 My name is Henry Silva and with all the other three speakers, we're going to have this panel We're going to start with a few introductions. So as I said, my name is Henry Silva I'm from Brazil and I have a bachelor's as applied mathematician I'm now work as a community officer for the Software Society Institute in Manchester, UK. I Contribute to volunteer for some projects that teach people how to program including software carpentry, data carpentry I went to a workshop from the jungles girls easier in Manchester and if you want to keep in touch with me online It's our GA I ACS most of the places. So I go to hand out to Alice Okay, so I'm a PhD student at the University of Southampton and so I'm an astrophysicist So in my day-to-day work, I model explosions on neutron stars So I kind of wanted to take part in this because I'm a fairly recent learner So I only started programming at the beginning of my undergraduate course And I've experienced lots of different programming courses So I had courses from computer scientists Which were kind of okay, but very fast-paced and I really struggled with them But I also had courses from physicists and they were in general absolutely awful And it was like here's some code change a few lines. Now you can program So, yeah, kind of I have a mix of experiences there and then more recently during my PhD I've been a demonstrator in both software carpentry courses and Undergraduate programming courses so numerical methods for kind of mathematicians and and yeah, if you want to Seema and Twitter, I'm up there Thank you Alice. So we're going to hand out to Matthews. Okay. My name is Matoush Kuzak I work at Netherlands E-Science Center So in my day job, I'm involved in writing research software But I work a lot with researchers and I got involved in teaching researchers programming like teaching them best program practices Because I think it's really needed I got involved in software carpentry and I teach software carpentry data carpentry workshops recently also library carpentry So we teach librarians about programming Mostly research librarians And I also train instructors now and I mentor new instructors And I'm involved in the steering committee of software carpentry. So if you want to ask me anything about carpentries Yeah, thanks Matoush Selene So hello everyone So I'm trained as a software engineer from Instaparitech in France But I think I learned my first computing concept by myself when I realized I could program my calculator because else Nobody was teaching me anything else than PowerPoint or word Since then I've been working in robotics and computer science And now I'm so I was for instance part of the Ask Now project at Aldebrun. We were Programming apps on robots and websites to help children with autism Now I'm involved in code for life So I'm the team lead at Okado for code for life a project where we create online coding games to teach all children Computing so it's what's in different but interesting challenge to not to be like on site But to program online games for people that you don't really see And also that's not about programming, but I'm also a volunteer To teach children creative writing at the Ministry of Story in London, but that's also an interesting teaching experience Thank you. So I'm going to join our speakers so Let's start with this question if you could send a letter to your past self One month before you have your first Teaching experience and by teaching experience I mean if you go for a workshop or if you try and write a tutorial online or if you're trying to write A course a book Anything that's related with teaching What you would write on that letter for you one month before your first experience. Do you want to start Celine? Yeah, so I think I would probably write myself to first never take anything for granted We tend to assume a lot of things and none of them are real So expect the unexpected just you know can happen. So I would say for instance I had some interesting experiences in schools for the autism project when we realized that the teachers couldn't use our web applications because of all the Protocols that were in the school and preventing them from accessing our website. Oh, we should have checked before But that was a while ago Also, that's some some trainings that we are creating right now for code from code for life And that we thought were really like five to eleven We realized that they were also used a lot in secondary schools because there's also a lot of skills there So there are a lot of unexpected things happening and you have to be prepared to To literally everything So when I started teaching actually I didn't teach programming. I've been teaching at the university to biologists But I think like something that I didn't expect I did I start teaching because I had to do teaching at my during my PhD training And and I didn't expect that I will actually enjoy it that much So that would be maybe like it's like in the letter. There's actually fun and I shouldn't worry too much about it I think that's the the main message and I really like the That if something is going like if something can go wrong, it will go wrong Yeah, just like don't stress too much about it I think that for me, so I Very recently I ran the first course where I'd written the material for the course myself and I was like the leader of the course rather than just a demonstrator and Something that would have been very useful to think a bit more about in advance is having loads of examples and loads of exercises for the students Because to really get people to interact with things exercises are just that it's just so much better Just standing and sharing people things and we ended up having to like make up exercises on the fly Which is really not great So just having loads of exercises prepared would have been very helpful Thank you Alice and everyone I really enjoy that you say like including lots of Exercise and examples in your first workshop, but as anyone that has any experience teaching You probably know that's lots and lots of things that you want to include on your first material So this is a little technical, but since we are on the Python conference We have the documentation the Python documentation where there is like the reference for the Language and so on so if you're going to prepare Teaching material or teaching a workshop what you do include it like what was never never going to Remove from your course or something and one extra thing that you're probably going to escape from the Python library Or it's something that you're on material you're interested Yeah, so Yes, so I teach coding to scientists and for then the most important thing is to get really using NumPy and doing plotting very early on because then they can relate it back to their work And suddenly less important for them is learning about classes and object-oriented programming because this is a completely alien concept to them And they're I mean they can write perfectly good scientific programs without ever having to do any classes And we certainly found when we were teaching this is just a step too far for them and they found it just way too confusing Yeah, so in code for life It's interesting because since we were mostly for our children first We have to follow the UK curriculum because it's mostly a UK based program at first And we realize soon that the most important things for teachers is to teach logical thinkings and to Help the kids understand that rather than actual syntax So we put more emphasis on the coding concept So that's why actually we start with