In this week's UEN Homeroom, we talk with Brandon Jacobsen, the CTE - IT Specialist for the Utah Board of Education, about the changing face of computer science in our schools. We discuss topics like: how is computer science being presented to Utah students, the role of computer science in all curriculums - not just STEM, what the job market looks like for students with a CS background, and more.
In this week's UEN Homeroom, we talk with Brandon Jacobsen, the CTE - IT Specialist for the Utah Board of Education, about the changing face of computer science in our schools. We discuss topics like: how is computer science being presented to Utah students, the role of computer science in all curriculums - not just STEM, what the job market looks like for students with a CS background, and more.
All right. Welcome back from your winter break. This is UEN homeroom.
Dani, how was your winter break?
My winter break was fabulous. It was one of the most relaxing in years. How about yours?
It was lovely, I actually went sledding, and I think I broke my foot. But other than that, it was very relaxing once I got out of the ER.
You liar, because you still haven't gone to the doctor.
You're right.
Don't lie to our listeners.
Do you think you just heard a bell?
I think I did. Let's get started.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So Dani, today we're going to be talking about integrating computer science and computer programming into schools. So what's your background in computer programming, Dani?
Oh, you know, I just code all day long.
I often see a lot of HTML on your screen, and I see a lot of Java scripting over there.
All the time. In all honesty, I learned HTML 4 in grad school. It quickly vanished from my head, but I'd like to say that I could probably program something if I had to. What about you?
So when I was in my undergrad, the greatest thing ever was that we could make a computer line of text scroll across the screen, and then you could make it blink.
That's amazing.
And everyone did all of their fonts in neon green.
Well, and that was probably all you were asked to do, but there are a lot more exciting things that can be done with computer programming. And not just geeky people, everyone-- everyone should know how to code.
No question. Like we've seen in the schools that we work with, computer science is really starting to blow up as an idea for students to learn. A lot of people are even saying it's the new foreign language that we should learn, right? That it's German, Spanish, and CS.
I totally agree. And I kind of feel like this, what we're moving into, is how technology in general used to be in classrooms. Like, used to just have a technology class and a computer lab. But really, there's ways that computer science can fit throughout all of the curriculums, and that's kind of what we're going to be talking about today.
Yeah, pretty exciting stuff.
Well, today we've got a special guest who's going to be joining us. So let's introduce him to you all. Brandon Jacobsen is a veteran within the education system, with a wide variety of classes taught over seven years. Easily the best job he ever had was teaching elementary PE. Dani, that's your dream job.
It is my dream job. And I'd like to say he's a saint for saying that.
Then he moved on to high school teaching business and marketing, computer science, database, financial literacy, and even dabbling in university courses, teaching methods of teaching business and marketing, database, and financial literacy. Prior to teaching, Brandon worked in real estate, banking and finance, national businesses, and national sales teams, farming, and even landscaping. His educational background includes an Associate of Arts and an Associate of Science from Snow College. He's got his Bachelor's in Business and Information Technology and management, and then went on to complete his MBA from Western Governors University.
He is currently working on his Master's of Educational Leadership from Western Governors University, and plans to complete that later this year. Brandon's passions are teaching, learning, building things, programming, as well as many things outdoors. He recently discovered the stunning local national parks located within Utah and the other western states. When he's not chasing his best life full-force, he can be most likely found reading, listening to a book on tape. Do they even call them books on tape anymore, Dani?
No, not even a little bit.
Or battling with his four kids in an airsoft or Nerf conflict. We would like to welcome to UEN Homeroom Brandon Jacobson.
Thank you, guys. It's a pleasure to be here. I just got to identify on that Audible book, at the very end it says, thank you for reading this audio book. And it says audiobook, or books on tape. So my wife argues with me, you didn't read that book. And I say, yes, I did. At the very end it says, thank you for reading.
I think it counts. I think podcasts, YouTubes, and audiobooks-- not books on tape-- are how we learn in 2018. So welcome, Brandon.
Thank you.
Yeah. Everything counts, Brandon. No harm, no foul on our end. Well, Brandon, we welcome you to our podcast. And one of the things we like to do to kick off each and every episode of our podcast is we want our audience to get to know you a little better by having you answer some questions from live Utah students.
Good luck, Brandon.
Thank you.
So let's hear from our first Utah student.
What is your favorite dinosaur?
Oh, my favorite dinosaur, I would have to say, is-- well, it's a tossup between two. There was the Utah raptor, that of course comes from Utah, and that was one of the biggest raptors. I thought it was really cool that the Utah raptor was one of the biggest Raptors. But then I've recently been reading this book, and actually reading it to my son. It's called--
You're the book on tape.
