 operationalising and creating democratising and learning, but let's all look at what this area looks like. So, good to see you, good to see you. Yes. Good to see you. Oh, there's a trap to work. If you're in the front, do it. Use that. Have a week. Crap. Don't worry about it, all right? All right, start the video. Oh, I was trying to hold it. Oh, I guess, I guess. Are you doing good this week? I guess. Yes, that is a big trade-off. My name is Jack Rice, and I'm the director of online editing for professional studies at St. Francis, St. George University in downtown. Well, I'm going to finish the discussion in Canada. But a little bit about me. I am a career educator. I haven't been in school since I was 40 years old. So I am institutionalized at this point. I have also worked in every educational setting you could possibly imagine. I have started infant programs, and I've been a graduate student advisor to a 72-year-old master's student. And I've worked at every single place in the world. I went to school, went to school, and spiced up all of these universities. And so I'm proud of that. Proud of the fact that I've been a practitioner in education for a long time. I seek great hope and promise in open learning. So it's one thing that I'm very excited about. And we've started some experiments in open learning at St. Francis, St. George University. I've also started open learning at my 200th institution that I've worked with. I've worked in Canada, and Australia, and the United States. And both of those didn't work perfectly at the first time. But we're hoping to get a few things right this time. We just keep going during really central learning from every one and all these years here today. I do hold a great hope for open learning. But I suspect that it will be co-opted by universities, dismantled by universities, marginalized by universities, and will end up in the same places we always have been. So that's both an optimistic take and a pessimistic take. We've been assigned which one we want to go with, so we can talk. When I got any question today, it was really informed in those two open education programs. Should we revisit? Should we rethink? Should we describe the purpose of my education and the purpose of ours? And I think the answer to that is yes. End of talk. However, I think there is a really good reason why we should think about that first before we jump in. And when I say first, well, that's still, isn't it? You know, open learning is put around forever, except it's not a new thing. But I do think that we should really think about purpose. Yeah. Definition of higher education. Does it also include vocational? Yes. I would say education. Any sort of education for many of us. Yeah, thank you. So in the room, are there faculty in the room? Now, this could be like faulty towers. You know, in faulty towers, you can be multiple. You can be every one of these different things. But there's the faculty in the room. It's beautiful. Administrator's in the room. Oh, nice to stick with the A. It's next to stick with the A. The gallery. It means brothers, et cetera. That's good. Structural designers. It's kind of people. It's wonderful. Faculty developers, people that work with faculty to help them. We're going to have to teach. Teach my buddies. Let's do this. Let's go to the studio. Libraries. I'm a librarian. It's community. It's community. And I always ask, you know, I don't think I do ask, but today we're going to report on time. If you start by talking to people, they won't be able to play up. It's lovely. You don't even get that in the classroom at the time. So the modern higher education institution was founded by a bad roommate here. There was a gentleman in the 1500s at the University of Paris. And his name was Francis. Lovely gentleman. Wonderful scholar. And living his best life, I will say too. He was living his best life because he had a double dormant and he had it all to himself. There was roommate on the left. And he was at the University of Paris in the 1520s. And just enjoying the nightlife of Paris. And then one day, the director came to us, the warrant knocked, and said, Francis, I have a roommate for you. Come over a little bit. So no, don't worry about it. You'll like this guy. He's from Spain too. He said, oh, perfect. His name is Ignatius. Well, he's going to be your roommate. So in hobble and actually bouncing, a gentleman named Ignatius. And Francis needed him. Couldn't stand him because Ignatius was overly optimistic about everything. Incredibly cheerful. So Francis thought, my life is a mess now. No more fancy nights out in Paris. I mean, he was spending my days with this gentleman. He was overlooking about everything. And so Ignatius told his story. And that was that he wanted to be a soldier. His whole life, all he wanted to do was dream about being a warrior. And he prepared himself for this moment. And in his first battle, and in first five minutes, he was struck with a cannonball and was laid out and had to convalesce in his home back in Spain. And he was looked after by his sister. And it was a long time, a couple of years before he could walk properly again. And the only book that he could read, an open education resource that we have, that he could read was in Spanish. And it was the story of Jesus. All the other books in his house, he could not read because they were loud. And he was reading the story of Jesus. And he thought, this is the toughest guy I've ever heard of in my life. And from that moment, he devoted his life to spreading this word about this tough guy, this warrior who read in his book. And so he decided to go to the University of Paris and study lab. And slowly but surely, slowly but surely, he born Francis older. And that's how St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola, in that dorm room at the University of Paris, in the 1520s, invented modern higher