Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Using AI To Teach Computer Science

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05/08/2025 Added

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Computer Science teacher and CS4NE Host Kimberly Ingraham-Beck discusses using AI in computer science education. University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) | College of Education and Human Sciences (CEHS) | Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education (TLTE)

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[00:00:00.510]Coming up on "AI in the Classroom."
[00:00:02.670]Teaching computer science with the help of AI.
[00:00:05.450](upbeat music)
[00:00:10.680]Hi, my name is Guy Trainin.
[00:00:12.840]And I'm Kimberly Ingraham-Beck.
[00:00:14.310]And Kimberly is a part of a different podcast we have,
[00:00:17.947]"CS4NE,"
[00:00:19.230]and she agreed to join us in "AI in the Classroom."
[00:00:24.720]You teach computer science.
[00:00:26.640]So talk to us a little bit about
[00:00:28.950]how you're using generative AI,
[00:00:31.950]right, if we want to be specific,
[00:00:33.990]to help you teach computer science.
[00:00:36.240]Absolutely.
[00:00:37.800]So I have scoured the internet,
[00:00:41.520]trying to find hands-on activities that I can do
[00:00:43.680]to reinforce some of the concepts that we're learning.
[00:00:46.380]Right now my school is pushing for more engagement
[00:00:48.690]and hands-on activities in our curriculum.
[00:00:51.120]And so I couldn't find anything that I liked.
[00:00:53.880]So I turned to generative AI and I started asking it.
[00:00:58.230]I have dice and I have playing cards.
[00:01:00.600]And so I wanted to find a way to use loops,
[00:01:03.870]different kinds of loops using those activities.
[00:01:06.450]So through different prompts that I did
[00:01:09.720]and working with it,
[00:01:10.680]I was able to find multiple ideas.
[00:01:13.140]And then I used these ideas
[00:01:15.060]to work with other ideas that I had
[00:01:18.090]and created some activities that my students really loved.
[00:01:21.210]And so you're talking, really,
[00:01:22.950]what we often call unplugged activities
[00:01:25.110]where they're actually using their bodies
[00:01:26.940]or artifacts to understand concepts.
[00:01:30.540]And this is sometimes in the curriculum,
[00:01:32.160]but again,
[00:01:33.570]one of the things that we've talked numerous times is
[00:01:37.680]how we know as teachers
[00:01:39.630]where students have the hardest time.
[00:01:41.670]Yep. And this is
[00:01:42.630]where AI can come in and just augment whatever we're doing.
[00:01:46.560]It's like, "This is where I'm having a problem."
[00:01:48.780]We can make it unplugged
[00:01:50.850]or we can make a short video. Absolutely.
[00:01:52.490]We can do other things to help communicate.
[00:01:55.980]So that's a great way to use.
[00:01:58.860]And then you're a very experienced computer science teacher.
[00:02:03.630]I'm old. You're experienced.
[00:02:05.171]This is the difference between things.
[00:02:10.369]You know.
[00:02:11.280]You can look at it and see if it's doing the right thing,
[00:02:13.650]which is the other important thing to remember.
[00:02:16.230]I did also, as part of that,
[00:02:18.090]I wanted to create different for-loops
[00:02:20.130]with start points and end points.
[00:02:22.320]And so I had AI generate a whole bunch of different ones.
[00:02:27.750]And then I also included a few infinite loops in there
[00:02:29.730]to get the kids,
[00:02:31.200]so then they just had to keep rolling and rolling,
[00:02:32.580]and rolling 'cause they were never able to do it.
[00:02:33.900]So I enjoyed that. (Guy laughing)
[00:02:36.120]But anyways, yeah.
[00:02:36.953]So I had AI help me come up with the ideas.
[00:02:39.720]I had AI help me come up with the examples
[00:02:42.690]'cause I made problems for every group,
[00:02:46.470]and then I wanted the problems to be similar
[00:02:49.950]but not the same.
[00:02:51.750]And so AI was very helpful with that as well.
[00:02:54.270]All right.
[00:02:55.103]And what AI are you using when you generate these?