Right, I'm now the book on tape. It's called-- I can't remember the title of it, but it's something like Because of the Milk, or Because of the Milk. And what happens is this mom goes out to do her job, and the dad has to get milk for the kids for cereal. And he goes out, and he comes back without the milk, and his son and daughter ask him, where's the milk? Well, he goes on this big long lie of a story, but very creative, and there's this stegosaurus flying this hot air balloon. And my son last night was just loving-- absolutely loving it. And I'd pause every once in a while and I'd say, is this fictional or is this a lie? And he'd say, it's both, dad.
[LAUGHTER]
You know they're both the same. So anyway, a stegosaurus and the Utah raptor.
I love the answer.
You know, I don't think we've ever had anyone answer the dinosaur question that didn't give us two.
That's true.
It's just too hard to pick one.
You have to do an omnivore and a carnivore, right? You have to do one that just can destroy everything and hunt in a pack, and then another one that can possibly defend itself pretty well.
All right. Our second question--
What is your favorite Transformer?
My favorite Transformer, because I've been looking at the artistic design of the Bumblebee and the new movie coming out, it has to be Bumblebee by far.
How do you feel about Bumblebee being a Volkswagen Beetle?
I think it's actually perfect. Like, a Bumblebee-- the very first time my sister had one of the new Volkswagens-- this was 10 years ago, 15 years ago-- she had one of the very new ones, and it was a yellow one, and my aunt had a blue one. And so I thought, that one looks like one of those bluish-green beetles that has like a metallic tint on it. And my sister's, I said, that's not a beetle. That looks like a bumblebee. And so every once in a while, we would actually put like black fabric over the top of it while we were washing it, like a black towel. I'd be like, see, it looks like a bumblebee. You even had the antenna on the back that looked like a stinger.
You're right.
Of course.
It fits.
It fits, yeah.
Our final question.
What is your favorite movie?
Oh, wow.
We really stumped you on that one.
I never knew that I was going to have a favorite movie, because there's a bunch of them. I would have to go with what I grew up quoting and loving, and that was Dumb and Dumber.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] hates me. My colleague just barely-- I kept saying, I don't have a copy of it. It was on VHS a long time ago, but I don't have a copy of it. Where--
Are you sure you don't work in our office? I feel like you'd fit right in.
So you're saying there's a chance you like that movie?
[LAUGHTER]
Harry [INAUDIBLE]. Anything with Will Ferrell in it, I love that type of comedy. Anyway, yeah, I'd have to say Dumb and Dumber. It's the one that I go back to. At the same time, I love the war movies-- the Braveheart, the Gladiator, The Patriot, love all those.
So on one hand, you've got Will Ferrell and Dumb and Dumber, and on the other hand, you've got action-adventure historical-based fiction?
Yeah, I think he's very well-rounded, is what he's saying.
Yeah. I don't know.
Well, don't you think we got to know Brandon a little better by those questions?
Yeah, I feel like he's just one of our pals now.
So today, Brandon, we're going to talk a little bit about what you're currently working on. As I read your bio, I don't know that we necessarily heard what your current position is. Why don't you tell everybody out there what you're currently doing?
All right. I worked for the Utah State Board of Education. I am in the Career and Technical Education department. Within that department, there's quite a few of us that are specialists in different areas. My one area of specialty is IT and computer science. So I'm officially called the IT education specialist for the Utah State Board of Education.
So you are it?
Yeah, I am I-T, it.
[LAUGHTER]
So recently, Brandon, and one of the things that you're working on kind of got onto our radar, as you've been presenting kind of your vision of what computer programming and computer science will look like in Utah schools. Maybe as we kind of get started, do you mind just sharing with our audience just a little bit about some of the initiatives that you're currently working on.
Right, absolutely. So last year-- I want to say it was March or April, sometime last year-- the Utah State Board of Education created a computer science task force. That computer science task force comprised of 20 to 30 people-- stakeholders throughout the state, you had some legislative personnel, board members, local teachers. You had persons that were in the IT area, persons that were not in the IT area coming together, and we identified and we presented six recommendations to the State Board of Education, and they approved them, one of which was-- I'll highlight the one that kind of governs a lot of the other ones. And that was to create a computer science K12 framework for the state of Utah to be able to reference back to. That's one of the initiatives that I've been working on within this role.
What's really interesting within the Career and Technical Education area, we really focus on where we can make an impact for careers, which, it starts really at the ninth grade and goes up. But we're trying as much as we can, because we see that if students can get exposure earlier on, they can kind of weed themselves out of places where their parents or we may think they want to get into, and actually find a bigger passion somewhere else within CTE or within the traditional education areas.
