The Intersection of Technology and Education with Kaitlyn Hornbuckle – Techstrong Unplugged EP39

Welcome back to Textron Unplugged. My name is Cassandra Chin and today we have Kaitlyn Hornbuckle. Hi there.

I'm here at CubeCon from Oregon State University. So let's hear about some of your stories of like how you got into technology. Oh, I can talk all day about that.

So, okay. I originally went to a completely different university and I studied journalism and media production because I was really into content creation at the time. And I recognized there was a divide between, uh, communicating really difficult concepts and I wanted to help, uh, figure out how to merge technology and communication together.

So I was always interested in technology my entire life. I always solved it issues in my journalism class when the printer broke and when my friends would have problems, um, with just different glitches on their computers happening. So I've always been into technology, uh, but when I did the journalism and media production, um, program, I did enjoy it at first, but it wasn't really challenging enough for me.

Um, however, I did learn a lot of really, really good skills as far as how to communicate concepts. I got a lot better at my content creation skills. It really opened up the door to learning what type of equipment I need, trying to figure out how to raise enough money in order to just get started with the bare minimum with concept creation.

And from there I went on to do the computer science program and completely switched. So by the time I graduate, which will be about two years, I'll have about, it's gonna be close to 300 credits by the time I graduate, which is kind of ridiculous. But here we are.

I did learn a lot though, so I feel very prepared. So essentially, um, when I took the computer science program, there were a few things that, uh, happened. So I would say going into computer science was extremely difficult.

Um, for me, I had never coded before. Um, I had worked with the scratch program a little bit, but that was about it. I didn't do any other programming at all.

So just blocks and then three modeling, but again, no coding. So when I was in my first computer science class, I struggled immensely. I definitely had some nights where I was crying over my Yazi project.

Uh, 'cause I had so many bugs and it was really funny. Um, so, uh, something that I kind of wish that I had going in was that I had more connections, um, and had made like more friends to, um, learn with. 'cause at the time it was very, I was very isolated.

Um, and I was even more isolated. 'cause when I joined the computer science program a few months later, the pandemic happened, the COVID-19 pandemic. So talk about really being isolated.

Right. And, um, that experience though was really good to, for me in a lot of ways because I ended up, um, working with a education technology company at the time. And that was when my knowledge of how you can use technology to help people really skyrocketed.

'cause something that I felt in my classes was it focused a lot on technical con content and trying to, you know, get the right answer and get your code working. But it was, there was less focus on community, like how to actually use the technology to make a difference or to help a community or to solve a real world problem, which is something that I felt like was missing. And that was what had driven me to journalism to begin with.

So when I saw that outside of academia, it was possible to use technology to actually make a difference, I started to get deeper into that in the work, um, field, even though I didn't get my degree yet. Um, so I worked full time with them for a little bit, um, took some time off of school. Um, and then I ended up transferring to another university because I just felt like I wasn't learning what I needed to be learning.

The quality of the content just wasn't there for me and it just wasn't a great fit, um, for what I was looking for. So that's when I transferred to Oregon State University and I'm on the cybersecurity track now. And boy I am learning so much more, uh, now than I did a couple years ago.

And technology is changing so fast. Uh, now that it's, it's almost hard to keep up. Like sometimes some of the courses don't keep up.

And so, um, sometimes I have to do a lot of research outside just to make sure I can continue to keep up, um, with uh, what's being taught like in the class, but also what's happening in industry. 'cause sometimes those don't match. Usually they don't.

Yeah. It's really funny though. Um, but it does challenge students to find a way to be able to learn, um, how acade, how academia views, um, the engineering field and how um, industry views it.

'cause they are very, very different things. Uh, something else that I'm noticing too is that there's a big divide between science and engineering. Um, I usually see you people either in one or the other, but not necessarily both computer science or computer engineering.

Right? Well, not even that, but um, like when people do computer science, sometimes you're missing like the sciences, like biology, physics, chemistry, um, 'cause those all play a role in technology as well. Uh, but you don't really get to learn that in the computer science field.

It's all just, it's strictly tech. Um, and that's something that I think is really missing. Um, 'cause we have like, you know, we have pharma industries right now that are trying to use AI and ML models, um, to work with massive amounts of data that they're having trouble analyzing to be able to make good decisions, um, for our health.

And I feel like that um, there is a divide between science and engineering. 'cause it just feels like, um, industries like sciences and sometimes education industry tries to take what they're seeing from industry, but because um, they don't have people from industry heavily involved, it could turn into a mess. So that's just my observations though.