Blockly and then we teach Python So there are a lot of things obviously that we don't teach from Python So not a lot of I would say most complicated data structures like dictionaries or even arrays are kept out of the loop because it's not For the 5 to 11 yet We don't really teach object-oriented yet, but we do teach functions We don't teach the other details like error management or things like that So it's just about the algorithm the logical thinking and how you can do that in Python in a very simple way Okay, so when I teach to life scientists or to research librarians, I think it's like something between physicists and a child Yeah, so Because so the level of the I think that the physicists are much more advanced in terms of they they have been introduced to programming Before and they know something and life scientists are like really they don't like they are afraid to approach it But they also because they're researchers They're really focused on like what they will take away like they're investing time in it so they have to get something back and That's why you can't start with Introducing I don't know that this is integer. This is Boolean. This is the least that won't like they won't buy it You have to start with something which is like really eye-opening and Like the wow moment show them amazing plot show them how you can very efficiently do something and then maybe Introduce a little bit of basics, but actually just hope that they will come home and they will be so motivated They will start learning by themselves, but we lost a lot of I've tried like in various ways doing it, but if you start with introducing like Don't show them the Python reference. That's like number one. I think advice But show them amazing things that they can do and then they will learn from there Thank you. I really enjoyed that you could make the comparison about stuff like science and teaching to kids So if you could go what little tip on that would be nice So what do you think it's like a big different when you need to approach people in different age and backgrounds like kids undergrad students PhD students Software developers like there's any suggestions like motivate people of different backgrounds or Which approach do you think that's interesting for motivate and Explain back to some of the concepts Yeah, yeah, so I think I think like depending who you're approaching you really have to target Your content and like how do you deliver the content? If you like you're teaching children you want to make it fun You're with researchers. It's really like the the time is the the most like The most important thing they have that they driver the research published papers. So they have to see what they get from it for Yeah, I've never taught Programmers or engineers actually my title is a science research engineer I've been I've been working as a science research engineer for I think five years now I still don't know what the science is and I'm not an engineer But I do write research software And with kids so I really would like to learn like how to teach kids. I I've never done it actually so it's Thank you. So yeah, indeed making it fun is very important But I think the key moment is probably making me ground it so ground it to something that they might like but grounded I would say in real life or with a visual example or even a sound example like sonic pie is doing with teaching programming with music For instance what we doing good for life. They have to program a van to go alongside the road to make deliveries The thing is it makes it fun because they see oh, okay So if I know about programming maybe later on I can also program games like that. I can actually have fun It's more like really a game than actually teaching. They just want to solve the challenge And it works well for actually making Them understand the logical thinking and the concept as I was saying before that is more important for them than just the syntax so for instance in the first levels of rapid rotor you only have like So there's a very small amount of instructions They can use it like move forward turn left etc. And they have to program a very complicated rule So later when we introduce like repeat loops It makes sense for them because they actually know that they need the concept to make their life easier So we just granted knowledge and I think it works really well for kids Yeah, so I think definitely for Physicists and mathematicians. They really just want to see that there is going to be some use for these programming skills at some future point and so last year in Southampton and for the first time we had a And a Python course for the first year mathematicians and the biggest error was that this course was optional and So after two weeks the students coddened onto this and they just stopped attending the labs full stop because they're like This isn't maths. I'm not going to use this And the notes were written in such a way that it just didn't relate to their course and they didn't think that they have any future use for this So really certainly for mathematicians and physicists and by the sounds of it basically everyone You need to kind of relate it back to their own experience and show them there's going to be some work to what they're learning Thank you This is a panel so if you feel that you have any questions you can just come to the front and then we can Listen your question at any moment, but Continuant is If you probably remember from the keynote from today She was recommended a video from a few years ago from PyCon saying That every program or most of the programs are me dukri And I think we as teachers we also mill dukri. So do you want to share any? Teaching experience that was not Amazing Okay, I Think so I think what is very important. So I don't remember like very specific I think what when I stress out too much and I wanted to make it too perfect then it probably will go wrong And I think the most important thing is So I don't have a good example of like where when things went wrong but you have to one thing you have to be prepared that things things will go wrong, but also Like I feel I'm in the same way learner as the learners who I teach I learned so much during teaching that And every workshop every event that I'm teaching Is the opportunity to learn so if the things go wrong is just so that I can learn how to do it better And it's mostly like how to troubleshoot things how like how to deal with situations that Like first you learn how to deal with situations that come up and then that you learn to deal with Unexpected yes, or like you get better in handling unexpected things happening And so yeah, so again relatively new to leading teaching sessions And I ran a workshop quite recently And I prepared all the material on my office Linux computer But I was delivering the workshop on my own Mac laptop, and I was like all this stuff's gonna work It did not all work I tested all the hard stuff all the stuff that was like live coding I tested that but the kind of Simple stuff. I had not tested assuming it will work and that was a massive error on my part. I Think that for me the most Things I took away from I would say really failures But it felt a bit like that at the point is about always think about so accessibility and what you can do better for The users that are in front of you or behind the computer so for instance, we did a lot of user research for our coding games with code for life and We realized that was a good idea that we were working on an iOS app for our game because there are some kids that Can't really use a mouse