So it's now it back down into the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade classes. We have quite a few classes in the middle school area right now. We have three that are specific to computer science. We have installed Intro to Python 1 and 2, and then we have a Creative Coding. And what was interesting is when we were sharing these courses out that we are creating, we were building, one of the board members at the State Board of Education made just an awesome comment. She goes, why all these names, other than Creative Coding, why are all these names so scary? I said, oh, Python's a language-- and she chuckles, she goes, I know what Python is. I'm just making a comment.
But when it comes down to the initiatives we're working on, naming a course actually is pretty important to marketing to a student.
Sure.
I've often said if we could call it programming with Pinterest, I think we could raise those people that are the crafty type of person coming in and figuring out how to program. And sometimes I get I get shut up really quick from my peers and my bosses saying, that would never fly. And other times some of my teachers that are just phenomenal, they're out there saying, oh, I'd market it like that all day long.
So our initiatives are creating courses, one-- framework, creating a framework, one, that is adaptable from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, and it's certain bands, and its grade bands, and then also areas of sub-concepts and concepts. And then being able to explain to the teachers what they actually mean, because I mean, we went to a teacher, and we were trying to explain what an algorithm was. And up on the board their students already were writing algorithms. We go to another teacher right across the hall from this teacher, and to explain algorithms to that class was completely different and much more difficult, because they weren't using the word, even just the word algorithm within that concept. So a lot of teachers donors understand what it is.
I'll be honest with you. A lot of my teachers would have struggles understanding that big long spreadsheet of a document, and how it relates and what it would look like in a kindergarten through third-grade classroom. So that's a big lift. That's one of our big initiatives is getting up to the elementaries where we can and being able to establish, like, this is what it means, this is what it looks like. What class, what lesson do you have?
So I just recently, last month, I went down to [INAUDIBLE] Elementary and talked to Principal Soper there and hung out with her third, fourth, and fifth-grade classes, and just had an absolute blast of teaching them what you're doing right here, you're already doing this, we could do it in a computer program and it would be it would feel like a game for the kids. It wouldn't be like this hard activity. And they're still learning the same things while they're coding as well.
Well, kind of like you said, one of you USBE board members said, why are they names all so scary, like Python? I think for a lot of teachers, just the word algorithm is really scary when, like you said, it's something that they're already doing.
Absolutely. What was really interesting is one of the very first times that we actually presented the framework and/or the recommendations-- I can't remember which one-- to a subcommittee at the Utah State Board of Education, my colleague, Ashley Hicks, she put up on the board just Block language, so either Blockly or just pseudo text. And so she put it up there. She said it went in room 156, and then it was purple, and then the next one down. If you have a question-- and the next one down. And that was this sequence, and it went through-- like, they start at 9:00 or 10:00 o'clock, and we weren't on until 1:00 o'clock. And so we said, we actually put this up here early this morning before you guys came in. This is what coding looks like. This is what an algorithm is. It's a process. It's a procedure. And teachers are currently doing this. It's just calling it out, just like you said, Dani.
One thing that you said, Brandon, that I thought was pretty interesting-- when we talk about computer science specifically, a lot of times we get almost more of a hassle from our colleagues when we try and make it go to the masses. Do you know what I mean? Almost like we've spent our time and we've learned some of these things. And sometimes we're a little-- like when you said coding with Pinterest, a serious programmer would never invoke Pinterest into their programming, but it's those kind of ideas that make it approachable to everyone.
Right. I still haven't been able to verify, but one of the school districts north of Salt Lake County-- so either Davis, Weaver, Ogden, it could have been one of the charter LEAs that we have, but somebody said that they actually, in one of their schools, pitched it like that, and they had-- and one of the other initiatives that we work on in CTL, all throughout CTE, is those nontraditional students in the classes. So for example, our foods program typically-- foods is a bad one, because every guy in school wants to go have foods because it's foods. Every girl takes it because that's what they think they're supposed to do.
But let's take, for example, one of the nontraditional, like nursing. You would typically see a lot of females in there. We try to really market to the nontraditional students. And so when I heard that they did programming with Pinterest-- and the story-- once again, I haven't been able to verify this yet, but the story came back that they had about 60% of the class were females.
Wow.
So a huge underrepresented population-- now, once again, I'm saying this. I haven't been in the verify where it was, but I've heard it's up there. And that's the other thing. We look at some of the courses that are out there, and some of that courses have a huge, huge capacity for the underrepresented minorities as well as the nontraditional students. And so we're trying to look at is it something in the name, is it in the way the course is developed. But that's another initiative that we work for at the State Board of Education.
