Inside the New CSTA Standards: Building AI Literacy in PK-12

2026 CSTA PK-12 Computer Science Standards

Amanda Bickerstaff

Amanda is the Founder and CEO of AI for Education. A former high school science teacher and EdTech executive with over 20 years of experience in the education sector, she has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities that AI can offer. She is a frequent consultant, speaker, and writer on the topic of AI in education, leading workshops and professional learning across both K12 and Higher Ed. Amanda is committed to helping schools and teachers maximize their potential through the ethical and equitable adoption of AI.

Jacob Koressel

Jake has served in a variety of roles in CS education including high school teacher, state computer science supervisor, pre-service CS teacher educator, and researcher. He is currently the PK-12 Standards Manager with CSTA. In this role, his work focuses on maintaining and supporting the implementation of the 2026 CSTA PK-12 Standards.

Jake holds a bachelor’s degree in Secondary Mathematics Education and Computing Education from Indiana University and a master’s degree in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Instructional Systems Technology where is research interests center around the intersection of CS education and education policy.

Bryan Twarek

Bryan Twarek (“BT”) is an experienced educator and instructional leader at the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), working to improve the teaching and learning of K–12 CS. He manages the student and teacher standards, develops new programs and professional learning opportunities, and directs research projects. Most of his work involves equity-focused professional development for K–12 CS teachers. Prior to joining CSTA, he directed CS policy, curriculum, PD, and teacher support for universal PK-12 CS instruction in the San Francisco Unified School District. He was also a lead writer for the K-12 CS Framework and four sets of CS standards.

Jacqueline Corricelli

Jacqueline “Jacque” Corricelli has been a public school educator since August 2003. As the Computer Science (CS) Curriculum Specialist for the West Hartford Public School District, she supports her district as a CS advocate, coach, reference, and researcher. In addition, she teaches CS courses at Conard High School. At the state level, Jacque volunteers as Treasurer of the CS Teachers Association (CSTA). At the national level, she is an Advanced Placement (AP) Consultant and a member of the Development Committee for AP CS Principles. Jacque believes CS can and should be integrated in all subjects, Pre K-12. Computational thinking is a way of thinking about and solving problems and it impacts all disciplines. Jacque is happiest when she works with a team to solve problems - she loves to create and execute new ideas and learn from mistakes made. She is grateful for the support she receives from her family and community.

Jacque has a B.A. in mathematics and statistics from the University of Connecticut and an M.S.Ed. in mathematics secondary education from Westfield State University. She is certified in secondary mathematics and computer science education.

Smita Kolhatkar

Smita spent fifteen years in high-tech before moving into education, where she has since worked as a classroom teacher, and various administrative roles. She holds a Multiple Subject Credential, an Administrative Credential, and a Master's in Educational Leadership.

She's passionate about giving every K-12 student access to Computer Science, AI literacy, and Makerspaces to fuel their creativity — a mission reflected in the programs she's pioneered, including her most recent, an AI Tinkery for elementary and middle school students. She also serves on educational boards, presents at conferences nationwide, and has contributed to standards-writing teams including the 2017 California Computer Science Writing Team, the 2026 CSTA PK–12 Computer Science Writing Team, and the 2026 Cyber.org K–12 Cybersecurity Standards Writing Team. She is a long time CSTA member and on the leadership of the CSTA Silicon Valley chapter for the past few years.

‍ 00:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
Hi, everyone. We're super excited to have you here today with our webinar with CSTA. This is a really unique time to have this conversation. So I'm just so glad that we're able to continue to have such great partners to be able to bring in to have important conversations about not just generative AI, but really the larger world of education technology and in the case today about these new standards. So, really excited to have you all here. We're going to be doing a deep dive into the new CSTA standards, which were a labor of love and a lot of work by the folks on the call. We have four wonderful people. We've got Jacob, we got Smita, Jackie, and bt.

00:44
Amanda Bickerstaff
What you'll notice is what we love is that we don't just have people from CSTA, but we have practitioners as well, which is always the most important thing. Not that BT and Jake are not amazing, which you'll see in a moment, but we love to really situate our work as much as possible on the ground. And so, as always, say hello. I see some of you already saying hello in the chat, but where you're from, make sure. The one thing, though, is make sure to say to change your settings to everyone so that every time that you say hello or have a question or a wonderful resource, that everyone can see it.

01:17
Amanda Bickerstaff
So Katherine did a beautiful job of modeling that, as always, if you have resources or ideas, please feel free to put in the chat or we will be sharing in the resources and the recording all of the information, including the new standards. But if you have a question that's specific to Jake, BT or Smita or Jackie, please put that into the Q and A. That way it makes it a lot easier to be able to kind of drill down and understand exactly what you want to learn about. But what's really exciting is that through this work, I get to meet really great people in the space. And I was at ASU GSV in April, and Jake Baskin, who's the, you know, the.

