About This Webinar
Join CodeHS for an exclusive panel discussion with district administrators who have successfully developed thriving computer science pathways in their districts. Hear firsthand insights from leaders across North America on building systems for a sustainable K-12 pathway, supporting teacher development, and engaging students at every grade level. Discover how CodeHS’s K-12 pathways and professional development resources have empowered educators to effectively reach and inspire students in computer science.
Learn how to build and scale a K-12 computer science pathway with insights from education leaders at CodeHS. This webinar explores district visions, CTE integration, and the impact of AI on workforce readiness. Gain practical advice on sustainability and curriculum advocacy for your school.
Full Transcript
Read the complete transcript of this webinar
Good afternoon everyone, or good morning depending on where you're joining from. I am very excited to have an engaging, interesting, and insightful discussion today with two wonderful education leaders that we work with directly here at CodeHS. Today, we're not talking about code directly, but more so how to actually build, scale, and set your vision for a K-12 computer science pathway that prepares students for the careers of tomorrow. We'll touch on some CTE as well in our discussion today.
Joining us today, I'm Eric Austin, the Director of Account Management here at CodeHS. We work with districts across the country and across the world to help them build and scale their computer science programs. We have two leaders who work with us in their settings today who I'm really excited for you all to hear from. We have Dr. Amna Ahmad from Moreno Valley Unified School District in California and Nick Baswell from the Nova Scotia Department of Education. We are truly coast to coast on both sides of our big continent today, which I'm really excited about. I'm going to have each of them introduce themselves and share a little bit more about their district, their backgrounds, and then we'll get our conversation started.
My name is Amna Ahmed, a professional development specialist serving Moreno Valley Unified School District. It is northeast of Los Angeles. We have around 34,000 students in our district. We are a mostly Hispanic and low-income district, so we have some struggles. Before joining as a PD specialist, I was a math teacher for nine years. Before that, I taught elementary and middle school. I have experience from TK through 12th grade. In a PD specialist position, this is my 11th year supporting STEAM programs in our district. My job is to support STEAM, mainly focusing on computer science and robotics.
I'm Nick Baswell, a technology consultant with the Nova Scotia Department of Education. We are a province with around 130,000 students in eight regions that work somewhat autonomously under our guidance, and we go from K to 12 education. From my own background, I started as an elementary school teacher in grades four and five, and for the last seven years, I have been working with the department as a technology consultant with my main focus being computer science curriculum and maker education.
I have worked directly with Nick to support their program and can speak to some of the growth that I've seen as well. Here are some things you can expect to hear about in our discussion today. We're going to have a pretty open discussion, but you should expect to hear about building a shared district vision. Maybe you right now run a school or a specific grade band within a district and you're thinking, how can I build up or down within my district? That's something these leaders have grappled with. If I'm doing that, how do I have the long-term sustainability so that whatever we've built this year succeeds for five to ten years to come? Ultimately, whether it's computer science or any subject, something our parents and communities are asking is how that prepares our students for the jobs not just of today, but for tomorrow. Workforce readiness is a topic that we'll discuss today. Very much related to that is AI. How are we using AI in the classroom right now? We are always looking for more perspectives on that as we continue to learn and deploy it.
Throughout the session, if you have a particular question and want to push our discussion in a certain direction, please do so using the webinar feature within Zoom. There's a Q&A button where you can ask a question. We have a couple of teammates who might be able to answer you directly, but we'll also surface some of those questions for the whole group at various points.
Thinking about your experience in your district or province, think about where you started and today. What did your computer science program look like at the time you started and what does it look like today?
When I think about where I started back in 2006, we had very basic technology outcomes as a whole. There weren't really specific computer science frameworks or outcomes unless you were in a high school class which solely focused on that. It wasn't something that happened day-to-day or even monthly within regular classrooms. In 2015, we had a renewed technology curriculum come out. At that time, there was a push for computer coding from K to 8 and to get it more introduced. We had some robots roll out to classrooms and Chromebooks go out. It was a much larger push to get hands-on activities along with some professional development for teachers. In 2024, we released our newest version of that where we really tried to make it more encompassing of the technology that we saw. Tech is the fastest-growing industry; it moves by leaps and bounds all the time. To have a curriculum that can cover it all, you really need to be very adaptive. When we looked at creating our new curriculum in 2024, we tried to make it future-facing by having some broader areas that would incorporate new technologies as they came along. We didn't want it to be outdated in two or three years.
