The 2022 launch of ChatGPT has accelerated the need for school leaders (at both the district and building level) to make important and time-sensitive decisions related to the use of artificial intelligence in their schools. Given the rapid development of artificial intelligence, there are few established practices or guidelines for school leaders to rely on, and school leaders' current knowledge of artificial intelligence may be too limited to inform these decisions.

The rapidly evolving space of artificial intelligence (AI) is requiring school and district leaders to make sense of how emerging technology applications, including those that use generative AI (GenAI), are being integrated in schools and districts across the United States. Much uncertainty exists about what GenAI is, how it works, and what the implications are for students, families, educators, and the broader school community.

Youth and their caregivers can play a critical role in rebuilding communities that are heavily impacted from natural disasters. Trauma informed STEM education can support youth and their communities to heal and recover during the aftermath of disasters. In this project, the Maui community and University of Hawaii researchers will collaborate to understand the role of STEM education in helping youth process the events in their community via content related to wildfires and their environmental impacts.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming society, and it is becoming increasingly clear to educators and researchers that K-12 students must be prepared for an AI-driven future. One crucial area that requires research is early childhood education (ECE) for children aged 5 to 8 years old. The potential impact of AI on early childhood cannot be overstated: there are far-reaching implications for language development, cognitive skills, sensory perception, and social-emotional development, which are the holistic goals of ECE.

Rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications have led to nation-wide calls for supporting youth in the development of artificial intelligence literacy, competencies needed to effectively interact with and critically evaluate artificial intelligence. Most importantly, a broader range of youths must be equipped to understand how these technologies work, their personal and social impacts, and how they may increase or undermine equity.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools have the potential to reshape education and may change teaching practices in K-12. As such, teachers must prepare students to have the necessary skills that will allow them to learn about these tools and use them productively for their lives and education. This project will pilot a curriculum with new educational methods in preparing pre-service teachers in understanding the fundamentals of generative AI and its potential teaching applications.

In the context of educational robotics, this RAPID project examines the educational equity potential of a task-oriented generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool to assist with creative productivity tasks in engineering design. This time-sensitive project will investigate how to support lower-performing learners through development and testing of an AI robot design assistant in a virtual robot-building game.

Schoolchildren are exposed to hundreds of digital tools each year, many of which are already driven by AI technologies. Parents and teachers must consider how to incorporate these learning tools into their daily lives at a rapid pace. Yet, very little is known about the current use and perceptions of AI among these key stakeholders. This time-sensitive RAPID project will identify the opportunities and challenges that arise for parents, teachers, and youth regarding the use of these AI-driven technologies in K-12 education.

The recent development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and Bard present new opportunities and challenges for learners in the elementary and middle grades. Despite their potential for facilitating and supporting scientific reading and writing, there are pressing concerns about how AI tools can produce harmful, biased, and false content, which then gets reproduced by users who lack sufficient critical evaluation skills or do not understand the importance of evaluating AI-generated content.

While Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve both science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teaching practice and students' overall classroom experiences, it is critical to better understand how teachers can more easily adapt it within their classrooms. In particular, supporting AI-driven tool adoption in resource-poor schools is crucial to address educational inequities. This RAPID project addresses an urgent need to facilitate integration of AI technologies into schools to maximize benefits while reducing the burden on teachers? time.