us and they are the authors and creators of a very interesting, very cool project called Mission encodable. And I'd like to just welcome each of you. Welcome, Harry. Welcome. Anna. It's great to have you on the show. Harry Wake: Hello, Kelly. Thanks for having us. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So excited to have you guys here. Harry actually reached out to us about a month or so ago and super impressed just by the expertise and great communication skills of the two of them already. So can't wait to hear more from them. Sean Tibor: So Anna, would you give us the two sentence summary of what is Mission encodable? And then we'll go into the winds of the week and the other parts of the show. But just for anybody who's listening in, let's give them a little bit of a preview of what's to come. Anna Wake: Okay, so Missioning Code is a free website that has lots of levels on learning to code in Python. So it's really for people between the ages of age 16, but anyone can use it. So we think it would be really good for teachers and students. And like I said, it's free, but there are loads of projects to make sure that everyone is engaged and interested in learning Python, which we think is very important. Sean Tibor: Well, we are excited to talk to you more about it. There's so much to dive into and we'll get to that in a moment. But before we begin, let's start the same place we do every week, which is with the winds of the week. So as is our custom, we like to make our guests go first because it's kind of fun to watch them go, oh, you're calling on me. So Harry, do you have a win that you'd like to share this week? Harry Wake: Yeah, I do. So we've actually started writing a little book recently, so this week we only just finished laying it all out and we made it all look nice and it's all ready to be proof, so we're going to read over that and then hopefully we'll release it soon. So that's been a really big project for us. We've just sort of nearly finished, so hopefully we'll be out soon on a website. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's very exciting. He gets a book and we can't even get a blog post going on. What's wrong with us? Sean Tibor: We're better on audio than we are in written form. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Well done. That's impressive. Sean Tibor: That's amazing. Anna, how about you this week? Is it the same one or do you have one that's a little bit different? Anna Wake: It's a little bit different, but it's my job to put all the content into our database I have just finished getting all of level four in there, so that will be coming soon, but it's Harry's dad's job to check. It also. Sean Tibor: Always good to have that second pair of eyes on it. Harry Wake: Yeah, exactly. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's exciting. I saw that you have three levels, so level four, that's awesome. I was joking around with my new teaching partner and I said, oh, look, I'm just going to give them the website. 6th grade Python is done. Thanks, Harry and Anna. Harry Wake: Easy. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Done. No more having to teach. Turn it on. Go. Can you grade for me, too? Harry Wake: Not yet. Coming soon. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Okay. Sean Tibor: Well, I'll go first, I guess. I think my big win this week is that I have a summer intern and she is amazing. I was able to recruit her through my alma mater. So I went back to Carnegie Mellon and looked for a computer science student that wasn't already engaged in an internship opportunity at Google or Microsoft or something like that. And I have the most amazing summer intern. She is very bright, eager to learn, just has a sharp, brilliant mind and a great attitude. And she is already making tremendous strides. So I guess my win is just not anything that I don't want to claim any of her accomplishments. I'm just amazed and enjoying so much, watching her learn and helping her grow her skills. She's very capable and eager to learn and it's just a joy to observe. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's awesome. Yeah, that's got that spark of teaching back in your eyes. I've noticed it the past couple of weeks every time you talk about the things that she's learned. So that's awesome. So yesterday, well, last week, my very good friend from the UK contacted me and said her 13 year old son, he doesn't have any technology at his school. He's at a French school. I don't know the name of it, so I won't put them under pressure, but they're at a French school and he says all we ever learn is a little bit of scratch for about six weeks and that's the only technology we have at our school that's pretty can't believe that's happening. So she asked me to give him an intro lesson and we went through a typical three weeks of 6th grade kind of course in 1 hour. And he was so quick. We made a quick little app so that he can impress his parents, just saying, hey, what's your name? How was your day rated on a scale of one to three and casted a couple of the variables as integers and came back with reply, put it in a loop. And we did all of that in an hour. And I was completely amazed how well he did. And I'm going to add my fail into this. At the same time, I had my son, who is an upcoming 6th grader, so he's never coded before. He sat in on the call and I was like, so how was it? He goes, I have no idea what you're doing. It's amazing that two year gap of two newbies how you can talk to almost three years, how you can talk to a 1314 year old and just spew off a lot of stuff where your 10th eleven year old takes a little bit more processing time. So I was like, oh, yeah, I guess you're not there yet. So when's and fails at the same. Sean Tibor: Time, yeah, we'll go in reverse order for the fails. So for my fail this week, it was that I've been working on this project for a long time and it's coming together really nicely, but I had some code change that I wanted to make, and I pushed