March 7, 2024 • 43 mins
In this episode I explore pedagogy, the art of teaching, with the help of highly experienced computer science teacher Andy Colley. We talk explicit instruction, cold calling, checking for understanding, PRIMM and much more, and agree that lots of computing-related jokes are not very funny. I wrestle with a printer and Andy goes off on a tangent more than once. A bumper 43-minute episode you cannot miss!
Transcript here: httcs.online/pod004
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Buy me a coffee here: ko-fi.com/mraharrisoncs thanks! Enjoy :)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Hello.
Welcome to how to teachcomputer science, the podcast.
This is episode four.
How do we really teach computer science?
I'll be answering that questionand many more with the help
of today's special guest.
every time I make a joke in class,I say to the kids, I say, there
aren't many computing jokes and theones there are aren't very good.
No, that is true.
So I'm trying to buck that trend.
(00:29):
I'm trying to bring in somenew humor to the subject.
I think it's necessary.
I
think that might be a bigger taskthan sorting out the pedagogy but.
Yeah, it
could well be.
Yeah
More on that in a moment.
My name's Alan Harrison, and I wrote thebooks how to teach computer science on
how to learn computer science availablein online bookstores, more details at
(00:51):
the companion website HTTCS dot online.
That's the initials of.
How to teach computer science.
HTTCS doc online.
You know, it's been quite a week.
I've had a lot of feedback on the podcast.
Most of it positive.
Thank you so much.
And I was in a teams meetingwith other teachers of GCSE and
A-level computer science this week.
Run by AQA.
Thank you, Steve Kenny for inviting me.
(01:13):
And there was a lot of love forthe podcast and it seems you
appreciate my humor, which is nice.
But I did say there are a load ofcheesy computing jokes, which are
not going to make it into the partssuch as why do computer scientists
confuse Halloween and Christmas?
Because OCT 31 equals DEC 25.
Like I say, I won't be doingcheesy jokes like that.
(01:34):
But just for Ian Bissix in the AQAmeeting, this is for you Ian what
sits on your shoulder, shoutingpieces of seven pieces of seven.
A parroty error.
Which reminds me, what's a Pirate'sfavorite programming language.
Ye might think it'd be Rbut his first love be the C.
(01:56):
If you like this content,please subscribe.
Tell your friends, buy mybooks at HTTCS dot online.
Leave a review on Amazon, orat the very least buy me a
coffee details on the website.
Every week, I will transcribethis recording and blog it at
HTTCS dot online slash blog.
If you prefer reading, you can alwaysprint my blog and read it on the
train like it's the 1990s again.
(02:17):
Talking of printing.
I was going to put this story in thebook, but I'm not sure of its veracity.
a listen and tell me what you think.
We have to go over to Germany inthe 15th century for this story.
1440.
Johannes Gutenberg has justinvented the printing press.
And just five minutes later at1445, the printing press has
(02:38):
invented the first paper jam.
And at 1530, despite printingonly in black and white.
Johannes printing press hasdemanded a magenta ink refill.
Gutenberg's invention heralded whathistorians call the printing revolution.
(03:02):
Although teachers are waiting forthe second printing revolution
where they all just work.
swear the teacher workload crisisis caused by 15 hours a week of
marking and 20 hours clearing otherpeople's paper, jams and screaming.
Jean!
Where the hell is theduplexing unit cover?
(03:24):
My advice.
Stop printing anything at all.
Use OneNote as theirdigital exercise books.
And when mocks come around, use yourschool's printing service, often described
in that unique way schools have ofclinging onto nostalgic terms from a
bygone age as the reprographics service.
Make sure you greet Mina inreprographics every morning, and
don't forget her at Christmas andshe'll print your stuff first.
(03:56):
This week on the podcast, I havea special guest he's been a CAS
Master teacher for many years.
He wrote the excellentPython course for REPLIT.
And is very active on X, formerly Twitterwhen CAS chat comes around every Tuesday.
I'm delighted to welcome a fellowcomputer science teacher, Andy Colley.
How are you, Andy?
I'm very well, thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
It's slightly unusual this because I'mpretty much sat up in my spare room and I
(04:20):
reckon if I look out of the window on myleft, I could probably wave to you because
you're about two streets away from me.
And yet we're using the magicof the Internet to record this.
Maybe next time we'llget in the same place.
So the how the tables have turnedbecause I was on your podcast
probably a couple of years ago now.
So just Fill us in.
What's your podcast about Andy?
(04:42):
I mean I've never been one to be backwardabout coming forward, but for those of you
who don't know me, my name is Andy Colley.
I am a rather fancily titledDirector of Computing, which is a
posh title for Head of Subject at aschool called Laurus Cheadle Hulme
in Cheadle Hulme, South Manchester.
And in my spare time when I'mnot teaching people, I like
to talk about teaching people.
(05:03):
And one of the ways I do that isthrough a podcast called Learning Dust
with an unbelievably good better half,podcast wife on there called Dave
Leonard, who is a network manager a MATnetwork lead, IT director and so on.
And he's fabulous.
He was one of the first people to steer mycareer down the way of using technology.
(05:23):
Pedagogy first technology, if you will.
Not just using it because it's a shinybox, but using it because It helps
learners improve the way they learnand remember more and be able to do
more.
Yeah, he's an all roundgood egg, Dave, isn't he?
I keep bumping into himas well at conferences.
I know he's annoyingly popular, isn't he?
Yeah.
But you called that podcast Learning Dust.
(05:45):
Just remind me wherethat phrase came from.
I think the first time I heard it was backat a conference called Rethinking ICT.
In about 2010, I want to say, and itwas Professor Tom Crick who used the
phrase, he said, magic learning dustdoes not fall out of the bottom of
an iPad, just because they're usingtechnology doesn't mean that automatically
(06:07):
the learning is going to happen.
And I've remembered it for years andyears because the way I've taught
and developed my career over thelast 20 years in education is I was
an advanced skills teacher, I was alead practitioner for teaching and
learning, I'm now running a subject.
Throughout all of that it's about howdo you do what you do in the classroom
(06:28):
to the best effect so that your kids.
Learn as much as possible for thatlimited amount of time they are
with you and then can remember itfor the next time you see them.
Absolutely and hence our shared belief inthe need to plan really effective lessons,
not see if we can use this new shinything that's come out and and is going
(06:51):
to, oh, the latest thing that's going torevolutionize education, let's throw that
into the classroom and see if it does.
You're dead right and what we were sayingjust before we started recording was that
I think we're in such a much better placenow both as the teaching profession and.
Also as computer scienceteachers in particular about
information about pedagogy thatworks, best practice pedagogy.
(07:16):
Dylan Wiliam speaks a lot of sense.
He says, everything works somewhere.
But what we do have now is aset Of best bets, if you will.
Of things that have beenshown to work in a majority of
situations that we can default to.
I like to call it minimum best practice.
So there are certain techniques thatyou use with questioning, that you use
with explanation, that you use withmodelling, that are my default techniques.
(07:40):
And from there, I've raised the floor.
Yeah, if my department are using coldcalling and think pair share as their
default questioning techniques, if we'reusing mini whiteboards as our default
check for understanding, if we're usingdual coding and live modeling as our
default method of explanation, then thatfloor standard is a much higher, and
(08:02):
there's much more consistency in terms ofIt sounds flippant, but the worst it can
possibly be, and then, what I say to mydepartment is okay, that's our minimum.
If you're going to do somethingdifferent, let's make it better
than what we've already got.
And we can use that as our benchmark.
And like I say, we've got so much moreinformation now, I'm looking at the Teach
(08:23):
Computing, Big Book of Pedagogy here.
And there's what, a dozen thingsin there, a dozen concepts.
Alan's reaching for his as we speak.
This is live podcast.
Yep, here we go.
Ta da!
There's page five.
There's a dozen things there.
Yeah absolutely.
This is I was going to talk about this.
I'm flicking it infront of the microphone.
Like that's helpful when we'reon a podcast, but yeah, it's I
(08:46):
like what you say about a sortof a floor level of performance
and then you can build on that.
So I do recommend everyone readssomething like the Big Book of Pedagogy.
There's other stuff out there now,like you say, loads of it that
we have access to now in the last10 years, like Sue Sentance's,
computer science, education book.
(09:08):
And I wrote a book by the way, Idon't know if you heard about that.
And I do mention it occasionally.
Yeah.
And William Lau's and many others.
What I tried to gather wassome of the best bits of , it's
a bit of a magpie book.
Really, I magpied all the best bitsof pedagogy from other people's
(09:29):
research, but I did credit everybody.
So yeah, I like what you're saying about,questioning and whiteboards and there's
sometimes I come across people who sayoh we're in a computing room we've got to
use the computers all the time and I thinkgood teaching is good teaching you don't
have to be on the computers all the time.
Magic learning dust does not fallout of the bottom of an iPad.
Exactly you
know if it's the best tool foreither explaining something to
(09:52):
them or checking that they'velearned what you've taught them.
Or getting them to practiceindividually, what you've learned,
what you've taught them, then if thebest tool for that is a pencil and
paper, then use a damn pencil and
paper.
Mini whiteboards are brilliant.
I've used them for years.
And, And, you can ask a question andbear in mind there is what people
(10:12):
call a lot of theory to our subject.
There's a lot to know.
There's a lot of declarativeknowledge as well as procedural
knowledge, if we're using thoseterms in the Ofsted Research Review.
You've got to check for understandingand that's a skill that we can use in
any classroom with mini whiteboards.
