AP CS Principles Redesign–Good, Bad, or just Different?

The College Board recently announced a AP Computer Science Principles Redesign that has got a lot of people talking. I read through the preview framework and it actually looks pretty good to me. More on  that in a bit but first the things in the announcement that are causing the discussions.

The first big change is that there is heavy AI integration required in the course. In fact, the announcement says:

• Students will complete a required series of hands-on, structured AI lab experiences.

and

• Students need access to a district-approved AI tool that accepts a student’s own written instructions and returns a response. Schools will need to make sure every student has access to one.

In short, students must use AI and the school must make it available. I imagine the AI companies are pretty happy about that. One university professor made the comment on Facebook “APCSP sponsored by OpenAI. With chatAPCSP available at a discount”

Some school administrators, school IT people, and a lot of teachers in a range of domains may not be too happy about that. On the other hand, is it really possible to do a good job of computer science education without using some AI tools? Probably not.

Possibly the most controversial part of the redesign though is the AI Create Project. Students will be required to use AI for their create project. Is this because someone assumes that students will use AI anyway so let’s just make it legal? I doubt anyone would admit to that even if it is true. And maybe it’s not but it feels that way to me. My worry is that students will wind up believing that they don’t have to write any code at all and will let AI do it for them. I remain convinced that doing it the hard way is the best way to learn. We’ll see I guess.

There is an emphasis in the framework on students reading and evaluating the AI generated code. How well they will be able to do that without having experience writing code on their own (without AI help) is not something that I can predict.

Another important piece to the redesign is that starting in the 2028/2029 school year a text-base language will be required for the Create AI. I believe that the timing is to allow teachers more time to learn a text based language and develop teaching methods and resources to teach it. A lot of teachers are only using block based languages these days.

Some curriculum providers are already moving to text based languages. I understand that CodeAI (nee code.org) is moving the Python for example. Teachers should look into the plans of any curriculum and/or tools suppliers they are using to find out  their plans and timings.

Looking at the AP Computer Science Principles Course effective fall 2027 I do think it is basically sound. I was afraid that they were going to lose a lot to make room for AI. There is an optional and untested Unit 5 that has a lot of what I was afraid would be lost. I wouldn’t keep that optional but a lot of schools may have trouble fitting it all in. Especially districts with fewer than 180 days of instruction.

I will be at the CSTA New York Conference next week (14 November 2026) and if you are there please find me and tell me your thoughts on the redesign. Or just to say hi.

Google AI, Product lock In, and Schools

Apparently, Google announced that schools would be able to block Google’s AI tools. The catch is that doing so will mean they cannot use Google Search. My first reaction, like many people was “so what?” There are plenty of other good search engines out there. I generally use Bing. I know people whose first choice is Duck Duck Go.

There are deeper concerns though.

Many schools are deeply tied in with the Google ecosystem. If they can use search to (attempt to) force schools to allow their AI what else can they use as leverage? One has to ask if dependence on one major tech company is a good thing for schools? I don’t just mean Google either. Microsoft and Apple are also building platforms for schools to use. None of this, not even so-called free tools, is completely altruistic. As students grow up and out of school they tend to take the tools they learned to use in school into their adult life.

Now I am not against technology in schools. I am also not against using software from large tech companies. What I am for is balance and diversity. I know that some people are going to use Google’s actions as a reason to move to open source. I’m not opposed to that either. Although, I have reservations about open source products as well. Different reservations than what I have about commercial products but different is not always better or worse. It can just be different.

Ultimately, schools and educators have to decide what is best for the students. What tools help students learn the most in the best ways possible. If a company tries to force (they might say “encourage”) schools to do things that school leaders are uncomfortable with doing than they have options. Now is as good a time as any for schools to start looking at them.

Interesting links 31 October 2026

Interesting links used to be a weekly post from me. I got away from it for a variety of reasons but I am hoping to bring it back on an irregular basis going forward. I have a bunch of things to share today so let’s get to it.

