Episode 40: A New Way Of Teaching Sean Tibor: [00:00:21] All right. Hello and welcome to teaching Python. This is episode 40, a new way of thinking about teaching. My name's Sean Tibor. I'm a T a coder who teaches. I almost had a teacher who codes cause it feels like it's, uh, been more about teaching than coding this week. Uh, and I'm joined by my cohost. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:00:36] I'm Kelly Schuster Perez, and I'm a teacher who codes and I've been coding a lot this week. Sean Tibor: [00:00:41] Oh, good. Good. So it seems like we've been using our time very differently, uh, this week as we've made the shift to online learning. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:00:48] Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's been a, it's been a fun time of, uh, switching a lot of things. Sean Tibor: [00:00:54] Well, why don't we start with, just to check in before we get to the winds of the week. How are you doing, Kelly? Like, what's your week been like since we've been, uh, working, uh, remotely. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:01:03] Uh, you know, I've had a lot of talking time. I, I've never talked so much in the past. Um, switching, which, switching things up and talking to a lot of people, most of the time I'm hiding behind the computer and, uh, coding along with the kids and not talking so intently. Um, but I've been doing a lot of talking this week. How about you. Sean Tibor: [00:01:22] Oh, for me it's been a lot of talking. Also, I think I was five or six hours straight in front of the computer yesterday. Uh, just meeting with students. Uh, we've been zooming a lot, working through a lot of things. So what I've been really impressed by is how quickly the students are adapting to this new model. Um, of course, I think that there are students that are falling behind or falling between the cracks. So that's one of the things that I'm working on today is to catch up and make sure that my students that I haven't seen this week are still engaged and still here and still present in their learning. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:01:54] Yeah. That's the hard part of trying to find, you know, the kids that aren't connecting in, they're trying to get a touch with them and. Trying to pull them into the conversations that we're having online and on virtual social, that social media on zoom Sean Tibor: [00:02:12] right? I mean, it's, it's funny, that article that you sent me earlier this week about how the, uh, generationZ , they now know what the Z stands for. It's for zoom Everyone is going on to zoom. I think zoom had something like six or 8 million new users last Monday morning that, um, you know, that first day that so many schools closed, they've just been booming in terms of their usage. And so a lot of the students are learning how this new model of interaction is going to work for the foreseeable future. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:02:41] Yeah, and what I really love about it is zoom, put a fire underneath Google. Cause now Google is trying to, to catch up and make some of the features that zoom has about muting and recording and ending meetings. Um, so it's definitely become a zoom generation. We have to watch out for those zoom zoom parties. Aren't we having a zoom Tiki night with our friends? Yes. Sean Tibor: [00:03:02] Yeah. I think that's the plan. I mean, we're a, we have to find ways to make it work, but I think everyone's being very flexible and adaptable, and that's been good to see happen. It's also been a little challenging. We are. All here at home, each trying to do different things. My wife is working from home. I'm teaching from home. My kids are learning from home and playing from home. And you know, in the space of this week, we've radically altered our home life to be able to accommodate all the different needs and obligations that we have. Um, but I think it was put best. Um, our president sent out an email and I think it was really apt. Uh, one of the quotes from our parents that said, I miss all the things that we've lost, but what we gained might be better. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:03:42] absolutely. Sean Tibor: [00:03:43] walks. We've gone swimming every day. We've been playing together. My kids have been playing for hours together, just playing no screen time, just enjoying each other, and it's been really great to see. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:03:56] it has. And it's funny, I was, I'm walking around the block the other day and I said, this is probably the first time I'm ever going to see my neighbors. Granted, we're across the street and wave and hi to each other, but there's so many people out and about it. I lie, I mean, for a bad thing, I kinda like it. Yeah. Um, I'm a little bit addicted to being at home and now I have a reason why I have to stay here. So it's good for introverts. Sean Tibor: [00:04:20] Yeah. Introverts are excited about this for sure. I was thinking like my next project may have to be a hat that projects a, like a red led or red laser line that's a six foot die, you know, radius around you so that people know that this is my bubble. Right. