Lessons Learned from (In)Formal CS Education with Grant Smith
In this interview with Grant Smith, we discuss the importance of continuing to learn from other educators, what informal and formal learning spaces can learn from each other, how COVID has impacted Grant’s teaching philosophy, our preferences for in-person or virtual professional development and classroom instruction, lessons learned from entrepreneurial adventures in CS education, learning by jumping in and trying new things, heuristic-based learning, and so much more.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of the podcast alternates
between a solo episode where i unpack
some scholarship in relation to computer
science education
and an episode where i interview a guest
or multiple guests
in today's episode i'm interviewing
grant smith oddly enough several years
ago i went to one of those like job fair
things at a district where you just kind
of got to interview with somebody and
then ask some general screening
questions
and i was talking about how it'd be
really cool instead of doing like
microsoft office suite you instead did
like art space coding
and interestingly grant happened to be
sitting at the table next to me and was
one of the hiring people
and was like hey let's talk about what
we're doing so i actually worked with
grant for the first year that i was in
cs education
so it's been great to catch up with him
and to discuss some different topics
like the
importance of continuing to learn from
other educators
what informal and formal learning spaces
can learn from each other
how covet has impacted grant's teaching
philosophy are preferences for in-person
or virtual professional development and
classroom instruction
lessons learned from entrepreneurial
adventures in cs education
learning by jumping in and trying new
things heuristic based learning and so
much more
as always the show notes includes many
links to the resources such as the
podcasts publications and whatnot that
we mentioned in this particular episode
which you can find by clicking the link
in the description that you're listening
to this on or by going to
jaredoleary.com
which has hundreds if not thousands of
free resources for cs educators
including a link to boot up pd.org
which is where i create the 100 free
coding curriculum that i develop
with that being said the interview now
begin with an introduction by
grant my name is grant smith i am a
former elementary
and middle school teacher i was briefly
a district of admin
i'm also the author of everything you
need to ace computer science and coding
in one big fat notebook
i've been involved in some csta projects
i've done teacher training with teachers
across the country
i've helped write curriculum for
codespark code.org
the nine new girl scout coding badges
and a number of other school districts
currently i'm the vp of education at
code ninjas we're an after school
program that's
around the world we teach coding to kids
ages 5 through 14.
i know you have experience writing a
book so this will probably be an easy
question for you to answer
but we're going to flip it instead of
talking about content knowledge we'll
talk about your journey into cs
education so if you
write like an autobiography of your
journey through cs education
what would the title of each chapter be
i would title the first chapter
fake it till you make it and then i
think i know what i'm doing
but looking back it's embarrassing clear
that i have no idea what i'm doing
and then the next chapter is i have a
ton to learn but i'm here to jump in
and the current chapter that i'm living
would be it's clear
i can't learn or do everything so it's
time to focus
yeah lots of snaps to that one that
resonates with me
what are some things that you've learned
from each of those chapters yeah so
you know in the beginning as the fake it
till you make it i was actually supposed
to be a science teacher
my first principal said hey i noticed
you can code why don't you teach coding
instead
i thought that there would be a ton of
curriculum support out there
other teachers doing it in the district
at least and there really wasn't any of
that support and so
i really had to jump in and just start
trying
and baking that i knew what i was doing
to my students
and just trying to see what worked with
them luckily i taught multiple periods
so if you've done this before you know
by the last period of the day your
lesson has finally been refined and you
can kind of tuck that one away
and then i moved into training other
teachers where i was still faking it
you know you were there at avondale with
me i was totally faking it and it was
so embarrassing you know how much i
thought i knew when i really knew
nothing and that's where at avondale
where i started to shift my mind to i
thought i knew what i was doing but then
i started to see
other people doing amazing things across
the country seeing
that there are some amazing things
happening at the k8 space
and then i got embarrassed because i
thought what i was doing was hot stuff
and it really was nothing
and that's where i kind of shifted my
tune to wow i have a ton to learn
and that's where my next chapter started
that's kind of where
i started to write my own book i was
approached by
workmen to write this book they already
had the plan the idea for it they just
needed someone to write it
so i jumped in learned as much as i
could about everything that they thought
i knew already
and put it into a book and started my
own little teacher training
business training other teachers eager
to share what i had learned and to
continue to learn
from all the teachers that i had met
that's where i really started to
solidify the idea that you know
a lot of people understand that you can
learn something from everybody but
that's where i really started to take
that to heart and
pay attention to everybody every
classroom that i visited every person i
spoke to every teacher
regardless if it was their first pd
they've ever been to and they'd never
taught
cs in their life or if they've been
doing it for decades and