In our district, our main focus is STEAM. We started with elementary schools first, and we actually have two STEAM pathways: elementary, middle, and high school. These are designated schools which are STEAM schools where we focus on introducing computer science, robotics, and engineering. Students participate in science and engineering fairs and computer science competitions. When I started almost 10 years ago, there was no clear vision of what we wanted to do. At that point, we offered almost 200 teachers basic training. We started introducing computer science in our elementary schools, and then we had some elective courses in middle and high school. It was just one high school or one middle school focusing on computer science, and multiple elementary schools were offering coding as an after-school club or during a flex day.
When COVID happened, the elementary computer science program kind of hit a roadblock. We don't see that much coding in our elementary school anymore, but our middle school and high school programs became stronger. Now almost all our middle schools have computer science programs in some way or another. All our high schools have computer science as an elective. We are offering AP Computer Science, JavaScript app development, and Unity game development in middle school as well. Our students have multiple entry points. If they don't take computer science classes in middle school, they can still take them in high school. We have a very strong cybersecurity program in middle school and high school under CTE. Students follow that path and get CTE certification.
How much of the growth of your program would you say has been driven from the bottom up or from the top down? I would say that we have a bit of both. We have that grassroots approach where there are a number of teachers who are very passionate about it, and they find resources and bring them up the chain. Then there are things that we do at the provincial level, like CodeHS, where we make that available for all of our computer programming teachers across the province. It's through that combination where we're able to get the most to our students. We host a conference in the summertime for about 200 teachers focused on technology and education. We find the passionate teachers who want to hit the ground running. One of the difficulties we've found over the blanket approaches of just providing robots to every grade is that you don't always have the buy-in from those individual teachers. You might have devices sitting on shelves not being used. We did a partnership with physical coding tiles and started with 25 schools, growing to around 220 schools over five years by finding the teachers who said they wanted to be a part of it. We had a huge buy-in versus putting it out to everybody and seeing wasted money.
It is more of a bottom-up approach here. Most of the computer science teachers took that initiative on their own. Even at the elementary school level, we see teachers who attended trainings or got certification and then started integrating it into their classrooms. In middle and high school, it is the same approach. Couple of our universities offer free certification for computer science. In 6th through 12th grade, you need to have a certification in computer science or be a math teacher to teach it as an elective. Most teachers took the initiative on their own to earn the certification. We sometimes partner with neighboring universities so professors can work with our teachers to design the courses. This is a discussion happening in our district right now: how the district can support this initiative so it isn't just teachers doing it on their own, because when the teacher leaves, the program also leaves.
How do you decide when to scale something that is growing from the grassroots? We look for the impact that it has on learning. Unfortunately, technology often falls into that "Friday fun time" and we want to get away from that. We want to make it meaningful and useful. If we see fantastic curriculum connections that are cross-curricular, linking up with language arts or math, then you get more buy-in. We look to see if it exists in a bubble or if it is very adaptable. You might have a language arts teacher who says they won't touch tech, but if you show them how they are doing language arts outcomes with technology, they will try it.
For a couple of years, we partnered with the University of California Riverside and offered our teachers a STEAM certificate. We modified their certificate to meet the needs of our districts and offered that to teachers for credit. Our in-house professional development specialists were teaching those courses, so it was aligned with our vision. We created opportunities for our teachers to learn about computer science integration, robotics integration, engineering, and arts. We have more than 100 teachers who are certified in our district. When they go back to the classroom, they integrate coding and STEAM.
Are you seeing that interdisciplinary connection happening mostly at the primary grades or at the secondary level as well? For us, it's definitely K to 8 that has the most amount of cross-curricular ability because we have teachers who teach more than one thing. When you get into high school and become more specialized, it is a tougher nut to crack. We try to show those connections where it makes sense. Sometimes a piece of technology forces the conversation. AI has opened the door to a lot of people discussing it in the humanities and math. Now we have to talk about how to use this effectively.