One thing I would say is I did startto, I did use occasionally something
(10:33):
called Socrative and of coursethe poll option and just asking
questions in Teams if you're on Teams.
So you can use technologyto imitate mini whiteboards.
And I like the, this Socrative.
com would allow you to ask a question,they would put their answers in, and then
you could choose two or three to push backto the students in a poll of best answers.
(10:53):
And so you can tweak.
The check for understanding with a miniwhiteboard with technology in some ways,
but it's still a check for understanding.
Yeah, once I've got the mini whiteboardsup, I will get some off the students,
particularly if we're learning howto write code fragments and I will
put them under the visualizer.
And then we'll debug them togetheror they will discuss what I like
(11:15):
about this particular example orwhere they've used, let's say,
variable assignment in here and so on.
But I'm I'm zooming we'rezooming right in at the moment.
If I back off a minute and look at bigprinciples in terms of information about
teaching in general, Daniel Willinghamsaid memory is the residue of thought.
For me, that's my Occam's razor.
That is, is.
(11:36):
Everything I'm doing in the classroom,getting the kids thinking hard about
what I want them to think about.
sometimes that can mean that I have tostop doing something really good to make
sure that we're doing something better.
A great headteacher once saidto me, if they're learning,
get the hell out of the way.
I like it.
(11:56):
And I have been as guilty as anyoneof having a lovely computing adjacent
discussion and if I've got a class that'sinterested and engaged, I will swerve off
what I want them to learn in the lessonand I'll stay off that for too long.
Oh yeah, my kids knew how to getme off on tangents but yeah.
(12:17):
eah talking of tangents.
We're just going to pause the interviewwith Andy Colley there and have a
quick look at next week's podcast.
But I will just say that one of the thingsthat I personally find really irritating
is when People think, oh, how can weget more girls into computer science?
Let's make the projects more girly.
And then they have like, , perfumeor nail polish or pink or something.
(12:41):
And as someone who's not interestedin that, I think many girls will spot
that immediately, and they'll be like,oh, honestly, this is really annoying.
That was a sneak previewof next week's podcast.
You're not going to want to miss it.
That was Anna Wake whowith her cousin, Harry.
Was talking about.
(13:02):
Getting girls into computingand their website mission.
encodable, it's a fab podcast next week.
Subscribe now, but firstback to Andy Colley.
if I've got a class that's interestedand engaged, I will swerve off what
I want them to learn in the lessonand I'll stay off that for too long.
(13:23):
I'm all over that.
The Willingham quote.
I use that a lot.
And it leads onto the ratioblogs from Adam Boxer.
Yeah.
And Ben Newmark's Golden Silence.
Um, Yes.
So it's, frightening sometimes when,kids are silently working, you think,
oh God, I should say something, butthe pressure to fill the void, yep.
Like I say, I like that quote, get outof the way if they're learning, and the
(13:46):
ratio thing, in case listeners haven'theard about it, is, what percentage of
my pupils are thinking hard about thestuff they should be thinking hard about
We were talking about that semanticwaves idea there we've introduced
the abstract idea of ratio.
Let's zoom into an example now.
For example questioning in the classroom.
If I say to you, Alan, what is this?
(14:08):
The moment I say Alan, everyone elsein that classroom stops thinking.
Yes.
Yeah, or if I go for hands up, thenthere are some kids who can quite
happily sit there and never put ahand up and never have to think.
Whereas if I say, I'm going to aska question, I want everybody to
think about their answer, and I'mgoing to take several responses.
Yeah.
Ask the question, pause, then Alan.
(14:30):
Now, the number of students thatare thinking up to the time I say
the name is hopefully everyone.
And then, because I've saidI'm going to take several
responses, I can move it around.
And that's, that's the sort of Thenutshell of cold calling, isn't it?
Yeah,
it is.
And I was talking about this.
I was delivering a course at the STEMCentre in York a few weeks ago and
(14:52):
we were talking about questioning.
And I brought up the fact thatnovice teachers often don't.
really understand the purpose ofquestioning and they remember their school
days of teacher asking a question and kidsput the hand up, teacher asked the child
who put the hand up and everyone moved on
we have to make explicit for noviceteachers what questioning is about and
(15:14):
it's a pedagogical technique that ensuresthat the students are all thinking
about what you want them to think about.
In a sense, getting the rightanswer is really not important.
The thinking is what's important.
And you mentioned cold call,which is what it's called in
Teach Like a Champion, of course.
And you also mentioned something thatDoug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion
(15:36):
bloke, calls wait time as well, whichis asking a question and waiting.
All these things are little habitsbecause it's possible to do all
of this stuff really badly and Isay that from a position of having
done all this stuff really badly.
Yeah.
Early in my career, I started behindthe eight ball because I started
in the era of engagement, the eraof how many different tasks can
(15:58):
you have going on in a classroom?
As long as people look busy, that's fine.
Yeah.
And from that, I've moved to beIf I want them to learn something,
I've got to explicitly teach it tothem, and then check effectively
have they learned what I'm teaching.
So from the engagement era, thenyou go through the right it's the
slide design as lesson planning.
And you end up, especially workingwith non specialists, or you're trying
(16:21):
to produce a curriculum that can bepicked up and run by other people,
temptation is you just put everythingyou're going to say on the slide.
Absolutely.
Which is, yeah, we've all satin those insets, haven't we?
Read out of a PowerPoint, and yeah,look at what some of us do to kids.
It's funny, some of the teachers CPDhistorically has been some of the
worst teaching that any of us have had.
(16:41):
But yeah, . We're thetoughest crowd out there.
Yeah, we're, yeah, we're sat theregoing, my brain's overloaded,
why am I suffering cognitiveoverload in a teacher CPD session?
But yeah, again,
Let's dig into that then, becausethat's the first time we've mentioned
cognitive overload, isn't it?
And Sweller and his cognitive loadtheory and being a non computer scientist
who learnt to teach this subject.
(17:03):
It's really easy when youare an expert to think that
everybody else finds things easy.
I've seen so many programmingcourses that go variable assignment,
input, output, and now recursion.
Yeah, absolutely.
And there's this giantpit that you fall into.
You're on your back like aturtle and you can't get out.
And I see that look on thefaces of students all the time.
(17:24):
So, yeah, my lesson slidesnow are a lot more pared back.
There's a lot more diagramsor part diagrams that I then
complete in front of the students.
The note section is where I keepmy explanations and I don't know
how long it, I dunno, it was fartoo long it took me, but before I
started practicing my explanations.
Actually get into an empty classroomand say what you want to say.
(17:48):
Are you doing it with brevity?
Are you doing it as simply as possible?
And then you can start to build inyour analogies and your what william
Lau brilliantly talked about in termsof semantic waves where you go from
concrete to abstract to concrete back toabstract you pack you unpack and so on.
So you as an experienced teacher you pickup on a load of those analogies don't you?
(18:11):
And you've got to be super carefulabout picking those as well
because if you pick the wrong oneyou can build in misconceptions.
You know, , you bake in themisunderstandings and You can do just
as much damage with a bad analogy asyou can enlighten with a good one.
Yeah, someone pointed out to me, thevariable analogy is a box, and I've
used that with novice programmers downin year 7,8,, And the box thing comes
(18:34):
with the possibility of a number ofmisconceptions, the main one being
a box can hold many things at once.
So that's
where you check for understandingwith your mini whiteboards.
Yeah, as you get more experience youlearn that if you have a bit of code
on the screen with the variable num1being assigned I don't know four
times in ten lines You can put thatup and you can say right predict on
(18:56):
your white boards What will be storedin num1 by the end of this code?
And you're trying to draw out thatmisconception that you don't just
add them all together, or you don'tshove them all in the variable.
And by doing that with the handoverphase, the checking for understanding
phase, the sort of we do it togetherphase, and especially by, oh,
brilliant, I'm glad you thought that.
Loads of people think that when theycome across variables for the first time,
(19:18):
and we can really learn from that now.
And getting discussion going about whythis isn't the case and questioning like
that, you can turn your classroom into aplace where it's okay to make mistakes.
Absolutely.
Where we're learning from this, thisis a learning process, so we are not
afraid to have a go, 30 answers upin the air you can see 30 different
answers from 30 different brainsand pick out those misconceptions.
(19:39):
And as you get more experienced,you get better at setting up those
questions and those examples to checkfor understanding, to draw those out.
For example, when you're teachingselection and you do if age is greater
than 18, output you can vote, and then youdo what will happen for an input of 18.
Yeah.
(20:00):
Because we don't read thecomparison operator properly.
I used to call it the bouncer programbecause it was you can go into the pub
and then someone pointed out that Ishould really not be encouraging drinking.
So it became the you can vote program.
Yeah.
And yeah, you can teach, with thatone example, you can teach , variable
tracing, and dry running a program tosee if it will work and testing as well.
(20:24):
Yeah, that's.
That leads us on to that to Sue Sentance'sreally quite fantastic PRIMM, doesn't
it, in terms of code comprehension andlearning to read before you can write?
Yeah.
I put a quote in the book from DavidGries, computer science educator, 1974,
said, if you're an apprentice carpenter,you don't get given a load of tools
(20:47):
and an example of a finished cabinet,and then be told go and make one,
so the idea of PRIMM's been aroundsome time, reading code before you can
write it and getting familiar with it.
But it's good to have theresearch to back it up.
Yeah, I think also, though, being supercareful with that cognitive load theory
and that Willingham idea of introducingnew material in small steps, , again,
(21:10):
we can fall into that expert trap ofwe're teaching selection, so Yeah,
with an if and an else, and then wego to a make task and it requires
selection and oh, there's an iterationin there as well, and then we've got
lists built into the make task as well.