have research papers you know about it
and whatnot so everybody has something
that you can
learn from them and then now i feel like
i've done
so many different things that it's time
to focus
and you really got to hone in on
something because
i guess at that previous chapter like i
said i've written a book
i started my own little teacher training
company my wife and i did an instagram
thing i did curriculum development for
various companies
a chinese company called vipkid you know
whoever wanted work done
i was out there raising my hand and you
just can't learn everything
and i realized i need to start to
actually get some mastery and not be a
jack of all traits
and so that's why i'm kind of focusing
now and focusing on the space that i'm
in now
yeah a lot of what you just said
resonates with me like i've also
refined my focus at boot up so like i
was
spending a ton of time doing pd stuff so
now i'm spending more time just focus on
curriculum and research and
content and whatnot but then even what
you're saying with the like you can
learn something from everybody
one of the things that i've also
realized early on is i can also learn
what not to do from
people because i've had some great
educators in my life and some really bad
ones and i go okay i will make sure i
never do that thing
yeah exactly i didn't say you had to be
a positive person from everybody
i'm curious so one of the things i like
to think about
is like something that i initially
believed in when i was first in
education and i no longer believe
i'm curious what that would be for you
like something related to cs education
that you're like oh yeah this is great
and then
now you're like no i don't really agree
with that yeah do you remember in the
early days
when it was popular to say you know as a
teacher you don't need to know
anything about cs to teach it i feel
like i still hear people say that today
but i've visited enough classrooms now
to know that
really you should know something about
cs
to be teaching it and it was a romantic
idea so nice to be able to think about
that like wow i can do this too even if
i know nothing about it and i think
everybody has to start somewhere so i'm
not saying don't get started if you know
nothing about it
definitely get started but i don't think
that's where it should end
i think that phrase was overused to the
point where people
release themselves from the
responsibility of continuing their
education right
and so the pd that is offered now
is still not enough we have so much work
to expand our own knowledge and we need
mastery in computer science education
yeah i totally agree i understand the
sentiment but i
also know like you said it can't be the
end point is there a piece of advice
related to education that has really
resonated with you
yeah i don't know if you remember flora
from our school district that we worked
together at
but she was my boss and she would
answer every difficult question with do
whatever is best for the children
actually have it behind me you're not
going to see it on audio but
i keep that sign with me everywhere i go
and it's basically my answer and always
my thoughts
is my current role we do a lot of
curriculum development so whatever
content we create whatever i'm doing i
want to think about
how this will impact the child children
as a whole
too is this inclusive how will this
impact their lives how will this improve
their lives
and make sure that i'm doing whatever's
best for them so if somebody were to
walk into
like an ideal cs learning space or
environment
what would they see hear or experience
i love this question because this is one
of the reasons why i ended up joining
code ninjas
i love public education i loved my time
training teachers i loved
being a teacher one of the cool parts
about being in an after school setting
is we have different constraints
and we have a little bit more freedom to
kind of do what we want i wanted to join
code ninjas because i saw the seedling
company
looking for how they can
impact children's lives and help them
learn coding but not knowing how to do
it
and ever since i was a teacher i had
always thought about what does that
ideal environment look like so i saw
code ninjas as a place where i could go
in
and mold it to be what i had always
hoped it would look like in
and really i love mitch resnick i'm
reading
lifelong kindergarten for the third time
right now because i feel like every time
i read it i gather something new
and so you know those four ps are really
what i look for and that's kind of the
simplest explanation i can dig a little
bit deeper but you know the projects
peers passion play
are really what i'm looking for and what
i'm trying to
accomplish at code ninjas i strongly
believe in all of those
four ps i remember your podcast jared
with
mark guzdal where he talked about how he
was a reformed constructionist i loved
that
because i always thought of myself as a
practical constructionist right because
it kind of in the same vein right where
you can't and you too had talked about
this where you can't just
do full bore on something right you have
to balance it
and so that's something else that i
think about when i want to think about
the ideal experiences
i do strongly believe in the
constructionist
learning theory and i love all the work
that seymour paper has done however
in the practical sense i think kids and
students need to be supported in ways
we have to think about who the teachers
are how knowledgeable and skilled they
are
we have to think about where the kid is
developmentally you know how old are
they but you know how much time have
they spent in this space
everything like that and so you know
when i think about that i think about
kids
building their own projects excitedly
sharing them with their peers
but also we're supporting them in ways
that that we can
i don't think of lectures when i think
of the ideal learning environment for
kids i'm in the k-8 space so maybe this
is different for older kids but i don't
think of
walking in and seeing a teacher at the
front of room lecturing the whole class
i think of kids engaging in things that
