MEG: Hello world and welcome to the podcast for educators passionate about computing and digital making. I'm Meg Wang, the editor of the Hello World magazine, and I’m recording this in the exhibit hall of the Computer Science Teachers Association's annual conference, which this year is being held in Cleveland, Ohio.
This is the second episode of our current podcast miniseries, continuing the conversation started in the latest issue of the Hello World magazine, issue 27, all about integrated computer science, also known as cross-curricular computer science. After the lovely feedback you gave us about our previous Teacher Tips episode, we thought we'd chat to educators here at the CSTA 2025 to hear their top tips for how to help you to integrate CS into your classroom.
Teachers, over to you!
TIFFANY: So my name is Tiffany Jones. I am a computer science and cybersecurity teacher. I teach at Global Impact Academy in Fairburn, Georgia.
INTERVIEWER: Teacher of the year, I heard.
TIFFANY: Yes, I did get teacher of the year this past school year at my school. So I am teacher of the year for the 25/26 school year.
INTERVIEWER: Woo!
TIFFANY: Thank you. So my top tip to help educators integrate CS into their lessons is essentially look at data. So let's say maybe you're in a science class and you're looking at maybe ocean health and you're looking at pollution. So you can look at different sensors that could be used, different microcontrollers that can be used to collect data, different environmental controls that can go to different physical computing devices to collect that data. You can look at different databases and platforms to help you analyze and visualize that data, with also different programing languages.
So I think by looking at it from a scientific aspect and then taking that computer science aspect and integrating it, you not only build that depth of knowledge in science by bringing in computer science, you're essentially helping students understand how that content crosses over different disciplines, which is what happens in the real world every day. And in business and industry.
JC: My name is JC Gordon. I'm from Nashville, Tennessee. I am currently a K-5 STEAM and computer science teacher in Metro Nashville Public Schools.
So my tip for other educators or future educators in integrating computer science into their classrooms is to not be scared of stepping outside the box.
Being that I am a dance educator first, into a new realm of teaching computer science and STEAM for my first year. I've pulled everything that I know about arts integration and dance in general into my STEM... STEM or STEAM computer, computer science classroom. And being that we use the language of dance, which is dance symbols.
It's kind of similar how music educators have the treble clef, the quarter notes, half notes. We as dancers and dance educators have our own language that as a choreographer, I should be able to write to you as a dancer and you should be able to read it. Not most dancers or people know that we have those. So you have had to had it in your pedagogy classes and or take it as an extra, you know, certification course.
And so teaching my third grade students about dance literacy, they were my coding babies. And so they learned how to program their partner as a robot, and then the coder.
In computer science it's called a unplugged activity. So it's not necessarily done on the computer. But so utilizing dance as an unplugged activity covers your standards for integration for computer science.
But just being able to step outside that box and not fit into a "code", if you will. To do something different. I always charge anybody to try something different.
I'm actually receiving the Computer Science Teacher of Excellence award for 2025 for my dance coding and computer science lab.
INTERVIEWER: Congratulations.
JC: Thank you.
INTERVIEWER: That's amazing. Wow. That’s awesome. Pleasure to speak to you then.
JC: You as well.
LISA: Hi, I'm Lisa Wenzel, and I teach computer science at Montgomery County Public Schools at Argyle Middle School.
So my top tip to helping teachers integrate CS into their lessons is figure out what you're passionate about, go talk to a computer science teacher, and I guarantee you that they're going to have something that you can do to teach coordinate planes or to teach colors in art, and it's going to involve computer science.
REBECCA: My name is Rebecca Muller, and, I do a lot of consulting, but currently I'm working with BootUpPD, helping develop curriculum and training other teachers in computer science.
My top tip of helping teachers integrate computer science into their classrooms would be to be thinking how to make it more interactive with your students. And I always tell them it's going to be the fun part of education that we... I feel like we've taken away from our students, and it'll be something they're super excited about. And, and they can make connections that they may not have thought of. And also it will connect certain students, that, that you might not have connected with before.
RICK: My name is Rick Ballew. I'm a middle school computer science teacher or computer science and engineering teacher in Bloomington, Minnesota.
I'm a big fan, specifically, of integration. I do teach computer science. However, I do like to help the other teachers in my middle school building because we are technically a computer science integration school. So my big thing is showing them how to use more computer science in their English class, or their social studies or whatever.