education. Between the two of them, they started hundreds of colleges and universities around the world. And really, the modern day higher education institution are those conversations with large. And I think what they did was they looked at the purpose of higher education and the purpose of education in general, and how could we disseminate this fantastic aspect. So, if we looked at the words we like to describe to the modern university of the will, I wonder what words we would use to describe it today. And I decided to find a recent article about the modern university by a scholar from the United States, called Francis, who had written a recent article on the Atlantic Leather. And he described modern higher education as no colleges for high school graduates, advanced schools, research centers, professional schools, stanchion institutes and continuing education and athletic and social organizations. Now, you'll notice I won't read his dribble that he wrote in the front of Tom Watson, but he didn't have to be as polite apparently in 1925 when he wrote this article about the modern university. And you'll see that really, as he describes the modern university in 1925, it's not much different from the university in 2023. And when that happened to see, we are embedded into a system. We are involved in a system that is perpetuating itself again and again and again. And I think that the tragedy of the world and perhaps the tragedy of landlifts is the fact that we are not here to think in terms of systems. We are here to think in a very deductivist manner and yet we live in a systems world. And I think that will ultimately destroy us. Although I do have a hope through hyperpunk this morning. It's hyperpunk, hope, hope, hope, hope, hyperpunk, hyperpunk. Yeah, I love that. Perhaps this is a way out. Perhaps this is the spontaneous way out to redefine the system. I've had an epiphany this morning, it's so wonderful. But I think this is the issue and I think we need to understand higher education, education in general perhaps and how we might be able to change the way those two gentlemen sitting in the University of Paris in the 1520s, maybe we should think about universities and education from the systems lens. That's what Kate Rayworth came when she looked at economics from a systems lens. And we looked at what donut economics. And I actually tweeted to Kate Rayworth, and I said, yeah, just read your book to fit in the past day. I said, did you ever read Thinking in Systems by Don Allen Adams? Well, she says, we need it. That's exactly where I got the idea for Don Allen Economics. It's so wonderful. And so I said, I should write a book of personal tech and education. Seven ways to think like a 21st century educator by Jack Burns. How do we write, how do we write that when we share? It might be some time out in the province. So, things that we need to think about when we think about systems. I hear all the time at my university, the system is broken. Systems are not broken. The system of higher education since 1520 and since the last 100 years is producing the same outcomes. It is not broken, it is perfect. It is a system perfected. It is doing the exact job that we've programmed it to do. And so if the outcomes are not what we want, we need to somehow shift that system away. And we typically use ways to shift that system to have no impact at all on the system at all. So one of the things that we try to do in systems or higher education is to switch out the people. Change out every single university president, every single provost, every single faculty member. It has no effect. That has no effect on system performance. If you change all 11 players of the Scottish national football team and you came back a year later, they would still be playing football. Now, they might make a few more penalty kicks until the last 11 years. But essentially, you would look upon the game and it would not have changed at all. So when we try to change individual components, you do not affect the system. System results may be altered by creating new rules. And so we do this sometimes in education, we create some new rules for things. It typically, especially a longstanding system, does not have much effect. We'll change the rules for tenure and promotion at my university. Believe me, we'll find a workaround for that. Any rule that we impose on a system can pretty much be found. There's a workaround for that. And lastly, I would say a better tact is to actually examine the purpose of the system. And this is where I go back to my diving question. Why is what's the purpose of higher education and education generally? If you change that purpose, you will create new feedback groups to actually deliver that purpose. The reason that outcomes and education are inequitable or racist is because that's what we're designed with. We're designed to produce those kinds of unequal, unfair results. So could we design it for something else? I think that's a possibility of a limit but we have to attack it at the purpose level. So I'm going to propose four changes that we could make to education and higher education in light of open learning. Because I believe that open learning plays into this great effect. So one, could the purpose of education be to fully realize human potential, both at the individual level and in the aggregate? I believe that is a different purpose for education and higher education. And I think open learning is potentially the solution that could help us get to that kind of new purpose, new paradigm for education. One of my favorite moments in my educational journey was in the time period where I got to be involved in a Montessori school. You look here at Montessori schools. Yeah. So if you were in a Montessori, you probably need to have one of them but you're in it somewhere. But I believe that that's really what she did. When she was trying to unlock