Teaching Python

It's the most wonderful time of the year as Kelly and Sean put together a gift guide for techie kids! From transformable robots to glowing toys to soldering stations, we cover the items on our lists for the holidays. Check the show notes for links that support the podcast!Support Teaching PythonLinks:Amazon.com : Plugable USB 2.0 Digital Microscope with Flexible Arm Observation Stand Compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux (2MP, 250x Magnification) : Electronics — Useful and fun for students, collectors, testers, and anyone interested in exploring the microscopic world. Includes a microscope camera yet cannot be used as a document cameraHakko FX888D-23BY Digital Soldering Station FX-888D FX-888 (blue & yellow): Power Soldering Accessories: Amazon.com: Tools & Home Improvement — Introducing the HAKKO FX-888D Excellent thermal recovery Heater output has been increased by 30% compared to that of the conventional models HAKKO 936·937. Also FX-888D delivers excellent thermal recovery by using T18 series tips for their terrific heat conductivity. Amazon.com: Otamatone [English Edition] Japanese Electronic Musical Instrument Portable Synthesizer from Japan by Cube/Maywa Denki, Black : Toys & Games — BEST SELLING – One of Japan's best selling musical Instrument Portable Synthesizer toys! FUN & EASY TO PLAY - You can create different sound and pitch by pressing down the middle part of the Otamatone. By sliding down your finger up and down, you can create higher and lower tone. Otamatone's face is made out of rubber, and by pushing his cheeks and making his mouth move around, the volume and the bass of the sound changes. When you press the cheek, mouth will open. It is a musical insturment, you can enjoy the sound.Amazon.com: ropoda Shut The Box Dice Game Wooden (2-4 Players) for Kids & Adults [4 Sided Large Wooden Board Game, 8 Dice + Shut The Box Rules] Amusing Game for Learning Addition, 8.6 Inches : Toys & Games — ROPODA Shut the Box is a game of dice, commonly played by 2 to 4 people. Unconfirmed histories of the game could go back to 12th century Normandy. In pubs, Shut the Box is traditionally played as a gambling game. But nowadays, it becomes a popular board game during family events, party and festivals.Adafruit CLUE - nRF52840 Express with Bluetooth LE : ID 4500 : $44.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits — Get a CLUE here at Adafruit by picking up this sensor-packed development board. We wanted to build some projects that have a small screen and a lot of sensors. To make it compatible with existing projects, we made it the same shape and size as the BBC micro:bit and with the same edge-connector on the bottom with 5 big pads so it will fit into your existing robot kit or 'bit add-on.T9 Interstellar Agent — It may look like just a great fun toy, but T9 – the most advanced, programmable auto-converting vehicle to robot on the market -- is much, much more than that. Control it with a mobile device or with voice commands. T9 is also your shortest path to a rich learning experience -- for kids of any age who are excited by the field of robotics, one of the hottest technologies in the world today.Amazon.com: Tamagotchi Star Wars: R2-D2 Classic White (88821) : Everything Else — Train R2-D2 to master various skills with STAR WARSTM R2-D2 TAMAGOTCHI. Take care of R2-D2 by keeping him charged and clean and by playing two mini-games (firefighting and Dejarik “holochess”). There are 19 skills for R2-D2 to learn and 7 mini-games for him to unlock, depending on his skill level. Make sure you keep your R2-D2 happy. If you neglect him for too long, the Jawas may take him away!reMarkable 2 | reMarkable — Take handwritten notes, read, and review documents Take notes directly on PDFs Paper-like writing and reading All your notes, organized and accessible on all devicesCircuit Playground Bluefruit - Bluetooth Low Energy : ID 4333 : $24.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits — Circuit Playground Bluefruit is our third board in the Circuit Playground series, another step towards a perfect introduction to electronics and programming. We've taken the popular Circuit Playground Express and made it even better! Now the main chip is an nRF52840 microcontroller which is not only more powerful, but also comes with Bluetooth Low Energy support for wireless connectivity.Amazon.com: Lil' Gleemerz Babies Black & White Figure : Toys & Games — These Lil' Gleemerz babies were born for teeny gleem dreams! Press its nose over and over for cute sounds and to light up tummy with rainbow colors. Tilt upside down and move all around for purrs, coos, and other silly sounds.What Is Nintendo? (What Was?): Shaw, Gina, Who HQ, Thomson, Andrew: 9780593093795: Amazon.com: Books — Founded in 1889, Nintendo started out as a small playing card company in Japan. Though the cards sold well, Nintendo really became popular when it began creating toys in the 1960s, and then became internationally renowned after developing video games and consoles in the 1970s and '80s. After introducing the world to some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises of all-time, such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Pokémon, it's clear to see why Nintendo is beloved by parents as a company that creates nonviolet, family-friendly entertainment for kids.

