Sean Tibor: Hello, and welcome to teaching Python. This is episode 132. My name's Sean Tyber. I'm a coder who teaches. Oh, go ahead, Kelly. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Sorry, you already screwed it up. You're messing us up. My name's Kelly Schuster Paredes, and I'm a teacher who codes, and I'm not alone this time. I'm with other teachers that code, so I'm excited. Now do your spiel. Sean Tibor: I'm very excited about this. Today we're joined by Dora Palfy and Chelsea Clagg to talk with us about getting more non coding teachers into teaching. So this is an exciting conversation. Welcome to both of you. We're excited to have you. Dora Palfi: Thank you so much. Chelsea Clagg: Thank you. We're excited to be here. Sean Tibor: Very good. Well, let's start where we always do, with the winds of the week. And, Dora, I'm going to choose you to go first. So, something good that's happened inside or outside of the classroom this week, right? Dora Palfi: Yeah. So I'm technically not really inside the classroom, except when I visit schools, but I was in New Mexico for their digital learning conference this past weekend, and I actually got to do a session on empowering teachers who are not coders to code. And we just had a great session. And having people code in Python for the first time and being really excited about it and spending their Saturday doing so was just a great experience for me. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm a little envious. I remember that time first learning to code, and I was like, wow, this is cool. Sean Tibor: I love it. And, Chelsea, over to you. Chelsea Clagg: So we just started state testing this week, so is it okay if my win of the week is from last week? Sean Tibor: Sure. Chelsea Clagg: Last week, we had been doing some Sol review, and I'd been coaching a first year teacher, and we decided that for one of our Sol reviews, our students would analyze children books, and then our middle school students would read to elementary kids via live stream. So we did that, and it was really cool. And all of the elementary teachers want to make the older students in our county reading to the younger ones a more common thing. So it was just really cool to see the young kids so excited and bonding with the older kids, and the older kids actually like being appropriate, good role models, so that that's like a. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Double win, that they were good role models and everyone had fun. I love that. Sean Tibor: I always find that funny when they were up there reading or speaking, and you're used to them with one version of themselves in the classroom where they're maybe goofy or inappropriate or whatever, and you're always corralling them. And then they get in front of the younger children and suddenly, like, this Polish comes over there, and they're just ready to speak, and they do so well, and they're so kind and so generous, and you're like, where did you come from? Can you do that in my classroom? That would be amazing. They take it so seriously, and I love seeing that with. With those students. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100%. Chelsea Clagg: Well, I think. I guess elementary school students are a more authentic audience than trying to maybe impress their teacher. I don't know. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100%. Shawn, are you going or am I going? Sean Tibor: Why don't you go next, Kelly? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Okay. Well, mine's not really about my classroom, but you know how I'm addicted to AI and trying to help promote AI for educators, especially when it comes to integrating AI and Python. And I found two good resources. That one was grow with Google. It's generative AI for educators. It's a two hour course, and I took it yesterday, all excited. I have to tell you the truth, though. I didn't get 100% on the quiz, but I just ran through it. Really cool. I'm excited about that. And then I found another one yesterday called day of AI. And apparently there's the day of AI on May 13 or something. They have a data science programming course with Python that's really cool. And it has all the slideshow, and I thought, what a great. How convenient. Like, we have this talk today. So all the non coding teachers out there who want to get into AI, they can do it in block coding, they can do it in python. They do things about making sense of our surroundings, how AI and human rights are in such a great two resources, and I have been just delving into. Sorry, there's a little joke from us, because delve is like the word of the past two years. So delving into it, enjoying it, and I put those, the links in the show notes for us. Sean Tibor: Very nice. Well, my win is actually getting out of work for a change. So this is exciting. For the last two years, we've had summer interns on our team, and this is an area where I've really spent a lot of time and energy after I left full time teaching, to really keep scratching that itch of wanting to help other people learn and discover things about themselves. And so I became heavily involved in our college intern program at my company, and I'm now one of the program leads for the United States. We have 20 new interns coming in, and for the first time since I started, I'm not the one developing the curriculum for onboarding them, we actually have our learning and development team that's generated a whole new curriculum for both interns and new hires in our area to be able to help onboard them. So I am just thrilled that they took some of the things that I had developed, as well as a lot of information from across. Across the company and across our it function, and turn that into an actual curriculum that's pretty decent. So I'm excited to support them in that effort and help supplement that curricula rather than having to create it all myself and teach it all myself. So this is a very big win, and I'm very excited about it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It's nice having a written curriculum now. Sean Tibor: I mean, other than making it up as I go along. Yeah, it's way better. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's funny. Cool. Sean Tibor: All right, why don't we jump right in? Let's start with introductions. And, Dora, you brought Chelsea with you to this. We had been talking for a few months now about getting you on the show, and you said, I have to bring Chelsea along. She's a great example of all that you're trying to do at Imagi. Why don't we start? First, would you introduce yourself, the company that you founded, as well as the brief overview of some of the products that you do, and then also weave Chelsea into that as best you can in terms of the role that she's played with curriculum and teaching and using the products you have. Dora Palfi: Of course, yeah. So thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. If we backtrack, like, original story, I come more from the coding side. Like you, I worked as a software engineer and experienced a lack of diversity in the industry. And my kind of teaching experience was just volunteering a lot to teach kids and teachers girls coding. I do come a family of teachers, but never officially entered the classroom. And essentially, like, my big question was, how could we ensure that, like, the future tech employees and coders will be more diverse? And it was a similar experience for my co founder. And there was a research project I did in my master's degree where we worked with girls and other underrepresented kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and co created, essentially a product idea that would make it fun to learn coding. And so some of the things that we discovered were important is making the experience more creative and tangible. So not just learning to code for the sake of learning to code, but actually linking it to something that's relevant to the student. And eventually, what we came up with is a way of learning python through creating art and animations. And then also having a physical component are imagicharms, which is almost like a tamagotchi. It's the imagicharm box. And for anyone on the live stream and then this little gadget that essentially like displays your art in the real world, we started imaging on a more consumer approach. We actually have an app anyone can download. We've had around 300,000 kids coding with that. What we discovered and realized is that there were a couple educators who started using the tool. And then we reflected on our initial mission of making it more inclusive and accessible to learn coding and realized that, okay, if we actually could provide a tool for schools and teachers, then we would really living up to that initial mission. Going into how Chelsea comes into the picture, we literally just, I think, launched our education version of our platform, like in the fall of 2022. It was not much later that Chelsea discovered, ordered our imagicharms first. And then she's been the champion in her district. So it was actually one of the first school districts we worked with in the US was Chelsea's district, Frederick county. We were originally from Sweden. That's where imagine started. But focus on the us school system because I did my undergrad in the US. And so yeah, Chelsea was one of the first educators who is covered and championed and has been really helpful and generous with feedback as well, just to make sure that we develop the tool in a direction that makes sense for educators. Sean Tibor: Chelsea, tell us your side of how you got involved. What attracted you to this program? How did you get going with this? Chelsea Clagg: So I'm a instructional technology coach for Frederick county public Schools. So there's two components to my job. One component of my job is teaching teachers how to integrate technology into their classroom. And another part is then instructional coaching. So our county has had funds and grants and they were looking for some tools to use to beef up their coding program. In the state of Virginia, we have computer solutions as a elective for all students. I don't know if all districts or all counties offer it, but it's a class offered in our state. And what we discovered is that with this national teacher shortage that we are having right now, is that most of our teachers in Frederick county, and not just in my county across Virginia and I imagine the United States, not all of our computer solutions teachers have a computer background at all, or coding background or anything like that. Many of them are career switchers that have came to our county from like a business side maybe. So you have all these people who maybe came from business or they retired from a previous job, and they're just wanting to continue working in some way or want to spread their knowledge to children, but they don't have a coding background at all. So how do you get all these teachers to know enough coding to teach middle school, elementary, even high school kids? So that's how we found Imagi and ended up starting out with just a pilot program of just a few of them. And now I think we have them at every middle school in our county. Now we have all of our computer solutions teachers using them, and we have all of our kids coding in Python now across the county. So it's pretty cool. Sean Tibor: Nice. Before you were an instructional technology coach, were you a coder? Did you have experience coding before you started this? Chelsea Clagg: Absolutely not. I was an english teacher for twelve years before I became an instructional technology coach. So it was also, Imagi was one of the ways to teach myself some coding beyond