Who was it who described I think itmight have been Sue Sentance again.
A single line of code canbe so syntactically dense.
(21:31):
Yes.
There's so much going on.
There's so many conceptsto understand, yes.
Let's go back to selection again.
You've got the selection statement,you've then got a condition,
so you've gotta understand whata condition can be made of.
A comparison operator, it cancontain a variable, it can contain
two variables, two pieces of data,strings, integers, and then you've got
indentation, and that's a single line.
(21:52):
So much going on.
You can have a subroutine call and thenin Python, you don't even have to go if.
Valid input equals true.
You could just go if valid input.
Yeah,
hang on.
that's a fun one to discusswhen you're doing selection and
conditions and stuff equals true.
You don't need that.
Ah, yeah, but I
teach it with the equals true.
(22:14):
And then you can take itoff and explain why later.
I call it the long way roundfor a lot of my students.
I say, I'm going to teach youthe long way around and we're
going to do one thing per line.
Oh, it never stops.
This idea that we simplify forthe age or the level of the
audience that we're teaching to.
It never stops because of coursewhen you get to A level you learn
(22:34):
functional programming and when youget to university you learn all sorts
of esoteric languages that do parallelprocessing with abstraction and so on.
So the first thing that you teachchildren about programs is they
are a sequence of steps to solve aproblem and then you get to a level
and they're not anymore becausea functional program is not that.
(22:55):
So we've got this idea that we teach,abstractions again of the knowledge
at each level and then sometimeswe have to unweave the abstractions
and teach them what the truth is.
Again, it's are you baking inmisconceptions and it's really
hard because it's tricky and Iguess this is pedagogy and this
is what we have been researching
(23:17):
yeah Yeah if we move onfrom programming a minute.
What other pedagogy is therein our subject that, besides
programming I'll give you an example.
I teach networking, what's called athreshold concept of packet switching.
Yes.
Just as an aside, someone asked me,do we need to teach packet switching?
(23:38):
because it's no longer in the spec.
It's true that in the OCR spec, youdon't have to describe packet switching,
but you can't possibly understandnetworking without understanding the
threshold concept of packet switching.
So I get nervous sometimes when teachersask me, can I drop this from my classroom?
And I go no, it's a fundamental concept.
So I get it across with post its.
Post it packet switching, I callit, and they write one word on
(24:01):
each post it and they write whoit's to and the number of that.
Post it in the message and I send themaround the classroom and so these post
its are standing in for the packets andthat's my analogy but I've got to make
sure I go back up like you mentioned,go back up the semantic wave and explain
how this analogy is the same as packetswitching and the ways it's different.
(24:25):
For example, it's not one word in apacket, it's a number of bytes and so on.
Are there any other pedagogicaltricks and techniques that you
use for the non programming stuff?
Yeah my overriding thing is beforeI go into the classroom, I've really
planned what I want to say andhow I want to explain it and then
how I want the students to respondto that in the handover phase.
(24:48):
And the majority of the time thatwill be an explanation, a diagram,
checking for understanding withmini whiteboards, think pair share
discussion time or cold calling.
And again, I'm picking up onthose if I expect them to know
the answer, I'll use cold calling.
If I need them to discuss something orto have a think and safety in numbers,
that would be think pair share and so on.
I do almost something similar whenwe're talking about CPU architecture,
(25:12):
the different parts of the processor..
So we will have some students sat alongone side of the room with instructions.
On their mini whiteboards, addthis load that, do something else.
Yes.
And then in the middle of the room,on a table, I will have my CPU.
And again, it's abstraction.
So I'm using the program counter thememory address, register the memory data
(25:36):
Registered the control unit, the A LU.
So the program counter tellsthe memory address, register.
Which number instruction is nextthe memory address register then
shouts that to memory instructionone That gets brought to the front.
Yeah, and if I really want to complicateit, I will have a student counting
down as the clock So we'll have afive second clock speed Five four and
it's got to be the instructions got toarrive at the processor into the memory
(25:59):
data register control unit decodes itgives the ALU if it's Arithmetic and
so on and they've got five secondsto complete this Yeah, good stuff.
Stuff.
And then we go again and we go again.
So they're actually moving theinstructions around and if you get
a class you can trust, that's great.
Yeah exactly.
So absolutely fab.
Yeah,
.What else have I been doing?
A couple of revision sessions, with11s on binary search, and again
(26:21):
Play the high low game.
We'll play the high low game,of course we'll play the high
low game, I will read your mind.
Six guesses or fewer, 64.
But what I'll do is Before I introducebinary search In order to do that,
you've got to master finding a midpoint.
And in order to find a midpoint,you've got to do integer
division, floor division.
We will do lots of practice of floordivision to get the right answer.
(26:43):
Then we will do floordivision to find the midpoint.
Here's a list, what's the midpoint?
We'll practice several of thoseuntil I'm convinced they've got it.
And then we'll introduce theidea of binary search, so that
We're introducing in small steps.
I'm getting that high success rate.
They can all do floor division.
They can all find the midpointnow binary search midpoint is
our search item higher or lower?
(27:04):
Yeah, and then we show them how itworks So we it's just about really
thinking carefully about what I'm doingand making sure that I'm pre teaching
the skills They need for them to besuccessful because there's nothing
worse than that Jump from input torecursion when you are absolutely lost
And, and it's so easy to do.
It's so easy to do.
And startling to realize, but some of ourlovely students do not do what I do and
(27:28):
spend every minute between one lesson andthe next thinking about computer science.
No, I know.
So there is a chance that they may not.
You can't be remembering the stuffthat you want them to remember
from one lesson to the next,especially at key stage three.
Talking of remembering stufffrom one lesson to the next,
how can we help them do that?
So yeah, I'm hintingat retrieval practice.
(27:48):
You got a lot of retrievalpractice going on, Andy?
Every lesson.
Every lesson.
Every lesson.
With very few exceptions.
And again, at Key Stage 4, Smart Revisesis the best platform I've seen for that.
They're constantly making changes.
It's worth the money.
Constantly making changes and updates.
One of the best things they'vedone recently is introduce
(28:09):
topic, guided topic filtering.
So with my 10s, as I teach a topic,I can add that to the smart revised
question set that my 10s see.
And then when they do mixed retrieval,just the topics we've covered.
are built in there, becauseretrieval should be something
you've already encountered.
It's practicing remembering, isn't it?
Because when you're sat in anexam, that's all you're doing.
(28:30):
That's what revision is.
It's tricking your brain intoremembering stuff that it
really doesn't want to remember.
I know all the words tothe Neighbours theme tune.
Not doing it now.
No idea why, but for some reasonmy brain, when I first encountered
CPU architecture and parts of theprocessor, it just slid right off.
So revision is just doing and doinguntil it blooming well sticks, until
that synapse pathway is strong enough.
(28:51):
At Key Stage 3, actually, I usesomething called Quizzizz, it's
that absolutely, it's that sweetspot of engagement and hard thinking.
And if you find me on Quizzizz as Mr.
A.
Colley, you can nick all myQuestion sets and question banks
it also lets me celebrate, oh this classtoday we got 70 percent as a class.
(29:13):
Let's aim for 75, and we cangive out house points for quality
performances, things like that.
It's great.
Absolutely.
You touched on something thatWillingham said there, which was
knowing is remembering in disguise.,
that's, that links back intocognitive load theory, doesn't it?
Because when, as we keep going backto programming, because we're computer
scientists and it's what makes oursocks roll up and down, isn't it?
(29:36):
But when you see a problem to program now.
You've got a stored bank of experienceof problems like that you've seen
before, and how you saw them solved,or how you solved them yourself.
So you're not processingthat as new information.
So your experience, and the fact thatyou can retrieve those and remember
them, they're in your long termmemory, means they don't take up.
(29:57):
Any of the, is it five
blocks?
Five things
in your working memory.
Five new, five new things.
You're not trying toprocess that as a new thing.
So that frees up your working memoryto process the new things that
are different about the problem.
It also means as an expert you can usethat experience to focus on the parts of
the problem that are important to do thatmental abstraction that you need to do.
(30:19):
Whereas a New learner can't do that yet.
They've not learned what'simportant and what's not.
They give everything equal weight Sowhen you're saying it's blooming easy.
Of course you need selection there.
Of course you need a loop there Becauseyou've seen it a thousand times.
They haven't.
By practicing retrieval, by rememberingexperiences or skills we've had, you're
(30:40):
removing that cognitive load, you'reremoving the opportunity for overload,
so they can process the things thatare different about that problem.
And it's all computer sciencein disguise, isn't it?
It's pattern recognition.
Abstraction.
All of that stuff.
So, there's a reason I was talking aboutbest practice and floor levels earlier
(31:00):
and that's because this stuff is provento make it more effective for our learners
to learn new things and without cognitiveoverload because it's hard enough as it is
absolutely you said about noticing what'sdifferent and I Listened to a talk from
William Lau about Marton's variationtheory, which Really explains all that.
(31:23):
Yeah, you've heard of that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so So, giving examples and nonexamples or varying one thing at a time.
And so the learners notice thething that's varied and how
that changes the situation.
Even the way you set yourquestions up in your practice.
I've reworked my binaryconversion practice questions.
(31:46):
Yeah.
So that a lot of my examples.
change just the least significantbit from one example to the next
so they can get to spot that thenevaluates out as one higher in denary.
Yeah,.
