One of the hot education topics in New York with the upcoming mayoral election is gifted education. From what I've seen, we usually talk about having or not having programs but not about how gifted programs should be run. Here are some of my thoughts: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/gifted...

New York State just announced that it's creating a centralized policy for Dual Credit courses - college courses in Highs school - an alternative to the AP program. My thoughts and a comparison of both approaches: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/dual-c...

In the latest CSEd Podcast, Kristin Stephens-Martinez talks to William Griswold about his practice of meeting with students outside of class. Great episode. My spin over on my blog relates this to high school as well: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csed-p...

A couple of things I want to keep an eye on over the upcoming school year: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/school...

My final post on #CSTA2025 - what was good, what was bad, some suggestions and a bit on Cleveland. cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csta-2...

My final post on #CSTA2025 - a little on a couple of specific good points from the conference and a couple of suggestions for improvement. That plus a bit of Cleveland.

More on #CSTA2025 #CSED. The Exhibit hall, hallway track and receptions. Spent most of the time at the Pickcode and CodeHS booths but there was a lot more going on. cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csta-2...

The rest of the the sessions I attended at #CSTA2025, Great panel on CS Ed in the age of AI moderated by Pat Yongpradit and BT Twarek consisting of Julie York, Maya Israel, Allen Antoine and Jacob Shulman followed by a discussion of the CSTA teacher survey cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csta-2...

Continuing my recap of #SIGCSE2025 - today two more sessions. One by @neilcbrown.bsky.social showing off a nice new Python programming environment and one by Joseph Maxwell sharing a program he built that gives students a chance to learn real SWE skills. cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csta-2...

#CSTA2025 day 3. Four talks including a great session by Chris Orban, Mahmoud Harding, Jacob Koressel, and Tiffany Davis and another fun one by Colleen Lewis and Maria Camarena: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csta-2...

#CSTA2025 - the sessions I attended on the first day. One great session on AI and one not so great: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csta-2...

Start of my recap series for #CSTA2025 - keynotes and overview: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/csta-2...

Teaching Computer Science in the Age of Artificial Intelligence blog.acthompson.net/2025/06/teac... #CSed #AI

There was an article recently in the NYT on teaching CS in the age of AI. It discussed challenges for colleges as well industry demands. My take: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/teachi...

I'm seeing more and more antisemitism out there from people who should know better. I wrote this post about a really cool store I visited recently, what they had up, why it's antisemitic and why it's important to speak out against it. cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/cool-s...

Saw an article the other day saying that CS teachers without a strong background might be better than teachers in other areas with strong backgrounds (article linked in blog post) - I disagree #CSEd : cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/better...

Recently, an article has been making it's rounds in the #CSEd community on having different intro CS classes for different purposes. My thoughts here: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/pathwa...

I've been seeing a lot on vibe coding recently. "Coding" by prompting AI repeatedly - no actual problem solving involved. I've also seen people saying how great it is as an educational tool, something I disagree with. #CSED cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/vibe-c...

Following up on my last post: On using slide decks in teaching: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/on-sli...

I read a great blog post the other day by Kristin Stephens-Martinez. Got me thinking about the practice described and differences in teacher prep in K12 vs what instructors get in college. Here I rif on it (and the original blog post is linked in mine): cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/daily-...

What really is in a cyber security course in high schools? blog.acthompson.net/2025/03/high...

Do we teach CS in K12 for future CS majors, for non CS majors or both? Riffing on recent posts by Mark Guzdial and Alfred Thompson #CSEd cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/cs-for...

Wrapping up my #SIGCSETS2025 coverage #CSD cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/sigcse...

Last week was my second and final week back at Stuy teaching CS. Here's what went down #CSEd: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/back-i...

More thoughts on #SIGCSETS2025, this time, Birds of a Feather sessions #CSED : cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/sigcse...

So I've been back teaching CS at Stuy for the past week with one more week to go. Here's how it's going: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/back-i...

#SIGCSETS2025 Keynote day 2 - what belongs in CS #CSED: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/sigcse...

Starting my coverage of #SIGCSETS2025 by looking at the opening keynote #CSED: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/sigcse...

Computer Science Teacher: CSTA Ends Free Membership blog.acthompson.net/2025/02/csta... #CSed #CSTA

There are some interesting challenges with preparing HS kids for apprenticeships. It's one of the things I'm doing to get back in the game (part time): cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/back-i...

Elon's false statement about 150 year old people made me think about some of the CS and Tech history that's never talked about in #CSed: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/know-c...

Devorah and I just spent the week in Savannah - here's what we did: cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/savann...

Some thoughts on what we teach and when we teach it (specifically Abstract types and interfaces) #CSed : cestlaz.zamansky.net/posts/what-w...

The CS Education community is pretty active on Facebook, specifically in Facebook Groups. With Zuck and other tech leaders actions and behaviour, perhaps we should consider what platforms we should support: cestlaz.github.io/posts/choose...

Some thoughts on classic movies classic comedy and current culture: cestlaz.github.io/posts/hitchc...

Time for a blog reboot: cestlaz.github.io/posts/blog-r...

Some thoughts on making mistakes and on what makes a good teacher great: cestlaz.github.io/post/great-t...

One of the things I love about Emacs is its extensibility. Here's how I used Emacs and a bit of Elisp to extract emails from unformatted text: cestlaz.github.io/post/extract...

I usually write "A teacher's view of adventofcode.com where I write up some of the problems. I haven't done that yet this year (still might) but though I'd share a teachers overall thoughts on this years #AdventOfCode: cestlaz.github.io/post/advent-...

I just completed all 25 days of Advent of Code 2024! #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com - first time to complete all 25 since 2020

Saw Eureka Day two nights ago. Good play. Lots of laughs. Solid acting across the board and I'll see anything with Bill Irwin. The only trouble was that being a former teacher, it hit a little too close to home at times - I've been in meetings with those people.

Most undergrads who study CS want to go into industry and some want to found startups. Currently, formal education doesn't do much to prepare kids interested in following this path. Yesterday, I put on event to start to rectify that. Here's what we did: cestlaz.github.io/post/learnin...

Apparently tech companies want their new hires to all be mid level ready. #CSED This is not a good thing: cestlaz.github.io/post/the-new...

In some ways, I was the same teacher over my 33 year career but in other ways I evolved. Here are some thoughts on teacher evolution: cestlaz.github.io/post/evolvin...

Some thoughts on Bluesky as opposed to Threads and Mastadon as a Twitter replacement: cestlaz.github.io/post/blue-sky/

I was in San Francisco last week where we held a StuyCS meetup. Over 120 Stuy grads in tech spanning the years. It made me reflect about the StuyCS community and how it's unique in Stuy. Wondering if there are other similar communities from other high schools. cestlaz.github.io/post/communi...

Education is a marathon. It took 30 years for StuyCS to get to where it is today. I took a look back: cestlaz.github.io/post/cs-prog...

Recently, NY created a cert for CS teachers but decided that current teachers, even if they have no CS background can keep teaching without being certified for 10 years. The same is happening for bilingual ed. This is not good. cestlaz.github.io/post/knowled...

As CS Educators, particularly us older folk in K12 have had the opportunity to observe the birth of a new area of study. CS didn't exist as a subject area not that long ago and now it's on its way. I wrote up some thoughts on this: cestlaz.github.io/post/observi...