First off, registration for the CSTA Annual Conference 2027 is open. Already? Yes! And early registration comes with a big cost savings. The conference page is at Home - CSTA 2027 Annual Conference The conference will be in Anaheim California July 8-11 2027.BTW, new this year - Exhibit Hall Only tickets. Get you in the Exhibit Hall, keynotes, and welcome reception.

Next up, several links to LinkedIn posts by David Renton. David is doing a lot of interesting things.

David is teaching a high school course about using AI. Read about how his students are growing beets, using physical computing, and looking at results and actions using AI https://lnkd.in/p/gUfeydeu 

With younger students, David is asking the question “Can a video game teach students how AI is really used on farms?” Check out the game he created that is helping answer that question while teaching students about farming, business, and AI. https://lnkd.in/p/gAA6DBdd

David also introduces Ripplet Racer, a new teaching game that is part of his Ripplet suite of software. Read about Ripplet Racer at https://lnkd.in/p/gV2g9-yY 

BTW, Ripplet Math now includes:
Animal Armada
Ripplet Racer
Math Fluency
Math assessments
Student progress data and feedback
More details: https://ripplet.us/

AI Is Getting Scary

Recently on Facebook, slider puzzle games came up in discussion. I remembered writing a program for playing one of those games and decided to see if I still had one. I did find one. It created a form and let me easily move the "boxes" around. It didn't 1) check to see if everything was in the right place 2) shuffle. So I decided to add those features. Enter GitHub Copilot which is built into Visual Studio.

I started writing an if statement in the appropriate place and Copilot offered the option to call a method called CheckWin. OK I let it finish.

Obviously, I needed CheckWin to be written.  I started writing "private ..." and it offered "bool CheckWin etc." so I let it create the method to see what it came up with. What it wrote works fine although not the same as I would have written it. But ok. CopIlot sure did do a good job of anticipating what I wanted.

My  next step was to add a shuffle method. I started writing "private void Shuffle" and it offered to write the method. That it did pretty much as I would have. So in a few minutes I had everything I needed.

Not sure how I feel about this. How did it figure out what I was up too? Does it have sort of understanding of the words I am using?

Of course, I am working on well-known, established, and simple programming here. There are probably dozens of examples of code on the Internet already that handle these sorts of puzzles. I am not asking AI to do anything new or innovative. Just how useful would AI be if I were working on problems no one has seen before?

None of this is perfect though. Some of the variable names, both that I wrote and that AI wrote, are not particularly informative. I assume I could ask CoPilot to rename things and I may do that. I do believe that the human touch in selecting names may be better than what AI comes up with however.

When if comes right down to it, I will probably not really understand the limits and abilities of AI until I decide to tackle a non-trivial and innovative project. And that is going to take some effort.

Programming Languages as Common Ground with AI

A few days ago I had a little problem. I had a text file with a lot of lines I didn’t want. Specifically, it was a computer generated transcript with timing on just about ever other line. It made reading the document harder and didn’t provide me with information I needed or wanted. So I decided to clean it up.  Obviously, I could write some pretty trivial code to do it for me.

This being the age of AI, I thought I would let AI write it for me. I use Visual Studio (the full blown version) and GitHub Copilot is available to me there. I thought about asking it something like this:

Create some code to read a file and create a new file that doesn't;t include lines containing a user specified word or string.

That's the sort of open ended instruction I might give students.I might use something like that in Advanced Placement CS A if I were still teaching it. It's fine as far as it goes. More on that prompt later in the post by the way.

I wanted something a bit more specific. Something that worked the way I like to work. That meant a Windows Forms application. I decided to give AI what I would include as scaffolding for a student project. Some easy steps to provide a more gentle path for students. Or in this case, something particular I wanted to see.

What I gave GitHub Copilot was:

Create a C# method that:
1.    Uses a dialog box to request and save an input file name
2.    Uses a dialog box to request and save an output file name
3.    Copies a string from a text box
4.    Opens the input file and output file
5.    Reads the input file and copies lines that do not include the saved string
6.    Closes both files when finished reading the input file
7.    Displays the message “Completed” in a message box 

This gave me exactly what I wanted. That’s not a surprise really. AI tends to be good at simple projects like this. The thing I realized is that the prompt worked well and I got the results I wanted because I knew what to ask. I easily broke the task down into specific steps and was explicit about what I wanted. Yea me.