This week Sean and Kelly are joined by Dr. Becky Smethurst from Oxford to talk about code and science. Dr. Becky is an astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Each week, she publishes a video on her YouTube channel explaining a bit about space,Special Guest: Becky Smethurst.Support Teaching PythonLinks:Dr. Becky - YouTube — Your friendly neighbourhood astrophysicist. I'm Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. 5 ways I use code as an astrophysicist - YouTube — I could not get my science done if I did not know how to code. Here are 5 things I use it for. Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time , Smethurst, Dr Becky - Amazon.com — From the big bang to black holes, this fast-paced illustrated tour of time and space for the astro-curious unlocks the science of the stars to reveal fascinating theories, surprising discoveries, and ongoing mysteries in modern astronomy and astrophysics.

This episode is all about working with the data we generate for students, whether it's in the classroom, your school, or your district. Special guest star Rusti Gregory joins us to talk about his transition from the classroom to the data manager role.Special Guest: Rusti Gregory.Support Teaching PythonLinks:Trick or Treat for Programmers — Sure, you know Trick OR Treat, but how about Trick XNOR Treat?

Kelly and Sean revisit some of our favorite hardware that we use to teach Python. From the various versions of the BBC micro:bit to the ecosystem of CircuitPython boards, we talk about all the pros and cons! Whether you're just getting started with using Python in hardware or you're a seasoned teacher, this episode should have something for everyone. We use hardware to give tactile and tangible feedback for our students when they write code. Students learn to do everything from make lights blink and shimmer to driving motors to using sensors to measure the environment. Join us on a journey into Python hardware!Support Teaching PythonLinks:CircuitPython — CircuitPython is a programming language designed to simplify experimenting and learning to code on low-cost microcontroller boards.Micro:bit Educational Foundation | micro:bit — Get creative, get connected, get coding! The pocket-sized computer transforming the worldPython Editor for micro:bit — Code and flash the micro:bit using the webCode With Mu — Code with Mu: a simple Python editor for beginner programmers.Amazon.com: Yahboom Micro:bit Expansion Board Piano Development Board for BBC Microbit Accessories for STEM Learning Code Compatible with Micro:bit V2 V1.5 (Micro:bit NOT Include) : Musical Instruments — Mini Piano Keyboard 】It possess 7 white note buttons, 5 black note buttons, 3 pitch buttons to switch high, medium and low tone, can play complete tune.

Kelly and Sean interview Tom Lauwers, founder and CEO of BirdBrain Technologies about the role of robotics in the computer science classroom. We've used the Finch 2.0 robot, which is designed to use the BBC micro:bit as a foundation for coding and computer science. Whether you're in a traditional classroom, teaching after school, or just trying to get people excited about the POWER OF CODING, robots can play a vital role in learning. About BirdBrain Technologies: BirdBrain Technologies’ mission is to inspire deep and joyful learning in all students through creative robotics. Founded at the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University in 2010, BirdBrain is a research-based company that promotes gender equality and diversity in computer science, engineering, and robotics. A large part of our mission is to assist educators interested in bringing computer science and engineering design into any classroom. We work collaboratively to support teachers with free standards-aligned curriculum and professional development. Our products have been used by thousands of teachers around the world to bring creative design and robotics fun into the classroom!Special Guest: Tom Lauwers.Support Teaching PythonLinks:BirdBrain Technologies - BirdBrain Technologies — BirdBrain Technologies’ mission is to inspire deep and joyful learning in all students through creative robotics.Introducing Finch Robot 2.0! - BirdBrain Technologies — Bring computer science to life from kindergarten to college with the NEW Finch Robot 2.0!Borrow a Robot Free for 60 Days! - BirdBrain Technologies — BirdBrain Technologies will allow educators in the US to borrow a robot for 60 days for FREE!Hummingbird Robotics Kit - BirdBrain Technologies — The Hummingbird Robotics Kit is an easy-to-use, creative robotics tool which allows students to design, build, and program a personally meaningful robot out of any materials, with any device, in multiple programming languages.Teaching Python - Blog - RIP Google Colab in Education — The Teaching Python blog post about the end of Google Colab in K-12...CREATE Lab — The Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab (CREATE Lab) explores socially meaningful innovation and deployment of robotic technologies.Amazon.com: Learn to Solder Kits Hue Soldering Kit | DIY Electronics Projects For Beginners | Practice For Adults & Kids STEM Classes & Events | Science Project Electronic RGB LED Light Circuit Board With Battery : Toys & Games — INTERACTIVE RGB LED KIT - Learn to solder in a unique, engaging, fun, and achievable way! The Hue Learn to Solder practice kit is our second solder project kit designed for beginners but offers more of a challenge than the Blink Kit. It features one large RGB LED light and three small dials. As you turn the dials the brightness of the red, green and blue change in the LED. Try different combinations to make any color in the rainbow!Finch Robot Loan Program - BirdBrain Technologies — We are currently lending out the original Finch Robot, which is tethered to the computer with a USB cord and works with computers and Chromebooks only (it does not work with tablets/phones). If you are interested in borrowing the new Finch Robot 2.0, which is wireless and works with computers, Chromebooks, and tablets/phones, please email loanprogram@birdbraintechnologies.com and we’ll let you know when that program is available.Amazon.com: microbit V2 Go Kit Programming Development Board STEM Pocket-Sized BBC Micro:bit Computer,Built-in Touch Sensitive Logo,Speaker and Microphone : Electronics — microbit V2.0 is a tiny programmable computer, designed to make learning and teaching easy and fun! Addition of the speaker and microphone：Same great features easier ways to use sound and touch to get creative in the classroom.