they want to learn and the teacher
pulling small groups or helping
one-on-one or better yet kids helping
each other
at some point kids do need access to
knowledge that they can't just stumble
upon themselves
that's kind of my balancing act with
constructionists but
i don't think that's provided through a
lecture environment right
i loved visiting your classrooms jared
where kids it looks like chaos and it
was amazing because kids are all doing
their own thing
and they're teaching each other and you
would sit there
and help explain some really cool
concept to kids and
they'd go home thinking about it and you
know with a deeper understanding of it
but they were loving it and kids kind of
learned at their own pace and
like that a lot too and that's the other
part that i would say is one of the nice
things about not
being in the public school setting is
kids can go at their individually owned
pace
we don't have to conform to a semester
we actually have different programs
where you can come in once
a week twice a week four times a week
you know there are different
time periods that you can come in you
can stay for three five years and
continue and keep learning
and i think that's really cool and so i
don't know those are kind of all my
ideal environments along with just kids
loving it well
for context for people who haven't been
in my former classroom so like
if you were to walk in to like let's say
a fourth grade class
they'd be potentially working on a
scratch project or
they'd be coding music using ruby and
sonic pi or they'd be creating art and
animation with javascript and khan
academy stuff or they'd be creating like
some apps with like swift and xcode
so my role in that 40 minutes was to
just kind of walk around
ask questions facilitate you personally
have been into
classes where i have literally spent all
just asking questions guiding them
through things and just kind of like
looking up every now and then to make
sure like nobody's on fire or anything
like that and
make sure that the rest of the class is
going good but like your comment about
the lectures
it was always one on one and it was
usually in the form of questions and
asking
and trying to guide and as opposed to
like full group okay class we're all
going to talk about this thing and i'm
going to talk at you so
yeah it's a very different approach
personalized
right it is definitely personalized but
you're mentioning of like
having experience in the k-8 like it's
the same approach that i've also
used in high school the same i've used
with undergrads and with like graduate
students like it works
like across all of them so yeah i'm more
biased to
try and avoid full group instruction
yeah i think it's definitely the way to
go i mean we have to support our kids
but i think there are better ways to do
it
so you have a wealth of experience that
many cs educators don't have because of
your background both
in the classroom and then supporting
classroom educators across the country
and i also have had some interesting
experiences like when i was
doing music education stuff where i was
teaching in the classroom but then
working
in like these outside groups that were
independent from any kind of school and
organization and whatnot
and so like i too have seen the
interesting contrast between these like
formalized and informal learning spaces
in different subject areas and what i'm
curious from like your
perspective like how does each inform
the other like how does your experience
in formalized learning inform the
informal
learning and then vice versa that's a
great question because i actually think
we have a lot to learn from each other
and i think one thing i'm excited about
is in the future
bringing more to conferences like csta a
couple of my team members that code
ninjas are doing a presentation because
i feel like we should share more i don't
remember hearing a lot when i was on the
teacher side the formal education side
i don't remember hearing a lot from the
informal and that may have been because
i was ignoring them and so i kind of
want to make sure that we do get this
back and forth conversation
because i think there's a lot to learn
between the two sides one thing that was
interesting that i have brought over
from formal education into informal
education is i know assessment
is kind of a bad word for some people
because of where state assessments have
taken
education but it's an important thing to
know what your kids know
right something that i brought into our
informal space
is i want to know what our kids know
how much they know about it so that i
know how they need to be supported so
that they can continue to learn
we're not going to do scantron tests or
anything like that
but we are trying to be creative about
how we're approaching assessment
so i mean we're working with you know
we've talked with diana franklin
about ways to assess computational
thinking in block-based coding
environments things like that right
to try and understand how that's
happening we actually are developing our
own learning management system where
we're trying to
build in assessments that happen in the
background so we're not even telling
kids that we're assessing them
but we want to know so that we as
curriculum developers can provide more
or less support or
more or less training to our
facilitators to help them know how to
support the kids
when needed then the other part about
assessment is we have a different set of
stakeholders now
so before assessment was important to
district admin who need to know
where to support the schools and the
kids that are in those schools
for us we need to show parents progress
they're not going to pay for their kid
to come to this program if they don't
believe that good things are happening
and part of that is showing more than
just the cool project
and this happens all the time parents
ask okay this is a cool project but what
did my kid learn
right and so we need to be able to show
them that no
we do know what they learned and here's
what they ended up learning right so
it's interesting i thought i would get
