Our project team is developing a research-informed educational ecosystem bringing AI concepts to upper elementary school students. This ecosystem will include a novel, low-cost, AI-enabled hardware toolset, including components such as sensors, actuators, and a microcontroller, for students to build smart systems, as well as support for teacher professional development. Through after-school and summer programs, we aim to engage over 1000 St. Louis County students in constructing functional AI-enabled solutions to problems presented in fictional stories that the students read in English language arts and summer reading programs. The goal of the approach is to encourage transdisciplinary learning at the intersection of AI, engineering, and literacy.  

Through this RETTL ITEST project, we hope to generate a new model for introducing vital AI concepts to elementary students that reduces barriers to integrating computational thinking into school curricula and provides tangible, trainable representations of AI for students to explore.