Which brings us back to last week withAndrew Virnuls and we were talking
about this then about how the principleof the number of bits in a sample, or
(32:11):
the number of bits in the bit depthof an image, the number of bits You
have on the width of your data busand so on, are all the same thing.
And it was interesting thatAndrew said we had a chat.
A few weeks ago about the number oftopics there are in computing and
how much content there is to cover.
(32:32):
And novice computing teacherswill talk about there being
30 topics at Key Stage 3.
And Andrew and I couldprobably think of seven.
And I think it's the understanding of thesubject gives us this overarching vision
of six or seven strands that everythingrelates to, whereas novice teachers will
(32:54):
see, a unit on Photoshop as separate to aunit on vector graphics and as separate to
a unit on data representation of images.
And the hard thing is in your lessonsthen how to keep the main thing the main
thing and introduce that informationin small parts when you can see all
these really exciting joins between thetopics, and then you're off on a story.
(33:18):
Yeah.
I know, I keep, every time I make ajoke in class, I say to the kids, I say,
there aren't many computing jokes andthe ones there are aren't very good.
No, that is true.
So I'm trying to buck that trend.
I'm trying to bring in somenew humor to the subject.
I think it's necessary.
I
think that might be a bigger taskthan sorting out the pedagogy but.
Yeah, it
could well be.
Yeah.
(33:38):
Because in my experience, I didcomputer science degree way back
in the dark ages the others on mycourse weren't particularly funny
or entertaining, so I didn't hangaround with the computer scientists.
I hung around with archaeologistsand English majors.
There is.
At the risk of alienating the entireaudience, there's a there's a stereotype
(34:03):
about computer scientists, isn'tthere, which is wildly exaggerated
and, but you hear it everywhere you go.
But for most stereotypes there's agrain of truth in there somewhere.
And sometimes the things that make youlike computer science and make you good
at it are not necessarily the same thingsthat make you good as a classroom teacher.
Yeah, that's probably true.
(34:24):
I've had this debate onlineabout, does a degree matter?
Does I think subject knowledgeis important, hugely important.
Otherwise, we wouldn't be, doing this.
But, yes.
Not all computer science graduatesmake good teachers, I think.
So
And not all great teachers, so better makegood computer science graduates either.
(34:45):
I think it's . It's awhat did Liam Neeson say?
It's a particular set of skills.
. . Yeah, exactly.
On that threat from Andy there.
Given that I've got a particular set ofskills, a new skill being podcasting.
I learned from the best.
Go and listen to LearningDust with Andy Colley and Dave
Leonard after you've finished.
(35:06):
Listening to this podcast.
What's your week like, Andy?
What's it looking like this week?
This
week in Laurus Cheadle Hulme, you it'soption year, nine options evening,
tomorrow night, which is exciting.
And tiring both rolled into one becauseit's that chance to change some minds or
To come
can anybody take computerscience in your school?
Yep.
Yeah, . I hear about a lot of gatekeeping.
(35:26):
A lot of schools are nervous aboutresults, and so they try to steer
some pupils away from computerscience, which I think is wrong.
I would like it to be open to everyone.
I think if you're gonna come in to theclassroom and you're gonna work hard.
Yeah.
And you understand as you're comingin, if your key stage three curriculum
has set students up to understandwhat they're really getting into.
(35:49):
Really getting into.
'cause you've gotta love, learnto love the pain a bit at GCSE.
Yeah.
You know that's true.
My 10, my tens are my 10.
Some of them are really wrestlingwith Subprograms right now.
Yeah, really wrestling and when yousaid about sequence before I'm thinking
yeah Because I've just introducedsubprograms to them looking at me going
I can't I just do this as three linesof code rather than having to define
(36:09):
a subprogram and call it in the mainAscended parameter because we're doing
it a very simple level at the moment.
It's yes, we'll make things better laterYou know, we're doing we're taking the
pain now they have to be prepared forthat and if you're gonna come in and
Work your backside off and get a gradetwo because you work your backside
off and that is a hole in one for you.
Then I am as proud of you as I'm as theperson who comes in and works the backside
(36:32):
off and gets a grade eight or grade nine.
Yeah.
Don't forget, grade two, three can bea positive progress eight score for
some students, let's not forget that.
It's a big achievement for somestudents and some of my Best
results were low prior attainers,and they thrived in the subject.
Catherine Elliott talks aboutwhat we've talked about.
That's these sorts of pedagogies of newinformation in small steps, avoiding
(36:55):
cognitive overload wherever you can, ofhigh success rate of code comprehension.
She talks about those as key techniquesin creating an inclusive classroom.
And these techniquesare just great teaching.
And if you are doing that and yourclassroom is a place where great teaching
is taking place, that helps everyone.
(37:15):
Yeah, a high tide lifts all boats ishow I explain it, which is the old
fashioned phrase, but yeah, I rememberthe days when, you know, my head of
department would go tell me all theways you're helping these students, and
it would be a list of characteristics,and it would be EAL, and PP, and SEND,
and so on, and oh, tell me how you'redifferentiating your lessons 20 different
(37:38):
ways . And, we're over that now.
We talk about inclusive and adaptiveteaching, which means, teaching it well
and responding to the needs of the pupils.
Know your subject
well.
Know your subject well.
Explain it well, model it, checkfor understanding well, hand over
that hand over lesson stage well.
(38:00):
Give students opportunities to practicewhat you're trying to teach them and
then explore and vary William Lauand the variation theory with your
better programmers, right, how manydifferent ways can you make this happen?
And have you seen that thatcompetition they have every year
of making the worst user interface?
Oh yeah, I love that.
Take inspiration from that.
What's the worst way youcan make this program?
(38:20):
What's the most inefficient way youcan make a program that does this?
And have some fun withit at that creative end.
You can't take a solo on an instrumenttill you've mastered your foundations
and you know your scales and then you getcreative with it once you can play with
the forms and break the rules And that'sthe creative end of computing for me.
So yeah it's about quality teaching.
(38:43):
And that comes back to,there's things like, now is
intervention season, isn't it?
It's how many extra revisionsessions are you running for this?
How many days of your Easterholiday are you giving up?
Actually, and this is abig bug, bear of mine.
Actually, the number one timeyou get with those kids is in
the classroom, in your lessons.
You don't get any chunk oftime that's bigger than that.
That's where the difference is made.
(39:03):
I've worked places where the head ofdepartment had me rattling through the
curriculum to leave loads of time forrevision and I knew it felt wrong at the
time because I was just flying throughthe content ticking it off, if you like,
so that I had time to revise it, whichmeant that they weren't getting it.
So they needed more revision time.
And it was a self fulfilling prophecy.
(39:24):
So by the time they get to the revision,they've got no confidence in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That high success rate, that, that smallsteps, high success rate is what builds
learners confidence in your subjects,especially in a hard subject like ours.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you've got optionsevening tomorrow ? Sell the
subject tomorrow.
I've got loads of Key Stage4 lessons at the moment.
I've got some fabulous groups ofkids who are just smashing it out of
(39:48):
the park and really lucky this year.
I did see when I popped in, I lovedthe idea that you had this open ended,
long list of programming problems thatthey were just jumping onto at the end
of lesson, and I thought that was fab.
That comes from something you said awhile ago about you never finished.
Yeah, so what I've done is I've takenthe Craig and Dave, the TIME and the
mission encodable time Programmingprojects and I've adapted them a bit.
(40:12):
I'm delivering them through Repl.
it at the moment, but wecan't do that anymore Can we?
So I'm gonna have to find a differentplatform And yeah especially my year 10s.
They've just absolutely gone nuts forit Yeah, in a way that I've never had
before and they're just loving it.
They're smashing through them they'redoing, they're doing four in lesson and
then going home and doing another six.
That's great.
It's great when you get that.
It's brilliant, but I've got
so much marking to do.
(40:33):
Not marking, reviewing of code.
Reviewing, yeah, so yeah, I was never abig fan of marking myself and so I tried
to do as little as possible and do thingslike, reviewing stuff online that they've
done or self marking quizzes and stuff.
Like I said back in class
at the time, those mini whiteboardsagain, get it under the visualizer.
That's feedback right there whenthey can do something about it.
(40:54):
Feedback, not marking, that's what we say.
I know I said earlier,you're never finished.
And I'm grateful that youmentioned that, that blog.
I blogged about it, didn't I?
I banned the words, sir, I'm finishedfrom my classroom because because
basically they should never be finished.
They should always have something to do.
But time is run outfor us we are finished.
(41:16):
This is the problem,
we talked about brevity ofexplanations, but when you get me
going.
Both of us the same, so we can talkabout computing pedagogy all day.
And I'm sure we will again, becausewe can come back and talk about
something else in a few weeks.
It's been great to talk to you.
Andy Colley, thank youfor coming on the podcast.
An absolute pleasure.
Thanks for having me, Alan.
(41:37):
And this has been how to teach computerscience, the podcast I'm Alan Harrison.
If you want to give me feedbackor get involved, just go to.
HTTCS.
Online or check the show notes.
Remember, if you liked thiscontent, please subscribe.
Tell your friends, buy my books,leave a review of my books on
Amazon, or at the very least buy mea coffee details at HTTCS dot online.
(41:58):
So don't miss next week's episodewhen we will have the amazing Harry
and Anna Wake of mission encodable,that was a fantastic interview
and you don't want to miss it so.
I'm heading down to that London at Easter.
So I'm just printing somestuff to read on the way.
(42:24):
But I'm printing black and white.
Okay.
Okay.
What.
Jean!.