away from assessment when i joined
informal but it is something that i've
kind of brought over and then on the
other side
you also interviewed dominick sanders
he did a better job explaining this than
me about
personally connecting with kids that's
something i feel like we do
very well in the informal space and i
know there are a lot of great teachers
like
him and you that do this and
i'm sure the listeners of this podcast
also do this but i feel like in the
informal space we do this
really well because we have to we have
to have that personal
connection with every child so that the
parent feels safe dropping their kids
off
so we tell our facilitators you know the
first thing you do
is connect with the kids like i don't
care what the kids know
yet until you know their dog's name
their favorite
hobby you know all the things about the
kid and then
we want to work with the kid so that's
something that's really fun
yeah that's a really good point if we
were to kind of generalize here and
break things down
into two categories in education there's
like the mandatory
education and then the education when
you volunteer or even pay to attend
and like you have to approach those two
things very differently
because if everybody is like forced to
be there then you're going to have kids
who are like i'm here but it doesn't
mean i'm going to work
but then if they're volunteering to be
there or paying to be there then that's
very different because like if you want
them to keep coming back you have to
really make it meaningful not to say
that like you don't in the other one
like having been in like music groups
where i was literally paying thousands
of dollars just to perform with it and
to receive an education
versus like a group where i was required
to be there for a degree
those were two very different
experiences for me yeah exactly
so you've been in education for a while
and had a variety of experiences
and knowing your educational philosophy
and understanding
like before covid i'm curious like
personally like how
has your philosophy kind of changed or
been solidified
since covid yeah i've had a weird
relationship with
virtual and online learning before and
after covet
i have a master's degree that was 100
online and loved it
the school i attended was amazing they
practiced what they preached
it was in educational technology and so
they really did everything
right i actually started another program
a doctoral program that was also online
and we would be reading the research on
how to teach online and they would not
be following the practices that
anyway so it was really frustrating the
masters program though was done right so
i've seen both sides
done right and done wrong i've also made
an online professional development
course right but i've also done a lot of
in-person teacher training i've done
in-person teaching with kids i've also
developed and
it was a synchronous course for vipkid
in china
and then i also worked for codespark for
a short time as their director of
education
and they are a platform that
teachers do use in their schools but the
primary audience is parents at home
who just let their kids go on the
platform and there's no support
you know the parents don't know what's
going on it's just app
driven right so kind of seeing a lot of
these different experiences
the culmination of seeing everything was
why i was looking for an in-person
experience because i had kind of dipped
my toe in so many
slightly different experiences so when i
saw goodness just like oh this is great
i really want in person and then covet
happened
a few months after i had joined code
ninjas where just out of necessity
obviously we had to do
online learning we tried to replicate as
much of the community some of the things
that i like about in-person learning is
that the community you know peers
at one of the p's the kids coming
together to be able to work with each
other
and so we try to emulate that it's very
difficult to do
and as we've been able to come out in
some of our
areas you know right now canada's just
kind of coming out uk still kind of
tough in the u.s a lot of our states are
coming out so we're seeing more and more
kids in our centers
we're excited to have the kids back in
centers is what it comes down to
we had a great run doing virtual stuff
but we'll not be pursuing that any
further we may have some select
activities or small add-on programs for
kids who
are taking the summer off from code
ninjas sometimes we have kids who do
that
and maybe they want to keep engaging at
home on their own but i
strongly believe in the connectedness of
an in-person experience
being able to connect with their peers
but also with our facilitators
i view our facilitators as more like
mentors someone who kids can kind of
look up to and look forward to seeing
and so you know i know there are going
to be teachers out there that disagree
with me
but i'm willing to have a debate with
them because i actually feel very
strongly about the in-person experience
especially for computer science
education yeah i see both
sides of or both like camps like yeah
there's
a ton of great things that can be done
online but in our internal discussions
with boot up we've been talking about
this
for multiple years now is do we want to
have like an online component or what
about like we're all schools where it's
hard to go out and do an in-person pd do
we offer like virtual
etc so this is like covet didn't start
those conversations
but we have consistently been like in
person is the best way to model things
is the best way to
make those connections communities et
cetera so like i'm in agreement with you
and i've done research on online like
spaces and i love them like they're
great you can learn a lot
but still prefer the in person yeah and
i think you know
especially for kids because for example
for pd i made an online course that was
semi-synchronous so i actually would
mail them there were eight
modules in the course i mailed a box to
the group and you had to form a group of
four people in the group
and i would mail the cute names for