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:04:34] Did you see, did you see the guy who put the circuit playgrounds on the side of his, his, his ventilator it with some led strip? Yeah, on Twitter. I was going to read, tweet it and said, that's going to be a next project, but I don't think, I think your wife and uh, your boss might kill you if you have another project going on right now. Sean Tibor: [00:04:53] there's, there's been a lot going on, but honestly, I've worked less on some of my side projects this week and more just focusing on getting the teaching right and getting the home life right. So it's really been about prioritizing everything as I'm, as I'm sure you're well aware. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:05:08] Absolutely. So, so what's your win of the week? Let's go back to that. What's your win to this week? Sean Tibor: [00:05:14] Um, let's see here. So wins of the week. I have. I have to say the win of the week has been watching the students make the transition online. And we've been, I've been trying to stay connected with my advisory. Um, so all the students that I meet with as their advisor, I try to have a zoom meeting with him every morning just to check in and see how they're doing. And they're not obligated to attend. But I've had quite a few kids that are making it part of their routine in the morning to show up. I also have quite a few kids who were still sleeping in. Uh, and not waking up for it. Um, but this week, probably the, the highlight was that I, uh, flew up with a friend to watch the space X launch and livestreamed it to my, uh, to my zoom advisory group so they could watch the rocket launch also. So it worked out pretty well. We were able to maintain our social distancing because it was basically me and the pilot and I didn't have to walk through a crowded airport or anything like that. We just got in his plane and flew up and that was pretty much, it. So worked pretty well. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:06:10] That's pretty cool. Yeah, I saw that you tweeted a lot about that. I haven't, I have to be honest. I didn't watch any of it. Um, I, I will eventually. Um, but it sounds like a really cool, cool opportunity. Sean Tibor: [00:06:22] We're, I mean, yeah. So you may hear a lot of background noise, uh, as we're recording this week cause we're all working from home. Everyone's here and kids are playing and work is getting done. So, um, just imagine it as a really small coffee shop where we're recording today. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:06:37] That's funny. Yeah. My, I've hidden my kids for a little bit, but I'm sure that won't last. Sean Tibor: [00:06:43] I asked my kids to go to their bedrooms, which meant they were there for about 45 seconds, and then they resumed roaming about the house playing and enjoying and having fun. So, um, so Kelly, you're one of the week. Let's, uh, let's move on to that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:06:55] Well, actually you're, my win is your win. Um, you managed to find our fix for mu in order to get arcade running. You got a hold. I don't know how Tiago Monte has got ahold of you or you got ahold of him, but the idea of getting arcade running on Moo with a third party packages, it's been a lifesaver. Um. It's easier to teach something that's new in an environment that they know. Then try to go into pie charm. I felt when I did that, it was a massive fail last week, and then a massive fail at the beginning of the week. And so I had a really good zoom call yesterday, and I played with, um, Paul, uh, Cravens, uh, arcade. And then I got a Python on a pink background with some . Box bricks like on a Mario brothers. So I'm going to make a game. I'm, we got through the first two things and my kids got through for the first two things on arcade, and it was just fun when, when, uh, when it came up and they're like, Oh, we did it. It was a good pod, a good zoom, I should say. So it was a fun one. Sean Tibor: [00:08:01] that's awesome. I'm actually looking forward to doing some zooms. Uh. This week or this coming week on that. I spent most of my time this week recording screencasts just to be able to make the learning as asynchronous as possible so that each student could do it when they had time this week. So I'm going to see if I can switch it up a little bit, add some live stuff next week, but I'm really glad to hear that you were successful with it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:08:22] Yeah, I need definitely to do some screencast. I, um, we were just troubleshooting and we were letting kids take over the screen and trying to manipulate the move folder and get the images into the folder in order for them to activate them. But yeah, it was fun. It was a chaotic zoom. I was almost embarrassed to post it as a recording because I was all over the place. Lots of conversations going on. Sean Tibor: [00:08:46] Yeah, well, it's, it's a very genuine, authentic experience when you're zooming and you post the recording afterwards because it's not scripted, you can't predict it. Um, you know, it's really great that we can have these recordings though, because it makes it more available for the student as a way for them to find the learning. And, you know, I think it's, it's really. Interesting this week is that it's reminding me of all the things that are great about online learning