Episode 39: Livestream
Sean Tibor: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, this is Sean. We tried something new this week. We did a live stream of our recording on Twitch, so you're going to hear a little bit less edited version of our podcast than you normally do this week. Uh, we hope you enjoy it and we hope to do more of these in the future. If you want to hear more live streams from us, um, why don't you send us a note at, uh, teaching Python.
Uh, you can go to our website teaching python.fm and send us something or reach out to us on Twitter. Let us know what you think. Thanks very much. And on with the show.
 
 
so Kelly, how are you were sitting face to face here, which I guess we're not supposed to do in the coronavirus world, but here we are, right? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:00:54] So I've been in the classroom with you all week, so I feel like we've, we've already got what we've gotten in whatever it is, what it is. So yeah, getting ready to go. Yeah. And I don't, 
Sean Tibor: [00:01:06] I don't think you, you even, um, cause you haven't even seen my screen yet.
So we're streaming this live on Twitch right now. So we're using a bit of a, a zoom meeting magic to get our, our, a webcam sinked up, but then we're moving the video portion of this out live over Twitch because we know that there's a lot of people who are curious about what's going on right now with so many schools changing.
Right. I'm from. In-person learning to distance learning and online education. So I guess we should kick this off the same way we always do. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:01:39] We're gonna make this official. 
Sean Tibor: [00:01:40] Yeah, let's make it official because we can start the start of the stream here. So this is episode. 39 74 68 something like that. I think it's the episode 40 actually 
Kelly Paredes: [00:01:49] 39 for the fourth time.
Sean Tibor: [00:01:50] For the fourth time. Okay. Yeah, it's, things have been, as you can say, very fluid. Right. Over the last few weeks, I have gotten an outpouring of emails from so many different sources. Um, you know, all expressing their concern for my health and wellbeing during this time of crisis. You know, so Hertz rent a car.
Very concerned. Citibank was one of the first ones to reach out to me and say that they wanted to make sure that I was okay affected by the Corona virus. Um, let's see here. I've gotten emails from, you know, CVS, Walgreens. That makes sense, right? Like those pharmacies. Publix down here in Florida. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:02:27] Got that Publix one too.
Yeah. But in all honesty, it was really nice seeing the outpour from the educational technology committee, um, community and how they've been just opening up their doors literally, and allowing so many free subscriptions to everyone worldwide. I don't know where to look. If I look across this at Shawna or look at this screen will look at the screen.
So we don't, so we're recording at the screen. No, we're not lucky. But I've gotten, um. So many emails as well from tinker, who has released free access. Zoom has released free actual access for educators. What else you name? It 
Sean Tibor: [00:03:02] seems like everyone's done something to, um, to make this a little bit less painful for everyone.
And that's been really cool to see how many different, um, companies have. You know, tried to open up and you know, like if I put my marketing hat on and I'm just a little bit cynical, um, obviously that's good business too, right? Like getting more subscribers, especially in, you know, when there's a lot of pressure for everyone, not just the companies, but for the educators to make changes quickly is a really smart move.
And if your product holds up, you know. You know, your zoom video conference holds up, or your tinker platform holds up under the stress of the additional customers. You're not going to lose all of them when this is over. Right. We're all going to be changed. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:03:45] Absolutely. And I just, uh, for parents out there, I just, um, got my fitness and fluency or what is it?
Fluency and fitness. I just signed that for that. For my six year old. Apparently you can do math and reading and. Whatever on while they're doing jumping jacks. So we'll see how that goes. They're sent out at 21 free days on fluency and fitness. I don't even sponsor them or they're not even technology, but I was so excited because as a parent having to work at home and teach other people's students at the same time as a little bit overwhelming, and I'm just trying to get myself, you know, pre-prepared.
I'm one of those people that organizes everything and purchases. Not a lot of toilet paper. Mind you, but. All my snacks and everything ahead of time so that I'll have to not go out to Publix or whatnot. Yeah. 
Sean Tibor: [00:04:34] But you know, that's not to say that we aren't going to go outside. It's still beautiful weather here.
Um, bright, sunny. You wouldn't know that anything was going on. Um, by looking out the windows. So I went for a walk 
Kelly Paredes: [00:04:43] today. It was great. You can always get outdoors. Just not going to go hang out at the local. The local, uh, restaurant. 
Sean Tibor: [00:04:50] Yeah. But you know, the playground might be a good spot with all the UV light that kills everything from the sunlight.
So 
Kelly Paredes: [00:04:55] all my kids will be playing football, soccer, sorry. Spanish football. 
Sean Tibor: [00:05:01] Um, so Kelly, I it are their wins this week. Have you felt like there was a win of the week for you? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:05:06] You know, I'm going to have to give a shout out for our school, and I think your win will be the same that we just all pulled together for the past week.
We, we didn't think we were going to close on Monday. And then what, three hours later, our head of school came out and said. Guess what, we're closing on Monday and we're going to be closed for a little bit of time, and we just kind of all pulled together and everyone's starting to step up. So I feel it's a real big win, especially for, um, our boss who really was spending a lot of time organizing all of this preparation and helping us prepare other people.
Sean Tibor: [00:05:40] Yeah. It's really kind of amazing. I mean. Everyone across the school had a job to do. Everyone had something that they had to accomplish and get it done in a very short amount of time, and at the same time, maintain this sense of, you know, calm, professional behavior for all of our students, regardless of our own internal emotions.
Right? So helping our students feel that they are still in a safe place, that this is a, that they're going to be okay as we go through this. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:06:06] Yeah. Um, I think that is true. It's like there was a lot of, when you work with little kids in the middle school, you, you have to manage a lot. It's not, the curriculum is the least of your worries.