just block based coding. Sean Tibor: Thank you both for coming on the show and talking to us about this is something that Kelly and I have talked about so many times before, about making coding accessible to more people, making it something that anyone can do. And personally, my ten year old daughter is watching the live stream right now from my son's lacrosse practice sidelines. She loves robotics, she loves coding. Some of it's because it's things that she does with her dad, but some of it's just because she's really good at it. And the things that she's at that age where it's not a boys thing or a girl's thing, it's just a thing that they all do. And our, and the school that she's at does a really good job of making coding accessible and friendly to everyone, no matter where they're coming from. So thank you for keeping this going. Just personally, I say hi to my daughter. Thank you for watching the live stream. Also, she's one of those kinds of kids that I think really benefits from this, that coding is more than learning it for coding sake. It's something that is personally relevant to her. And, and I see it every day when she comes home and she's excited to tell me about something that she learned in computer science class. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Super cool. So, as you're talking, Chelsea, seven years ago, when I was told I had to teach Python as a bio teacher, I was a bio. I'm an ed tech specialist as well. So everything we know, you're paying Sean and I, you're like edtech computer science. Do everything. Oh, learn some coding, help teachers get their computers turned on, logged into their lms. Oh, yeah. And go and push in and do some more classes to connect. So there's a lot going on. But then having to tackle and teach Python just added a little bit of stress to the job. Back seven years ago, I remember just trying to figure out what a variable was and how to teach it. So how can you describe your scenario and maybe what the challenges, anything you faced while learning Python or did you have any challenges or just came naturally? Chelsea Clagg: I think most schools are familiar with block based coding, and a lot of them use scratch or cs first through Google. What we discovered is that in the middle school at least, there was this humongous jump from block based coding to the actual coding in Python. And as soon as they switched over to that, seeing that language, it just looked like a foreign language to kids and it was very intimidating to them. Of course, the educators that were going to be teaching it to them as well. So one of the things that our county really liked about imagi was that they had all of the lessons pre made for the teachers in Google Slides ready to go. It wasn't just something that the teachers okay, I have this tool, but how am I going to teach it to the kids? All the lessons were pre made. The initial first lesson introduces the matrix and the idea of turning on pixels like a chessboard. So even making that connection starts making sense to the kids. And then I think at the middle school level, since they were already used to block based coding and coding the games and stuff in scratch, even though the imagi charm is simplistic, I think that at least at the middle school level, they liked having that tangible thing to code for them. Sometimes we're always trying to go more new school and more AI and more digital and save the trees, and that's fantastic. But I think that elementary and middle school kids still like having that thing to go home and show their parents. So having the little magi charm that they could take home or that they could wear around the school, and they could say, look, I made this. Look, I coded this. I think giving them that little bit of ownership over the physical part was also important to get kids to buy into. We also had a huge issue with kids wanting to sign up for the classes at the high school level. We know that the future is technology. That's where the jobs are going to be in the next years, and we know that right now there's a shortage for people who have those skills. We want our students to have those jobs, those good jobs, those high paying jobs in the future. And to be fulfilling that need, we have to start their interest younger. That's a challenge, too. How do we teach coding and get kids who are in elementary and middle school level interested in something that is higher level like that? Maggie was just a really good outlet for our county and to fit that gap that we needed. Sean Tibor: So, Dora, as you were developing a Magi and as you were founding it, was this always the kind of vision that you had? Was this kind of full, comprehensive view of curricula plus hardware, plus skills and development, or was it something that evolved over time as you learned more about how people were using the product? Dora Palfi: This was definitely not the plan. We had the idea for the tangible product from my research. And then I think, like, anyone who makes hardware thinks, oh, Kickstarter. So, like, we had a Kickstarter campaign in the beginning, and it was very naturally, like, driving kind of parents towards the tool. So our first software was our mobile app. So there is the imagi app, which works on the phone or the iPad and has kind of, like, self guided lessons, and that's completely free and have, I think, today, like, 300,000 kids who have tried it. What we saw was that that's just, like, one way of doing things. But as we were developing those levels, we ourselves always wanted to test it. And so we were like, even when we just had the prototype, like, we would be testing with kids first in a one on one setting, but then even earlier, like, we would bring together a group of kids to kind of see how the tool works. In that process, I ended up developing slides for myself because