March 16, 2024 • 41 mins
I meet the teenagers behind "Mission Encodable", a Python tutorial website, hear their stories of learning to code and why they made the product. I reminisce about my classroom days when I wrote "10 PRINT "MY TEACHER IS AN IDIOT" / 20 GOTO 10" and I share a promo code for my books and more at johncattbookshop.com .
Mission Encodable is here missionencodeable.com
The full Transcript is here and my podcast page is at pod.httcs.online
Buy me a coffee at ko-fi.com/mraharrisoncs thanks!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello, and welcome to how toteach computer science the podcast.
This is episode five.
How do we teach programming?
I'll be answering that questionand many more with the help
of today's special guests.
, I do think it is really importantfor children to learn to program.
I know we're talking about it can build upresilience and it can be really creative
(00:28):
and it helps you think outside the box.
ChatGPT and the other AI things, are allreally great for writing bits of code,
but I think, it's a lot more valuableto be able to understand what the code's
doing, and then that way, if you havean error, then you'll know why that is.
And we'll hear thefull interview shortly.
(00:48):
My name is Alan Harrison, and I wrotethe books how to teach computer science
and how to learn computer scienceavailable in online bookstores, more
detail at the companion website.
HTTCS dot online.
That's the initials of how to teachcomputer science HTTCS dot online.
So last week's episode withAndy Colley proved to be an epic.
(01:08):
Even with drastic cuts, it was still43 minutes and this week proves
to be just as difficult to edit.
So there will be no morewasting time with silly jokes.
I'm just going to.
What?
oh, so it seems Alexa islistening and has a joke for me.
Let's see how this goes.
Who's there?
A hardware interrupt.
(01:33):
Oh, dear.
All right, let's try something else.
Alexa.
Why was six afraid of seven.
Because 7, 8, 9.
If you like this content,please subscribe.
Tell your friends, buymy books at HTTCS.Online.
Leave a review on Amazon or at the veryleast buy me a coffee, details at HTTCS
(01:54):
dot online on how you can do that.
Every week, I'll transcribethis recording and blog it at
HTTCS dot online slash blog.
So if you don't like my voice.
We're talking about programming todayand soon I'll introduce my guests, but
remember in the books HTTCS and HTLCSeach chapter starts with a story from
(02:16):
the hinterland of our thrilling subject.
Today's story takes placein Boston, Massachusetts.
It's April the 10th, 2019.
Late afternoon.
The final stage of the pipelineof algorithms is executing.
(02:37):
Dr.
Katie Bouman sits at her Mac.
And watches open mouth as the picturestarts to appear in the upper left window.
She and a team of computer scientists,astrophysicists and electrical
engineers have been working onthis project for three years.
Five petabytes of data on half aton of hard drives from telescopes
around the world, arrived here at MITover a week ago, and the algorithms
(03:01):
have been churning it ever since.
The black hole, Doctor Bouman isanalyzing, looks tiny from earth.
About as big as an orange wordon the surface of the moon.
Refraction limits what wecan see with our telescopes.
So the very best image of the moonfrom earth consists of 13,000 pixels.
But each pixel at that distance wouldthen contain around 1.5 million oranges.
(03:23):
To take an image of a black hole wewould need an earth sized telescope.
We can't make one of those, butwe can connect telescopes around
the world, giving us lots of lowresolution images from different
angles which could be processedby computers into a single image.
That's what Dr.
Bauman did creating an earth sizedcomputational telescope called
the event horizon telescope.
(03:45):
Just like several different, lowres images of the same face can
be used to generate an accurateprediction of the real face.
We can use these sparse noisyimages and put them together to
create a more detailed image.
Doctor Bouman has spent the lastthree years building a computational
pipeline to do just that with the imagesfrom the radio telescopes around the
globe being fed into the algorithm,which eventually produces an image.
(04:09):
The full story can be heard on DrBouman's Ted talk, but what excites me
is that the programming language chosenfor all this computation was Python.
So it was at around 6:45 PM.
On April 10th, 2019.
A researcher took a picture.
(04:29):
Of Dr.
Bouman at her computer in animage, you can see in my books
and is reproduced on the cover.
We can see a code window on theright of her screen, which looks
like the matplotlib Python library.
We can see the now famous imageof the M 87 black hole, but most
(04:49):
importantly of all, we are privilegedto witness the joy of discovery.
Dr.
Bouman presses her hands to hermouth eyes wide open in wonder.
An algorithm, her algorithm has unlockedone of the secrets of the universe.
(05:10):
So you can buy.
How to teach computer science or howto learn computer science, to read
that story again, and many more.
I did put lots of hinterland of ourwonderful subject into the book.
So that you can share it with yourstudents or enjoy it just for itself.
As for my story.
Well, I learned to program inthe eighties home, computer boom.
(05:37):
My school was one of the first toget the BBC micro . On which Mr.
Charnley taught us to program.
And of course the first thing we did waswrite a program that went a bit like this:
10 PRINT.
'Mr.
Charnley is an idiot' 20 GOTO 10.
And then press run.
(05:58):
Mr Charnley was not an idiot.
he was a very good computing teacher Igot an a in computer studies in 1984.
And it's all been downhill since then.
So that was my classroom experience.
But today's guests are going totell me a little bit about theirs.
(06:19):
It's time to introduce my special guestson the podcast today and I'm delighted to
have Harry and Anna Wake with me, who arethe young creators of Mission Encodable.
So please do tell us alittle bit about yourself.
Harry first, perhaps, and then Anna.
Harry.
Yeah my name is Harry.
(06:39):
Of Mission Encodableand I'm Anna's cousin.
I think a lot of our interests are quitesimilar, a lot of what I'll say will
also apply to Anna, but I'm studyingmaths, computer science, physics, and
further maths at A level currently.
And about two years ago I madeMission Encodable with Anna, which
is a website that teaches studentsto code in a fun and engaging way.
Over to you, Anna.
So yeah, as Harry said, we have verysimilar interests, but I am the other
(07:02):
co founder of Mission Encodable, and I'mdoing exactly the same A levels as Harry.
But it's also fair to say that outside ofdoing computer science and programming,
we also like climbing and swimmingand running and all those activities,
I think we do both like allof those, so it's quite handy.
Just means that whenever we haveto write a bio out, it means that
(07:23):
they both look almost identical,like they've been copied.
It's because we are justvery similar people, I think.
yeah.
Thank you for the books, bythe way, they are really nice.
Yeah,
very nice.
Nice little little book, yeah.
So I wrote the first one, whichis sat over here, for teachers.
There you go.
That one, the teacher one, but thisis full of stuff that teachers need to
know, and you don't need to know, notunless you're going to teach it, which
(07:45):
is something you could do in the future.
You think, ever thinkabout going into teaching?
I have read quite a bit of pedagogystuff recently, just because I find it
interesting, and it is funny becausethe more you learn about it, the more
you watch your teachers doing things.
cold calling, found it.
Yeah, I often think about that when,I make this podcast and there's lots
of other teaching podcasts and YouTubechannels and stuff out there and
(08:05):
just books generally, and I think,do the kids know what we're doing?
Would the students, if they knew whatwe were doing, would they try and
undermine the pedagogy techniques?
That would be mad.
So you don't undermine cold calling,do you like keep sticking your
hand up and annoying the teacherwho's trying to do cold calling?
No, I mean I've
never quite got to the extent ofsome pseudo reverse pedagogy, but
(08:26):
yeah, it is really interesting andI've got teachers who do more of it
than others do as well, it seems.
Yeah, that'll be interesting, ifI can talk to you sometime about,
about the good teaching and thebad teaching that you've seen.
in classroom, but we're going to tryand stick to computer science today.
So while we're on the subject then soyour experience of learning programming
(08:48):
in school, I was, I must admit, Idid my homework, I was watching that
video you did with Craig and Dave fromnearly two years ago now, I think,
where you were introducing MissionEncodable, and you were saying that you
were Coding for fun during lockdown.
Yeah, so during lockdown I thinkHarry and I, we started to have
our Zoom meetings at the time.
Yeah.
We called them our executive meetingsand we'd just make little projects.
(09:12):
I think the first onewe did was in Scratch.
And very imaginatively,we called it Wake Mania.
It had lots of games, all sorts.
It was a bit like a board game andthen you could play it with your family
so it was really nice.
And then we made a website.
And it had lots of puzzlesand things like that.
I had a Caesar cipher all kinds of,number pyramids, all that kind of thing.
(09:35):
And that used just HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
But it was quite fun.
And, we had a lot of fun designingit and making all the problems work.
And then we entered that intothe coolest project competition.
And we did win, and we'revery pleased with ourselves.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Coolest projects.
That's run by the Raspberry PiFoundation, I think, isn't it?
Did you have to go to aprize winning for that?
(09:56):
No, because it was in lockdown.
Of course it was.
Did you have a, did you havea Zoom prize giving ceremony?
It was a YouTube prize giving, wasn't it?
Yeah.
It was like a live stream and I think,we both watched at the same time waiting.
I've got kids roughly the same age as you.
One who's just gone off to university,and one who's in year 11, and
(10:18):
she went through secondary schoolwhen there were no trips anywhere.