It's everything else that's going through their little brains as they're developing. And it's just, it's just a little bit of overwhelming things. You know, it's a talk of the talk of the middle school to talk about coronavirus and everyone's going to get it and we have to shut down the school. So you just kind of have to manage that.
That emotional, the social, emotional side of teaching more than anything. 
Sean Tibor: [00:06:38] I would, I would agree. So I think, yeah, I will pick a different when just so we're not repeating ourselves, but I have to agree. I think that that was probably the biggest win this week was, it was stressful. It was busy. It was fast and furious, trying to get everything arranged and organized.
Um, because as of, I think as of. This last night at like five or 6:00 PM, the campus was pretty well shut down and beginning Monday. Um, no one's allowed on campus for the next, uh, four weeks. So there was a lot to accomplish. When you think about how much everyone had to pull together to make it work, um, I, you know, for me, I think.
The win of the week. Um, probably came yesterday during our president's announcement. Um, you know, they had assured us earlier in the week that in the event of a shutdown, we would still be paid. All of these things would, you know, would continue to happen because, you know, we're still working, right? Like the campus is closed, but the school is still open.
Um, but I think the, the part that was most gratifying to me and why I really felt. Proud of the school that I work at was, was yesterday when the, um, president of the school also assured all of the faculty and staff that all of our hourly employees would continue to be paid throughout the campus closures.
So, you know, we w like we wouldn't have to worry about our colleagues that, um, are paid differently, um, having any sort of financial hardship from a campus closure that could really affect them in a, in a significant way. So that to me was, was still showing that we are putting our purpose and our values above.
You know, saving penny, you know, saving some pennies. Right, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:08:04] absolutely. And just a shout out then to all those administrators all across the world who've done this two, two months ago who've already, um. Did the stress of, of shutting down your school and organizing your teachers and being that, that cheerleader in the background, that's, that's there for you.
That's a huge, huge accomplishment. And we, I think we're all coming together in the educational world and, and sharing a lot of information and sharing a lot of, um, support for each other. And it's been a, a very overwhelming but good feeling. In a battle, in a, in a bad situation, you have to make light of it.
Um, we just kept saying, you got, this is all we kept hearing, so it was good. 
Sean Tibor: [00:08:49] Yeah. We've, we've really, um, you know, I, I don't know, it's just, it's been a unique and remarkable experience. Something that I didn't expect to happen. Um, you know, I, I know I keep saying this, but as a new teacher, there are things that I didn't expect to experience, things that were different than when I was a student.
Um. You know, here in the United States having to do lockdown drills on a regular basis is something that I didn't really want to do. Um, how to defend your classroom effectively, right? And protect your students is a training that I'd never wanted to have. Um, having to shut down a school in the space of a week or two.
Um, and be a part of that, you know, um, be, be a contributor to, that was something that I didn't think I would have to do, um, due to a global pandemic. Right. And it's been something that, that has been a good experience for me from just, you know, learning what you can do and learning that what you're capable of doing and, and knowing that there's a way to make it all work.
Kelly Paredes: [00:09:45] Yeah. Well, I, we still have six minutes before our official launch. Do you want to talk about anything? Cool you coded this way? 
Sean Tibor: [00:09:51] Um, man was there, was there a time for code 
Kelly Paredes: [00:09:53] code? I can't remember 
Sean Tibor: [00:09:55] actually the one thing that I got to play with this week, and I'll put a link to it in the, in the show notes. Um, it's something that, that showed up last week and it was rather unexpected.
It was a big box that showed up. And as soon as I saw it, I suspected that's what it was. But it was something that I had ordered like a year and a half ago on a Kickstarter. And it had taken so long to get to me that they had actually gone through a major product revision. And what showed up was actually, um, improved and evolved beyond what I had originally ordered.
But I got a light form LF too. Um, which is kind of a cool thing. And we were playing with it in the classroom and you were making fun of me cause I was. Almost ignoring my students. Maybe ignoring some of my students, at least the ones that were kind of, that needed to be ignored so that they would go learn things.
Kelly Paredes: [00:10:41] Was that also the time you were ignoring your students when you were, when you were playing with the RGB lights and the switches on microbots I have to tell them to put things down all the time. Get so into it. Kids 
Sean Tibor: [00:10:50] love it. Role modeling. Good behavior. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:10:54] Focusness 
Sean Tibor: [00:10:56] yeah, so I'll, let me, I'm going to put the, uh, the link in the chat here.
I think it's, um. Let me find it. But, uh, but basically the light form is a projector that has a camera built into it. And so it uses structured light patterns of, um, alternating white and black lines to, um, scan a room or scan an image and determine all the depth map. So the, the relative distance from the projector to the surface, and then it can generate for you a, um, you know, a render depth map along with a color scene that you can then use to do light painting on the room.
So you can, it has software. That's very much, I would say, like. Adobe after effects or Photoshop. It has a lot of those same sort of concepts of layers and effects and things like that that you can apply, but it lets you paint onto surfaces in the room, create services, or identify services that don't have to be flat.
So you could, um, paint on a flower, for example, and it would create this really cool effect of light. Flowing over the, the surface. So we did some things, like we found some texts that was a decal in our room, and then we outline that with color and made it animated so it would light up and glow and everything like that.
So that was a pretty cool, um. Thing to see happen. You know, it was a, it's a fun, it's a fun thing to play with. And, and my goal was to learn enough about it so that we can use it for events and, uh, and things at our school and also teach the kids a little bit more of this fusion between art and technology.
Kelly Paredes: [00:12:23] Yeah. I was thinking just having an, I was talking to the art teacher when she came in to see it. Can you imagine if they all had their individual space and they all made it. Um, geometrical design, and then they can work in that little space. To, to set their window for it. It's going to be really cool.