human potential, is the problems that we have of tomorrow are going to require the best of every single one of us. And not only each one of us individually, but thinking in terms of the aggregate and its collectiveness. So how do we enable that? People can learn with something to say about it. We have to divorce ourselves from our obsession with regret and its arbitrage value. So in higher education, and here's an example of the opportunity in 20 years. Someone from a peer institution of mine and our institution kind of collaborates with some of these other students came to me and said, I would like to produce some material on 21st century classrooms. Some of them, that's wonderful, I love that. So we thought about it and created the idea and rumbled around it. And she said, I don't know where to house this. And I said, I don't know where to house it. Where to house it on my open learning platform? Here I am. This is an idea that will cost us in total $5,000 to produce, let's produce it. Let's put it on the open learning platform. Well, shortly after a year later, a month later, she came to me and said, great news. I have absolutely great news. My university has ended up as a three credit course. Not only that, but they are going to buy any student and takes this class, an iPad. And I said, oh, really? That's what this idea has become. Oh, this is amazing. We're going to have 30 students take this class at $1,500 for each student, but they'll all sign up for it as they get three credits and an iPad. And I said, system standard. We haven't really attacked this at the purpose level. We haven't made it open. Well, because of that, this great idea will diminish wither away and eventually die when there's no funding next year. I have to remove the clock from education. There's two things that I've learned in my life. Number one, and this is more important, never wake a sleeping baby. A baby is sleeping, never wake that baby up. Learn about the heart rate. And the second is, never stop a learner who's learning. Why do we do this? Every single moment you put the clock on education, you have this 10 minutes to complete this exam. Five minutes to finish this speech. You have three months to complete this course. It's madness. So again, we think the purpose of education, why don't we put these artificial timelines on learning? So open learning has a potential solution to that. I have a feeling, though, that it will be directed, pro-opted, marginalized, and spit out the system of higher education. You have to be quite forceful in these things when you think of open education. If you're creating open education, and you're putting time inputs on it, I don't think you're fixing much. And then we have to decentralize the rule of assessment. I did the walk yesterday, where there was a gentleman from the GovGN network here, and I debunked every single one of his arguments in the 35 minutes we walked, it's out of why we need assessment on education. I think he's still recovering from that. So I'm going to start with some, but we are so focused on the credit. We're so focused on evaluating and assessing learning. We just forgot the openness and the joy of it as well. So we're involved in open learning. We have to fight. We have to fight tooth and nail to preserve that. So these are my four changes that I would make to higher education when we consider the role of open learning. And I have, well, I have four more. I just don't know what they are. But this is broken. I suppose I could have brought them on, obviously. More, four more. Suggestions for open learning. I once asked a faculty member who was creating their courses for a year. I said, have you ever taken any of the students classes? And she said, what are you talking about? I said, you know, the students classes. You've published your roster of classes that the faculty make. I know what a big book of them. It's online. I have never looked through all of the courses that the students teach, but never. Well, you really should. Why don't you go to the catalog of student-led courses and you should probably take one or two of those. Of course, there are no student-led courses at my university. She never got back to me. So as soon as she didn't find them, I'm back at the catalog anymore. But if we are truly an open learning experience, why is it that only people over the age of 43 they get to teach classes? I think one of the first things the students should be able to do when they attend a university is teach a class. Open up a Moodle site. Teach me something, right? If it is a learning community, there has to be an open exchange. I don't think the world will be open to learn until we build my own. I often get the question, I'm in charge of online learning with professional studies and I've done the question all the time. Jack, how much learning should be online? And I said, well, that is a great question. I do not know the answer to that question, but I believe I can tell you how much learning is online currently, but right now. And I said, oh, really? I said 100%. You cannot disentangle technology today from learning. It is impossible to do. It is impossible to do. We are rewired humanity in this world. We need to continue, but there's no positive, there's no getting up. That does not mean we shouldn't get together. I came all the way to Inverness to get together with all of you. Both when I think about this conference, we had a pencil, paper, whatever. I will be learning online. There will be a digital aspect to it. I cannot reverse myself on it. Education does not support wellness. What's the point? We need to elevate the advising function at our universities. And classes have to focus on community building and intellectual multiplier effect. If I learn something in isolation and I don't pass it on, again, it's gonna be a complete waste of time. So how do we create open learning