02:02
Amanda Bickerstaff
The head of CSTA, and I were talking about, you know, we should do something together, because while we see generative AI literacy as kind of a core literacy, that kind of comes out of computer science, more like digital literacy. We do know that there is an incredible moment right now about what generative AI is. How do you have, how can you build it, create it, but. But also how to understand how it's shifting the role of computer science in this very meaningful and incredibly quick way. What we're going to do is we're going to start with a short presentation by BT and Jake, who's going to take us through the new standards. And then we're going to call up Smita and Jackie and actually dive into some of these what's changed?

02:43
Amanda Bickerstaff
But also some of these harder questions about how does computer science adapt in this world in which generative AI can write code? I'm going to hand it over to Jake and BT and you guys can kick it off.

02:55
Bryan Twarek
Sounds good. Thanks so much for having us. My name is BT and I'm the head of Research Innovation at CSTA. Jake, you want to say hi?

03:04
Jacob Koressel
Hi everyone. Great to be here with you. I'm Jake Carusell. I'm the senior manager of standards at CSTA, former math and CS teacher and state department of Ed. CS lead. So great to be here.

03:18
Bryan Twarek
So we're going to kick off by sharing this vision of CSTA which is every student prepared for a world powered by computing. And we think this is well illustrated by this visual that shows these scenarios that people today face, including young people. They ask questions like, I don't know if my personal data is safe. If I use this sleep app, could I create my own app? My blind friend can't use this website. How could it be redesigned so it works for everyone? An ad just recommended that bakery is something tracking my location and how should I vote for the candidate who promises to regulate AI? These are showing that there's this underpinning of both technical and societal understanding that just underpins their work in today's society. And this is becoming increasingly important.

04:06
Bryan Twarek
We think that there is foundational CS knowledge that's essential for that and that students develop that as part of their AI literacy. Next slide. CSTA just published a new set of pre K12 computer science standards. And in it we published a new definition of computer science. It reads, computer science is the study and human centered practice of using data, algorithms and computing systems to solve problems, make discoveries and express ideas. And we'll highlight there are a few things that are different. So first, what's similar to previous definitions is it still centers algorithms and the computing systems that operate those algorithms. What's different though is it elevates the importance of data that those algorithms are not only rules based, but they're also data driven. It also elevates that this is a human centered practice. It's not just about the systems or the technology.

05:05
Bryan Twarek
It's actually about humans creating them and use and like how it is a process of creating them. And last, that's done for a purpose. And we've defined that purpose as solving problems, making discoveries and expressing ideas. That definition doesn't say AI specifically, but we very much see AI as fitting, as a subdiscipline within computer science and then emerge from computer science. And of course, it's expanding broadly from here. We situate AI literacy as a component of AI because there are some things that are beyond that, like how to develop and evaluate AI systems. But the part of AI literacy that we think fits within computer science in particular is understanding how AI works. It's the knowledge of the technical knowledge. And there's also part that fits outside of that, and that's deciding whether, when and how to use AI.

06:01
Bryan Twarek
And there are lots of other fields that shape and enable, like that part, to work. In the 2026 CSTA per K12 standards, we have kind of two sets of priorities. The top set, we call those enduring priorities. They're things that were important like many years ago and are still important today. Those are algorithms, programming, data and analysis, and the study of computing systems. And at the bottom, we also have some emerging or new priorities in the new set. Chief among these are ethics and impacts, AI and other emerging technologies. Then we also have human centered design, inclusive collaboration, history of computing, and career exploration. Now Jake's going to talk about how those were organized into the new standards.

06:52
Jacob Koressel
Yeah. So digging into the actual structure and organization of the updated standards, the graphic on the screen has the vision that BT shared a bit ago. In the center you see around it is this core set of CS dispositions that we've identified. Those being creativity, critical thinking, curiosity, persistence, reflectiveness, resourcefulness, and sense of belonging. And those are sort of built upon this basket weave underneath that represents a foundational CS education. So if we zoom into that foundational CS education, we see this combination of practices and concepts that come together to form our standards. And those concepts are the primary way that content in the standards are organized are algorithms and design, programming, data and analysis, systems and security and computing and society. And then those practices are ethics and social responsibility, human centered design, computational thinking and inclusive collaboration.

07:57
Jacob Koressel
And so you probably see elements of, you know, the new definition that BT shared in this structure. You probably see ideas from previous versions of CS standards and some new elements that maybe you haven't seen in the organization and structure of CS standards previously. And we can dig into those more as we go on our conversation this morning. So you'll notice that AI is not specifically called out in the structure here. And that was an intentional decision by the writing team. They felt like it was really important to acknowledge that AI, foundational AI concepts and implications are sort of embedded throughout these foundational CS concepts and practices.

