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Teaching Python

Episode 62: The New Normal

Kelly and Sean take some time to reflect on what has worked well over the past year of teaching, what could be better, and what we hope stays with us once things go back to "The New Normal."

Whether it's getting back collaborative whiteboarding, keeping screen sharing over Zoom, or appreciating how much better department meetings can be when we use breakout rooms, join us to talk more about how teaching and coding have jumped ahead during the time of COVID-19.

As mentioned by Sean, the wordlist file on Macs can usually be found at /usr/share/dict/words.

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Links:

  • Our Presentation: What We Learned from Teaching Kids to Code - YouTube — Learning to code has many unexpected advantages. Because programming languages are updated frequently and are fluid tools for future jobs, coding is a semi-perishable skill. However, the durable skills developed while learning to code are essential. These skills help develop life long skills that benefit students for years to come. In this session, explore the techniques used and learned while ‘learning how to code’ and brainstorm ways to transfer these skills into your classroom and curriculum.
  • Video - The Pandemic is A Portal by Arundhati Roy - A Future where the Global Goals are achieved — Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. Right now, nothing could be worse than a return to normality. It’s time to reimagine a new future where the #GlobalGoals​ are all achieved.
  • Article - Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ — Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs? 
  • Will Richardson's 9 Questions Free EBook — What have we learned about education in schooling in 2020, and what might we create for learners in 2021? After what we experienced in 2020, one thing is certain: education and school will never be the same.
  • Live Curious 2021 — Home page for the Live Curious, Go Beyond conference where Kelly & Sean presented.
  • Twilio Engage Everywhere 2021 — Join us to hear from Ashton Kutcher, American actor, producer, and entrepreneur, for a virtual conversation with Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson as they discuss the future of communication and new technology that is leading the way during a global pandemic. 
  • Episode #303 Python for Astronomy with Dr. Becky - [Talk Python To Me Podcast] — If you are involved in science or use computational tools in your work, you should be using code to solve your problem. On this episode, we have Dr. Becky Smethurst who's an astrophysicist at Oxford University. She uses Python to explore galaxies and black holes. Learn how she's using Python to make new discoveries at the cutting edge of research and dive into a couple of her YouTube videos aimed at spreading scientific truth in an entertaining wrapper.
  • Kodak's First Digital Moment - The New York Times — Imagine a world where photography is a slow process that is impossible to master without years of study or apprenticeship. A world without iPhones or Instagram, where one company reigned supreme. Such a world existed in 1973, when Steven Sasson, a young engineer, went to work for Eastman Kodak. Two years later he invented digital photography and made the first digital camera.

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