Time to kick off 2024. I closed out 2023 the way I usually do - going to bed early but I didn't start 2024 with a run like last year. I'm still nursing a broken toe and it'll be a couple more weeks before I'm cleared for full activity.

I won't make any predictions on what's to come in CS Education in 2024 but I thought I'd share a few things I'd be looking at.

The hot topic in and out of education last year was AI and that looks to continue throughout 2024. For general education the issue will be cheating on one side an how to leverage the technology on the other. For CS an interesting twist will be how teachers deal with AI enhanced programming environments. The interesting questions will be not only be how we either limit or enable to the tools but also we'll probably see the start of a long term conversation as to what it means to teach programming. Nothing huge will change in this coming year but issues like the importance or lack thereof of understanding algorithms and data structures as opposed to using AI completion will start to surface as AI IDEs become more commonplace. Of course, in addition to the technical AI issues, the ethical ones ranging from uses to using private data for training are sure to be hot topics.

1Going back to School programming environments, that's something else that I'll be looking at. Over the past few years, tools like repl.it became extremely popular. A few months ago, though, repl.it removed it's educational features leaving many teachers in the lurch. Repl.it was a hit because it could work on a chromebook, was free, and had great classroom features. It turns out that putting ones trust in a private company's largess was probably not a great idea.

I've always been wary of making my teaching reliant on outside entities and that's something that I hope the greater CS community takes more seriously. I get it that many schools have few options - they have to use chromebooks and only approved software but having a well educated vocal community would be a start.

Speaking of educated communities, that's a big one that I'll be looking at - the preparedness of K12 CS teachers. This has been a drum I've been banging for a long time and will continue to do so.

I've always believed that K12 CS teachers need to have a decent background in CS - something like a strong undergrad CS minor that goes at least a course beyond APCS-A and has some breadth. That's how I designed Hunter's CS teacher certification program.

It appears, however that I'm not the norm. NYSED created a system by which CS teachers with no knowledge can continue to teach CS for the next decade. I wrote about that here. I've also seen plenty of new certification programs come online that require no real CS knowledge in order for the participants to complete the programs.

It's alarming but deep down I think the ship has sailed.

There will be a few pockets of excellence in terms of preparing pre service teachers and a few deep CS professional development options out there but we'll more often than not see weak CS accompanied by tangential education issues.

Right now, I think those will be the things I'll be keeping my eye out for but who knows. Before ChatGPT hit, AI wasn't on educators radar so you never know.