Changing the World Bit by Bit with Micro:bits

We are very excited to introduce our awesome guests for this episode. Katie Henry, head of partnerships for North America from Microbit Educational Foundation, Alinda Beiter from Melva Davis Middle School in Adelanto School District and Dominique Conerly from Kelley Elementary School in Rialto. They came today to our changing the world bit by bit with microbit workshop to help engage other teachers just like themselves in microbit endeavors.

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Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay - Wataboi Flavour

Transcript

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 Sonal  00:03

Welcome to the SBCSS Digital Learning Bits and Bytes Podcast inspired by our dedication for equitable and inclusive educational technology and computer science. Todays Digital Learning Team Hosts are Sonal Patel and Dr. Sharisa Chan.

Sharisa  00:20

Hello, everyone I'm Sharisa Chan 

Sonal  00:22

and Hi everyone I'm Sonal Patel.

Sharisa  00:24

We'd like to begin by introducing our awesome guests. Katie Henry, head of partnerships for North America from Microbit Educational Foundation, Alinda Beiter from Melva Davis Middle School in Adelanto School District and Dominique Conerly from Kelley Elementary School in Rialto. They came today to our changing the world bit by bit with microbit workshop to help engage other teachers just like themselves in microbit endeavors.

Sonal  00:49

We're going to go ahead and start with our first question. And we'll start with Dominique if that's okay, please share one bit of byte that people may be intrigued to learn about you.

Dominique  00:59

Something that's that they'd be interested to know about me. I am an extroverted introvert, if that makes sense. If upon meeting me, I'm very, very quiet. But then once you know me, you got to give me back quiet again. I love traveling. I love having a lot of fun. I just love experiencing life. So

Sonal  01:19

Thank you thats' lots of bits and bytes. Love it. And then we'll take it over to Alinda.

Alinda  01:24

Okay, something interesting about me. I do also love to travel. But I also love to drive big rock crawlers that are almost taller than me. The wheels are almost taller than me. So that's one of the past time is spent that my family loved to do.

Sonal  01:40

I have to see pictures of that. Do you have to do both of you have a favorite travel destination?

Dominique  01:44

Jamaica for sure. I've been a few times and Hello, love it. Wow. Love it.

Sonal  01:49

Thank you with a unique culture.

Alinda  01:50

My dream site would be Ireland. I never really want to go to Ireland. Yeah,

Sonal  01:55

I think my favorite I love to travel as well. Favorite place Florence, Italy. I'm guessing you're a traveler, Katie.

Katie  02:03

Yeah, that's actually going to be my sort of fun fact. I once worked on the three continents in three weeks, I was traveling really hardcore for my former job training teachers and I just got sent all over. So I was of course traveling around the US. I was in three different time zones got on a plane went straight to Europe. And from there went straight to Morocco in Northern Africa.

Sonal  02:23

Wow. No way. Wow. 

Katie  02:25

But I haven't been to Florence, Italy. That sounds amazing.

Sonal  02:27

Amazing. The most out of this world. Like I don't like to travel to places more than once. But Florence Italy is probably going to be a retirement home. amongst many other retirement homes. I'm hoping for 

Katie  02:40

what brought you there the first time 

Sonal  02:41

I went from my my husband wanted to do his 40th birthday trip over there. So him and I went we went you know when the flooding was happening in Venice. So we went right then we like had to wear those boots, up to our knees. And so was everything about it was like a gondola everywhere, everywhere. But it was fun. Still, it was still fun. So that's what took me there. I always wanted to go since I was a little girl. And I was like, I'm not going to this place until I'm married. And I have money because it is expensive. And it's just a place full of love. So I just always said to myself, this is the one place I will not go and back backpacking around Europe when I was a kid, actually not a kid in my 20s. Right. I went backpacking around Europe, but I left Paris and Italy for when I was to find love. I did find love. I ended up going to Paris and Italy. So it all worked out like a movie.

Sharisa  03:37

Yeah, that's awesome. So I have that in common to with all of you. I do love to travel, we go to the same destination often, which is Hawaii, that's my home away from home. However, I really love Japan. That is where my mom's side of the family is from. Oddly enough, my mom's never been to Japan before. So my brother and I have both gone there and my dad is gone as well. My mom is the only one of Japanese heritage yet to go. So we will we will get there. Our plan is actually to go hopefully this year or next. So that's, that's in the works. But thank you so much for sharing those tidbits about you. Amazing. So we will go ahead and start with a question for you. Now, Katie, tell us a bit about the microbit Educational Foundation and what you do there.

