Sean Tibor: Hello and welcome to Teaching Python. This is Episode 73, and it's all about curriculum design and planning for the upcoming year. My name is Sean Tiber. I'm a coder who teaches. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And my name is Kelly Schuster Free. And I'm a teacher of that code. Sean Tibor: Nice. And we are live streaming yet again this week with our good friend Quinten Sheriff, who's actually, Kelly is really good friend. But we've been getting along really well in the pre show, so I will count him as one of my new friends also. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. We're very excited to have Quinten. What can I say about Quinten? I met him in Peru in 2,011, right. 2,011. And we started our adventure in South America comes I forget where you worked before. Where you come from? Zimbabwe, correct? Quinten Sheriff: Yeah. I come from Zimbabwe. And I used to teach music and international school. So I worked in China for four years, in Thailand for three years. And then we met at the American School of Lima E for three years. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Absolutely. And he Quinten was like one of those people that you can just bounce the ideas off of. We had some fun tech integration with English and some awesome music technology with design, tech. And always a person that just bounce the ideas with what I was going to do with tech and what he was going to do in English. And now he works for Concordia. He's an instructional designer, which I'm so excited for. And you also got your degree in tech integration. And Yeah, he's getting there. Getting there. Sorry, getting their curriculum developer, but tons of experience. And I'm just so excited to introduce them to Sean. And we can have this great conversation about instructional design and planning for the future. Sean Tibor: Very cool. Well, Let's start where we do every week. Let's start with the winds of the week, and Quinten will make you go first because that's fun for us. Anything that's good that's happened inside outside of the classroom, wherever you can find it. Quinten Sheriff: Yeah. I've got two wins for the week. I'm in the last three courses of this master's degree in instructional technology, and my team for this piece of group work is going so amazingly well that I just feel very proud of all of us. And the project is going to be amazing. And my second win of the week was an onboarding with a Bank that's based in Europe, where I'm going to be doing some curatorships, thanks to Brexit. So I need to be doing some consultancy and curator ship with French and English with them. So that was exciting. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's exciting. And we can't share that Bank, but it's awesome. I'm very excited for you. It's a huge win. And Congratulations on that. Quinten Sheriff: Thank you, Sean. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Are you going to do your win or me? Sean Tibor: I'll let you go first. Ladies first this week on mine. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I just have to say that yesterday had to be my one of the week. You know, part of the reason why I moved back to Florida was to be able to spend time with my father and to introduce my childhood to my children. And yesterday we were out in the boat 22 miles out in the middle of nowhere with my oldest son and my father just really taking in the environment, learning some skills that my grandfather, my dad, my grandfather, my dad was passing down to my son. And you know what? It's just one of those things that you can never, never forget. And hopefully it'll be a memory for my oldest son for years to come. So it was a great win. Sean Tibor: Oh, that's awesome. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And I had no check all day because there was no service out. 22. Sean Tibor: I know. I was trying to text you. I wouldn't even go to delivered status. It was just like she's gone. It was great. Well, it's rare that that happens. Usually you're very available, and it's good to be unavailable for a while. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It was weird, but, Yeah, it was good. Sean Tibor: For me. My win has been a technical win. I use summers as a time to push myself on technology and learn new things and really have that focus time where I can dive into something very deeply. And so this project that I've been working on for probably, I think, since November or December. Last year, I spent some time pushing it forward. And it's horrendously complex, right? Like, it has a lot of moving parts. It has all these things, but it's really production grade, detailed, heavy duty stuff. And I'm just diving into it. And I'm, like, happy as a pig in mud, because now I've gotten over that initial learning stage where everything is difficult. Everything is hard. And now I'm getting it to do really cool things. And the whole project is very briefly, this database that scrapes data from government websites about licensing information for healthcare providers. And the goal is to make it so that is to provide data to a bunch of other websites, like websites that want to provide resources for parents of children with autism or that are otherwise on the spectrum. It gives them information about providers in their area. The short version of it is, Let's say, someone gets licensed in the state of Ohio here in the Us to be a behavior analyst. This program will scrape that website, like, once a week, download the publicly available data process. It put it into a database, but then it also looks up their address information and geo codes that into a latitude and longitude so it can be put on a map. And the big thing that I worked on this week was getting it so that it sends a notification email on a daily basis. To let me know that, Hey, here are the number of new providers that I found. Here's the number of updated ones I had a big breakthrough with, like, just trying to figure out something simple, which is if I have a provider that exists in the database already, how do I know that the information has been updated on the website? And how do I compare the two and do that in a way, that one. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Don't you do sets, you can do sets or you can use Pandas. No. Sean Tibor: And you'll like this one. Kelly, So you'll like this? So I made a class, so I'm using Panic data classes, and I overloaded the equality operator between two pedantic data classes so that I can win too quickly. I could just well, it's like one of those things, like the hard parts are the simple things are always really complex. But basically now what you can do is say if the provider that's on the database is not equal to the provider that I just scraped, then go update their data. Otherwise don't do anything. So it makes it really simple to be able to say, is the old one the same as the new one? If so, don't do anything otherwise updated. So it's like it was a lot of work to get there, but it was really satisfying. And I'm learning so much. And I also feel like I'm going to be able to explain more technical concepts now because I just have been immersed in it so much over the summer. So it's getting me excited to think about what I can do in the fall with the students and some of these newer things that we want to include in our curriculum. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's crazy. That's, like, that goes with this new book, of course, have another book for this week, this new book that I'm talking about these talent code Quinten. I've got maybe a centimeter of myelin around my neurons that pass on this Python training and where Sean just wrapped around. And so the more myelin is this more of this talent, and this neuron is solid. So here I am trying to understand web scraping, and I'm getting in there and I'm slowly building the myelin around my neurons. But, man, it's impressive when once you get into that clicking and that just build out. So it's pretty cool when thanks. Sean Tibor: So of course, without without fails, there would be no way. My fail of the week is something you can't actually see on camera because I'm not flexible enough to I can get it on screen. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: But no. Quinten Sheriff: No, no. Sean Tibor: My other big project this summer in the fail is not that I hurt myself. The fail is the timing of it. My other big project this summer was I'm going to get back in shape. I've got some flexibility in my schedule. I'm still working a lot, but I'm going to go to the gym. And the one condition that my wife put on me going back to the gym was you cannot go at 5 15 in the morning to the early class. You have to go later in the day. So I was doing really well. I was there like six days a week for the first two weeks. And then I rolled my ankle in the gym and tore a ligament in my ankles. So I've got about six weeks of recovery, which just happens to coincide with me returning to school. Right as that is. So it's all on core exercises and upper body strength now. Nothing. Lower body. Unknown: Wow. Sean Tibor: Could have been worse. Quinten Sheriff: Ligaments. That's tough. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. Quinten Sheriff: Yeah. Sean Tibor: But Luckily it's not debilitating too much. It's like on the side of my ankle. So as long as I don't need to twist my foot or anything, I'm fine so I can walk on it. I even have gone biking and things like that just to kind of stay in shape. So not too bad. I. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Don'T have it. Well, I do have sales, but nothing Besides the fact that I have to learn how to do Excel spreadsheets and merge two and look for duplicates. And I'm just like, I can't remember. Surely I could just write a Python script for that quicker. But that's about the biggest fail. Any sails for you, Clinton, or anything? Quinten Sheriff: Oh, a small one. I tried paddleboarding this weekend when I went camping and couldn't stay up. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And that water is cold up there now. Quinten Sheriff: It's cold, but I love the water, so it's fine falling in small. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's funny. Always jump into our topic, John. Sean Tibor: Well, I just wanted to go through a couple of news topics and get reactions and things like that. Now as we're going back to school and I don't want to open up a huge can of worms, but the biggest thing that I've been seeing lately is around in person teaching and requirements for students to be able to go back. And just kind of wanted to get your thoughts on a lot of the latest guidance here in the Us from the CDC has been controversial. I think a lot of people have been saying like, Oh, maybe it's too lose. Maybe it's not restrictive. Maybe it's too restrictive. I just want to get your thoughts about how teachers should be thinking about the start of the year when it comes to just COVID response and your reactions to a lot of the news that's been coming out lately about the start of school. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Again, when you want to take that you guys are actually on lock down. Still correct. Or I know the borders are lock down in. Quinten Sheriff: Yeah. Up here in Canada, the bosses are still in lockdown. We're supposed to be opening them up in, like, three or 4 weeks time to fully vaccinated Us travelers. Sean Tibor: I. Quinten Sheriff: Know that there's a lot of international students are making them way to Canada. So it's a big thing that we're talking about in terms of going to colleges and University. It seems as though as long as you've got two vaccines doesn't matter which ones that Canada is going to let you in without the quarantine and will let you come and study. But the universities themselves are not really allowing all students back in, so they're only allowing between Sean, if you have to have something at the University, the schools are very organized by province and by different school boards. And Yeah, I'm not quite sure about that. I think they're pushing for blended learning still. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, I know. We have still a little bit of a staggered start a couple of days in the beginning. I think it's just to acclimate the teachers, really, and the students back into the fact that we're not using maybe the camera as much or Zoom as much. The hopes were that we were going to move forward and go back to that. I hate the word normal, Sean, back to normal kind of thing, but I don't know. I think there's a lot of questions going around on the parents. What's up for me is whether they're going to wear a mask or not wear masks, and and how does that look like? You know, I'm preparing. Personally, I say the whole year, I've loved Zoom. I've loved what it's done for teaching coding. I love the ability to share the screen. So I'm hoping that I can still say, Hey, just jump on Zoom. I know there's other project product out there where we can share code, but Zoom was so easy, and the kids know how to get in, and we share the code, and they can talk about it, put their little face on the screen, and it's like presenting without the fear of having to stand up and present in front of a class. So personally, I'm hoping that I could still use Zoom in the classroom. Sean Tibor: Well, I think you're still going to have an account. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So go for it to crash the bandwidth. Unknown: Yeah. Sean Tibor: My reaction to this news has been I really hope that all of our teachers out there can stay safe with all of this, and everyone's able to make smart decisions for their classroom the way that they teach best, and that keeps them safe and their students safe. That's really what it comes down to. And I think we disagree on how we do that, but I think the goal is still there, that we want to be able to teach in whatever way makes the most sense for the subjects and the areas that we're in. But finding the right way to do that is hard. And I think, you know, the good news is at least the way Kelly and I have been teaching is that it's an iterative process. We try things out, we experiment, we see how they work. We throw away the things that don't work and keep the things that do, and that's the way that we create our own normal. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Well, that's so funny, Sean. I had a link on here to share. Actually, I don't know if you saw this from shekiro. Maya Gawa he's a Professor of linguistics at MIT. He did a short talk. It's very good video, and I think it's eight minutes or 10 minutes. But he talks about the things that we learn from COVID and the things that we should think about when we're building our instructional curriculum or designing what we're going to do in the classrooms. And the couple of things that he got out of or we got out of learning online was this whole thing about teaching the whole student. I know, personally, I was able to feel more connected to someone at home. You got to see in their houses. We got to comment on, Oh, that's a cute little picture in the background. Or Here's your dog. Here's your cat. And we got to learn our kids about our kids personally, more than what we would see in the classroom. So he says that's one thing that we should take away from the whole COVID and make sure that that stays in the new school year. And the other thing was this attention of focus or this. We were doing crazy things. Like, I was like, come on, guys, and jumping up and down and putting red lipstick on with my Zoom to keep the attention of his students. And we were in this constant how are we going to engage the kids? How are we going to keep them from falling asleep? How are we going to do this? And I think what Professor Siguro says was when we go back to the classroom, the kids might have the sudden feeling of boredom because they're not in a screen. They're not looking at something that's engaging them. So how are we going to keep them focused in the learning in the new school year? So I thought that was interesting. Sean Tibor: I think that leads really well into our topic, too, because regardless, every school year is different. Right. It can feel like they get a little bit the same after a while or a little bit repetitive. But I was thinking about it when I first started teaching. That was my first year. Right. So everything is new and everything is different. My second year. I'm like, I got this second year. I don't know what I'm doing. I think I have most of this figured out. And then, boom, COVID. Right. And then last year has been different for everyone. And so each year is different. And I don't think that there's any such thing as a normal school year anymore. So as we go into this, how do we think about designing our approach, making this an intentional process, and not just let me just react to everything that's coming my way. Quinten Sheriff: Right. Sean Tibor: So, Quinten, maybe you can share a little bit about the role that you have with design and the way that you are working at Concordia. Right. And how you do this intentionally instead of just letting things wash over you. Quinten Sheriff: Yeah. Can be a bit of a panic state when you're getting to the end of the holidays and you realize that there's a whole year ahead of teaching, and you're thinking, how are we going to manage this with all the changes with all the the regulations, et cetera? I was listening to you chatting at the beginning about studying, Sean. You're talking about studying this project. This database projects that scraping data. You're talking about when you've got certain time, you can come back to the work and you can really take a deep dive into it, but you don't always have the time. You've got to be flexible. All of these things are aspects of what we call Andrology or teaching to adults. So there's Pedagogy, which is teaching K 12 and there's Andriga and in Pedagogy, there are extra things that we need to adds to our toolbox. As Kelly says, we've got to keep the learners engaged. We've got to do things that switch on the motivation and keep drawing them along. The learning program. However, when it comes to adults, we've got this expectation that they're going to be engaged. They want to do this project. They want to do this course or this degree. So if I come at it from an umbrella aspect and I talk about human performance improvement, if we think of, like an HR of a company, any company is spending a lot of money on the people and the people, the employees are going to be the most costly asset in the company. So we want to make sure that everyone is able to perform efficiently at the best of their ability. We want to make sure that they've got all the skills and knowledge that they've got the capacity to do this, and that the organization and the environment gives them for possibilities and