everybody i can't remember
what the name was for the person who
received the package but anyway they had
their job they were supposed to receive
the package
and then they were supposed to meet
somewhere someone's classroom
i saw people meeting at panera you know
whatever open up the box together
and then they would look online on the
course watch the short little videos i
had made
and then do the activities together so
they were actually
working on projects together and so in
that way we were trying to like
replicate the in-person experience so i
think there are ways where you can
leverage technology like you said to
reach rural areas and whatnot
but for kids i would prefer
in person strongly over cure online i'm
curious if we could expand upon
like what you just mentioned that was a
really creative idea
very innovative you so you've had the
experience doing something like that but
you've also had experience like writing
a book you also had experience like
the project that you mentioned with your
wife like on instagram like
what have these different experiences
like through the
entrepreneurship around cs education
taught you about cs education
yeah there are a couple lessons that i
learned some of them are lessons
some of them just nice lessons one was
progress happens when resources are
allocated
right but more resources does not always
guarantee more progress
so something you know that you have to
consider
is teacher training curriculum
development
hardware you know computers cool devices
robots micro bits mickey mickey's things
like that
these all cost money and also
time is a huge resource as well and so
if you want to make something happen you
have to pour resources into it
the other thing is it's okay not to
scale
that's something that i learned later on
is i was trying to scale things
because i wanted to have a larger impact
on more kids and so
i kind of realized that it's actually
okay
just to do something cool for the people
around you
and do something small so for example my
wife and i started an instagram account
well it started out with i read a
research article out of
australia it was titled unraveling the
cognition
of coding in three to six year olds it's
really interesting because the study was
about you know
trying to develop an assessment tool
that assesses computational thinking in
kids ages three through six
and i thought wow what is this
can you do that and it was just
eye-opening and i had a three-year-old
at the time
and a one-year-old also but i started to
think well okay they're trying to assess
this
can you teach it what does that look
like and i'm also
one of those believers that first i
understand we have so many definitions
of computational thinking i think we
need one i agree
i also believe that it has to happen
with a computer but
i started to think about are there
precursors
like what are the abcs of coding and
computational thinking
i have no idea if there's transfer this
is not a real study
but my wife and i decided to try and
make
activities for our three-year-old and to
hold ourselves accountable
we opened up an instagram account and i
say we
it really was 90 her i would kind of
give ideas and then she would do it all
and so i should probably just say she
we would make these activities and then
put them on instagram just to
i don't know if you post it somewhere
you're more accountable right
we did not think anything would happen
two years later she
gained 15 000 followers most of which
had no idea what this was
had no background in coding instagram
will give you the stats
almost all of the followers were moms of
small children
and what was interesting is my wife has
no background in computer science has
never taken a computer science class in
her life
so our other little experiment was can i
give some ideas and then
someone who doesn't know as much can
they make cute activities out of it
i don't know what the results are i
don't know we failed or if we succeeded
i have no real assessment i didn't use
this australian assessment on my own kid
i probably should go back and see
i also didn't have a lot of faith in the
assessment that was well so
i didn't quite know where to go with
this but the whole idea was
taking it back to it's okay to not scale
big but also progress happens when
resources are allocated
for this instagram account little
problem solvers if you want to go look
it up it's still up the activities are
still there
they're all unplugged activities it's
pretty cute and a lot of fun to do with
kids regardless of if my kid
learned anything or what not you know
our one-year-old is now a three-year-old
and we do the activities with her as
well
the point is it took a lot of time we
didn't put money into it but it took a
lot of time
and if you want to make something happen
you just got to jump in and start doing
it
and it was okay just to start with their
own kids we didn't have plans to scale
we ended up even doing a kickstarter
where we had pixel blocks we developed a
toy to teach specific concepts and that
was a fun experience too
and we just thought can we do this and
then we jumped in and did it and
i think that's what i would tell
teachers is just jump in and try
right i'm sure everyone listening to
this podcast has some amazing idea
is probably starting to think about how
they can make it happen
and i would encourage everyone to just
go and try and make it happen
there's a lot of cool things that still
need to be done in computer science
education
and allocate your resources to it if you
think it's worth it
yeah i like that advice it actually
resonates with
me right now cause like having one foot
in two different fields like
it's been interesting like i've been
doing all the cs content for a while now
but now i'm also like on the weekends
creating like percussion content which
was like my original background
in education was playing the drums and
teaching people how to do that i like
started sharing things on social media
for like the first time
in years related to percussion and like
the anxiety that comes with that
like it's it's been funny for me to like
