| 2025 12-06 |
“ETH unterwegs” in SchaffhausenWith “ETH Unterwegs” (ETH on the move) ETH regularly visits high schools in Switzerland to introduce the university as a whole and in particular, what it means to study in its different programs. This week we visited the “Kantonsschule” in Schaffhausen. There are no entrance exam for most programs at ETH Zurich; anyone holding a Swiss “Matura” is admitted and can enroll. This includes the Bachelor's degree program in Computer Science. 
photo by ETH / Ulrike von Groll I was very happy to meet some old friends there, including two former students who now work as computer science teachers. In order to give the students a flavor of what makes computer science a scientific discipline and not just a collection of digital tools, I talked about one of the things I like to talk about most: computability and the roots of computer sciene. Further Reading
Tags#K-12 #Talk |
| 2025 10-03 |
The Future of (Swiss) Schools in the Age of Generative AI </DramaticTitle>Yesterday I gave a talk about the future of schools, in particular with a focus on the role of generative AI and its impact on how we teach and what we teach. Of course: I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Still I was very happy to be invited to Fribourg and speak in front of teachers of all kinds of subjects about what I consider to be some reasonable assumptions regarding what some aspects of school may look like in, say, ten or twenty years from now. 
photo by Oliver Hirt First off, I hope that some things will actually not change, for instance, the automony of schools and teachers that we have in Switzerland. Second, teachers do not only have much more freedom in what and how they teach than in many other countries; but the very profession of being a teacher is viewed as a much more worthwhile career choice than at many other places. At least in my personal experience, Switzerland looks up to its teachers—as it should—much more than other countries to theirs. Third, I hope the permeability of the Swiss education system will remain unchanged. Now of course, things will look different in a decade or two, and recent changes due to the unprecented advances in generative AI will leave a mark. To me personally this first and foremost means to think about whether our curricula should be affected in any way. I am actually rather hesitant with respect to the extent the basics behind, say, transformers or neuronal networks can be didactically reduced in a meaningful way to make them part of K–12 curricula. But I think some central points can indeed become part of school education, and allow the students to take a look behind the scenes of our modern world. Then of course there are those that, apparently driven by some fear of being left behind, franticly call for abandonning, for instance, programming education all together: “Replace it by prompt engineering, because that is the skill that is from now on essential to software developers,” they say. Frankly, if that is what some people think, then maybe these people wanted to teach programming for (what I consider) the wrong reasons anyway. It was never about making every school student a future software engineer. But I also understand that for the general public, and for schools and teachers in particular, there are more pressing questions; such as what the future will look like with respect to homework or the “Maturitätsarbeit.” Of course there are very simple answers, most prominently: “It will be more important to assess the students' process, when, say, working on a project, and not just the mere results of their work.” or “We will have to make sure that theses will be defended by more thorough oral presentations and subsequent questions.” Sure, but implementing such changes will cost time and money. Here I do see some potential for new tools that may indeed help future teachers—never to replace them, but to support with, for instance, internal differentiation. The important thing here is that educators should decide where and how they could benefit from such support, and critically evaluate whether technology does offer a real perspective. It must not be the other way around, just using tools because they are there now and it would be a mistake not to use them—for whatever reason. Further Reading
Tags#K-12 #Talk |
| 2025 05-19 |
50 Years of the Austrian Computer SocietyThe Austrian Computer Society (“Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft”, OCG) just celebrated its 50th anniversity. On this occasion a symposium with different talks, panels, and poster sessions was organized from May 13 to 14 in Vienna. I was invited to give a talk about the current state of computer science in Swiss schools, and in particular how programming education can be implemented in a spiral curriculum. 
photo by OCG / Irina Scheitz In the light of recent disruptive events, I spent a significant part of my talk on how programming education may develop in the next years—in particular when the code writing abilities of generative AI gets better and better. Bottom line, I do not think that we should abandon programming education all together, just as we should not abandon calculus simply because “machines are better at it.” At least for this audience, this was a rather uncontroversial take. Happy anniversary, dear OCG! Further Reading
Tags#K-12 #Talk |