the resources. In human performance improvement, we split it into two things, what can the person do themselves? What are their skills and knowledge? What attitudes and motivations can they bring to it? And we split it into the environmental. And we say, this is the system that we're living in. This is the industry. This is the way we recruit and select. This is the way we compensate. These are our expectations. And this was developed from it's called the Behavior Engineering Model. And there's been a lot of data and research that shows that the systems and the environmental aspects take up about of what actually has an effect on the human performer. So there's a huge amount that's in your school curriculum that's in the school protocols and systems that is there in place, whether our learners fit into it or not. Then if we bring it down another level and we go and we look at things like curriculum design here, we're saying, okay, Let's form it a little bit more uniquely. We're going to call this the mass curriculum. We'll call this one for English lit curriculum. We'll call this one. The Spanish has an additional language curriculum. And here we're looking more at focusing on what does this person need to learn year by year? What are the skills? What are the behaviors? What are the attributes that we want to see them perform at the end of this? And then focusing specifically on this master that I'm doing now, which is instructional design and using instructional technology, we're saying, okay, what the exact course or class that we're going to be teaching? And how can I deliver this in multiple aspects that are going to hit all of the objectives, still pull my learners along in a motivating and engaging way and will know that at the end of the course, give them the skills that they can apply in a real life weight immediately. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I. Sean Tibor: Think, Kelly, hold on. You're muted. You're muted. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm muted. Sorry. I'm muted because there's people in the background. I had to processing. I was like, Where's my paper? I love that. There's so much to think about. I think sometimes when people come into the industry, and I'm not going to say Sean did this because he came in and he became a natural right away. But there's just, like, you come into this industry, I'm going to teach, and I'm going to teach Cody, and I'm just going to go and stand up at the board, and here you go. You're going to type print, Hello world. And we're going to do this, and we're just going to go and we're going to go into Idol, and we're going to type this. We're going to do this. And, Bam, you know, it you're ready to go go code something. But like you said, there's so many other factors that actually need to be built upon. First, I almost think of it like that pyramid, you have this instructional design of everything that's going on within the system, and then you can start building on your curriculum, and then you can start building on the actual content. So there's a lot of things going on and a lot of moving parts. So if that something in that cog or something in that base starts to deteriorate the system or the culture or the the parameters in place and the whole content is irrelevant because it's just going to fall off the pinnacle. Sean Tibor: The other thing that I like, too, about the way that you incorporated all that was that it's also very goal focused that you've got really clear design goals for what you want to create, whether it's for the individual or for the environment, to be able to really clearly tie all of the activities, all of the pieces that you're designing and putting together back to those goals. That and that was one of the things that I found as I was teaching was that Kelly and I sat down at the beginning and thought, okay, what are three things that we're going to try to do at the beginning of this course, right? We're going to try to accomplish those, and we're going to measure ourselves. We're going to be critical of how well we've achieved that and all of those things. But then we're going to reevaluate and say, Did we reach those goals? What else do we need to do? How can we better achieve these goals? What worked, what did and all of those things? But we wouldn't be able to do that if we didn't set out those goals at the beginning. We have to design with that intention of these are the things we're really trying to do. Quinten Sheriff: Yeah. Absolutely. And when you talk about being goal oriented, our goal, no matter if it's teaching learners to code Python or if it's like the work that I'm doing for Concordia University, the goal is the end. Learner. How can we impact this knowledge in a useful, efficient way that gives them real world skills that they can immediately tone to their next project and go, How can I put this model in here? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So Here's a question. And I'm going to throw this out there because I know you can handle anything. I give you a lot of our listeners or a lot of people that are who may not have curriculum science in their schools, who want to develop a K 12 or 6 8 or K five curriculum. They're like, How do you begin? What would you say? I know what I would say. I could talk an ear off, but what would you say as an experience of destruction? Al Designer. Quinten Sheriff: Yeah, that's a good one. That's a really good one. It's a huge question. I would start out by saying, Hey, the wheel has already been invented. If your school board or school district doesn't have a well formed curriculum, is there something Nat in the neighboring school district that works really well that you can download and start looking at as a model? Or can you use a theory or a model like we use Add? It stands for analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate, or something like Agile? You know, perhaps you've heard Agile or you were mentioning at the beginning of the podcast, you use an Iterative approach to learning. So you try something, you write something out, you talk to your other teachers about it and say, Do you see this working in our classroom or for your subject? Maybe you do a few tweaks and then you teach the lesson, and then at the end, come back and wrap it up with an evaluation and say, that went really well. Let's keep that for next year. And slowly you're going to start building modules that fit rarely well within the overall framework. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. I mean, I think that was something and I'll use as a personal story, like, we develop the design technology curriculum at our former school, and it was something that was definitely trial and error five years in the making. I think that's something for everyone to keep in mind, Sean and I've been doing this for three years, and we have only been teaching six through 8 of Python for three years. And every year we've added a little bit more. We tweet a little bit more. We constantly talk. We get to do this four times a year. So what someone has at the beginning of the school year might look a little bit different by the end, because we're constantly going through this process of reflection, design, Teric, iteration, evaluation, just going through this constantly in this agile method. There's so many. They're all the same, right? Aren't they? Quinten Sheriff: There's a lot of overlap with so many of these. Like, I learned, like, 20 of them in one of my learning theories courses, but I only used to. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: The idea of just reflect on it, and it'll be fine. Quinten Sheriff: Metacognition Medico. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Is funny on. Sean Tibor: Well, Sean, I think it's a good point. There's a lot of frameworks out there, and it'd be really easy to try to mix and match. It's like the idea of a Cook who's looked at a lot of recipes, Sean says, like, okay, I'm just going to make up my own thing. Sometimes it's better maybe just to stick to one or 2 recipes and do them really well and not have to worry about everything else. And then once you've really played it out and you feel comfortable that, you know that it works, then switch to something else if it's not working for you. Right. So I'm totally with you. Yeah. I know 20 different ways to do a lot of different things, but I have the two that I know that I can do. These are the ones that I can do. And Quinten, you may have something totally different that works well for you. And that's kind of the beautiful thing that I found about teaching is being able to watch what works and what doesn't and how it affects each individual student in their own way, too. Right. Quinten Sheriff: And it's adding more tools to the toolbox. Sean Tibor: Right. Quinten Sheriff: Just to give you an example with Concordia, some of the materials that I'm developing are pretty heavy going. So I'm talking about media manipulation, police, misinformation, state manipulation of the media, community outreach, different cultures, multiculturalism. These can be quite challenging topics to bring to a high school student or a middle school student. So I'm using a model called Keller's Arcs model, and it's specifically designed to motivate and engage students from the beginning to the end, because I know that the material is tough to go through. So I'm using something that's going to motivate them. And like to give another metaphor that illustrates what you were talking about. Sean, it's like, if you start following a recipe for some stirfry and then suddenly halfway through cooking, you switch it to something French, it's not really going to work. Try one model all the way through and see how that goes. And if it works, well, try it again with another format. Sean Tibor: Yeah. Sean, I think if you're a brilliant chef, maybe you can figure that out. But the only way that brilliant chefs got to be brilliant chefs was by following through, doing the work, playing it all the way out and seeing what happens. So I know that there are things I'm good at. I'm not a brilliant chef, so I'm going to keep working on the recipes. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Sean, can I ask you another difficult maybe not difficult, but I love the mission statement you posted this in here about Concordia mission statement. And I love that the whole fact that to conduct research on teaching and learning and to develop evidence based tools and strategies, and this is the thing that I love about it that positively impact our society. I think as teachers, we want to make a positive impact on our society, on our kids, on the community at our school. And I just like that mission statement. You want to elaborate on some of the ways that you bring that in to your instructional coaching, for sure. Quinten Sheriff: So I'm working for a specific Center at Concordia University, and it's the Center for the Study of Learning and Performance. So bringing in learning for K to 12 and this human performance engineering for adults. Sean, what we're doing is one of my directors is the UNESCO Chair for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremism in Canada. So we do have an advocacy and a focus on data and evidence based research. So we've got about 40 members and collaborators that work on researching these themes of cognitive and motivational science, educational technology research creation, social pedagogy. And we try to focus on these not only to create strategies that we can give a teacher, and they can download a lesson, but we want to make it elearning accessible, universal design for learning. And we want to make it based on our facts and our research. So we know it's going to make a positive difference in the classroom. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: There's a lot of things in there, a lot of things to break down. And I'm thinking of these words as you're coming out with it. For example, the cognitive and motivational science. We have the cognitive side of, why do we teach what we do? How is it going to help with the learning? How is it going to build that mile? And how is it going to solidify those? What Barbara Oakley was telling a Sean, from the short term or the long term? How do we get that happening? The motivational science. What is it in? Sean always tells me, pick a project, pick a project. And I'm like, I'm Sean, my intrinsic extrinsic motivation. So how do we bring that in for our kids? Sean, what else did you say in educational technologies? That's an easy one for us. I think we're always constantly in computer science using the computer, but we tend to forget that there's the other side of it. How do we use it for social good? How do we use it effectively? How do we pick the right tool? How do we communicate what we've learned? And there's these things that people assume that we're doing in computer science because we use a computer to code, but we don't necessarily go into the unsexual educational technology side. When you say research, research, creation, that I'll let you go into that and the social pedagogy, I mean, social pedagogy. I'm assuming you're talking about how do we fit in within society and how do we make our place, our spot in place in time within that curriculum and and rest. Right. Unknown: Right. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Heavy. Lots of stuff going on in there and lots of things, lots of stuff to think about when you're designing your curriculum. Sean Tibor: Yeah. I think maybe one of the things we could do is just go through some practical steps that people can go through, right. To be able to get this going. I ran my lovely wife. Is that well, I'm thinking about I'm really thinking about what are the practical steps? Like, what are we going to do now to set ourselves up for next year? And I thought maybe what we could do is come up with a few items, a few things like, where do we start? How do we get this going so that we can include a lot of the goals that you're talking about? Quinten, in our process so that our audience, our teachers, our students can really have this as part of their curriculum from the beginning of the year and from their delivery at the begining of the all the way through. So one of the things that I think we should start on is setting goals. How many goals do you set? What makes good goals, and how do we measure them, or how do we track them as we go? So, Quinten, what makes a good goal to set out when you're designing curriculum? What's something that would be a good goal that maybe every teacher should at least consider when they're designing? Quinten Sheriff: That's a really good question. I'll come back to it. My learner is my end goal. So I've got to almost create a learner persona in my mind and think, Okay, I've got ex learner sitting in front of me, and they coming into my classroom with these things that they do well, and these things, they don't do well. And we've got all sorts of things to consider. But if I can create one enduring understanding or overall goal that fits into the overall curriculum, that gives me a good umbrella from which I can start dropping down different panels of courses or course materials. And those can each have their own little educational goal that builds into the overall pyramid. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'll break that back down because I know I'm seeing the picture that he's saying. So we could talk. Chris, that profile. Sean, we know our students. So if we're starting this, but we don't need to. We don't necessarily think about it. So we already know our students, but we're thinking, okay, most of our students have gone through K through five with some form of coding curriculum. They know what a loop is. They kind of have this idea that that little fuzzy codable guy is going to go and catch the little blocks or whatever, and they're going to do some thinker, and they know that. And they're not going to be too scared of coding, but they might be scared of scripting. So that profile, to keep in mind, is we probably have some eager students, but they're a little timid. So as we think about what enduring objective we want as our umbrella, I think for Sean and I speak for him, I think our idea is that they get this passion, our enduring understanding that our students will develop a passion. And I don't want to say passion for coding, but for solving problems to help their lives or their lives around them. We want them to understand that with this technique, this goal, this idea of coding, that they can even solve a problem of how to build something, because we're teaching them the skills that are applicable with coding, with with design, with humanities research, we're trying to develop these skills. Is that right, Sean? Do you want to summarize that in a better? Sean Tibor: Well, I think the idea is really solid. And this concept is used in marketing as well, which I know a lot better than I know teaching. But the idea of personas is really important. And one of the traps that Sean companies fall into when they do their marketing is they either have one persona that they think everybody fits into or they have. So they've gotten so finely detailed on it that it's irrelevant. So what we typically do in the marketing side, and I think this works pretty well or translates pretty well to teaching is coming up with three to 4 different learner personas. Right. And that gives you enough differentiation that you can distinguish between them and say, Okay, this is maybe one of my persona is the kid who is just GungHo for coding. For whatever reason, they are already bought in. They're already sold. You don't need to show them anything to get them excited. You just need to help them channel that energy. Right? Then you might have another persona. That's the exact opposite. This is the kid that's sitting in the back of the room like, you can't teach me nothing, right? I'm here because I have to be, not because I want to be, and then a whole variety of different places in between. So if you come up with those three to 4 different personas that work really well for your learners and help you kind of identify what people need, you can better tailor your approach to each of those personas. And it's okay if they're different. They don't have to be everything to everybody. I think the second thing that I wanted to pull out from the goals conversation is that it sounds like there are very concrete tactical goals. I want them to have this knowledge or these skills that they've developed. But you, Sean, also have goals that are less tangible. Like, Here's how I want them to feel when they enter my classroom and when they leave. Here's how I want them to feel at the end of the course. These are the emotional goals, the social goals that I want them to acquire or achieve as part of my course. And then the last area is I think you have to include those