think through that and go wait i have a
podcast that reached like
hundreds and thousands of people like
every single month
and yet i'm nervous about like sharing
something related to percussion on
twitter like come on
but this is also a great example of this
podcast itself right
you know you saw a need i don't know if
you have podcast experience i've never
heard of it from you but you just jumped
in and did it right
and and you learned what needed to learn
we had no idea what instagram
what it took to run an instagram account
right but we jumped in and we learned
and figured it out and i'm sure we
failed in many ways but it was very cool
because now we have that experience and
can kind of tuck it away and
it's just a cool life experience i
wonder if your answer to this question
will kind of relate to that but
what do you feel is holding back
educators or the field and what can we
do i have a couple quotes in response to
this because
i love alan turing's quote we can only
see a short distance ahead but we can
see plenty there that needs to be done
and that's how i felt education has been
right
there's still so much that we need to do
it's almost like jared pick a category
and then i will tell you how it's still
holding teachers back you know
everything
is holding us back teachers need better
and more training
we need more robust curriculum schools
need more teachers
and more resources to offer this to
their students governments need more
data to
convince them to allocate more resources
to the schools you know it's just a huge
thing and and it goes even to the
parents parents don't understand on my
side the informal education that's one
of the things is like
trying to help the parents understand
what's going on a lot of parents want
this for the kids but
can they recognize good instruction or a
good program do they know what their
kids should be learning
and so it's everything right and that's
why i say allocate your resources let's
all pitch in
and let's make it happen that leads to
my other favorite quote from
catherine johnson everything was so new
the whole idea of going into space
was new and daring there were no
textbooks we had to write them right
and that's how i kind of felt that's
what we're all doing all
the time we all make our own lessons
probably we all make our own
programs and content and pd and whatever
else needs to be done
because it's also new we're not going to
the moon but we're doing cool things
regardless
so that leads perfectly into the next
question is so like how do you practice
and iterate on your abilities as an
educator
there's definitely something to be said
about just jumping in and putting
yourself i know it's so cliche to say
put yourself outside of your comfort
zone
but that's kind of how it goes put
yourself outside your comfort zone do
something
you wouldn't normally do and then you
know reflect on it and then try again
it's funny because i studied information
systems in college because
i realized when i was looking at the
classes and everything
that i would never have to write an
essay and
i hated writing and i was so excited to
just be able to create projects for my
homework and then i was asked to write
this book
and it's 550 pages it's not
insignificant
and so i thought you know i hate writing
but
you got to do things that you're not
comfortable with and i
don't know that i would repeat a 550
page book but i'm interested in shorter
books
i've learned a lot about that process
that i would have never been exposed to
and it was a really cool experience and
i hope it helps a lot of kids talk to
parents and
kids who have bought it and they love it
and so that makes it seem worth it even
though it took
three years and many weekends and nights
and things like that
and then if i were to do it again i
would reflect
get feedback and then iterate right and
i think that's the same for everything
like when i would make
pd you jump in do it ask for feedback
always make it better next time ask for
feedback make it better next time
yeah i like that approach of just kind
of
getting outside of your comfort zone for
context like this podcast i'm an
introvert and
was like very nervous the first time i
ever even did this
and just happened to get elia kim for
the very first interview
and was like okay i'm jumping in here we
go let's let's do this thing and like
the very first class i ever taught on my
own i had a panic attack right before
it happened because it's just like oh my
gosh like i hope i'm really good like
i don't want to like teach this class
very poorly et cetera and
even the very first video that i made
for boot up i've made like a few hundred
now but the very first one it took me
like a dozen retakes just to get the
like
the intro the first like five seconds
because i was just i felt so
uncomfortable being an introvert like
putting myself
out there and like sharing it what not
so i like that think about now how much
you've learned about video editing audio
editing
prepping people for calls you know all
those things are great assets to add
to your tool belt how do you do that
without
getting that burnout that can come with
like pushing yourself too far or doing
too many things
that's true i've said one thing i've
said go and do it and allocate your
resources right
i say no now there's a balance right
and i'm now in a position where
i can't take on many additional projects
i wouldn't be able to write a 550 page
book right now
i wouldn't be able to make a whole pd
course we've even put our instagram
account
on hold because of what i'm doing now in
my current position it's just too much
right and i want to have that balance i
don't want to burn out i want to be able
to see my kids
and so there is a lot to be done there
is so much ahead of us
that needs to be done but we're no good
to each other
if we all burn out and we need to find
that balance in our lives
and we need to find out what works for
us
i know we've talked about teachers who
end up leaving to go back into software
development right because the pay is not
good enough that's another form of
burnout