experiences so people are engaged to pass on what they want? Oh, there we go. So here's my hope and dreams for open learning in my last three minutes. When the university says to you, like what's going on here with open learning, let's define it. Let's put some definitions around it. Let's regulate it. What? Let's give it a budget. Let me give you three more people and a seat on set. Tell them to get lost. Tell them to get stuck. Because that is, they are buying you at that point in time. Stay in the margins, stay clear, stay punk, and stay off the grid as much as you possibly can. Ring on community partners. I work with community partners all the time to bring them on and share how open learning is. I'm not as interested in working with my faculty unless they are interested. They may come to me if they would like to work on an open learning project. If they don't, that's fine too. I have the community out there that I can reach and I can work with. Curate community at all time. If two people get online or meet a person and don't make a friend within the first couple of weeks, I am going to receive them. So curate community constantly. Balance the credit, mandate. Again, why does, it's as if they think that the credit oozed out of the primordial suit. You know, there was bacteria and then there was self-flanked in and then the next step was, oh look, the university credit. Yes, there's been a lot of trouble. We made all this stuff up. It's just getting in the way. Build a like-minded team of scoundrels around you. I came here to find more scoundrels. I think I've been in the right place. Same in terms of scale and understanding that what we're building, the value is it or we're only with pieces whenever there is a platform. Thank you for letting us bring you up. Thank you very much, David. You can have 15 minutes. We'll be doing the next session. So are there any questions, Jack? Yes, Priscilla, please. Yes. Hi, Jack. Again, we met yesterday. I know you're not from the US and made that mistake. I'm Chrissy from the University of Leeds. Very interesting what you say is all of it. And I like storytelling part at the beginning as well which draws people in and did me personally. And one question about one thing you said about I work with those who want to work with me basically. So what would the university either say about this? I'm wondering when we have often challenge on making institutional change happen, et cetera. So how can we be so selective in our approach? Great, great question. So one project that we're working on at my university is creating an open education platform for international healthcare workers in Canada. So that was scaled very quickly. There are about 10,000 of them. And so what we've done is created this platform and portal for them all to get on and meet each other, create a community of practice, take some courses, but university credit for it or not, all of it is free, but it's paid for by healthcare and old stocia. So I have made the most money off of things in education that are free. And so university leaders go, Jack, keep going, keep going. This is wonderful. So I do try to engage with my university leaders. Most of the time they don't understand what I'm talking about. So they let me move, sweep a little bit of freedom. But you have to show results. And for me, I think results is scale. It's platform is the size. But when I start to see people coming on masks, university leaders get excited whether they should do it or not. They might be thinking of it for a different purpose than I am when we'll see people reach the other side. We have another question. So we'll take this one just a moment. Can I try to set it up? So, yeah. Yeah, Jack. Lucas Johnson, Lincoln University and then around Ontario, Canada. Curious about your decentralizing assessment. I think that the system is very much in here towards objectives and achievement. And I'm just wondering what that looks like in your mind on how you sort of mark progress. Is it peer-based or self-based? And I'm not fully into checks and balances. I teach the engagement-based course where students sort of choose their own adventure, pick their grade at the beginning, and then whatever they want to get the mark they want, they get full marks if they hand it in and hit the criteria. But I'm curious what that assessment looks like and how we shift away from students that come up in a system where some might argue that it's almost gamified, that they just are trying to accomplish the task that the instructor wants. So, how do we help students find their way in learning with the decentralized assessment system, I guess, that's where I'm going? Yeah, good question. You should come on the walk yesterday. I'll walk over you back if you'd like tonight. But so, I'm also apparently now the intro coordinator of the Teaching and Learning Center at St. Fetts. Because they had an open call and nobody wanted to do the job. So, I was like, okay, I'll do that one too. So, here's the one thing that I've talked to faculty about in recent meetings. I said, have you ever thought of just talking to the students? Like just opening up the Zoom room, saying, hello, how are you? I noticed that in the second line when you stated your thesis, you said this, this, and this. How did you come up with that? Like, try to chat GPT back, right? In the middle of, just talk to them. Just have a conversation. Do you know how many classes that I sit in at the university and I put on my watch and I go, you know, what was the first question that's going to be asked? Is it forever? So, nice questions, talk to them, record them, create artifacts, build portfolios. I think it's all there for us and you have the technology to do it. It's just, be brave. Freaking down the scrubs, close to 100 students classrooms, I think, but the class sizes, right? I love the approach, I agree with it, but sometimes first year, you get 200 students in class. 