for instance So all the things that you need to think about so if you have like a real life workshop You might want to understand that it might happen But more important also when I was working for kids with autism with the now a robot so We had set up a big session in a classroom in Birmingham With the robot and all the class with the kids and the teachers etc Of course everything went wrong first because of the network So we were like basically ss etching into the robot and trying to do a lot of crazy stuff from there And we were sweating like hell, but it worked However things we had done realized Our robot was speaking in American English And there was a game where the robot was asking was imitating Playing football and he was asking which sport am I imitating and he was listening to the answer from the kids and one of the kids answer Football and the robot was like no, you're wrong. It was soccer So the kid is like Yeah, you were right. Sorry, and the thing is that kids with autism tend to be very sensitive against Social injustice and things like that. So I really felt awful for having Participated in that so you need to really yeah, you need to really know that you will have to think about fall back and Make the the kids feel okay that it's okay It's not their fault or it's fine not to make Errors or things feel like too much of a failure. So it's more like a yeah teaching practice. So Thank you. I really enjoy it when you say about accessibility because most of the conference just I go back to your question just one moment siphon siphon Come back to accessibility most of the conference. They are trying to be inclusive and so on and here on this stage We have two vegans one gluten-free and one lactose intolerant So do you have any recommendations for accessibility in terms of workshops or any teaching material because I remember when I'm teaching and like Some of things that I'm worried like make the phones very big enough for everyone on the room can actually read without Difficult and do you want to start sitting? so for for instance Online resources or the visual games for instance that would be pay attention to To UX user experience and details such as the contrast. So make sure that if you write something It's not like dark gray on black Because sometimes it looks cool, but people just can't read it and people can have be visually impaired etc Also, if you have games which too much sounds and different sounds and things like that as well as visual etc It can be a bit distracting. So for instance Children with autism might have a hard time Not feeling stressed with your game But sometimes if they like one of the sound as the contrary they will try for instance to fail So you can get the failure sound so might want to pay attention to that too So there are also things like of course a mouse or a screen try to find about different ways that you can make Engage with your materials So there are also other things that you can try like board games that teach coding So it's not only has to be about computers or Tablets actually So yeah, I would say just pay attention to that but I will say the real deal is that try to understand which What you might encounter what can happen if you if you can talk to the Educators before that deal with for instance children if you want to or just a group of people you're going to teach to Understand if there are any such requirement and try to just talk with them to see how you can make them feel comfortable and adapt your materials to that So when we teach a software carpenter, especially if you if when we train new instructors We want them to make an experiment like if they're going to organize the workshop to get from the from the airport to the venue By the with the wheelchair and see like what what is on the way like what what all the Barriers are on the way and it's actually like we sometimes we think Like and until we try to actually do it We don't realize how many obstacles there are there are in the way So we really have to make more effort like do this extra work to realize How hard or not hard it actually is I think it's it's very interesting experiment Actually, I've never done it actually, but I think like it just started thinking about it So I never did it with with actual wheelchair, but just like when you start thinking about it Like how do you get out of this? Bus and get to the venue I think it's really interesting Okay, so this might be as we have quite an international audience here This might be slightly more obvious to everyone else But I when I was an undergrad and before that I was always in an all native English speaker environment, and I just I'd never really Communicated or like mixed much with people from other countries So I was completely unaware that I naturally speak very quickly and I use quite a lot of maybe technical or like Less clear vocabulary that for non-native speakers is quite difficult And I've noticed a lot in classes There'll be some people so I'll be people just starting their master's courses And then I've been in Britain for maybe two weeks when they get to their first class And I start trying to explain things to them and they really struggle So I remember there was one thing and I was telling them to put to type from them dot so full stop and they just didn't understand I was like dot and Yeah, so Definitely trying to really make sure you use very clear language and for me Yeah, it was a real eye-opener because I just was completely unaware of this before I'd started my PhD Quite how difficult it is in terms of languages Yeah Because it reminds me one thing so very often we like when we try to help people with So as an example We add the subtitles to help people with with hearing problems We're actually without realizing we're helping much more people that we targeted because of these cases We have people giving talks with strange accents or like difficult to understand or with Speaking very fast will help people Which is like they can't keep up on the way, so I think it's it's also nice that It's wider impact. I'm sorry. I'm also thinking of something else I would say also if you organize a workshop because I also participate in some meetups and The struggle is also always to find a good time for instance for the events So if you organize your events or your workshop at a specific time or day of the week You might not get the same amount of participation that you might expect depending on who your targets are so for instance if you want to If you want to make something at like 4 p.m. You probably will never reach people that might be working etc So just pay attention to to that Thank you. Do you want to ask your question? Thank you. Do you want to comment yet? So I mentioned before that in Southampton. We were trialing these first year Python courses So the demonstrators for these courses were PhD students And I think I'm probably the only PhD student in the master problem and actually use this Python So you had all the demonstrators for this Python course and not one of them could actually do Python So recently they actually ran a course to teach the demonstrators Python So that when these students turn up the lab to the lab and have questions They actually have someone there who knows what they're doing Because otherwise they're turning up. They couldn't get any help They're just so discouraged. I'm not surprised that they will stop coming up to the second week Mathew Kathleen do you want to add something? Yeah in the front Thank you for the very good question I think that one of the suggestions that you're going