AI Coding Buddies: Sparking Critical and Creative Thinking in CS

Slides
CSTA Conf2026
Imagine every student having a friendly “Design Thinking Buddy” to guide them through coding challenges, project work, and authentic computational problem solving. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll experience how student-facing AI agents can scaffold design thinking, universal design for learning (UDL), and inclusive CS practices. You’ll learn the essentials of prompt engineering, try out an AI Coding Buddy built for real student workflows, and walk away with editable templates for building your own bots, using Flint, MagicSchool, SchoolAI, Google Gemini,...