200 students, I think. I can have a conversation in two minutes. You can assess whether someone has done the meeting or not. Yeah. Well, I think those are close to our apologies, especially on my second time, but Jack, what's the one? So, we've got a short change of a break at the end. So, we'll run a minute or so, make sure that Jack, we get a second. We're having a time for the session. So, Jeffrey, what's your question? Good morning, everyone. My name is Jack Elfner. I'm a high school community college teacher and remaining working in Harvard and Virginia. I have two quick questions before I start. How many people here are familiar with the GPL? Okay. And the other question is, how many people are familiar with the Python program? Oh, okay. So, I've got a half hour and I'm going to talk for the latter part of that. So, I'm going to go over the slides, hopefully in 15 minutes and give you some context. So, I'm here to share an OER fairy tale, because back in 1999, open education, before it was even a thing, open educational resources, touched my life and charmed me and I've been living with enchanted things happening in my life ever since. And what happened then was, Ellen Daly wrote a book called How to Think Like a Computer's Eyes. And he released it under the GPL. So, since people were not familiar with the GPL, how many people here know about the Creative Commons? Okay. Sorry. So, the GPL stands for the GNU Public Lectures and it comes from the pre-software movement. And it's also known as copy left. And the idea of copy left was it's copyright turned upside down. And in 1993, when I was enrolling in a grad program in computer science, I discovered the GPL and I fell in love. Because immediately I recognized that the GPL was an attempt to be commodified learning. And I was seeing the horrors of the modification of everything everywhere. And I just thought, oh, this GPL is just the most wonderful thing. And I got involved in the pre-software movement that time. And so I was coming to OER actually as a computer teacher involved in the pre-software. And so, Ellen Daly's book was released under the GPL because there wasn't over eight accountants. And he designed this, it was a, it's a wonderful book. He designed it with these goals in mind. He wrote it for his students. So he wanted to keep it short because he thought it was much better for students to read 10 pages than to not read 50. And many of you've looked at some of the commercial computer books. Have you seen them? They're tomes that they have to republish every couple of years so that there's a new addition so they can sell you yet another book. And they don't really enhance learning in any particular way. Be careful with the vocabulary. Minimize jargon and define each term. So build gradually. And focus on programming not the programming language. Now, he wrote this book for a course he was teaching and he used Java as the programming language. So this was a book written to teach programming but using Java. Meanwhile, now that I'm in Virginia, I was teaching high school computer science for all of the public school. And I was confronted with a problem. I already mentioned that the GPL and my love for free software I was desperately looking for a new program. And I'll explain why I was looking for a new program. Because there's this thing called the advanced placement computer science that we have in the US. It's a standardized test that students take for all the time you get college credit while they're in high school. And so it's called AP. And AP computer science used a programming language called Pascal. It was a wonderful language for teaching people to program. But in 1998, they actually switched to C++ which is a terrible language for teaching people to program. So it was stopped. What am I gonna do with my first year students? Because we were offering AP in the second year. I can't possibly use C++ as the first. I need something else. And Pascal is kind of showing his age and I'm connected to the free software movement. So what should I do for a new program? And I chose Python. I chose Python for a number of reasons. And more people were familiar with Python than they were with the GPL. But Python when I started was a small little community programmer. And Python is this magical language that people say you come for the language and you stay for the community. It's a programming language by programmers for a word. It was built in the open source environment. People who created the language were making it for themselves. And they built this wonderful community. And this is Michael McClay who is a scientist who was working at NIH. And he helped bring Linovon Rossum, the creator of Python over to the Virginia area. So after they all came right near where I live and they started growing this Python community. And Python is easy to write, easy to read, it has its own local R.I. ceiling with a lot of great reasons why Python is a wonderful language that you can use for programming. And so I chose that language because I had met Michael McClay at a Linux install fest in 1995 at NIH where I was bringing my computer to try to get Linux working on it. And he was raving about this language by God. But at the time, Pascal was working this fine, didn't need to make a change. So I said, oh, I absorbed his enthusiasm, but I didn't have a need. But then in 1999, I had a need because C++ was a nightmare. So what am I gonna do? I went back online and a whole bunch of people said, oh, you should just use Python, you should just use Python. So, and then I asked a student of mine at Matt Aaron's who was a senior, I said, Matt, can you check out this new language and let me know what you think about it? And he did this for a senior project and he came back to me raving and he said I could do more with Python in three months