You know, I think that's a really interesting point. Because last semester I was working quite a bit with Granite Technical Institute, and I spent a lot of time with their computer programming teachers. And that's a huge deal for him, is to try and bring in more diverse populations into his class. He doesn't have much of a problem marketing to 10th grade boys, generally speaking. But just to see some of the different ways that we're trying to reach out to groups that maybe don't always think of themselves as having an interest in computer programming.
Right. I was actually meeting with a peer of mine out in the Lehigh area. We had a restaurant, and one of the kids in his off time, he knows me from our neighborhood. And he came and hassled me and said, what are you doing? Don't you ever work, he says to me or something. And it was a work meeting, and I actually had him sit down. And my colleague, or my buddy, had ordered some food there. So he said, I actually have a question. I'm asking about these nuggets here. You've got to now sit down and ask me-- because you're on the clock. Now listen.
And my colleague said, hey, you're a senior in high school. Have you ever taken a programming class? And the kid from my area, he's like, no, I haven't. He said, why not? He's like, I just think it might be hard, and I just don't know if I'd ever do it. My dad does finance stuff, or my dad does whatever else, or-- he's saying all these different things, and my friend he's just drilling this-- and my friend's the nicest guy you'll ever meet, but he's just drilling this student. And he says, well, you need to change your schedule next semester. You only have eight months left or six months left of school, and you've got to change it. Go into your class.
So I start rattling off-- the student goes to a Utah County School, and I said, you've got go talk to Mr. Test, and you gotta go talk to Mr. Barr, you got to go talk to-- and I start rattling off the teachers that I know teach there. And I said, go. And I go, do you know Mr. Page? He's like, yeah, he was my entrepreneurship teacher. I said, he can get you in touch with those other two.
And so I then met up with him and just reached out to him just a couple of days ago. I said, so did you make the change? And he goes, programming was a full-year-long course. So I'd be entering it at this semester. I said, what about web development? He goes, I thought you'd forget. OK, I'll go back. I emailed his teacher today. I said, hey, you got to go hunt this kid down. Go to Mr. Page and find out how to get a hold of him, but hunt him down. He's going to take this. And I then texted that that kid. I said, you're on. They're hunting you down. Go find it.
So yeah, that kid would not think that he-- and he's a smart, very, very smart kid. And that's the other thing that we get. We've always in the past, we've always identified that if you're going to be a computer scientist, you also need to be good at math. I'm sure it helps. In fact, it does help when you can understand how math can work with computer science. But you don't have to be good at math.
That's right.
To be an effective programmer. You can find a role within programming if you don't like math. You might not like math, but you still may be good at it. We're trying to break down all these little hurdles and stops where students put a barrier in front of them, or it might be-- and I'm not slandering any teacher, or any counselor, but it might be the school organization that really just says, OK, hey, we're going to do computer coding and computer programming and web development and GIS, and we're going to do all these other courses. And they just expect that there's going to be 85% male and 15% female, and of the race and underrepresented minorities, it's going to be whatever the demographics of the schools are.
So we're really trying to break those down and make sure that anybody-- what's so awesome in the elementary-- I know I'm jumping all around a little bit, but what's great in the elementary is I get to go into a class where it's everybody in the class. And I went to a sixth grade class, and I got with Ricky Scott, who's the science specialist at the State Board of Education. I said, hey, buddy, I'm going to be teaching a science class on ecosystems. Help me out. He goes, well, you could get this reproductive-- and right when he said that, I thought, no.
[LAUGHTER]
And he goes, no, it's not what it sounds like. It's this module here, and you go through and you model-- and it basically is hawks versus mice. And you toggle this little button down the bottom to make the background go gray. So the gray mice now have more camouflage than the tan mice. And you toggle it back, and then you see the hawks come down and swoop them up, and they repopulate.
So we did that. I showed the students what it was. We talked about what it was. And some of the best students that were there are the ones that would never expect to be the best at coding. And we then, of course, to make it fun, we actually made them produce an ecosystem, a sustainable ecosystem in Minecraft with lambs, or sheep, and cows, and chickens, and how fast they reproduce and whatever else. And the teacher, she was great, she was absolutely wonderful, but she always assumed computer coding as like the Hour of Code, the traditional Hour of Code. It's just a game. Yeah, there might be some math components to it. And after she saw that lesson-- and I was steering the lesson, and luckily Ricky helped me out with it, the teacher was blown away.
The students were saying, is there anything else we can do coding with? I'm like, yeah, look around, anything. Like, this whole building was created through a code. Like, the measurements is all done through some sort of computer system where you're a user of it, but you can also be a creator of something. So we had an awesome conversation.