and independent learning, where if you're watching a video, you can pause it, you can rewind it, you can, know, go through a section multiple times if you need to. You don't have to say, wait, wait, wait, go back, go back, go back. You can just do it. And that seems to be working really well for many of our students because I'm seeing that, um, the vast majority of my students are successful with the instructions, with video, with, you know, trying to figure things out. Um, and I'm seeing some really fun, creative submissions coming in for the assignments that I'm giving, and I'm really gratified to see that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:09:41] Yeah, it's, it's kinda, it's, it's a nice feeling. I'm trying to fight the urge to, to meet the kids every once in a while. It's a little bit of a joke when they start talking all at the same time. I'm like, ha ha ha. But it's so it, it's a lot of fun with a lot of, a lot of great opportunities for learning. Sean Tibor: [00:09:59] Yeah. I mean, I think that's where it kind of leads us into our topic, which is we have to adopt a new way of thinking about how we teach and how our students learn. Because. You know, the things that we, we've done in the classroom are different than what we can do online. And there are definitely advantages to being in the classroom where we can be interactive and face to face. And certainly some things are easier, but now we're getting into a medium where it's going to be different. And the strengths of the channel, the strengths of the medium are different than being face to face. And. We need to think about the way we teach best in this new, in this new world, in this new medium. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:10:41] Yeah, absolutely. And so that brings us to this, I guess this, this article that we, uh. I found from one of my friends, bill Cotter, he was sharing it around on Twitter and it was an article by Seth Goden of of how this conversation, this new way of, of getting around in education and why we have this, this ability or this opportunity to create magic within our, within our environments, within our classrooms. Sean Tibor: [00:11:10] It's a really, it's a really thought provoking article. I had a moment earlier this week where I realized that we are in the middle of getting an entire generation of students to learn differently. To try to learn in a more self sufficient way to have a more, more self-direction, more agency, more control, all of these things over there learning. And it got me really excited for what's possible and what's going to happen next. So, as we are looking at this, this next few months of, teaching remotely Corona virus, whether we're here, whether, uh, in our homes or whether we're in our classroom, um, it's not going to be the same as what we had before, Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:11:49] Yeah, and I, I'm, I'm kind of silently hoping that this is going to become a trend. An education that sticks. I had a great conversation with one of our colleagues this morning. an English teacher, and she was saying, um, despite the fact that she's nervous about using the technology, she's really enjoying the conversations that are happening. And she had a Harkness on zoom where she had people discuss two books and she said it was amazing. And the, the. Words and the thoughts that came out during this Harkness zoom meeting were just so powerful and it just sparked her and she's just excited, excited about the reading and the conversations that they're going to have. Sean Tibor: [00:12:37] Yeah, it's, it's really great. And I think that's, you know, really the main thrust of Seth Godins uh, piece. So maybe we can, um, briefly summarize it. So, Kelly, do you have the two sentence version , of this blog article that we can use as a starting point. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:12:50] Uh, yeah. Seth goes and says, the digital world enables a new kind of conversation, one that scales, one that cannot possibly be replicated in the real, real world. There's even a special button for it in zoom, and if you have enrollment and the passion to engage with it, you can use it to create magic and that that is just like a tweetable sentence site. Thanks Seth. Sean Tibor: [00:13:14] I really like it. So he's talking about a couple of different things here. Um, and I think his starting point is really good. His starting point is that the way that we do things in the classroom can't just be transferred over to the online world. . If you think about it, , every class is supposed to start with the teacher taking attendance to make sure that the student is present and that they're there for learning. if you take attendance online, who cares? our measure isn't whether the student was present. Our measure is, are they learning? Are they demonstrating that they can learn and they don't necessarily need to be present to be able to do that. Obviously they need to be present for our conversation, but if you're just sharing information with them, they don't need to be. Be there live to be able to see it. They can watch it whenever they want or they can find a different way to acquire the same information that may be better suited for them. So, you know, we're seeing this in the business world of water