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We meet up with Head of Curriculum, Ben Jakuben, in a hotel lobby and take a tour through some old school Treehouse scenes.
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Hi, and welcome to the Treehouse Show.
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The Treehouse Show is a weekly
conversation with the Treehouse community.
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[SOUND]
We're a remote company so
0:04
we don't get to see each other
in real life that often.
0:10
We all got together last week for
a retreat.
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And I had the incredible opportunity
to get to hang out with our head of
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curriculum, my wonderful manager, and our
old school Android teacher, Ben Jakuben.
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Ben, thanks so much for
being on this show.
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>> It's actually my pleasure,
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thank you.
>> I know that we're traveling.
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It's a little weird where we're standing.
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Let's chat though.
>> Let's do it, this is the perfect spot.
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>> All right.
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So Ben, I have a question for you.
>> Fire away!
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>> How did you get started in technology?
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>> Well, nobody in my family was at all
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interested in technology.
>> My parents ran a landscaping business,
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so the furthest thing from technology.
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Well, no, mowers and weedeaters and
things like that are technology.
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So I took a programming class in college,
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my first intro to anything
to working with computers.
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And I didn't do that
well with it actually.
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I skipped a lot of classes,
don't do that at home.
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>> [LAUGH]
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>> I read the book.
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The lectures were horrible, which is why
I really love what [LAUGH] we do here.
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Lectures were horrible.
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I got all the information from the book,
did the exercises, and
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I got through with a B, a solid B where I
didn't really understand what I was doing.
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>> What language was that in?
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>> This was in
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C++.
>> Okay.
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>> Not a great first language to
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learn either.
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And I put it away, I walked away from it.
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And I was taking other courses to
figure out what I wanted to do.
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Two years later,
I decided that I wanted to revisit it.
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I went back to that same textbook
over the summer, and I read through.
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And wow, the second time through,
things actually made sense.
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So I took a bunch of classes after that,
and from then on,
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it was like everything made sense.
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It was a lot of hard work still,
but it made so much more sense.
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I cared about it more.
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It led into getting the degree,
getting a job, and where we're at today.
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>> Awesome, so during that time, so
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you've been here with Treehouse for
how many years now?
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>> Almost six years.
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>> Six years, so
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you've seen a lot of
different stuff going on,
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you've taught a lot of different things.
>> I sure have.
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I came here as an Android
teacher specifically.
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I've taught mostly Android classes,
including some Java back in the day, but
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it was in the context of Android apps.
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So I was very thankful when Craig
joined as a Java teacher first.
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And then I did some iOS courses
because we just had a need,
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a lot of student demand for
certain things.
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So I did a couple of apps in iOS and
Android.
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And now I'm doing less teaching,
managing the teaching team and
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helping plan the overall curriculum,
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which is great cuz I get to see
what's going on across the team.
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But my most recent course, cuz I don't
do that much, was helping out on
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an IBM Watson, using their APIs to build
a chatbot, which was really fantastic.
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I learned a lot, it was really fun, and
always great to be working with the crew
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again, awesome.
>> Yeah,
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when you're talking about all those early
days, I think there's a video of you, or
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a couple videos of you in a canoe.
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Is that right?
>> That's my all time favorite shoot
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because it was like 95 degrees.
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There were planes flying
overhead constantly so
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we had to stop recording
after every sentence.
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And we had to continually roll around to
the same spot so that we could float in
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the right direction for the shot with the
lighting, and the waves, and everything.
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It was horrible.
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It was like four or five hours of work for
like four or five minutes of content.
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It was amazing content, though.
>> It's some of my favorite.
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>> Find the link to put it in the notes.
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>> Yeah, let's show some.
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[MUSIC]
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>> The inner ear of most
mammals is remarkable for
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its ability to detect motion,
rotation, and acceleration.
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[INAUDIBLE]
3:38
[MUSIC]
3:40
[INAUDIBLE] and put together,
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make a banner [INAUDIBLE].
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[LAUGH]
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[MUSIC]
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>> Other than this canoeing, what's
something that the students watching
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wouldn't be able to know about you,
you, Ben Jakuben?
4:05
It is Ben Jakuben.
>> No, it's not, it's Ben Jakuben, and
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Craig you should really know this.
>> I do this all the time.
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And I'm sorry, Ben Jakuben.
>> Much better,
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look at that, brilliant.
>> So what's something that the students
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would not know about Ben Jakuben?
>> Let's see, well, they know I love Dr.
4:20
Who, because I work those
references into my material.
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I'm fairly boring, so you don't
know how boring I am that my life,
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my focus outside of
Treehouse is my family.
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So it's a lot of time playing video games
with my kids, watching shows with my wife.
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I play basketball, not very often,
not very well, but
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I love basketball still.
>> That doesn't sound boring.
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Playing video games is not boring.
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What video games do you play?
>> Well, my current obsession is Zelda.
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I've always loved all Zelda video games.
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That's been the most of my time,
and Breath of the Wild has been on
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heavy rotation since the holidays here.
>> Awesome, and one of my favorite things
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that you've actually taught me is that
you can play video games with your kids.
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>> Yes, we do share that in common.
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Our children love to play
video games with daddy.
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>> Yeah, so I'm glad.
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You mentioned that you
just had a title change.
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You're now head of curriculum.
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That is pretty big.
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How do you do that?
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What does that mean to
be head of curriculum?
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>> It's a lot of research,
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talking, planning.
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Really it's trying to think about
what you all need to get jobs or
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that you're interested in learning,
and then prioritizing.
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How can we build that for you?
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There's a lot we want to do.
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There's a lot you're asking for.
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And we can't do everything,
at least not right away.
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So it's picking out what's
most important first.
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So Craig and I and all the other teachers,
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we'll get together either as one on
one situations, sometimes as groups.
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And we plot things out as you
hopefully are well aware.
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Our material is organized in these long
tracks or tech degrees where it's really
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trying to make sure we're
identifying all the gaps and
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picking out all the related skills that
you need to be effective in a role.
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So it's a lot of research and planning.
>> Excellent.
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[SOUND] Thanks for
watching the Treehouse Show.
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To get in touch with the show,
reach out to me on Twitter, or
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email us at show@teamtreehouse.com.
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See you next time.
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I gotta start practicing
my rowing skills cuz I'm so
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writing a canoe scene in my next script.
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