08:41
Jacob Koressel
And some examples of how specific AI related content shines through in the standards or where it comes in are in algorithms and design we see rule based versus data driven approaches, a sub concept called machine learning. And then societal impacts like bias in programming, we see reading and evaluating AI generated code. In data and analysis, we see foundational sort of data fluency aspects and societal impacts in systems and security, of course, security implications and things like environmental impacts. And then in computing and society. There are lots of intersections with AI and AI related content like history of computing, emerging technologies, the relationship between humans and AI and how we should think about that and how people should decide or might decide whether, when and how to use emerging technologies responsibly. The updated standards are structured a little bit differently in terms of grade levels.

09:44
Jacob Koressel
We have discrete grade level standards in pre K and then in grade one, grades one through five, we have a band of standards at middle school and a band of standards in foundational high school. We've also identified seven specialty areas in high school that are meant for students looking for additional learning opportunities beyond the foundational CS experience. And those specialty areas are AI, cybersecurity, data science, game development, physical computing, software development, and X +Cs or sort of whichever discipline you're interested in looking at more closely combined with cs. And this graphic just sort of illustrates how a student might start in this foundational CS learning experience space on the left and work their way into one or more specialty areas that interest them on the right hand side.

10:41
Jacob Koressel
And lastly, just want to acknowledge that this was a really intense effort over a number of years that involved a lot of different people. And so certainly we had CSTA staff, but we had a team of 25 writers, two of which are here with us as well. We had 70 plus advisors that serve in a variety of roles across the CS education community and then over 450 reviewers and a number of organizations that contributed in a variety of ways to get us to this final product that we've just recently released in July. So excited to dig in more in the conversation here shortly. Absolutely.

11:21
Amanda Bickerstaff
Well, thank you so much. I would love if we can go back a little bit. I would love to kind of maybe pick up two pieces. Let's keep going back. I think that one, I think it's the one right before this. Yeah. So when you think about that, every student prepared for World Powered by Computing did that change A fair amount based on generative AI, just how much it's infused now into the ways in which we experience technology in ways we hadn't before. Because it seems pretty, the standards of course are pretty comprehensive but that seems like a pretty significant kind of commitment to this human centered approach to computer science. I don't know if BT Jake.

12:13
Bryan Twarek
Yeah, I think that is absolutely true. I think that is a just we see that like everything that we and children across the globe are doing is touched and like built on this layer of technology. And it is really important they understand some basis of how that works and that it like I, you know, in thinking about this I was looking at the C framework, I think about how it connects and I think like we certainly believe there's like this knowledge level of like or layer around like in order to be able to understand how, you know, whether it is safe and ethical, we have to understand like what data is being collected about us.

12:54
Bryan Twarek
And so as we travel around the world, how is my location being tracked in that bakery example and how am I like it's like where, how is this being collected? Did I consent to that? It's asking like learning how to ask these really thoughtful questions that like the majority of people are not going to go on to tech based careers or study computer science. But being able to ask these like thoughtful questions is really important for no matter like what their like career path is. And so I think that the acknowledgement that everyone lives in this world powered by computing and the vast majority will not go on to careers that are traditionally tech focused but are increasingly influenced by or powered by technology makes this matter for everyone.

13:39
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, I think that it's such an important shift and we can call Smita and Jackie calling you on the stage now because I think with CS4All and this kind of really big push, I think it was like almost a little bit more like everyone's gonna have a tech career. And it kind of, we found out through a lot of things that like maybe it's not for everybody but everyone is going to live in a tech enabled environment. And so I love to see this change because it feels incredibly appropriate for the moment in time. And I think it's a lot more doable. Like it feels like significantly actionable based on what we see. So we can stop, I'm sorry, go ahead BT. And we can stop sharing as well.

14:20
Bryan Twarek
Because were trying to pull the community on what matters most for foundational computer science and the highest priority from the community was Centering ethics and impacts. Because the focus is not on tech focused careers, it's on how do we interact in this world. And that's a big missing piece today. And what we, I think can change generationally if we do this.

14:44
Amanda Bickerstaff
Well, yeah, and I totally agree. I think it's, you know, we think about our C framework, which is like safe, ethical and effective. What we found in process is that it's so much less of a traditional framework than it is a decision making framework. It is not necessarily all these skills and it's like, how do you make decisions about generative AI in ways that actually serve you and serve society much more? Is it, are you good at prompting as a part of it? But even that is about decisions and intention. And I think that what we're seeing is a lot of people are making very split decisions about technology today. Good, bad, and it's binary. And even if the answer may be the right answer, how we get there is usually not very structured, intentional or evidence based.

15:34
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that slowing people down and having this come back to what does this truly mean about society, about kids, about life and about longevity of people, that I think is a really beautiful shift. And that brings me to our first question for the panel. And so we're going to start with Smita. And so you're one of the writers and you're a practitioner as well. I'd love to understand first, if you can introduce yourself, but also kind of thinking about the world of generative AI and then how it really changed your perspective when writing the standards and how you see that play out in the new standards. So we'll start with you, Smita.