Sean Tibor: [00:12:42] Yeah. I can't wait. Yeah. There's so much we can do with it. So that was, that was some fun tech to play with. Um, of course, I got my, my light saber working, uh, for summer camp. Um, so that's been a lot of, of playing around with circuit Python stuff. Um, and then the other thing I've been starting on, and I hope to do more with, uh.
When I have some, some time as I've been going through the fluent Python book and trying to level up my own Python knowledge about the internals of Python, how things work behind the scenes, just so that when we encounter things for students where they have a question that I can. Accurately describe what's going on.
Even if I don't have to delve into that detail with them, I can at least explain to them why things work the same the way that they do. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:13:22] Yeah, you're pretty remarkable. You kept telling me, stop talking to you because you were reading. You had to get through the chapter. 
Sean Tibor: [00:13:27] Well, that was actually my stress relief for a little bit.
Also, it was just like help to. To cool down a little bit after working so much on other things. I could take a moment to, to think about Python and how something works and that it ended up being a good way to kind of meditate a bit. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:13:42] Yeah. I had a really good week of coding though. We managed to get through a lot.
We, uh, we dumped out all the sensors from the, the micro bits, um, the deep bore sensors. I even got some more of the deep, um, I guess our expansion boards. Just the kids were learning how to learn and how to find the code, and I kept telling them, this is research. Um, just copy the code, see what it does, see if you can read the code.
This is not your own production of code. We'll worry about that next week. Well, no, we're going to worry about it coming up. But the idea was then to just get in and play with the electronics of wiring for me. That's something always hard to get my head around of how do I wire things up? Which pen do I use in order to code?
Is it analog? Is it digital? Um, so it was a full on research and we had so much fun. They really got through a lot of things and they were able to find. The code for a lot of the products that we had, and I had never even started. Some of us, some of the kids got the a halo ring up with the accelerometer and having it chased the blue light with the microbit.
If you've never seen it, we'll put a link on, on our show notes for that as well. It's, it's such a great, um, product and there are three. Codes on their website that the kids can easily use. And it's not a complex code. So they can read, um, what's going on. And we were changing the variables so that we can better name them.
Because I did name the, the variables a and B, an X, which kind of confused our kids cause we teach them to name them what they should be. But it was so much fun. And then in the seventh grade, we just started, started just to look at arcade, thanks to Paul Craven. And. He, I'm officially released, or I don't know if it's officially released or tweeted last night.
I'm a chapter in the book about getting set up and making the first picture. And I was thinking to myself, wow, that's a great Monday lesson, 
Sean Tibor: [00:15:40] you know? And it kind of brings up a good point. Like, what are we gonna do on Monday? Right. I think we've been thinking a lot about a lot of other people's lessons and a bit about our own.
Um, so we've been trying to figure out like, what are we, what do we do on Monday? How do we start with this? Right? Um, how do we get students to make that transition? I think there's a couple things that you and I have thought about and we'll kind of, and we're still waiting for questions here, so, you know, if you have questions, please throw them in the chat.
Um, Kelly and I are, are, you know, keeping an eye on that. We're also keeping an eye on Twitter and LinkedIn to see if anybody, um, throw some questions our way from there. Um, but really the idea of making this transition as something that a lot of people aren't used to, um, many of us, uh, as teachers or as educators, as administrators or just as adults, have done more online education in the last 15 to 20 years than.
You know, our students have, right? Our students often have been taking classes in a classroom, um, where they're, they have a more traditional model. How do we help them make this transition over to being online learners that are self-paced, that are, um, driving their own education, taking ownership of it, and how do we make the transition ourselves to being online educators, distance educators, where we are setting our students up for success?
And I think that's an. Yeah. You know, it's not as simple as saying, well, we're going to do the same thing that we do in the classroom, but we'll just do it online. We'll just use this technology tool that we have and we'll just hold classes over video and everything should be fine. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:17:14] Yeah. And it's that question cause what we do in the classroom is a lot different than what's out there for the Python community.
And even talking just in general for, you know, Khan Academy or anything else where you can have yourself pace learning, we do something different. The reason why teaching, um. Becomes successful or why you are successful as a teacher is not necessarily the curriculum that you teach. It is the personality and the deliverance of the curriculum that you teach that makes you successful, and it's that whole switch.
You've lost that personal touch. You've lost touch that didn't sound right for a teacher, but you've lost that personal connection. With your students when you go behind a screen, and that's one of my biggest worries of how am I going to get that back. I have a group of kids that sit at the table where I sit and it's like a dinner table and we always joke around.
I was like, the dinner participants are here and they sit right next to me and there was about nine of us, and they constantly fight for that table just to sit next to us and to code. And I don't know, it's something to consider. How do you make sure you're still making that connection with the kids.
Sean Tibor: [00:18:27] Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's helpful to provide a little bit of context too, for online learning and where this has been most successful. Um, maybe there's some lessons we can draw from that success. So, you know, one of the rules that I had before I was a teacher was I was in marketing. Um, for many years, and I was a marketing director for a online university.
And you know, one of the, the profile of the person that we thought would be the best fit for our style of education was someone who had taken some college. You know, and maybe it wasn't successful, right? Or it was someone who had a entry level degree, you know, and I was particularly focused on nursing.
Um, so looking for people who were already nurses, not necessarily people who wanted to become nurses. So you kind of put yourself in the shoes of someone who is a nurse and that person has been, you know, working. Maybe they're working four, 10 hour days or three twelves or something like that. That's a, you know, relatively busy long day.
