The discussion covers the current landscape of LLMs in coding education, from the benefits of faster iteration cycles to the risks of students losing that crucial "aha moment" when they solve problems independently. Simon shares insights on prompt injection vulnerabilities, the importance of local models for privacy, and why he believes LLMs are much harder to use effectively than most people realize.

Key topics include:

• Educational Strategy: When to introduce AI tools vs. building foundational skills first
• Security Concerns: Prompt injection attacks and their implications for educational tools
• Student Engagement: Maintaining motivation and problem-solving skills in an AI world
  
• Practical Applications: Using LLMs for code review, debugging, and rapid prototyping
• Privacy Issues: Understanding data collection and training practices of major AI companies
• Local Models: Running AI tools privately on personal devices
• The "Jagged Frontier": Why LLMs excel at some tasks while failing at others

Simon brings 20 years of Django experience and deep expertise in both web development and AI tooling to discuss how educators can thoughtfully integrate these powerful but unpredictable tools into their classrooms. The conversation balances excitement about AI's potential with realistic assessments of its limitations and risks.

Whether you're a coding educator trying to navigate the AI revolution or a developer interested in the intersection of education and technology, this episode provides practical insights for working with LLMs responsibly and effectively.

Resources mentioned:

• Simon's blog: simonwillison.net
• Mission Encodable curriculum
• Datasette and LLM tools
• GitHub Codespaces for safe AI experimentation

Special Guest: Simon Willison.

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This episode sheds light on the importance of coding in today’s education and the crucial role of creativity and cross-curricular connections in engaging students. Hear firsthand accounts of teachers and educators who, despite having no coding background, have successfully integrated coding into their curriculum, making it a valuable tool for enhancing cognitive skills and preparing students for the future. Explore the transformative power of coding education and how it’s shaping the educators of tomorrow.

Whether you are a seasoned coding professional or a curious newcomer to the field of education technology, this episode offers valuable insights into making coding accessible and fun for everyone. Through real-world examples and engaging discussions, discover how coding is not just about learning a new language but about building a foundation for critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity in the digital age.

Special Guests: Chelsea Clagg and Dora Palfi.

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Support Teaching Python

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Links:

• Online Python Tutor - visualize, debug, get AI help for Python, Java, C, C++, and JavaScript — Python Tutor helps you do programming homework assignments in Python, Java, C, C++, and JavaScript. It contains a unique step-by-step visual debugger and AI tutor to help you understand and debug code.
• Welcome - Barbara Oakley

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Note: This is a shorter episode format that focuses on one specific topic, limited to 15-20 minutes.

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Links:

• Teams for Education - Replit — Tests and autograding Save time on grading. Free yourself up for more individual attention and increase student persistence by letting them test code before turning it in.
• PyBites Platform | Real World Python Exercises — Overwhelmed by tutorials? Stop consuming books and courses! The only way to really learn to code is to write a lot of relevant code. Our platform makes you a confident programmer fast.

During our conversation, we talk about everything from making learning open and accessible, to the role that teachers and mentors play in our learning, as well as the ability to write and publish what we learn to improve our own understanding. We even sprinkle in a bit of Club Penguin.

Join us to learn about how to go from basic to intermediate Python and so much more.

Special Guest: Yasoob Khalid.

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Links:

• Yasoob Khalid — I am Yasoob! You might know me from Practical Python Projects or the Intermediate Python book. Welcome to my personal blog which is going to be the new home for all of my old and new articles.
• Practical Python Projects Book - Yasoob Khalid — The Practical Python Projects book demonstrates how to combine different libraries and frameworks to build amazing things.
• Club Penguin - Wikipedia — Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), involving a virtual world that contained a range of online games and activities. It was created by New Horizon Interactive (now known as Disney Canada Inc.). Players used cartoon penguin-avatars and played in an Antarctic-themed open world. After beta-testing, Club Penguin was made available to the general public on October 24, 2005, and expanded into a large online community, such that by late 2007, it was claimed Club Penguin had over 30 million user accounts. In July 2013, Club Penguin had over 200 million registered user accounts.[1]
• Applesoft BASIC - Wikipedia — Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It is also referred to as FP BASIC (from floating point) because of the Apple DOS command used to invoke it, instead of INT for Integer BASIC.
• Intermediate Python — Python Tips 0.1 documentation — Python is an amazing language with a strong and friendly community of programmers. However, there is a lack of documentation on what to learn after getting the basics of Python down your throat. Through this book I aim to solve this problem. I would give you bits of information about some interesting topics which you can further explore.
• CMU School of Computer Science — Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science is widely recognized as one of the first and best computer science programs in the world. Our programs train the next generation of innovators to solve real-world problems and improve the way people live and work.
• Logic & Proofs – Course from Professor Sieg — An introductory logic course, designed for students from a broad range of disciplines, from mathematics and computer science to drama and creative writing. It is also designed to reflect aspects of the logical tradition (going back to Aristotle) as well as the practical applicability (for example for the construction of Boolean circuits). Below one finds a detailed description of the course with many of its special features.
• Talks - Brett Cannon: Python's syntactic sugar - YouTube — Did you know that it only takes 11 pieces of syntax and some special functions to implement all the rest of the syntax of Python 3.8? It turns out you can take something like + and unravel it into Python code, letting you implement what Python does for a certain piece of syntax all on your own!

