Untitled - September 18, 2026

00:00:00 Speaker: And I think we're calling this. What does the show mean now? You like that? I like that. I'm Kelly Schuster. And I'm a teacher who codes. And I'm Julian Sequeira and I'm a coder that consults. Yes. We now have a different one every week I'm going to have a different title. You're gonna have to come with like a C word or you're gonna just come up with anything. We don't use the C word in this, uh, in this podcast. Um, no, I think no coders allowed. No coders? No. Um, there's going to be some fun ones. I'm gonna have to make a list. Rita. Sounds good. All right. So. So what are we talking about? What's happening? Do we do wins of the week real quick. Oh, do you want to do that? What? Oh, wait. We should we should relaunch this whole thing. This is really bad. So today's episode is what does the show mean now. And I think we're actually we're going to restart this really well. And we're going to talk about the fact that, um, so much is going on in everybody's lives. So much is going on with AI in the world. Everything is kind of changing. Um, roles are changing. Schools are trying to change, but I'm not sure if they're changing too much. And, and we just got a lot of things to discuss and it's just Julian and I. Perfect. How's that? I think that's a great synopsis. There's, there's too many things to cover, but we're going to go through the general gist of it. Sounds good. Do your one of the week first win of the week? Uh, I don't know. Okay. What I'll say is, uh, actually, it's been a while since we recorded, hasn't it? So since we last recorded, I have been, I've picked up a couple of roles as a CTO at a few companies, two, two different companies, uh, which is awesome. And what I think a lot of people don't realize is that you don't need a CTO twenty four over seven in every company, I guess in huge companies like Amazon and all that kind of stuff, of course. Right. But in smaller to medium sized businesses, you can get by with just a few hours a week of consulting, right? And so that's what I've been doing. And it's awesome fun. And so the win for me is that the two contracts are going really well. And the first one gave me some incredible feedback this week, just telling me we were having coffee. I was sitting with the directors having coffee, and it was just the most incredible feeling to have such thoughtful, kind feedback saying how well I've been doing, how much they appreciate the work I've been doing, and also, for me personally, just how much of an impact I've had on the team. So everyone loves having me there, loves seeing me walking through the door. Um, on the days that I do show up and it's just been it's been wonderful. So that's my win is that these contracts are going really well. And there's more around the corner and lots of growth in the future. Maybe even a trip to Tasmania in another month for this. So, uh, yeah, I'm pretty, pretty happy. I'm just kidding. You don't know where that is? Well, somewhere down there. Are you at. Yeah, yeah. It's not. I haven't visited Tasmania before, so, um, it's not on my radar yet. I still have a couple other bucket list items to go. Hey, if you're going to Tasmania, you've got to come through Sydney and see me first. So there you go. That would be that would be four times I would be in Sydney. Well I didn't see you the other in a lifetime. All right. No, those are good wins. I think it's nice to um well one I think it's nice to have a change of scenery every day. And I think that's what kind of makes it fun. Also on your part is not going to the same place every day at the same time seeing the same people. Yeah. And now it's just a couple of days a week and different people every time, and it's really good. I'm actually very happy. I think that's the important thing. I'm very happy in what I'm doing. That's good. What about you, Kel? What are your wins? Oh, you know, I'm trying to think back. I had a couple wins a while ago, and I was like, oh, I wish we were recording, and I forgot. Um, I've been doing a lot of trainings recently and I had a really cool training last week. It was just getting everyone talking about AI, and we have about four hundred staff at our school, and I had one hundred people show up for the training. So I had a fourth of the both schools come to the training. I collected post-its and I let them kind of share out their their thoughts on AI and connected or collected over one hundred and eighty two post-its put them into AI. And it was amazing how the OCR is so good. I remember when I started ten years ago at this school, the counselor was getting very aggravated because she couldn't find like something that would recognize hand script very well with the kids. And now now I can put on really small post-its and it can pick up everything. So that's really nice. And then this week I had, um, some training on an app called snorkel. And people are surprisingly, um, surprisingly surprised about the things that I'm doing with this, this AI and just getting them to think about thinking and not really about AI. So a lot of my trainings are all about how do we add that productive struggle? How do we make sure that we're still developing those foundational skills? How do we make sure that kids are still learning? And most importantly, how do we know that the kids are learning? And so it's been real fun. It's been a change of scenery for me. And I have to make new, new