probably Here from everyone's I try to pair people that more experienced with more novice try to balance But I go to pass the award for the other speakers you want to Yeah, it works to even for four children. Some of them will have like different Types of knowledge or previous knowledge and so if you pair them together the child which is Which knows more will also feel valued and will work quite well and the other kids will probably also learn a lot We're talking to the other one. So actually that works for Etheregenerals levels even with different ages, etc. So yeah, so I also do that And it works really well pairing people the less advanced with more advanced, but also like more general advice is For you don't want to lose the the novices. So you really have to you rather slow down They'll go faster But then you're risking that you're going to lose people who are more advanced you have to make them busy and You have to make them feel important and like So that they will want to engage. So one one way is Making them like mentoring other people or like give them some tasks like some extra exercises or let them make notes or like let them Comment or something on the materials that you have so that they have to get be busy and they have to have something which Like it is important. It gives something back Yeah, so then then they feel like they have a role here and it's very easy to lose them also because they will get this Courage is like there is nothing for them to learn here. Yeah, so that's my advice Yeah, that's kind of what I was gonna say. So just having exercises where I was like, oh, you finished this This was easy now try the slightly harder thing Because yeah, it's so easy for the more advanced students to get bored and just completely lose interest And that's terrible because like they're very they're obviously quite talented So you don't you want them to continue and be infused by this See ya Yeah, so sometimes we yeah Just one moment we have one question that and then we go to you But are you going to comment? I wanted to add to that. So in in carpentries workshops, we have helpers So sometimes if the person like that is really advanced Just make him a helper. Yeah, that's that works great one thing that I thought matter was going to say but in software and data carpenter normally would give Pink and a green sticker for each one of the students and we ask them to put the pink Seeker when if you have any issue like oh something on this commands not working There's a error and I need help to solve that. Oh, oh, I still need more time to finish the exercise And the green stickers when they are okay, like oh, I finished the exercise So this is very useful for us as instructors because we can go to one of the Students that finish the exercise and say oh, do you want to try to make these are the change of People that are at finish they can say oh my colleague at my Side that he needs some help so he can start in talking Do you want to add something about it? No, so going to the guy on that So we try to Thank you, we're going to that guy. Thank you I Think of who you pair with or so depends on the type of the exercise is that you're making so I think indeed that's a That's a really good if you're doing something when you know that that might be a mistake, etc But if he's just Trying to to help someone solve an exercise and thinking about it together, etc I think that actually works better. So it really depends on this thing. Thank you're going to question So I have a counter argument actually so very often like I see it myself Very often if you have to explain you think you understand something you think you know well And you try to explain it to someone and you realize like I don't I don't know what I'm talking about or like I Don't like I was wrong like when I try to think about because you have to think about it much deeper If you want to explain it so that might help, but I agree with you that in some cases that might be Yeah, please So I have an answer to that actually so one way we try to avoid it and I'm also guilty of that Yeah, so I have a tendency of like trying to overpower So if I need to show someone something I will try to take over the keyboard. This is something that we Never allowed to take over the keyboard or never take over the keyboard yourself You sit back and you explain to the person who's learning and I think that this helps a lot with it. So Then you have to add just to the pace of the novice and you're not allowed to Yeah Overpower basically the person Tony So, yeah, so our undergraduate I had these supervisions where you'd be putting groups of two or three and then you'd discuss your homework with a PhD student or a tutor and For one of my computer science courses I was paired with a couple of computer scientists and as a physicist who only been coding for a month I was completely lost and the supervisions were entirely at their pace I sat there feeling completely stupid not understanding anything and it was awful And I had to go and beg to be paired with someone who was more like my level and after that was so much better But it was the worst experience ever So I think that could have been helped a lot If the person who was leading the tutorial had actually Encouraged me to speak up because I didn't get everything wrong. I mean I felt like I did but If I'd have been encouraged to actually speak up because I didn't feel confidence speaking in front of these people who I felt Knew everything and I didn't and so really if I'd have been encouraged a lot more it would have helped But yeah, there's definitely dangers of pairing mix abilities in that way Just one moment ceiling to going to say something Something which is not related to teaching coding but teaching creative writing at the Ministry of Stories. So I Was taking care of two child two children They were supposed to work on something like creating a poem or a story about their pets or something like that And one of the little girls was like completely Unresponsive she looked like really sad and I asked her are you okay? What happened and she would just wouldn't answer The other kids were not really paying so much attention to her So it was quite difficult to just not make her work, but just really make her Happy to think what was going wrong and what can I do to help her and at some point the other kids? I was with just started to literally take over and since she's also a kid it actually also made sense that She that she would do that So she wouldn't feel indeed maybe the distance with me for instance and she started to sit next to the other little young Say okay, it's fine. What did you want to write about your cat? Okay, let's start with that sentence and she literally started the story and the other kid got engaged into it and Actually finished a pretty amazing Story by the end of the session. So it was like yeah, that's awesome. So it happened without me But yeah, that was quite quite interesting. So Thank you to raise like that sometimes can be dangerous to people when you pad and especially when you first And to be working pairs Something that not sometimes we suggest is that people attend our workshop in groups especially like universities or other Work community workshops because if you have someone that it's your friend. Maybe you're going to be less scary More friend, which like keep on the same pace of the other people in enjoy. Do you want to? Comment anything else? Who was okay? No, just get out. So the guy on the black t-shirt and the other guy and then you later I Yeah, so I would say for instance