So she didn't do any school trips at all.
From year seven to year11, it's pretty sad.
So everything happened online.
You're that generation that loadsof stuff just went online during a
really important part of your life.
How was that for you anyway,
? Yeah, it was strange, I think, but I think we also adapted to it
(10:38):
rather well, or at least I seem to.
There's a lot of benefitsthat have come out of it.
I don't think Anna and I would behaving these little meetings each
week had lockdown not happened.
There are positives
that have come out.
Like this, the way that we just jumpon a Teams call and everyone just does
that now, Teams, Zoom or Google Meet,whatever, so the world's changed and one
of the problems we've got as teachers.
(10:58):
Is we can't work at home a lot of teachersare leaving the profession because they're
seeing their other halves working athome and going, I want a bit of that.
Yeah, quite, until all schools goonline, that's going to be a big problem.
Yeah, there is discussion about thatnow, isn't there, whether virtual
remote teaching could be a thingand if everyone could just stay at
home all the time and more peoplesigning up to programs that do that.
I don't like the sound of it very much,so I'm quite glad I mostly avoided it.
(11:22):
But,
yeah, do you know, I think there's aplace for that for certain students.
There are a lot of students who,have trouble going to school for
various reasons, disability and so on.
And I think, so onlineschools really need to happen.
But I don't think it wouldbe good for everybody.
Not all students need to do that.
No, I agree.
I think there's a nice socialaspect of actually going into a
school and seeing your friends andseeing your teachers and things.
(11:43):
And I don't think you get that online,but then equally, there's a persistent
attendance issue at the moment.
So for some people that find it difficultto come in for all those reasons, I can
imagine it also has lots of positives.
So yeah, it's an interesting one.
It is, yeah I read something recentlycome back to technology this is
primary school children going to schooland they're unable to read a book.
(12:06):
They've never seen books before andthey swipe the cover of the books
as if it's an iPad or something.
That's quite scary, isn't it?
I've heard of people getting to secondaryschool in their computing lessons,
having never used like a proper monitorand keyboard before, and they start
swiping at the screens apparently,but I've never heard of it with books.
Oh yeah so yeah kids unable to use a bookwhen they start school is quite tragic.
(12:28):
Okay, don't get me wrong, I lovemy Kindle and that's where I read
everything, but that's mostly becauseI'm 50 something now and my eyes have
stopped working and so I can't readthe text on ordinary books these days.
Kindles are great for that.
So I want to First of all, ask you aboutlearning programming and what it was like
for you learning programming in school.
(12:49):
And before I go into that, I've justinterviewed Andy Colley who's on last
week's podcast by the time this comes out.
And he wrote the Python course for Repl.
it.
Yes, I know we all know about Repl.
it and that's a A big deal for youguys, I'll talk about that in a minute,
but so he knows a bit about teachingprogramming, Andy Colley, and he said
I've seen so many programmingcourses that go variable assignment,
(13:10):
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
. Those are the words of Andy Colley.
Have you experiencedthat in the classroom?
Have you found yourself suddenly lost bywhere the programming teaching has gone?
(13:32):
I think a lot of teachers.
Yeah, teachers know not to dothat, I think as a general rule.
Not all, but the majority, I think,they've taught for long enough to
know that, you do have to transferyour knowledge in a way that
students can understand as well.
But if that is happening, something'sgoing a bit wrong, I think.
Yeah, so what I'm driving at is youprobably had decent programming teachers.
(13:52):
Anna, what was your experience like?
It was all right.
I think I was quite lucky because my dadis also quite into programming and he when
I was, not super little, but probably.
Year six or seven, we would make likePython games and all that kind of stuff.
So he taught me a bit ofPython before I got to school.
(14:12):
I think for a lot of people it justbecomes quite dull at school because the
projects, they're all very samey and theycan get quite mathematical and that some
students find that hard to relate to.
Yeah, I guess you guys are, like,not typical students, really,
because you probably a bit like me,learned how to program before you
(14:34):
went to school or before you wentinto secondary school, at least.
And you said about mathematical problemsand stuff, and I was watching that YouTube
video you did with Craig and Dave nearlytwo years ago now and you were quite
keen to put into your product missionencodable, which we will come to in a
minute stuff that wasn't mathematical.
You did madlibs and a bandname generator, I remember.
(14:57):
Was it important for you to put instuff like that rather than just
oh, this is the volume of a cuboid
yeah, absolutely.
I was going to say earlier,if you can create games and.
actual projects with your programming,like right from the beginning, like
with my dad, we did connect four andtic tac toe and that kind of thing.
And it just, it shows you what you cando with the programming that you learn
(15:18):
and I feel like occasionally that'smissing from the projects that you
do, like finding out the volume of acube is all very well, but it's not
really showing you how important itis and all of this so yeah Harry,
do you want to talk about missionencodable yeah, not being mathematical.
Yeah, let's hear- harry,what's Mission Encodable?
(15:39):
Oh I'm very happy to giveyou the elevator pitch.
Thank you.
So Mission Encodable is a website thatAnna and I made about two or three years
ago now, and that we are always workingon it and we designed it because we wanted
to make learning to code more interesting.
So I think, as Anna's just touchedupon, a lot of tutorials are just.
Quite dull to be frank, like they willtalk a lot about mathematics or other
(16:01):
things which aren't very relevant tostudents lives, and we were seeing a lot
of our peers get quite switched off bythat, I think, and we really liked coding,
so we didn't want to just watch that, soMission Encodeable was what we made to try
and inspire people a bit more and to find,the more enjoyable aspects of programming,
because it is really creative.
So it's a free courseand it teaches Python.
(16:23):
All the way up from students not knowinganything about coding, having never
written any code, or knowing what anIDE is, or even what Python is, all
the way to being able to answer someof the very top tier questions in
their GCSE computer science exams.
So it's split up intoseveral different levels.
I think we've got nine at themoment, although by the time this
comes out, hopefully that will beincorrect, we'll actually have 10.
(16:46):
So there's lots more to come.
But the principle of it is that wewant to make learning to code really
fun and enjoyable for everybody.
So there are lots of projects in there.
There's step by step walkthroughexplanations, so teachers, students,
everything they need to know, andthey get to see it applied in practice
in a really fun and engaging way.
Yeah.
That's brilliant.
I've had a play with it andyeah, I can see what you mean.
(17:09):
You build up the skills and then there'sa project and it's something interesting.
Like you say I mentioned the bandname generator earlier and the
Madlib it's quite a good incentiveto, to get all those skills because
you can make something that's fun.
Yeah, good.
And like I say, I watched you talkabout it on your YouTube video it must
seem like ages ago now, with Craigand Dave and just as an aside, I know
(17:33):
Craig and Dave very well and we'refans of each other's work, I think.
So the book that I've justsent you a copy of how to learn
computer science, haven't I?
And if you turn to the foreword,you will see a foreword by Craig
and Dave, because they were verysupportive of my book projects and
and Dave actually proofread the wholething and gave me lots of pointers.
(17:53):
When I was working on the book, Ihad this brilliant class, which I
pretty much took through computingfrom year seven to year 11.
And they did brilliantly in summer 22, andbut they asked me about Craig and Dave.
Oh, you, do you know Craig and Dave?
And I became a minor celebritywhen I went on Craig and Dave's
youTube channel and that like theymade me keep putting it back on.
Oh, Sir show us when you didthat collab with Craig and Dave.
(18:17):
And I went, what's a collab?
And but they started asking me questionsand this thing happened and Craig
and Dave, neither of them know thisand they're going to listen to this
podcast and they go, oh my goodness.
But I got asked a question.
And a perfectly innocent question,so I thought, and the class asked
me Sir, are Craig and Dave married?
And, I know you're ahead of me here,because I know you're teenagers and
(18:40):
you know what that question means.
It's not what I thought it was, andso I said yeah, I believe they are.
And there was suddenly a whole load ofwhispering like, I told you, I told you!
And I went Told you what, we knewthey were married, like whoa guys,
they're married to separate people.
And so it took a littlewhile to sort that one out.
(19:02):
Oh, that noise meansit special offer time.
My wonderful publishers.
John Catt bookshop.com have kindlygiven all my podcast listeners
that's you guys 20% off, not justmy book, but the entire store.
Head to John Catt bookshop.com.
That's J O H N C a T T.
(19:25):
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HTTCSPOD that's HTTCS P O D for 20%off everything including books by me.
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(19:46):
At JohnCattBookshop.com now.
Back to the interview.
about Craig and Dave Yeah
, it was a few years ago and that was moreor less at the very start of Mission
Encodable for us, so that was reallygenerous of them, I think, because, we
were very small at that point, still arequite small, but, at that point, we had
very few people on our website, so itwas really generous, I think, of them
(20:08):
to give us that platform initially, whenno one had really put any trust in us at
that point, that was great and we've donea lot more work with them over the last
few years as well actually, haven't we?
So it's not just been that one thing,there's a lot more that's gone on.
Perhaps Anna could talk a bit about that.