presentations every, every week. Oh my gosh, a little bit daunting, but constantly learning. That's what we do. That's cool. No, I love it. It's a good segue into the topic of today, but before you do, actually, you piqued my curiosity. When you say, you know, everyone gave these post-it notes. Did anyone talk about their fears? Were there any is there anything any insights that aren't confidential that you could share? Like what are people worried about? Yeah, a lot of people, well, because they're teachers, a lot of them are worried about the foundational skills and making sure that students are learning. That's like a general thing. And then the other one is they do always worry about privacy. Mhm. Um, and they also, they also fear the fact that they just don't know the answer. So they want to teach something and they want to, they want to do it so well, but they're afraid that they don't really know the answers when somebody asks them. Mhm. And so that was another one. There's a lot of a lot of, um, variety because it's PK twelve. Yeah. So from four year old to twelve year old. So there's a lot of things in there, but that's pretty much general. I would say the majority of it was about AI literacy. Got it. Um, and then the smaller side was about governance and policies and, and what, what do they do? But and keeping up, they were just like, even with once a week having a new training, they, they feel like they just can't, can't keep up. And I keep reminding them I'm just like one or two articles or webinars ahead of them every single day. It's just, I can't tell you how many webinars I listen to now. Yeah. Um, at one point five, get through it, trying to consume them because most of it's the same stuff over and over again. And I just try to find that one nugget from the forty five minute webinars. But yeah, maybe that's like our podcast. They're gonna look for that one nugget. Yeah, that was it. That was it. The one nugget. All right. We're done. All right. See you next week. Yeah, exactly. It was good. All right. So so what's changed? Well, you. Okay, so one of the things we both noticed, and it's funny as we had this conversation the other day, um, there's this distinct, I hate using this word, but shift shift in the industry and in the teaching space and everywhere with how things are taught, what is taught, and the whole niche that places used to focus on has to grow because of the advent of AI. And to know these things, you have to know all these satellite schools. I'm trying to be very generic here, but, you know, we can we can drill into that. Um, so for example, you know, in one of the contracts that I'm working, not only do I, it's no longer just, okay, I can just no infrastructure, right? It's because they want to use AI. I have to know infrastructure, cyber security. I have to know some code. I have to know all these different pieces, even program management, business management. I have to figure out all these things just because AI can touch everything. And so there's this kind of generalization that's coming out that you have to be aware of a lot more than you used to. And so knowing Python is not enough, right? Knowing even just the different libraries of Python, like web development or whatever is not enough. Um, and so I find that a very interesting shift. And you, as you were saying, you've noticed this as well, and you've seen places actually commit to that change, right? No. Yeah. There's it's a huge shift. Well, I didn't even talk about this with you before, but even that role of the edtech specialist has shifted. And so now I remember when I first started as an edtech back in the days like two thousand and three, um, not that long ago, I was just it was so long ago. You're like, I was born then that's when somebody said to me, oh, anyways, so back in the days it was just like, you know, here's an iPad or we're gonna do one to one or here's how you search the internet. And it was a very limited amount of tools. And now even in our in our portfolio at school, I manage about two hundred plus edtech tools. And, and it's like having to know all that. And then. But the EdTech person is now also the AI literacy person. It used to be everyone was a digital literacy instructor and now everyone needs to be an AI literacy instructor. And then the idea of code, we've actually changed our title of our class, our course in middle school to apply to AI and technology. And so now we're still learning Python, but it has more embedded AI and AI literacy skills in it. And we were talking about this earlier. Csta has finally updated their their standards released this year. And if you notice, there's more than just CS skills. They've embedded cybersecurity, they've loaded internet, they've embedded everything they can think of that encompasses everything within computer science. And that was a huge shift. And then the one that was really weird is how code dot org switched to code dot ai. And so everyone's been doing this shift to try to encompass everything that has that we have taken on in the past five years. And so it's like, we still need to learn Python, but we also need to learn how to be AI literate. And we also have to know about privacy. And we also need to know about cybersecurity. And we also need to know about digital literacy. So that world of computer science has just gotten a lot bigger. Yeah. And probably for most people has the same amount, the same amount of time given to