In this interview, we'll cover everything from the shortage of computer science teachers to smart doorbells to going beyond Kahoot! to tools that help teachers assess student learning progress.

Special Guest: Ryan Dehmoubed.

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Links:

• Python Smart Doorbell - JuiceMind — Learn the fundamentals of Python by building a REAL product – a Smart Doorbell that sends text messages and emails!
• Ping Pong Launcher - JuiceMind — Strengthen your Python skills and learn the fundamentals of robotics by building a Ping Pong Launcher that can fire a ping pong ball 20 feet!
• JuiceMind Quizzes

Special Guest: Elad Inbar.

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• RobotLAB Group - Robotics Solution Integrator — We are "The Robot Guys". the only company you will ever need for your turn-key robotics solution. No matter how small or large your project is, we can do the heavy lifting for you!
• NAO Robot Power V6 Educator Pack — The latest version of NAO with 10 major areas of improvement is here! Bring STEM and Coding to life with the NAO Robot. Hands-on learning platform to teach core subjects: Reading, Writing, Math, pre-algebra, geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus and programming.

Episode Errata:

• The hackday event referenced in the episode was related to Pyscript and more information will come out on that shortly.
• The data science competition for high school students referenced in the episode is called Data Science Expo and will be piloted in the 2022-2023 school year.

Note: we had to go to the cloud-based recording backup for this episode, so you may notice a few issues with audio quality. Our editor did his best to clean it up, but there are a few rough spots.

Special Guests: Albert Defusco and Sophia Yang.

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Links:

• Anaconda Nucleus — Find content in the Anaconda library, support, and more!
• Anaconda | The World's Most Popular Data Science Platform — Anaconda offers the easiest way to perform Python/R data science and machine learning on a single machine. Start working with thousands of open-source packages and libraries today.
• Getting started with Anaconda — Anaconda documentation — Anaconda Distribution contains conda and Anaconda Navigator, as well as Python and hundreds of scientific packages. When you installed Anaconda, you installed all these too.
• PyScript | Run Python in your HTML — Run Python in Your HTML

Special Guest: Richard Culatta.

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Links:

• Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World by Richard Culatta — When it comes to raising children in a digital world, every parent feels underprepared and overwhelmed. We worry that our children will become addicted to online games, be victims of cyberbullying, or get lost down the rabbit hole of social media. We warn them about all the things they shouldn't do online, but we don't do nearly enough to teach them the skills of digital well-being.
• We are ISTE | ISTE — We help educators around the world use technology to solve tough problems.
• Circuit Playground Bluefruit - Bluetooth Low Energy : ID 4333 : $24.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits — Circuit Playground Bluefruit is our third board in the Circuit Playground series, another step towards a perfect introduction to electronics and programming. We've taken the popular Circuit Playground Express and made it even better! Now the main chip is an nRF52840 microcontroller which is not only more powerful, but also comes with Bluetooth Low Energy support for wireless connectivity.

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• EarSketch — EarSketch helps you * Learn coding through music * Use our sounds or your own * Learn Python or JavaScript code * Produce studio-quality music
• Take Advantage of the Mac's built-in wordlist — OS X comes with a list of all the words in Webster's 2nd International Dictionary (234,936 of them to be precise). These words can be found in the file /usr/share/dict/words. I find it useful to search this list if I'm not sure how spell a given word by using the following command:

Barbara Oakley is a professor of engineering, former Russian translater on Soviet fishing trawlers, Antarctic researcher (where she met her husband), author, MOOC creator, and so much more. Kelly and Sean talk to her about the ways that our brain learns and retains knowledge, and how we can use that mechanism to learn how to learn better.

Special Guest: Barbara Oakley.