and we need to find places that we can
feel impactful effective but also
sustainable so yeah it's all about the
sustainable got to take care of
ourselves
yeah looking at the long-term potential
impact of what you're doing right now
and how that might impact things like
that is something that i
too am having to look at and also learn
how to say no still learning
do you have recommendations for how to
improve equity or inclusion in cs
education
i'm not an expert on this and there are
far
smarter better people i am in the
learning and
trying phase still on this personally
what i try and do is just make sure that
everything kids do
is personally exciting to them beyond
that i'm listening learning and trying
my best
what do you wish there's more research
that could inform your own practices
there are two things that i want more
research on and honestly i need to do
more reading and that's why i appreciate
this podcast thank you for giving me the
cliff's notes version
and i wish i did more and so thank you
for that but also what i would like to
see more research in
is developing assessments for k-8 in
creative
ways right what we're trying to do at
code ninjas is creatively assess
kids in the background and when i say
creatively i mean they are working on
creative projects we are not telling
them
a question or a prompt and then they
have to make something we want them to
make what they want to make but i want
to assess if they've used the
concepts that we want them to use right
so i'd like some more
research on that obviously there are
bigger topics
to be had like transfer and you know we
transfer kids from blocks to text
i want to know if there's transfer to
bigger
areas is coding useful for other areas
in life
i want more research on that i want one
definition of computational thinking
i want to know what that definition of
computational thinking how that impacts
everything it'd be helpful in talking to
parents
about what their kids are doing to know
all of these things a lot of parents
are excited about coding and they want
their kids to know
this you know this skill and and have
this skill for the 21st century
but i think we need to articulate the
why better i think research would help
us
one of them that stood out was like the
definition of computational thinking so
i was involved in
a summit that was trying to bring
together
researchers and practitioners to talk
about and come to a definition of
computational thinking
and there was a lot of what i would
probably describe as
healthy debate it was very passionate
in terms of what some people thought
that was very different than others
and ultimately there was no definition
that came out of it that was
a unified definition but it was at least
good dialogue
yeah i think that would be helpful right
what about something that you're working
on right now that you could potentially
help with
what if there's a listener out there who
might be able to assist with that what
would that be
yeah we have big plans for code ninjas
in what we'd like our curriculum
and our programs and our what our kids
do in our centers to look like
we're at the beginning of a huge shift
in how we reach kids and what we do with
them
we're excited about offering the best
coding environment in the world in my
opinion because this is why i'm here
right i want to kind of make this the
culmination of everything we know about
practical application you know the
practitioners but also looking at
research
and then pushing the envelope we've
hired some pretty heavy hitters on our
team that
are also experts people on this call may
recognize bill marslin from san
francisco we have sarah smallovitz from
the creative computing lab
we have polly smith from nine dots and a
few other people that have done pretty
amazing things
and we want to continue to add to that
because we have such big plans for
what our programs should look like it's
not just selfish it's not just so that
our centers are the best in the world or
whatever i actually want to help
push and help expand what we know about
computer science education how it should
be taught the pedagogy of it
and everything like that so that we can
then help inform the community too
because we have fewer constraints
because we can do what we want i feel
like we're in a position
to further the field but we need experts
so
we have been hiring for over a year now
and continue to hire if you are someone
who has experience
in developing computer science
curriculum for k-8
kiddos and you love constructionism you
love project-based learning you love
kids having fun working in a self-paced
environment
then you should definitely join us we
would love to have someone like that on
our team you can work remotely
and yeah we have a pretty amazing team
we all get along we love each other
yeah do you have any questions for
myself or for the field
yeah you've talked about heuristic
learning that's something that i want to
get into more at good ninjas too
how do you make that practically happen
right like what are your tips for making
that happen
in the classroom or in a classroom type
setting so
that approach is an approach how i
generally
take like conference presentations like
the very first like session i ever did
i sat down was like what kind of a
session would i have wanted to attend
and what i was seeing at a lot of the
conference that i was going to is very
how to do this very specific thing in a
very specific context
rather than how to think broadly and
then be able to come up with your own
steps for your own particular context
and so in my presentations i have a
tendency to give like two hours worth of
content in an hour long session
and so what i'll do is i'll like point
to these resources and be like okay
we're gonna spend two minutes talking
about this thing that if you actually
dive into it it'll probably take you
like 20 minutes to do
and so i will point to all these things
and basically like
a tree like branch out into all these
different potentials
but not necessarily go down each one of
those specific branches
and really focus on the what thoughts
