WeTeach_CS Summit 2026

Micro:bit Educational Foundation recently developed new 3rd-5th grade lessons aimed at integrating CS with core academic subjects and piloted these resources with over 150 teachers across 84 elementary schools. Hear from the Micro:bit Educational Foundation and the Texas Advanced Computing Center evaluation team as they tell the story of the pilot project, examine the evaluation research results, share the resources created, and walk through an example lesson. Small group discussions will focus on how to roll out micro:bit integration into local district and school contexts.

Learn how to confidently teach debugging in this interactive session. We’ll explore essential debugger tools—breakpoints, stepping, variables, watches, and the call stack—through guided practice with real bugs. Participants will leave with ready-to-use classroom strategies, sample debugging activities, and a simple, repeatable workflow that helps students think more clearly, troubleshoot independently, and write more reliable code. Perfect for teachers who want to strengthen students’ problem-solving skills and reduce frustration during coding units. This session will use Java, but can be applied to other languages.

Many states are embracing “data science” as a new high school course that emphasizes data visualization and data storytelling. In this session we describe hands-on data science activities with spreadsheets that we developed as part of the STEMcoding project (http://youtube.com/STEMcoding). These activities strongly align with various math, science and computer science standards. They can be used in a year long data science or statistics course, or they can enhance science, math or computer science courses.

Join us for an interactive session highlighting the findings and recommendations from Texas Education Preparation Program (EPP) working groups focused on strengthening the CS teacher pipeline in Texas. Over the past year, these groups have collaborated on strategies to address critical challenges in recruitment, shared instruction, and CS teacher certification and preparation.

In this session, participants will:
• Learn about key insights, frameworks, and resources developed by each working group.
• Engage in discussion and provide input on how these strategies can be scaled and adapted across Texas.
• Explore next steps to advance CS teacher preparation and support sustainable pathways for certification and shared instructional resources.

Participants will leave with practical ideas and collaborative opportunities to advance CS teacher preparation in their own contexts. This session aligns with the Summit theme 'Celebrating Brilliance' by showcasing the collective expertise and creativity of Texas EPP partners working toward increasing CS access for ALL students.