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Background and Context. This innovative practice full paper describes the development and implementation of a professional development (PD) opportunity for secondary teachers to learn about ChatGPT. Incorporating generative AI techniques from Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT into educational environments offers unprecedented opportunities and challenges. Prior research has highlighted their potential to personalize feedback, assist in lesson planning, generate educational content, and reduce teachers' workload, alongside concerns such as academic integrity and student privacy. However, the rapid adoption of LLMs since ChatGPT's public release in late 2022 has left educators, particularly at the secondary level, with a lack of clear guidance on how LLMs work and can be effectively adopted. Objective. This study aims to introduce a comprehensive, free, and vetted ChatGPT course tailored for secondary teachers, with the objective of enhancing their technological competencies in LLMs and fostering innovative teaching practices. Method. We developed a five-session interactive course on ChatGPT capabilities, limitations, prompt-engineering techniques, ethical considerations, and strategies for incorporating ChatGPT into teaching. We introduced the course to six middle and high school teachers. Our curriculum emphasized active learning through peer discussions, hands-on activities, and project-based learning. We conducted pre- and post-course focus groups to determine the effectiveness of the course and the extent to which teachers' attitudes toward the use of LLMs in schools had changed. To identify trends in knowledge and attitudes, we asked teachers to complete feedback forms at the end of each of the five sessions. We performed a thematic analysis to classify teacher quotes from focus groups' transcripts as positive, negative, and neutral and calculated the ratio of positive to negative comments in the pre- and post-focus groups. We also analyzed their feedback on each individual session. Finally, we interviewed all participants five months after course completion to understand the longer-term impacts of the course. Findings. Our participants unanimously shared that all five of the sessions provided a deeper understanding of ChatGPT, featured enough opportunities for hands-on practice, and achieved their learning objectives. Our thematic analysis underlined that teachers gained a more positive and nuanced understanding of ChatGPT after the course. This change is evidenced quantitatively by the fact that quotes with positive connotations rose from 45% to 68% of the total number of positive and negative quotes. Participants shared that in the longer term, the course improved their professional development, understanding of ChatGPT, and teaching practices. Implications. This research underscores the effectiveness of active learning in professional development settings, particularly for technological innovations in computing like LLMs. Our findings suggest that introducing teachers to LLM tools through active learning can improve their work processes and give them a thorough and accurate understanding of how these tools work. By detailing our process and providing a model for similar initiatives, our work contributes to the broader discourse on teaching professional educators about computing and integrating emerging technologies in educational and professional development settings. 

The Computer Science Frontiers (CSF) project introduces teachers to the topics of artificial intelligence and distributed computing to engage their female students in computing by connecting lessons to relevant cutting edge technologies. Application topics include social media and news articles, as well as climate change, the arts (movies, music, and museum collections), and public health/medicine. CSF educators are prepared in a pedagogy and peer-teaching centered professional development program where they simultaneously learn and teach distributed computing, artificial intelligence, and internet of things lessons to each other. These professional developments allow educators to hone in on their teaching skills of these new topics and gain confidence in their ability to teach new computer science materials before running several activities with their students in the academic year classroom. In this workshop, teachers participating in the CS Frontiers professional development will give testimonials discussing their experiences teaching these topics in a two week summer camp. Attendees will then try out three computing activities, one from each Computer Science Frontiers module. Finally, there will be a question and answer session.