After I got my file cleaned (the reason I started this) I went back to make the program more flexible. For example, what if I wanted to keep lines that included a specific string rather than skip it?

The AI in Visual Studio was very helpful here. Or rather it tried to be helpful. It suggested all sorts of code based on the assumptions it was making about my intent. It got things wrong as often as it got things correct. Maybe it would have done better if I gave it specific prompts but maybe it wouldn't. One thing is clear though. I knew enough code to know that it was wrong and how to fix it. Experience matters.

Coming back to my initial prompt. The AI did a very good job. It does everything I asked an more. All sorts of error checking (file exist?) and even asks if the user wants the comparison of stings to be case sensitive or not. As with the other prompt, the code is nicely commented. It created a console app which is not my favorite way to work but is the way many, perhaps most, student projects are created.

I can’t help but think about what all this means in the context of CS education.

Could students use these prompts to have AI write code for them? Absolutely. Would the results be obvious to someone grading the work that the code was not student written? Also, I think, pretty obviously. The comments alone would be a good clue. The error handling, something we tend not to cover very well because of time constraints would be an even stronger clue. Yes, I have had students add error handling but when they do it tends not to be unexpected. We’ve all had those students who do more. Often they have experience prior to coming to class.

So what is an educator to do? Ban the use of AI! Have you met today’s students? They are past masters of getting around the rules. I had students from China who laughed, literally laughed, at the attempts of a national government to limit what people do on the Internet.

I think we can ask students not to use AI to complete projects. Some will listen. Some will not. In either case, I think it is up to us to make the case that they need the experience of writing their own code. Every professional developer I talk to knows that their prior experience allows them to use AI more effectively.  The people making the most effective, productive results using AI have written code on their own.

Here is what I think is the most important skill in software development today. Being able to analyze a problem and break it down into its component pieces. Compare the two prompts I used above. Admittedly, this is a simple problem and it is easy to break down. Which one is easy to produce code for? Which one is more likely to solve the problem in a way that the user wants to operate?

If a student cannot break down a “toy” problem like those we  tend to assign in early courses how can they be expected to break down larger problems professionally? Or even non-professionally to solve problems in their career.

Circling back to the tweaks I made to AI generated code for a minute. Being able to read and understand code is key to understanding where code went wrong. AI tools have their own assumptions and they are not mind readers. Communication, between user and AI just like between people, requires some level of common understanding. Programming languages are the languages of computer science.

I am reminded of stories I have read about people with tattoos in languages they don’t understand later finding out that the tattoo doesn’t say what they wanted it to say. We had better keep current and fluent in computer languages unless we want computers to get totally out of control.

Computer Science is Not Just Coding and Its NOT Dying

The discussions about the future of computer science and of computer science education are unending. We are seeing huge numbers of layoffs in the tech industry as coders are (attempted to be) replaced by artificial intelligence. Universities and high schools are seeing drops in signups for computer science courses as students don’t see the same economic future in coding that they once did. Some are trying to counter the “CS is dying” narrative. For example, the two opinion pieces linked below.

• The End of the ‘Learn to Code’ Era
• Stop Telling Students Computer Science Is Dying

Much of this is self-inflicted. Far too many people, especially in politics and in school administration roles have pushed computer science as vocational. Dare I say, as JUST vocational. Now in a career technical school that pretty much made sense. For comprehensive schools, I maintain, that it never made sense.

I have been saying for years that we don’t teach physics because we have a shortage of physicists. Nor do we teach biology because we have a shortage of biologists. Rather, we teach those subjects, and many others, to help students to understand the world in which they live. That is the reason why students still need to learn computer science.

We need to change our messaging. No, that’s wrong, I think that computer science educators have always tried all along to promote CS as more than just vocational. That message has just gotten lost in the noise from people with louder platforms. So not “our message” but the message that the wider world is hearing.