Yeah, so you might have seen on ourwebsite that we have lots of, mission
encodable in partnership with Craigand Dave, and that's because we've
(20:29):
done a lot of work with Craig andDave they have their programming site,
Time2Code, and we have Mission Encodable.
And we've worked really hard together tomake sure that our levels perfectly align.
And they cover all of thesame concepts in each level.
And Time2Code will cover it inperhaps a more pedagogical way.
It uses the TIME framework, which is abit like a version of PRIMM throughout.
(20:53):
And the programs are a bit more serious,and Perhaps a bit more mathematical
throughout, and then on mission encodable,you have the more kind of fun and
guided projects that hopefully are morerelevant to, or relatable to students
like Mad Libs that you mentioned.
So I think it's really great becauseyou can use both to make your.
(21:16):
Learning to programming experience reallywell rounded because you can have the
kind of set like guidelines of timeand then you can go and maybe make some
more fun projects to test your skills oryou can go through our projects and our
steps and then go and look at time tocodes projects just to test everything.
So it's been really good and Ithink yeah, very generous of them
(21:38):
again to reach out to us to do that.
Yeah, good guys.
Yeah, absolutely.
No it's great.
So how does a teacher get ontoMission Encodable and start
using it in their Classroom.
It's very easy to get started with, soprobably the best thing to do, honestly,
is just have a look at our website.
So it's missionencodable.
com and you can look at ourtutorials really easily.
(22:00):
You just have to click the bigorange get started button and
you'll see everything you need to,so you can see our whole course.
You can see it all mapped out infront of you, so you can use that
to figure out roughly where yourstudents are at and what you'll find
in there are different tutorials.
Separated into levels, so you might havelevel one, which is the introduction
to print statements and inputs.
So if your students have never codedbefore, that would be a great place
(22:23):
to start, but we do also have lots ofother levels, the more advanced coders.
What teachers might do if they maybedon't feel as confident teaching the
programming themselves or, they wantto set it as homework, for example, you
could give your students a link to alevel of mission in and have them do that.
Or alternatively, you could teach them.
Bits and pieces from the front endof the class, and then you could show
the mission encodable, as a revisionresource or as some projects to do.
(22:47):
So there are lots ofdifferent ways to use it.
The other thing that I would sayis that we do have a teacher's
page with lots of resources on it.
So if you want, perhaps a sheet and aspreadsheet to track what your students
are up to in our course, you candownload that from our teacher's page.
We've got a launch presentation, sothat will introduce students to Mission
Encodable in their very first lesson.
We've got posters, we've gotnotebook sheets, all sorts of
(23:10):
other useful resources, andthey're all free to download.
Everything is free, Mission Encodable,just in case people didn't know.
So yeah, best way to start is havea look at our website, explore it.
And and if anyone does have anyquestions who's listening to this about
Mission Encodable, they're thinking,would it be right for their students?
They're very welcome to get in touchwith us just send us an email or fill
(23:31):
out the contact form and then we'llgladly meet with them and discuss
in more depth how it can help them.
Absolutely.
So you said there that it's free.
Are we talking about free levels andpremium levels or is the whole thing free?
No, it's all free.
Every bit of it is free.
People do like to ask so we don'tmake any money out of it at all,
but it's all free to access.
There's no accounts requiredeither, so there's no friction.
(23:54):
You don't have to give usan email address, just go on
there, use it as you please.
We wanted to do that, I think, justbecause lot of things are paid,
but people can't always afford them.
And initially like we thoughtif people want to use it, they
don't want to stop them by gettingin their way of the paywall.
Often schools don't have very muchmoney, particularly at the moment.
So we're really happyto provide it for free.
I have, I've been head of department.
(24:15):
And for five years.
And I remember looking for resourcesfor teaching programming and
being quoted, thousands of pounds.
And I remember having this conversationwith one vendor who said, and we can do
the whole thing for you for 7000 pounds.
And I said, you don't know anythingabout school budgets, do you?
No, no computing teacher listening tothis has got anywhere near that kind of
(24:36):
money, so it's great to know that you'vemade all of this available for free.
That's brilliant.
I also heard you tell Craig and Dave thatyou coded the whole thing yourself I would
have, like Dave, put money on WordPress,but no, no, you taught yourself web design
and the React framework and away you went.
So that's pretty, pretty amazingthat you've got that under your belt
(24:58):
now at this stage of your lives.
So are you hoping that, to takethat to some employer and go this
is what I made when I was 15, isthat your plan for the future?
I think it is a reallygood project to have.
It, it was, it's an amazing, I thinkit's a really good thing to build and to
put your skills to the test as it were.
And show what you can do.
It's also got a databaseand it's all set up.
(25:21):
We did have quite a bit of helpfrom my dad, who we now call
technical support, but , most ofthe the HTML, the React we've all
written we were also really lucky.
The design that lots of peoplesay, Oh, that must be WordPress.
But we had some help from my mumand all that, those people to
make it look the way it does.
(25:42):
Harry did an excellentjob of designing it.
So yeah,
it's a really good project.
Proper, proper family business.
This isn't it.
Oh, good stuff.
Yeah, so it must have took you, alot of resilience to get that coded.
I think it's important when you'relearning to program to have that
(26:03):
resilience and just keep plugging away.
Do you think that's important?
I definitely think so.
When we started making it, probablyMission Encodable was slightly above
our skill level, so we had to teachourself a lot, but in a way like that's
good because it helps you learn stuff.
So I definitely recommend that toany students who are listening,
perhaps, or teachers with students.
Yeah, you just dive in and start saying.
(26:23):
If you just learn what you need tolearn, it's a really good way of
learning, just experimenting withdifferent things, and you will hit
roadblocks along the way, which arequite frustrating sometimes when you get
stuck for ages, as long as you've gotsomeone you can ask for help, or nowadays
you can ask ChatGPT if you want to.
You can, and I'll tell you a betterchatbot to use, and that is the
new one from Harvard's computingdepartment that's called cs50.
(26:47):
ai.
So cs50 is Harvard's famous entrylevel computer science course which
they make available for free online.
There's hours and hours of lecturesand problems to solve, and to go
alongside it they Looked into, you'veprobably heard of rubber duck debugging.
Have any of your teachers givenyou rubber ducks to talk to?
(27:09):
I've never had that, but in my currentcomputer science class, we have a lot of
ducks that have been stuck on the walls.
I think possibly the previous uppersixth left them as a bit of a prank.
So just in random places,you'll find them dotted around.
They probably had a teacher that triedit and said, look, if you've got a coding
problem, you talk it out to a rubber duck.
You just go it should be doing this.
It's only doing that.
(27:30):
It's not doing that.
This line has given me an error.
What do you think?
And the principle of rubber duckingis just the fact that you verbalize
the problem you're trying to solveactually sometimes helps you solve it.
You suddenly realize where theerror is because you're talking
it out with a rubber duck.
So you just go cs50.
ai, it's free, you need to sign in witha free GitHub account, annoyingly, but
(27:52):
they're free, and then you just ask itquestions, and you can say, oh, I've
written some code, I'm trying to do this,I'm trying to output all the rows in my
table, but it's only doing the first 10,not 11, and it will go, Oh, have you got
the range function correct in your Python?
And it will not give you theanswer, but tell you where to look.
So it's got a picture of a rubberduck on the website because it is
(28:15):
supposed to be AI rubber ducking.
So that's something totry if you get stuck.
So what you said, Harry if you've gota project in mind, if you've got, a
goal to reach and it's currently beyondwhat you're able to do, Then that's
a brilliant motivator for findingout the bits that you're stuck on.
There's nothing better than havingthat motivating project, which is
(28:38):
brings me back to mission encodable.
You've got that project at theend of every level, haven't you?
Whether it's a Madlib ora band name generator.
Yeah, we have, we call them capstoneprojects capping a level off and
they are independently completed bythe learner doing the level, and it
should put all of the skills thathave been learned in that level to
(28:59):
the test, and I think it can be great.
It's really easy to say, Oh, itshows you what you need to work on.
It does, and it shows you ifyou need to go back and go over
something and try doing it with moreexamples and that kind of thing.
But also I think it's nice.
It shows you your strengths and itgives you maybe a confidence boost.
(29:19):
If you feel like, yes, I can do this.
I am.
Feeling quite skilled, actually,with my new Python knowledge.
So I think it is a very nice thingto have at the end of a level.
And also, we've tried to makethem quite nice projects.
As you were saying, you can showyour friends and you can play a game.
I made a our new level which Harrymentioned will be in Turtle and I was
(29:41):
making a Turtle racing game during my freeperiod and my friends got very into it.
They were like, oh yeah,pink, go pink, go yellow.
I love that.
Turtle's very motivating actually.
Turtle graphics in Python and tryingto do things like, I like doing fractal
flower patterns and things like that.
And I often do Turtlegraphics, Christmas cards.
With year seven or
(30:02):
eight.
I know it's a nice little, yeah, I know.
I like it.
Always does encourage abit of silliness, I think.
Yeah,
yeah, nice.
So why do children needto learn to program?
You can go, ChatGPT, write me aprogram to do this and it will do it.
What do you think?
I think, I do think it is really importantfor children to learn to program.