And it then goes from there forward where, once again, we were talking prior to this about the ability to-- where it's a hindrance, and also a great thing of not giving all the creative ideas out because it stifles creativity. We had all these kids, we gave them the parameters, and they went through. It took about 30 minutes for one of the students to get a sustainable thing, and then that student kind of expressed how she did it. And then we got about 15 of the 35 students that were finally able to get their sustainable ecosystem in Minecraft based on the ecology.
That's fabulous. One thing that I'm thinking about as you're talking is a while ago there was this big push to use scientific language, even with our youngest learners, right? It's not your best guess. It's a hypothesis. Because even a five, six-year-old can use hypothesis correctly if that's what we expect from them, and I kind of feel the same way with computer science. If we expose even our youngest learners to these kinds of things, maybe when they get to middle school and high school, when they have a choice, they're not going to automatically opt themselves out because they're this or they're that. They've already had experience with those kinds of things, and it's not scary. It's not the big Python word anymore. They're comfortable with it. They've used the word algorithm since they were in kindergarten.
I know my kindergartner, his school does Project Lead the Way. And so he's doing a lot of robotics and STEM stuff and coding. I got to go do an hour of code with their class last month, and they're totally comfortable with it. It's not scary.
Right. We're they doing the Rosie?
No. I brought in Ozobots.
Oh, now you're just spoiling them.
I did.
[LAUGHTER]
You say that, and you make a solid point. The more exposure they are, it's not necessarily going to change where they may want to end up, but it's going to make them a better-- let's say they install carpet. The more technology they can use and the more that they understand how it works and the more they can be a creator of technology, the better they're going to be in a carpet industry, or the better they're going to be at anything and everything, lighting, sound. They're going to be exposed to quite a few more ways to do things.
What was really interesting is, as my bio says, I like to build things and do home improvements. Well, I like to do home improvements if it doesn't have to do with paint. I just don't like painting. But I did a flooring, and I went and I measured with one of the apps. And I took it into the guy and said, I have this amount. He's like, well, let me send one of my measurement guys out. I said, well, hold on, do you not think that I know how to do math? He goes, oh, no, I just don't know if you know how to get the corners. I said, well, let me show you my layout. And he looks at it. He goes, how did you do this? I said, it was on an app. And he goes, where's the app?
So I showed him. And so he said, how do you know this is very sure? And so we went into some of the reading behind it, and he said, OK, well, let me still send some guy out. Let me see how close he can measure it. And I go, if you're within 23 inches, I'll start marketing this to my customers. And it's a free app.
And so we were within like three inches of an entire--
And what a time-saver for his guys.
A huge time-saver. Yeah. Well, and when you think about it, he can start reducing cost. And this is him being a user of technology. I've been identifying the difference being user and creator. He didn't create that technology, but because he knows that it could be accurate, he could give a few guidelines saying, hey, Dani, when you're going to measure your floor. You're calling me for a bid. How about you measure your floor. I can give you the certain specs. It'll save us a bunch of time, and I can start cutting down cost and have my guys, or my installers that are going out, actually install rather than wasting time measuring five homes to install in one. Now they're just installing, installing, installing.
So it could help in any of the industries that they're at. And what's really cool is I've been working with some of my friends up at Newmont College. And the one guy I was talking to, he says, one of the activities we do when we go to the high schools is we ask the students, what career does computer science not touch. And kids will start throwing-- well, racecars. He's like, lies! And he starts talking. They're almost like, wrong, wrong, like a wrong button.
That would be a great activity to do with our teachers before we start working with coding, because a lot of times they come in, and they feel like it's something that they have to do, and they want to do it because they want to be cutting-edge. But that's a great example of-- I can't think of one off the top of my head where you wouldn't be using some sort of computer science, or you could if you wanted to.
Right.
Yeah, there's just a lot of preconceptions out there, or misconceptions. I mean, I just think what you said, Brandon, about there's the stigma sometimes about, well, if you're going to do that, you've got to have the pocket protector. You categorize somebody as being kind of a math nerd or something like that, and it couldn't be further from the case now.
Right.
Like you guys are saying, anyone can be involved in this.
Absolutely. What's really cool is we always go to conferences and with teachers around, and you see the teachers throughout the state that are teaching computer science, and it's a very great mix between male/female. And based on our Utah population of race, we have some awesome, amazing, underrepresented minorities that are actually teaching, and they do an exceptionally great job.
The ones that I'm trying to recruit from, everybody's like, oh, how about you come and try to recruit our math teacher. I'm saying, well, why not your social studies teacher too? And why not your language teacher and your foreign language? Why not your English language learners? And these are some administrators and/or some college persons where I'm saying, hey, you're in college. Why don't you do this? Well, I'm a language arts teacher. I'm going to become a language arts teacher.