And then they come home and they also do, you know, their online degree. And most of them are trying to go from an associate's degrees to a bachelor's degree or bachelor's degree to a master's, or, you know, they're basically trying to level up. Their education so that they can accomplish something. And you know, we always said there's a reason why people are choosing to do this, right?
Because Netflix is a lot more fun than going back to school right there for most people. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:19:53] For most people. I'm like, I don't watch TV. Right? I'm the weird one. 
Sean Tibor: [00:19:58] But you know, but it's true. I mean, most people, if they were given a choice, they wouldn't say, you know what I'd really like to do after working a.
You know, a 12 hour day is to go online and participate in a group chat or watch a lecture or learn something or write a paper. Right? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:20:15] Why doesn't everyone like you, Demi? I love going online anyways, sorry. Yeah, so they don't want 
Sean Tibor: [00:20:21] to do that. They have a goal. They have a goal in mind that says like, I need to do this because.
I'm being told that I need to get a bachelor's degree by my workplace, or I want to get this position, or I want to, I have this career goal that I want to get to and I have to do. I have to get this degree in order to do it. It's something that enables something for me. I think that's very different for adult learners.
That motivation, that source of motivation is very different. When you are looking to achieve something, you have some sort of career or life goal that you're looking to accomplish or you're mandated to write, you have to do it. Um. Most of our students probably form fall more in the mandated mode, right?
They are forced to be at school when you're in middle school, usually by their parents, but you know, they're by law also. They have to be in school somewhere. So our students have to find some additional motivation because just having to be there and to be present is enough, isn't enough to actually get them to learn.
It might be enough to get them to memorize or to regurgitate or to perform like a talking parrot. Um, but it's not enough to actually get them to learn. So what do we need to do to help them? Right. And how do we make that transition from, they don't, they have to be at school and have to be physically present there.
Cause otherwise they're marked absent too. You know, now they're online. How do we know that they're learning? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:21:36] Well, there's a lot of, um, tips out there of things to think about as we're making that switch in our curriculum. I was speaking with a teacher this morning who was just like. What am I going to do?
Oh my gosh, I'm just going to put that project that I was going to do in class and I said, but wait, how is that going to work? Because I'm not sure when you go to switch into online learning that you really consider the fact when we're in the classroom, when we're presence in that are present in the classroom, we take our formative assessment by what the kids are learning and doing right in front of us.
We do check ins. Are you okay? Thumbs up, how's it going? And we, we assess whether we put it in the grade book or not. That assignment in the moment when you're online, if you're not doing it with synchronous learning, there's not. Many opportunities to assess if they got the lesson for the day. So you have to start thinking about how are you going to chunk those lessons?
How are you going to be more effective online and do it in smaller chunks so that you can assess periodically and effectively. So that's one of the big things I'm thinking about. 
Sean Tibor: [00:22:57] Well, you know, we had like, and there's some things I think that are simple metrics, um, some simple ways to evaluate an assessment model and see if it's effective.
So for example, you know, some of our students were asking us about, you know, how we are going to test them and how they were going to prevent people from cheating, right? And they're like, how are you going to know that I'm not Googling stuff? And we said, well, if you can Google it and come up with the answer, it's probably not a very good question.
Right? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:23:24] Well, maybe the Googling is the assessment, 
Sean Tibor: [00:23:26] right? Or the, you know, how quickly can you research and find the right answer and know that it's the right answer. I mean, that's, that's also, um, rather, you know, important in terms of the, the way that we're teaching kids, because we're gonna assume that they're gonna have more access to search and more access to information, not less.
Right. Um, so I think that's been sort of a, um, an interesting challenge as we go through this transition is, is resetting everyone's expectations for what does it mean to really assess learning and understanding. Um, and how do we really, um, look at this? This is what I think is really the silver lining.
And I, you and I have talked about this a lot. Um, and this is going to force everyone to reevaluate what learning and education really means. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:24:08] Absolutely. It's not only is it going to make them what it means, but really is it is what you're doing, really. What it means. Yeah. And taking a self reflection. We love reflecting here at teaching Python.
Um, but it's this moment of am I really assessing them on what's important in my curriculum? And it goes back to us with computer science education. What is really important, I know, um, and I'll probably speak for shock for you, Sean, is what's important is not necessarily what they make. That's fun. That's great.
But it's what they learn from making. So even if it is, um, small steps with the sixth graders, when the ability to find someone else's code, make it, and then make a small product of their own. That's huge. So for us, it's like it's easy for to put out there what we want them to do. I guess in my mind what we want them to do because we just want them to learn and appreciate the ability to learn for themselves.
Sean Tibor: [00:25:14] Yeah, I agree. Um, you know, Kelly, we've been, believe it or not, we've been recording for about 30 minutes already. Um, we're going to take a break for a little bit and come back. So I'm gonna, um, pause the stream for a bit. We'll probably be back in about 20 to 30 minutes, um, to, uh, to resume the conversation.
In the meantime, while we're gone, I'm going to just pause the stream, but send us your questions over Twitter. You can put them in the chat for our channel. Um, we also have this posted on on LinkedIn. So if you're looking for us on Twitter, we're at twitter.com/teaching Python. Um, it's P. Y. T. H. O. N. um, we both, uh, are Python teachers, but we teach many other things as well as we're fond of saying.
And Python is the vehicle for teaching the things that really matter. Um, and I think anyone who's a Python coder would agree with that. The language is a beautiful, elegant, uh, sort of thing. But the really important thing is how you think through problems and how you solve them in the, in the way that makes sense to you.

We're back after a short break. Um, you know, it's, it's funny, this, this weekend is not really much of a break at all. Um, as we make the transition from Friday being in our classrooms to Monday, being, uh. Virtual with our students. So it's turning into quite the, um, quite the weekend of, of helping out our colleagues, of helping ourselves learn a little bit.