Where the hell is the duplexer cover?
(42:51):
In case you're wondering,R, is a programming language
used mostly for data science.
Also no printers were harmed in therecording of this week's episode.
Although this one's goingto get it in a minute.
It's been lovely to talk to you.
Speak to you next week.
Hello.
Welcome to how to teachcomputer science, the podcast.
This is episode four.
How do we really teach computer science?
I'll be answering that questionand many more with the help
of today's special guest.
every time I make a joke in class,I say to the kids, I say, there
aren't many computing jokes and theones there are aren't very good.
No, that is true.
So I'm trying to buck that trend.
(00:29):
I'm trying to bring in somenew humor to the subject.
I think it's necessary.
I
think that might be a bigger taskthan sorting out the pedagogy but.
Yeah, it
could well be.
Yeah
More on that in a moment.
My name's Alan Harrison, and I wrote thebooks how to teach computer science on
how to learn computer science availablein online bookstores, more details at
(00:51):
the companion website HTTCS dot online.
That's the initials of.
How to teach computer science.
HTTCS doc online.
You know, it's been quite a week.
I've had a lot of feedback on the podcast.
Most of it positive.
Thank you so much.
And I was in a teams meetingwith other teachers of GCSE and
A-level computer science this week.
Run by AQA.
Thank you, Steve Kenny for inviting me.
(01:13):
And there was a lot of love forthe podcast and it seems you
appreciate my humor, which is nice.
But I did say there are a load ofcheesy computing jokes, which are
not going to make it into the partssuch as why do computer scientists
confuse Halloween and Christmas?
Because OCT 31 equals DEC 25.
Like I say, I won't be doingcheesy jokes like that.
(01:34):
But just for Ian Bissix in the AQAmeeting, this is for you Ian what
sits on your shoulder, shoutingpieces of seven pieces of seven.
A parroty error.
Which reminds me, what's a Pirate'sfavorite programming language.
Ye might think it'd be Rbut his first love be the C.
(01:56):
If you like this content,please subscribe.
Tell your friends, buy mybooks at HTTCS dot online.
Leave a review on Amazon, orat the very least buy me a
coffee details on the website.
Every week, I will transcribethis recording and blog it at
HTTCS dot online slash blog.
If you prefer reading, you can alwaysprint my blog and read it on the
train like it's the 1990s again.
(02:17):
Talking of printing.
I was going to put this story in thebook, but I'm not sure of its veracity.
a listen and tell me what you think.
We have to go over to Germany inthe 15th century for this story.
1440.
Johannes Gutenberg has justinvented the printing press.
And just five minutes later at1445, the printing press has
(02:38):
invented the first paper jam.
And at 1530, despite printingonly in black and white.
Johannes printing press hasdemanded a magenta ink refill.
Gutenberg's invention heralded whathistorians call the printing revolution.
(03:02):
Although teachers are waiting forthe second printing revolution
where they all just work.
swear the teacher workload crisisis caused by 15 hours a week of
marking and 20 hours clearing otherpeople's paper, jams and screaming.
Jean!
Where the hell is theduplexing unit cover?
(03:24):
My advice.
Stop printing anything at all.
Use OneNote as theirdigital exercise books.
And when mocks come around, use yourschool's printing service, often described
in that unique way schools have ofclinging onto nostalgic terms from a
bygone age as the reprographics service.
Make sure you greet Mina inreprographics every morning, and
don't forget her at Christmas andshe'll print your stuff first.
(03:56):
This week on the podcast, I havea special guest he's been a CAS
Master teacher for many years.
He wrote the excellentPython course for REPLIT.
And is very active on X, formerly Twitterwhen CAS chat comes around every Tuesday.
I'm delighted to welcome a fellowcomputer science teacher, Andy Colley.
How are you, Andy?
I'm very well, thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
It's slightly unusual this because I'mpretty much sat up in my spare room and I
(04:20):
reckon if I look out of the window on myleft, I could probably wave to you because
you're about two streets away from me.
And yet we're using the magicof the Internet to record this.
Maybe next time we'llget in the same place.
So the how the tables have turnedbecause I was on your podcast
probably a couple of years ago now.
So just Fill us in.
What's your podcast about Andy?
(04:42):
I mean I've never been one to be backwardabout coming forward, but for those of you
who don't know me, my name is Andy Colley.
I am a rather fancily titledDirector of Computing, which is a
posh title for Head of Subject at aschool called Laurus Cheadle Hulme
in Cheadle Hulme, South Manchester.
And in my spare time when I'mnot teaching people, I like
to talk about teaching people.
(05:03):
And one of the ways I do that isthrough a podcast called Learning Dust
with an unbelievably good better half,podcast wife on there called Dave
Leonard, who is a network manager a MATnetwork lead, IT director and so on.
And he's fabulous.
He was one of the first people to steer mycareer down the way of using technology.
(05:23):
Pedagogy first technology, if you will.
Not just using it because it's a shinybox, but using it because It helps
learners improve the way they learnand remember more and be able to do
more.
Yeah, he's an all roundgood egg, Dave, isn't he?
I keep bumping into himas well at conferences.
I know he's annoyingly popular, isn't he?
Yeah.
But you called that podcast Learning Dust.
(05:45):
Just remind me wherethat phrase came from.
I think the first time I heard it was backat a conference called Rethinking ICT.
In about 2010, I want to say, and itwas Professor Tom Crick who used the
phrase, he said, magic learning dustdoes not fall out of the bottom of
an iPad, just because they're usingtechnology doesn't mean that automatically
(06:07):
the learning is going to happen.
And I've remembered it for years andyears because the way I've taught
and developed my career over thelast 20 years in education is I was
an advanced skills teacher, I was alead practitioner for teaching and
learning, I'm now running a subject.
Throughout all of that it's about howdo you do what you do in the classroom
(06:28):
to the best effect so that your kids.
Learn as much as possible for thatlimited amount of time they are
with you and then can remember itfor the next time you see them.
Absolutely and hence our shared belief inthe need to plan really effective lessons,
not see if we can use this new shinything that's come out and and is going
(06:51):
to, oh, the latest thing that's going torevolutionize education, let's throw that
into the classroom and see if it does.
You're dead right and what we were sayingjust before we started recording was that
I think we're in such a much better placenow both as the teaching profession and.
Also as computer scienceteachers in particular about
information about pedagogy thatworks, best practice pedagogy.
(07:16):
Dylan Wiliam speaks a lot of sense.
He says, everything works somewhere.
But what we do have now is aset Of best bets, if you will.
Of things that have beenshown to work in a majority of
situations that we can default to.
I like to call it minimum best practice.
So there are certain techniques thatyou use with questioning, that you use
with explanation, that you use withmodelling, that are my default techniques.
(07:40):
And from there, I've raised the floor.
Yeah, if my department are using coldcalling and think pair share as their
default questioning techniques, if we'reusing mini whiteboards as our default
check for understanding, if we're usingdual coding and live modeling as our
default method of explanation, then thatfloor standard is a much higher, and
(08:02):
there's much more consistency in terms ofIt sounds flippant, but the worst it can
possibly be, and then, what I say to mydepartment is okay, that's our minimum.
If you're going to do somethingdifferent, let's make it better
than what we've already got.
And we can use that as our benchmark.
And like I say, we've got so much moreinformation now, I'm looking at the Teach
(08:23):
Computing, Big Book of Pedagogy here.
And there's what, a dozen thingsin there, a dozen concepts.
Alan's reaching for his as we speak.
This is live podcast.
Yep, here we go.
Ta da!
There's page five.
There's a dozen things there.
Yeah absolutely.
This is I was going to talk about this.
I'm flicking it infront of the microphone.
Like that's helpful when we'reon a podcast, but yeah, it's I
(08:46):
like what you say about a sortof a floor level of performance
and then you can build on that.
So I do recommend everyone readssomething like the Big Book of Pedagogy.
There's other stuff out there now,like you say, loads of it that
we have access to now in the last10 years, like Sue Sentance's,
computer science, education book.
(09:08):
And I wrote a book by the way, Idon't know if you heard about that.
And I do mention it occasionally.
Yeah.
And William Lau's and many others.
What I tried to gather wassome of the best bits of , it's
a bit of a magpie book.
Really, I magpied all the best bitsof pedagogy from other people's
(09:29):
research, but I did credit everybody.
So yeah, I like what you're saying about,questioning and whiteboards and there's
sometimes I come across people who sayoh we're in a computing room we've got to
use the computers all the time and I thinkgood teaching is good teaching you don't
have to be on the computers all the time.
Magic learning dust does not fallout of the bottom of an iPad.
Exactly you
know if it's the best tool foreither explaining something to
(09:52):
them or checking that they'velearned what you've taught them.
Or getting them to practiceindividually, what you've learned,
what you've taught them, then if thebest tool for that is a pencil and
paper, then use a damn pencil and
paper.
Mini whiteboards are brilliant.
I've used them for years.
And, And, you can ask a question andbear in mind there is what people
(10:12):
call a lot of theory to our subject.
There's a lot to know.
There's a lot of declarativeknowledge as well as procedural
knowledge, if we're using thoseterms in the Ofsted Research Review.
You've got to check for understandingand that's a skill that we can use in
any classroom with mini whiteboards.
One thing I would say is I did startto, I did use occasionally something
(10:33):
called Socrative and of coursethe poll option and just asking
questions in Teams if you're on Teams.
So you can use technologyto imitate mini whiteboards.
And I like the, this Socrative.
com would allow you to ask a question,they would put their answers in, and then
you could choose two or three to push backto the students in a poll of best answers.