than I could with C++ in two years. So I was hooked at that point and I spent the summer, right after that thing I'm gonna learn Python and I'm going to teach something next year with Python. But there was a problem. There were no books to teach Python with. There were only a couple of books, a handful of books that even existed in 1999 with my son here's pictures of them. And they were all about the language, not about programming. So, which makes total sense. I mean, it was a small language community and they had written some books for programmers who wanted to learn a new language. But I needed a book to teach beginners how to program so what am I gonna do? Well, Richard Stolben, the father of the free software movement I was involved in that I had emailed him back and forth and he introduced me to Alan Dowdy. He said, Alan Dowdy has this book. How did they like a computer scientist? So if you look at it, it's a wonderful book. Then while I don't feel like I could write a textbook on my own to start out with at this point I could take Alan Dowdy's book and turn it from a Java book into a Python book. And for people who know programming that's not so hard to do. I mean, what computers do, what computers do and programming language is all working on the same machine. So they're not that different. And here I had a book with a bunch of topics and questions and all I had to do was rework it from a Java book into a Python book. And because of that and because he had released it under the DPL I had the rights to do it. So I did. And what happened next was really pretty amazing for both Alan and I. I mean, we ended up meeting online. It was years later. We finally met at a Python conference. But I converted the book into Python. He's now the author of dozens of books that O'Reilly publishes and everything. And in the introduction to his big Python which is the latest iteration of this book he said he had the strange experience of learning a new language by reading his own book. So that was pretty cool. So what basically, we were doing this three years before OER the term was coined. And it just, because we were at the right place at the right time, Python was exploding as a language. I mean, it went from a little tiny community to being the most popular programming language in the world. So just to ride that magical story has been exciting. And because of where we were and when, because OER we were able to play a role in that. Because how did they, like a computer scientist ended up on MIT's free software, courseware resources. It was released and remixed. I'm just watching. There are now interactive versions online. You can go and see all of the things that just came out of that. Making by sharing, if we sort of give and you get back. It's a pretty amazing thing. And one of the things, another OER that I wanted to give a shout out to Dr. Jock because he took a remix of our book and turned it into my thought for everybody. And now he's got a whole series of videos online, all creative commons. I end up using a lot of his materials now in the courses that I'm teaching. So again, he credits Alan with having inspired him to do this in the beginning. So that was also very exciting. So that's the story. I mean, I've met people. I've gone to Python conferences. I've had Guido come into my classroom. I've done all of this stuff because open educational resources brought me back to an open book, which brought me to the Python community, which and it's just been so joyful. I think I don't know that I would still be teaching high school or not for the joy I get out of being part of all of this process. So I'm a couple of years from retirement, although if I keep having fun, I mean, never retire. We'll have to see how it goes. But I have this goal. So I'm part of what's a dual enrolled program. So the thing we're doing in the US where high school students get college credit. So we offer an associate degree, which is a two-year degree. I don't think you have it here in the U.K. so it's a little different. But we have this community college system all across the US. And it's the first half of a bachelor's degree. And you can do it more affordably at a local school. So I am an adjunct at Northern Virginia Community College because my students, our high school students, also get college credit. And in fact, we offer an associate degree in computer science concurrent with high school. Part of this isn't really a good story. It's because also it's getting so expensive, higher education, that in the US, the only place you have control over education to be brought down is public education. So they're pushing higher ed into K-Quality. They're pushing it into the high schools because they can do that. And so anyway, not all my students are ready, but those that are are getting associate degrees in computer science along with their high school diploma. And the Northern Virginia Community College, which is part of the Virginia Community College system, has rolled out a wonderful new associate degree. I'm pretty impressed with the work they've done. And it's gonna have these five courses and that are part of the associate's degree. What I wanna do, and I'm working on it now, is to produce OER content for that entire curriculum. And I would invite any computer teachers here or I'd love to collaborate with you. So that's my quick presentation, because I would like to have a discussion with the time we have left. Perfect, perfect, perfect. So questions, comments, join me later at the pub? Thank you, but still, that's amazing. Yeah. How many could you talk about? That's really interesting, but that's the knowledge that's part of the only way to share it. So yeah, really wonderful. Any questions or comments, observations? Yes. We said that the AP test had switched to C++, so is that the case that you got students to start with Python and then they were