went behind
the thing that i ultimately ended up
doing and
use that as a model but not as a mandate
so like here's a thing and here's how i
thought through and came up with this
thing for this specific context
but you in your class and with your own
comfort in your own community and
students and whatnot
what are some things that you could
think through to
actually apply that in your context does
that make sense
yeah it makes sense so i just want to
make sure that i knew where you were
coming from because i've been
incubating this idea where we would be
able to provide resources like you're
saying just point to them
and for example at home just finished
printing
a ironman helmet for my six-year-old we
printed it together
we programmed the micro bit soldered the
solders there soldered the servos in and
everything and he loves wearing it
around
i want our kids at code ninjas to be
able to come to our center and do
something like that but
not be told it's an ironman helmet right
like
i want to be able to provide them with
the option of hey here's what you need
to know about 3d printing
and have you know various levels of
depth that they can dive into here's
what you need to know about the micro
bit here's what you need to know about
circuits and soldering and things like
that right and then they theoretically
could go and make their own thing so is
that within that house of what you were
saying if i were to
point them to those resources like you
do at conferences can you see that being
applicable
in a setting with kids yeah definitely
so there have been a couple of things
that
formed that thought for me so i did an
episode
unpacking k anders erickson's like one
of his seminal works
on developing skills and expertise so
i had a professor who working with
pre-service
educators was saying in that four years
they're not going to get enough time and
experience to become
an expert in education or even really
know how to do education
very well no matter how good your
program is there's just not enough time
to do that because you need to actually
get out there and try and fail
and then learn from that so her
particular approach was
i'm getting them to think as educators
so that way long
term when they do come up to some kind
of a
use case scenario or experience that is
outside of the scope or not talked about
in any of the
examples or projects or whatever in the
pre-service education
they'll at least know how to think
through how to do that and so for me
i'm trying to think of okay when i was
working in a k-8 school i saw kids
potentially for nine years in a row
but what about after that and what about
outside of that what about when they go
home and they are away from anyone who
can
answer their questions how can you get
them to think on their own so that way
it can be like self-directed learning
and so that was kind of like the overall
things that really kind of guided that
thought process because like in an
hour or even a three hour long workshop
with teachers like they're eventually
going to run into more questions and so
encouraging them to think rather than
just how to do this very specific thing
that's what i tend to focus on
i like that because that's what my
ultimate goal i want our kids to be able
to be
innovators and solve their own problems
right surely code and they'll learn how
to code
but the bigger thing is i want them to
be able to know how to
make their own iron man helmet without
instructions right and just know where
to go
what to ask things like that yeah i like
that i will say
there has been some pushback some people
who see me present
or see me facilitate or teach a class
assume i don't know how to do it the way
most people do it
and so like they think that this is like
a deficit and like i don't get it and
it's like
no no you don't understand because i've
done it before i'm just choosing not to
do that
intentionally because i don't think it's
as valuable and so like
there has to be some dialogue usually
around like why
you're doing this and that can be
helpful because otherwise people might
look at it and go okay well the way
jared just did this is different than
the other like 10 people that came
before them so clearly they don't know
what they're doing
it's like well to me it actually seems
more difficult
to accomplish successfully right because
we have to
anticipate where kids minds will be
provide them with
all the resources that they need which
is much more difficult than providing
them one resource that every kid has to
use right
and so yeah definitely i can see
how this would balloon into a huge
project well
that's exciting though i think that is
kind of part of the future of
where we could take this kids becoming
amazing thinkers right
and solving their own problems yeah i
mean
i hope so especially that's one of the
main points of like computational
thinking whichever definition you go
with most of it's around solving some
kind of a problem
so then where might people go to connect
with you and the organizations that you
work with
yeah you can visit us at codeninjas.com
you can find me on linkedin
sadly i'm not on twitter anymore this
last year has just been too much
i'll be attending csta bill marslin and
polly smith from my team will be
presenting at csta
sarah smallovitz will also be presenting
but she won't be presenting as part of
couldn't just she's doing her own thing
yeah around the community
we like to stay present and stay active
because we still consider ourselves
teachers and educators and
want to be part of this community and
with that that concludes this week's
episode of the cska podcast
make sure you visit jaredeliri.com to
check out the show notes or by clicking
the link in the app that you're
listening to this on
that way you can connect to grant and
check out his book and see the resources
that we mentioned in this particular
episode
stay tuned next week for another
unpacking scholarship episode and two
weeks from now for another interview
hope you're all staying safe and having
a wonderful week
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