(10:53):
And so you can tweak.
The check for understanding with a miniwhiteboard with technology in some ways,
but it's still a check for understanding.
Yeah, once I've got the mini whiteboardsup, I will get some off the students,
particularly if we're learning howto write code fragments and I will
put them under the visualizer.
And then we'll debug them togetheror they will discuss what I like
(11:15):
about this particular example orwhere they've used, let's say,
variable assignment in here and so on.
But I'm I'm zooming we'rezooming right in at the moment.
If I back off a minute and look at bigprinciples in terms of information about
teaching in general, Daniel Willinghamsaid memory is the residue of thought.
For me, that's my Occam's razor.
That is, is.
(11:36):
Everything I'm doing in the classroom,getting the kids thinking hard about
what I want them to think about.
sometimes that can mean that I have tostop doing something really good to make
sure that we're doing something better.
A great headteacher once saidto me, if they're learning,
get the hell out of the way.
I like it.
(11:56):
And I have been as guilty as anyoneof having a lovely computing adjacent
discussion and if I've got a class that'sinterested and engaged, I will swerve off
what I want them to learn in the lessonand I'll stay off that for too long.
Oh yeah, my kids knew how to getme off on tangents but yeah.
(12:17):
eah talking of tangents.
We're just going to pause the interviewwith Andy Colley there and have a
quick look at next week's podcast.
But I will just say that one of the thingsthat I personally find really irritating
is when People think, oh, how can weget more girls into computer science?
Let's make the projects more girly.
And then they have like, , perfumeor nail polish or pink or something.
(12:41):
And as someone who's not interestedin that, I think many girls will spot
that immediately, and they'll be like,oh, honestly, this is really annoying.
That was a sneak previewof next week's podcast.
You're not going to want to miss it.
That was Anna Wake whowith her cousin, Harry.
Was talking about.
(13:02):
Getting girls into computingand their website mission.
encodable, it's a fab podcast next week.
Subscribe now, but firstback to Andy Colley.
if I've got a class that's interestedand engaged, I will swerve off what
I want them to learn in the lessonand I'll stay off that for too long.
(13:23):
I'm all over that.
The Willingham quote.
I use that a lot.
And it leads onto the ratioblogs from Adam Boxer.
Yeah.
And Ben Newmark's Golden Silence.
Um, Yes.
So it's, frightening sometimes when,kids are silently working, you think,
oh God, I should say something, butthe pressure to fill the void, yep.
Like I say, I like that quote, get outof the way if they're learning, and the
(13:46):
ratio thing, in case listeners haven'theard about it, is, what percentage of
my pupils are thinking hard about thestuff they should be thinking hard about
We were talking about that semanticwaves idea there we've introduced
the abstract idea of ratio.
Let's zoom into an example now.
For example questioning in the classroom.
If I say to you, Alan, what is this?
(14:08):
The moment I say Alan, everyone elsein that classroom stops thinking.
Yes.
Yeah, or if I go for hands up, thenthere are some kids who can quite
happily sit there and never put ahand up and never have to think.
Whereas if I say, I'm going to aska question, I want everybody to
think about their answer, and I'mgoing to take several responses.
Yeah.
Ask the question, pause, then Alan.
(14:30):
Now, the number of students thatare thinking up to the time I say
the name is hopefully everyone.
And then, because I've saidI'm going to take several
responses, I can move it around.
And that's, that's the sort of Thenutshell of cold calling, isn't it?
Yeah,
it is.
And I was talking about this.
I was delivering a course at the STEMCentre in York a few weeks ago and
(14:52):
we were talking about questioning.
And I brought up the fact thatnovice teachers often don't.
really understand the purpose ofquestioning and they remember their school
days of teacher asking a question and kidsput the hand up, teacher asked the child
who put the hand up and everyone moved on
we have to make explicit for noviceteachers what questioning is about and
(15:14):
it's a pedagogical technique that ensuresthat the students are all thinking
about what you want them to think about.
In a sense, getting the rightanswer is really not important.
The thinking is what's important.
And you mentioned cold call,which is what it's called in
Teach Like a Champion, of course.
And you also mentioned something thatDoug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion
(15:36):
bloke, calls wait time as well, whichis asking a question and waiting.
All these things are little habitsbecause it's possible to do all
of this stuff really badly and Isay that from a position of having
done all this stuff really badly.
Yeah.
Early in my career, I started behindthe eight ball because I started
in the era of engagement, the eraof how many different tasks can
(15:58):
you have going on in a classroom?
As long as people look busy, that's fine.
Yeah.
And from that, I've moved to beIf I want them to learn something,
I've got to explicitly teach it tothem, and then check effectively
have they learned what I'm teaching.
So from the engagement era, thenyou go through the right it's the
slide design as lesson planning.
And you end up, especially workingwith non specialists, or you're trying
(16:21):
to produce a curriculum that can bepicked up and run by other people,
temptation is you just put everythingyou're going to say on the slide.
Absolutely.
Which is, yeah, we've all satin those insets, haven't we?
Read out of a PowerPoint, and yeah,look at what some of us do to kids.
It's funny, some of the teachers CPDhistorically has been some of the
worst teaching that any of us have had.
(16:41):
But yeah, . We're thetoughest crowd out there.
Yeah, we're, yeah, we're sat theregoing, my brain's overloaded,
why am I suffering cognitiveoverload in a teacher CPD session?
But yeah, again,
Let's dig into that then, becausethat's the first time we've mentioned
cognitive overload, isn't it?
And Sweller and his cognitive loadtheory and being a non computer scientist
who learnt to teach this subject.
(17:03):
It's really easy when youare an expert to think that
everybody else finds things easy.
I've seen so many programmingcourses that go variable assignment,
input, output, and now recursion.
Yeah, absolutely.
And there's this giantpit that you fall into.
You're on your back like aturtle and you can't get out.
And I see that look on thefaces of students all the time.
(17:24):
So, yeah, my lesson slidesnow are a lot more pared back.
There's a lot more diagramsor part diagrams that I then
complete in front of the students.
The note section is where I keepmy explanations and I don't know
how long it, I dunno, it was fartoo long it took me, but before I
started practicing my explanations.
Actually get into an empty classroomand say what you want to say.
(17:48):
Are you doing it with brevity?
Are you doing it as simply as possible?
And then you can start to build inyour analogies and your what william
Lau brilliantly talked about in termsof semantic waves where you go from
concrete to abstract to concrete back toabstract you pack you unpack and so on.
So you as an experienced teacher you pickup on a load of those analogies don't you?
(18:11):
And you've got to be super carefulabout picking those as well
because if you pick the wrong oneyou can build in misconceptions.
You know, , you bake in themisunderstandings and You can do just
as much damage with a bad analogy asyou can enlighten with a good one.
Yeah, someone pointed out to me, thevariable analogy is a box, and I've
used that with novice programmers downin year 7,8,, And the box thing comes
(18:34):
with the possibility of a number ofmisconceptions, the main one being
a box can hold many things at once.
So that's
where you check for understandingwith your mini whiteboards.
Yeah, as you get more experience youlearn that if you have a bit of code
on the screen with the variable num1being assigned I don't know four
times in ten lines You can put thatup and you can say right predict on
(18:56):
your white boards What will be storedin num1 by the end of this code?
And you're trying to draw out thatmisconception that you don't just
add them all together, or you don'tshove them all in the variable.
And by doing that with the handoverphase, the checking for understanding
phase, the sort of we do it togetherphase, and especially by, oh,
brilliant, I'm glad you thought that.
Loads of people think that when theycome across variables for the first time,
(19:18):
and we can really learn from that now.
And getting discussion going about whythis isn't the case and questioning like
that, you can turn your classroom into aplace where it's okay to make mistakes.
Absolutely.
Where we're learning from this, thisis a learning process, so we are not
afraid to have a go, 30 answers upin the air you can see 30 different
answers from 30 different brainsand pick out those misconceptions.
(19:39):
And as you get more experienced,you get better at setting up those
questions and those examples to checkfor understanding, to draw those out.
For example, when you're teachingselection and you do if age is greater
than 18, output you can vote, and then youdo what will happen for an input of 18.
Yeah.
(20:00):
Because we don't read thecomparison operator properly.
I used to call it the bouncer programbecause it was you can go into the pub
and then someone pointed out that Ishould really not be encouraging drinking.
So it became the you can vote program.
Yeah.
And yeah, you can teach, with thatone example, you can teach , variable
tracing, and dry running a program tosee if it will work and testing as well.
(20:24):
Yeah, that's.
That leads us on to that to Sue Sentance'sreally quite fantastic PRIMM, doesn't
it, in terms of code comprehension andlearning to read before you can write?
Yeah.
I put a quote in the book from DavidGries, computer science educator, 1974,
said, if you're an apprentice carpenter,you don't get given a load of tools
(20:47):
and an example of a finished cabinet,and then be told go and make one,
so the idea of PRIMM's been aroundsome time, reading code before you can
write it and getting familiar with it.
But it's good to have theresearch to back it up.
Yeah, I think also, though, being supercareful with that cognitive load theory
and that Willingham idea of introducingnew material in small steps, , again,
(21:10):
we can fall into that expert trap ofwe're teaching selection, so Yeah,
with an if and an else, and then wego to a make task and it requires
selection and oh, there's an iterationin there as well, and then we've got
lists built into the make task as well.
Who was it who described I think itmight have been Sue Sentance again.
A single line of code canbe so syntactically dense.
(21:31):
Yes.