When you're thinking about a new pathway, how do you make those decisions? It's a combination of factors. It is looking at industry and the background of the students. One of the best things about computer science is that you can get a job that pays well without leaving your local community. We have a career pathways pilot and a digital innovation technology certificate. When you complete it and a module from one of our local universities, you get a credit at that university before you're even finished high school. It puts you on the map for career development.
In our district, the computer science pathway was intentional because we wanted our students to get that exposure. My daughter went to the school where I was teaching math. She applied to university and picked computer science as her major. When asked if she had ever done coding, she panicked and changed her major to mechanical engineering because her exposure was very limited. That gave me the thought that if we're not exposing our students to computer science early, they are never going to take that risk. If we keep thinking that low-income families or students who are not good at math shouldn't have these opportunities, they will never get them. We pushed for a STEAM advisory because we previously struggled with whether a robotics course should go through math or science. Now, all like-minded people are on that advisory, they brainstorm, and they approve courses faster.
How much do state policies or requirements influence your program? Our state has funding for VAPA, which has some mention of STEM. Now the state has this new requirement of computer science, and universities are offering free certification, but the state is not making computer science a requirement yet. We are hearing the conversations, but the district is so focused on math and ELA because we have low scores.
We see the same thing where math and language arts dominate the conversation. That's why cross-curricular things are how you get it in because that's where the money and focus are. If your math scores are down, that's where the PD funding is going. You have to be creative. We don't currently have a computer science requirement for graduation. There is some discussion around a mandatory online course, but we don't necessarily have the strength of internet in all areas to make that happen yet.
In your roles as advocates, do you have any other success stories for making sure computer science is prioritized? It's interesting to see who excels early. Sometimes it is the risk-takers or students you wouldn't expect. It's a wonderful opportunity for a student who might not have traditional leadership skills to find a niche and support other students. I've also found that when you're doing something as engaging as STEAM or computer science, behaviors in the class drop off. If you talk to a teacher about behaviors going down, it's going to pique their interest.
How does budget factor into this? Budgets are incredibly difficult in the fact that they can fluctuate. You have to find a program that supports it in a meaningful way to justify the money or find a cost-effective strategy. Code.org is a fabulous place to start because it is free. Sometimes you find something that you really need to spend money on and you have to advocate for it. Sometimes it's getting those decision-makers into the schools to see the impact. It's one thing if they hear it from me; it's another if they hear it from the teachers and students.
We have a STEAM budget for designated sites. I work under the professional development department, and they always give some budget for STEAM. We see where the need is. This is our third year buying CodeHS licenses through that budget. My director knows I will be asking for that money. There is always a struggle because there are so many things happening behind the scenes. We also see the district spend money on kits that sit in cabinets and become obsolete. Those are the challenges. If you convince them enough, they will give you money to support the program, but we don't get as much support for after-school programs.
How do you prove the return on investment? A few weeks ago, we had our STEAM expo. This is a district-wide event open to the community. We invite community partners, universities, businesses, and emergency services to set up a STEAM activity. We started with 400 or 500 people, and this year we had 1,600 to 1,800 in attendance. We encourage teachers to showcase what they are doing. It is a community family event and that keeps parents and teachers engaged.
We've hosted an innovation fair for the last seven years, which is similar to a maker fair. Students from around the province come to a host school to put on projects for the day. One of the key aspects is who you invite. You bring in community leaders and politicians to show them where the funding is going. Getting politicians to see what students have created goes a long way in supporting the budget.
Why do we even need to learn computer science in the age of AI? It's the same reason you learn how to read and write. You can ask AI to generate anything, but if you're not able to read and understand it, you don't really know what you have. If you're not able to understand the code, you can't adapt it to get what you're looking for. You have to know how it works. We're looking at ways to support teachers and students in understanding the "hows" and "whys" so that the work reflects them, not just a quick prompt.
If students don't understand the programming behind what they are doing, AI is not going to help them. AI might spit out a great-looking program, but if they don't know how to use it, what is the purpose? It is important to understand the "behind the scenes" to know if a program is going to work. Also, no matter how improved AI is, there are always going to be personal biases. When we teach programming, we make sure students understand they are programming for everyone and not building their biases in. You need to be able to catch those biases in AI as well.