So a fifth grade teacher in the Alpine School District, I went and helped out in her class. I said, I really need you to go to that training, a microbit training. And she's like, Brandon, I don't know computers. I don't want to do this. I said, you're going. Just go. And I kind of forced her arm. I went up and talked to her principal. I said, you've got to send her. Please pay for her. So whatever you have to do, get her out the door. Get her up there.
And she texted me that afternoon and said, this was one of the best trainings I've ever been to, yet I still don't know how to code. And I said, but you don't necessarily need to know how to code. You need to know how to facilitate your students in their learning, because your students are going to completely pass you up.
Absolutely.
And hopefully we're comfortable with that as educators.
I think that's one of the things we have to get most teachers past when it comes to computer programming. With most of our content we're the experts. And so it's very common for us to know more than our students do. But with a lot of the new technologies like, Brandon, you just said, there's no way you're going to know more than your students do once you get past the initial lessons.
Yeah, especially if you're using Minecraft.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah. There's no way any of us are going to know more than a fifth grader about Minecraft.
Right. What was really interesting is we were at one of the Talent Ready Utah board meetings, and somebody was presenting and they-- oh, it might have been that meeting. I might have been a different meeting. But they said there's 256 new languages, and that includes the updates and version 7, version 8, but 256 programming languages out there. And for people to be able to understand and learn them and go with the curve that the technology is developing, our learning curve is going to be a lot slower of a growth learning curve than the programming languages. And that's why at the State Board of Education one of the things that we've done is we've identified the five most used, I guess, or most popular coding languages in programming, and then we also have the web development side. And we have, of course, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for that.
But for the other program, when we use Python, C+, or C Sharp, C++, Swift, and Java, and we use those programming languages. And so the transition has gone from our students being taught just one language and being very proficient at one language to our very first semester, it's language agnostic. Then the second semester, Jared, you're going to pick Python, and Dani, you're going to pick Java, and I'm going to pick C Sharp. And we're at different schools, or we might be at the same school, and we teach them that language until they're proficient in a single language. But then that third semester, which, the third course of it, the sequence, it's a full-year long, and that is back to language agnostic. And they have to figure out why are there hashtag lists here, and why are there arrays in this other one, and which ones have which, and which ones don't.
And so the students-- and this is kind of consistent with what the industry has been saying is-- we want somebody who knows, once again, kind of back to the big words that we're using, but we want them to know computational thinking.
Right.
Or, the ability not just to give up. And so when they learn a language, Java-- they've taken your class, they learn Java, and now they come to work at my company, and I just need a Python programmer, they can do that transition. Or, they know how to collaborate with other persons and speak that language, and it's not big language to them. It's just common language.
Absolutely. And it's that comfortability with change that I think is really important. So when you are talking about the job market, what is the job market like for computer science, especially in our state?
Oh. Depending on who you talk to, I mean, it's anywhere from the biggest industry to the very biggest need. So it is, no matter where you're at-- I mean, you can go on and Indeed.com. You can go on all the websites that are posting jobs, and you'll see that there's-- we want Java. And they're starting to say programmer. And my colleague that we were sitting in the restaurant when we drilled the student, he showed me just a YouTube video of somebody applying to be a programmer at Google, and he said, it's going to scare you. Like, look what our kids have to be aware of.
And so we watched it for three and a half minutes and I thought, I'm lost. I really don't know what I'm looking at, but I want to figure out how to do this. So then he sent it to me. Then I went and watched it and I thought, oh, it's not really that hard, but it looks scary at first.
The job market here in Utah, what's happening is Jared's going to be an owner of one company. I'm an owner of one, you're an owner of one, Dani. So as we go throughout, I then steal Jared's UX/UI person.
I knew you were going to do that.
Yeah, right. And then I'm so happy. I have her in my company and she's doing amazing. And then, also, Dani catches wind, and Dani offers her a $10,000 signing bonus, and she goes over to Danny. And then you realize you need her back, and so she starts to freelance for you and I. And this happens with a lot of our programmers throughout.
And our programmers who are programmers, but then they become project managers, or team leads, where they won't be in the day-to-day, but they can jump up really quick. And I mean, that's why you're seeing a lot of these boot camp companies come up and be able to teach somebody how to code and program within 12 to 16 weeks, or might be 7 months, whatever it is. And they're coming out with a credential that these companies are now looking at saying, I need somebody that can just come in here and code, and then just so you know, Dani, we're hiring your person for only seven months. You can take her back, or you can take him back after the seven months, but we need them for this project.