games and making them understand that they can hike into Minecraft or just help shape the world at some point by either creating website or creating games themselves So just related to something they enjoy It really make a lot of sense for them. So they just want to to go in and create something also Sometimes they want to do it because they want to impress like their friends, etc But I think it also works better in the long term if you can make understand was real life example Sonic pie I was saying before is also useful because the example is about music so for kids that also like that It's they really learn concept and sometimes quite advanced concepts even like threads and things like that They can that actually makes sense when they start to program music with it So I would say yeah things that are really grounded and in areas that They would enjoy so you can always ask them like what do you like in life? And you can always obviously find an example where programming might be useful and you can just Try to explain for instance when I was a kid I didn't know much about computing, but I was really interesting in so many different things like archaeology or art or also physics And I realized later than actually all those areas could be linked with Computing because you could be a programmer and work in all those different areas So it's just the cross all the cross domain possibility of computing which is amazing so So your question, please great question So for a workshop that I helped out with recently we had a survey beforehand So it was a very short survey to try and encourage people to actually fill it out so I think there were five questions and it just asked What kind of experience people had so whether they've been like how often they did programming? What languages that may be experienced before and also what they wanted to get out of the course the kind of what they were interested in learning? Because that really meant that we could tailor the course to their needs and requirements Yeah, yeah, so for the carpentries workshop the survey is there You can also just have some kind of questions do formative assessment to get an idea. I think it works really well Now you can have these applications with the clickers so that people can answer quickly a BCD And you look at the distribution of the answers and you can adjust so you start start the workshop with 10 10 easy questions and you will have some overview of the levels in the group and then you can go from there In code for life we have something interesting in rapid router, which is with still online and not seeing people But actually we have like coins that you can win after each level So you can win a coin if you manage to finish the level But you can win other coins if you manage to like sort of optimize it a bit So then all the teachers which are registered to code for life can see all the coins that their students have And it's also easier for them to understand at the quick glance after like a first session Who's advanced and who's not and try to make the effort later on in the right direction Just addition I go to her and then Just addition is that sometimes it's can be very very difficult to just assess How much people know because if you have something that's very long people are not going to fill the survey and if you have open Opening questions like you don't get answers that you want for me something that was very useful was like if you have Breakfast before the workshop where people come then you can start to talk with people and at least you Ask a few questions and then you can have a better not 100% better But you have idea of what was previous experience from people and so on so you can Prepare a little of yourself. What's all your expectation and what are the expectations of people that are coming for the workshop So I think one advice is if you have those questions for the for the assessment at the beginning You have to be very specific in those questions. Yeah, so you ask about specific things because first people are very Bad in judging how good they are and the novices don't know what they don't know So they they really if you if you if you want to get some good idea The it has to be have you ever used the terminal window or things like that they then they can answer Sorry, yeah, I think it's also like I don't know if you were the keynote by Tracy Osborne But there were some very interesting there also about the fact that it's not just beginner Advances etc, but it can be a dot of different topics So I completely agree with that for instance in rapid router where we teach different concept like if statement for loops, etc And I say it's quite easy to see with the coins you earn which concept you might know or not And it's really like that the drop down of the concepts and understand which one they understand or not and then trying to understand how you can Really teach that that notion but not just yeah, are you good at broccoli? Are you good at bison? The kids are I don't know It's normal Thank you. So we go to the lady at the back then we go into you and then you okay Let's use us again to you and you so first I think it really helps if the group so if you have a set of instructors and helpers It helps if like the more heterogeneous they are the better because then you can always fit in to different target audience and I think the other thing is It's I hope it answers your question But We try to like we think that people the best for teaching are actually people not very advanced yet So it has to be people who who are not novices anymore, but they They still remember how it is to be a novice and then they don't feel too competent Let's say so they they have to be I mean they have to be competent But they they're not they're still remember and they it's easier for them to put themselves in the shoes of the of the learners I think that helps really well. So at the workshops The Carpages workshops we invite very often people who just they just did the workshop and we see that they're like more advanced We encourage them to go forward and become instructors or maybe first come as a helper And then the second time come because I'm come as a deserter It's very easy to forget when you get get to advance to forget how it is and like what kind of questions you had What kind of challenges there and the ministry of stories? We also have something that we do at the beginning of a session We take the exercise that the kids are going to make and we try to apply ourselves to it very shortly by drawing something in relation to To the same so for instance It's not just a nice breaker that we do at the beginning of the session with kids And we do it also ourselves as the adult volunteers And then we show the kids what we have come up with so that can be for instance draw a building And at each floor you put like your favorite books or things that you liked about some books Etc. And we all are very actually keen to do the drawings ourselves and we tend to be pretty Pretty dedicated to it But then in the end it's also the kids know that you have done it too That you are just not above that and that it's actually not a dumb exercise for instance So it also helps to put yourself in their shoes and try to spark your own creativity before And so I think teaching the teachers is definitely important So I mean software carpentry before you do your become an instructor you have in shock to training And the material from there is like from a more educational perspective So it's people who know about education and know about education concepts and they