able to move to C++? Yes, I mean, what I ended up having, actually, it was the biggest mistake that the college school had ever made. So they only stayed on C++ and then switched to Java after four years. That's the job. But yeah, so I was able to teach the intro course. And you still do the introduction in Python or do you find Java's okay to start with? So ironically, it's kind of interesting. So this course right here, Introduction to Problem Solving and Programming is a full year course and I use Python. So students get a year of Python and then of the program we had been doing with Java, but ironically, I'm now switching back to C++ which is not so bad as a second language. You've had a year of Python and I could go into why. I mean, really the goal, I view that the goal of this program is to demystify computers because computers aren't becoming ever, ever more indistinguishable from the edge. Students just need to talk to it and does stuff. And if you're going to be studying this field, you ought to come away with some sort of human intuition about what is at the root of the machine and how does it work and what's capable of doing. So that's leading me to be able to, I'm actually going back in time and teaching students on this thing called the Altair 8800 which was a machine from 1975 that you program with switches. So there's one course where we actually, I actually teach them how to use that computer. It was about the last time an entire computer could fit in your brain. And so that, and because of that, C++ is a good language to get closer to the machine. Do you use the turtle with Python? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. We use the turtle with Python. There's a whole bunch of there. Developed in the UK, there was something called the LiveWriars, I met somebody who did a summer camp in the UK in 2007. Also, another whole open-storey story. It developed this incredible curriculum for a summer camp because at the time they said they couldn't work computer programming into the high school curriculum here. So they did it as a summer camp and I took that and adapted it and we call it GASP, the graphics API for students at Python. And my students love that and that's just a remix of what they developed here for that program. Thank you. Another question again? Hi, Andrew Smith from European University. So, Jeff, you've got introduction to program, problem-solving program, object-oriented program. You've got Python and MC++. How do students code for the transitions in Python to see Java or any other language? So it's not hard. I mean, in the sense that the first thing you have to do is understand what the computer does and how it goes. So they were sequencing or iterating or branching and you have to do that in any program because the computer is the computer and any program language can make it do that. So Python is a great gentle powerful way to learn that but by the time they're learning C++, they know that or they don't have to struggle with that. Now they have to struggle with the kind of weird language but then it's different and new and they're able to track it. So the syntax nuances, they're comfortable, they need some. Yeah, I find that after, like, they come to the start but after that, there's a, the first language is hard. The jump from the first to the second is pretty small and people who go into this field learn a dozen program language because after a while you can pick one up in a couple of weeks. My confession is on computer science that used to teach Java programming to beginners. And I used to tell them it isn't case sensitive, it's case frigging finicky. Right. Whereas Python is a little bit more forgiving. So yeah, where I'm C is, yeah, you can set a prior to things with C. Right. It's just good to see that, yeah, you're making that transition. Well C is the language unless you shoot yourself in the fight. Yeah. You should when you're learning. Yeah. We actually let you shoot yourself in the foot, play that head as well. Okay. So there's a question in that? Yeah, I'm also an experienced teacher in C++, wonderful language. But we also start with a fight in course before we go into C++. And I want to see all the questions. Also if you switch to another language, I think it's still important to focus on the programming and not to say on the language. Right. So books are sort of like dictionaries of the programming language. Right. You should not use those. You should use examples. Focus on the program and the algorithm thinking. And then it doesn't really matter which language you use. And especially with C++, I think you should also focus on the subset of the language. And then people feel comfortable. And then you can go through the edge cases. So I'm searching on this right now. So I'm thinking maybe we could meet with a scientist who will be sitting with me for the rest of my entire career. And this is another remix of Alan Downey's original book. And it does just what I think is what you're saying. So, but I'm going to use it for two courses. So I'll use it for our object. Really with Python, they'll be learning about Victorian programming already. So this is the, I'm in a really privileged position because I'm in a cohort I have a small group of students that I get to see for three years. I get to know them, build relationships with them and I can integrate the curriculum across the courses. So I don't have to think of it as these like separate things. I can think, well, we already learned that here. So even though it's supposed to be in this course description, I can kind of, you know, walk, you know, quickly move over that. So we're going to go through this book the first semester object oriented programming, the first half of it, but then for data structures and algorithms, linguists, trees and all that. I actually want them to use learned pointers. That's another reason for