A resource for computing educators
A practical guide to building a media presence — finding your niche, choosing your platform, setting up your gear, and creating sustainably.
“The public conversation about AI, computing, and education is happening right now — with or without academic voices.”
— The premise behind this guideThe Problem
Computing educators hold deep, hard-won expertise that rarely leaves the classroom. Meanwhile, public discourse about AI, software, and CS education is everywhere — and largely uninformed. Your voice can change that.
You know things that took years to build. You can explain concepts in ways that practitioners, students, and the public rarely encounter — and that perspective is genuinely rare.
Your students reach hundreds. A well-placed LinkedIn post or a clear 2-minute video can reach tens of thousands.
Conversations about AI ethics, software hiring, CS education, and the future of tech are dominated by voices that are loud, not necessarily informed.
Your participation raises the quality of that conversation — for students, practitioners, and the public alike.
You already have the expertise. You just need a channel — and a starting point.
Step One
The most common mistake is starting without a clear sense of who you're talking to or why. Answer these three questions before you ever hit record.
Think about what colleagues, students, or friends ask you to explain. What could you teach someone in five minutes that would genuinely help them? What expertise took years to build that now feels obvious?
Examples: explaining recursion without losing people, what AI hiring systems actually do, how to set up a dev environment, why CS theory matters in practice, how to read a research paper.
You do not need a massive audience — a small, highly engaged niche is far more valuable than a large passive one. Consider: students entering the field, fellow educators, industry practitioners, parents of CS students, or the general public curious about AI.
The same expertise can be reframed for each group. Pick one audience to start with and speak directly to them.
There is no universally best format. The best format is the one you will actually use consistently. Consider what you already consume and what comes naturally to how you communicate.
If you love talking: try video or podcast. If you love writing: start with a blog or LinkedIn. If you want fast reach: try short-form video. If you want depth: long-form YouTube.
Write down your three answers, then share them with a colleague. Listen for what surprises them and what they'd want to hear more about. Their reaction will tell you more than your own instincts will.
Step Two
Every platform has trade-offs. The goal is not to find the best platform in the abstract — it is to identify which one is best for you right now. Start small. You can always expand later.
Long-form explainers and tutorials. Content stays discoverable for years — a video you record today can still drive traffic in 2030.
Professional commentary, articles, and short video. Strong reach among practitioners and educators. Lowest barrier to start.
Nuanced arguments, tutorials, and long-form writing. Excellent SEO. No gear required — just your ideas and a keyboard.
Conversations, interviews, and nuanced topics. Listeners are loyal and deeply engaged — they choose to spend 30–60 minutes with you.
Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts. Fast reach for one-idea concepts — but content fades quickly and demands consistency.
Which platform do you already consume content on? That is usually the right starting point — you already understand the format, the pacing, and what makes content feel worth watching or reading.
Step Three
You do not need a studio. You need just enough gear to sound and look clear. Here is how to think about investment at three levels — and why starting at the bottom is almost always the right call.
Most successful educators started with a phone, a window, and a stack of books. Early audience growth is driven by content quality, not production quality. Get reps in first — upgrade later.
If you invest in one thing, make it sound. Viewers forgive mediocre video. They do not forgive bad audio. A $25 wired mic matters more than a $500 camera upgrade.
Upgrade when your gear is clearly the bottleneck — not before. If you're posting consistently and audience feedback keeps mentioning audio or lighting, that's your signal to invest.
Step Four
The goal of your first piece is not to be perfect. It is to break the inertia of "I'll start when I'm ready" — a moment that rarely arrives on its own.
Resist the urge to explain everything you know. One clear, well-developed point beats five vague ones. If you find yourself saying "and also…" — save it for the next piece.
Imagine a specific person — a first-year student, a colleague just starting to teach, a parent curious about AI — and speak directly to them. Specificity creates unexpected universality.
Skip the long preamble. Drop the audience into the interesting part immediately. You can add context once they're engaged — a hook is worth more than an introduction.
Publish the imperfect version. Every piece teaches you something about your audience. The feedback loop is the education — and you can only access it by shipping.
Step Five
Starting is easy. Posting the 12th piece is where most people stop. Build systems — not reliance on motivation — and content creation becomes a natural part of your professional life.
A YouTube video from three years ago can still be someone's first introduction to your work. A blog post from 2021 can drive traffic today. Invest in formats with longevity — they compound over time in a way that short-form content simply cannot.
Topic Library
The hardest part is often not the recording or writing — it's knowing what to talk about. These prompts are designed for computing educators and work across any format or platform.
Don't wait for inspiration — pick one prompt, set a 25-minute timer, and write or record without editing. The goal is a rough draft, not a finished piece. You can polish later; you can't polish a blank page.
Quality Check
Run through this before posting anything. It won't make your content perfect — nothing will — but it will make it ready. Check off each item as you go.
Action Plan
Motivation gets you started. A concrete plan gets you to month three — which is where the habit forms and the audience begins to grow.
Publish something every two weeks at minimum. Anything less and the habit doesn't form. Anything more and it becomes unsustainable. Two pieces a month, consistently, for 90 days — that's the target.
Efficiency
You have already created more content than you think. Every lecture, paper, conference talk, and office-hours explanation is raw material. Here is how to turn what you have into what you can share.
You don't need a new idea for every piece of content. You need one good idea, expressed in multiple formats for multiple contexts. A single conference talk, fully repurposed, can generate 6–8 pieces of content across different platforms — each reaching a different audience who would never have attended the conference.
Further Reading
A curated collection of tools, platforms, and communities to support your content creation journey at every stage.
Medium, Substack, and Hashnode are free platforms built for writers. LinkedIn Articles reach your existing professional network immediately. A personal site (GitHub Pages, Hugo) gives you full control and lasting ownership.
DaVinci Resolve (free, pro-grade) and CapCut (mobile, fast) are strong starting points. For screencasts, OBS Studio is free and powerful. iMovie and Clipchamp (Windows) handle simple cuts with no learning curve.
Spotify for Podcasters (formerly Anchor) handles hosting, distribution, and monetization in one free place. Audacity is free and sufficient for editing. Buzzsprout and Transistor.fm offer better analytics on paid plans.
Buffer and Later (free tiers available) let you schedule posts across platforms in advance. A simple Notion or Trello board for tracking ideas, drafts, and published pieces removes decision fatigue on posting days.
The SIGCSE community, CS education research groups, and educator threads on LinkedIn are good starting points. Sharing your work in these spaces generates early feedback and accountability without a built-in audience.
Look for computing educators who have built audiences on YouTube, LinkedIn, or via newsletters. Notice what makes their content compelling — pacing, structure, the specific examples they choose, and who they seem to be talking to.