What do the policies look like for student use of AI? It depends on the individual region. Most regions have it on for staff. We use and recommend Gemini. Some regions have it on for students and staff. There's been training done around rubrics. If you are assigning an essay, students need to include the AI component, what prompts they put in, and how much they leaned on it. We don't want to completely limit it, but we want it to be meaningful.
AI is open for teachers in our district, but students don't have access yet. We are working on guidelines to open it to high school students on a trial basis. We are thinking that teachers should be introducing it to students, but they shouldn't have direct access yet.
Do you anticipate having dedicated AI courses? That is part of the guidelines. Years ago, we did digital citizenship, and now we are going to focus on digital citizenship with an AI focus—what protocols students need to find and what is safe to use. For us, it is being woven into the digital citizenship piece about ethical use. It's not its own course per se, but we are discussing student tech modules throughout the year with different technology skills.
What are ways you are bolstering student credentials? We have AP Computer Science and the career pathways. Those are the two main ways computer science stands out on a student's transcript. We also encourage our students to participate in local computer science competitions and the Congressional App Challenge. This gives them exposure to what other students are doing. Every year, our students go to Google headquarters in Palo Alto and they go to Stanford. They see how the real world works. Some of our teachers work with local businesses. We hear from students who graduate from college and email their teachers to say they are working for a tech company.
What advice would you offer someone new in your role? I would say go for it. Don't let other people say it's too tough. Take a look to see what other regions have done. CSTA and ISTE have great information and standards. Put your ideas down, get other eyes on it, and then just go for it. Become part of a technology or computer science network. Attend STEAM events and talk to teachers. Attend conferences and look for free events. My first two years, I was looking for free events on my own time to see what other places were doing. I have seen teachers who didn't know any coding, but they started doing it, their students learned faster than them, and now they have mastered it and are expanding those programs.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Often the larger community will take what you've created and make it something you didn't even dream of. We have some additional webinars coming up, including a focus on AP Cybersecurity, which is a brand-new course next year. We also have our virtual teacher conference on April 11th.
One of the questions in the chat was about the collaboration between CTE and curriculum departments. Here in Nova Scotia, the communication is as simple as a phone call or walking to the next cubicle. We work together on a variety of projects. In our district, we have cybersecurity under CTE, but other computer science courses are separate. We are trying to start a computer science or STEAM PLN to bring all those teachers together so they can share ideas and collaborate.
The last piece of advice is to find your people to help support you and grow ideas. If you run into challenges, they are going to be your cheerleaders. You can become a CodeHS certified educator or earn a micro-credential to show you can teach JavaScript, Python, or cybersecurity. Please stay in touch via our Facebook community and social media. Thank you to Nick and Amna for joining us today.
Joining us today, I'm Eric Austin, the Director of Account Management here at CodeHS. We work with districts across the country and across the world to help them build and scale their computer science programs. We have two leaders who work with us in their settings today who I'm really excited for you all to hear from. We have Dr. Amna Ahmad from Moreno Valley Unified School District in California and Nick Baswell from the Nova Scotia Department of Education. We are truly coast to coast on both sides of our big continent today, which I'm really excited about. I'm going to have each of them introduce themselves and share a little bit more about their district, their backgrounds, and then we'll get our conversation started.
My name is Amna Ahmed, a professional development specialist serving Moreno Valley Unified School District. It is northeast of Los Angeles. We have around 34,000 students in our district. We are a mostly Hispanic and low-income district, so we have some struggles. Before joining as a PD specialist, I was a math teacher for nine years. Before that, I taught elementary and middle school. I have experience from TK through 12th grade. In a PD specialist position, this is my 11th year supporting STEAM programs in our district. My job is to support STEAM, mainly focusing on computer science and robotics.
I'm Nick Baswell, a technology consultant with the Nova Scotia Department of Education. We are a province with around 130,000 students in eight regions that work somewhat autonomously under our guidance, and we go from K to 12 education. From my own background, I started as an elementary school teacher in grades four and five, and for the last seven years, I have been working with the department as a technology consultant with my main focus being computer science curriculum and maker education.