going back to C++. Take a close look at the other team. Yeah, I'm from Sri Lanka, I'm a brother and I'd like to approve this too because when I'm learning in 2001, I'm an undergraduate. So first I learned Java but completely lost with programming when I'm starting with Java, then they ask us to, like they taught us C++. They know that's good. Then I can learn something. Then after that, when after graduating on Island Python, so I know that's a start in five. So thanks to you and the people who wrote these books. I think nowadays, students have more opportunities to learn how with the beginning. So I'm also, it's very much appreciated that you're well and the people who commented here because learning, like thinking has come to scientists is a very good place to start the program. Just going in the place and trying to do it. So I think, thank you very much. And it's a good thing. So how was my thought after the last time you got up? Yeah, it's nothing. Yeah, I think we're supposed to do it first. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. I think we're back to the room. No, I'm not a property scientist. But I want to appreciate your commitment to community college. And I love how you use those terms community college in the States. And from English further education, which is comparable, but we've been made to be businesses for many years now, just financially come back into the sector. And I hope that community college can be put back on and think about ourselves. I love that the Labour Party joined up. I absolutely love that. And I think I just wanted to appreciate that because unless you have people like you, Jeff, who bring your enthusiasm to your passion, which is just so engaging, and into a few colleges to help feel that joy and that advice, some colleges do really in the pathway to waging, but in many, they're quite separate. But I just wanted to appreciate that you must be inspiring out there. Thank you, you know, it's great to be here, the keynote this morning, and then Jack's rules of what he wants to see with education. And that's what I've been trying to do, sort of on the fringe, right? But that's what's kept it joyful for me. I mean, I have the best job in the world. And because I get to do all these things that I have the best job at the moment. Yes. Oh, I'm from West Virginia, so practically neighbors. But my exposure to Python is for your competitive robotics. So I'm curious if you have any experience with using that as like a gateway that it gets more interested in. So there's so many things you can do with Python. Adafruit is a company that produces the circuit like not express. So, you know, it's funny, we need to, you know, takes the village for a child. I'm really not a hardware person, right? So students love it. I love programming because I can predict what's gonna happen and it runs every time. And I'm not dealing with tolerances and voltages and, you know, things that I find less interesting. Personally, I'm more of a humanities person. I actually gotten to be into the computer science. So I want to do a text, not circuits. But there definitely is. I mean, so with it, because it's microprocessor now and with circuit Python, you can do a whole lot with robotics. And students do. So it spills over. I teach them the basic programming and then Python has libraries for anything. Thank you. Yeah, I'm also a humanities person, but I'm masquerading as a computer scientist some days. And I wasn't aware of your book. So I think I suppose just what a couple of people said, thank you for your work, it's fantastic. And it's great that it's open source. I was using a book called Teaching Tech Together by Greg Wilson, a Python open access book that's absolutely wonderful. And I guess I just, and the other thing to thank you for as well, as you didn't mention anything about how we're gonna plug gaps in the economy and create for a person that are gonna, you know, stop China and we need more of these people at STEM and all this kind of thing. So just your passion and just making the work open is a good thing because that just kind of, it seems like a very welcoming attitude you have to it. And what are the biggest kind of barriers you find teaching them, programming to students at the moment? What are the things that they're struggling with? So I mean, our program is an associate degree concurrent with a high school diploma. So my students come in pretty well, and I haven't had that many obstacles in terms of actually getting them to be successful in the intro course. Some of them go through the intro degree course and say, I don't really want to do an associate degree. They switch to something else, but most of them stay and they tend to be very successful. I mean, for me, it's fraught with contradictions. I'll be honest with you. I want to do good in the world. And sadly, most of the jobs in the sector are not doing good in the world. So it's like, ooh, what am I really doing with my life? I mean, I have to think about that sometimes. But I'm hoping to start a nonprofit called Social Justice Computing. I'm trying to, there are so many good things we could do with the machines, but there are no money in it, right? So that's the sad part. And so it's hard to actually make a living doing good with that knowledge. It's possible, but it's not easy. But even small things are enough. Like even making a book, open access to people, it's that small thing, but it helps people for a pretty in some way. Oh yeah, that part has been great. I met people from all over the world, virtually, mostly, but absolutely, it's been joyous. So we've got time for one more question or comment. Otherwise, we'll let you go slightly down, all right? Thank you very much. See you in a couple of minutes. Social Justice Computing, part of the next video, guys. So thanks, everyone, and your next session will start at 10 to 30 hours.