Kelly and Sean discuss their latest experiments in the classroom, including student peer code reviews, testing code for correctness, and creating comfy environments for coding.Support Teaching PythonLinks:EarSketch — EarSketch helps you * Learn coding through music * Use our sounds or your own * Learn Python or JavaScript code * Produce studio-quality musicTake Advantage of the Mac's built-in wordlist — OS X comes with a list of all the words in Webster's 2nd International Dictionary (234,936 of them to be precise). These words can be found in the file /usr/share/dict/words. I find it useful to search this list if I'm not sure how spell a given word by using the following command:

A lunchtime livestream with Kelly and Sean talking about setting up learning environments for students, coaching and setting high expectations for students, and the new tools we're using this year for teaching code. Replit Teams for Education Daily Challenges for formative assessment Physical classroom layouts Google Colab Choice Boards High expectations teaching Note: Kelly's audio track has a bit of echo that we can't eliminate. We'll get it fixed for next time.Support Teaching Python

With the new school year upon us, we're talking about CSTA standards and how they can be applied to the classroom environment. Join Kelly and Sean as they talk through ways to plan, deliver, and assess CS student standards. The Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA) provides student standards for learning as well as professional development standards for instructions. For example, there are 23 standards for grades 6-8 that cover everything from algorithms & programming to inclusionary culture to networks and internet. How do you go from a published standard to an engaging lesson that raises student learning?Support Teaching PythonLinks:Crunchy Engineering of Pringles' Hyperbolic Paraboloid Shape | IE — "Once you pop, the fun don't stop", is the slogan of the popular American chip brand Pringles. But if you're an engineer, you might be interested in Pringles for more than just their addictive crunch and taste. In fact, Pringles have been designed in the shape of a hyperbolic paraboloid.Standards | Computer Science Teachers Association — K-12 teaching standards for Computer Science(19) Alex (Mengyao) Wang | LinkedIn — Talks about #python, #technology, #datascience, #machinelearning, and #artificialintelligenceTeaching Python - Blog - Hacking the Classroom Hand Sanitizer Dispenser Part 2 — In Part 1 of this series, we hacked the hand sanitizer dispenser and got it talking to Home Assistant as a binary sensor. For this part, we'll work on a couple of useful automations in HA that will collect data and make it fun for students to sanitize. By the end of this part, you should have a sensor that shows today's dispenses, an automation that makes Alexa speak and some lights flash, and even an interface to a local MQTT broker to send and receive data with other devices.

The Teaching Python podcast speaks with Quinten Sheriff from Concordia University , an Instructional Designer, e-learning implementation specialist, and curriculum developer with global experience on four continents. A systems thinker who uses instructional models such as ADDIE, AGILE, SAM, ARCS. In this episode, we will explore topics such as designing curriculum for the next year, and what it means to design for instruction versus designing for content. In this we can also look at designing for inclusivity, diversity and equity.Special Guest: Quinten Sheriff.Support Teaching PythonLinks:Amazon.com: The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. eBook: Coyle, Daniel: Kindle Store — Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism.Teaching Python Newsletter — Sign up for our newsletter!