I have worked directly with Nick to support their program and can speak to some of the growth that I've seen as well. Here are some things you can expect to hear about in our discussion today. We're going to have a pretty open discussion, but you should expect to hear about building a shared district vision. Maybe you right now run a school or a specific grade band within a district and you're thinking, how can I build up or down within my district? That's something these leaders have grappled with. If I'm doing that, how do I have the long-term sustainability so that whatever we've built this year succeeds for five to ten years to come? Ultimately, whether it's computer science or any subject, something our parents and communities are asking is how that prepares our students for the jobs not just of today, but for tomorrow. Workforce readiness is a topic that we'll discuss today. Very much related to that is AI. How are we using AI in the classroom right now? We are always looking for more perspectives on that as we continue to learn and deploy it.
Throughout the session, if you have a particular question and want to push our discussion in a certain direction, please do so using the webinar feature within Zoom. There's a Q&A button where you can ask a question. We have a couple of teammates who might be able to answer you directly, but we'll also surface some of those questions for the whole group at various points.
Thinking about your experience in your district or province, think about where you started and today. What did your computer science program look like at the time you started and what does it look like today?
When I think about where I started back in 2006, we had very basic technology outcomes as a whole. There weren't really specific computer science frameworks or outcomes unless you were in a high school class which solely focused on that. It wasn't something that happened day-to-day or even monthly within regular classrooms. In 2015, we had a renewed technology curriculum come out. At that time, there was a push for computer coding from K to 8 and to get it more introduced. We had some robots roll out to classrooms and Chromebooks go out. It was a much larger push to get hands-on activities along with some professional development for teachers. In 2024, we released our newest version of that where we really tried to make it more encompassing of the technology that we saw. Tech is the fastest-growing industry; it moves by leaps and bounds all the time. To have a curriculum that can cover it all, you really need to be very adaptive. When we looked at creating our new curriculum in 2024, we tried to make it future-facing by having some broader areas that would incorporate new technologies as they came along. We didn't want it to be outdated in two or three years.
In our district, our main focus is STEAM. We started with elementary schools first, and we actually have two STEAM pathways: elementary, middle, and high school. These are designated schools which are STEAM schools where we focus on introducing computer science, robotics, and engineering. Students participate in science and engineering fairs and computer science competitions. When I started almost 10 years ago, there was no clear vision of what we wanted to do. At that point, we offered almost 200 teachers basic training. We started introducing computer science in our elementary schools, and then we had some elective courses in middle and high school. It was just one high school or one middle school focusing on computer science, and multiple elementary schools were offering coding as an after-school club or during a flex day.
When COVID happened, the elementary computer science program kind of hit a roadblock. We don't see that much coding in our elementary school anymore, but our middle school and high school programs became stronger. Now almost all our middle schools have computer science programs in some way or another. All our high schools have computer science as an elective. We are offering AP Computer Science, JavaScript app development, and Unity game development in middle school as well. Our students have multiple entry points. If they don't take computer science classes in middle school, they can still take them in high school. We have a very strong cybersecurity program in middle school and high school under CTE. Students follow that path and get CTE certification.
How much of the growth of your program would you say has been driven from the bottom up or from the top down? I would say that we have a bit of both. We have that grassroots approach where there are a number of teachers who are very passionate about it, and they find resources and bring them up the chain. Then there are things that we do at the provincial level, like CodeHS, where we make that available for all of our computer programming teachers across the province. It's through that combination where we're able to get the most to our students. We host a conference in the summertime for about 200 teachers focused on technology and education. We find the passionate teachers who want to hit the ground running. One of the difficulties we've found over the blanket approaches of just providing robots to every grade is that you don't always have the buy-in from those individual teachers. You might have devices sitting on shelves not being used. We did a partnership with physical coding tiles and started with 25 schools, growing to around 220 schools over five years by finding the teachers who said they wanted to be a part of it. We had a huge buy-in versus putting it out to everybody and seeing wasted money.
It is more of a bottom-up approach here. Most of the computer science teachers took that initiative on their own. Even at the elementary school level, we see teachers who attended trainings or got certification and then started integrating it into their classrooms. In middle and high school, it is the same approach. Couple of our universities offer free certification for computer science. In 6th through 12th grade, you need to have a certification in computer science or be a math teacher to teach it as an elective. Most teachers took the initiative on their own to earn the certification. We sometimes partner with neighboring universities so professors can work with our teachers to design the courses. This is a discussion happening in our district right now: how the district can support this initiative so it isn't just teachers doing it on their own, because when the teacher leaves, the program also leaves.