There's so much going on.
There's so many conceptsto understand, yes.
Let's go back to selection again.
You've got the selection statement,you've then got a condition,
so you've gotta understand whata condition can be made of.
A comparison operator, it cancontain a variable, it can contain
two variables, two pieces of data,strings, integers, and then you've got
indentation, and that's a single line.
(21:52):
So much going on.
You can have a subroutine call and thenin Python, you don't even have to go if.
Valid input equals true.
You could just go if valid input.
Yeah,
hang on.
that's a fun one to discusswhen you're doing selection and
conditions and stuff equals true.
You don't need that.
Ah, yeah, but I
teach it with the equals true.
(22:14):
And then you can take itoff and explain why later.
I call it the long way roundfor a lot of my students.
I say, I'm going to teach youthe long way around and we're
going to do one thing per line.
Oh, it never stops.
This idea that we simplify forthe age or the level of the
audience that we're teaching to.
It never stops because of coursewhen you get to A level you learn
(22:34):
functional programming and when youget to university you learn all sorts
of esoteric languages that do parallelprocessing with abstraction and so on.
So the first thing that you teachchildren about programs is they
are a sequence of steps to solve aproblem and then you get to a level
and they're not anymore becausea functional program is not that.
(22:55):
So we've got this idea that we teach,abstractions again of the knowledge
at each level and then sometimeswe have to unweave the abstractions
and teach them what the truth is.
Again, it's are you baking inmisconceptions and it's really
hard because it's tricky and Iguess this is pedagogy and this
is what we have been researching
(23:17):
yeah Yeah if we move onfrom programming a minute.
What other pedagogy is therein our subject that, besides
programming I'll give you an example.
I teach networking, what's called athreshold concept of packet switching.
Yes.
Just as an aside, someone asked me,do we need to teach packet switching?
(23:38):
because it's no longer in the spec.
It's true that in the OCR spec, youdon't have to describe packet switching,
but you can't possibly understandnetworking without understanding the
threshold concept of packet switching.
So I get nervous sometimes when teachersask me, can I drop this from my classroom?
And I go no, it's a fundamental concept.
So I get it across with post its.
Post it packet switching, I callit, and they write one word on
(24:01):
each post it and they write whoit's to and the number of that.
Post it in the message and I send themaround the classroom and so these post
its are standing in for the packets andthat's my analogy but I've got to make
sure I go back up like you mentioned,go back up the semantic wave and explain
how this analogy is the same as packetswitching and the ways it's different.
(24:25):
For example, it's not one word in apacket, it's a number of bytes and so on.
Are there any other pedagogicaltricks and techniques that you
use for the non programming stuff?
Yeah my overriding thing is beforeI go into the classroom, I've really
planned what I want to say andhow I want to explain it and then
how I want the students to respondto that in the handover phase.
(24:48):
And the majority of the time thatwill be an explanation, a diagram,
checking for understanding withmini whiteboards, think pair share
discussion time or cold calling.
And again, I'm picking up onthose if I expect them to know
the answer, I'll use cold calling.
If I need them to discuss something orto have a think and safety in numbers,
that would be think pair share and so on.
I do almost something similar whenwe're talking about CPU architecture,
(25:12):
the different parts of the processor..
So we will have some students sat alongone side of the room with instructions.
On their mini whiteboards, addthis load that, do something else.
Yes.
And then in the middle of the room,on a table, I will have my CPU.
And again, it's abstraction.
So I'm using the program counter thememory address, register the memory data
(25:36):
Registered the control unit, the A LU.
So the program counter tellsthe memory address, register.
Which number instruction is nextthe memory address register then
shouts that to memory instructionone That gets brought to the front.
Yeah, and if I really want to complicateit, I will have a student counting
down as the clock So we'll have afive second clock speed Five four and
it's got to be the instructions got toarrive at the processor into the memory
(25:59):
data register control unit decodes itgives the ALU if it's Arithmetic and
so on and they've got five secondsto complete this Yeah, good stuff.
Stuff.
And then we go again and we go again.
So they're actually moving theinstructions around and if you get
a class you can trust, that's great.
Yeah exactly.
So absolutely fab.
Yeah,
.What else have I been doing?
A couple of revision sessions, with11s on binary search, and again
(26:21):
Play the high low game.
We'll play the high low game,of course we'll play the high
low game, I will read your mind.
Six guesses or fewer, 64.
But what I'll do is Before I introducebinary search In order to do that,
you've got to master finding a midpoint.
And in order to find a midpoint,you've got to do integer
division, floor division.
We will do lots of practice of floordivision to get the right answer.
(26:43):
Then we will do floordivision to find the midpoint.
Here's a list, what's the midpoint?
We'll practice several of thoseuntil I'm convinced they've got it.
And then we'll introduce theidea of binary search, so that
We're introducing in small steps.
I'm getting that high success rate.
They can all do floor division.
They can all find the midpointnow binary search midpoint is
our search item higher or lower?
(27:04):
Yeah, and then we show them how itworks So we it's just about really
thinking carefully about what I'm doingand making sure that I'm pre teaching
the skills They need for them to besuccessful because there's nothing
worse than that Jump from input torecursion when you are absolutely lost
And, and it's so easy to do.
It's so easy to do.
And startling to realize, but some of ourlovely students do not do what I do and
(27:28):
spend every minute between one lesson andthe next thinking about computer science.
No, I know.
So there is a chance that they may not.
You can't be remembering the stuffthat you want them to remember
from one lesson to the next,especially at key stage three.
Talking of remembering stufffrom one lesson to the next,
how can we help them do that?
So yeah, I'm hintingat retrieval practice.
(27:48):
You got a lot of retrievalpractice going on, Andy?
Every lesson.
Every lesson.
Every lesson.
With very few exceptions.
And again, at Key Stage 4, Smart Revisesis the best platform I've seen for that.
They're constantly making changes.
It's worth the money.
Constantly making changes and updates.
One of the best things they'vedone recently is introduce
(28:09):
topic, guided topic filtering.
So with my 10s, as I teach a topic,I can add that to the smart revised
question set that my 10s see.
And then when they do mixed retrieval,just the topics we've covered.
are built in there, becauseretrieval should be something
you've already encountered.
It's practicing remembering, isn't it?
Because when you're sat in anexam, that's all you're doing.
(28:30):
That's what revision is.
It's tricking your brain intoremembering stuff that it
really doesn't want to remember.
I know all the words tothe Neighbours theme tune.
Not doing it now.
No idea why, but for some reasonmy brain, when I first encountered
CPU architecture and parts of theprocessor, it just slid right off.
So revision is just doing and doinguntil it blooming well sticks, until
that synapse pathway is strong enough.
(28:51):
At Key Stage 3, actually, I usesomething called Quizzizz, it's
that absolutely, it's that sweetspot of engagement and hard thinking.
And if you find me on Quizzizz as Mr.
A.
Colley, you can nick all myQuestion sets and question banks
it also lets me celebrate, oh this classtoday we got 70 percent as a class.
(29:13):
Let's aim for 75, and we cangive out house points for quality
performances, things like that.
It's great.
Absolutely.
You touched on something thatWillingham said there, which was
knowing is remembering in disguise.,
that's, that links back intocognitive load theory, doesn't it?
Because when, as we keep going backto programming, because we're computer
scientists and it's what makes oursocks roll up and down, isn't it?
(29:36):
But when you see a problem to program now.
You've got a stored bank of experienceof problems like that you've seen
before, and how you saw them solved,or how you solved them yourself.
So you're not processingthat as new information.
So your experience, and the fact thatyou can retrieve those and remember
them, they're in your long termmemory, means they don't take up.
(29:57):
Any of the, is it five
blocks?
Five things
in your working memory.
Five new, five new things.
You're not trying toprocess that as a new thing.
So that frees up your working memoryto process the new things that
are different about the problem.
It also means as an expert you can usethat experience to focus on the parts of
the problem that are important to do thatmental abstraction that you need to do.
(30:19):
Whereas a New learner can't do that yet.
They've not learned what'simportant and what's not.
They give everything equal weight Sowhen you're saying it's blooming easy.
Of course you need selection there.
Of course you need a loop there Becauseyou've seen it a thousand times.
They haven't.
By practicing retrieval, by rememberingexperiences or skills we've had, you're
(30:40):
removing that cognitive load, you'reremoving the opportunity for overload,
so they can process the things thatare different about that problem.
And it's all computer sciencein disguise, isn't it?
It's pattern recognition.
Abstraction.
All of that stuff.
So, there's a reason I was talking aboutbest practice and floor levels earlier
(31:00):
and that's because this stuff is provento make it more effective for our learners
to learn new things and without cognitiveoverload because it's hard enough as it is
absolutely you said about noticing what'sdifferent and I Listened to a talk from
William Lau about Marton's variationtheory, which Really explains all that.
(31:23):
Yeah, you've heard of that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so So, giving examples and nonexamples or varying one thing at a time.
And so the learners notice thething that's varied and how
that changes the situation.
Even the way you set yourquestions up in your practice.
I've reworked my binaryconversion practice questions.
(31:46):
Yeah.
So that a lot of my examples.
change just the least significantbit from one example to the next
so they can get to spot that thenevaluates out as one higher in denary.
Yeah,.
Which brings us back to last week withAndrew Virnuls and we were talking
about this then about how the principleof the number of bits in a sample, or
(32:11):
the number of bits in the bit depthof an image, the number of bits You
have on the width of your data busand so on, are all the same thing.
And it was interesting thatAndrew said we had a chat.
