[HN Gopher] We're two middle school teachers learning and teachi...
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We're two middle school teachers learning and teaching Python
[audio]
Author : mooreds
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-01-05 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.teachingpython.fm)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.teachingpython.fm)
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| erwincoumans wrote:
| I've been looking for teaching Python to middleschool kids as
| well. Most of them are commercial, few free. We ended up starting
| with Minecraft Educational Edition, Python 101, since the kids
| already loved Minecraft. https://education.minecraft.net/en-
| us/resources/computer-sci...
|
| I'd like to see a Python course for kids using Google Colab, so
| you don't have to install stuff and jump straight to the lessons.
| sailfast wrote:
| Looks like this is 82 episodes in. Are there any specifically
| high value ones that people have heard to point me in the right
| direction? I have some young kids and would be interested in some
| of this but don't have hours to devote to a podcast. Thanks!
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'd be elated to see a school program which just gives out PI
| Zeros.
|
| At 10$ each kids can lose or break em. Now I'm imagining some
| super programmer origin story, where a old Unix coder gives a
| poor kid a PI and said kid ends up at Google later.
|
| Back before I got my first salary job I was building apps on a
| old laptop. While struggling with Windows , Ubuntu ran like a
| champ.
|
| I largely learned to program on that thing, got my first salary
| job and now I can buy whatever computer I want.
| interestica wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Their first episode was in 2018:
| https://www.teachingpython.fm/episodes/page/7
|
| So maybe that's what happened?
| dqpb wrote:
| 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.
| mooreds wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| analog31 wrote:
| I had kind of a similar experience due to taking a course
| intended for math majors, and then being asked to run a
| tutoring session for the parallel course given to non
| majors. It was statistics. For instance I solved problems
| by building solutions on top of the principles that we had
| proven. My students had to solve similar problems using
| memorized formulas and algorithms.
|
| Since that time, I had a couple temporary teaching gigs
| interspersed in my career, such as when I showed up in a
| university town with no job.
|
| One thing you learn during your first engagement is that
| how you learn math is useless to your students, and they
| can't be brought up to speed. It's too late. Second, your
| students are bright, but labor under strong misconceptions
| about the subject matter.
|
| I think the first year puts you into the mindset of trying
| to actually think your own way through the problems using
| nothing but the knowledge at your students' disposal. For
| my second teaching gig, I told my students: "I can do this
| stuff in my head, but that's not fair, so I'm going to
| pretend that it's all new to me." I never quoted a formula
| from memory, but always found it in the textbook.
|
| I developed a bit of cynicism about the subject matter.
| That's hard to overcome, and an impediment to a teaching
| career. You have to dance with them what brung you.
| reidjs wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I agree, this will never happen through a school system.
| But I think it could, for example, replace Stack Overflow.
| analog31 wrote:
| Thankfully, there's no standardized test for Python... yet.
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