I wanted to see what concepts would like. So I knew coding, right? I didn't know so much about writing curriculum, but then I wanted to test, like, what concepts would stick with the kids and really just started to develop these slides in detail for my own sake, for when I was essentially teaching test sessions, then some of those turned into opportunities to partner with organizations like girls code in the beginning. So as more and more of these opportunities popped up, we just developed more and more of these slides. And so I think the reason why they are so detailed, like Chelsea mentioned, is because we ourselves use it to teach. And especially my co founder, I always have to give credit to her for being extremely detail oriented. I'm a bit more like you, coming up with the curriculum as I go. But then just my co founder, she makes sure that we have it ready before. So they were just there because of this reason. So as we launched this education solution, we were just putting it out there and seeing if this resonates with teachers. It seems like having the slides and actually editable slides is like a really nice format for educators. But of course, right now we have more of the school focus, so now we are spending more time developing in that direction. But initially, that kind of just emerged as a side product, I would say. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, I find it really neat because I showed it to my girls who code club and the first, and I actually gave the. I gave away my freebie. Sorry, Dora. I gave it to the leader of the girls who code, and I said, I just want to thank you because she started this pub. And the first thing she said, oh, no, thanks a lot. Now my weekend's totally gone. And I was like, what? I'm just gonna have to figure this out. So it's really cool that it does have a nice tendency to get the girls on board because it's like, oh, can I hang this on my backpack? What's really neat about it is the fact that you went in with that tangible idea, because that's always something that I have trouble with in the classroom. And BBC micro bit give a shout out to them because they brought out the tangible item. And it's nice. It's got the 25 leds. They don't change pretty colors, so that defers a couple because you can only do so much with the five by five. But the idea that you can push further with functions and go into the animations is neat. Have you seen Chelsea? Have you seen the kids go further past just turning on the lights and really diving deep into python concepts? Have you gotten that far into the pilot? Chelsea Clagg: And, yeah, we have some kids who have gotten really into it, and we've had kids that have coded up to 800 lines of code, which I think could be simplified as they continued and stuff to advance their code, because that's a lot of code. But that just goes to show how passionate some of the kids are. The kids also seem to really enjoy some of the challenges that imagi has put out as well. While the challenges aren't always necessarily straight related to coding, the more recent challenges related to entrepreneurship. Just having also, like Dory said early, earlier about tying it to the real world as well, doesn't do any good to teach coding if you're not also teaching, like, how this applies to the real world. For us, the imagis are more of a introductory to Python, and then that's what we call our middle school electives. We call them exploratories. So they're more of just kind of exploring and getting kids interested but it's really just one of the things that we can do to get that buy in and get kids interested to wanting to take the higher level python when they get to high school. Because again, if they're not exposed in middle school, if they're not getting excited about some of this stuff at the elementary level, even then, you're not going to get the buy in later on, and we're not going to get the kids signing up for college and stuff either, trying to fill those jobs. Sean Tibor: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit about that, how this approach has worked for those non coding teachers as a way to get started with teaching. Because I think one of the things that was really impressive about the way Kelly learned through that first year and continues to learn in various ways. But like Kelly, you were learning two days ahead of what you were teaching the students. And maybe I was three days ahead, but we were learning that, especially that first year as we went and learning the concepts and applying them. And for some reason, and I don't know exactly how to describe this phenomenon, but I feel like that first year might have been one of our best years teaching because we were so engaged and invested in learning it for ourselves. That became obvious to our, apparent to the students that we were doing it with them, that we were part of this. Have you seen something like that with the non coding teachers that are now getting into coding? What's that experience been like for them? Chelsea Clagg: I think definitely, like I said, our teachers, most of them do not actually, I don't think any of the ones that are middle school, not a single one of our computer solutions teachers has a coding background. Almost all of them have a business background of some sense. So it's really interesting to see them. And for us at the middle school level, computer solutions is not a coding class. Coding is a unit. It's a part of the class. So it's interesting for me. I go in and I work with a first year teacher and we co teach the lessons together the first time. And then it's interesting because these are only one semester classes. The next semester they're leading the classes and they're coaching it, and they're taking what I taught and they're taking what imagine has provided and they're turning it into their own thing and providing their own spin on it. It's interesting, too, because when you're only teaching this as a unit and it's not a full time coding class, how it's like you're relearning it every single time. And you're getting excited and you're adding more to what you did the last time. See, I definitely think the teachers are getting into it more as well from some of these tools that they're using. Like imagine. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, I remember our four tool. It will remain nameless, but we had a tool as well. And they would come say, I have a problem. I don't know. Well, let's see. That's a great question that Sean would say. How can we figure that out, solving the problems with the kids? I have to admit, Sean, it was probably a highlight of my teaching career at that time. So really getting that mindset to take on the risks was something. Something that I don't think I'll let go. And I think. I don't know if it was you, Dora, that brought it up is about that mindset. You want to expand that? You said something great about it. Dora Palfi: Yeah, I was just gonna say. Yeah, exactly. I think it's been so inspiring to me, like, actually being able to talk to and meet the educators who are like non coders and picked up imagi and the things that they have shared. We have an english teacher who recently shared on one of our blog posts, or a media specialist librarian and really just admitting to the fact that I told my students that we're just gonna have to figure this out together because I don't know this myself. And so I think the common denominator among the educators that I've talked to who love DiMaggi is really about the mindset and not really about having a coding background. It's just that curiosity and being open to trying something. And also the reason why I think it's extra useful in coding is we actually, in our first lesson, we have some slides around bugs and errors and how, like, error messages are actually your friends. And so that kind of, like, fear of failing is something that you really have to overcome, because, like, your code is never going to work for the first time. And so it's just nice to learn from the beginning that, like, oh, like, mistakes are just part of the process and we're all going to have to learn from it. I find that really inspiring. Like, hearing the stories of educators approached it that way. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yep. Chelsea Clagg: I also think that just teaching perseverance and that idea of computational thinking, even if the kids don't decide to go on and they're not going to pursue a job or a career in technology or computers or coding or whatever, that computational thinking is so important for kids these days, at least have some understanding of how technology works, and even just understanding, like, what a pixel is, it's like all the time. It's interesting because we talk about the imagi charms and the kids are always like, well, I want more pixels. This isn't enough pixels to do what I want to do. And then you can have that whole conversation about how times have changed. And we talk about, like, how many pixels the original Super Mario was. And then we even pull up pictures of Laura Croft, the original, and then Lara Croft. Now we talk about how pixels and technology have changed. So even just giving kids some of that understanding that technology is changing and you're going to be able to persevere and adapt and change with it. Right now, maybe they are the more computer savvy, maybe more computer savvy than their teachers in some cases. But, you know, that's part of the growth for the teachers and the students 100%. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I can't help but think of Nick Tolarve of the moo editor, and one of his things at the end of the help document on the editor is, if there's something that the moo editor can't do, it's time that you graduated from the moo editor. So next time a student says, there's just not enough pixels, say, I know a great led board that's this big from Adafruit, go buy it, graduate to circuit Python. So that's nice and really powerful for a teacher. For me, it's humbling, a little bit embarrassing at some times, but I like to tell my 8th graders, I said, you're already smarter than I will ever be because you're going to keep growing. And I'm still going to be teaching the basic concepts of python. I'm going to try to grow a little bit, but not as fast as you. So I'd like that. Kids are always aiming high. Sean Tibor: I have a question for both Dora and Chelsea, and one of the things that we discovered as we went through the teaching process was that constraints breed creativity. Constraints drive really interesting, creative solutions. When you don't, when you only have 64 pixels, how can I do something really interesting with the 64 that I have? Just for a second? I wanted to step back and define the imagi charm first because we have multiple components. We have the app that you described and the ability for people to write code even without the hardware. But the hardware itself is really nice and you can check it out online. There's great imaging well done on the product photography. It's something that I really like in terms of the hardware itself. It looks rugged without looking chunky. It's smooth, it's sleek. It has really nice design to it, but it's an led matrix. It has a nice charm lanyard with it, you could recharge it. You connect it to your app via Bluetooth so you don't have to, like, worry with a bunch of wires just to get your code running. Sometimes that constraint of the hardware, the fact that it has the 64 pixels, what creativity have you seen from that? What are the things that people have come up with as really interesting solutions to problems that the constraints have driven? Dora Palfi: I can just quickly mention, and I know Chelsea has some examples because I've heard her talk about it. I love that you mentioned this, like, constraints, like read creativity, because that was exactly the concept. And when we created Imagi this way, the idea was, when I learned python coding in college, I really struggled. That was my first subject ever where I really struggled, because there was so much, like, stuff around that you had to do set up. What we were trying to do is really move away all the things that are making it complicated to get to your first positive feedback that you created something. What I've seen is that, first of all, a lot of teachers and kids have created bigger images by collaborating and putting things together, which I love seeing. But just to give you some of my favorite projects I've seen. So through the animations, you can do, like, really cool things. There was a kid who just loved Harry Potter and was quite advanced because learned about the random function. So recreated the sorting hat from Harry Potter. So if you run your code and you upload to the magic charm, then it will show a hat, and it will show, like, the logo of which house you belong to. So I think that's a big favorite for me. It's almost like you can tell stories through a series of images. So I've seen beautiful things, and then we have these challenges, like we had around, like, traveling or languages and, I don't know, like, from a japanese flag and the cherry blossom tree and all of that, like, really telling stories, which I love seeing. Chelsea Clagg: It's been really interesting to see the coding be able to go cross curricular because it is a little bit simpler with the 64 pixels. It's really hard to make this cross curricular connections if you are doing something really, really deep and high level sometimes. So we've had a science class. The kids have partnered and done the phases of the moon before. We've had kids do the parts of plot and use the animations to code different parts of plot, like scenes. From the stories we have had kids collaborate together to make one giant image by combining together. So just sometimes for me, just seeing those cross curricular connections and seeing a computer solutions teacher work with a core teacher to figure out how they're going to use this product to teach both of their content areas, I think is just really cool. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I can't help. And this is what happens when we have these great conversations. I think of some cool ideas. I can't help of thinking of a challenge, recreating a better. So that's been around for what? I don't know. For a little while was it. I looked it up. I saw 2011, but for some reason I feel like it was longer ago. Where did it come up? Sean, you're like a wealth of knowledge, but try to get nye on cat girls or create the new meme for that or something. That's what I think of. She's writing it down. Dora Palfi: Yeah, that's it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's a great challenge accepted. Dora Palfi: I do. I must say, though, like, the criticism of the size of the Matrix does come up. I recently visited a school just outside New York, and I had a student coming when she learned that I was the one who made the tool. And she actually got on her knees and started praying, please make the matrix bigger. So I couldn't leave until I promised that we'll think of a way of maybe not the hardware, but on the software side, like allowing for more, but maybe I will steal your idea. Kelly, like, you graduated. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Here you are. Sean Tibor: I like imag Excel. I think that's the way to go. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Or like a vector board, you know, instead. So if you've seen the vector board, they flip like an old train station. Instead, you have to code a gigantic maggie board classroom set. Kickstart that one. Cool. Chelsea Clagg: I think also, though, at an elementary and middle school level, kids are really tough on technology. You see some of these, like, chromebooks that these kids bring in. You're like, oh, my gosh, kid, how. What happened to this thing? So I think one of the nice things about the size of the Magi Charman is that it is, like, durable. We've had ours, I think, now going on three years, and surprisingly, we have not lost one. And that is surprising. Like, I'm surprised to say that they hold up to a good drop and stuff when you're with middle school kids. We do have other products in our county to teach coding. Imagine is not the only thing we have. And some of them are more expensive and some of them don't hold up as well. So even just considering that you could do more with a bigger board, or you can upgrade to these other things, but sometimes when it comes to the things that students are going to be using en masse, sometimes simpler is better. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: All right, I have to do this to everybody. So you had one piece of advice. To talk to a teacher or a school about getting into coding without naming a product. We're going to put the product aside. You have one piece of advice for teachers. I'm too old. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. I can't teach coding. It's too hard. What would you say? Make Sean go first while you think. Sean Tibor: I mean, the one that always comes to mind to me is the story of the Nobel Prize winner from, what, seven or eight years ago in economics? The guy won the Nobel Prize at the age, in his late fifties, and he did it all using Python Jupyter analysis and all this stuff. And he started learning python in his early fifties. So if you can do that, use the coding as a tool or as a vehicle to achieve something or make something better, it's worth learning and it's worth doing. No, we're not all going to be Nobel Prize winners as a result of learning code. But if you can learn coding in your fifties and use it to do something great, or even something just really good, isn't it worth a try? Why not? What's the worst that can happen? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yep, like that. Anyone else? Dora Palfi: Just because you said, like, you can't teach all those new tricks. It rang a bell in my head. And so I actually visited Chelsea's county and had a long conversation with her and some of her colleagues. And I actually had a quote literally saying, one of Chelsea's colleagues, that she had this fear at first, but then, actually, it's been so fun and it made her feel more relevant and just being part of what's going on in the modern world. So it was, at the end of the day, really fulfilling and gave, like, a new kind of topic to engage with fellow colleagues and just like a new motivator. So at the end of the day, pretty much what you said before, what's the worst thing that can happen? But at the end of the day, it could be just a new fulfillment and a new motivating factor, really. You don't have to win the Nobel Prize, but just keeping up with the world. Chelsea Clagg: Our education system is changing a little bit. I know that in our county, we're really pushing for those 21st century skills. Now, it's not just about learning the science term or the english term or learning the knowledge for the sake of having a great trivia jeopardy knowledge. Now it's turning more to like, do I have those skills that I can collaborate and I can create, being able to create and collaborate and show that I'm learning and growing and I can do that with others in a work type environment. That's what the whole goal of schools is and what it's moving towards. Coding is just another way to do that. Like you said, I don't know why teachers wouldn't want to try or be willing to learn. I mean, we're trying to make our next generation. We can't be afraid. If we want to prepare our students for the future, we have to jump right in with them. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Hundred percent. I'll answer my own question, too. It's funny, because I've been trying to get teachers at our school to get into coding and a lot and use of AI or push in some sort of tech, and it's always difficult to get into the door sometimes with teachers. And funnily enough, a teacher came back from a conference a couple weeks ago, learning in the brain conference. It's a cognitive science conference in New York. And she grabbed my arm. She said, kelly, did you know that coding really enhances cognitive abilities? Dora Palfi: I went, what? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I didn't know. She goes, it helps them critically think and analyze situations. So good for the brain to learn to code. I was like, and I joked around and I said, have I not been telling you that for about four or five years? So the hardest job to do as a ed tech specialist or coding teacher is just to wait, because eventually those teachers will slowly come around. So mine's more for the edtech specialist. Just wait. Just keep knocking on the door. Just keep reminding people about the innovative side of coding, how it makes connections, how we're just, like, ready to handle the real world and bring everything together. Eventually, everyone will see the benefits of what we get to experience. Especially, we get an added bonus. No offense, Sean and Dora, but as non coders who've been doing a thing one way, and then all of a sudden, our brain is forced to think differently and to code, it does something for us, benefiting our cognitive load and our cognitive ability. That's what I would say to all those teachers out there. If you want to feel that that brain spinning after years of teaching, like 25 years, then go learn code. Sean Tibor: The only thing I would add to that is go learn code and connect it with what you're doing already, the stuff that you care about, and you're passionate about. That's the secret. That's the key for both students and for teachers. It has to enhance or improve or transform something you're already doing. Because I know for me, coming at it from the other direction, I was very comfortable with technology, very comfortable with coding. I had a lot of experience, but adding teaching to that, it was like the opposite direction. Here's something new that I'm learning how to do, and I'm connecting that and enhancing something that I already know. It made both my teaching and my coding better, and I now get lots of compliments and feedback from people saying, wow, you know how to explain that really well. Thank you for sharing that with us. Well, I've had a lot of practice now, and my brain has rewired itself to be able to do that. So it. It absolutely goes in both directions. That connection is what really makes the difference. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Very true. Sean Tibor: Well, we're right at the top of the hour and want us to just say thank you to both of you. This has been a really inspiring conversation. Really enjoyable to learn from each of you and see how you're bringing more and more people into these subject areas of teaching and technology and coding that we all love and share the love of. Thank you for being more inclusive and bringing more people out from their shelves and into the world of coding and technology. Chelsea Clagg: Yeah, glad to be here and be a part of it. And thank you for having me. Dora Palfi: Thank you so much. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Thank you. Excellent. Sean Tibor: All right, well, I think that'll do it for this week. So thank you for joining us and for teaching Python. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: This is Sean, and this is Kelly signing off.