A few weeks ago about the number oftopics there are in computing and
how much content there is to cover.
(32:32):
And novice computing teacherswill talk about there being
30 topics at Key Stage 3.
And Andrew and I couldprobably think of seven.
And I think it's the understanding of thesubject gives us this overarching vision
of six or seven strands that everythingrelates to, whereas novice teachers will
(32:54):
see, a unit on Photoshop as separate to aunit on vector graphics and as separate to
a unit on data representation of images.
And the hard thing is in your lessonsthen how to keep the main thing the main
thing and introduce that informationin small parts when you can see all
these really exciting joins between thetopics, and then you're off on a story.
(33:18):
Yeah.
I know, I keep, every time I make ajoke in class, I say to the kids, I say,
there aren't many computing jokes andthe ones there are aren't very good.
No, that is true.
So I'm trying to buck that trend.
I'm trying to bring in somenew humor to the subject.
I think it's necessary.
I
think that might be a bigger taskthan sorting out the pedagogy but.
Yeah, it
could well be.
Yeah.
(33:38):
Because in my experience, I didcomputer science degree way back
in the dark ages the others on mycourse weren't particularly funny
or entertaining, so I didn't hangaround with the computer scientists.
I hung around with archaeologistsand English majors.
There is.
At the risk of alienating the entireaudience, there's a there's a stereotype
(34:03):
about computer scientists, isn'tthere, which is wildly exaggerated
and, but you hear it everywhere you go.
But for most stereotypes there's agrain of truth in there somewhere.
And sometimes the things that make youlike computer science and make you good
at it are not necessarily the same thingsthat make you good as a classroom teacher.
Yeah, that's probably true.
(34:24):
I've had this debate onlineabout, does a degree matter?
Does I think subject knowledgeis important, hugely important.
Otherwise, we wouldn't be, doing this.
But, yes.
Not all computer science graduatesmake good teachers, I think.
So
And not all great teachers, so better makegood computer science graduates either.
(34:45):
I think it's . It's awhat did Liam Neeson say?
It's a particular set of skills.
. . Yeah, exactly.
On that threat from Andy there.
Given that I've got a particular set ofskills, a new skill being podcasting.
I learned from the best.
Go and listen to LearningDust with Andy Colley and Dave
Leonard after you've finished.
(35:06):
Listening to this podcast.
What's your week like, Andy?
What's it looking like this week?
This
week in Laurus Cheadle Hulme, you it'soption year, nine options evening,
tomorrow night, which is exciting.
And tiring both rolled into one becauseit's that chance to change some minds or
To come
can anybody take computerscience in your school?
Yep.
Yeah, . I hear about a lot of gatekeeping.
(35:26):
A lot of schools are nervous aboutresults, and so they try to steer
some pupils away from computerscience, which I think is wrong.
I would like it to be open to everyone.
I think if you're gonna come in to theclassroom and you're gonna work hard.
Yeah.
And you understand as you're comingin, if your key stage three curriculum
has set students up to understandwhat they're really getting into.
(35:49):
Really getting into.
'cause you've gotta love, learnto love the pain a bit at GCSE.
Yeah.
You know that's true.
My 10, my tens are my 10.
Some of them are really wrestlingwith Subprograms right now.
Yeah, really wrestling and when yousaid about sequence before I'm thinking
yeah Because I've just introducedsubprograms to them looking at me going
I can't I just do this as three linesof code rather than having to define
(36:09):
a subprogram and call it in the mainAscended parameter because we're doing
it a very simple level at the moment.
It's yes, we'll make things better laterYou know, we're doing we're taking the
pain now they have to be prepared forthat and if you're gonna come in and
Work your backside off and get a gradetwo because you work your backside
off and that is a hole in one for you.
Then I am as proud of you as I'm as theperson who comes in and works the backside
(36:32):
off and gets a grade eight or grade nine.
Yeah.
Don't forget, grade two, three can bea positive progress eight score for
some students, let's not forget that.
It's a big achievement for somestudents and some of my Best
results were low prior attainers,and they thrived in the subject.
Catherine Elliott talks aboutwhat we've talked about.
That's these sorts of pedagogies of newinformation in small steps, avoiding
(36:55):
cognitive overload wherever you can, ofhigh success rate of code comprehension.
She talks about those as key techniquesin creating an inclusive classroom.
And these techniquesare just great teaching.
And if you are doing that and yourclassroom is a place where great teaching
is taking place, that helps everyone.
(37:15):
Yeah, a high tide lifts all boats ishow I explain it, which is the old
fashioned phrase, but yeah, I rememberthe days when, you know, my head of
department would go tell me all theways you're helping these students, and
it would be a list of characteristics,and it would be EAL, and PP, and SEND,
and so on, and oh, tell me how you'redifferentiating your lessons 20 different
(37:38):
ways . And, we're over that now.
We talk about inclusive and adaptiveteaching, which means, teaching it well
and responding to the needs of the pupils.
Know your subject
well.
Know your subject well.
Explain it well, model it, checkfor understanding well, hand over
that hand over lesson stage well.
(38:00):
Give students opportunities to practicewhat you're trying to teach them and
then explore and vary William Lauand the variation theory with your
better programmers, right, how manydifferent ways can you make this happen?
And have you seen that thatcompetition they have every year
of making the worst user interface?
Oh yeah, I love that.
Take inspiration from that.
What's the worst way youcan make this program?
(38:20):
What's the most inefficient way youcan make a program that does this?
And have some fun withit at that creative end.
You can't take a solo on an instrumenttill you've mastered your foundations
and you know your scales and then you getcreative with it once you can play with
the forms and break the rules And that'sthe creative end of computing for me.
So yeah it's about quality teaching.
(38:43):
And that comes back to,there's things like, now is
intervention season, isn't it?
It's how many extra revisionsessions are you running for this?
How many days of your Easterholiday are you giving up?
Actually, and this is abig bug, bear of mine.
Actually, the number one timeyou get with those kids is in
the classroom, in your lessons.
You don't get any chunk oftime that's bigger than that.
That's where the difference is made.
(39:03):
I've worked places where the head ofdepartment had me rattling through the
curriculum to leave loads of time forrevision and I knew it felt wrong at the
time because I was just flying throughthe content ticking it off, if you like,
so that I had time to revise it, whichmeant that they weren't getting it.
So they needed more revision time.
And it was a self fulfilling prophecy.
(39:24):
So by the time they get to the revision,they've got no confidence in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That high success rate, that, that smallsteps, high success rate is what builds
learners confidence in your subjects,especially in a hard subject like ours.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you've got optionsevening tomorrow ? Sell the
subject tomorrow.
I've got loads of Key Stage4 lessons at the moment.
I've got some fabulous groups ofkids who are just smashing it out of
(39:48):
the park and really lucky this year.
I did see when I popped in, I lovedthe idea that you had this open ended,
long list of programming problems thatthey were just jumping onto at the end
of lesson, and I thought that was fab.
That comes from something you said awhile ago about you never finished.
Yeah, so what I've done is I've takenthe Craig and Dave, the TIME and the
mission encodable time Programmingprojects and I've adapted them a bit.
(40:12):
I'm delivering them through Repl.
it at the moment, but wecan't do that anymore Can we?
So I'm gonna have to find a differentplatform And yeah especially my year 10s.
They've just absolutely gone nuts forit Yeah, in a way that I've never had
before and they're just loving it.
They're smashing through them they'redoing, they're doing four in lesson and
then going home and doing another six.
That's great.
It's great when you get that.
It's brilliant, but I've got
so much marking to do.
(40:33):
Not marking, reviewing of code.
Reviewing, yeah, so yeah, I was never abig fan of marking myself and so I tried
to do as little as possible and do thingslike, reviewing stuff online that they've
done or self marking quizzes and stuff.
Like I said back in class
at the time, those mini whiteboardsagain, get it under the visualizer.
That's feedback right there whenthey can do something about it.
(40:54):
Feedback, not marking, that's what we say.
I know I said earlier,you're never finished.
And I'm grateful that youmentioned that, that blog.
I blogged about it, didn't I?
I banned the words, sir, I'm finishedfrom my classroom because because
basically they should never be finished.
They should always have something to do.
But time is run outfor us we are finished.
(41:16):
This is the problem,
we talked about brevity ofexplanations, but when you get me
going.
Both of us the same, so we can talkabout computing pedagogy all day.
And I'm sure we will again, becausewe can come back and talk about
something else in a few weeks.
It's been great to talk to you.
Andy Colley, thank youfor coming on the podcast.
An absolute pleasure.
Thanks for having me, Alan.
(41:37):
And this has been how to teach computerscience, the podcast I'm Alan Harrison.
If you want to give me feedbackor get involved, just go to.
HTTCS.
Online or check the show notes.
Remember, if you liked thiscontent, please subscribe.
Tell your friends, buy my books,leave a review of my books on
Amazon, or at the very least buy mea coffee details at HTTCS dot online.
(41:58):
So don't miss next week's episodewhen we will have the amazing Harry
and Anna Wake of mission encodable,that was a fantastic interview
and you don't want to miss it so.
I'm heading down to that London at Easter.
So I'm just printing somestuff to read on the way.
(42:24):
But I'm printing black and white.
Okay.
Okay.
What.
Jean!.
Where the hell is the duplexer cover?
(42:51):
In case you're wondering,R, is a programming language
used mostly for data science.
Also no printers were harmed in therecording of this week's episode.
Although this one's goingto get it in a minute.
It's been lovely to talk to you.
Speak to you next week.
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