I know we're talking about it can build upresilience and it can be really creative
(30:26):
and it helps you think outside the box.
I think it's a very good skill for that.
And I think that if you if you don'tknow what you're doing and you just
say, Oh, write me a program that doesthis and writes your program, but it
doesn't work, or, it does somethingunexpected and then you don't know why.
And I think it is.
I think it is good to understand whysomething works the way it works or to
(30:51):
be able to fix any problems yourself.
And also all of the, skills, like beingcreative and thinking about it logically
and building up that resilience andconfidence that can come with learning
to program is really important.
And you won't get that from just
I think as teachers we call thatcomputational thinking usually,
(31:16):
and it's it's the hard bit.
Really, it's the solving the problemand you know churning it out in
Python and getting the syntaxright isn't really the hard bit.
And so you know, having the idea andfleshing it out, maybe drawing flowcharts
or diagrams to To get your ideas outthere that's the hard bit and that
(31:37):
still needs a bit of creativity that Idon't think AI is quite there with yet.
You might as well have just writtenit sometimes, or search stack overflow
for the code, annoyingly, StackOverflow has now got AI answers, so
you know, in a few years it'll just beAI talking to itself on that website,
so that'll be interesting to watch.
I didn't know it had that, butthat's quite annoying, because Stack
Overflow is great, but always use it.
(31:59):
Yeah, don't we all?
ChatGPT and the other AI things, like theHarvard one you just mentioned, are all
really great for writing bits of code,but I think, it's a lot more valuable
to be able to understand what the code'sdoing, and then that way, if you have
an error, then you'll know why that is.
You can look at it yourself, because ifyou aren't able to do that, You don't
have any more skills than anyone does,
really.
(32:20):
No, I think it's really, that'sa really important point.
And one of the big problems withAI, and if you watch a film called
Coded Bias you'll hear about this.
It's a great film about the the pitfallsof AI and how it can entrench the biases
that already exist in our society.
And one of the problems with AI is that.
If you use a machine learning model tomake decisions for you, it can't tell
(32:42):
you why it made that decision and.
There's no real legislationaround this at the moment.
For example, women will be denied creditcards that men in exactly the same
financial position will be given, andthe AI can't tell you why it's denied
that woman that credit card, because itdoesn't know why it made that decision.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm doing an EPQ at the moment, whichis an extended project qualification.
(33:04):
So you write, I think it's a 5, 000 wordreport, and I'm doing mine around bias in
AI, which is basically what you just said.
And a lot of the time, the issue thatpeople face with it is that you don't
know how a decision has been reached.
And there's not really any hardway that you can prove that an
AI model is going against theEquality Act, but it probably is.
(33:25):
And, there are scary cases of womenbeing denied credit, for example,
where it hasn't even been told thatthey are a woman, but it's like it's
picked up other bits of information.
Yeah, and it's figured that out itself.
You definitely need people towork on that who understand the
ethical implications, I think.
And that is what a goodcomputer scientist can do.
Yeah, absolutely.
Oh that's fascinating thatyou're doing that EPQ.
(33:46):
I'd love to read thatwhen you've written it.
I love all this.
I'm really into learningabout AI at the minute.
So talking of bias against women,sorry Anna, but that's the world
at the moment is it's slightlyproblematic, shall we say.
Okay, so what we really need.
What we really need to solve that is morewomen in technology so how do we get more
(34:08):
girls to learn to program or for girlsto take computer science GCSE in England.
I think part of it lies in making itmore interesting and more relatable.
Because I think a lot of people don'tdo computer science because they
find it boring and Some of thosepeople will be girls, so if we can
make the projects more interesting,then more people will want to do it.
(34:31):
The content that's coveredmore interesting, more
people will want to do it.
Also, I think that making the programs,I'm talking about programming here,
because that's what Harry and I do.
Yeah, absolutely.
Make the projects I think my dad has beendoing some research into this and he's
talking about making it apply to the widerworld, so things about how does computer
(34:55):
science integrate with medicine orgeography, like lots of different fields.
And I think he was sayingthat girls can find that more
interesting and more relatable.
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 perfume ornail polish or pink or something.
(35:18):
In fact, actually, as you were talkingabout, if you ask ChatGPT about
projects that might interest girls,it comes up with stuff about nail
polish and perfume and all of that.
And as someone who's not interested inthat, and I think many girls will spot
that immediately, and they'll be like,oh, honestly, this is really annoying.
Stereotypical.
It goes
back.
So what you're saying happened in 2015.
(35:42):
IBM, that global technology giantwith hundreds of thousands of IT
professionals around the world.
They wanted to encourage more womeninto IT and they launched something
that became infamous in 2015.
It was called the hacka hairdryer campaign.
Hack a hairdryer and calling all women intech join the hack a hairdryer experiment
(36:06):
to re engineer what matters in science.
And there you go.
And it was on Twitter and you can seethe Twitter replies and somebody says,
that's okay IBM, I'd rather buildsatellites instead, but good luck with
that whole hack a hairdryer thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah,
it's a difficult one, isn't it?
Because, we do need more women in techdesperately working on AI, for example,
(36:27):
because that is one of the ways that theycan spot biases that are appearing and,
prevent them from Being extrapolated,but equally it's really odd because a
lot of girls just don't seem to havean interest in it and somehow we failed
to capture that, I can't see how thatwill be a biological thing, but, all
the research that I've read about it,I've never, no one's given me a solid
(36:48):
sort of reasoning as to why less girlsare doing it because it is an issue
and a lot of the stuff people willsay just sounds relatively sexist.
Like it will be something like, Ohyeah girls like to see, you know,
things that are more humanities justbecause they don't like hard maths
and you think that can't be right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So where it comes from, I don't know,but I'm very interested to know if anyone
(37:08):
has any research they'd like to share.
Yeah.
So one of my other jobs is I work as aprofessional development lead for the
NCCE, the National Centre for ComputingEducation, and they're running a big
program called I Belong to try toget more girls to take the subject.
And yeah, I think it is true accordingto the research, that relevance really
(37:29):
helps getting girls in, because I thinkgenerally speaking, boys are happy to
mess about with technology for its ownsake, and girls, this is generalizing
greatly, girls would like to see,something important happen at the end of
it, so that's why I always, when I'm Inthe classroom, I'm talking about careers.
I always talk about, like you say, medicaltechnology, bioinformatics, and so on.
(37:53):
One of the things that fascinates me isthings like VR being used for therapy,
for like trauma patients, and so on.
And so I read something that,a load of boys were asked, what
would you do with a VR headset?
And it was like.
Every single one of them said I'dwrite games and then girls said oh
I'd make a therapy environment to helppeople who've been traumatized in war
(38:14):
I think it's really important to showthe relevance of technology, but I
think, it will inspire more girls intoit, which is great, but also it will
inspire everyone into it, because ifyou show how it's relevant, I think
no one's going to be opposed to that.
You might as well do that and showpeople, no matter what you're interested
in, if it's climate change, if it'sspace exploration, if it's nail polish,
which it might be for some girls,but probably not for all of them.
(38:37):
Or hack a hairdryer?
Yeah.
I think that's really important thatwe show people how computer science
can be applied in all sorts ofdifferent fields and how it can help
lots of different types of people.
Absolutely,
I think there's quite a lot ofstuff about role models like
with the I belong program.
We have some of the posters up in our CSclassroom, but I think That is a good idea
(38:57):
too, and it shows you also what you coulddo with computer science if you do it.
Also, just, I hadn't really thoughtof this before I started talking,
but Harry and I have got a ComputingLegends campaign going on at the moment.
Every month we have a pioneering computerscientists just trying to highlight
the importance of computer science andshow people that it is not all I don't
(39:21):
know, there is lots of things you cando with it outside that field of just,
engineering a CPU or that kind of thing.
Yeah but a really good, really fastCPU could solve climate change,
or lots of them put together.
So yeah let's talk aboutwhat will become possible.
One of the things I say to my studentswhen I'm trying to encourage them
(39:42):
to take GCSE computer science,and they say why should I take it?
And I go because, come the robotapocalypse, we want more human
soldiers on the human side.
And so all my students, you know, okay.
And then I occasionally have one studentsays, no, I'm on the side of the robots.
It's a good argument that, ifthat's not going to convince
you, I don't know what is.
It's coming.
The robot apocalypse is coming.
(40:03):
We need soldiers.
We need people who know technology.
I've seen Terminator.
I know what happens.
It's been great to talk to you.
I think, I think we coveredeverything I wanted to cover.
That was
brilliant.
I think that went well.
Just about.
So thank you so much for being on,
. Well, thank you for
having us.
Brilliant to talk to you, thankyou so much for your time, Anna.
(40:24):
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, that was brilliant.
Thank you to you as well.
All right.
Right.
Thanks, guys.
Lovely to talk to you.
Thanks, Alan.
Have a good evening.
Bye.
You too.
This has been how to teach computerscience, the podcast I'm Alan Harrison.
If you want to give me feedback orget involved, just go to HTTCS dot
(40:46):
online or check the show notes.
Remember.
If you liked this content,please subscribe to the podcast.
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.