[00:02:57.060]So I am currently using Gemini from Google.
[00:03:03.360]I like to use different ones.
[00:03:06.270]So I will usually ask the same prompt to multiple platforms,
[00:03:09.570]and then whichever one gives me the thing
[00:03:11.520]that I like the best, then I work with that.
[00:03:13.440]Yeah, and I do love that,
[00:03:15.584]and I do find that I do something very similar.
[00:03:19.770]So I jump around between Claude and ChatGPT,
[00:03:22.920]and occasionally, Gemini,
[00:03:25.890]a few others when it feels right.
[00:03:29.370]But trying them out and seeing which one is good at what,
[00:03:32.820]because they are not equal.
[00:03:34.195]Exactly. I do use DeepSeek as well.
[00:03:35.820]I was gonna ask (laughs). They are not equal,
[00:03:38.550]and you get different things
[00:03:40.860]that really are excellent from one
[00:03:42.900]and then not so much from another.
[00:03:44.760]Absolutely. It's worth playing around,
[00:03:46.530]especially if you're not paying for all of them.
[00:03:48.480]I am paying for all of them. (Kimberly laughs)
[00:03:50.640]So that's a price I'm willing to pay.
[00:03:53.010]But as a teacher,
[00:03:55.050]use the free version, see which one gets you
[00:03:57.480]where you want to go.
[00:03:58.710]And there's probably going to be lots of opportunities.
[00:04:01.230]Hopefully, schools will start helping teachers with that,
[00:04:05.310]at least for teachers.
[00:04:06.870]I really believe, eventually,
[00:04:08.520]we need students to have access.
[00:04:10.170]Now tell me what you are doing with students in AI.
[00:04:13.039]So I teach a game development class with Unity,
[00:04:17.040]when it uses the language C#,
[00:04:19.170]but I don't have a class that teaches students C#.
[00:04:21.900]And so the curriculum that we use teaches them
[00:04:24.450]how to use Unity.
[00:04:25.920]And then also, by the way, here's C#,
[00:04:27.990]but it doesn't go into too much detail.
[00:04:29.460]So it's fairly similar to Java.
[00:04:32.430]And so the students kind of have an idea
[00:04:34.050]of what's going on, but not really.
[00:04:35.850]So when errors come up,
[00:04:39.360]sometimes it's really hard to troubleshoot
[00:04:41.040]'cause they don't know the language.
[00:04:42.510]So I encourage them
[00:04:44.160]to throw it into their preferred generative AI
[00:04:47.610]and see if it can troubleshoot
[00:04:49.140]and help figure out what the issue is.
[00:04:51.030]And there is a growing understanding in the field
[00:04:53.670]that AI does a fairly good job,
[00:04:56.070]definitely in recognizing errors, but also producing.
[00:04:59.880]We talked in a previous show about vibe coding
[00:05:02.190]and all of that.
[00:05:03.420]So I think that the opportunity
[00:05:05.040]and also teaching students that they can use AI
[00:05:09.720]to supervise what they're doing with coding
[00:05:12.300]and to learn new coding, and all of that,
[00:05:14.190]is really, really powerful,
[00:05:15.360]because we do know,
[00:05:16.740]that's what's going to be expected from them-
[00:05:18.960]Definitely. In the workplace.
[00:05:20.550]Yes.
[00:05:21.494]I firmly, wholeheartedly believe,
[00:05:25.470]the first thing you ask the generative AI to do
[00:05:27.990]is not going to be a good thing.
[00:05:29.340]You gotta work with it.
[00:05:30.240]You gotta constantly revise
[00:05:31.830]what you're asking, give it more details.
[00:05:33.840]And so I like having my students use it
[00:05:35.670]because they really get down prompt engineering,
[00:05:39.180]which I think is gonna be huge for them
[00:05:40.680]in the workforce as well.
[00:05:41.940]Yeah. All right.
[00:05:43.140]So today on "AI in the Classroom" and "CS4NE,"
[00:05:48.240]we talked about how Kimberly is really using AI to plan,
[00:05:53.280]but then also in teaching itself.
[00:05:56.310]And we'll see you next time.
[00:05:58.293](upbeat music)

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Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Using AI To Teach Computer Science

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