Synopsis: JupyterCon 2018 Education Track
I’m on the train to NY, giddy in anticipation of the Jupyter community celebrating together for the second year. It was a privilege for me to be invited to keynote last year, at the inaugural JupyterCon. This year, I am part of the Program Committee, co-chairing the education track with Robert Talbert. Let me tell you about the impressive and inspiring conference line-up for Jupyter in education!
The main conference lists 11 talks on the education track, listed below. In addition to these, we have a panel (2:40–3:20pm Thursday), and an unconference-style session on Thursday at 5 PM.
The panel is titled “The Future of Jupyter in Education,” and features the following panelists:
- Carol Willing, @WillingCarol
- Natalia Clementi, @ncclementi
- James Colliander, @colliand
- Allen Downey, @allendowney
- Jason Moore, @moorepants
- Danny Caballero, @physicistdanny
Each panelist will make a 2–3 min statement to get people thinking, and then it’s Q&A with the audience. We’ve asked the panelists to jot down some ideas to share with us, based on the following questions:
What do you see in the future of Jupyter if it is to fulfill its potential for teaching and learning?
What do you want from Jupyter as its adoption in education grows?
If you are interested in the future of Jupyter in education, please come join the conversation at the panel — it will be energizing!
One thing we don’t want for the discussion in this panel is to drift towards the DevOps challenges of adopting the tools (like JupyterHub and nbgrader). The Project Jupyter team is very aware that DevOps is a pain point for the educational uses of Jupyter. And they are working on it!
Let’s put our minds together to build a vision for the ecosystem, imagine how institutions might collaborate (e.g., federated solution in Canada), what could be the role of the private sector (i.e., paid options, freemium models), or the nonprofit sector (e.g., NumFOCUS) — but refrain from going into the weeds of concrete technical details (on this occasion).
We want to steer the conversation towards the learning concerns more than the edtech concerns. For example, now that many educators are using Jupyter, can we look into what works, and are we using research-based pedagogical strategies? What are these (e.g., chunking, scaffolding), and can we distill some “best practices”?
For the unconference-style session, the slate is clean. We’ll bring sharpies and big post-it notes, and be ready to live tweet!
Thursday: 5 sessions
11:05am–11:45am
Flipped learning with Jupyter: Experiences, best practices, and supporting research, Beekman/Sutton North | Lorena Barba (George Washington University), Robert Talbert (Grand Valley State University)
11:55am–12:35pm
JupyterHub for domain-focused integrated learning modules, Beekman/Sutton North | Mariah Rogers (UC Berkeley Division of Data Sciences), Ronald Walker (UC Berkeley Division of Data Sciences), Julian Kudszus (Yelp)
1:50pm–2:30pm
Jupyter for every high schooler, Beekman/Sutton North | Rob Newton (Trinity School)
2:40pm–3:20pm
Real-time collaboration with Jupyter notebooks using CoCalc, Murray Hill | William Stein (SageMath, Inc. | University of Washington)
4:10pm–4:50pm
Learn by doing: Using data-driven stories and visualizations in the (high school and college) classroom, Beekman/Sutton North | Carol Willing (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo), Jessica Forde (Jupyter), Erik Sundell (IT-Gymnasiet Uppsala)
Friday: 6 sessions
11:05am–11:45am
Data science in US and Canadian higher education, Beekman/Sutton North | Laura Noren (NYU Center for Data Science)
11:55am–12:35pm
I don’t like notebooks, Nassau | Joel Grus (Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence)
11:55am–12:35pm
The Jupyter Notebook as a transparent way to document machine learning model development: A case study from a US defense agency, Concourse A: Business Summit | Catherine Ordun (Booz Allen Hamilton)
1:50pm–2:30pm
Jupyter graduates, Beekman/Sutton North | Douglas Blank (Bryn Mawr College), Nicole Petrozzo (Bryn Mawr College)
2:40pm–3:20pm
Reproducible education: What teaching can learn from open science practices, Beekman/Sutton North | Elizabeth Wickes (School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
5:00pm–5:40pm
Current RISE candies and its evolution into the future, Beekman/Sutton North | Damián Avila (Anaconda, Inc.)
If I missed an education-track session in my synopsis, let me know and I’ll add it!