my changes to our shared GitHub repo and it didn't work and it failed the build. And so I made some changes and failed again. I pushed and failed and pushed and failed. And then I realized that everybody else on my team was waiting for me to finish my code deployment so that they could do their work. And so I had this moment where I was kind of failing in front of everyone for a few hours until I got it finally working. And I did get it working, but it was just one of those moments where if I could do it over again, I probably would have rolled everything back to the original state, figured out all my issues that I wanted to work with, and then pushed it once it was working correctly, rather than going through that process of trying and failing over and over again. So everyone was very cool about it. It wasn't like a big thing, but it was just one of those, and I probably shouldn't have done it that way. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So did they see the fails every single time on the planet? Sean Tibor: Every single time. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: How many were there? Sean Tibor: Seven. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I think. Sean Tibor: Somewhere out there there's an audit trail or a log with Sean fail to build. Sean fail to build. Sean failed to build. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Do you guys have any fails of this week that you learned from? Harry Wake: Yeah. Well, the other week, and I should preface this by saying it does not normally happen because we're a very reliable website, but I think it might have been last week or the week before that our website went down somehow. And then I think a few hours later, we got an email from someone that we've been wanting to get in contact with for ages. Who's this person, quite a big organization who said, your website sounds great, but I can't access it. Is it still working? To which we had to sheffish a response. It's gone down. We're really sorry. From what I gather, it was not really our fault. I don't entirely understand what happens, but I think they tried to move it to a new server, the company, and then it didn't quite beat up properly or something. But it is all working again now and it was only about 6 hours. So very unfortunate that's the same 6 hours that this person decided to look at. Anna Wake: It happened again quite recently and all the content just didn't show up. We have very reliable websites. Harry Wake: We should not be saying, It's okay. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: We'Ve all been there. Anna Wake: What's that conversation. Harry Wake: Going on? Sean Tibor: And yet every website owner, every web developer in the entire world that's listening to this right now is going, yep, I've been there, I know exactly what you're talking about. We've all had that experience and what you learned from it is the most important thing, because you might glean some new kernel of knowledge that says, oh, if we just changed this, we won't have that problem again. Harry Wake: Yeah, I don't know what our kernel of knowledge is really going to be, but I suppose at least it turns again now. It was like how they fixed it as well. They turned it off and turned it on again. From what I gathered. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: The question is, do you have a backup somewhere that's not hosted on that web server? Harry Wake: I should hope so. I'm pretty sure that we do. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It. Harry Wake: Yes. Use our website, everybody. It's great. Sean Tibor: Well, perhaps that's something I can help you with. After the call, we can do a little bit of review and see if there's some ideas for at least have a backup. That's definitely a good thing to ensure. Harry Wake: I think it does actually have a backup. Sean Tibor: That is definitely one of those things you want to be sure about, though. So I'll help you out with that if you're interested. Harry Wake: That'd be great. Sean Tibor: And anything else you want to share, any fails that you saw on your side other than the website for those. Anna Wake: Couple of instances, mainly be the website. Sean Tibor: Yeah, well, I certainly understand. I have been there myself and like I said, probably at the same time you were trying to figure out what was going on with your website. I was trying to figure out why my code wasn't working and trying to get it working in front of everyone else. All right, well, now that we've gotten that out of the way, we've talked about all of our failures in front of the world, let's move and talk about the website itself, because it really is quite amazing and we're so excited to learn more about how it came to be and how it got started. Why don't we start with a little bit of an introduction about each of you, just maybe where you go to school, how you got started coding, and then how you found each other to create this website. Harry Wake: Should I go first or do you. Anna Wake: Want to add a you can go first. Harry Wake: All right, sure. Right, so I am a 15 year old student. My name is Parry, I should say, and I go to school in Greater Manchester in the UK. So I'm studying GGSE, computer science. And I think my interest in coding started somewhere around sort of Year Four, which I think must be what, around age? Yeah, fifth grade, I think, in America that would be. And we started getting introduced to Scratch in our class, which is sort of the drag and drop coding language that I'm sure most people are familiar with. You get quite a fun catage, quite a lot of my own games using that with our class, and that's when my interest really started. So then I started learning about Python and yes, then we have this idea to make website together because me and Anna are cousins, so we thought we wanted a project build together. We've done a few things before, so we thought mission Encoder might be a good next step. And that's where it all started, really, I think. Sean Tibor: Anna, is that all true? Can you verify his story? So, Anna, tell us a little bit about yourself. Anna Wake: So, I'm a 14 year old student. He goes to school in London. And I'm also taking GCSE computer science. And I think, similar to Harry, I started getting interested about Year Four with Scratch because we had a lot of fun with that. We made all kinds of crazy things. And then my dad started to introduce me to Python and that was really fun. And we made like, hangman games and that was fun, but I'm not sure I totally understood what was going on the whole time. I just had it really cool. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Your cousins, were you always coding together and sharing Scratch games or how did you know that both of you just love doing things like this? Harry Wake: I think it probably started around the first lockdown, so that was in sort of early 2020. And we saw that because obviously we both had a lot of time and I hadn't suddenly just stuck at home. And obviously we just started having all kinds of lessons online. So we've been doing a lot of zoom calls with our teachers and we sort of thought, well, we could do this together as well. So we had the idea to make something together. Actually, we made a Scratch game, I think it was to start out with called Wake Mania. We call it's our surname, Wake. So there was this little game where you would sort of earn some wake points. You'd go around a board collecting them and then we sort of just kept it going. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I mean, if you had only produced the Wake meaning, I think a lot of our listeners would be still highly impressed to get the motivation for two students to spend their time during COVID. Not just scrolling aimlessly, looking at YouTube videos, or not anything wrong with Minecraft like my kids did, but just playing Minecraft and capture kind of the flag in Minecraft the whole time. That's commendable. I really respect that. How do you think that came about, that passion of, you guys just wanting to make something which is going to make something. Where does that passion come from? Anna Wake: Well, I think we both probably like making things, don't we? And also we're not super interested in minecraft, so I guess that just wasn't for us. We've done a few phone calls prior to that, I think, but not many. And then I don't know how we decided to start doing projects, but we must have at some point. And yeah, I think after you do something and you start to enjoy it, then you just keep wanting to do more. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100%, I agree. Sean Tibor: And so where did the idea for Mission and codable come from? Was it something that you saw as a need that wasn't being fulfilled? Is it something that you discovered as a passion of yours to have these kind of teaching tools and the ability for people to learn from your website? Where did the idea of permission and codable originate? Harry Wake: So I think we both started learning Python in our schools and it had been introduced to quite a lot of our friends. So obviously we were hearing what people were thinking about it and I think a lot of people said to us that they want to sort of learn a bit differently, so they were thinking of making their own games. So we thought actually we could be the ones that would do that. So we had a little discussion. I think our experiences were the same. So what we decided to do was we were looking for a new project anyways. We thought, well, we can sort of combine our interests and we can make a website that teaches people to code and then see what people think of it. Because we looked at and there wasn't that much that did what we wanted it to. So we thought we'll be the solution, we'll make it. So we did and I think it started yeah, it was just like a little project and we thought it will be over in a week and we thought we'd write tutorials one day, we decided on the website the next, then we coded it and then it will be on the internet. It did not do anything like that. It went on for over a year. But yeah, that was where the idea came from at least. Sean Tibor: So who started doing what? Anna, you mentioned that you're uploading content for lesson four. Harry, you said you were working on the book parts of things. Have you been just kind of working on the things that interest you, sharing all the work? How did you decide who does what with the project? Anna Wake: I don't know, but Harry's definitely done more of the kind of design CSS kind of part and I've probably done more of the content and connect to the back part. I don't know how we decided that. I think also my dad is quite good at that kind of stuff, so he can help when we get stuck, but other than that, I don't remember. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: How we decided that you just kept your strengths and what was easier for you, perhaps. Harry Wake: Yeah, I think we both had to learn quite a lot to sort of do it, but we both organized it so it was like, well, I can write this tutorial, I will proofread it now. Write this tutorial. And we kind of both did a lot of everything really. We had to learn quite a lot of skills because there's only two of us, so we didn't necessarily know everything that we wanted to do, but we just agreed that we both figure it out and help each other along the way. We divide it up evenly and it worked out quite well. Sean Tibor: So you got the website put together. Did you launch with the first three parts already done or did you start with like one and just kept adding as you went? Anna Wake: We launched with the first three parts, yes. Harry Wake: Nice. Sean Tibor: So what do those cover? What kinds of things are in each part of the learning journey? Anna Wake: The first level has things like printing and inputs in Python, a bit of variables, that kind of thing. Then at the end you make a Mad Libs generator. I don't know if either of you are familiar with that game, but basically it says, give