I'm also available for staff training,inset days and student master classes.
(41:06):
See the website for details.
Next week's guest is the amazing Adriennetough or miss tough on Twitter to you.
And that is an unmissable interview.
Because it's got more jokes in it.
I'll leave you with one ofthe jokes from next week.
Why was the computerscientist late for work?
(41:29):
Find out next week on how to teachcomputer science, the podcast.
It's been great to talk to you.
See you then.
Hello, and welcome to how toteach computer science the podcast.
This is episode five.
How do we teach programming?
I'll be answering that questionand many more with the help
of today's special guests.
, I do think it is really importantfor children to learn to program.
I know we're talking about it can build upresilience and it can be really creative
(00:28):
and it helps you think outside the box.
ChatGPT and the other AI things, are allreally great for writing bits of code,
but I think, it's a lot more valuableto be able to understand what the code's
doing, and then that way, if you havean error, then you'll know why that is.
And we'll hear thefull interview shortly.
(00:48):
My name is Alan Harrison, and I wrotethe books how to teach computer science
and how to learn computer scienceavailable in online bookstores, more
detail at the companion website.
HTTCS dot online.
That's the initials of how to teachcomputer science HTTCS dot online.
So last week's episode withAndy Colley proved to be an epic.
(01:08):
Even with drastic cuts, it was still43 minutes and this week proves
to be just as difficult to edit.
So there will be no morewasting time with silly jokes.
I'm just going to.
What?
oh, so it seems Alexa islistening and has a joke for me.
Let's see how this goes.
Who's there?
A hardware interrupt.
(01:33):
Oh, dear.
All right, let's try something else.
Alexa.
Why was six afraid of seven.
Because 7, 8, 9.
If you like this content,please subscribe.
Tell your friends, buymy books at HTTCS.Online.
Leave a review on Amazon or at the veryleast buy me a coffee, details at HTTCS
(01:54):
dot online on how you can do that.
Every week, I'll transcribethis recording and blog it at
HTTCS dot online slash blog.
So if you don't like my voice.
We're talking about programming todayand soon I'll introduce my guests, but
remember in the books HTTCS and HTLCSeach chapter starts with a story from
(02:16):
the hinterland of our thrilling subject.
Today's story takes placein Boston, Massachusetts.
It's April the 10th, 2019.
Late afternoon.
The final stage of the pipelineof algorithms is executing.
(02:37):
Dr.
Katie Bouman sits at her Mac.
And watches open mouth as the picturestarts to appear in the upper left window.
She and a team of computer scientists,astrophysicists and electrical
engineers have been working onthis project for three years.
Five petabytes of data on half aton of hard drives from telescopes
around the world, arrived here at MITover a week ago, and the algorithms
(03:01):
have been churning it ever since.
The black hole, Doctor Bouman isanalyzing, looks tiny from earth.
About as big as an orange wordon the surface of the moon.
Refraction limits what wecan see with our telescopes.
So the very best image of the moonfrom earth consists of 13,000 pixels.
But each pixel at that distance wouldthen contain around 1.5 million oranges.
(03:23):
To take an image of a black hole wewould need an earth sized telescope.
We can't make one of those, butwe can connect telescopes around
the world, giving us lots of lowresolution images from different
angles which could be processedby computers into a single image.
That's what Dr.
Bauman did creating an earth sizedcomputational telescope called
the event horizon telescope.
(03:45):
Just like several different, lowres images of the same face can
be used to generate an accurateprediction of the real face.
We can use these sparse noisyimages and put them together to
create a more detailed image.
Doctor Bouman has spent the lastthree years building a computational
pipeline to do just that with the imagesfrom the radio telescopes around the
globe being fed into the algorithm,which eventually produces an image.
(04:09):
The full story can be heard on DrBouman's Ted talk, but what excites me
is that the programming language chosenfor all this computation was Python.
So it was at around 6:45 PM.
On April 10th, 2019.
A researcher took a picture.
(04:29):
Of Dr.
Bouman at her computer in animage, you can see in my books
and is reproduced on the cover.
We can see a code window on theright of her screen, which looks
like the matplotlib Python library.
We can see the now famous imageof the M 87 black hole, but most
(04:49):
importantly of all, we are privilegedto witness the joy of discovery.
Dr.
Bouman presses her hands to hermouth eyes wide open in wonder.
An algorithm, her algorithm has unlockedone of the secrets of the universe.
(05:10):
So you can buy.
How to teach computer science or howto learn computer science, to read
that story again, and many more.
I did put lots of hinterland of ourwonderful subject into the book.
So that you can share it with yourstudents or enjoy it just for itself.
As for my story.
Well, I learned to program inthe eighties home, computer boom.
(05:37):
My school was one of the first toget the BBC micro . On which Mr.
Charnley taught us to program.
And of course the first thing we did waswrite a program that went a bit like this:
10 PRINT.
'Mr.
Charnley is an idiot' 20 GOTO 10.
And then press run.
(05:58):
Mr Charnley was not an idiot.
he was a very good computing teacher Igot an a in computer studies in 1984.
And it's all been downhill since then.
So that was my classroom experience.
But today's guests are going totell me a little bit about theirs.
(06:19):
It's time to introduce my special guestson the podcast today and I'm delighted to
have Harry and Anna Wake with me, who arethe young creators of Mission Encodable.
So please do tell us alittle bit about yourself.
Harry first, perhaps, and then Anna.
Harry.
Yeah my name is Harry.
(06:39):
Of Mission Encodableand I'm Anna's cousin.
I think a lot of our interests are quitesimilar, a lot of what I'll say will
also apply to Anna, but I'm studyingmaths, computer science, physics, and
further maths at A level currently.
And about two years ago I madeMission Encodable with Anna, which
is a website that teaches studentsto code in a fun and engaging way.
Over to you, Anna.
So yeah, as Harry said, we have verysimilar interests, but I am the other
(07:02):
co founder of Mission Encodable, and I'mdoing exactly the same A levels as Harry.
But it's also fair to say that outside ofdoing computer science and programming,
we also like climbing and swimmingand running and all those activities,
I think we do both like allof those, so it's quite handy.
Just means that whenever we haveto write a bio out, it means that
(07:23):
they both look almost identical,like they've been copied.
It's because we are justvery similar people, I think.
yeah.
Thank you for the books, bythe way, they are really nice.
Yeah,
very nice.
Nice little little book, yeah.
So I wrote the first one, whichis sat over here, for teachers.
There you go.
That one, the teacher one, but thisis full of stuff that teachers need to
know, and you don't need to know, notunless you're going to teach it, which
(07:45):
is something you could do in the future.
You think, ever thinkabout going into teaching?
I have read quite a bit of pedagogystuff recently, just because I find it
interesting, and it is funny becausethe more you learn about it, the more
you watch your teachers doing things.
cold calling, found it.
Yeah, I often think about that when,I make this podcast and there's lots
of other teaching podcasts and YouTubechannels and stuff out there and
(08:05):
just books generally, and I think,do the kids know what we're doing?
Would the students, if they knew whatwe were doing, would they try and
undermine the pedagogy techniques?
That would be mad.
So you don't undermine cold calling,do you like keep sticking your
hand up and annoying the teacherwho's trying to do cold calling?
No, I mean I've
never quite got to the extent ofsome pseudo reverse pedagogy, but
(08:26):
yeah, it is really interesting andI've got teachers who do more of it
than others do as well, it seems.
Yeah, that'll be interesting, ifI can talk to you sometime about,
about the good teaching and thebad teaching that you've seen.
in classroom, but we're going to tryand stick to computer science today.
So while we're on the subject then soyour experience of learning programming
(08:48):
in school, I was, I must admit, Idid my homework, I was watching that
video you did with Craig and Dave fromnearly two years ago now, I think,
where you were introducing MissionEncodable, and you were saying that you
were Coding for fun during lockdown.
Yeah, so during lockdown I thinkHarry and I, we started to have
our Zoom meetings at the time.
Yeah.
We called them our executive meetingsand we'd just make little projects.
(09:12):
I think the first onewe did was in Scratch.
And very imaginatively,we called it Wake Mania.
It had lots of games, all sorts.
It was a bit like a board game andthen you could play it with your family
so it was really nice.
And then we made a website.
And it had lots of puzzlesand things like that.
I had a Caesar cipher all kinds of,number pyramids, all that kind of thing.
(09:35):
And that used just HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
But it was quite fun.
And, we had a lot of fun designingit and making all the problems work.
And then we entered that intothe coolest project competition.
And we did win, and we'revery pleased with ourselves.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Coolest projects.
That's run by the Raspberry PiFoundation, I think, isn't it?
Did you have to go to aprize winning for that?
(09:56):
No, because it was in lockdown.
Of course it was.
Did you have a, did you havea Zoom prize giving ceremony?
It was a YouTube prize giving, wasn't it?
Yeah.
It was like a live stream and I think,we both watched at the same time waiting.
I've got kids roughly the same age as you.
One who's just gone off to university,and one who's in year 11, and
(10:18):
she went through secondary schoolwhen there were no trips anywhere.
So she didn't do any school trips at all.
From year seven to year11, it's pretty sad.