Katie  04:22

The microbit Educational Foundation is a nonprofit based in Oxford, England. But with a global impact. We are dedicated to the mission of inspiring every child to create their best digital future. We do that through hardware and software that we design and develop teaching and learning materials that we co create with other teachers worldwide. And then through partnership. So my role is actually looking after our partnership just in North America. And it's honestly the best job in the world.

Sonal  04:52

And it started in England.

Katie  04:54

 It did 

Sonal  04:55

Those are my friends.

Katie  04:58

Yeah, yeah back in 2016 Micro bit launched, it was a project out of the BBC, every year seven student have received a free microbit. And since then the project has just grown worldwide.

Sonal  05:11

Awesome, thank you. And I just have to say a little bit about that, because Katie Henry has just been so instrumental in helping us grow our work here at County, they're our official partners now we're happy to see and they're just throwing so many resource resources at us, including teacher learning and professional development, which I'm sure you'll hear about soon.

Sharisa  05:29

And further more Katie is here with us all the way from Philadelphia, here in California to support us at this event. So definitely, we're thankful that we have you and we're partners. And you know, it's nice to be in that same circle. So thank you.

Katie  05:43

Thank you.

Sonal  05:45

Today, all of you came to are changing the world bit by bit microbit workshop, which was facilitated by the amazing Dr. Chan over here. What are some of your takeaways, especially working with the UN Sustainable goals,

Alinda  05:58

I never even thought about how I would tie the micro bit to the UN Sustainable goals. And I learned that today for the first time because I'm pretty new to micro bit . And I'm excited, I'm pretty new to coding period, I've done scratch, I've done code.org. So I like that. But I'm new to that to the micro bit. And I'm so excited to go back because I think the kids are gonna have so much more buy in, when we give them those goals that they get to work on. So today, I've learned so much today. It was really exciting.

Sonal  06:32

And Linda is one of the people that just amazed up to Chennai when we went out to her school to visit and they had all these amazing projects. You know, it's nothing to do with micro bits it kind of is because it's computer science stem ish. Oh, yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about those wonderful projects that your kids created with rollercoasters?

Alinda  06:49

Yeah, it's the Mesa program through UCR. And they compete at the college, with about 27 other schools in the area. It's all over California and some outside of California. And they did the first competition of the years roller coasters. And they're like 10 feet tall. They do with marbles, they could use anything outside of like, pre made kits. And they do themes, and they have to do 3d drawings with them. And they have to do press releases. And the competition is all based off of that. And we had three teams win this year out of five, and they got to go to Knott's Berry Farm. So it was a lot of fun.

Sonal  07:31

And one of my favorite things about that was that they actually worked in teams to create these projects. So the amount of collaboration that went into that must have been just phenomenal to watch.

Alinda  07:40

Yes. Our teams this year were spectacular. This was my best year.

Sonal  07:44

Yeah, no, thank you for sharing. So what about you, Dominique? What What are your key takeaways from today?

Dominique  07:50

For me, I'm just excited to bring my excitement back to the classroom. Because one thing that I've tried to emphasize to my students all year round, is that everything that we do here is not supposed to stay in the classroom. But now that I know that we can use our micro bits on a much grander scale to solve issues in our communities, issues in our own lives issues around the world. I think it's gonna give my students so much purpose, yeah, to do I just love that, that that opportunity is available for them. Because we can do so much more than what we're doing now inside the classroom. But how can we take what we're doing in the classroom, and affect the world? Because we all have the ability to do something positive.

Sonal  08:34

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And I love to have both of you at ideating with your teams in the working on some potential solutions to those global problems. So thank you for participating. Katie, did you want to say something I can see, you're itching to

Katie  08:46

know, I'm just I just don't honestly just so impressed with the teacher work that happened today. In this workshops, like you said, so much brainstorming and thinking about like Dominique was saying, leading with student passions, letting what students already care about and want to know more about guide, the discussions and the problem solving in the classroom. Absolutely. It was inspiring to see teachers planning for that

Sonal  09:08

today. And those the problems could just start off with some local community problems that they're trying to solve, right? The amount of passion and excitement that can come out of solving something, you know, locally or regionally and then globally, it can just take kids in such a an amazing direction can really help to change change the world.