Um, so that's kind of what we wanted to do here was just give a, a quick, sort of a live stream so that any other educators who are trying to make this pivot. Um, and, and had questions could jump on anybody who's already made the pivot because a lot of the educators around the world have been doing this for months now and have learned a lot of the things that, that we'll be learning over the next few weeks, I would say.
Kelly Paredes: [00:26:52] Absolutely. And I think it's just getting our heads wrapped around about what we're going to do on Monday. I've been talking to some of my former colleagues that I worked with in Peru. Um. About how they've been handling their working around situation in Asia because they're now working in Asia and it's just been a really long couple of months for them.
They've been shut down for six weeks. Um, and they, they have talked about some of the benefits of what they've learned, whether switching, it's that combination of live class sessions supplemented with this like flip class opportunities and it's a. They're realizing that they couldn't expect their kids to be dialed in for seven to eight hours, and it's just, it's been a, it's been a whirlwind of learning experiences for a lot of my friends and colleagues across the world, and we're about to embark on it.
Sean Tibor: [00:27:44] Yeah, I would say that that's probably the. The most important part of this is that we don't expect our students to be engaged for seven or eight hours during a normal school day. So, and not only that, we probably shouldn't expect them to spend all the time in front of a screen either. They need that time to change what they're doing, to switch between tasks to freshen up their minds, um, to move around a little bit.
So, you know, as I'm going through, like my own children will be home with, with me over the next few weeks. We're putting together a schedule for the day, you know, the things that they're going to be doing. Like, and I love the idea that you shared with me. I'm sure you found it from one of our other colleagues.
You know, the idea of learning stations where there's a place where that's your own idea. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:28:30] I love 
Sean Tibor: [00:28:31] that. I love that. Um, so there's no, this idea of, of learning stations where the student can go to have that space, like a physical space where they're going to learn so that when they're away from the space, they're really taking a break.
And when they're there, they're learning. Um, and I, you know, I know that that's, um. Something sort of like that is what most successful people in work from home situations have set up. Um, you can't work from your dining room table, uh, for an extended period of time. It works for a day or for a few hours.
But 
Kelly Paredes: [00:28:59] hope it works for me for three weeks. No, I actually got that idea cause I was reading a lot about, um, I think it was from Julian and Bob. They're talking about setting up how you're working from home. I w 
Sean Tibor: [00:29:10] the high bites, right? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:29:11] Pie bites, I think. And just the idea of. What do you need to get into your learning realm?
And I think as a parent, I really know that my kids, one child cannot handle anybody making noises around them. He can't focus. And the other one. He needs more of a comfy, cozy spot. So I kind of made that place and I'll, we'll reshare it. I tweeted it out this morning. I was really proud of my spaces and everyone was laughing at me and my close friends because they couldn't believe I was doing that at eight o'clock in the morning.
Kind of like nesting, but I did want to share, um, there's a viral. Uh, Darrell daily schedule going around all over Facebook about little schedules for kids. And I think you can manipulate that well as well for middle schoolers. But just talking about doing a, a wake up morning walk, academic time, creative time, lunch, chore time, quiet time, academic time.
And it's this idea of making sure that we also. Physically, mentally, um, recharge ourselves and our students and our children while they're on this online learning. I know, especially as computer science teachers, we're constantly on the computer and, and I'm not aware, I'm not sure, I don't even know what the proper phases, but I'm not sure how our colleagues who don't necessarily teach all the time on the computer how they're going to do with this.
Cause it's a difficult transition. We're used to being on the computers. We're used to staring at the screen. I know you probably stare at the screen way more than I stare at a screen, but it's a, it's a little bit of a trying time. 
Sean Tibor: [00:30:44] Yeah. And also some of the things that we've been going through over the last week is helping to match up our colleagues with, um, technology equipment that may work.
Well for them. Um, and you know, some of the things that, that have worked well or don't have to be sophisticated, right? You know, even a simple, like, you know, nine by 12 whiteboard square that you can write on. And if you're trying to do like a math equation or draw something and you just hold it up to your webcam.
Can often be good enough to illustrate a point, and then you could snap a picture of it with your phone later. Um, so a lot of the things that are, um, you know, maybe not, they're, they're high tech. Um. You know, cameras and things like that, but kind of low tech combinations where you merge the two together, they make a lot of sense.
Or even, you know, set up your, your laptop with a, um, a wall behind, you know, wall behind it that you can draw on. You know, one of the things my wife works for office Depot, one of the things that they have, I believe if they have any of them left, it's pretty cool. It's a static cling whiteboard sheets.
That you can stick to a wall and it just clings there with statics, so there's no adhesive. It doesn't do anything to the wallpaper, but you can turn any wall into a whiteboard wall temporarily, which could be great for a student's learning space for a teaching setup where you could have the wall behind you as a temporary whiteboard that you could work on.
Is it perfect? No, but is it good enough to get a lesson completed? Probably. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:32:05] Yeah. The other thing we have to think about is this differentiation. Kind of aspect. I was talking to a colleague this week, and I'm saying, while you're videotaping, maybe you're going to have something behind you hanging on the wall, like you said, so that you have it tight, you have it hanging, written out, and you also have a video, so you're hitting all the modalities.
Um, so that. We're making sure that every student is successful. 
Sean Tibor: [00:32:35] Right. I think, you know, really what I'm excited to see over the next few weeks and, and I know that, you know, this is kind of like finding silver linings, right? But. You know, I'm excited to see all the creative solutions that people come up with to IM improve distance learning.
I mean, if you think about it, we've seen a gradual upsurge in distance learning and online education over the past 15 to 20 years, but we've essentially shut down most of the schools in the United States in the last week or two. And you know, if, if education is moving online, we've now unleashed all these educators with finding creative ways to engage the learning.