So everything happened online.
You're that generation that loadsof stuff just went online during a
really important part of your life.
How was that for you anyway,
? Yeah, it was strange, I think, but I think we also adapted to it
(10:38):
rather well, or at least I seem to.
There's a lot of benefitsthat have come out of it.
I don't think Anna and I would behaving these little meetings each
week had lockdown not happened.
There are positives
that have come out.
Like this, the way that we just jumpon a Teams call and everyone just does
that now, Teams, Zoom or Google Meet,whatever, so the world's changed and one
of the problems we've got as teachers.
(10:58):
Is we can't work at home a lot of teachersare leaving the profession because they're
seeing their other halves working athome and going, I want a bit of that.
Yeah, quite, until all schools goonline, that's going to be a big problem.
Yeah, there is discussion about thatnow, isn't there, whether virtual
remote teaching could be a thingand if everyone could just stay at
home all the time and more peoplesigning up to programs that do that.
I don't like the sound of it very much,so I'm quite glad I mostly avoided it.
(11:22):
But,
yeah, do you know, I think there's aplace for that for certain students.
There are a lot of students who,have trouble going to school for
various reasons, disability and so on.
And I think, so onlineschools really need to happen.
But I don't think it wouldbe good for everybody.
Not all students need to do that.
No, I agree.
I think there's a nice socialaspect of actually going into a
school and seeing your friends andseeing your teachers and things.
(11:43):
And I don't think you get that online,but then equally, there's a persistent
attendance issue at the moment.
So for some people that find it difficultto come in for all those reasons, I can
imagine it also has lots of positives.
So yeah, it's an interesting one.
It is, yeah I read something recentlycome back to technology this is
primary school children going to schooland they're unable to read a book.
(12:06):
They've never seen books before andthey swipe the cover of the books
as if it's an iPad or something.
That's quite scary, isn't it?
I've heard of people getting to secondaryschool in their computing lessons,
having never used like a proper monitorand keyboard before, and they start
swiping at the screens apparently,but I've never heard of it with books.
Oh yeah so yeah kids unable to use a bookwhen they start school is quite tragic.
(12:28):
Okay, don't get me wrong, I lovemy Kindle and that's where I read
everything, but that's mostly becauseI'm 50 something now and my eyes have
stopped working and so I can't readthe text on ordinary books these days.
Kindles are great for that.
So I want to First of all, ask you aboutlearning programming and what it was like
for you learning programming in school.
(12:49):
And before I go into that, I've justinterviewed Andy Colley who's on last
week's podcast by the time this comes out.
And he wrote the Python course for Repl.
it.
Yes, I know we all know about Repl.
it and that's a A big deal for youguys, I'll talk about that in a minute,
but so he knows a bit about teachingprogramming, Andy Colley, and he said
I've seen so many programmingcourses that go variable assignment,
(13:10):
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
. Those are the words of Andy Colley.
Have you experiencedthat in the classroom?
Have you found yourself suddenly lost bywhere the programming teaching has gone?
(13:32):
I think a lot of teachers.
Yeah, teachers know not to dothat, I think as a general rule.
Not all, but the majority, I think,they've taught for long enough to
know that, you do have to transferyour knowledge in a way that
students can understand as well.
But if that is happening, something'sgoing a bit wrong, I think.
Yeah, so what I'm driving at is youprobably had decent programming teachers.
(13:52):
Anna, what was your experience like?
It was all right.
I think I was quite lucky because my dadis also quite into programming and he when
I was, not super little, but probably.
Year six or seven, we would make likePython games and all that kind of stuff.
So he taught me a bit ofPython before I got to school.
(14:12):
I think for a lot of people it justbecomes quite dull at school because the
projects, they're all very samey and theycan get quite mathematical and that some
students find that hard to relate to.
Yeah, I guess you guys are, like,not typical students, really,
because you probably a bit like me,learned how to program before you
(14:34):
went to school or before you wentinto secondary school, at least.
And you said about mathematical problemsand stuff, and I was watching that YouTube
video you did with Craig and Dave nearlytwo years ago now and you were quite
keen to put into your product missionencodable, which we will come to in a
minute stuff that wasn't mathematical.
You did madlibs and a bandname generator, I remember.
(14:57):
Was it important for you to put instuff like that rather than just
oh, this is the volume of a cuboid
yeah, absolutely.
I was going to say earlier,if you can create games and.
actual projects with your programming,like right from the beginning, like
with my dad, we did connect four andtic tac toe and that kind of thing.
And it just, it shows you what you cando with the programming that you learn
(15:18):
and I feel like occasionally that'smissing from the projects that you
do, like finding out the volume of acube is all very well, but it's not
really showing you how important itis and all of this so yeah Harry,
do you want to talk about missionencodable yeah, not being mathematical.
Yeah, let's hear- harry,what's Mission Encodable?
(15:39):
Oh I'm very happy to giveyou the elevator pitch.
Thank you.
So Mission Encodable is a website thatAnna and I made about two or three years
ago now, and that we are always workingon it and we designed it because we wanted
to make learning to code more interesting.
So I think, as Anna's just touchedupon, a lot of tutorials are just.
Quite dull to be frank, like they willtalk a lot about mathematics or other
(16:01):
things which aren't very relevant tostudents lives, and we were seeing a lot
of our peers get quite switched off bythat, I think, and we really liked coding,
so we didn't want to just watch that, soMission Encodeable was what we made to try
and inspire people a bit more and to find,the more enjoyable aspects of programming,
because it is really creative.
So it's a free courseand it teaches Python.
(16:23):
All the way up from students not knowinganything about coding, having never
written any code, or knowing what anIDE is, or even what Python is, all
the way to being able to answer someof the very top tier questions in
their GCSE computer science exams.
So it's split up intoseveral different levels.
I think we've got nine at themoment, although by the time this
comes out, hopefully that will beincorrect, we'll actually have 10.
(16:46):
So there's lots more to come.
But the principle of it is that wewant to make learning to code really
fun and enjoyable for everybody.
So there are lots of projects in there.
There's step by step walkthroughexplanations, so teachers, students,
everything they need to know, andthey get to see it applied in practice
in a really fun and engaging way.
Yeah.
That's brilliant.
I've had a play with it andyeah, I can see what you mean.
(17:09):
You build up the skills and then there'sa project and it's something interesting.
Like you say I mentioned the bandname generator earlier and the
Madlib it's quite a good incentiveto, to get all those skills because
you can make something that's fun.
Yeah, good.
And like I say, I watched you talkabout it on your YouTube video it must
seem like ages ago now, with Craigand Dave and just as an aside, I know
(17:33):
Craig and Dave very well and we'refans of each other's work, I think.
So the book that I've justsent you a copy of how to learn
computer science, haven't I?
And if you turn to the foreword,you will see a foreword by Craig
and Dave, because they were verysupportive of my book projects and
and Dave actually proofread the wholething and gave me lots of pointers.
(17:53):
When I was working on the book, Ihad this brilliant class, which I
pretty much took through computingfrom year seven to year 11.
And they did brilliantly in summer 22, andbut they asked me about Craig and Dave.
Oh, you, do you know Craig and Dave?
And I became a minor celebritywhen I went on Craig and Dave's
youTube channel and that like theymade me keep putting it back on.
Oh, Sir show us when you didthat collab with Craig and Dave.
(18:17):
And I went, what's a collab?
And but they started asking me questionsand this thing happened and Craig
and Dave, neither of them know thisand they're going to listen to this
podcast and they go, oh my goodness.
But I got asked a question.
And a perfectly innocent question,so I thought, and the class asked
me Sir, are Craig and Dave married?
And, I know you're ahead of me here,because I know you're teenagers and
(18:40):
you know what that question means.
It's not what I thought it was, andso I said yeah, I believe they are.
And there was suddenly a whole load ofwhispering like, I told you, I told you!
And I went Told you what, we knewthey were married, like whoa guys,
they're married to separate people.
And so it took a littlewhile to sort that one out.
(19:02):
Oh, that noise meansit special offer time.
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(19:25):
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(19:46):
At JohnCattBookshop.com now.
Back to the interview.
about Craig and Dave Yeah
, it was a few years ago and that was moreor less at the very start of Mission
Encodable for us, so that was reallygenerous of them, I think, because, we
were very small at that point, still arequite small, but, at that point, we had
very few people on our website, so itwas really generous, I think, of them
(20:08):
to give us that platform initially, whenno one had really put any trust in us at
that point, that was great and we've donea lot more work with them over the last
few years as well actually, haven't we?
So it's not just been that one thing,there's a lot more that's gone on.
Perhaps Anna could talk a bit about that.
Yeah, so you might have seen on ourwebsite that we have lots of, mission
encodable in partnership with Craigand Dave, and that's because we've
(20:29):
done a lot of work with Craig andDave they have their programming site,
Time2Code, and we have Mission Encodable.
And we've worked really hard together tomake sure that our levels perfectly align.
And they cover all of thesame concepts in each level.
And Time2Code will cover it inperhaps a more pedagogical way.
It uses the TIME framework, which is abit like a version of PRIMM throughout.