kind of, like, mandatory goals, like the requirements, like it's paying taxes, right? Yes. I have my administration that needs me to do these things. They're not necessarily directly influencing my other goals in the classrooms, but there are things that I have to do. Right. So how do I include those goals in my design as well? Like, I have to teach all of this in 50 minutes a day. Right. I can't set my own schedule. So you have these constraints, these requirements that are imposed on you that you have to include as well. And I think it's okay to sit down now while you have some time and go through laying out each of those goals and laying out the personas of the students that you have, and then thinking about how you're going to achieve each of those goals with each of the personas, and there can be overlapped. Yes. All the students are only going to have 50 minutes right. In the classroom. But then maybe my GungHo students are going to want a lot of extra time. So how am I going to solve that for them? My second question is Quinten, how do you know that you're reaching your goals? Right. How do you know that it's actually working? This is my Brian Akin question for testing, right. Not testing scores. And how do I create better quizzes? But how do I know that it's working, that I'm achieving those goals for those learners? Quinten Sheriff: It comes down to, Sean, your different learners provide you with the products and learning deliverables that show a complete understanding and using the materials up to the level that you want them to. Do you want them to just repeat the information back to you? Do you want them to modify the information a little bit? Do you want them as with your problem solving encoding, do you want them to create something new? So beside the level that you want them to give you the product, the learning product, and then build tasks that go up to this product. Coming back to the learners. One way that we do this, an instructional design is we actually creates paragraphs of this is our current learners behavior. They're doing this. They're having problems with that. They don't understand this. They drop off engagement at this level, and then we create the same persona. But doing 100% of what we imagine is the level that we wish them to be at. And then we analyze and compare the two, and we compare it with those six boxes of internal support and environmental. So we say, do they what skills and knowledge gaps are missing? This becomes our skills and knowledge goals. What resources and instruments are missing in this gap? This is what we need to supply them with. What is motivating and incentivizing them to continue with this. What's the gap there? How can we fill this gap or motivate them to reach that? And then same for the work of themselves or the learner. Sorry. What are they bringing to the classroom? What's their prior knowledge? What did they learn in grade five before coming to your grade six class? What are they bringing to this in their attitudes and emotions? Sean, that's talking about your learner who's like, Yes, give me these challenges. I got that done. I'm on to the next one, as opposed to the young person at the back of the class is like, Oh, God, wins recess. Unknown: Alright. Quinten Sheriff: Yeah. So we create two learn of personas where they are right now. Ideal. We find the gap in the middle and the gap becomes the learning goal. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm like, Whoa, I combine as well. I combine Sean and Quinton. Right. So I'm thinking we always get again, we get these questions because we have those kids that are off the charts in sixth grade coding beyond my abilities, which I push me to learn. So in theory, Sean, we have these Let's simplify and just say 3, 3 profiles. And we did this for what does the student who finishes grade 12, that Pine Crest look like? What is the students who comes into six grade loving coding? What does he look like at the end of our quarter? What is the kid that you know? Okay, I know coding. I'm going to do it because I'm a good student and I'm going to put my best foot forward. What does that student look like at the end of the quarter? And then the child that sitting in their Holcom digging his feet in and say, I hate this class. I can't code. What does he look like or she look like at the end of the quarter? That's just that little step. And we extrapolate it to what do they look like at the end of grade? Right. And that goal, that final picture, that final profile is our ultimate goal, where you can have those panels that Quinten was talking about. Here's our mandates from the school curriculum. Here's our social emotional learning goals for our students. Here's our educational use of technology for our students. And they kind of fit into this, this body persona of this child and what we want to see happen. And what do they look like when they graduate? Sean Tibor: Sean, I think it's important also here is that the role of assessment is really critical in this as well. It's critical that we think about assessment very broadly and very creatively in terms of how we're going to assess progress against each of these goals, because it'd be pretty simple to put out like a Google form that says, how do you feel? Like one to 5? I feel great about coding, or I feel terrible about coding. And at the end, ask them the same question and see if it's moved right. But there are many other forms of assessment that you can do that are maybe less quantifiable but more quality. Sean nature. That could be helpful for you to get a better sense of what's happening as a teacher and then also importantly, be able to show others to be able to share, like, look, Here's a flip red video that might heels, Dug and student recorded at the beginning of the quarter versus here there at the end, and maybe they're not 100% on board yet at the end of sixth grade. But they're like, I found something cool that I could do, and that part was a win for me in the course. I didn't like anything else, but I found one thing I like to do that might be enough progress for that profile or for that persona to claim a victory in terms of we're making some goals happen, and that in seventh grade, when they're back now we've got something a little bit higher to build. They've got something that was a win for them that we can use to take them a little bit further. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: While you're thinking, I saw this really funny, tweet Will Richardson, we went, we presented I forget where we saw him in the Monterey conference. There we go, that one. And he's just go, go get her educational reform. And I just love a lot of the things he said because he likes to push the boundaries. And he replied to someone on Twitter who was saying there was a study and a whole write up on students who enjoy school at age of six earn higher standardized test scores at 16, even after controlling for intelligence. So they're talking, we have them motivated. They enjoy it. They want to come to school, they're going to have higher standardized tests. That's great. We see this abstract like, Yeah, of course, Let's motivate them. Let's make them enjoy school. But Will Richardson being Will Richardson says if raising test scores are a motivator for making learning fun, then something is seriously wrong. So, again, how are we measuring students? Again, like Sean said, it's not necessarily this this tangible. Yes. Now my student can repeat to me what a four loop is. Or now my student can say, Yeah, I understand that classes or this or this is object oriented programming. Great, you know, but is that what we're going to take as our standard for success right now. And that poses a good question. Sean Tibor: And Here's an example. Right. So my first year, I had an eight grade student and Kelly, those the student I'm talking about who was, like, my project student because her attitude was just, like, really tough. You know, she was definitely smart, but she fit into that. I'm digging my heels in sort of thing, and it was really hard to get her motivated, but I kept telling her that she could do it. I kept working with her. I kept encouraging her. I told her I wasn't going to just give up on her learning this. I wanted her to find a way to do it. And I wish I could say I had all of this figured out with what was the gap for her that I needed to figure out. But I think she was my first class my first year, so I just did what I thought was best and made it work. And at the end of this past year, I spoke with her, and she she didn't have to take any computer science courses in the upper school. It's not a mandatory course. She could have chosen a different path. But not only did she choose to take computer science, but now she's choosing again to take another computer science course in the fall. How do you measure that? I don't know that you can measure it and say, like, okay, well, kids who take how many of my students go on to take computer science in upper school is the right measure. How do you say students that were really hesitant before about computer science are now engaged and interested in it, that their attitude has changed? There's probably a way to measure that, but it may be just as effective to be able to use the anecdote to say, Hey, I've got the student who really didn't like to do it, and now they're not only doing it, but they're doing more, they're asking for more. They're wanting to do more. And that is a way to express that qualitative storytelling aspect of achieving the goals that you're setting out to. I know we're coming. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And that's going into my database that I'm making. Yeah. Sean Tibor: There you go. There you go. Quinten Sheriff: Sending a whole book on the assessment I want to talk about. Right. Sean Tibor: I know we're running a little bit short on time. I have another call coming up right after this. We are going to wrap up here, but I think certainly there's a lot more that we can talk about with you Quinten about design and measurement and assessment. Sean goal setting. So I want to say thank you for coming for that. But I also think that there's this great additional conversation that we can continue to have. It's something we've talked about before around diversity, equity and inclusion. I think it's worth a whole episode on its own. In fact, we keep talking about it because it's worth more than just an episode. It's something that drives a lot of our purpose. And we'd love to have you come back for that. So I think our our audience would definitely appreciate to have you back for more. And so we will schedule that as well. Any final thoughts to share? Any advice for teachers going back to school or going back to the Zoom in a few weeks? Quinten Sheriff: Take a deep breath. Remember that it's a tough job and that you need to look after yourself. Also, especially in the first few weeks. There's a lot of everyone coming to the teacher because you're the central point of information or advice. So set things up well the week before and then look after yourself for the first month. And I would love to come back and talk about inclusivity is very close to my heart. I've had such an awesome chat today. I've loved sharing the things that I'm studying and researching and working on. So thank you very much. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It's never enough time to have a great conversation with friends, so definitely would love to have you back to see if we're keeping up with our goals. Sean Tibor: And in terms of announcements from us, we're continuing on social media. We did just launch an email newsletter subscription, which you can find at Teaching Pipe on podcast substa com, I believe. Yeah. Okay. I'm looking for the banner at the bottom of the screen to make sure I get it right. That's why I put it up there, but that is a free newsletter for now. We may work on a premium version of that with some additional content, but if you'd like to get email updates from us, that's now the best way to get that. And so for Teaching Pipe. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Wait, wait real quick. I know you have one minute. Don't forget STI standards. They released them in 2,020, but they did put them out. That's 14. Sean, how to design their classroom. And then talent code will put the link. I can't see that little code. This is a great book. I love it. All right. For Teaching Python. Sean Tibor: All right. Sounds good for Teaching Python. This is Sean. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And this is Kelly signing on.