teach you all of these things And so yeah at Southampton before I did any demonstrating we had to go and we had to do a course And it was taught by education people and I mean I hated it We all hated it at the time, but it did at least because we were like we know how to teach it's easy But no, I mean it did at least make us think about different things that you wouldn't otherwise think about so how to deal with Like less able students and mixed abilities and stuff and so yeah, definitely at least trying to teach The educators a bit more I think helps so This is something that the carpentries. We really think like we want Teachers to learn from each other. That's why we never teach alone in the in the class. Yeah, there's always our teacher we Learn how to get feedback on the teaching every workshop We after the workshop we sit down and we discuss and we get feedback from from helpers from learners We collect the feedback from the learners and we try to improve teaching We believe that teachers are not born. They're made like you have to Everyone sucks at the beginning like the first lesson you suck and you just that's and you improve and the next workshop You're better the next one should be better and you learn what you suck the most at and then you try to improve that and You you learn from other learners. We try to I Try to teach always like always with a new people so I like going to other to other places for the workshop so that I can teach with someone else and Learn their style. Everyone has his own learning side. There is no one way of learning of teaching Yeah, so everyone teaches in some other way. They have their their style and yep Okay People know how Okay, so I'd like to Get your opinion on when we talk about the part of programming course So I think this you can never really introduce it too early I mean from my experience. I didn't learn version controls till I started my PhD and at that point I'd done quite a lot of programming. I'd done a whole masters project in C++ and Really suffered from not having used version control. It was awful And I mean I feel once you explain to people how useful it is. It's really it's not that difficult a concept I mean understanding how git works that is I mean, I have no idea But definitely just using basic version of trial. It's so useful. I really think it should be introduced like less than one Yeah So I mean, yeah, I don't design the undergraduate courses if I did I would introduce it earlier I don't think it's actually even in the curriculum at the moment But now you said that I might have words because I know who writes the courses No, just that I was actually thinking after you took actually to add some things in rapid return to teach the basics of Version control to the kids because right now The only thing that they can do with their code is save them so they can save the workspace Which is for instance, they can start a level and save things But that's it. It's just the same name, etc But maybe we can find a better way to To teach them and still not being led to To drive but yeah, so the version control is the in core curriculum for software carpentry It's not for data carpentry So yeah, we try to teach I find it very difficult to sell people are One thing that I always show. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the PhD comic If you have a research background you probably do there is one cartoon Which is when they send so there is a PhD student and supervisor and they sent by email the PhD thesis beg and forth and it's like version 1 version 2 version 2.2 version final 1 version final 2 and In the end it's like few lines of Title and that that's how I and they asked and like is it familiar to you and then that's why we have version control But it's it's super difficult to sell how I try to do it now and I think like a Lot of people will not agree with me But I'm really happy that there is github with the user interface where I can show researchers This is so github uses gith in the back You can use it like this and I sell it as a collaborative tool So that this is how you can collaborate with your other researchers You can set up a website with like two clicks You will have your your personal website and once they learn that I hope that they will start learning What is actually behind it the The gith and I know that not not everyone agrees because people think like we shouldn't be showing people gooey Yeah, like show them hardcore terminal, but I I don't think it works. It just doesn't sell so So this was a personal experience of me. I teach kids a few times and Most of the times I was using just one file So I have like one read me file and that's a mocked our file and like we sat in writing some things and then we commit Then you go to go check out and you send to github and so on so learners they just get used to all the git crypti command line interface, but there was one One student on the last workshop the students. She asked me So I still didn't get how useful is git like or why it's supposed to use that and then after talk of her I understand what was my mistake my mistake was that I was only use one file Because if I have only one file probably I don't need to go back to the history It's just one file or I can just save with a different name and it's going to be fine But then if you have experience as a pie to developer or just doing program in any other language You know, that's not going to work that way because once you save the file with a different name Then we need to change all your imports So in face of having like import full now you have to change all your import to import full two Importful three and so on so then I learned my mistake and like the next time I'm going to use at least two files to make that Learning difficult much more easy for the students to get But yeah, I think that it would be nice to introduce kit at the very beginning but still quite challenge most because like as Completely novice that someone that never program they don't see the advantage very far very soon Do you still have a question I comment. Yeah, I'm not sure if I understand your question. Can you? Rephrase that I think that like it's It's very difficult just to say that because it's a personal choice I think like I don't have any design skills My if I need to paint something I'm very very bad But I think that maybe if I want to start work hard and prove my I could But it's going to take time So it's like how much time I want to put that and trying to make me better But do you want to comment? So yeah, so in first year undergraduate courses quite often you see people who they really struggle So in the first term like they're struggling you see them every single session They turn up to every session and they struggle so much and you kind of wonder like is this course for them? Like should you really maybe talk to them? But I mean in my experience in my first year when I did computer science I struggled so much and it was just the course was pitched wrong Because I didn't have the same background as other students and it just all went slightly too fast for me So I kind of know that and I mean now I write code. I program supercomputers It it wasn't just that I was not a good programmer It's just the course was wrong for me and so when I have students like that I really just try to find other materials and other approaches to learning out there I can point them to so it might just be the course is not for them and they need a slightly different approach and to learning these things Yeah, I Agree, I think this also relates to the