Closing out this year's AP CS Principles course, my students and I watched "The AI Doc" in sections, reading and researching claims, making student presentations, and using some of Code.org's AI mini-courses.
Today the College Board just did what Code(AI).org did yesterday, announcing they are redesigning AP CS Principles around Artificial Intelligence. I posted responses to both forums about why I thought adding units was a good idea but redesigning everyone's approach and workflow around what is essentially a marketing term for LLM chatbots fueled by huge datacenters was appalling.
My post got some articulate replies that grounded my concerns both in the "principles" of the curriculum and in the experiences of career CS teachers and industry professionals. It seems to me that teachers need to claim some agency around this, and not just be railroaded into "AI Everything" by organizations clearly paid by the mammoth AI corporations vying for primacy and rushing as fast as they can.
Off the bat, topics for an AI-Proofing Community of Practice might include:
- Ways to regulate and guide safe student use of LLM chatbots
- Helping students learn the "AI-proof" computational thinking and collaboration skills that LLM chatbots can't replace
- Understanding the AI industry ecosystem and predicting future social, personal, and planetary impacts
- Developing a shared informed and nuanced professional stance toward "AI" from which to speak to students
To gather that teacher agency in an environment of shared sensemaking, holding each other to defensible standards and offering mutual aid, I've proposed an "AI-Proof CS" Community of Practice, initially for MA teachers but open to folks outside. My proposed plan is to meet with teachers who want to be "core" members of the community and gather online during the first week of July to plan a full gathering for an evening the week of July 20th, to correspond with the Worcester CS4MA training. Hopefully people meeting in person can talk about the issues at lunch / after sessions and bring those conversations to a hybrid meeting.
Here's how to sign up for the Community of Practice and if you wish, say you want to help plan it: https://airtable.com/appLII6E1XockjRvb/pagXtQCjq2d7Jka3l/form
Thank you!
-Bram
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(Martin) Bram Moreinis
CS Teacher, Westfield High School
Westfield MA
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