Coding is still a language of computer science. It’s not going away. We’re still going to require coding knowledge in the future. It will probably not be the main thing in a job but understanding what AI is doing is going to require some knowledge of the language of computing.

Logic is still important. It turns out that expressing logical expressions in computer languages is still a good way to learn things. Coding is still a good tool in learning about abstraction and breaking a problem down into smaller parts and assembling building blocks of processes. Understanding how computers work and how they communicate and how they tackle problems is still basic computer science. AI does not make the need to understand those concepts go away.

If one thinks of computer science as little more than writing code it is understandable to think that learning CS is less valuable. On the other hand, if one understands that computers are going to be increasing in importance and impact on society AND that CS is about what makes AI work than CS is more important than ever. Students who enter the workforce without an understanding are going to enter it handicapped and limited.

Computer science is alive and growing. It is growing in complexity, in influence, and in the need for people to understand how it works. Students need computer science education.

Post CSTA 2026 Thoughts

CSTA 2026 was an excellent conference. No surprise there. CSTA is the biggest and best conference for K-12 computer science teachers. It’s one I recommend to anyone teaching CS. I am told that there were about 1,150 people in attendance. Not a record but a lot more than we had even a few years ago. Lots of younger teachers and a lot more diversity as well. These are all good things.

There were some surprises this week. One was who wasn’t there. Specifically, three large companies that had large booths in the exhibit hall at previous conferences had little to no presence and none in the exhibit hall. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google were not in the exhibit hall at all.

Microsoft had some people there and they made some presentations. I didn’t  see Amazon or Google. If they were there I missed it. I know that Google has dropped some of their programs completely. I don’t know about Amazon’s Future Engineer program. Of course all of those companies have let lots of staff go and cut all sorts of programs. Funding for CS education conferences was sometimes a tough sell at Microsoft even 10 years ago when I was working there. GitHub Classroom is going away and they were big at previous conferences. So there is that.

CodeAI was not present either. I understand they had a large presence at ISTE so maybe they spent their conference money there. I am sure they reached a lot of people but I have no insights on their goals. I am not sure what any of this means for the relationship between CodeAI and CSTA.

Attending CSTA as a retired teacher without a real connection to a school or company is different from attending as a teacher. That’s probably obvious. For one thing, it changes how I deal with exhibitors. The swag is really there for active teachers so I hesitate to help myself. At the same time, I do try to make myself useful to in-service teachers who can’t make it to the conference by sharing things that I learn there. So I do talk to exhibitors, ask questions, and take literature. It sometimes feels awkward to me. I wonder how the exhibitors feel.

I select sessions differently as well. I am not looking to prep for a specific course because I am not teaching. I am quite curious about a lot of things and learning for my personal benefit is important to me. So I attend sessions for various reasons i.e.. something strikes me as interesting. I also don’t lose value by skipping sessions for the hallway track. Although, to be honest, even when I was teaching I sometimes found the hallway track more useful than some sessions. Priorities!

The quality of sessions is pretty good. That is especially the case when teachers are talking about what they are doing in the classroom. Presentations from corporate people, whether they be big or small is a mixed bag. Most are very professional, very informative, and well prepared. They can be a bit sales like at times and lighter on concepts than I would like. They do tend to be very respectful of teachers and don’t try to drive the conference as much as it feels like ISTE is vender driven. I credit the conference committee for that. I’ve served  on the conference committee several times and the goal has always been about what teachers need rather than what industry wants to sell.

Circling back the the exhibit hall for a minute, I think that CSTA is a great opportunity for smaller ed tech companies to communicate with CS educators. Yes, ISTE has many more teachers but it’s also much more expensive and the target market for a CS ed product is a small percentage there. So bang for the buck I think CSTA wins every time. I talked to one exhibitor who was at ISTE this year and they thought the same thing.

It may be a good thing for smaller companies that the monster companies are staying away. A lot more conversations can happen at CSTA both because the big companies are not attracting people away with giveaways.

As always, I am leaving with a lot to think about. I hope to write up some of that thinking after it has settled. If you were at CSTA I would love to know what you took away from the conference as well.