In this episode, Dr. Peter Dalmaris talks with James Zaki.
James is a Graduate of Mechatronic Engineering and Computer Science with honors and 14 years of industry experience.
He started in industrial automation and then transitioning to application development.
Outside of development James worked as an engineering team lead and management in small-medium sized companies. He worked predominantly with start-ups and small companies, and has spent considerable time abroad (France, China, India), and always connected to the EduTech space. James is skilled in programming for various devices: mobile, Linux, and microcontrollers. He is experienced at turning product ideas into reality and managing mixed developer teams.
James can speak fluent French, which he has taught himself.
He is also one of the organizers of Ozberry, perhaps Australia’s largest Raspberry Pi and Maker-related meetup.
This is Stemiverse Podcast episode 29.
Stemiverse podcast is brought to you by Tech Explorations, a leading provider of educational resources for Makers, STEM students, and teachers. Go to techexplorations.com to see a complete list of our books and courses covering the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and electronics.
Show Notes
- [00:00] Introduction – Introducing James Zaki
- [04:41] James talks about his background
- [05:01] GW-BASIC programming language
- [06:38] Learning how to program before Google
- [07:17] Are we going too far today and disadvantaging learners by trying hard to create top notch learning materials?
- [11:03] The amount of time and effort one had to go through in order to produce results on their own is a big part of the learning experience – Alain de Botton on meritocracy
- [12:53] Diverse students called upon to produce similar results
- [14:03] James’ current projects: freelancing on various projects such as Blockchain and Smart Contract Development
- [14:52] James’ definition of the Blockchain
- [17:26] Ethereum’s Light Sync Mode
- [17:59] James’ experience in applying Blockchain and Smart Contracts to teaching: the concept of Wallets
- [19:07] The Blockchain Private Key
- [20:41] Examples of how the concept of a Wallet or Blockchain can be used in education
- [21:46] Test Networks and Internal Economies
- [22:54] Educational outcomes of such setups: Economics, Entrepreneurship, Bookkeeping Accounting, Distributed Networks, Consensus and more
- [24:22] OzBerryPi: The monthly Raspberry Pi Meetup in Australia
- [26:04] What happens during an OzBerryPi Meetup
- [28:00] OzBerryPi Themes
- [29:54] Typical backgrounds of meetup participants
- [30:43] A robot to solve a rubik’s cube puzzle
- [32:20] Why teachers come to OzBerryPi and what do they do there?
- [34:20] Top 3 technologies teachers use in the classroom to teach STEM topics
- [35:58] James’ position on how to begin using low-level technologies that don’t work out of the box such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi for educational purposes
- [44:58] The Cyclearn project
- [48:09] James’ future plans
- [50:24] Rapid Fire Questions
- [50:34] Applications James can’t live without: Sourcetree
- [53:45] James’ programming language of choice: C++
- [55:26] Parting thoughts
- [57:21] James’ Contact Information: Twitter: @james_zaki
Downloadable Resources
These materials are created by James Zaki and are available for free download with his permission. All rights are reserved by James Zaki. Click on the images to download.
| Cyclearn Arduino | Cyclearn Raspberry Pi |
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