And so the job market, there's a co.org stat out there. It talks about STEM, and 86% of the jobs that are in STEM have to do with computer science. And yet, the amount of those courses that are being taught in STEM that is computer science is only like 14% or 17%. I'm getting the numbers a little off, but the conversation is there's a huge gap. And once again, a lot of people say, oh, that's a huge challenge. I look at it as, look at that opportunity. That's the opportunity that we can correct as a state by working with each stakeholder and industry and all representatives as well.
I would just like to take the opportunity to say, if anyone needs a freelance ed tech trainer, I'm available and willing.
[LAUGHTER]
Jared just gave me a look.
I don't even know how to respond to that.
Are you going to edit that part out and make sure that doesn't--
No, that's staying in.
That's staying in.
I'm just kind of laughing, because I remember a few years ago I watched a video where they were talking about the future of Google. And Google's pretty new back then. So it's more than a couple of years ago. They said that the biggest challenge to Google in the future will not come from outside companies. It will come from employees that have left and started their own companies.
Oh, I believe it, yeah.
What you're saying there, that is the market nowadays. I mean, once we get the skill set and we get some learning, boy, we want to develop our own thing. It's not just we want to go work somewhere else. A lot of times you want to try something completely different.
Absolutely. And I think that goes back to that comfortability with change, and with problem solving, and with being able to work with people, all of these skills that are not necessarily specific to coding or computer science, but are just kind of the soft skills that students are going to need in the job market.
You talked to me about changing jobs, and it gives me anxiety, whereas people who are just starting in this industry and others, they're going to have-- what's the stat on how many job changes? It just goes with the territory now, and being comfortable with that is really important.
Right, job changes as well as career changes. So a job within a career, and then a career outside of a different career, they're going to have many of them. My wife's grandfather worked at one place his entire life.
Oh, I think there's a lot of people, right?
And when they hear that, oh, I worked at Nordstrom Pete, oh, I went to Copper Hills, they're saying, why are you switching so fast? Oh, now I'm on the State Board of Education, that just seems unstable. It's like, it may seem unstable, but at the same time, it's a progression, and a lot of our youth, especially-- I mean, what's really interesting is we also look at screen time for students, and we want to make sure that we're being very aware of screen time. Screen time for educational purposes is actually a lot healthier than the screen time for entertainment like social media. But the screen time for social media is every three sec-- it changes the vision every three seconds. So it's popping, it's popping, it's popping.
If you go back to like the 1980s Sesame Street, you have one screen. Like, it's Big Bird walking out, and they don't change the pan. They don't really zoom in on it, but it's a good 12 to 15, 20 seconds. And then they change to a bigger one, it's 12 to 15 seconds, and it's a lot longer. And now you watch like even YouTubers, they'll do a hard clip and something else, and that's something that we're aware of as education and computer science, and we're wanting people understand how that's such a quick in transition, and that's going to happen with their jobs too. Not as fast-- hopefully not three seconds, but just because they're used to this quick change, you'll see a lot of change happening.
Well, and I see-- you say that, and I see the positives in that. When I see someone who has had a couple of job changes, think of all the experience that they've gained in different leadership styles and working with different colleagues. And they've made all of these connections and networking connections that they're more able to solve problems. And if they have a question or we do run into an obstacle, they can say, oh, my colleague back at XYZ can help solve that problem. And if they're good at those relationships and working with other people, I think that's a great thing. Whereas in the past, it might look like, oh, this person is unsteady. They change jobs a lot. So it's a whole idea that I think is changing a lot.
One of the things that we're really trying to incorporate in our classes is group work, group work with roles, with certain roles like project management, Scrum, Agile, Waterfall. We're trying to make sure that all these different methods of you know work take place, and that is because of the rapid change of job. So they can work with Jared, and Jared's this type of manager. Then I can go work with Dani, and you're this type of manager. And yet, then I can make sure we have this respectable approach to me, saying, Dani, I can't do it. I'm still valuable for your company. But my buddy over here, she can totally-- she knows how to program like this, and you're going to want her on this single sign-on, because I don't know how to do that. But we could probably pick her brain. She works for this other company.
And being able to have this relationship of me saying, I don't know how to do it, but I know how to collaborate with someone that does, and I can speak that language, that's a huge, huge thing that we're trying to make sure we cover.
I love it.
I mean, think of how you're breaking down the stereotype right there just with that conversation. Because typically, what would be our stereotype of a computer programmer? Somebody who's isolated, who's working down in the dark, who's just kind of doing their thing. When you guys are saying, no, no, it's way different now, I mean, it's all about who you know, not just what know, how you can utilize your colleagues as a resource, not just your understanding of Python, or C++, or any of those kinds of things.