Uh, argue that like in computer science they teach you all the coding fundamentals. Yeah. But once you graduate, like you can basically go into a whole different industry and Right, exactly.

Scientist, yes, you definitely can. Um, but I think it would be like easier though if you had some of the, um, you know, like for example, if you wanted to work in a biology, bio biology field, um, if you had no classes in biology whatsoever, trying to get into that field is gonna be really tough. Um, especially with competing against people who maybe have a biology minor and a computer science degree that would, that would really set them up for it.

But I definitely agree that as a computer science major, you can do a ton of different things. I mean that's one of the main reasons why I joined it too, because I didn't wanna be stuck in just one field. I wanted to be able to adapt this degree to a variety of different fields.

So, yeah. Um, what are your feelings on, on um, science versus engineering though? Um, honestly I always felt like computer science was more software and computer and engineering is more hardware.

Yeah. But like they go together. I don't actually know why we have to divide it like that.

I agree. Uh, I know some students, you know, they learn um, how to use CAD programs and computer engineering. But my, the computer science department doesn't teach that, at least in my experience.

Which is crazy 'cause I wanna learn how 3D printers work. I mean that's important to be able to program those. Um, but I have to do that on my own time.

There's no classes that teach me that. I've seen some colleges where they've just merged the computer science and computer engineering track. Oh really?

That's really cool. I'm not sure if they're doing it for good intentions or if they're trying to save resources. Fair.

I feel like, um, computer engineering feels more mathematical heavy and you have to know some physics in it as well, um, to be able to understand how the computer parts interact. But with computer science's all just software, so all that's abstracted. So I almost feel like there's less math involved.

Um, less math in physics and computer science versus computer engineering. So yeah. I'm glad to hear that there's some schools combining the two though.

'cause I think that's definitely the right direction. 'cause when you only have computer science, computer engineering and they're separate, you're missing, like one is even missing software, one is missing the engineering and science part of it. Right.

So it's really good to have both. Um, what have been your experiences in your computer science courses? Like do you feel like you're learning what you need to do to be successful in the industry?

Uh, they just, I feel like they mainly just teach me how to code. But it's like very old style. They don't teach me how to like integrate my code with modern development tools and like definitely no ai.

Oh really? Yeah. They tell us not to use AI or else we'll get like a punishment of some sort.

Yep. I definitely have taken some classes where if you use an AI tool, they won't let you pass the class. So Yeah.

I've, I've experienced that myself. It's really weird though 'cause um, some classes are okay with it. So you have to really look at the, um, each individual syllabi of each class.

'cause every professor feels different about it. I personally feel like if we can learn how to use AI to like, um, to not cheat or not like, you know, not to, um, just have it do stuff for us, but have it be an assistant like learn how to use AI responsibly because it's not really going away and um, we could either ignore it or we can use it the search engine. Right.

Exactly. Or when the calculator was invented, uh, you know, we used to have to do all calculations manually, but when the calculator came out, uh, made and made a lot of operations a lot easier to do. So yeah.

It's, it's an experience for sure. Do you wanna talk about your experience teaching Kids Day? I would love to talk about that.

So yeah, Adam, the Kids Day event at Q Con on Sunday, that was a lot of fun. Um, I got to help teach Minecraft modding, um, to kids and a lot of them hadn't coded Java before. Um, and a lot of 'em hadn't played Java edition before.

Uh, Minecraft Java Edition, at least in my experience when I've taught kids before, a lot of them are more familiar with Bedrock a edition. And I think one of the reasons for that is because it's very, it's more accessible to more people. 'cause you can play Bedrock Edition on tablets, phones, uh, computers, um, gaming consoles.

It's all merged together. Whereas Java Edition is only on the computer. So for a lot of them it was their first time learning the WASD keys, which is really, it's a common combination for gaming, but it was really cool to be able to share that and then also share how to manipulate their code to be able to make, um, their ideas come to life in front of them on the computer screen.

And it, it really helped a lot. Uh, something that I learned though was it could be really easy to lose, um, their attention if you go too deep, too fast, however you wanna be careful with this 'cause you still want them to learn something, um, at the end of it. So keeping that in mind, I just remembered that they had never coded before and so some of the basics that they're going to see in every mod, um, are going to be the same and it's gonna be repetitive.

So something that I focused on was getting them familiar with the process of, um, loading code into the eclipse IDE, um, learning how to, um, build and run it so that it's executed into, um, the Minecraft instance. They can play around, then they exit it. So it follows the process of when you, um, pull code into um, your project.