as well, or many of us hope that you see this in the business world. If you've ever been in a meeting where they're just telling you information. That should be an email, right? Here's your memo, here's your information. Especially if there's no conversation that's happening. And so as we think about this for students, most of the time our teaching has been this, here's the information, here's a memo for you to read, but I'm just gonna tell it to you instead of, instead of having you read it, or here's a demonstration of a concept or something like that. But it's all one way. And so his point. I think is the next part that he gets into. So can you tell us, tell me a little bit more about this conversation's part that he's, uh, he's talking about as well. Like why would we want to shift the way that we think about our zoom meetings? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:14:52] So I'd love the whole part of the article when they go in and he's, when he talks about, um, having a specific conversation, um, as you said, with having a meeting of just to disseminate information, that is not a conversation. I think it's very important to think about when we're designing our lessons of why we're having a zoom meeting. Why are we, um, prerecording or just having a, an, uh, uh, talk about stuff that can be easily delivered otherwise in a better environment, say a screencast or something. But to actually design our conversations, design our, our meetings with our students with People are faculty as an actual conversation about a topic that's been posted, not just small talk, but a detailed focused conversation about why things work the way they do. We have this opportunity to really go deep and have deep learning happen. Yeah. And share different thoughts. And I think to learn from each other is pretty much the point. Sean Tibor: [00:15:56] , he summarize this really nicely into a few bullet points that I thought were really good. So he said the most important thing is only have a real time meeting if it deserves to be a meeting. So if you need people to read a memo, send them a memo. If you need the students to do a set of problems, send them a problem set. Like. If you want people to watch a speech or talk to them recorded and email it to them, the meetings and the realtime engagements that are worthy of conversations are rare and magical. Use them wisely. I think this is very powerful, and I think. Also think that this is where he's really getting to the, the point of this and the point of our online learning, which is as we're thinking about if we're going to ask everyone to show up and be present, we need to make it worthy of their attention, not worthy of their time, because time can be moved around, right? But we need to make it worthy of their attention that they want to be there because they are contributing and getting value out of it that they cannot do in a different vehicle or different format. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:16:54] Yup, absolutely. And then a couple of the other points of. Ready to have a conversation. Um, don't try to convert course, coerce them to be there. This whole thing, like you said, of requiring students to attend and requiring them to speak if, if they're not wanting to converse with you, why are we forcing them? Sean Tibor: [00:17:16] right? Well, we've, we've been forcing them for years, right? That's the whole point of this is that like students in the United States that we started required to be at school. Right? They have to be there. So that's where we have to take attendance to prove that they were there. We also have to prove that they are, you know, that they're learning information. So we have to give them grades. Right? And so what's happened is that these grades have turned into the coercion. If you don't show up, you'll get a bad grade. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:17:41] And what about those people that you know already learned without, without the conversation, are we, are we extending that? So do we really need a coerce them? Sean Tibor: [00:17:52] Right. And can the conversation enhance their learning or add to it instead of replacing it? Right? So if we make the conversation valuable that they want to be there, we don't have to worry about taking attendance. They're going to show up. And our metric is not, were they, did they show up to the beginning of the meeting? But how many of them stayed, how many of them participated and stayed because they were having a useful and valuable conversation? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:18:16] absolutely. Sean Tibor: [00:18:17] Um, says a part of being engaged. Uh, it means being prepared. So we have to prepare for those meetings. You can't just like free form of conversation. It has to, it has to have a plan for it. Even if you deviate from that, you have to be prepared and be ready for it. Right. It doesn't mean that you have to structure it or follow it too closely. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:18:35] Yeah. It's kind of goes in line with our podcast. I think we've learned that really well. If we don't have at least an general idea of what we're doing, we kind of go off on a ramble. Nobody wants to sit there and listen to people rambling on, and I've been caught on that a couple of times this week where I had a plan to do a. A code along or to do a tinker help. And it turned into, okay, well, um, if you don't have any questions, you can leave. I didn't want them to be forced to be in the zoom just because I set that time slot for them. Um, the other thing that I liked that he did is gave these nine tips. The secrets of video conferences. And it's funny because as I'm sitting here reading over the tips, I saw so many Epic fails from so many different people this week. Um, and we've, we even told some teachers, we really didn't tell the kids, the kids are getting better at it, but sit close to the screen. Like, get in there. The whole point of having the opportunity to see someone's face is actually to see someone's face. I had some of our kids like put their hoodies on and. Seeing half of their forehead. Um, and that's, that's a big point. Sean Tibor: [00:19:43] Yeah. And, and having good lighting, right? So you know that you've got your room set up, that you've got decent microphones, that you've got sound, , headphones help. It's all these things that everyone's going to be learning. You know, we, we say that people have failed this week, but they're learning rapidly, right. And we're learning through that failure. And how to be better in our online meetings. I'm already seeing improvements from, from all the students that I'm with. You know, they're all getting it. Um, and I'm also teaching my advisory students and telling them to go teach others how to do this. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:20:16] Yeah. I, I love this point and, um, I fail on this one and I need to learn how to do this better, but when I'm on mute during the audio call. I need to not be doing other things. I sometimes it's just, it's information overload and again, it was because maybe the conversation's not necessarily as engaging as I feel it can be, and sometimes I put it on mute and I, I'm not sitting there and nodding or engaging in the conversation. If your audience is not in it, even when they're on mute, then you're boring them or you're not having a conversation that they're interested in. Sean Tibor: [00:20:55] Well, that leads to the last point of this, which is, is to organize the conversation. You can't do it at a scale more than five people, right? So more than five people. And it, you don't have a conversation. You have maybe three people talking and everybody else listening. That's not a conversation. That's a, you know, like a panel discussion. Right? So that's something that people can watch and record. And so think about, we're having these department meetings where we have 10 or 12 people there. Um. , what if we broke that up and did into discussion groups for our conversation and then came back to the group and did share backs with everyone. So that's a really interesting thing. And it's something that zoom does particularly well. And I think it leads to his last point is use the breakout room features of zoom heavily. So zoom has this feature. If you haven't used it before, where as the host, you can assign people to smaller zoom rooms where they can have a conversation in groups of two or three. And then you as the host can circulate between each of them and kind of pop in and check in and see how they're doing. So this is a really powerful way of being able to, um, to get the conversation going. And do it with your students, and you can do this at scale. You don't need to have 20 students that are broken up into five rooms of four each. You could do this with 200 students and have 50 rooms happening and then have some way of them to for them to share or not share back, right? Maybe they share only if they want to, but, but really the question is, are they having a good conversation? You know, what are they staying on task and focused. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:22:25] Yeah. And I just had like this mind blowing idea for Monday's lesson. I'm just so excited. So in my arcade lesson, I'm going to assign some more of the tutorial and I'm going to break them out and make them code and solve the problem together, and then we're going to come back and share those screens. I just, I think like these conversations of, of the kids figuring things out and talking about how they figure things out. Um, together is so powerful. I think it really gives us opportunity to share what's in their brain and the creative ideas , of, um, what's happening, and then kinda trigger other mind blowing, uh, ideas. I don't know. I'm just envisioning it while I'm talking, so Sean Tibor: [00:23:08] No, it's, it's really great. I was actually having a similar thought because you can combine some of these tools together. For example, replica has multiplayer mode where each work groups can work together on the same code. So if you have something that doesn't require, you know, like open GL, like RK does, if you have a different project, you can put them into the same replic multiplayer mode and have them work on the code together and it's going to be messy and chaotic and probably pretty amazing. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:23:35] Absolutely. So we'll put that link though for South Golden's article on our show notes. Um, I'm going to jump to another same conversation. Get it conversation. Sorry. That's my bad Sean Tibor: [00:23:48] moving on to part two Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:23:49] part too. Um, of another way of having conversations, and this is one of the things that I, I always love and go back and refer to is, um, articles by making, thinking visible of how can we make our conversations show sinking is occurring. And that that's really deep. I know in a philosophical way. Um. But yeah, I, I, you want to go through some of the nine easy, you want to start with some of the nine easy discussion starters. So this is for parents and for teachers, I think, in the classroom and online. Sean Tibor: [00:24:22] Well, parents are the teachers right now. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:24:23] Yeah, that's true. Sean Tibor: [00:24:24] my wife's favorite. Comment or post that she saw this week, and I'm going to share it because it was brilliant and she found it. It was, if you see me talking to myself this week, just leave me alone. I'm having a parent teacher conference. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:24:38] That was good. Sean Tibor: [00:24:40] Um, the other one that we'll share out also is a Israeli mom who's basically just ranting and raving about. Um, everything that about distance learning and how messed up it is and how everything's not working. Um, and, and she's just, she is totally passionate about it and upset and frustrated and brilliant and amazing all at the same time. It's really something to see. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:25:04] man, she talks really fast. I was trying to keep up with reading. All right. Sean Tibor: [00:25:10] let's talk about some of these things that may be helping out parents and educators as they're thinking about this. Making it so they're here in a few of the nine easy discussion starters for parents, the app generation, I'm actually not going to go in order. I'm going to focus on the ones that I think were, um, are the most important ones that I like the most here, which is, um, and they're all great. It's actually hard to choose, but the one that I love Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:25:33] pick one. Sean Tibor: [00:25:35] is what? Yeah. My, so my favorite is what questions did you ask today. Um, to get students into that curiosity mindset, to ask questions, to ponder the world around them and think about what's going on and have good questions. Because sometimes a good question is far better than a good answer. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:25:55] absolutely. And we, we talk about that a lot in a couple of our podcasts about getting kids to, to. Ask better questions. Well, we need to get better at that as well. So instead of just what did you learn? Or did you learn anything today, you can actually go in there and say, what did you learn that made you go, why or how, or what sparked your, your mind to ask more questions. And that would be a good conversation to have with some of your kids. And I. Sean Tibor: [00:26:27] Yeah. And I would, I would add to that, you can also, you know, make this something that's part of your learning environment for the, for your kids also, or your students. Um, for example, we have these window cling or wall cling whiteboard, uh, sheets that are really cool, like you're going to write on them. They're just a sheet of, of white plastic that sticks to the wall without any sort of adhesive. And we use them all over the house for making lists, for documenting things, for keeping things. And a great way to do this would be to have a question list. Have a place where you write down all the questions that are coming to mind. Um, and it's a really great way to, as they're going through the day, get in the habit of. Tracking these questions. So I think we got it at like office Depot and it wasn't expensive cause there's no adhesive or anything to it. It's just a sheet of plastic. So we use them, we reuse them. Um, if they get messed up, it's not that big of a deal. We grabbed another sheet off the roll, or if we run out of space, we just grab another sheet off the roll. So we've got them up all over the house. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:27:23] Yeah. And our colleague, Jessica, uh, to give a shout out for that, she's really good about getting these questions out. She uses the right question technique. And, um. She loves to put those questions up on the board to make kids really dive into why the constitution, why the government, and why is things working the way they are. So I do have to definitely say that's, that's an awesome tool, getting those questions Sean Tibor: [00:27:49] teachers like making that a a document, maybe it's a something to track. Here's all the questions we're asking and the, or even doing a discussion board, that's all the questions that people want to ask and have challenge other students to try to answer them. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:28:03] Yeah. So I couldn't pick one either for me. I'm actually going to combine mine so that, so that I can have one. So mine is about providing time to pursue passions. Which kind of focuses on the learning over the work. You know, this is when you have a passion, you want to learn more. And so I think that. Getting, if a kid, I saw an article, sorry, I'm retracing, I saw a Twitter posts. I think you shared it with me. Or, um, why would I stop painting if my child is painting and, and they keep wanting to paint and it's been two hours and they're still painting. Why would I say, okay guys, let's stop. It's now time to switch and do your math homework. If they're passionate about painting, maybe they're going to be the next, van Gogh or. A Monet, let them paint, let them code. I know people would say, why are you playing and making a game? They're coding. They're going through a process. , they're trying to problem solve. Um, I'm really hoping some of our students just get hooked. We don't really have the opportunity to go into gaming and game design, but Hey, we've got a week left of this quarter, and I'm gonna let them. Go as far as they can, and I've seen kids already pass where I've put them and let them, I want to let them pursue their passion of learning. Sean Tibor: [00:29:25] that's an area where you're really sparking a lot of engagement with them where they know, not for every student, because not every student's into it, but for those that are, that they're really going further and they're finding some motivation to, to run with it. So I think that's a really great, yeah. Place to get kids thinking about the stuff that they love and why and keep going. And that thread that you mentioned on Twitter is fantastic because it talks about why teachers do this, that things they do in the classroom. Why do we structure time that way? Why do we have worksheets? Why do we have things that they turn in? Because it's crowd control, we're managing. Multiple students, 2030 students at a time. We're taking attendance to make sure we don't lose anybody, right? We're structuring the time to make sure that we're covering all the things that we're required to do and those things that work in a classroom of 20 or 30 students to manage and maintain. Flow and direction and momentum are not the same things that you need to accomplish for an individual student that's learning something. Obviously, they still need to learn some math at some point, right? But that doesn't have to be right now. Or that there's no time limit on being creative. There's, here are the things that we need to accomplish. Now how do we best accomplish that? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:30:37] And it was funny because this morning I did work. I made my kids do work because we didn't finish everything yesterday. Yesterday I gave up. It was just too much going on and I said to my eldest, who really, um, is slow into getting started with things. I said, you know, do you want to do. IXL. Do you want to do iReady? Do you want to do some sort? And he's like, yeah, I'm going to do math. And then I'd come back after 10, 20 minutes and he's already done two or three of them. He's like, I really liked the fractions cause I let him pick. I was like, I don't care which math you do. Pick something. And he likes multiplying fractions. Don't ask me why. So, but he did it and it was something engaging. And then my youngest, he wrote a story about, um. Playing Legos and how they were just playing Legos and he wrote a story. Um, I let them pick. It wasn't necessarily the assignment, but it was close enough to the assignment that was given, and I feel that it was a successful learning opportunity. So. Sean Tibor: [00:31:34] the challenge is definitely going to be making sure that while you give them the agency and choice, that they're also picking something that has sufficient difficulty to it so that they're growing that desirable difficulty that we've talked about in the past. So you still have to assess it and say, okay, are they picking this because it's easy, or are they picking it because they really want to do it and they're excited to learn it and they're going to use it to develop persistence and determination to, to learn it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:31:59] I don't know if you've ever done IXL, it takes forever. Definitely need persistence in that row. Anyways, switching gears real quick, looking at the list of nine, and we'll post this up, what do you think is going to be the hardest for for parents who are not educators? Um, when they are trying to develop conversations? I kind of Sean Tibor: [00:32:19] but don't rescue Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:32:20] that. I was gonna absolutely. Sean Tibor: [00:32:23] That is the hardest thing to do for teachers. And the hardest thing to do for parents. We see a lot of parents that, you know, you want to help your kids, you want them to be successful. You want them to succeed. You don't want them to fail. Let them fail. What them struggle. Let them, you know, figure it out. Let them be challenged. Don't let them spiral out of control or get, um, you know. Too far, but an appropriate amount of challenge is really healthy and really good and they're going to feel like they accomplished something real. At the end of that Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:32:52] absolutely. Help them think through the problem. Help them ask the right questions, help them identify a solution while you're going in there. I agree. That's going to be really difficult, um, as a parent, especially when, when you're just trying to get things done and you're trying to move. You know, you've got to stop and say, am I just trying to get things done or do I want my child to learn? So I agree Sean Tibor: [00:33:17] Yeah. And I would add, um. we're going to be learning more as we go. for us, we've completed four days of this we're going to learn more about how this best works and, and we're going to be sharing more and learning more, and it's going to evolve over time. And that's exciting. So I can't wait to see, you know, we called these, we predicted them, but maybe it's something else that comes out of left field that we didn't expect. That really is the challenge for teachers and students. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:33:42] Yup. So one of the last articles that we picked out that we really liked is, um, from ed week, Edutopia, and it's got five quick little. Quick little hints and how to create challenges. And I'm hoping to see more of this with our colleagues as, again, like you said, they move into a longer, um. A longer time frame in online learning, and I'm not talking about our colleagues only at our school. I'm talking about colleagues around the world. When we talk about this, I, I, I do want to emphasize it's the whole world that is doing this obviously, right? So we're talking about educators as a whole. We've come together and we've been sharing ideas and tutorials and ways of doing things. And. I'm hoping that we get this right. We get this right for the kids around the world of helping them to understand the importance of learning. You never know this generation might be like, might just really come out and thrive in a good way about having to all do this for a little bit of time. Sean Tibor: [00:34:41] we are going to be different. There is no way we can go back to the way it was before. And I think that's a good thing. I think we're going to evolve and change and grow as a result of all of this and I'm excited to see what happens. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:34:55] So just go through this quick little list and I'll let you, uh, w dive into the ones you want to, but an Edutopia, they're just thinking five simple ways that teachers in all subjects, all subjects. So computer science, even of way that we can create challenges for our students. Practice a skill that's important to them. . Sean Tibor: [00:35:15] Number two, follow your curiosity. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:35:18] yeah. Number three, create something you're proud of. Sean Tibor: [00:35:21] Number four, find a way to help your community. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:35:23] And number five, find a spot where you can observe the natural world. Sean Tibor: [00:35:28] I like that one. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:35:29] It's nice you did that. You did that at space X. Well, you did it for when you watched the launch. How great is that that you got to see, it's not necessarily natural, but how great is it that you got to see that and then see the manatees? Sean Tibor: [00:35:40] call Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:35:41] Yep. Sean Tibor: [00:35:42] me. Yes, we can absolutely go bicycle riding after this. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:35:48] And observe. Sean Tibor: [00:35:49] two to go bicycle riding. So yes, of course we're going to go bicycle riding. We're going to get out of the house and we're going to see the world around us. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:35:56] Absolutely. I don't. And I think we can actually, uh, leave on that note. Right. It's a good opportunity. Mr Tiber Sean Tibor: [00:36:03] things I want to just highlight for our listeners. So, , this is a time of unprecedented change. We have not seen a global pandemic like this in quite some time. It is something that is going to change our society in ways that we cannot predict. And as that's happening. Tell us about it. We'd like you to share with us. You can always share through our website@teachingpython.fm. We also have our Twitter account at teaching Python. So if you have things that you want to share, observations that you're seeing, stuff that's like, you gotta check this out, especially if you have your own wins of the week, right? So if you have your own wins. Let's start sharing those, because I think we're all in front of our computers. We're all craving connection. We would love to be part of that connection for you. So start sharing that so that we can all benefit. Um, lastly, just a reminder to support, uh, the podcast if you're interested in doing that. We have a Patrion account. I'm linked to that on the show page, so you can always support us through Patrion. Um, if you're interested in sponsoring a show or a series of shows, you can always contact us through our website. We're available for a upcoming shows to be able to sponsor it and mention your products or services. We do try to focus on the things that we personally will endorse. anything that's a good way to help out the education community, help out students. How about teachers? Uh, we'd love to hear about it and we'd love to, uh, to partner up to make it happen. So for teaching Python, this is Shawn Kelly Schuster-Paredes: [00:37:28] And this is Kelly. Sean Tibor: [00:37:29] signing off.