How do you decide when to scale something that is growing from the grassroots? We look for the impact that it has on learning. Unfortunately, technology often falls into that "Friday fun time" and we want to get away from that. We want to make it meaningful and useful. If we see fantastic curriculum connections that are cross-curricular, linking up with language arts or math, then you get more buy-in. We look to see if it exists in a bubble or if it is very adaptable. You might have a language arts teacher who says they won't touch tech, but if you show them how they are doing language arts outcomes with technology, they will try it.
For a couple of years, we partnered with the University of California Riverside and offered our teachers a STEAM certificate. We modified their certificate to meet the needs of our districts and offered that to teachers for credit. Our in-house professional development specialists were teaching those courses, so it was aligned with our vision. We created opportunities for our teachers to learn about computer science integration, robotics integration, engineering, and arts. We have more than 100 teachers who are certified in our district. When they go back to the classroom, they integrate coding and STEAM.
Are you seeing that interdisciplinary connection happening mostly at the primary grades or at the secondary level as well? For us, it's definitely K to 8 that has the most amount of cross-curricular ability because we have teachers who teach more than one thing. When you get into high school and become more specialized, it is a tougher nut to crack. We try to show those connections where it makes sense. Sometimes a piece of technology forces the conversation. AI has opened the door to a lot of people discussing it in the humanities and math. Now we have to talk about how to use this effectively.
When you're thinking about a new pathway, how do you make those decisions? It's a combination of factors. It is looking at industry and the background of the students. One of the best things about computer science is that you can get a job that pays well without leaving your local community. We have a career pathways pilot and a digital innovation technology certificate. When you complete it and a module from one of our local universities, you get a credit at that university before you're even finished high school. It puts you on the map for career development.
In our district, the computer science pathway was intentional because we wanted our students to get that exposure. My daughter went to the school where I was teaching math. She applied to university and picked computer science as her major. When asked if she had ever done coding, she panicked and changed her major to mechanical engineering because her exposure was very limited. That gave me the thought that if we're not exposing our students to computer science early, they are never going to take that risk. If we keep thinking that low-income families or students who are not good at math shouldn't have these opportunities, they will never get them. We pushed for a STEAM advisory because we previously struggled with whether a robotics course should go through math or science. Now, all like-minded people are on that advisory, they brainstorm, and they approve courses faster.
How much do state policies or requirements influence your program? Our state has funding for VAPA, which has some mention of STEM. Now the state has this new requirement of computer science, and universities are offering free certification, but the state is not making computer science a requirement yet. We are hearing the conversations, but the district is so focused on math and ELA because we have low scores.
We see the same thing where math and language arts dominate the conversation. That's why cross-curricular things are how you get it in because that's where the money and focus are. If your math scores are down, that's where the PD funding is going. You have to be creative. We don't currently have a computer science requirement for graduation. There is some discussion around a mandatory online course, but we don't necessarily have the strength of internet in all areas to make that happen yet.
In your roles as advocates, do you have any other success stories for making sure computer science is prioritized? It's interesting to see who excels early. Sometimes it is the risk-takers or students you wouldn't expect. It's a wonderful opportunity for a student who might not have traditional leadership skills to find a niche and support other students. I've also found that when you're doing something as engaging as STEAM or computer science, behaviors in the class drop off. If you talk to a teacher about behaviors going down, it's going to pique their interest.
How does budget factor into this? Budgets are incredibly difficult in the fact that they can fluctuate. You have to find a program that supports it in a meaningful way to justify the money or find a cost-effective strategy. Code.org is a fabulous place to start because it is free. Sometimes you find something that you really need to spend money on and you have to advocate for it. Sometimes it's getting those decision-makers into the schools to see the impact. It's one thing if they hear it from me; it's another if they hear it from the teachers and students.
We have a STEAM budget for designated sites. I work under the professional development department, and they always give some budget for STEAM. We see where the need is. This is our third year buying CodeHS licenses through that budget. My director knows I will be asking for that money. There is always a struggle because there are so many things happening behind the scenes. We also see the district spend money on kits that sit in cabinets and become obsolete. Those are the challenges. If you convince them enough, they will give you money to support the program, but we don't get as much support for after-school programs.