And so even simple things like using the whiteboard or writing on glass, or you know, like I've got a USB microscope, right? So you can stream the F the feed from the USB microscopes. So we're going to take some closeup, looks at like. What a Neo Pexels do on circuit boards or, um, how a circuit is actually wired on a small level.
Like it, there's some cool things that we can do with that. Um, especially as we start to get into the, some of our specialty classes like robotics or, um, as we start to look at things, you know, I'm excited because I think our e-sports team is finally going to have enough focus to take off now. It 
Kelly Paredes: [00:33:48] could be fun.
Yeah. Posting right now. My, my, Oh, I thought. Get this going here. I'll get to in a second. But I was trying to post up my, a couple of things I wanted to, um, share with the listeners. 
Sean Tibor: [00:34:01] So if you have, by the way, I was going to, we're making this up as we go along. This is our first stream, so, you know, please be gentle of course.
But, um, we have this zoom meeting here if you'd like to, um, to see things where you want to share stuff, you can share it on the zoom, share the screen, and then it'll get streamed out to everyone also. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:34:17] That's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, I'll try to do it cause I'm, I have to look in there. We have to log into the chat to get in there.
Okay. But, um, what I was thinking is I was looking at the creative ways that people who are in teaching with video. I'm really excited about the fact that I'm going to have some little videos short, maybe screencast defies or something with the teaching of Python. And I'm thinking that's a great momentum to start recording things for extra help sessions.
I can post later on in next year maybe where it's on my resource. So the funny thing is, is we're in the wheel course. So in between our three weeks off or on online, 
Sean Tibor: [00:34:59] remote, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:35:00] sorry. And between our, our three weeks of remote teaching, we are. We are going to, Mmm. We're, we're going to be switching the quarter, so we're going to be switching from  a third quarter into fourth quarter.
And so I'm going to have the end of my PI's on teaching and I'm going to have the beginning of my Python quarter. And so I'll be missing the middle parts of the teaching. So maybe I can take that time to, to add some more screencasts. Sorry. It's very interesting doing a Twitch or doing a live chat.
There's so much going on. This is what our students are going to be dealing with because they're going to have chats. How do they multitask? Switch task. 
Sean Tibor: [00:35:45] I don't know. I mean, we'll see. I mean, the nice thing about that I've always found in online learning is that you can pause it, go back, you know, move forward, that sort of thing.
So hopefully we can, we can employ the same sort of like. Pacing. Um, that works well for, um, you know, rewinding playback, that sort of thing. Okay. So I had someone just mentioned in the chat list to tip said that Kelly's a little bit on the quiet side. So Kelly, I need you to move your microphone a little bit closer.
Sorry, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:36:15] I'm being the loudest person. Um, but I want to touch base. I also had this article that I read. Earlier this this week, about seven tips of online teaching. I kind of wanted to go through, I don't know if you read it. 
Sean Tibor: [00:36:28] Do you have the, uh, do you have the article? Can we put it up on the screen? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:36:31] Can I put it up on the screen?
Now you're getting technical. Do 
Sean Tibor: [00:36:34] you just do share screen and zoom and let's see if that works. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:36:36] Oh, we know how we're doing a lot of, uh, 
Sean Tibor: [00:36:39] we're layering a lot here. Um, and hold on. I'm going to plug in to charge off. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:36:44] There's so much going on. We'd have done zoom so many. Um. Zoom. Trainings today. You have been on.
There you go. Can you? Awesome. So I found this insider higher ed, and I've posted out, but just thinking of making a group effort. This one is interesting with the focus in on active learning. It's easy for us. If I was, I posted to an email to the computer science students yesterday, this morning, and I said.
We're going to be doing a zoom meeting to do some code alongs. We're going to have that feature where we can mute the students. I can share my screen and well, you can we pop up? Look, I've got mu shout out to the mu. Can you see that? On the screen and maybe we'll have some code, Alon. So I'm thinking of trying to get some active learning.
Maybe I can have them share their screens with, with zoom. Um, just that feature of how are we going to get them to be hands on while we're all at home alone with our loved ones. 
Sean Tibor: [00:37:47] Yeah, maybe. I mean, we'll, let's, Oh, hold on one sec. I mean, I'm just at this point trying to figure out like, why you can't 
Kelly Paredes: [00:37:54] hear me, 
Sean Tibor: [00:37:54] what the next day or two looks like, let alone like how we're going to go even further.
Like how we're really gonna maximize this. So I think there's like, there's two phases. They're a set short term of how do we make the pivot right now and how do we do that? Uh, you know, while keeping our students safe and secure and helping them make the transition, and then how, once they're comfortable, do we go into that full sort of optimization growth, you know, longer term.
Yeah. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:38:26] What are you thinking about doing for your first day? Now we're trying to multiplies. What are you trying to, what are you going to do for your first day besides get everybody crazy, and I'm sure you're going to zoom right away. Zoom, zoom, zoom. 
Sean Tibor: [00:38:35] You know, my only zoom that I have planned right now is for my, um, my advisory students.
So my students that are non-graded. Um, just the, the eighth graders, I'm setting up a, I have a, a group of students just to back up from an, I have a group of students that I advise, um, and that have been assigned to me for the year. So the goal of that is to really, um, build relationships and really help, uh, grow their community and have some people that they're connected with.
So I'm going to make sure that we keep that connection going. And I'd like to start by doing a zoom meeting with them. Uh, that first day to help make sure that they're comfortable. I'm getting online and getting all the things that they 
Kelly Paredes: [00:39:10] need. So apparently my Mike is only coming from you. 