them. Like, here's your forty five minutes a week. Go teach it all now. Learn everything. Yeah, no, you're exactly right, I think. And from a person who's, who's had an, a Python education business, right. As an from, from an impact on a business perspective, You know, so many people are obviously using. We know this. People are using LLMs to code, find whatever they're using agents. But it also means that the flow on effect is that they're not going out there to invest in their own education. Right? So the amount of people enrolling in Python courses has dropped. The amount of people doing standard Google searches for Python terms and or anything to do with coding really has dropped significantly to the point where SEO on your website, I wouldn't say it doesn't matter, but it's becoming less of an issue. You're seeing your traffic drop by two thirds because everyone's just looking in an LLM through ChatGPT or whatever, or even using those Gemini created search results on Google at the top, right? So yeah, because so I can imagine, and you know, I don't know anyone at code dot org, but just them, they were a website built around learning to code and everything like that. It probably lost a lot of traffic at the same time with all of this. And so now they've realized they need to survive as well. They need to, um, jump on the bandwagon and teach a lot more AI at the same time. So it's, um, it's a challenging time, I think, I do think, and I think, I mean, with the whole job changes that have been going on, um, we might as well just breach into that. So my, my role has evolved more. I am less in the classroom now. I got to keep my exploratory robotics, which is a whole nother. I should have been a win today because I've been playing with Legos. Um, which I'll tell about that later, but I still get to do Python. But now it's the point where I had a kid in computer science was like, oh, I just got the c d key, w a s d key to, to Bluetooth with my spike robot. I'm like, what? It's like all these years I couldn't get the stupid radio and we go and do pie breaks and now we can, like, we can control our spike robots with the key keys. I mean, I knew it could happen, but this kid just did a quick little, uh, Gemini, uh, not Gemini. He used flint, but quick little flint search, and he got the code and imported. I'm like, oh my God, he just imported like pi bricks on the on the on the little hub. And I'm like, oh, whatever. Have fun. Let's see who's faster, the coded bot or the human controlled one. But so my job's really kind of mutated. I, like I said, I don't spend much time in the classroom. I don't teach computer science anymore. I teach adults. Um, and I was telling you, I teach, I've had twelve trainings. I do twelve trainings a week, three days a week. And then that's not including all the other webinars that I do with the training as well. So it's been a, it's been a shift in everything. And even though Python is still at the core. Because I do a lot of work with teachers trying to do, um, work with Python. Now I coach, now I, you don't coach, I coach, I coach them through automation, through Python. Um, but it's, it's not the same, I think, you know, you touched on something there, you're talking about your role changing significantly with all this. And I think when we think about this, you myself, Shawn as well, all three of us over the past, I don't know, two years have gone through massive changes with our careers and what we do. And while we were originally just in this kind of, I wouldn't say just, but we were originally teachers of some kind. You guys were definitely high school teachers and committed to that. And I was doing coaching through pie bites. Right? So that was life. And now we've all kind of grown into these different roles that go beyond that. And, you know, I'm still teaching people every day through on the job, right? They don't understand the technology. And so I'm still trying to find interesting ways of bridging the knowledge gap with AI and the tools that we use and all that kind of stuff. But to that end, uh, our roles have changed significantly. So what would you say your title would be now? What would you say? I had a good one too earlier. Uh, I think I could ChatGPT that one somewhere. I did ChatGPT at somewhere. Um, I don't even remember. It was like director of everything but everything, but, uh, but the job title. Yeah, the job description. Um, no, because like, I think the job description of a computer science or Stem teacher is not the same anymore. Yeah. it's it's like it made a lot more sense when technology, like stayed in the lane. You know, we learned how to code or you were even, even, even a short amount of time that I've been in coding, it was like you were a JavaScript person or you were a Python person. And I mean, there was people that coded other languages, but I felt like I felt like when I first joined as a Python, Easton a. Mr.. You were like a Python person. You could tell the people that were Python people and people that were like converts or begrudgingly converted into Python. And it's like, I don't think you can even tell anymore. I can tell though. Um, the only thing I can tell is like a person that knows Python and uses AI and a person that doesn't know Python and uses AI because their code is crummier. So I don't know what my title would be, but it's definitely not just a Python computer science teacher. Yes. You can't stay in your