me an adjective and your name and car and it makes you a silly sentence. And also band name generator, which is quite fun. And then the second level is more about selection so you start to be able to do if statements and data types and just developing that a bit more so you can make more fun projects. I think we have like a Choose Your Own Adventure game, which we had a lot of fun writing. And level three is a bit more I think it's randomization and lists and getting a bit more complicated. I don't know if Harry would like to add to any of that. Harry Wake: That sounds great. Yeah. So I think obviously we step up as we go. I've just tried to read what's on each level now, but we start off with the basic stuff and then it basically progresses. So if you just started learning to code perhaps then level one would be the perfect place to start because obviously introduce you right from the basics. So we get you set up with your coding editor, which we use Reckless for online and it's free, so we show you how to use that and we show you basically how to write your very first print statement and then it just builds in itself. So you finish level one, then pick up level two again and that's another two fun projects on that level. So, yeah, it's all progressive and it's really great to start off with or if you're a dance and you want to make some more cool projects using some more advanced skills, you build up, perhaps from somewhere else. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Very cool. I have two questions before Sean jumps in. So you mentioned you wanted to do something sort of different than the way that you were learning in school. What makes us different than the way that besides doing it yourself, obviously, and having your own direction and leading your own project, that's awesome. What makes it different than the way that you were being taught versus the way that your tutorials and your website presents it? Harry Wake: So I think the first thing I'd say is it's all self paced. So in a school, often you'll go for a PowerPoint, maybe you'll all write some code together. But I think what we realized with that is that sometimes for those people who are more able, then it gets a little bit dry having sits through it. And then for those who may find it a little bit more challenging than for them, it can be quite difficult to keep up. So what we thought is, if it's all written, which obviously maybe a bit more difficult in a classroom, but our idea was that you'd be able to go for whatever page you liked. And it's a lot more hands on, I think, as well, compared to certain ways. So we can sort of put in lots of exercises and things, which I think our format is really good for. So you'll learn a bit about coding, but then you'll put it into practice because we all know that you can teach concepts, but if you don't give people time to experiment with it, then very shortly after, like, the next lesson, people will be going this how do I do a print statement kind of thing? And you just have to learn again. So we make sure to put lots of exercises and games in there that we think people will enjoy making. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Love it. And second question is, why replicate? I thought it was awesome the way that you have your users forking your own code. So that was pretty cool. But how did you get into using Replica? Anna Wake: So I use replet at school quite a lot. It's one of the things we use, like you say, because you can fork repels and it's very easy. It's online, you don't have to install anything. So we thought that would be really great because it's free, it's online, so you don't have to dodge any of the schools. Like It protocols. And also you can fork each other's code, you can run each other's code. It's a bit more collaborative because I think you can do I don't want to say multiplayer, but you can do it. Sean Tibor: I think it actually is multiplayer. It's really fun. Anna Wake: Yeah, I don't feel that's been very useful for me and Harry because we can just get on it very quickly. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: On a side note, because I went after I clicked on it, then the Replica came up with their new this is just a tidbit. Sorry. This is the thing that we usually share at the end, but they have the new Play, import play and Pong game that just came out. So because of your website, I clicked back on replet and they took me and they said, sign in, introducing Play of REPT. So there's like tutorial five and six for you guys, too. Harry Wake: I had actually seen that. So that's really interesting. But, yeah, replicates really cool stuff, don't they? So we're losing it as well here. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Excellent. Harry Wake: I'll have a look on, I guess. Sean Tibor: My question is, it sounds like you use Python in school quite extensively and you're leveraging the tools you've used before. Did you consider writing this in any other languages or offering any other types of language instruction? Or was Python just like the natural fit for the work that you wanted to do with us? Harry Wake: Well, we did explore a few different languages, didn't we, before we actually set up on Python? But Python was obviously what we learned in school, so it felt like the go to language. We thought it was really good for beginners just to get started, because it's quite close to sort of human English, basically. So it's really good to get started in where often other languages, there's a lot more complication to it. So, yeah, we thought because it's what we're using in school, it's what is taught at GCSE level, and because we think it's really good to get started with, we thought that would be a really good one to teach. And we obviously gave me it quite well already, so it was what we felt confident doing. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: How far does the GCSE take you in Python? Anna Wake: So you go, I think, up to about sub routines, which will be in our level five, which I'm putting in right now as she speaks. It doesn't go much further than that. But you do like iteration a bit, I think, but also for my qualification, which is the AQA GCSE, you also learn a bit of pseudocode, which is much closer to English than Python. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It's just an AQA. Anna Wake: I don't know what you call the examination board. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Okay. Harry Wake: That's actually funny because one of my English teachers examined for AQA, who like this company that basically produces exams for all kinds of students across the UK, and I said to him, do you know what AQA stands for? And we both had this moment be like, not really, no. And I did Google it, and I think I found out it was like the Assessments and Qualifications Association. I probably just got that wrong, but it has some fancy name anyway. Nobody really knows what it stands for. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's fine. Sean Tibor: One thing we noticed about the way that you're both explaining things and the content is that it's really clear and easy to understand. And I was curious to know if you thought that there was a difference in the way that you're trying to explain things to your fellow students in that kind of eight to 16 range compared to the way your teachers explain it or adults try to explain it. Because one of the things that I know I always try to be aware of when I'm teaching is that I like to use the exact, precise words of what that thing is in computer science, but that may not be the most understandable word for someone who's fresh into computer science. So just curious about the way you choose to explain things, the approach that you're taking, and how you see that as being maybe different or unique compared to adults. Harry Wake: Yeah, well, we're obviously students, so I think we do take a bit of a fresh look on it because we can explain things in terms that we think would make sense to our peers. And obviously, because we only learned Piping a few years ago, we can remember which bits we really struggled with when we learned to ourselves. So that was quite good. But we don't always take the most technical approach. So you might choose to use dictionary definitions for selection or something, but we would prefer to just talk about how the concept works and give an example instead. And I think that's often a bit more comprehensible, because I think if you go in there and you bamboozle everyone with some kind of alien language, it can be quite confusing and overwhelming. So the more we simplify, I think to a certain extent, the better it is and the more intuitive it is for people who are just getting started to learn from. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I love that when I first opened up the level one, I really appreciated the fact that you start off with higher level programming language and you set the stage for that. Pretty impressed. Do you feel that your vocabulary and your Python knowledge has become more solidified now because of your website? Anna Wake: I think mine has, yes. We have had a few moments when we're like, actually, no, that's not how you do that. We've had to change it. But I think it's been really good to go over it and make sure that we can explain it and then we can explain it to others and know for ourselves what's going on a bit deeper. Harry, has anything to add? Harry Wake: Yeah, I think we did that quite a bit, actually, didn't we? Because we were sort of writing our tutorials and it was like, are we writing something that's correct? Because we can't really go teaching people the wrong stuff. So we'd often have to read a few other sort of documentation and tutorials and things to make sure that we were getting everything right, obviously. And we have to be quite thorough when we proof on everything to make sure it was technically correct, but have also been like a few moments there where there's been a bit of a disagreement because I think recently we have this thing where. It was there's two different names for the subprogram and a subroutine, which is sort of a function, in essence. And we were looking like, what's the correct way of saying it? Do you say subprogram? Subroutine. And I think we might have gone for subprogram in the end, but we were looking about and we looked at the different sort of exam board specifications, and I'm doing via Excel, and they go, sub programs, what you need to know about a sub program. And then AQA who are Anna's exam board goes, subroutine. We're going to introduce you to a subroutine, like, what do we actually call it? So sometimes you have to sort of clarify, I think don't need to make sure people know. Often different words do go about and it can get a bit confusing for us as well. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And I guess it's like almost the difference of maybe other countries. For example, just totally off topic of Python. In the UK, a lot of teachers use the Prim method of teaching. I'm sure you guys are awfully aware of the premium sort of process. Repeat something. And for us, we sort of do the same thing, but we don't call it a premium, so I guess you have to double check with that. So it's a lot to think about. And you're 14 and 15. That's pretty impressive. Has this method of writing this website and learning Python and teaching others Python. How is that kind of transferred to your other skills and courses in school? Has that helped or? Anna Wake: Well, I would say probably improved my written grammar, because Harry's dad likes to proof check and make sure we've got it all right. And often there's a big long list of spelling errors or fostering or whatever, and we have to think, yes, that's probably the main one for me. Harry Wake: Yeah, I agree. I think definitely you learn a lot about grammar when my dad reads through things. Sometimes it's a bit random. Like the other day, we had this tutorial where it said something about Larna del Rey, I think, and I don't know how we spelled it, although with the correction was it is Larna del Rey spelled correctly? That was interesting. And I never knew that my dad was a Lana del Rey fan. Yes, but aside from that, I think it does teach you to think in a way as well, because I think programming is I mean, often people say, well, I don't see why I need to do this because I don't want to become a progress. But then often you can argue that there's digital revolution, everyone should learn to code. But also, I think it has got some other skills too. So even if you don't intend on using python in itself as part of your work, it teaches you all kinds of things about how to think and how to solve problems, and it gives you that kind of mindset. So you can apply that pretty much everywhere in life, whether it be coding or something completely unrelated like woodworking. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I suppose at this point of the podcast, everybody listening is going, yes, we've been saying that all along. Well done, Harry. Well said. Sean Tibor: Have you gotten any feedback from people who are using the website? Have you shared it with your peers? What's the response been like so far? Anna Wake: We've gotten a little bit of feedback. We have a Contact Google form on our website and we've got a little bit of feedback through that, but not loads. But also, I know that Harry's trying it at his school in a kind of coding club and I'm going to be trying it in my school and another school near me, so hopefully we get a little bit more feedback from that and we can make any changes if they need to be made. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: However, your teachers responded to this project that you all have started, they seem. Harry Wake: Very impressed, I guess you can imagine. But I remember it was quite fun, sort of surprising, of the initial email going, look at this, we've just made it because we haven't told them that much about it. And I think we've been working on it behind the scenes for a very, very long time. It was at least a year, just keeping it all quiet because we didn't want to go about ruining the surprise. And then when it actually came out, it was really exciting sending out load of emails and being like, look at this, our website is here. And yes, I'd elaborate on that. So I started doing it at school as a coding club, so we've had loads of really lovely feedback from people doing it there and also online as well, even if we don't know that. We've had some lovely little messages on Twitter and stuff and people have filled in that form with all kinds of suggestions. We also get some rather random things through that form as well, but that's been quite fun to read, too. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So what's next? What are your goals? I mean, you have two more years for school, is that correct? Anna Wake: I have three more years. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Three more years and Harry has two. Harry Wake: We're actually in the same year group. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Okay. I get so confused with the GSC because our students graduate at 18, so roughly the same. What are your goals? What are your hopes and levels for what's next for Mission encodable and for yourselves? Harry Wake: Big question, I suppose. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Big question, yeah. Harry Wake: Mission encodable wise, I think we want to try and grow the website, so adding lots more tutorials and then the aim is really to get it better known so that more people find out about it, which obviously this podcast will play a role in. So, thank you. Yeah, I guess we want more people to find out about it, start using it with their classes, and hopefully we can have an impact on lots of people. I suppose in terms of our careers. I'm thinking something computer science related. I don't quite know exactly what yet, but definitely it's made me more interested in that kind of field, working on a project like this. So hopefully, yeah, that's what we're going for. I'm assuming Anna is similar. Anna Wake: Yeah, very similar. Sean Tibor: What's been your favorite part of this project so far? Anna Wake: Probably when it launched and everyone could see it. That was really nice. But it's also really nice because me and Harry pretty much always talk to each other on Saturday at 03:00 in the afternoon and that's really nice as well. And we just have a chat and we do some coding sometimes or some designing or some book writing or whatever. And that's just really nice as well. Harry Wake: Yeah, it's been really good, I think, for us to spend some time together, hasn't it? Make a project and yeah, elaborating on that when it launched. That was definitely the highlight, I think, getting all these really nice emails and feedback and things and people been absolutely wonderful. So hopefully they will keep on coming. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So for those students and other kids around out there who we teach and who might be listening, what kind of inspiration can you give them about starting something? I mean, it's pretty huge for us to have a project like this and a website and a Twitter and Sean even noticed your posters. We noticed all these great things. What kind of inspirational words or suggestions or whatever can you give to people out there listening? Harry Wake: Kelly, it's the time to come up with an inspirational quote. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: No quote needed, but hey, you're on the spot. Harry, this is going to be marked in history as your inspirational Quote of. Harry Wake: The Year book soon. Just get started. I think if you've got an idea, then just go for it, really. And you don't know what's going to happen exactly, but just try things out, have some fun, mess around and you might create something wonderful without really noticing what you're even getting started into. Like we were about a year ago, I think. Sean Tibor: Now, Anna, do you have any advice you'd like to share, too? Anna Wake: I would say also find something that you like to do that you'd be happy to continue doing for quite a while, or not quite a while, if you just want to get started. And I would agree with Harry, just do it. But when you're doing it, try and do it properly and don't be slap dash about what you're doing. If you want it to work at the end and be really happy with it, then I'd say make the small steps along the way that will make. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: You happier at the end, regardless of the work. Right, the workload. As I can imagine, you all have spent many hours. Harry Wake: Many, many hours. Yeah, I think we both put in a good few hours every day for like the last I don't even know how many months. So it's been a really big project. It's been going on for a long time, but it's been super fun. And obviously when we got started, I said we didn't entirely know what we'd got ourselves in for, but having started, it was just really good and we really enjoyed it. So we kept on going, and now we've ended up with a website. Sean Tibor: Do you have any questions for us? Anything that you're curious about that we can help you with? Harry Wake: I wondered, so in classes, what do you think the best way to teach Pipeline is? Like, what advice would you give to someone who was just about to start out with it? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's so funny. I skip over them. Sean Tibor: Kelly just ignores the question and moves on. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm like classes. No, not there, but just put it in perspective. I teach ten, 1112 and 13 year olds, so we sort of stopped at functions and Sean attempted classes once. It was fun. Sean Tibor: It went reasonably well with Turtle, right? Yeah. But in all seriousness, to answer your question, I think for us, especially when we're working with young people, they don't necessarily know whether they like to code or not. They might have seen a little bit here or there, they might have done some scratch programming before. But one of the most delightful things about when I teach is watching a learner discover something new that they get really excited about. And sometimes it's the person you least expect. And my favorite has been seeing we had that one student who was in our robotics class who is a ballet dancer, and she was the first one to program the robot to navigate a full lap around this race track that we had set up with machine learning. And when it crossed the finish line, she was jumping up and down with excitement and joy because she got it to work and she was hooked. From that point on, she thought this was the greatest thing ever. And watching her kind of go through that process, you realize that it's the same reason why we teach music to students there's science or English, is that you don't know what's really going to stick with a student. And more importantly, you have to keep teaching these things because it may be that the student, at some point, maybe they're in year four and programming was incomprehensible to them. Unknown: Right. Sean Tibor: They're like, I don't understand anything that's happening. But then by year six, they may see it and go, wait a minute, there's something really fantastic here and I want to learn more. So continuing to keep trying to give it a fresh start when you need to is really important because you may discover something about what you like to learn and how you like to learn that could stay with you for the rest of your life. It could become a career. It could also just become some really useful skill that you have that you apply to a different area. So my advice has always been to give it a try and see what you think. And if it doesn't quite work right away, keep trying because you may just need to get a little bit further down the path and discover that thing that you truly love. Harry Wake: That's really interesting you say that as well because I think often people will go into it not really knowing what coding is, not having much of an interest in it. Like they're more interested in playing minecraft, as you say. But it's just like it takes that one moment of getting really hooked on something and then you're on it and you want to keep on going with it. And I think if we can all inspire someone to do that, then that's really great. Obviously, I think that's probably the ambition of all of us here and everyone listening to the podcast as well. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yes. And I would add a challenge for you for teaching classes and objects and things like that is find a metaphor that sticks because we have yet to find something that makes that click. You know how when you're learning something and you were talking about functions or inputs or arrays and it doesn't click into that moment of when someone says something just right and you go, oh, that's what I tend to find misses out. When we teach classes, we say, oh, well, this is a method, or this is the way that you write it, or it has to be this with the self. And everyone's like, okay, well, why is that? Well, because it has to do this and it has to do that with the attribute, blah, blah, blah. And people go, and you have all these vocabulary words and everyone gets lost within the vocabulary words. So I'll challenge you to come up with an amazing metaphor that just helps 1415 year olds just have it stick. And it makes sense in that I. Sean Tibor: Think cows written your part six for you. Harry Wake: I think it's the idea, isn't it? We go on sort of Turks and Oop, so we're hoping that we'll get that there. And it seems like a metaphor is often the best way of explaining things to people, otherwise you end up with a lot of random technical questions. So if you put it in context, that's always better. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, and we find a lot of the games always just go and say, hey, you're going to make a class and here's your alien, and you make a copy in this help. And kids don't really understand what's going on besides the fact that they have to do it. And so being able to explain why that happens will be an awesome and I look forward to reading that. Sean Tibor: Anna, did you have any questions for us also? Anna Wake: Well, I know that the name of your podcast is Teaching Python, but are there any other languages that you like to teach or, like, do programming, or would you recommend we try out. Sean Tibor: All of them? Right. Keep trying things and see what you like and what they're useful for. Right. I think Kelly and I have taught primarily Python, but you've taught HTML before? And CSS. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: A long time ago in London, I used to teach HTML through Dreamweaver. I wish I had stuck with it because it changed so much with the CSS. I read somewhere what was it? JavaScript. HTML and Python, without a doubt, right now, are the top running coding languages that need to be understood in order to get your jobs at this moment. It might change in two years. It probably will in one year, but that's what I heard. I've only been coding for four years, so for me, I'm like, Python is enough right now. So I'm playing with Choreograph in my new robot that I'm playing with that might be helpful. I don't know if that's actually a language or just some sort what is Choreograph, Sean? Sean Tibor: I don't know. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: You're the one that blocks, and the blocks can all have extra code in it, and you can write the code in C plus plus and Python and all kinds of craziness. I just started it last two days ago, so I'll let you know. I play with robots and I try to figure them out, but I don't write other languages. Sean does a lot with cloud. Sean Tibor: Yeah. So my current job, I'm doing a lot with cloud engineering, and we're writing what's called infrastructure as code. So, for example, when you need a web server in a database, I can write code that creates those resources on the Amazon cloud for us, and much more complicated things as well. But learning that language has really put me back in a full time learning mode where I am trying to learn as quickly as I can. And the nice thing about experience in coding is that your second language is often much easier to learn than your first language, because after the syntax and you understand the syntax of what you're coding, it really turns into how the implementation was designed or the features of the language, the things that they've made easier for you in some ways and harder in others. And I find that process of learning a new language just incredibly rewarding because it lets you do things that you couldn't do in all the other languages that you're familiar with. So just keep learning. Go find another project, find something you want to do, and learn the languages that you need to make that happen and you can't go wrong. Harry Wake: Fantastic. Sean Tibor: All right, well, I think we are just about out of time. I want to wrap up by asking, so people can find you on the Web@missionencodable.com, correct. Where else can they follow along with what you're working on and what's next for the mission encodable team? Unknown: Yes. Harry Wake: So I think our website is best place to look. But also we're on Twitter, so we're at Mission Encode, so you can follow us there. And we're hoping to do a lot more tweeting soon. So we'll sort of put out what we're working on and stuff and that people have the opportunity to give their view and say what they'd like to see as well. So follow us on Twitter, check out our website. Also, if anyone does want to get in touch with us and share any feedback, then our emails on that info@missioningcobal.com so you can get in touch there as well. Sean Tibor: Very nice. Well, for us, if you'd like to get in touch with the Teaching Python team, you can find our website at teachingpython FM. We're also on Twitter at teachingpython. Kelly is at Kellyperette on Twitter. I'm at Smtber on Twitter. I recently reactivated my PlayStation Network account, so if anybody wants to game together, my palette has turned into a bit of a close racket of lately, so I have to get back on that too. But I will post a link to my PlayStation Network account, so anybody who wants to play games with me is welcome to join. And I think that does it for this week. Kelly, any upcoming announcements from your side or anything you'd like to share? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: No, I shared the roughly the Pong game on there. I am playing with the now robot, so if anybody knows how to code the now robot in Python, I'm asking for help. I'm learning the Choreograph, which I just googled, is a multi platform desktop application which allows you to create animations, behaviors and dialogues. So if anyone's expertise in that, I am in a crash course learning mode and having this humanoid robot talk to me, so it's going to be fun. Sean Tibor: Excellent. So the only other upcoming event is that we are looking to schedule a Patreon supporters only Zoom session for July. So we are looking to get that going relatively soon. More details forthcoming to our Patreon supporters. If you'd like to become a Patreon supporter, you can find that on the Show Notes. There's a link to our Patreon page there and we don't have any sort of tiers or anything like that set up. So any amount that you contribute and support us with will get you access to the members only or supporters only Zoom meeting. So we're looking forward to doing that and it's going to be a nice way to connect with some of the people who have been with us for quite a long time and given us so much support over the years. So we're looking to connect and makes a better community in that area as well. Okay, so for teaching Python, this is Sean. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: This is Kelly signing off.