Sean Tibor: [00:39:14] Oh, hold on one second.
That's 
Kelly Paredes: [00:39:16] the problem, huh? 
Sean Tibor: [00:39:19] Okay. Let's see what we can figure out. This is good. Shawna's just like in podcast 
Kelly Paredes: [00:39:26] of hello world, our very first podcast where we know what we're doing. Always learning. 
Sean Tibor: [00:39:32] Well, let's see here. So we're broadcasting and stereo and the levels look pretty good on my side. Kelly, can you say something really smart and intelligent for everyone?
Kelly Paredes: [00:39:40] I'm really smart and intelligent. 
Sean Tibor: [00:39:42] Okay, so the levels are looking good. So less to tip, maybe you're, maybe you're only getting the right side audio for some reason. Let me see if there's a setting here that I can change for that. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:39:54] Yeah. So while you're playing around with it, so I'm going to assume with my, with my advisees as well, I feel, I feel like we, again, going back to that social emotional learning, we have to really do that connection for our kids, but I'm, I'm really excited, I think, I think I'm going to make Paul Craven happy and really dig into arcade.
I've got to figure out, I got to figure out if, uh. Emily on the right. There you go. Oh, I'm in stereo. 
Sean Tibor: [00:40:22] I just changed something here. Um, okay. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:40:25] But, um, I'm going to try to do, dig into arcade. I've got to figure out, and Sean's going to help us see if we can get our third party. Um. Libraries into mu because I think pie charm, I jumped ahead and tried to install pie charm with my seventh graders, but it was too overwhelming for them.
So we're going to make a screencast of the fix for some people with mu and getting those third party packages to go in something with a brew. 
Sean Tibor: [00:40:51] Homebrew. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:40:52] Yeah. Yeah. It has to do that recording tonight with all with the limited, I know this weekend. Tomorrow. 
Sean Tibor: [00:40:58] No, I'm, I'm going to do that as a screencast probably.
So, um, you know, there's a lot of things that I, I'm actually excited. I think they'll work better as a recording. Um, and when the students aren't distracted by everyone else around them. Um, so the w, you know, the specific issue that we're running into is that the mew Python editor that, um, we've used so much  and works really well, has a kind of a strange bug with it.
The alpha version where you can't, um, install third party packages like map plot lib or pandas or something like that, which normally you wouldn't really care to do. Like you're kind of moving. By the time you're ready to do a pandas data set, you're probably not going to be using you to do it. But, um, the Python arcade library that Paul Craven came out with, it works really well and I think it'd be a natural fit.
The problem is that on Macko S, which is the dominant operating system that we have at our school. Um, the, the, um, it depends on open SSL. So in order, the fastest way that we've found to get that going is to install Homebrew and then get open SSL going. So it's been a little bit tricky to, uh, to get students to follow along with that.
And so I think the screencast is gonna actually be a really great way of getting them to 
Kelly Paredes: [00:42:07] do it. Yeah. And it's helpful for me because I always say I can't remember how to do it, which I can't because I know it's something, something in terminal, something, something here, and then now I can just install all the third party packages and it's great.
And I keep forgetting. So it's going to be something to handy to have. Going back to that, these are the things that I think are going to be beneficial to every teacher is you're going to have these set of resources so. He may not necessarily teach just like that in class, but you can put on your in your curriculum, Hey, here's my screencast on how to fix things with Moo and how to install brew, or here's my, here's my lesson about making a function for sixth graders.
So these are the things that I find readily on the internet because. People don't teach the way I teach, and I like to do certain things a certain way. Even though Python is Python, we all have our little idiosyncrasies of how we teach, so it's going to be nice to have that bank. 
Sean Tibor: [00:43:10] Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, and then sharing that.
Right? So that's the, like, as 
Kelly Paredes: [00:43:16] you mentioned, 
Sean Tibor: [00:43:17] you don't have, you don't have to share everything, but, you know, um, I think that's the thing that we've seen is just the spirit of sharing as much as everyone can to help get, um, everyone through. So, um, you know, we'll share what we can, um, and keep going from there.
Kelly Paredes: [00:43:30] Yeah. And I brought home a couple books. You brought home a lot of books. I know 
Sean Tibor: [00:43:35] I brought home a lot of things, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:43:37] way too much stuff. When our boss told us to bring home everything we needed, Sean was just like, I can't live without that. Oh wait, I can't live without 
Sean Tibor: [00:43:44] that. All right. I only took one of the three D printers.
Kelly Paredes: [00:43:48] Yeah, so what I'm thinking about the things that I brought home, I brought home the pie top, the new pie top to 
Sean Tibor: [00:43:54] top four. Now I taught for 
Kelly Paredes: [00:43:57] four. I brought home that and then I brought home vector. Yup. Cause vectors coming out. Vectors the AI robot that the company went under or sold out. 
Sean Tibor: [00:44:08] Yeah. It was, um, made by  hunky and they, they, uh, went bankrupt.
Um, but then, uh, digital dream labs are 
Kelly Paredes: [00:44:15] the ones that make the puzzle. It's, yep. They are doing a Kickstarter and I think we're going to purchase that so that we have some. I did. 
Sean Tibor: [00:44:22] We got to, I was, I think the Kickstarter's closing like as of right now, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:44:27] so, so yeah. So we, we want to get in there and get some of that and, uh, be able to edit our vector.
We'll Sean, we'll edit vector. We'll just play with them in sixth grade. Um. That's what I brought home. That, and I brought home Meg Ryan. Meg's a book. Meg Ryan. Yes. 
Sean Tibor: [00:44:43] Meg. Meg. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:44:44] Meg Ryan's the actress. Meg Ray. 