You make changes, you compile it, run it, execute it, close, um, the executable and then just redo the process. So I really honed that in this time when we taught it and the kids had it pretty much memorized by the end of the class, which was really great. 'cause that's one fundamental that I find can be really tough for kids to learn, especially when they're using a computer for the first time.

And the other thing I did too was, um, every that we loaded in, I would explain what it did and every time I did, I highlighted just little parts of the code so they know what parts that controlled. So for example, um, for sparring potatoes, if they put the magic word potato in the chat, I always said magic word to get them excited because if I just say, oh yeah, if you type this fandom word, it's just doesn't, just doesn't sound as exciting. So I, I just highlighted potatoes and I said okay, this is the magic word.

If you change this, um, then when you type that it's going to spawn, um, 64 potatoes. But if you want more than 64 potatoes, change that number. I had several students put in like 10,000 potatoes.

See, encourages them to like modify the code exactly without having to say, okay, line one does this, line two does this, line three does this. Um, I just focused on the most important parts so that they could still modify that. Um, and if they get stuck, the other kids still have something to work with because that's another problem is if I go too deep too fast, then I can have three students that are stuck on trying to customize their code but then the other students don't know how to move forward yet.

Um, and so then they end up just playing Minecraft. So I tried to remedy that by having them all know how to load in um, each mod. And then by the end when we had extra time, I helped them, uh, with trying to change their code, um, and with showing them like an easy way to change it.

Um, throughout when they did customize it, a lot of 'em didn't get stuck 'cause they weren't trying to change the whole thing. They were just trying to change a couple words to see what happened. Yeah.

I walked in on your workshop and that was the most focused I've ever seen the kids. Really? Oh, I was super glad to hear that.

Yeah, it seemed like they had a lot of fun. I definitely tried to keep them on their toes too so they didn't get bored and um, hopefully programming is a lot more exciting for them now than when they first walked in. Do you have any future plans for kids workshops?

So I do wanna talk to the, uh, curricula developers, um, a little bit. Uh, 'cause I wanna figure out how to update the Minecraft curricula for next year's Q con in London. So I'm looking at that currently right now.

Um, something about the Minecraft Learning Workshop is it's a little bit outdated. Um, it was perfect for this, um, for this um, weekend, but I wanna try to find something that the kids can relate to a little bit more. I'm gonna look into maybe how a modern Bedrock editions because that's the version they're familiar with because then they, when they make mods, they can share it with their friends.

Um, with job edition, a lot of the kids don't have job audition themselves, um, or unfamiliar about how to use it. Um, or how to, how to set it up themselves. So I wanna try to figure out how to make it more relatable.

And then I also really wanna look into how to implement a Roblox workshop. 'cause that's something that I haven't seen yet. And that's something that I'm really passionate about, um, is Roblox game design.

I do that just as a hobby, um, outside of academia and work. So I'm looking into getting involved with curricular development more, um, teaching more. 'cause that's something I'm really, really passionate about.

I just have to make sure I can talk to the uh, right people and get ideas rolling for that. I'm really excited about your idea to like do Minecraft Bedrock Yeah. Where the little kids are at now.

Yeah, I'm really excited about it too. 'cause I know there's this, um, there's this software too called Block Bench where you can create your own, um, mobs and your own items. And I already had some kids in the workshop this past Sunday ask, oh hey, can we make like our own items or our own, um, animals?

And I said, oh, okay, that would be, that would be for Bedrock. Um, 'cause yeah, I wasn't familiar how to do that with Java quite yet. So it's like both, both my both versions are a completely different process.

Um, but I did, I did refer them to Block Bench 'cause that, that tool makes it a lot easier to be able to, um, to change those. And a lot of them are familiar with, um, content creators that use Bedrock Edition too. And um, modify bedrock edition on there.

Every content creator I've seen in Minecraft using Minecraft right now. If they're playing Minecraft it's usually Java Edition. But when they're playing on customized worlds, I am, um, seeing more and more Bedrock edition.

So yeah, it excites me too. I don't know too much about it yet, so I have to do some research, but I'm really excited 'cause I play Bedrock version myself, so it's a lot of fun. Yeah.

I'm looking forward to see what you create and come up with that Cube Con London. Yeah, I'm really, yeah, I hope I can get it started. Um, and I'm, I'm hoping that since I'm already starting to get involved now, like a whole year in advance, that I hope we can make it happen.

So yeah, a great chat. Thank you Caitlyn. Yeah, of course.

Thanks for having me.