(20:53):
And the programs are a bit more serious,and Perhaps a bit more mathematical
throughout, and then on mission encodable,you have the more kind of fun and
guided projects that hopefully are morerelevant to, or relatable to students
like Mad Libs that you mentioned.
So I think it's really great becauseyou can use both to make your.
(21:16):
Learning to programming experience reallywell rounded because you can have the
kind of set like guidelines of timeand then you can go and maybe make some
more fun projects to test your skills oryou can go through our projects and our
steps and then go and look at time tocodes projects just to test everything.
So it's been really good and Ithink yeah, very generous of them
(21:38):
again to reach out to us to do that.
Yeah, good guys.
Yeah, absolutely.
No it's great.
So how does a teacher get ontoMission Encodable and start
using it in their Classroom.
It's very easy to get started with, soprobably the best thing to do, honestly,
is just have a look at our website.
So it's missionencodable.
com and you can look at ourtutorials really easily.
(22:00):
You just have to click the bigorange get started button and
you'll see everything you need to,so you can see our whole course.
You can see it all mapped out infront of you, so you can use that
to figure out roughly where yourstudents are at and what you'll find
in there are different tutorials.
Separated into levels, so you might havelevel one, which is the introduction
to print statements and inputs.
So if your students have never codedbefore, that would be a great place
(22:23):
to start, but we do also have lots ofother levels, the more advanced coders.
What teachers might do if they maybedon't feel as confident teaching the
programming themselves or, they wantto set it as homework, for example, you
could give your students a link to alevel of mission in and have them do that.
Or alternatively, you could teach them.
Bits and pieces from the front endof the class, and then you could show
the mission encodable, as a revisionresource or as some projects to do.
(22:47):
So there are lots ofdifferent ways to use it.
The other thing that I would sayis that we do have a teacher's
page with lots of resources on it.
So if you want, perhaps a sheet and aspreadsheet to track what your students
are up to in our course, you candownload that from our teacher's page.
We've got a launch presentation, sothat will introduce students to Mission
Encodable in their very first lesson.
We've got posters, we've gotnotebook sheets, all sorts of
(23:10):
other useful resources, andthey're all free to download.
Everything is free, Mission Encodable,just in case people didn't know.
So yeah, best way to start is havea look at our website, explore it.
And and if anyone does have anyquestions who's listening to this about
Mission Encodable, they're thinking,would it be right for their students?
They're very welcome to get in touchwith us just send us an email or fill
(23:31):
out the contact form and then we'llgladly meet with them and discuss
in more depth how it can help them.
Absolutely.
So you said there that it's free.
Are we talking about free levels andpremium levels or is the whole thing free?
No, it's all free.
Every bit of it is free.
People do like to ask so we don'tmake any money out of it at all,
but it's all free to access.
There's no accounts requiredeither, so there's no friction.
(23:54):
You don't have to give usan email address, just go on
there, use it as you please.
We wanted to do that, I think, justbecause lot of things are paid,
but people can't always afford them.
And initially like we thoughtif people want to use it, they
don't want to stop them by gettingin their way of the paywall.
Often schools don't have very muchmoney, particularly at the moment.
So we're really happyto provide it for free.
I have, I've been head of department.
(24:15):
And for five years.
And I remember looking for resourcesfor teaching programming and
being quoted, thousands of pounds.
And I remember having this conversationwith one vendor who said, and we can do
the whole thing for you for 7000 pounds.
And I said, you don't know anythingabout school budgets, do you?
No, no computing teacher listening tothis has got anywhere near that kind of
(24:36):
money, so it's great to know that you'vemade all of this available for free.
That's brilliant.
I also heard you tell Craig and Dave thatyou coded the whole thing yourself I would
have, like Dave, put money on WordPress,but no, no, you taught yourself web design
and the React framework and away you went.
So that's pretty, pretty amazingthat you've got that under your belt
(24:58):
now at this stage of your lives.
So are you hoping that, to takethat to some employer and go this
is what I made when I was 15, isthat your plan for the future?
I think it is a reallygood project to have.
It, it was, it's an amazing, I thinkit's a really good thing to build and to
put your skills to the test as it were.
And show what you can do.
It's also got a databaseand it's all set up.
(25:21):
We did have quite a bit of helpfrom my dad, who we now call
technical support, but , most ofthe the HTML, the React we've all
written we were also really lucky.
The design that lots of peoplesay, Oh, that must be WordPress.
But we had some help from my mumand all that, those people to
make it look the way it does.
(25:42):
Harry did an excellentjob of designing it.
So yeah,
it's a really good project.
Proper, proper family business.
This isn't it.
Oh, good stuff.
Yeah, so it must have took you, alot of resilience to get that coded.
I think it's important when you'relearning to program to have that
(26:03):
resilience and just keep plugging away.
Do you think that's important?
I definitely think so.
When we started making it, probablyMission Encodable was slightly above
our skill level, so we had to teachourself a lot, but in a way like that's
good because it helps you learn stuff.
So I definitely recommend that toany students who are listening,
perhaps, or teachers with students.
Yeah, you just dive in and start saying.
(26:23):
If you just learn what you need tolearn, it's a really good way of
learning, just experimenting withdifferent things, and you will hit
roadblocks along the way, which arequite frustrating sometimes when you get
stuck for ages, as long as you've gotsomeone you can ask for help, or nowadays
you can ask ChatGPT if you want to.
You can, and I'll tell you a betterchatbot to use, and that is the
new one from Harvard's computingdepartment that's called cs50.
(26:47):
ai.
So cs50 is Harvard's famous entrylevel computer science course which
they make available for free online.
There's hours and hours of lecturesand problems to solve, and to go
alongside it they Looked into, you'veprobably heard of rubber duck debugging.
Have any of your teachers givenyou rubber ducks to talk to?
(27:09):
I've never had that, but in my currentcomputer science class, we have a lot of
ducks that have been stuck on the walls.
I think possibly the previous uppersixth left them as a bit of a prank.
So just in random places,you'll find them dotted around.
They probably had a teacher that triedit and said, look, if you've got a coding
problem, you talk it out to a rubber duck.
You just go it should be doing this.
It's only doing that.
(27:30):
It's not doing that.
This line has given me an error.
What do you think?
And the principle of rubber duckingis just the fact that you verbalize
the problem you're trying to solveactually sometimes helps you solve it.
You suddenly realize where theerror is because you're talking
it out with a rubber duck.
So you just go cs50.
ai, it's free, you need to sign in witha free GitHub account, annoyingly, but
(27:52):
they're free, and then you just ask itquestions, and you can say, oh, I've
written some code, I'm trying to do this,I'm trying to output all the rows in my
table, but it's only doing the first 10,not 11, and it will go, Oh, have you got
the range function correct in your Python?
And it will not give you theanswer, but tell you where to look.
So it's got a picture of a rubberduck on the website because it is
(28:15):
supposed to be AI rubber ducking.
So that's something totry if you get stuck.
So what you said, Harry if you've gota project in mind, if you've got, a
goal to reach and it's currently beyondwhat you're able to do, Then that's
a brilliant motivator for findingout the bits that you're stuck on.
There's nothing better than havingthat motivating project, which is
(28:38):
brings me back to mission encodable.
You've got that project at theend of every level, haven't you?
Whether it's a Madlib ora band name generator.
Yeah, we have, we call them capstoneprojects capping a level off and
they are independently completed bythe learner doing the level, and it
should put all of the skills thathave been learned in that level to
(28:59):
the test, and I think it can be great.
It's really easy to say, Oh, itshows you what you need to work on.
It does, and it shows you ifyou need to go back and go over
something and try doing it with moreexamples and that kind of thing.
But also I think it's nice.
It shows you your strengths and itgives you maybe a confidence boost.
(29:19):
If you feel like, yes, I can do this.
I am.
Feeling quite skilled, actually,with my new Python knowledge.
So I think it is a very nice thingto have at the end of a level.
And also, we've tried to makethem quite nice projects.
As you were saying, you can showyour friends and you can play a game.
I made a our new level which Harrymentioned will be in Turtle and I was
(29:41):
making a Turtle racing game during my freeperiod and my friends got very into it.
They were like, oh yeah,pink, go pink, go yellow.
I love that.
Turtle's very motivating actually.
Turtle graphics in Python and tryingto do things like, I like doing fractal
flower patterns and things like that.
And I often do Turtlegraphics, Christmas cards.
With year seven or
(30:02):
eight.
I know it's a nice little, yeah, I know.
I like it.
Always does encourage abit of silliness, I think.
Yeah,
yeah, nice.
So why do children needto learn to program?
You can go, ChatGPT, write me aprogram to do this and it will do it.
What do you think?
I think, I do think it is really importantfor children to learn to program.
I know we're talking about it can build upresilience and it can be really creative
(30:26):
and it helps you think outside the box.
I think it's a very good skill for that.
And I think that if you if you don'tknow what you're doing and you just
say, Oh, write me a program that doesthis and writes your program, but it
doesn't work, or, it does somethingunexpected and then you don't know why.
And I think it is.
I think it is good to understand whysomething works the way it works or to
(30:51):
be able to fix any problems yourself.