It's been a few weeks since we recorded, so this week's episode is all about catching up on listener questions and mail. Highlights include: the new AWS machine learning course we're taking, whether we'd rather be teachers or coders the new Adafruit hardware we're trying the Deep Composer keyboard equity and equitable opportunity in and out of the classroom You can also check out the recording of the livestream on our YouTube ChannelSupport Teaching PythonLinks:Doll-E 1.0 - Kindle edition by McCloskey, Shanda. Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. — A STEM-friendly tale of a girl and the doll she upgrades to be her new friend, for fans of The Most Magnificent Thing and Rosie Revere, Engineer.T-Bone the Drone - Kindle edition by McCloskey, Shanda. Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. — A new tech toy brings epic trials and triumphs in this playtime adventure for fans of The Most Magnificent Thing and Iggy Peck, Architect.Data.WA | State of Washington Open Data Platform | Data.WA | State of Washington — Welcome to Data.WA.gov - the general purpose open data portal for the State of Washington.Learn computer programming | Online courses from JetBrains Academy — Try a holistic approach to learning in which you study the theory and immediately put it into practice by building working applications. Dive into Java, Python, and other programming languages in a project-based learning environment that is integrated with JetBrains IDEs.AWS Machine Learning Foundations Course | Udacity Free Courses — Study machine learning techniques and algorithms, programming best practices, python coding, and Amazon AI Services and Amazon AI Devices, including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon DeepComposer. The foundations course is intended to help developers of all skill levels get started with machine learning.Amazon.com: AWS DeepComposer – a machine learning-enabled musical keyboard for developers: Amazon Devices — AWS DeepComposer gives developers a creative way to get started with machine learning. Get hands-on, literally, with a musical keyboard and the latest machine learning techniques, designed to expand your ML skills.Computer Chronicles Revisited, Part 16 — The Apple Logo Programming Language - S.M. Oliva — Today, Python is probably the most popular computer programming language taught in elementary and secondary schools. (There’s even a terrific podcast, Teaching Python, on this subject.) But back in the 1980s, BASIC was the language of choice for many introductory computer classrooms. Specifically, versions of Microsoft BASIC came with many popular 8-bit microcomputers, including the Apple II and Commodore 64, which were also commonly used in schools at the time.Amazon.com: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence eBook: Hawkins, Jeff, Dawkins, Richard: Kindle Store — For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world-not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought. A Thousand Brains heralds a revolution in the understanding of intelligence. It is a big-think book, in every sense of the word. GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer — Trained on billions of lines of public code, GitHub Copilot puts the knowledge you need at your fingertips, saving you time and helping you stay focused.PyBites Platform | Real World Python Exercises — Solve Real World Problems Using Python Overwhelmed by tutorials? Stop consuming books and courses! The only way to really learn to code is to write a lot of relevant code. Our platform makes you a confident programmer fast.Real-World Python: A Hacker's Guide to Solving Problems with Code: Vaughan, Lee: 9781718500624: Amazon.com: Books — Through a series of hands-on projects, you'll investigate and solve real-world problems using sophisticated computer vision, machine learning, data analysis, and language processing tools. You'll be introduced to important modules like OpenCV, NumPy, Pandas, NLTK, Bokeh, Beautiful Soup, Requests, HoloViews, Tkinter, turtle, matplotlib, and more. You'll create complete, working programs and think through intriguing projects that show you how to:Adafruit IO Wippersnapper DevLog #1: What IS Wippersnapper? #AdafruitIO​​ #Adafruit​ #IoT @adafruit @adafruitio « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — Adafruit IO Wippersnapper is a new way to create robust Internet of Things Projects without writing code. Wippersnapper is in early development and it’s not out yet. Adafruit FunHouse - WiFi Home Automation Development Board : ID 4985 : $34.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits — Home is where the heart is...it's also where we keep all our electronic bits. So why not wire it up with sensors and actuators to turn our house into an electronic wonderland. Whether it's tracking the environmental temperature and humidity in your laundry room, or notifying you when someone is detected in the kitchen, to sensing when a window was left open, or logging when your cat leaves through the pet door, this board is designed to make it way easy to make WiFi-connected home automation projects.Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense : ID 4516 : $32.50 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits — The Adafruit Feather Bluefruit Sense takes our popular Feather nRF52840 Express and adds a smorgasbord of sensors to make a great wireless sensor platform. This Feather microcontroller comes with Bluetooth Low Energy and native USB support featuring the nRF52840!  This Feather is an 'all-in-one' Arduino-compatible + Bluetooth Low Energy with built in USB plus battery charging. With native USB it works great with CircuitPython, too.EngiNerds (MAX) - Kindle edition by Lerner, Jarrett. Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. — Ken is an EngiNerd: one of a super-smart group of friends—all nerds—who have been close since kindergarten.Amazon.com: POWER A Nano Enhanced Wireless Controller for Nintendo Switch - Grey-Neon, Works with Nintendo Switch Lite, Bluetooth Controller, Gamepad, Compact, Smaller, Rechargeable, Portable - Nintendo Switch: Video Games — Wireless Controller with Bluetooth 5.0 Technology + compact ergonomic shell with standard sized Buttons & controls Features motion controls and mappable advanced gaming Buttons + LEDs for player number, button mapping, and low battery warning