CSTA New York Conference 2026

The state wide New York state CSTA chapter is running their first conference. We’re at the State University of New York New Paltz today. I missed the CSTA New England conference last weekend (other commitments) so itis great to be here. I am enjoying connecting with friends I have made over the years. CSTA is a real community.

First up, the keynote Philip Courtney CEO of Urban Arts. Urban Arts teaches video game design and emerging tech. Philip has an interesting background that started in the theatre and evolved into education. The idea behind Urban Arts is a blend of art and technology. I love the idea of involving the creativity of art combined with technology. I have always believed that computing was a creative endeavor. He brought  two alumni of the program who are now in university. These students showed what they did at Urban Art and then the work that they are doing now in university.

One student is studying neuroscience and the other civil engineering but technology is still a key part of what they are doing today.It was interesting hearing about their paths. One thing that became clear is that Urban Arts really promotes teamwork which is a critical soft skill. Students also talked about the encouragement they got from Urban Arts to look at other areas of student and broaden their experience. That is something that good teachers do!

Obviously, the keynote was a promotional talk for Urban Arts but it was also look into the evolution of a program and a good story of the value of cross curriculum education.

For my first session I decided to attend one on Figma. Figma is totally new to me so I was curious. Figma is a design tool that is apparently being used widely in industry. Figma has education programs (free) that they make available. The presenters were both former teachers which was encouraging to me.

This was basically a “sales pitch” for their education program and the resources that are part of it. Like a lot of companies, they would like to see students get to university or internship with a knowledge base in their products.That is not a bad thing and I don’t mean it as a criticism. I can see how using a design tool like this could be a valuable addition to a curriculum. Being free is of course a plus.

Next session was on teaching Ethics in AI based on the CSTA standards. (Slide deck at dayofai.org/cstany ) This presentation was by Day of AI dot org.

Day of AI has a lot of resources for teaching AI. They include a trivia game, individual lessons, and a full semester course. Materials are arraigned by grade level and range from Pre-K through high school. The youngest grades only have a few lessons and as the grade levels increase the number of lessons increases. There is a lot of focus on fairness and why AI may not always be fair.

I love that they emphasize the need for human judgment. They talk about lot about AI sometimes lacks context, full information, or understanding of right and wrong. These are materials well worth checking out.

After lunch was my presentation. I talked about Subgoal Labeling, Parsons problems, Live Coding, and a little on rubber duck debugging. My PowerPoint is at http://www.acthompson.net/TeachingCS.pptx and a PDF version is at http://www.acthompson.net/WhatWorks.pdf if you are interested. Maybe someone else will review it.

After my session, I went to a session about a post AP project based learning effort using AI to create a complete web application. Students created an online ordering app for a coffee shop. They used things from multiple CS courses and worked in a team. There was a solid planning phase, a research phase, a learning phase, and a build phase when students could use AI to help develop the site. It was a really good project.

Last session of the day,From Python Pixels to Prompts. The software used in this session is from Imagilabs.com software. This was a middle school targeted presentation but I really like the art aspect. The sire does have resources for grades 3 through high school. In this session, we were shown how students use Python code to draw images using a 8 by 8 grid of “pixels.”  Students learn the basics of programming and have fun. I like the creative aspect of using simple images as the output.

Part two of the talk was about having students prompt AI to write code using Vibe Coding ideas. They work a lot of planning into the process before the AI gets involved. I think that is an important idea. Planning makes using AI much more effective.

One statement that was made (I think during the keynote) was

Code is not the opposite of design. Code is the material for design .

That wasn’t the official theme of the conference but it was an idea that threaded its way though the sessions I attended. Overall, a very good conference. Lots of opportunity to connect with other educators and all of the sessions I attended were high quality.