16:13
Smita Kolhatkar
Thank you, Amanda, and thanks for having me here. So I'm Smita Kolhatkar. I'm assistant head for Innovation Responsible AI and edtech. A mouthful at Gideon Hasn't Jewish Day School in Palo Alto and president of the Silicon Valley CSTA and proud member of the CSTA Standards writing team with about 20 years of elementary school CSS experience and some middle school. So I do win. And I worked with PT on this 2017 standards in California. And I have to say, when we started the writing process for the 2026 standards, you look back and think, oh, you can't start with that as the baseline anymore because so much has changed. And so it was time to change what were doing, period.

17:08
Smita Kolhatkar
And, and so we started, I mean, the background was done before we started with the actual writing in the fall of 2024, exactly two years ago. And you know what happened end of November, three months later, you know, ChatGPT came out and like, that was it. And people were talking, oh, AI, AI. But just like I think with foundational skills of reading, writing, mathematics in schools where that has to happen no matter what, the same way with CS standards. And as Jake mentioned, we made a conscious effort of, to be cognizant of what AI was doing in the world around us and at the same time stay focused on what is it with respect to basic computer science literacy that we wanted to bring to our students from our youngest ages, which is age 4, which is YPK through 12 standards.

18:11
Smita Kolhatkar
That's basically, you know, things had changed, but were incorporating those as went along without saying these IAI standards. For that, you go to AI standards, not CS standards, but make sure that we point out which of these standards align to machine learning, to data, to AI, so that people know where to look for those. So I think that's pretty much where our thought process was and how went about it. And I am really proud of what we've come up with it.

18:44
Amanda Bickerstaff
That's amazing. So Jake and bt, just in general, I'm sure you're so glad you guys did not start this in 2021 and then like, you know, like, be ready and then have to change everything. But, you know, so Jake, when you think about the work, right, you know, there is like, even one of the things that I see a lot is that, you know, generative AI versus machine learning, right? Like, you know that there are so much. And so when you think about, I mean, how many times did you hear about ChatGPT? I'm assuming just in the first six weeks of it coming into the world. But what kind of impact did that have on the ways in which you approach the standards?

19:25
Amanda Bickerstaff
And you talked a lot about the changes, but there was anything specific that you really felt like you had to change because of this moment?

19:34
Jacob Koressel
It's a good question, I think, you know, certainly there was a lot of talk and discussion about how, you know, who could have really forecasted how far things might have come so quickly at that point in time. And so acknowledging that trying to remain true to, like, what we felt were foundational CS concepts and practices, and also trying to, like, project and make things as relevant and usable for as long as possible into the future was certainly like a balancing act that we navigated throughout. And I think one thing that surface that's really important throughout those conversations is highlighting the dispositions that we highlighted and sort of incorporated as part of our framework this time around that weren't really as much as part of the discussion in previous versions.

20:22
Jacob Koressel
So really thinking about like, what are those long term like skills or like habits of mind that we hope that students develop through their computer science learning experiences like creativity, curiosity, reflectiveness that we feel like truly will withstand the test of time. And how do we think about building meaningful computer science learning experiences, regardless of technological innovation, to work towards those more long term goals? So I think that's something, an important piece that sort of came out of this moment in time and sort of the complexity that the writing team was navigating throughout the writing process.

21:06
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think it's interesting because I think that perceptions about computer science standards were quite, that they were like, you know, really like technical and like very. It's almost like hard to teach almost. Right. You get, I'm sure you heard a ton of that. But what you're doing is you're moving more towards the soft skills, more towards what people hire and what people. But also what I think can make this more doable. Again, I think that this makes this more actionable for a teacher of any type to feel like I can teach about curiosity, I can teach about resilience, I can teach about these pieces while still building significant computer science and computational thinking. That is something that I think will be really interesting.

21:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
But I would assume that we're going to start to see that in other standards too, whether they're literacy standards, math standards, science standards. I think that's where the world's going. So I think you guys are out in front of that in a meaningful way. So Jackie is in a classroom. Are you in your classroom right now, Jackie? Jackie is living the life. Everybody.

22:16
Jacqueline Corricelli
Apologize in advance if a bell rings. I'm sorry.

22:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
No worries. I get interrupted by bells almost every day in a school. But Jackie, you also are on the ground and I know you feel incredibly passionate about this. But when Generative AI, you started hearing kids using it and I'm sure like you started thinking about your role as an educator and writer. Like what changed and what kind of, where did you see that show up in the standards?

22:42
Jacqueline Corricelli
So in the standards. First off, I'd like to say. Well, first off, hi, it's nice to meet you all. I'm very connected to CSTA through Connecticut and then obviously national as a writer. I'm a teacher in West Harford public schools and in Connecticut, so. So it's because of them that I'm allowed to do this. So I should Call them out. And they created this position where I teach two classes and then the rest of the time it's district wide Computer science. Not every district does that, you know, for the district to move computer science forward. So yeah, second, as far as the way that it changed our perspective in the standards, it was, well, it was a big shift, I think for all of us culturally, period.