Sharisa  09:29

Absolutely. I was just so inspired by all of the work that you are all doing today. In there the during the workshop. I heard a lot of questions come up. And it was funny, Alinda, I'm gonna say something about you. Alinda, students are very passionate about the projects they want to do. And sometimes as teachers, we wonder, can we really do this? Is it too big? And her students were very determined, and she's a little bit worried about it, but it's funny because a Linda showed the same characteristics today when she was iterating for her project. She said, I think we're gonna just get this done today. And I was like, well, we only have x amount of time, she said, we're gonna do it. I was like, Oh, interesting, just like your students. Wow. Amazing. And then Dominique asked some amazing questions, too, that I couldn't answer. But I pointed her into a different direction. And I learned so much from the questions that she asked. So just thank you for both being you is amazing. Yeah.

Sonal  10:22

So they were they were really taking the inquiry based approach. Right? They were ideating. And then they were thinking about how they're going to attain this, you know, how they were going to go into get their solutions. And part of that might have might have been Dr. Chan. Right. Dr. Chan may have had those solutions. But, you know, you she modeled perfectly today that she doesn't have all the solutions to any of the questions that you have that we have to kind of use the resources around us, including, you know, Google and chat. GPT. Sorry, I'm gonna throw that out there. It might have helped you today might have helped you,

Sharisa  10:55

And our network too. Yeah, to the shock of people that may have Yes, so important to do things like this, just to lean on one another. Okay, so moving on to the next question. What are you currently doing with microbeads? In your own school districts? In Dominica, we'll start with you.

Dominique  11:11

Okay, so what I'm doing currently, I'm letting my students have a lot of fun with the micro bits, I find little ways to incorporate projects into our content areas, and I was sharing with Sonal earlier, for example, my students were starting our opinion writing unit. And so the first day, we had discussions on what is a factor what is an opinion, then we had discussions on that. And then I had my my students code characters, that would explain to me as the difference between a fact and an opinion as if I did not know anything about it. And so they had a lot of fun with that, when we're doing multiplication, they will use the micro bit to create their own math problems. And the answer will pop up on the on the micro bit. So we find ways for them to code in the areas that we're learning in the classroom. So we have a lot of fun with it. I know my students love, it's the best part of the day for them.

Sharisa  12:03

Doing that integration piece is so important. Where all just fits together. Yes, yes. Thank you. 

Alinda  12:08

What about you Alinda? Well, my kids are with me, my Mesa kids, I have three teams working on just Mesa Day stuff. And then I have three teams working on the Innovation Day. So hoping to come up with some good projects. But I'm, I'm thinking about implementing it with my ELD students, because they really, they're really quiet. And I need them to start talking and communicating with each other. And I think that this will be exactly what they need, because they can work in teams. And I love that their micro bits talk with each other. And they'll have to communicate to get that done. So I'm excited to put it in with my ELD kids.

Sonal  12:08

I saw somrthing really exciting lately that you just reminded me of one of the teachers that I work with created, had her kids participate in some micro bit projects. And then the kids had to reflect using flip. So you're just building that academic discourse using flip, she gave them some scaffolds to help support them as they were explaining what their projects were about. So it was just taking their leadership and their reflections to another level by you know, recording it and then getting other people to respond to their, their reflections and then responding to other people. It built those communication skills as well.

Alinda  13:23

I mean, that's such a great idea, because I use flip all the time in the classroom. And I do with my ELD kids to get them to talk. So I just made take that. Yeah.

Sonal  13:34

Thank you. Before we move on to the next question, though, I was I was wondering, Katie, whether you've seen some things at school districts that you've just been so impressed with that you want to you want to share?

Katie  13:46

Yes, you know, honestly, something I saw today, it was in a video that Dr. Chan played as part of one of the thinking routines, and the teacher was sort of demonstrating how students begin to break down a problem, essentially. And he actually had his students start by looking at last year students projects. And I thought that was really powerful. Because sometimes we think we have to keep this like veil of mystery over everything. And we have all this control and power in the classroom of like, you can know it when I say you can know it, because I you know, I'm guiding everything and but the reality is, nobody exists in a vacuum. We don't want to isolate our students. We don't want to compartmentalize things beyond like the scope of actual reality. And when you say like, let's look at what someone else did, even if you're about to do that thing. That's that's how we improve our world. We examine our current state, we examine our current structures and systems and we examine, evaluate, discuss, and we look back before we look forward so that we don't make the same mistake. And so I thought that was really just that one act of looking at last year students projects and reflecting on them yeah. That was really powerful.