Sean Tibor: [00:44:46] I mean, I didn't know she was into Python, but you know, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:44:48] that would be cool. Meg Ryan, if you're into Python, you know, hit us up at teaching Python, Meg Ray's book.
Cause I only, I've only made it halfway through her book and I keep . Looking at it, staring me down, trying to get those vampire pizzas to come after us. Um, you haven't done that all the 
Sean Tibor: [00:45:05] way. I've seen you working on it, which is kind of fun. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:45:09] What else did we bring home? I brought home a lot of components.
For the microbit and the Gemma, because those are these projects. So I have a lot of high hopes in between. Maybe some tutorials for extra time for the kids. We'll see how it goes. I still need to purchase a desktop camera, I think would be nice when we're doing the electric connections. 
Sean Tibor: [00:45:31] Yeah. Um, you know, it's interesting.
I've found that the magnification on that USB camera is probably a little too much for. Um, the screen, like it's good for showing individual components. Um, document cameras I think are going to be the key. Um, so if it, if it can capture an eight by 10 space, you could kind of move it close enough that you could, um, make the alligator clip connections for the students.
Kelly Paredes: [00:45:53] So yeah. That's about it. 
Sean Tibor: [00:45:55] I don't know for, for me, I've got way too many projects. I left the lightsaber in the classroom. I realized that last time, like this is the nerdiest thing ever. My, my lightsaber is there, but in fact it's, it's completed. So at this point, I'm going to leave it there. I'm working on a second prototype cause I want to change the design a little bit, but I'm in no rush for that.
Um, so I didn't, I brought home components for that. I may do some of the soldering on it because it's a, it's a good relaxing activity to do. Um. And then I'm looking at a couple of other things that I brought home. I brought home the, the light form, a light painting projector that we were talking about in the last session here.
And then I also, um, brought home some cool stuff with, um, the, like I brought home the, the DGI robo masters cause my kids love playing with them and I think we might actually get out some safety goggles and use the, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:46:44] yeah, the record that, so that's the one of the thing of the moral motivation as a strain that's a strain for our students.
That's what I wanted to put back in there. I'll keep searching for it. The videos, some teachers from elementary school made some really cool videos to keep that motivation. So I can just see if you guys a race it around with those robots that we have at school, I, you definitely need to record that. Send it to your 
Sean Tibor: [00:47:06] kids.
We're definitely going to see how it goes. I have to, um, I have my own. You know, not a school owned, but I have my own drone as well. And that's one of the things that I may pull out during the break, as well as, um, get some sort of combination of the drone and the, uh. And the robots driving around, um, to get some kind of fun video and everything.
So, you know, it's, it's as much, I'm using this almost as like, I'm half teaching half sabbatical as a way to focus on some of the projects that I don't always get to, um, to play with. And that's been a lot of fun to see the opportunities for that and think about like, what could be done now. Yep. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:47:43] That'd be good.
So what else. We're pretty much done, I think for a little bit. We've got a lot of talking today that we've done. 
Sean Tibor: [00:47:53] That's true. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:47:55] And this was a good tester just to see how things are going and. And Twitch and streaming and maybe do a couple more of those. Yeah, I think  wants to stare at me. 
Sean Tibor: [00:48:07] Well, but I, you know, I have to say, well, it gets pretty great.
We've had several viewers show up. There's less a tip is in here. Lurks is in here as a toric is in here. Um, you know, when we set this up, we didn't even know if anybody would show. So to have you all join us and, um, chat with us has been really, really great. So thank you for joining for that. Um, we are probably going to do more of these.
We have some, um, some live streaming that we're going to do over the next, uh, you know, probably over the next couple of weeks. Um, and you know, Kelly has, I set her up with, um, a little miniature recording, uh, interface so she can start, uh, recording the higher quality audio and we'll just see where we go from there.
Kelly Paredes: [00:48:41] Yeah. And, uh, thanks for putting up with us while we're testing. It's, you know, that's one of the things. We tell all computer science teachers and any teacher out there, you, you gotta be okay with the failure. Um, you've gotta be able to put yourself out there and take the risks. We probably look like idiots half the time 
Sean Tibor: [00:49:02] I have a feeling like I'm going to need to elevate my webcam cause I'm looking up at you and it's probably not in the right spot.
So if I change this a little bit. It probably will look better, you know, so it's like, it's all the little details and tweaks that you don't know until you actually try it. So the only way you're going to do that is to try it, right? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:49:19] Yeah. So we hope to get a podcast out for you guys. A real one. Um, we've 
Sean Tibor: [00:49:23] got a couple of the have been recorded.
One of them we may end up, uh, postponing or delaying because it was about some live events we were working on. Um, that may be, you know, adjusted based on the current situation with the Corona virus. Yeah. Um, the other one though I think is actually maybe even more apt right now, um, around Python and parenting.
So we're going to 
Kelly Paredes: [00:49:41] launch out on my soon, 
Sean Tibor: [00:49:43] soon, very soon. So I'm going to figure out how the heck we're going to edit this audio file into something coherent. And then I will 
Kelly Paredes: [00:49:51] just put it up as one of our, we're going to post it as episode 40, what not to do on Twitch. 
Sean Tibor: [00:49:57] Maybe. Make it be. Uh, but you know, we'll, we'll, you know, actually the kind of goes to show you, I may end up just posting this as a live recording with all the warts and blemishes on it.
Um, I'm on the, you know, the non edited, I don't have words, 
Kelly Paredes: [00:50:11] as you can see. 
Sean Tibor: [00:50:13] Um. Just to add, we'll post it as a live recording just so we can get it out faster and sooner rather than later. So, um, again, thanks for listening and this has been a new thing for all of us. So, um, for teaching Python, this is Sean.
And this is Kelly signing off.