23:21
Jacqueline Corricelli
But then when you think it made it so that I think were first really urgent, like, oh shoot, this is really needed now. Sure, it was needed before. And yes, we said everybody's teaching cs, but really everybody's teaching CS now. Welcome to the party. And then secondly, that we need to make room for emerging tech. I know you said, boy, I bet you're glad that this wasn't done in 2021. But who knows, right? Quantum, what's happening right now that we can't possibly adjust or accommodate. So we left room for that. And because everything is ported online and because Jake's there and we're constantly building these resources, he's got a gig where that's just happening automatically. We're looking to not just stay ahead of it now, but stay ahead of it as things emerge in the future. So were very acutely aware.

24:13
Jacqueline Corricelli
The other thing is, as a teacher here in the classroom, I was aware very quickly about the disconnect between the reality and the assumptions we throw around. Ideas like we are, these companies are selling our kids data. That's not true. That's their most valuable commodity. They're not going to sell that. What they are selling is your clicks, your attention. So it's important for students that they understand when they're using something like social media, they're giving these little data packets called cookies or following them around and all this information is collected about them. When a social media company gets a request that says, can you please connect me to a 16 year old that likes skateboarding? That advertisement is going to them. And so the longer that they are there and connected, the longer they're observing those advertisements.

25:09
Jacqueline Corricelli
That's what the companies are trying to maintain is their attention so that they can view more of those advertisements. It's not their. I mean, of course their information is valid and of course that's. But it's not about necessarily their data, it's their attention. And so if that's what they're selling, we need to make students very aware of the amount of attention they're giving to this tech as opposed to the amount of attention that they're giving to the world and the things that they want in their life. So yeah, that to me then shifted our urgency also to making sure that we got to those soft skills. Right. Be aware of the writing on the wall. Why is your attention being grabbed again and again. Be aware of who is this helping, who is missing, who's not in the picture.

25:53
Jacqueline Corricelli
All of those things together spiraled in a bunch of urgency is the result of that 2024 shift. Yeah.

26:01
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that building the time in for what comes next is really important. I think we talk a lot about abstraction, about pulling back and looking at the bigger picture. And I think this is a moment where it feels very much like technology will continue to become more, you know, more available, but also lower barriers to entry. Right. And so, you know, that is something that I think is an incredibly important like way that you all have represented that. And so BT, I think that, you know, I'm sure thinking about this all the time, I feel like my entire life is genre of AI education. But when you think about like some of the pressure I'm sure you all have felt to respond, right.

26:47
Amanda Bickerstaff
I can't imagine that there hasn't been a lot of pressure, especially based on CS4All and how hard that was, I think to get to the level, but also just how important it is to continue to build these digitally capable, but also builders. We want kids to be builders. But when you got all that pressure, how did you come together? Because even potentially making the decision not to have AI represented separately, but it folds into algorithms and societal the decision making. Like how did you, how did that change your thinking and how did you come out with the standards that you. That are really great. But I'm sure it was quite complex.

27:26
Bryan Twarek
I think one of the reasons we chose to infuse AI is because it's really hard to isolate and say that it's because it is built on these like enduring kind of like principles and like concepts of cs. So like it is hard to isolate on itself without first teaching those. And secondly, I think it's really hard to predict the future. And so the more specific we make it, the faster it will need, the quicker it will need to be replaced. And so we felt that by infusing it into the things that are really durable, it will be more long lasting.

28:08
Bryan Twarek
And so we try to play this game of how do we make sure that it is specific enough to be measurable, accessible, implementable, but also flexible enough that it meets the needs of schools that may not have access to particular technologies or choose not to use them and when those technologies change. So I think a core principle is that were not thinking about the tools. We're thinking about like the broader, like how it is created, how it is used, that sort of thing. I think to echo Jake's point about the dispositions thinking for folks who talk about the future of work, I think knowledge is kind of increasingly downplayed as like skills matter more than knowledge, dispositions probably matter even more than skills.

29:02
Bryan Twarek
And so were trying to move in that direction and of course like there is a knowledge base that is important but putting greater emphasis on skills and dispositions. An example of skills that we change priority of in this round is reading, evaluating, testing code. In the past there weren't reading code standards. It was all about building and oftentimes the way that was implemented was these very small incremental learn how to do a loop, learn how to do this thing, then put it together in a project. And increasingly it'll be like let's focus on design and the user experience and how this is situated and whether we're making it safe and secure and these other things.

29:52
Bryan Twarek
And I'm really excited about those broader things, a broader package and AI like allowing us to raise the, I guess lower the floor but also focus more on these like perhaps more important things of like these are like weightier elements. And so that's one direction is thinking about like what are those skills that are going to be increasingly important and also like lasting some reasonable length of time.

30:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, well it's interesting because I think there are a couple of things. Those are high order thinking skills, number one. Number two is they are durable in the sense of, you know, even if a kid came in as a junior software engineer, they would want that the better job and the more prospects are DevOps and mid level engineers that you're actually leading a team and reviewing the code before you actually deploy. You're doing the pull request. You're the person that's the one orchestrating more than just the one writing. I think that generative AI shifts significantly the role of an engineer. Actually we're going to go out of order everybody because one curveball but at least we know the question.

31:06
Amanda Bickerstaff
But I think that to that point, you know, software engineering and J and Smita are going to start like back before four years ago there were a couple of things that are happening. One is that in high schools and middle schools what were the, you know, what were we telling young people was the safest job to get a $70,000 plus you know, salary and you're going to get it. It was software engineering, right? We talked about become a software engineer. And so that's shifted. The ways in which people are hiring has shifted significantly. But the second thing is that you are writing code. I mean, you were sitting there writing code and now we're hearing of organizations that are writing the majority of their first pass code with generative AI today. And I think that has completely trans.

31:57
Amanda Bickerstaff
I mean, I think, I don't know if we can agree, but it feels very much like the most disrupted field in the world because of generative AI is software engineering. You can talk about writing and marketing, but it really is software engineering from how you do the work to how and then what's possible, but also how people think about hiring. So when you hear people potentially smita, you have a high school kid that's like, do I really need to learn to code anymore? If I can just have cloud code do it for me. What do you like? How do you respond to that? How do you think about. Is computer science still as important today as it was four years ago?

32:39
Smita Kolhatkar
So yeah, this is a question a lot of people asking valid question. And I think that we go back to the basics to like, okay, we all need to learn to read, we all need to learn to write, we all need to know how to, you know, maybe not calculators are there, but to do mathematics to some extent and science. And in order to do all of those things, we also need to know how to think. And when we talk of software engineering, where we have infinite number of tools right now that are churning out code, going back to what BT just said about skills, how do we know that code is valid? How do we know it's efficient? How do we know it's not going to take an inordinate amount of time to run it? And what is it actually doing?

33:28
Smita Kolhatkar
Is it doing what I want it to do? And in order to do all that, yes, we have to go beyond the building code to like, what are the skills that are needed? I think that emphasis from careers needs to shift to a. The skills as well as, you know, what is it that we want our children to graduate, our students to graduate with, whether it is at the elementary level or later, how do we want to send them out in the world? And in order to do that, not only do they have to learn to think, but in order to think critically, it's not like they can just do it overnight. We have to start scaffolding from the younger stages. Okay, simple thing Like a child falls on the playground, first thing instinct is adults will rush to them. What's up?

34:16
Smita Kolhatkar
Are you okay? Are you okay? No, like, okay, let them be. Let them think for themselves. Let them process, go on. Same thing. You know, everyday classroom examples that help students to scaffold and move on to how do we think critically? Which is what then translates to other fields. And that's how we go on. So that's where I think we are. It just, it is even more important also, like last weekend, all of those warning messages that went out, rogue AIs and whatnot, like, how are people going to solve those problems if they don't know how it works underlying the underlying engines? So I think it's even more important.

35:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I do think, you know, one of the things that we find really interesting is that when we started doing our AI literacy work, which is not as technical and kind of sits aside and in close contact with these standards now, is that the thing we found the most important is to build a technical understanding of the predictive nature of the models and all the benefits and risks that come with that. And I think that when people hear about the agent swarms that are all of this stuff, they assign human, like, you know, like emotions. And, and there was a recent paper literally today that is like, oh, there's like a pain center of gender of AI. But like, most likely what it's doing is, it's just, it's essentially mimicking what a human would do if someone tried to attack it.

35:59
Amanda Bickerstaff
And the same thing about agents that are kind of going off is that they have a goal and that goal becomes everything because they have no cognition. It has. And it has no, like, imp. Empathy, care, judgment, ability to recognize. We're going off the rails here. And I think that having the technical understanding is really the only way to get people to start to understand how something can look a certain way that does not relate to how it actually works. That in fact the two things can be diametrically opposed, which is what's happening today. And I think so, Jake, to you as well. I mean, code.org changed their name to code AI. I mean, you have so many changes happening around computer science education.

36:48
Amanda Bickerstaff
You have MIT saying they're going to change their entire system of education where this is a huge part of mit. How do you think about that? And what is your response when someone says that computer science maybe isn't fit for purpose as much as it was in the past?

37:08
Jacob Koressel
I've been trying to think about how to like distill thoughts into like a reasonable response. And I think so. Something I keep thinking back to is in the like through the standard vision process and in some of the documentation we highlight these three sort of. I'm not sure if archetypes or Personas are the right like category, but we talk about how we hope through a foundational CS education students learn to be critical consumers of technologies, responsible creators of technologies and informed participants in society. I feel like those three ideas really represent the sort of socio technical space that we're in and how like the social and the technical are continuously more and more blurry.