Sonal  15:01

Yeah, thank you. All right. So moving on to final question. So you've had some experience with microbeads. What is one advice? One piece of advice you would give to others who are using micro bits for the first time? Why don't we just start with you, Katie with this one? Thank you for using it for the first time, what might you

Katie  15:19

Yeah, my advice would actually be just remember the name of today's workshop, which is changing the world bit by bit. And the idea of little change that just little by little, we can make big improvements. And the benefit of actually taking small steps is the changes likely to be more long lasting. In other words, if we make big change overnight, it can change back overnight. So sustainable, meaningful change actually comes very slowly. So if you feel like something's taking a long time in your life, or going very slowly, that can actually be a really good thing. So my advice is, start slow and celebrate small gains emphasis on the all in the small.

Sonal  15:59

I love that. 

Katie  16:00

That's from Dr. Chan by the way.

Sonal  16:04

Wow, by the way, Dr. Chan works with me. So I love that. Thank you. And then what about you, Alinda, what would you give as your piece of advice as an educator who's in the classroom, working with these micro bits,

Alinda  16:20

I would say, no matter how intimidated you feel, take it and run with it, you will learn so much from your students. I have learned more from my students than I could have ever learned in a classroom, you know, with, with you guys , no offence but if they figure it out? Yeah. And that's how we figure it out. We learn from them.

Sonal  16:43

Great advice, thank you. And what about you, Dominique,

Dominique  16:45

I would actually agree with that, um, I would say don't be afraid of, it's okay to not know how to use the micro bit. There's a lot that you can do with it. And like she was saying, you can learn with your students. And it's okay if you try to do a project, and it doesn't come out the way you intended the first time, because I try to tell my students failure is okay, we learn from our mistakes. And so if you don't know how to do something, or your code came out wrong, or you meant for your sound to be, I don't know, I don't know, I would just say embrace the mistakes, because they're going to come.

Sonal  17:24

Absolutely. And with that I do I do have to talk to you about a little bit about actually, I'm going to throw it over to Dr. Chen to talk a little bit about what we hope is the outcome of today's workshop, because it is all leading up to this Innovation Day, which is going to be so exciting for our micro bit Professional Learning Network and the people that came today. So you want to talk a little bit about that.

Sharisa  17:46

Absolutely. So I want to start first with our hope with computer science is always the expansion of it across our county and Riverside County as well. We want to give access to all of our students, and let them know that they are capable of being computer scientists. So we would like to make sure that they're included in all of these efforts. So that's the first part. The second part is Innovation Day, for sure. So we want students to think about somebody be beyond them, not just themselves, but think about who else is out there. Who can we develop for to make the world a better place. And that's what innovation is all about is taking microbead these physical competing devices, using the hardware and software that work together to get a product and, you know, come up with something for the greater good of the people around or community. So it's really that just thinking about where in their heart they see is an area that they love that they want to work on, for the greater good of mankind.

Sonal  18:49

Thank you so much for sharing this valuable information. Katie, Dominique and Alinda, we really appreciated everything that you had to talk to us about today. It has been such a pleasure having this conversation with you all the work that you're doing is is inspirational and we're so thankful to have you here at SBCSS.

Sharisa  19:06

Yes, thank you so much. I can't thank you enough. It is just a pleasure to be with all of you today. You're all amazing. I look up to you but a lot of people are like what you do I do I think you're all amazing. You're inspirational and just keep doing what you're doing what your doing. My heart is overflowing right now with just so much love and joy and I'm just I'm feel truly blessed to have you all here

Sonal  19:31

and I do want to ask you all just to say your Twitter handles out loud if you don't mind if you remember them to Katie with yours mine

Katie  19:38

is @katiehenrydays.

Sonal  19:43

What's your school?

Alinda  19:45

I will make one today.

Sonal  19:46

Well, it's coming soon. Dominique!

Dominique  19:50

@_blackmissfrizzle.

Sonal  19:53

Great. Thank you. Thank you to our listeners. If you have any more questions or you'd like more information about microbeads please contact myself or Dr. Chen. Thank you.

Sharisa  20:05

Thank you so much.

Katie  20:06

Thank you.

Sonal  20:08

Join us next time for more bits and bytes of digital learning and computer science. And remember, if you're hungry for more, you can simply text dlsnews to 22828 or find us on Twitter at SBCSS_EdTech.