lane anymore. You've got to. There is no. I don't even think there's a lane. I don't even know. Well, it's true. You know, thinking about some of my technology mates, um, you know, there's a two. Two good friends of mine, Hugh Tipping, which you've met him at PyCon and another guy named, uh, Christo and Christo. He excels at AI. Like, he can build AI, he can build all that stuff behind the scenes with vector databases and everything. Um, and Hugh is an infrastructure engineer. He knows his Kubernetes inside out. He's got all the certifications. But even though they have their niches like that or their expertise areas, they still have to know everything else. So they both know Python extremely well. Um, they're both learning other languages, such as go. Um, they both know TypeScript to deal with AWS. They both know Google Cloud Platform and Azure and everything. So there's just so much more because in this era of technology, you kind of have to know everything or know parts of everything. You have to know the detail, but you have to be aware of it. I just had the epiphany, and I've had this for a while, and everyone always asks me like, why am I so good at understanding the AI and then training and explaining it to teachers? At a basic level, I think, and I, I've always said that I think Python coders are really good problem solvers. And that's why, that's why coders are the way they are and that's why they get into code is because they like to solve problems. But I think we're really like generalists. If you think about it, they've always been generalists because we can step through and change the plan and then we're like, make these connections. Oh, and, and you like, see, see things where, oh, I might need to use this library or I might need to do this connection, or I might need to, um, make this thing work this certain way. I feel like I feel like the new coders are the generalists, the people that can know a little bit about everything to get by. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what led me into this CTO thing is because I that's a nice label generalist. I like that it used to be a horrible label. Like if you were a generalist, it was because you couldn't pick a, you couldn't pick a, a, a, a, a role, you couldn't pick a side or whatever. You didn't know what you were doing. You're like, oh, I'm a generalist. You were before your time. You dabble. That's what it was. I dabble, yeah, I'm always before my time. I was born in the wrong time. I tell everybody, but think about it, think about it. You know, I, I just think about my my experiences over the past. Let's just let's, let's just say ten years just being here in Florida, I'm like, okay, I code, I know about APIs. I, I know about Rpas. I know a little bit about cloud. I, I understand what's going on with AI. I, you know, a little bit about agents. Now someone comes to me and I'm like, oh, that's a workflow problem. Oh, you need to have that to be a deterministic problem. It's not a probabilistic problem, like all these little things. And they're like, how do you know this stuff? I'm like, I don't know. It just it's just stuff that's come into to what I've read or I've had to problem solve and figure stuff out. And it's always about getting unstuck and then having like at least a little bit of work to figure where you're gonna go. That's it's interesting. And with people asking you those questions like, well, how, how did you get there? How do you do that? I think a lot of people, you know, seriously, for a second, I think a lot of people are kind of scared and afraid of being left behind, and they don't know how to keep up. But I the argument I have is that not the argument, but the way I try and frame this for people is just tackle it like anything else. You know, don't be afraid because of the the whole, you know, glitz and glamour around AI and all the focus and hype. Just remember, it's just a skill like anything else you would learn. So if you wanted to learn guitar, how would you do it? You'd maybe take a course or look at read some stuff online or you'd dabble with it. Actually pick it up and play it. Or you'd find someone to come and just talk to, you know, one of, I think one of the greatest things anyone listening can do, if they want to kind of just bridge that gap and break through that fear barrier is just find someone to talk to. Go, go have a coffee with someone. Um, and a perfect example of that is one of my friends up here where we live now. Glenn, uh, he and I have been having a coffee once a week. We're very lucky. We can do it. Um, for the past year, I'd say year and a half or something like that. That's a lot of coffees. There's a lot of avocado and toast. Um, and so we, but every one of those chats, we talked about our technology careers, we talked about AI, we talked about stuff we'd read, we'd listen, and we learned so much together, just sharing what we've talked about. And it meant that these things weren't so scary to learn and they weren't so daunting. So I think, um, not that there was meant to be a lesson here, but um, I think if anyone's worried about it, just start reading, start reading. And if you don't understand a term, open a new tab and do a quick Google search of what that term is. Nobody Googles. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I mean, open up, open your chest. Yeah. Well we have to do a conversation on that, but not today because we'll stay focused. So I think I think like this, this idea that this episode, besides us talking things out, we're just trying to figure out like, what does it mean to teach Python? What does it mean to learn Python? And what is it? What, what happens when the conversations stop being primarily about learning Python? Because if you think about the last few episodes, they really haven't been primarily about Python. We've had, um, data science, we've had cybersecurity. We had the hardware that went to the moon. Yeah, yeah. So. And that was well, that was Micropython was that micropython or circuit Python, I can't remember. Oh, I haven't so long ago. I don't remember, I don't remember. But it's like, what does it mean to really teach Python now? And I think that was where we were having that conversation. Um, you know, at what point does that? Does the learner need to only know about Python? Maybe maybe they're going to start learning about what is that new react? Um, because all the AI websites are some form of react. Tailwind, tailwind CSS tailwind. Is that what it is? Well, that's the CSS framework. But again, I don't even get me started. Don't even get me started to tell you about the, the training I'm doing about how we're using Gemini to write the inline CSS HTML for our canvas learning pages so we don't have to use the editing banner and all that other stuff. We just go in and we say, Hey, Gemini here, can you change all our our our document into inline CSS? Put it into the canvas page again. How did I know that? I don't know, like things just you just ask like, I'm gonna train you in this. I just learned it yesterday. Come on. Curiosity. I'd say it's just curiosity. It's just curiosity. That's it. That's crazy. So to summarize this episode of this is this is literally us having a coffee at coffee at a cafe. I think, um, well, I'm having my coffee. You're about to have a nightcap. What time is it? It's late anyway. Seven forty three. It's late. Late for you since I talked to you this morning at four twenty. This in the a m? Um, but no, I think the summary here is that, you know, teaching Python has evolved both the actual act of doing it and the podcast. We'll see that connection I made. That was pretty cool. That was really cool. Um, it's evolved and you know, you guys have brought me on, which I'm, again, I'm always grateful for, but, um, I'm not the reason for the change, right? Just. Just listen. Yeah. It's all your fault. It's all your fault. No, we blame Sean. Sean. We can roast Sean instead of poor Anthony. I think Anthony's mad at us. Sean? No, Sean. When Sean. Sean ditched me in the. And the teaching world. And I couldn't go on without him, so I decided to to evolve with him. Mhm. Um. There you go. So I think that's a good way of saying we've evolved. But yeah, you can continue. No, I was gonna say, what does that mean? I think it just means that the conversations will be a little more broad. You know, it's not just always going to be focused on Python because as teachers, educators, consultants, um, coaches, we need to do more than just that core Python that we, you know, knew and, and loved back ten years ago before I came in. Well, we need to embrace that generalist. I think that's what I was getting at because like, I feel like this podcast is the reason why I am the way I am today is because of the conversations that weren't centered only around Python. It was, you know, learning what technical means. What does it mean to have foundational knowledge? Um, like what happens when you evolve from the beginner of just doing basic code and you want to go further? Like you can't just keep coding into us, you know, into the mu editor or into, into where we are. You have to get out of that. And then what does that all mean when we start going into the real world? And how does that affect the security and software engineering, like all the things that are encompassing? So I feel like, you know, and we were talking about this and now that I've talked it out, I really don't feel like teaching Python has ever been only about syntax in Python. It's been about that. It's been about the whole, the whole encompassing of what it means to, to learn a language, to be new at something, which is where Sean and I started. I was a new coder and he was a new teacher. And what does it mean to, to grow into into your new role? And I feel like that's where we're going to be in. And I hope that other listeners can feel that evolution and enjoy, enjoy that progress with us. There you go. That's a perfect wrap up. That's good. That just goes into the fact of what I have been saying all week is that when you when you think through your thoughts aloud, clarity is, you know, happens. I'm so glad you did it in that whisper calm voice to. That's my non-angry voice. I've never heard it before. Weird. I don't know why. Yeah. All right. So short. Sweet. I hope our ramblings make sense. It was perfect. And we'll also have a much more regular cadence as well for recording, which is good. Yes, maybe it'll just be thirty minute ramblings. Yeah, I like it. Of what does someone learning Python in twenty twenty twenty six need to understand in order to not just code in Python? We should get some, uh, clickbait and say, what does it mean to learn in twenty twenty seven? Oh. Oh, snap. Yeah. Can you make that an a e? Oh, no. No. All right. All right. Well, for teaching Python in twenty twenty six, this is Julian and this is Kelly signing off.