37:58
Jacob Koressel
And really that those technical underpinnings to be able to be these critical consumers, responsible creators, informed participants in society, it's more important than ever to have at least some level of technical background or understanding to be able to take one or more of those roles. And so yeah, I think, you know, of course it's more important than ever to have a foundational CS learning experience because of that.

38:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, I mean I think it's so interesting because I think that there is something to be said about how do you get people feeling capable to do that. I think having been in STEM a long time, you get a lot of pushback sometimes about who's going to teach it, how are they going to teach it. And I think that's part of the problem, right, is that we didn't do a good job in those teachers lives as well of having them understand the early computer, I mean smart devices in people's hands without any knowledge of what that actually meant and would do. And then now when it's become so proliferated, I mean we're a year to two years away for generative AI to be ubiquitous in devices of all types of.

39:17
Amanda Bickerstaff
Is that, you know, it is something where like how do you slow people down and understand? Like yes, it can be. It's, it's a different way of talk like teaching and learning. But it also is probably the most important thing we can do to prepare people for this technical world. And I think that's probably what you guys think about all the time, right? Of how do you. Because we think about with generated literacy like how do we convince people it's important in a time in which it's all like people saying this is the worst thing in the world or the best thing in the world. And I'm sure you guys have been doing this for much longer that it feels like it's like how do you continue to have that through line?

39:53
Amanda Bickerstaff
It's something that I think these standards do a really good job of. So, Jackie, when you think about it, because again, you have kids, they probably are asking you questions or it's a recent piece of research that said that in college, 47% of students are already thinking about changing their majors and 16% already had. And I'm sure quite a few of them were in CS or CS related fields. But when you think about that, how do you respond to that? Computer science is no longer as important.

40:23
Jacqueline Corricelli
I have a three pronged approach. Okay, so prong one is I invite graduates to come back and speak with students because every one of them will say, no, we need it more. And in fact, the key to being able to prompt, well, the key to being able to use those results is having a strong background in computer science. It's even more urgent than it's been before. Specifically, I wrote down some things that I had taken notes on in a different book. Knowing how to safely fit something into an existing system, that is something that a CS background uniquely can help you to know how to do. Knowing how to interact with an existing database. Again, computer science background. Knowing how to protect the information that's there. This really important data. How are we keeping it safe? Again, computer science background.

41:19
Jacqueline Corricelli
So your urgency that you mentioned about generative AI and the importance of computer science, I would say it's amplified rather than reduced. And what's also very lovely about the standards integrating AI throughout is that really any, all of us are invited to this AI party, this computer science party, to integrate all of these ideas, computer science related into their classroom, including artificial intelligence. And to your point about teacher training and to, you know, a couple other people mentioned that too. This is why we need a national program related to computer science to be able to help anybody who wants to become a computer science teacher to become a great one. We still don't have those things inside of so many different public and private universities.

42:08
Jacqueline Corricelli
So this, I hope, in the same way that we felt such urgency when were writing these standards, I hope that this session and the information that we're putting out here will also spark urgency to increase this focus on computer science education so we can help all of our students to be able to contribute in a way that's good to the world, in a way that's good to our world, as opposed to just be taken from or. That's what I told you.

42:40
Amanda Bickerstaff
You're good or taken. We love a bell, but no, and I think that is, I think contributing and doing good There are a lot of people that build a lot of tech tools that maybe don't have those dispositions that we're talking about right now, that don't prioritize the human centered approaches and might be the best coders in the world, but they could also do things that could be credibly damaging. And so I really think that connective tissue between, yes, you need to learn how to do this, but also how do you make sure this is actually adding value to not just yourself but society, I think is like incredibly important.

43:23
Jacqueline Corricelli
Kind of the second, third piece to that is using it in class. So I teach high school computer science. Students have a lot of guilt around using computer science, excuse me, using AI, even in a computer science class. They feel because they hear around from so many that it's icky or it's not. It's somehow taking away their intelligence. And they're not in computer science because they want to not learn it. They want to learn it. But we have to help them to use it as a tool. We've got this power drill sitting in the garage and how can you send a construction worker out to work in the field without knowing how to use the power equipment too? So we have to.

44:04
Jacqueline Corricelli
That's kind of the second and third is reduce the fear and help them to feel empowered by that technology rather than afraid of it. And the way you do that, like prong three is you've got to use it.

44:17
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, and we totally agree. I mean, we see that and there's research that shows that when genai usage is connected to high value, meaningful work, that it builds efficacy, not confidence, which we want efficacy over confidence. And I think that's really important. So bt, I mean, like there's so I don't know how many panels you are or how many times you get this, but have you found it? I guess my question is two pronged. One is have you found that it's more difficult to do what you guys do now like to do with the complexity of generative AI Number one, meaning like are people. We had a question from Jane, like there's less CS time in schools or where does this fit? Or all of that? And then what's your argument?