Right.
Awesome. Well, Brandon, it has been fabulous talking with you. Is there anything else that you'd like to plug before we let you get out of here? No. You know, I came into this role at a really awesome time. We had a lot of courses like lined up already. The teacher professional development was happening already, and I've been able to actually see what's going on.
And now Utah is kind of morphing into this new area where we're no longer scared of computer science. Not that some of my teachers were, but I think some parents might have been, and maybe some administrators, just because they don't know what it is. And now we're in this new area where we're saying, this is what computer science is. And if we can start earlier with the elementary kids, their minds are brilliant.
And I keep saying to the teacher, it doesn't matter if you don't know how to teach this. Do your very best, but keep your minds open, and you're trying to get outcomes. And so the more that we can really dare, if we can be daring-- I love reading Brené Brown books, but aren't listening to them book on audio, right?
[LAUGHTER]
I love listening to Brené Brown because she talks about being courageous, and it's having that vulnerability of being like, my fifth graders are going to be-- when I was a sixth grade-- when I was a PE teacher, I was so proud of myself, because this was the first time I was taller than anybody in the gym, until the second semester when the sixth graders outgrew me. But it's one of those things where we have to dare to be great. It doesn't matter if our students are going to pass us up like they passed me up in height, which, that's not hard. But it is going to be something for our fifth and sixth grade and third and fourth grade teachers for the students to come in and say, hey, you just taught this math principle or this science principle to us. Can we code that? And be open to say, yeah, absolutely.
We've been doing book reports in coding, and they tell a story through their characters on a code. And the teacher said, I would have never thought about doing this because I didn't know. Now I'm not doing it any other way. Like, this is my favorite way to do it.
I love it.
Yeah. Be daring. If you're a teacher and you're listening to this, be daring. One of my favorite teachers that I talk about, she's a social studies teacher, and she talks about how she has Ozobots and Spheros that migrate, and they try to simulate the migration patterns, either from Europe to here, or any migration to the United States, or from the east coast all the way over to the west coast in American history. And she teaches CSP and history, and she does the same exact lesson for both classes like six or seven times throughout semester, because they all match. She says, this is my passion. My passion is science, social studies, but my other passion is now computer science, and now they're one.
I think that's awesome.
That's so cool to see that. Be daring.
I love all the ideas for some teachers that you're giving us.
Oh yeah, good.
So hopefully, yeah, they're listening and they're going to adapt some lessons that they're using.
Well, we'd like to think Brandon Jacobsen for being our guest in UEN's homeroom this week.
Thank you guys. Pleasure to be here.
So Dani, do you want to give our audience a tech tip today?
I mean, do we have to?
Well, I mean, this is a podcast kind of about technology.
I'm tired. Do you have a tech tip for today?
I mean, I guess if I have to, I can come up with one.
I mean--
So for our lazy teacher's tech tip today, I just wanted to give you an idea of a new way that you can customize your Canvas interface. A lot of us have more than one course that we're currently teaching on our dashboards, and now Canvas has made it so that you can literally just drag and drop your courses into whatever order makes the most sense for you and for your students. It's a great way for you to organize your dashboard. So that you can find the courses you need quickly, and you can be able to access the content from your students.
I think this is awesome because before, the only way we could really personalize our dashboard was which courses show up and which courses we have to go into the course archives to find. This way, like you said, the courses that I'm teaching right now I can drag to the top, and maybe my master courses I can put closer to the bottom. I love this tip, Jared.
Yeah, super easy to do, and a fast, effective way for you to organize your screen. So Dani, that conversation with Brandon about computer programming and computer science and schools blew me away.
I know. It was just awesome. I loved his enthusiasm and how their focus is bringing it to under-served populations, maybe students who would normally opt themselves out of computer science. I think it's just-- I think it's great.
One of the things that just keeps going over and over again in my mind is that we start out with full classrooms of kids in elementary school, where everybody thinks of themselves as a computer programmer.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And the trick for us is to keep that going for as long as they have an interest.
I completely agree. I have to say, when I took Ozobots to my son's kindergarten classroom, there wasn't one student who was afraid that they were going to screw this up. They all knew that they were in charge of that robot, and they were going to program it accordingly. There was no problem. We've got to keep that thinking going through middle school and clear till high school.
And especially now. I mean, last month so many teachers probably did something with the Hour of Code in December, but what next? What can you do? Once you get those kids excited about that idea of programming, where can you go? What problems can you solve? What questions can you answer?
I love it.
Well, I think that wraps it up for this edition of UEN's Homeroom. We appreciate you listening to us.
Yeah, thanks for coming, everybody. Now skedaddle.
See ya.
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