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Links:

• Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects | Coursera — This course gives you easy access to the invaluable learning techniques used by experts in art, music, literature, math, science, sports, and many other disciplines. We’ll learn about the how the brain uses two very different learning modes and how it encapsulates (“chunks”) information. We’ll also cover illusions of learning, memory techniques, dealing with procrastination, and best practices shown by research to be most effective in helping you master tough subjects.
• Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential | Coursera — Mindshift is designed to help boost your career and life in today’s fast-paced learning environment. Whatever your age or stage, Mindshift teaches you essentials such as how to get the most out of online learning and MOOCs, how to seek out and work with mentors, the secrets to avoiding career ruts (and catastrophes) and general ruts in life, and insights such as the value of selective ignorance over general competence. We’ll provide practical insights from science about how to learn and change effectively even in maturity, and we’ll build on what you already know to take your life’s learning in fantastic new directions. This course is designed to show you how to look at what you’re learning, and your place in what’s unfolding in the society around you, so you can be what you want to be, given the real world constraints that life puts on us all. You’ll see that by using certain mental tools and insights, you can learn and do more—far more—than you might have ever dreamed!
• A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) 1, Oakley, Barbara - Amazon.com — In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to learning effectively—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them.
• Amazon.com: Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens eBook: Oakley, Barbara, Sejnowski, Terrence, McConville, Alistair: Kindle Store — A Mind for Numbers and its wildly popular online companion course "Learning How to Learn" have empowered more than two million learners of all ages from around the world to master subjects that they once struggled with. Fans often wish they'd discovered these learning strategies earlier and ask how they can help their kids master these skills as well. Now in this new book for kids and teens, the authors reveal how to make the most of time spent studying.
• Amazon.com: Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential eBook: Oakley, Barbara: Kindle Store — At a time when we are constantly being asked to retrain and reinvent ourselves to adapt to new technologies and changing industries, this book shows us how we can uncover and develop talents we didn’t realize we had—no matter what our age or background. We’re often told to “follow our passions.” But in Mindshift, Dr. Barbara Oakley shows us how we can broaden our passions. Drawing on the latest neuroscientific insights, Dr. Oakley shepherds us past simplistic ideas of “aptitude” and “ability,” which provide only a snapshot of who we are now—with little consideration about how we can change.
• Amazon.com: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence eBook: Hawkins, Jeff, Dawkins, Richard: Kindle Store — A bestselling author, neuroscientist, and computer engineer unveils a theory of intelligence that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain and the future of AI. For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world-not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought. A Thousand Brains heralds a revolution in the understanding of intelligence. It is a big-think book, in every sense of the word.
• Amazon.com: Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn eBook: Oakley, Barbara, Rogowsky, Beth, Sejnowski, Terrence J.: Kindle Store — A groundbreaking guide to improve teaching based on the latest research in neuroscience, from the bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers. Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists have made enormous strides in understanding the brain and how we learn, but little of that insight has filtered down to the way teachers teach. Uncommon Sense Teaching applies this research to the classroom for teachers, parents, and anyone interested in improving education.
• Amazon.com: Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything eBook: PhD, Barbara Oakley, Schewe, Olav: Kindle Store — Do you spend too much time learning with disappointing results? Do you find it difficult to remember what you read? Do you put off studying because it’s boring and you’re easily distracted? This book is for you. Dr. Barbara Oakley and Olav Schewe have both struggled in the past with their learning. But they have found techniques to help them master any material. Building on insights from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, they give you a crash course to improve your ability to learn, no matter what the subject is. Through their decades of writing, teaching, and research on learning, the authors have developed deep connections with experts from a vast array of disciplines. And it’s all honed with feedback from thousands of students who have themselves gone through the trenches of learning. Successful learners gradually add tools and techniques to their mental toolbox, and they think critically about their learning to determine when and how to best use their mental tools. That allows these learners to make the best use of their brains, whether those brains seem “naturally” geared toward learning or not. This book will teach you how you can do the same.

Special Guest: Jeff Olson.

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Links:

