Thank you for listening to the Leaders, Innovators and Big Ideas podcast, supported by Rainforest Alberta.The podcast that highlights those people who are contributing to and/or supporting the innovation ecosystem in Alberta.

Michael Chui Michael Chui enjoys learning about different perspectives and challenges assumptions through questions. He had a diverse career in finance and operations, technology (software), product management (product owner) and regulatory economics including times training as a locomotive engineer. His diverse experience allows him to look at complex ideas through multiple lenses and pinpoint its simplest core values. He is currently unlearning && re-learning how to build intuitive (web) applications and effective architecture solutions as a full stack developer. He is also volunteering with Chartered Professional Accountants (CPA) Alberta to help accountants better adapt to the latest in software and technology.

Dr. Byron Chu Byron has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Calgary. His studies focused on intrinsic properties of proteins, and today he applies the same scientific principles to data science projects. As a data scientist, Byron is interested in the intersection of data analysis and storytelling, and how numbers can inform and impact on every level of society: from education and the environment to the health issues we may potentially face.

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Show Summary

In an online article, the business publication Forbes recently discussed the importance of teaching K-12 students “computational thinking”. Computational thinking is a way to solve complex problems by breaking them down into steps and finding trends and patterns. In this episode, Rainforest Alberta host Michael Chui chats with Dr. Byron Chu, project manager and data scientist for the Callysto program. Byron talks about why it’s important to teach students computational thinking and what Callysto is doing to bring computational thinking into Grades 5-12 classrooms across Canada.

About Callysto, Callysto is a free, online learning tool that helps Grades 5-12 students and teachers across Canada learn and apply in-demand data science skills, including data analysis, visualization, coding, and computational thinking. The online tool’s interactive learning modules are available in a variety of subjects – from math to history – and are aligned with existing curriculums. The Callysto is federally-funded and is led by the non-profit organizations Cybera and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences.

Callysto: https://callysto.ca/

Callysto Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPdq1SYKA42EZBvUlNQUAng Cybera: https://www.cybera.ca/

Jupyter notebook: https://jupyter.org/

Forbes article: "Stop Calculating And Start Teaching Computational Thinking" by Tom Vander Ark. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2020/06/29/stop-calculating-and-start-teaching-computational-thinking/#3f1856d83786

Show Quote:

"Computational thinking in combination with data science and open data is a very powerful phenomenon...where industries can share a lot of the knowledge to come up with solutions to apply to teach and educate. "

"In the student's first hackathons, we had challenges on Pokemon, Spotify, and Alice in Wonderland. Books can be turned into data. Words can be turned into data. We had a whole exploration of what you can do with natural language processing, even though (the students) don't recognize they are doing natural language processing."

Credits...

This Episode Sponsored By: Community Now! Magazine

Episode Music: Tony Del Degan

Creator & Producer: Al Del Degan

System Engineering Sponsor: Kris Chase - PODMaster 2020