today's keynote There are so many different ways to it and on the other hand I also think this is not the programming problem Yeah, this is like people like I There are people who are very determined to become great cooks and they will never become great cooks Yeah, and and first if they're so determined probably if you tell them that they shouldn't they won't they won't listen to it anyways and But I think in the in the end this is like so heterogeneous Topic words and so that like there are so many different ways and and also we have so many Stirrups around it that Maybe they just have to find their own way of programming. Yeah, that they will be amazing yet Why not? Yeah And if you are my talk on Tuesday, but I was talking about I get who is a friend of mine and my boyfriend's best friend She's She was taught when she was young that she could never be any good at math or programming So some someone told her that because she was a woman But someone else just because though she was a not any good and nothing would happen because she went bad at theoretical mathematics and they thought it meant that she could never be a developer guess what she's a developer now And it's just also this idea of grounded mathematics or grounded knowledge that worked for her so Just also remember that the memory works also in different ways some people have a visual memory some more auditory memory or Feeling memory etc. So I think sometimes yeah It's mostly about the different teaching approaches that might work or not work But I wouldn't dismiss someone as it's like it's not for you right now And also it's awful when you hear that so that's just I got out the hand So we're going to the guy that then you then you then you sorry to try to control the room too much I just went to second Alice and there was on the keynote. She was saying I'm Visual learner and Sometimes this is the case of your friend most of all the courses. They are trying to teach you with videos or Audio or just stacks and sometimes you need like more visual things to learn and this remembers me like when I was on my undergrad doing the Introduction to calculus and there is mostly two books that people is using there is one book that was Calculus almost for dummies and there's another one that was like calculus for PhD students or postgraduate students and Like depending of which one of the professors that you have the cause he just speak one of the books and Even if you have like all other suggestions readings But that's the cause of the the book of the cost of like you more or less need to read that and Sometimes you struggle because you're not on the streams You are on the middle and then you don't know like sometimes is the day that you feel very good because if the day exercise Or sometimes like I spend two hours three hours almost the day trying this exercise and I still on this step zero So yeah Do you want to comment? Yeah Just also something that teachers say they like most about our rapid router game is our levels Which are blocky to Python because it's a very visual way for the kids to have next to it The the graphical programming of blocky and the text programming of Python So when they add a blocky block they can see directly where he's going what it looks like in Python so it's just a way to introduce them to Python without Going straight to it for instance and they can see that it's the same that you just a concept Express differently in a different language and they have this like this visual thing going on. So yeah Yep I Yeah, so This is one of the things that we try to show is that you can make mistakes and actually like you learn through mistakes and we so we actually Like making mistakes when we teach. Yeah, we we make a mistake and we say oh I have an error now Yeah, and I explained the error and I take the opportunity to actually teach more through the error But I also introduced that there is nothing wrong like Errors are normal the being like making mistakes is normal like computer doesn't explode Everything is fine and it also applies to others. So I think this is The whole topic of like the fears of people this is like if you want people to learn You have to first challenge their fears and one of the things that I have with researchers. I'm a big fan of open science open research collaboration researchers are like some at least are very afraid of like Making the research open they they're afraid they'll be scooped whatever and Or they that also translates to like when they start programming there will be afraid of putting their code out there on github and then We show them okay So you put your code on github and it's like the word didn't collapse like it's all fine It's not like everyone immediately looked at your code and got angry about it like at you or something No, it's it's it's fine. Yeah, it's it's okay. So I think this is something that you can try just to show that it's not It's it's fine Yeah, so something that I noticed in the undergraduate courses is you get some students and as soon as they're stuck They put up their hand and I every five minutes I'll put up their hands because they just don't know how to search for answers So I we teach using spider So I really I always try to show them like this is how you find a documentation Then I explain to them This is how you read the documentation because if you've never seen it before it's not that great And then I show them how to like play around with the terminal and like try out different values to really explore how things work So yeah, definitely teaching people how to find the answers themselves is definitely a valuable thing to teach and include Sorry you and in the front you had that question go Yeah, so on the back. Yeah, you want a green t-shirt. Thank you You and then you on the black one Oh Just yeah, yeah, so, okay Also, they don't want to be confronted with the problem You don't know what is going on in the mind of a child, but it's having a problem Maybe he's not the one that keeps or wants to keep on Sitting there and thinking about it Maybe he wants to walk away have a nice dream and then he comes back with it with the best solution I Agree with you sometimes you just need to start thinking about the problem any comments Yeah, so speaking of which we also so we teach children But we also have to teach the teachers first, right because we our games are mostly using coding clubs and Mostly schools and sometimes the teachers themselves are the one which actually are not confident with their skills They don't know sometimes why they have to teach coding is just because the UK curriculum says they have to but they don't Necessarily see the point themselves I think the kids might be better than them and usually it's actually the case so they actually all their fears They're speaking of fears. They have all of them. So that's why we're trying to also break down all the exercises to Make it sound like it's not magical I think it's important because there's like at the keynote this morning It's not something like you want to look like you're an expert and blah blah blah But at some point if people think that it's an area they can never reach into There's a problem so for instance In in my team we have a UX designer Which actually has a some front end knowledge, but he stopped Becoming a stopped doing programming because he didn't feel confident at all and also he felt that programmers were people that knew Magically about everything and every that they knew all the syntax of every programming languages and they could just code Magically and at some point we were