• Model inclusive language - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University — As instructors, you can have a great impact on the classroom climate through the very language you use. Yet it can be hard to recognize in one’s own speech that some of the most basic idioms and examples are often not inclusive, for they are actually very specific to one group in society (e.g. men/women, Christians, whites, heterosexuals, etc.). This tendency can inadvertently marginalize minority groups. For instance, research has shown that using gender-exclusive language (e.g., using he to indicate he or she) in professional settings affects women’s sense of belonging and lowers motivation (Stout and Dasgupta, 2011; Sczesny, Formanowicz, & Moser, 2016).
• The Trouble with Real-ish Problems — We've all seen math problems like this. Problems where the context or numbers are ridiculous. And what might we say to a kid in this situation? "Don't worry about that, just do the math."
• What Are You Talking About?! The Need for Common Language around Personalized Learning | EDUCAUSE — As a former language teacher, I love examples of translations that didn't turn out quite as they were intended. There's the famous example when the U.S. auto-maker Chevrolet marketed the Nova in Latin America: no va in Spanish means "doesn't go". Airports seem to be a great place to find language problems, such as the sign helping people find the restrooms. My point is that language matters.
• Students Don’t Need Simple Examples | by Jeff Olson | upperlinecode — In my post about coding for predictions, I wrote a sentence that got edited out of the final draft, but that’s played on repeat in my head ever since. Students don’t need simple examples. They need clear ones. I’m realizing that this catchy little antithesis is essentially my whole teaching philosophy rolled up into one line.
• Education Summit 2020 - YouTube — The Summit is a gathering of teachers and educators focused on bringing coding literacy, through Python, to as broad a group of audiences as possible. -Jeffrey L. Olson Jr, Foo and “Bar” Must Die - Teach Less and Do More with Context, Predictions, and Playtime
• Humble Book Bundle: Learn to Code the Fun Way by No Starch Press (pay what you want and help charity) — Sean's Win of the Week is the If Hemingway Wrote Javascript from the current Humble Bundle. --- We've teamed up with No Starch Press for our newest bundle! Get ebooks like Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!, Practical SQL, and Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition. Plus, your purchase will support UNCF and No Starch Press Foundation!
• Amazon.com: If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript eBook: Croll, Angus: Kindle Store — What if William Shakespeare were asked to generate the Fibonacci series or Jane Austen had to write a factorial program? In If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript, author Angus Croll imagines short JavaScript programs as written by famous wordsmiths. The result is a peculiar and charming combination of prose, poetry, and programming.

With thanks to Al Sweigart and his book, Automate the Boring Stuff With Python, Kelly and Sean look at how teachers can leverage Python to speed up or eliminate the most boring and repetitive aspects of teaching.

This episode includes a walkthrough of an example project that Sean built to automate iPad setup at his school using Google Cloud Functions, JAMF Server APIs, and Apple Device Management.

Support Teaching Python

Links:

• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners: Al Sweigart: 9781593279929: Amazon.com: Books — In this fully revised second edition of the best-selling classic Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand--no prior programming experience required.
• Zapier | The easiest way to automate your work — Easy automation for busy people. Zapier moves info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work.
• Cloud Functions - Event-driven Serverless Computing  |  Cloud Functions  |  Google Cloud — Simplest way to run your code in the cloud Automatically scales, highly available and fault tolerant No servers to provision, manage, patch or update Pay only while your code runs Connects and extends cloud services
• PyBites Platform | Hone Your Python Skills — Absolute beginner? Don't worry, we've got your back. Start learning Python from scratch!
• Circuit Playground Bluefruit - ALPHA - Bluetooth Low Energy ID: 4333 - $24.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits — Circuit Playground Bluefruit is our third board in the Circuit Playground series, another step towards a perfect introduction to electronics and programming. We've taken the popular Circuit Playground Express and made it even better! Now the main chip is an nRF52840 microcontroller which is not only more powerful, but also comes with Bluetooth Low Energy support for wireless connectivity.
• Support the show. Sponsor us on Patreon! — Teaching Python is creating a podcast for people who teach Python (of course) | Patreon

What are coding challenges?

Coding challenges are teacher-defined coding problems that students tackle individually or in groups with more than one possible solution. Challenges are time-bound, i.e. they must be solved within a set period of time and range in complexity from simple code snippets to complete programs.

For example:

• A 5-minute challenge to add comments to existing code
• A 3-day challenge to create a game in Python
• A standing challenge to solve a complex math problem by the end of the course

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Links:

• Simple Programming Problems — This page is a collection of progressively more difficult exercises that are suitable for people who just started learning. It will be extended as I come up with new exercises. Except for the GUI questions, exercises are generally algorithmic and should be solvable without learning any libraries. The difficulty of the exercises of course somewhat depends on the programming language you use. The List exercises for example are more complicated in languages like C that don’t have build-in support for lists.
• Coding Games and Programming Challenges to Code Better — Coding games to improve your programming skills.
• The 10 Best Coding Challenge Websites for 2018 – Coderbyte – Medium
• 4 Things Transformational Teachers Do | Edutopia
• seantibor/microbit-compass: A digital compass using the BBC micro:bit and a laser-cut compass rose — Repository for the 6th grade Microbit Compass Challenge
• Chapter 3: Guess the Number — The guess the number challenge inspiration.