How do you prove the return on investment? A few weeks ago, we had our STEAM expo. This is a district-wide event open to the community. We invite community partners, universities, businesses, and emergency services to set up a STEAM activity. We started with 400 or 500 people, and this year we had 1,600 to 1,800 in attendance. We encourage teachers to showcase what they are doing. It is a community family event and that keeps parents and teachers engaged.
We've hosted an innovation fair for the last seven years, which is similar to a maker fair. Students from around the province come to a host school to put on projects for the day. One of the key aspects is who you invite. You bring in community leaders and politicians to show them where the funding is going. Getting politicians to see what students have created goes a long way in supporting the budget.
Why do we even need to learn computer science in the age of AI? It's the same reason you learn how to read and write. You can ask AI to generate anything, but if you're not able to read and understand it, you don't really know what you have. If you're not able to understand the code, you can't adapt it to get what you're looking for. You have to know how it works. We're looking at ways to support teachers and students in understanding the "hows" and "whys" so that the work reflects them, not just a quick prompt.
If students don't understand the programming behind what they are doing, AI is not going to help them. AI might spit out a great-looking program, but if they don't know how to use it, what is the purpose? It is important to understand the "behind the scenes" to know if a program is going to work. Also, no matter how improved AI is, there are always going to be personal biases. When we teach programming, we make sure students understand they are programming for everyone and not building their biases in. You need to be able to catch those biases in AI as well.
What do the policies look like for student use of AI? It depends on the individual region. Most regions have it on for staff. We use and recommend Gemini. Some regions have it on for students and staff. There's been training done around rubrics. If you are assigning an essay, students need to include the AI component, what prompts they put in, and how much they leaned on it. We don't want to completely limit it, but we want it to be meaningful.
AI is open for teachers in our district, but students don't have access yet. We are working on guidelines to open it to high school students on a trial basis. We are thinking that teachers should be introducing it to students, but they shouldn't have direct access yet.
Do you anticipate having dedicated AI courses? That is part of the guidelines. Years ago, we did digital citizenship, and now we are going to focus on digital citizenship with an AI focus—what protocols students need to find and what is safe to use. For us, it is being woven into the digital citizenship piece about ethical use. It's not its own course per se, but we are discussing student tech modules throughout the year with different technology skills.
What are ways you are bolstering student credentials? We have AP Computer Science and the career pathways. Those are the two main ways computer science stands out on a student's transcript. We also encourage our students to participate in local computer science competitions and the Congressional App Challenge. This gives them exposure to what other students are doing. Every year, our students go to Google headquarters in Palo Alto and they go to Stanford. They see how the real world works. Some of our teachers work with local businesses. We hear from students who graduate from college and email their teachers to say they are working for a tech company.
What advice would you offer someone new in your role? I would say go for it. Don't let other people say it's too tough. Take a look to see what other regions have done. CSTA and ISTE have great information and standards. Put your ideas down, get other eyes on it, and then just go for it. Become part of a technology or computer science network. Attend STEAM events and talk to teachers. Attend conferences and look for free events. My first two years, I was looking for free events on my own time to see what other places were doing. I have seen teachers who didn't know any coding, but they started doing it, their students learned faster than them, and now they have mastered it and are expanding those programs.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Often the larger community will take what you've created and make it something you didn't even dream of. We have some additional webinars coming up, including a focus on AP Cybersecurity, which is a brand-new course next year. We also have our virtual teacher conference on April 11th.
One of the questions in the chat was about the collaboration between CTE and curriculum departments. Here in Nova Scotia, the communication is as simple as a phone call or walking to the next cubicle. We work together on a variety of projects. In our district, we have cybersecurity under CTE, but other computer science courses are separate. We are trying to start a computer science or STEAM PLN to bring all those teachers together so they can share ideas and collaborate.
The last piece of advice is to find your people to help support you and grow ideas. If you run into challenges, they are going to be your cheerleaders. You can become a CodeHS certified educator or earn a micro-credential to show you can teach JavaScript, Python, or cybersecurity. Please stay in touch via our Facebook community and social media. Thank you to Nick and Amna for joining us today.
