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I see they've both been using Python for several years. The headline made me think it would be an interesting exercise if the instructors set out to learn somet

I see they've both been using Python for several years. The headline made me think it would be an interesting exercise if the instructors set out to learn something concurrently with their "students" -- it would be a way of showing learning techniques and how to go about finding resources. It could follow along with an external curriculum so that there are regular goals.

mooreds 5y ago
Their first episode was in 2018: https://www.teachingpython.fm/episodes/page/7 https://www.teachingpython.fm/episodes/page/7 So maybe that's what happened?
- KellyPared 5y ago
  Hi, so what happened was---I was a bio teacher/tech educator and was asked to teach Python. No computer knowledge really, a little HTMl and File Maker but mostly used for educational reasons- absolute coding newbie (block code really doesn't count!)! Practiced for a few months in the summer and started teaching. Really scary and in year 4, I am still learning. It is hard, it is humbling, it can be very humiliating at times, but isn't learning something new always like that! I have enjoyed the thread. The kids no my journey and Sean and I promote active learning and discovery in the classroom. Happy to answer questions. Thanks Scott for the point to! - Kelly
  - KellyPared 5y ago
    *know
dqpb 5y ago
I think you could revolutionize education if you did this. Consider this - learning is not about receiving factual information. Rather, it's about transitioning through a series of states that take you from being someone who does not know a thing to someone who does. It's fairly obvious that for most people, receiving a snippet of factual information does not trigger those state transitions! Usually, what does trigger those state transitions is experimentation. Experimentation increments you through those states. But effectively nobody records those intermediary states and state transitions. Egregiously, services that could sort-of do this, like stack overflow, explicitly do not. Having that history would provide two things: more relevant information for learners, and data that would be useful for teachers to engineer a better curriculum.
- reidjs 5y ago
  Maybe I'm a pessimist, but with high-stakes standardized testing I can't see this ever working. Teachers need to optimize their time with students to ensure they are prepared for the test questions.
  - dqpb 5y ago
    I agree, this will never happen through a school system. But I think it could, for example, replace Stack Overflow.
  - analog31 5y ago
    Thankfully, there's no standardized test for Python... yet.
- mooreds 5y ago
  Practical question? What do you do in the second year? The teacher can't start from a blank slate: they already know python at that point.
  - dqpb 5y ago
    Ideally you collect the data from students, so you have a constant stream of learner trajectories. Also, if you did this well you could mostly get rid of exams.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - smtibor 5y ago
    It's a great question. I couldn't learn the basics twice, so what I always tried to do was have something new that I would learn with the students. So for one cohort, I'd learn about Turtle. The next, I'd learn about PyGame Zero. Or we would do new things with CircuitPython boards. The best moments are when students learn something new and blow my mind. I had one student figure out how to make a really elegant Python for loop that would create a full rainbow of RGB colors using the colorsys library. I had been writing this in 5-6 lines of code. She did it in two (plus the library import) for i in range(255): color = colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(i/255, 1.0, 1.0) Not bad for a 6th grader!
smtibor 5y ago
I'd been working with technology my entire life prior to starting to teach in 2018. When we started the podcast, it was because we were learning so much with our students that we needed a way to discuss and organize all of it. When I look back on it, it's incredible how much I learned WITH my students. What we're really teaching them is not Python, it's how to learn new things, especially when it's difficult.

mooreds 5y ago

Their first episode was in 2018: https://www.teachingpython.fm/episodes/page/7 https://www.teachingpython.fm/episodes/page/7 So maybe that's what happened?

KellyPared 5y ago
Hi, so what happened was---I was a bio teacher/tech educator and was asked to teach Python. No computer knowledge really, a little HTMl and File Maker but mostly used for educational reasons- absolute coding newbie (block code really doesn't count!)! Practiced for a few months in the summer and started teaching. Really scary and in year 4, I am still learning. It is hard, it is humbling, it can be very humiliating at times, but isn't learning something new always like that! I have enjoyed the thread. The kids no my journey and Sean and I promote active learning and discovery in the classroom. Happy to answer questions. Thanks Scott for the point to! - Kelly
- KellyPared 5y ago
  *know

dqpb 5y ago

I think you could revolutionize education if you did this. Consider this - learning is not about receiving factual information. Rather, it's about transitioning through a series of states that take you from being someone who does not know a thing to someone who does. It's fairly obvious that for most people, receiving a snippet of factual information does not trigger those state transitions! Usually, what does trigger those state transitions is experimentation. Experimentation increments you through those states. But effectively nobody records those intermediary states and state transitions. Egregiously, services that could sort-of do this, like stack overflow, explicitly do not. Having that history would provide two things: more relevant information for learners, and data that would be useful for teachers to engineer a better curriculum.

reidjs 5y ago
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but with high-stakes standardized testing I can't see this ever working. Teachers need to optimize their time with students to ensure they are prepared for the test questions.
- dqpb 5y ago
  I agree, this will never happen through a school system. But I think it could, for example, replace Stack Overflow.
- analog31 5y ago
  Thankfully, there's no standardized test for Python... yet.
mooreds 5y ago
Practical question? What do you do in the second year? The teacher can't start from a blank slate: they already know python at that point.
- dqpb 5y ago
  Ideally you collect the data from students, so you have a constant stream of learner trajectories. Also, if you did this well you could mostly get rid of exams.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- smtibor 5y ago
  It's a great question. I couldn't learn the basics twice, so what I always tried to do was have something new that I would learn with the students. So for one cohort, I'd learn about Turtle. The next, I'd learn about PyGame Zero. Or we would do new things with CircuitPython boards. The best moments are when students learn something new and blow my mind. I had one student figure out how to make a really elegant Python for loop that would create a full rainbow of RGB colors using the colorsys library. I had been writing this in 5-6 lines of code. She did it in two (plus the library import) for i in range(255): color = colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(i/255, 1.0, 1.0) Not bad for a 6th grader!

smtibor 5y ago

I'd been working with technology my entire life prior to starting to teach in 2018. When we started the podcast, it was because we were learning so much with our students that we needed a way to discuss and organize all of it. When I look back on it, it's incredible how much I learned WITH my students. What we're really teaching them is not Python, it's how to learn new things, especially when it's difficult.