And also all of the, skills, like beingcreative and thinking about it logically
and building up that resilience andconfidence that can come with learning
to program is really important.
And you won't get that from just
I think as teachers we call thatcomputational thinking usually,
(31:16):
and it's it's the hard bit.
Really, it's the solving the problemand you know churning it out in
Python and getting the syntaxright isn't really the hard bit.
And so you know, having the idea andfleshing it out, maybe drawing flowcharts
or diagrams to To get your ideas outthere that's the hard bit and that
(31:37):
still needs a bit of creativity that Idon't think AI is quite there with yet.
You might as well have just writtenit sometimes, or search stack overflow
for the code, annoyingly, StackOverflow has now got AI answers, so
you know, in a few years it'll just beAI talking to itself on that website,
so that'll be interesting to watch.
I didn't know it had that, butthat's quite annoying, because Stack
Overflow is great, but always use it.
(31:59):
Yeah, don't we all?
ChatGPT and the other AI things, like theHarvard one you just mentioned, are all
really great for writing bits of code,but I think, it's a lot more valuable
to be able to understand what the code'sdoing, and then that way, if you have
an error, then you'll know why that is.
You can look at it yourself, because ifyou aren't able to do that, You don't
have any more skills than anyone does,
really.
(32:20):
No, I think it's really, that'sa really important point.
And one of the big problems withAI, and if you watch a film called
Coded Bias you'll hear about this.
It's a great film about the the pitfallsof AI and how it can entrench the biases
that already exist in our society.
And one of the problems with AI is that.
If you use a machine learning model tomake decisions for you, it can't tell
(32:42):
you why it made that decision and.
There's no real legislationaround this at the moment.
For example, women will be denied creditcards that men in exactly the same
financial position will be given, andthe AI can't tell you why it's denied
that woman that credit card, because itdoesn't know why it made that decision.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm doing an EPQ at the moment, whichis an extended project qualification.
(33:04):
So you write, I think it's a 5, 000 wordreport, and I'm doing mine around bias in
AI, which is basically what you just said.
And a lot of the time, the issue thatpeople face with it is that you don't
know how a decision has been reached.
And there's not really any hardway that you can prove that an
AI model is going against theEquality Act, but it probably is.
(33:25):
And, there are scary cases of womenbeing denied credit, for example,
where it hasn't even been told thatthey are a woman, but it's like it's
picked up other bits of information.
Yeah, and it's figured that out itself.
You definitely need people towork on that who understand the
ethical implications, I think.
And that is what a goodcomputer scientist can do.
Yeah, absolutely.
Oh that's fascinating thatyou're doing that EPQ.
(33:46):
I'd love to read thatwhen you've written it.
I love all this.
I'm really into learningabout AI at the minute.
So talking of bias against women,sorry Anna, but that's the world
at the moment is it's slightlyproblematic, shall we say.
Okay, so what we really need.
What we really need to solve that is morewomen in technology so how do we get more
(34:08):
girls to learn to program or for girlsto take computer science GCSE in England.
I think part of it lies in making itmore interesting and more relatable.
Because I think a lot of people don'tdo computer science because they
find it boring and Some of thosepeople will be girls, so if we can
make the projects more interesting,then more people will want to do it.
(34:31):
The content that's coveredmore interesting, more
people will want to do it.
Also, I think that making the programs,I'm talking about programming here,
because that's what Harry and I do.
Yeah, absolutely.
Make the projects I think my dad has beendoing some research into this and he's
talking about making it apply to the widerworld, so things about how does computer
(34:55):
science integrate with medicine orgeography, like lots of different fields.
And I think he was sayingthat girls can find that more
interesting and more relatable.
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 perfume ornail polish or pink or something.
(35:18):
In fact, actually, as you were talkingabout, if you ask ChatGPT about
projects that might interest girls,it comes up with stuff about nail
polish and perfume and all of that.
And as someone who's not interested inthat, and I think many girls will spot
that immediately, and they'll be like,oh, honestly, this is really annoying.
Stereotypical.
It goes
back.
So what you're saying happened in 2015.
(35:42):
IBM, that global technology giantwith hundreds of thousands of IT
professionals around the world.
They wanted to encourage more womeninto IT and they launched something
that became infamous in 2015.
It was called the hacka hairdryer campaign.
Hack a hairdryer and calling all women intech join the hack a hairdryer experiment
(36:06):
to re engineer what matters in science.
And there you go.
And it was on Twitter and you can seethe Twitter replies and somebody says,
that's okay IBM, I'd rather buildsatellites instead, but good luck with
that whole hack a hairdryer thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah,
it's a difficult one, isn't it?
Because, we do need more women in techdesperately working on AI, for example,
(36:27):
because that is one of the ways that theycan spot biases that are appearing and,
prevent them from Being extrapolated,but equally it's really odd because a
lot of girls just don't seem to havean interest in it and somehow we failed
to capture that, I can't see how thatwill be a biological thing, but, all
the research that I've read about it,I've never, no one's given me a solid
(36:48):
sort of reasoning as to why less girlsare doing it because it is an issue
and a lot of the stuff people willsay just sounds relatively sexist.
Like it will be something like, Ohyeah girls like to see, you know,
things that are more humanities justbecause they don't like hard maths
and you think that can't be right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So where it comes from, I don't know,but I'm very interested to know if anyone
(37:08):
has any research they'd like to share.
Yeah.
So one of my other jobs is I work as aprofessional development lead for the
NCCE, the National Centre for ComputingEducation, and they're running a big
program called I Belong to try toget more girls to take the subject.
And yeah, I think it is true accordingto the research, that relevance really
(37:29):
helps getting girls in, because I thinkgenerally speaking, boys are happy to
mess about with technology for its ownsake, and girls, this is generalizing
greatly, girls would like to see,something important happen at the end of
it, so that's why I always, when I'm Inthe classroom, I'm talking about careers.
I always talk about, like you say, medicaltechnology, bioinformatics, and so on.
(37:53):
One of the things that fascinates me isthings like VR being used for therapy,
for like trauma patients, and so on.
And so I read something that,a load of boys were asked, what
would you do with a VR headset?
And it was like.
Every single one of them said I'dwrite games and then girls said oh
I'd make a therapy environment to helppeople who've been traumatized in war
(38:14):
I think it's really important to showthe relevance of technology, but I
think, it will inspire more girls intoit, which is great, but also it will
inspire everyone into it, because ifyou show how it's relevant, I think
no one's going to be opposed to that.
You might as well do that and showpeople, no matter what you're interested
in, if it's climate change, if it'sspace exploration, if it's nail polish,
which it might be for some girls,but probably not for all of them.
(38:37):
Or hack a hairdryer?
Yeah.
I think that's really important thatwe show people how computer science
can be applied in all sorts ofdifferent fields and how it can help
lots of different types of people.
Absolutely,
I think there's quite a lot ofstuff about role models like
with the I belong program.
We have some of the posters up in our CSclassroom, but I think That is a good idea
(38:57):
too, and it shows you also what you coulddo with computer science if you do it.
Also, just, I hadn't really thoughtof this before I started talking,
but Harry and I have got a ComputingLegends campaign going on at the moment.
Every month we have a pioneering computerscientists just trying to highlight
the importance of computer science andshow people that it is not all I don't
(39:21):
know, there is lots of things you cando with it outside that field of just,
engineering a CPU or that kind of thing.
Yeah but a really good, really fastCPU could solve climate change,
or lots of them put together.
So yeah let's talk aboutwhat will become possible.
One of the things I say to my studentswhen I'm trying to encourage them
(39:42):
to take GCSE computer science,and they say why should I take it?
And I go because, come the robotapocalypse, we want more human
soldiers on the human side.
And so all my students, you know, okay.
And then I occasionally have one studentsays, no, I'm on the side of the robots.
It's a good argument that, ifthat's not going to convince
you, I don't know what is.
It's coming.
The robot apocalypse is coming.
(40:03):
We need soldiers.
We need people who know technology.
I've seen Terminator.
I know what happens.
It's been great to talk to you.
I think, I think we coveredeverything I wanted to cover.
That was
brilliant.
I think that went well.
Just about.
So thank you so much for being on,
. Well, thank you for
having us.
Brilliant to talk to you, thankyou so much for your time, Anna.
(40:24):
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, that was brilliant.
Thank you to you as well.
All right.
Right.
Thanks, guys.
Lovely to talk to you.
Thanks, Alan.
Have a good evening.
Bye.
You too.
This has been how to teach computerscience, the podcast I'm Alan Harrison.
If you want to give me feedback orget involved, just go to HTTCS dot
(40:46):
online or check the show notes.
Remember.
If you liked this content,please subscribe to the podcast.
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.
I'm also available for staff training,inset days and student master classes.
(41:06):
See the website for details.
Next week's guest is the amazing Adriennetough or miss tough on Twitter to you.
And that is an unmissable interview.
Because it's got more jokes in it.
I'll leave you with one ofthe jokes from next week.
Why was the computerscientist late for work?
(41:29):
Find out next week on how to teachcomputer science, the podcast.
It's been great to talk to you.
See you then.
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