talking about something because we needed someone to help review some front-end And I don't have a lot of front-end skills and say James you do have some front-end skills Can you look at that? I was like, yeah, but you know, I'm not really confident to say you know more than I do Say okay fine, but I don't know about that. Okay. Sure. Let's Google it and we say, okay. You actually just program using Google Yes and he said yeah That's actually a good thing to learn is that it's not like a mystery and we all like to appear like we know everything But that's not true We like to program with Stack Overflow and Google like like everybody and just demystifying it It's also a good way to make people understand that They might not be afraid, but yeah, just breaking down for things. It also works for for teaching the teachers There is very nice term Demagification and this is basically what we want to do we want to show there is no magic behind it Yeah, like there is it's it's simple you have to break it down and this is how it works and People who do it are not magicians. They're just like humans like everyone else. Yeah, and they learned it through making mistakes Yeah, so one thing that I find really useful to see is life-coding examples because you're gonna make so many errors and so many typos and Possibly even just get completely lost and have to Google something at one point And it's so useful seeing the people who you think are just like magicians and know everything They also make mistakes, too. So I think that's really helpful to have Thank you You okay? What session is it? on on to link Okay, thank you very much. I think for your second question about the feedback One thing that you try to do is like as people to feel the feedback when they are still on the workshop room Because this increase the numbers About the other question. I don't have any magic bullet for you But I'm going to pass if people have any good experience How we gather feedback in Software carpentry workshops, this is my teaching with some pens But there's something that we use a lot in software carpentry workshops. These are the post-it notes And we use them like Ranier mentioned for to see for example if people need help Then they put the pink sticky or red sticky And the helper will come over and without disturbing the whole group will help solve the problem If we want to know if people solved all the exercises or like are up to speed They put the yellow sticky, but we also do We ask people to put feedback after the workshop on there So they put positive feedback on the yellow one and the negative on the on the pink one but the thing that works the best is One up one down we call it And it's we ask Everyone in the group for feedback, but we ask one person for positive So the good thing and the thing to improve is the next person But they're not allowed to repeat after them after the previous person. So After a while you come up with like more deep things And they can't escape. Yeah, so that like we're not going to let them leave the room before they say give Some feedback there. Yeah. Oh Yeah, I completely agree with that. It works well Also in software teams actually where you think like retrospective after the sprints and I did once a thinking had type of retrospective where at some point you have ten minutes and people are forced to only say negative things about how it Happened I could see my team starting to melt down like I don't want to say negative And actually that's how we get the most useful feedback to help us grow as a team and work better So yeah, completely agree with that. Just another point on feedback. So We are programming online games So it's quite difficult to just see people interacting So we put a lot of emphasis on user experience and having a user researcher in the team that will talk to Teachers to kids to understand how we can make things better. So just continuous feedback really but yeah, it's quite Difficult to do that because sometimes people just won't say I say bad things to you So you have to say before like even you lie and you say I didn't program that you can say if it's shit And they were sorry But well they will they will they will not necessarily tell you so you have to pay attention to that So that's what anonymous feedback can also work So if they put their comment on the post it notes at the end of the session without you watching it They might be more honest Yeah, yeah, I forgot Yeah, so I think it also helps to rephrase it instead of having positive and negative It could be what went well and take a look at for example And it's much easier to say something take a look at then I'm going to be negative now and tell you yeah and question I just say so for undergraduate lectures they used to hand out feedback forms and it was like at least two sides of paper And I like I bring it to the next lecture and hand it in or put it in this pigeon hole on the other side of campus and I Never did that. It's just like no I think the only times I filled it in this one I had really awful lecturers and you'd just be like this was terrible. I learned nothing. You are awful So yeah, just making it really easy and having like limiting the number of questions So if you want to find something out kind of prioritize and only put the really important ones because people are lazy And they're not going to tell you things unless you make it easy for them I know that we have two questions there, but we are almost out of time So I'm going to ask you and say your two questions over lunch after the talk Sorry Okay yeah, and When I'm organizing try to pass all the feedback to anyone that's helping me Just to connect with your question and try to finish this As we know there's many groups worldwide are trying to develop lessons to teach people But this collaborative part of developing the lesson can be quite challenge So this is going to be my last question to all the panelists if you have a magical lamp and The genius is going to give you one wish To solve or improve how people develop and lessons collaborative What are you going to ask for the genius? Okay So what I what I would ask in terms of lesson development I would say like stop people from writing their own lecture materials that they keep in their shelves This is like the mode like this is So much time like the time in the world is wasted for like you have all those lectures They will prepare the lecture that will get outdated the next year. They won't share it. They don't yeah Like no one can reuse it. I think this is For me would say also Something to help you put your ego away a bit when you're teaching So some people can if without noticing they might sound arrogant etc. And that's also we're talking about the fears But this fear can be ungray if you hear your teacher saying things like oh, yeah, that's not real programming But we'll do that after or Hope what did you do that or sometimes you can't catch yourself doing that But that's good if you try to put your ego away and to make sure that you don't sound arrogant that you sound inclusive that you don't Judge what people have been doing because then that just probably is why people fear of being of looking stupid Okay, so are there is two two announcements? What time is your open session? To today to two To four five and then there was another open session for education. What time So if you want to continue this question, there's two open sessions Just look on the board on them how and a round of applause to all you that was on audience and just make this panel much better Thank you very much. Thank you