My top tip to help teachers integrate computer science into their lesson is pick one of your favorite lessons you're already doing, and figure out a way that you can introduce computational thinking into it. Because chances are, computational thinking is already a part of that lesson you're doing. Call it out to the students, and that's going to help them to start understanding how computer science is baked into everything we do.
So an example of ways of incorporating computer science into things that you already do is my former life. I was a band teacher. I taught beginning band and learning how to read a new piece of music is very similar to the steps in computational thinking. Got to break it down. There's abstraction. You've got to figure out the sequencing and you create the way that you're going to learn it. And that is all part of computational thinking.
VOSHONDA: I'm Voshonda and I teach computer science for middle school students in Decatur, Georgia.
So my top tip for integrating CS in the classroom will probably be to keep an open mind. And then always just to make sure that you are just using the Hello World magazine to find different topics like that. So yeah, that would be my top tip.
MEG: If you found those tips helpful there’s a lot more advice on how to integrate CS into your classroom in the latest issue of the Hello World magazine. Just head to helloworld.cc to subscribe, and read it. And if you need any further reasons why to subscribe, here’s a few from the educators we just spoke to.
First up, Hello World writer and CS & Cybersecurity teacher in Georgia, Tiffany N Jones.
TIFFANY: If you’re not subscribed to Hello World, I feel like you should definitely subscribe so that you can read articles from other teachers, understand things that they’re doing in their classroom and what works for them. Because maybe you want to implement those things in your classroom. Also it’s a world of information for Raspberry Pi Foundation and all of the different educator tools that are available out there for both educators and students.
MEG: Next up, CS teacher in Maryland, Lisa Wenzel.
LISA: I mean, I know the internet's really cool and you can Google stuff, but Hello World is like an encyclopedia and everything's in one place, and I really appreciate that.
Like, I'll sometimes grab the whole thing and give it to the kids and have them do activities like that. And then sometimes I take them and I modify them and kick them up a notch. But I have so much fun.
If you’re a nerd and you teach computer science, just having those things accessible to you in your classroom or for your own toolkit are really important, And I think, we all know that, you know, we don't want kids in front of the screens all the time. And I know for me that, having resources that don't involve a computer in my classroom that kids can self-select are going to become something that I'm focusing on in the future.
MEG: And now to CS consultant Rebecca Muller.
REBECCA: Hello World is always on the cusp of what's going on. I read it to kind of be forward thinking of what's going to be coming in America. A lot of philosophy that I've gained is because of reading some of the articles, like with, the unplugged activities and paired programing, lots of articles over the years have really kind of built my foundation of computer science education. If you haven't heard of it, you need to find it. It's available. And read through it. You will get a good sense of what's happening in the world with computer science education. And it is free.
MEG: Over to CS and engineering teacher in Minnesota, Rick Ballew.
RICK: I’m not a huge fan of print magazines except for one, and that is Hello World! Another reason you should be a subscriber to Hello World is you're given all sorts of resources that go beyond sitting in front of their device. You're getting all these different ways of doing physical computing that aren't just you and your Chromebook, or you and your iPad. It gives you the opportunity to work with physical computing devices. There are non-device lessons
that are available through Hello World. All sorts of different ways of incorporating computer science, whether you're a computer science teacher or anything else, that allows you to do computer science without the computer.
MEG: And finally, CS teacher in Georgia Voshonda Bolton.
VOSHONDA: So the Hello World magazine is very useful for me because it has articles that are relevant to the areas that I'm teaching right now. Listen, a lot of times computer science teachers tend to be the only ones in the building, and so this way they can see what other colleagues are doing.
MEG: Big thanks to not just those brilliant teachers, but all the fantastic educators who dropped by the Raspberry Pi Foundation booth here at CSTA 2025 to hear more about what we do. If you have any top tips for how to integrate CS in the classroom, do drop us an email. We'd love to hear from you! We’re podcast@helloworld.cc
Okay, next week we'll be hearing what AI education looks like around the world. We're joined by three global partners from the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Experience AI program, covering not just three different countries, but three different continents. Did you know the podcast is published as video on YouTube and Spotify, and its audio on your favorite streaming platforms? So you can watch or listen your way. Subscribe to Hello World on our website helloworld.cc to ensure you never miss a release. Until next time, bye!
