So it seems like Copilot and similar will be beneficial to programmers but the question remains as to how beneficial. Will it be incremental change or will it be a game changer? Today we'll look at how it will affect teaching and learning CS. It seems pretty clear that one group of learners will benefit from things like copilot - people who are already strong programmers who are learning something new.

ChatGPT in education has been all the rage but there's another twist on AI that was getting some buzz even earlier - AI based code completions. GitHub's Copilot has gotten the most air time but there are others out there as well. When you code with Copilot, you type in a function name and maybe a comment above it and the AI system will fill in the function. A canonical example seems to be Mergesort.

A teacher in one of my networks posted a question earlier today - "have you had any challenges or trouble with motivating kids in your classes?" Not a new question and I'm sure for any teacher with any level of experience the answer is a resounding yes. I don't care who you are. Not all of your students are motivated all the time. This can particularly be a problem when a teacher switches over from teaching an elective or selective to a required class but it might not be.

Yesterday, Alfred Thompson posted on students knowing their development environments. Alfred's post was inspired by a related post by Eugene Wallingford. Eugene's post was about more than development environments and both his and Alfred's posts are worth a read. Being a tool wonk I thought I'd add my two cents. I've always been a tool wonk. Use the right tool for the job and if you need to buy one, don't cheap out - get the best value right tool.

I'm team teaching the CS Topics course this semester with my buddy JonAlf. It's the final course in our Advanced Certificate and Masters programs in CS Education. It's a fun course. The theory is that a K12 CS teacher doesn't need to know everything but should know a little about a lot. It's a survey - think of it as an intro unit in ten to twelve different topics in CS.

As I'm sure you're aware, recently, in his latest racist, fascist proclamation, Ron DeSantis threatened to stop offering AP African American Studies (APAAS) in Florida because, well, we can't actually teach our children anything resembling our actual rather checkered history. I'm sure you're also aware that the College Board just announced changes to APAAS which basically removed everything DeSantis found objectionable. I've been seeing articles, blog posts, Tweets and more all calling the College Boards act a cowardly one.

Lots of layoffs in big tech recently. Overall lousy but I am encouraged by the number of people trying to organize the local community to be supportive in helping those affected. Clearly this "correction" can turn current employees worlds upside down and place individuals and families in precarious financial situations but the effects also affect the incoming workforce. In addition to layoffs, internships and offers have been canceled left and right.

So, yesterday was the first day of the semester. Since I'm retiring, it's my last first day at Hunter. Felt pretty good. I think knowing that I'll get a break after the term has alleviated some of the burnout for now. What will I be focusing on in class this last time around? I'm teaching three classes. First up is my undergraduate data structures. To be honest, I'm not looking at anything special there - just business as usual.

I know I said that I was done with chatGPT but since I've ended up sharing my posts with a few people I though a quick table of contents post would be appropriate. Post 1 - Some general thoughts on cheating Post 2 - Cheating with chatGPT Post 3 - Teaching with chatGPT Post 4 - More teaching with chatGPT Post 5 - chatGPT in a CS class Back to new content soon.

This should be my last post about chatGPT. The GPT in chatGPT stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer. Not something that you're going to cover in an early college CS class. I wanted to get my head around it and the technologies are typically covered in an advanced machine learning undergraduate elective so something you take after you take that 400 level machine learning class. Looks like I'm going to have to do some review first since I haven't looked at any of the prerequisite material in around a dozen years.