Episode 138: Innovative Coding Education with Pamela Fox

Teaching Python

In episode 138 of Teaching Python, hosts Sean Tibor and Kelly Schuster-Paredes welcome Pamela Fox, a Principal Developer Advocate at Microsoft, to discuss the dynamic world of teaching, coding, and creating. Pamela shares her experiences working with Python in the cloud, emphasizing the various applications from serverless functions to web application backends using frameworks like Flask and Django. This episode provides a comprehensive look at how cloud-based environments like GitHub CodeSpaces and CoLab make programming more accessible and reduce the friction often associated with setting up development environments.

Pamela dives into her approach to teaching and the unique challenges posed by different educational formats. Drawing from her work at institutions like UC Berkeley and her development of AP Computer Science Principles content for Khan Academy, she highlights the importance of making learning engaging and personalized. Pamela shares insights into the design of interactive and project-based curricula, touching on how tools like Parsons problems can scaffold learning effectively and make complex concepts like recursion more approachable.

The conversation also explores the significance of visualizations in learning programming, as exemplified by Pamela's recursion visualizer tool. The episode concludes with reflections on the breadth of topics covered in AP CSP and the value of exposing students to a wide array of programming experiences. Listeners gain a deeper understanding of the balance between teaching fundamental concepts and encouraging creative expression through code, along with practical tips for educators at all levels.

Special Guest: Pamela Fox.

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Links:

• GitHub - pamelafox/recursive-visualizations: An online tool to visualize recursive JS functions step-by-step as a tree. — A way to visualize the call graph of recursive functions. Uses Pyodide to run rcviz.py and then a WASM PyDot/GraphViz port to build an SVG graph. Finally, some JavaScript adds a slider for stepping through the calls.
• GitHub - pamelafox/faded-parsons-static: A way to run Python Faded Parsons problems entirely in the browser. — This website allows you to run Faded Parsons Problems in the browser. It uses Pyodide for executing Python doctests and localStorage for storing user progress.