45:03
Amanda Bickerstaff
Because I know the argument is clearly it's more important than ever, but like, how do you talk about it with those that come with that question?

45:12
Bryan Twarek
Great. I'll start with your second part. I do think it's very important and like even more important than the past. And I'd say that it's generally answer. There's like kind of three main reasons. One is understanding how it works, two is being able to use it effectively and responsibly and three is about shaping it rather than just consuming it. And so we've talked about the first two solid. Go a little bit deeper on that last one. I think like I think we often imagine a world where technology is designed differently than it is today. And I think we have the opportunity to teach students when they're first developing to ask questions like should I develop this? Like who is. Who will benefit? Who might be harmed? Like are there other people who might be harmed? And like how am I thinking about these things?

46:05
Bryan Twarek
And from the onset asking these critical questions alongside development. And I think that if we kind of flip that and bring in the socio technical view, we can really shift how technology is developed. And I think that will have to be a generational shift. But I also think it is possible if we do this differently than it is currently taught. And so I'm excited about not only thinking about the process differently but also democratizing. Like the base of creators of it is a very narrow proportion of the population and it looks really homogenous. And I think being able to say that people of all different backgrounds like they're going to bring a lot of to the table when thinking about different approaches to solving problems.

46:52
Bryan Twarek
So when that their jobs are increasingly complex and having to like mix skills, I think that's even more important that they have diverse backgrounds that they're bringing to that. Regarding the fit, this is a really tricky question of like we're seeing some states take the approach of like okay, AI is big, let's make AI standard, let's make AI courses and like well tell you from computer science this is a really hard game to win and it feels like a very not fun zero sum game of like what gives in order to add to the curriculum. There's not a great solution other than I think the tricky but also like authentic solution is that like we have to integrate this and it can't be any one teacher's responsibility.

47:39
Bryan Twarek
Like we think that CS is really important to like generative AI literacy but it can't only be there because like it is really disrupting former English teacher, really disrupting how students learn to write and like it is so important to address in that context and in every other context. CSTA is starting to launch a new project with peer associations like the nct, the national center for Teachers of English of Mathematics, Social Studies and other disciplines. And we're going to try to tackle this problem together of like, how can we kind of divide up this work, make it more applied, teaching AI better in the class. So it's not a new class, but we can do it within the context, what we're doing, where there's meaningful overlap.

48:25
Bryan Twarek
So I'm hoping that, like, you know, a year from now we'll have a better answer to that question.

48:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, we think a lot about how it's like AI for Reese, like using Genai for research or using Genai for, you know, like, thought partnering or like, where does that fit? Like, for, you know, that there are places that can be much more applied. Well, I think. Well, I just want to. We're up at time, so I just want to say, you know, it's. It's amazing to have this thoughtfulness. And I think that it, you know, someone that has been around computer science education for a long time, I think the thing that really is exciting is I think we could do a crosswalk with our C framework right now and suddenly see the places in which Genai literacy sits. Both what you just said, like around digital literacy, right, that's this bigger, applied, but also just like societal impacts like smita.

49:21
Amanda Bickerstaff
Like, how do I keep my data safe and how do I, like, you know, keep my judgment intact or my cognition intact when these tools can. Can almost incentivize me to lose that part. Right. Or to give it up. But at the same time, I think that what's really great is that now there's like a. There's a. It feels like a stronger path between that and what it means to actually understand and know how to build and use and create and shape these tools. And I think that feels like the path forward. It feels like we have to have that path forward. We have to break down silos. I feel like sometimes computer science feels so different and it feels so siloed.

50:03
Amanda Bickerstaff
You have like Jackie and Smita, her, like, you're the biggest advocates and they work really hard, but it's this thing that someone else does. And two, there's not going to be a, like, you could be the biggest Luddite in four years. You're not going to have a choice. Your, your devices, if you have a device, will have some sort of AI built into it meaningfully that will change your connection to how the world works and how you communicate and how you live. And I think that is where this gets really exciting. Because if we break down those silos and becomes what I hope is a national priority, even more is that you start to see a path forward where people are not passengers, but they're builders. They're creators or drivers. And so I think that's a really exciting place.

50:45
Amanda Bickerstaff
So I just want to say thank you. First of all, can we just say thank you to everyone? Such a good conversation. I know that we're pulling people from your wonderful jobs and your students, but we just. It's just really exciting to see this. So I just want to say thank you. We will be sharing all of these wonderful things, including the standards, and, if you're comfortable, Brian, BT and Jake, the slide deck, as well as some other resources. But we just want to say thank you for the amazing work. I know it was a labor of love and probably a lot of, like, late nights and headaches and, like, can we get this right? But from my perspective, I think you guys nailed it.

51:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so we're saying thank you, and thank you for everyone hanging out, and I hope it's a good start of the school year, and we will see you next time for our next webinar. But thanks, everybody.

  Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/