Ready ‘out-of-the-box’, the new AI K12 education curriculum can be taught by any teacher and learned by any student, regardless of educational background or age
Project-based learning approach makes learning AI accessible, fun and engaging
ReadyAI, the first teacher-friendly K12 Artificial Intelligence (AI) education company, today announced the launch of AI-in-a-Box, a comprehensive AI education solution for K12 teachers and students. Designed for users of all experience levels and abilities, each box provides everything that teachers need to instruct students on how to apply the key concepts of AI to real-world problems – including the curriculum, hardware, and software. AI-in-a-Box empowers schools and teachers to provide 10 hours of STEAM and project-based AI education. The unique curriculum teaches six key concepts of AI, including visual recognition, facial recognition, object manipulation, landmark-based navigation, speech generation, speech recognition.
In use at 15 community organizations and school systems throughout the U.S., AI-in-a-Box has already seen tremendous success and garnered strong support. ReadyAI has also been working to bring K12 AI education to students and teachers in China, training teachers to become certified AI instructors, and running student AI competitions.
“Over the past six months, ReadyAI has given the children at Western Pennsylvania Boys and Girls Club the opportunity to learn and understand the technologies that they experience in their everyday lives,” said Christine Nguyen, Director of the STEM Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania. “Exposing them to these incredible programming and creative experiences today will encourage them to become the scientists that create tomorrow.”
“AI in K-12 is an excellent opportunity to teach youth early fundamentals of coding, design and the evolution of robotics,” said James Carter, an early childhood educator at both the Jewish Community Center and the Boys & Girls Club in Pittsburgh, PA. “It also can be a stepping stone for our future engineers and other career paths. What made me recognize and follow the path to becoming one of the first Ready AI instructors was being able to do something I love in science and technology, as well as the opportunity to teach children how to grasp the future by learning AI ideas and curriculum.”
AI-in-a-Box includes everything a teacher needs to get started, including formal teacher training, providing the tools and resources for teachers to learn key AI concepts in just four hours. One AI-in-a-Box enables up to 15 students to be engaged at once, and can be used to teach up to 1,000 students in a single school year. AI-in-a-Box includes:
- 3 Cozmo robots by Anki
- 3 Fire 7 Tablets
- 3 Xbox One Controllers
- 3 Laptops with preloaded software
- 3 pre-installed Calypso licenses
- Up to 15 ReadyAI Passports for teachers and students to us as a repository for their AI projects
- 15 ReadyAI Badge Stickers for student AI Passports
- 3 sets of flashcards
- 1 Printed binded lesson plan and 1 Quick Start guide
- 3 vouchers to participate in regional competitions that may lead to the World AI Competition for Youth (WAICY)
“From intelligent assistants to self-driving cars, Artificial Intelligence technologies are reshaping our world,” said David Touretzsky, ReadyAI advisory board member and Research Professor in the Computer Science Department and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University. “The general public is both thrilled and terrified. Teaching kids about AI is as important today as teaching them about electricity was in the previous century.”
“AI-in-a-Box is a teacher-friendly curriculum to guide students to demonstrate the six most important AI concepts,” said Andrew Chen, President, ReadyAI. “Over the past 15 months, we have conducted pilots and seen proven results in more than 30 school systems and organizations around the world. Our plan is to train and certify up to 500 AI teachers worldwide in the next 90 days. We are confident that AI-in-a-Box will be a powerful enabler to K12 AI education.”
AI-in-a-Box complies with the National Guidelines for Teaching AI for K-12 Students, a working group chaired by Carnegie Mellon University Robotics professor Dr. David Touretzky, founded by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). ReadyAI also supports the Future Ready Schools® (FRS) initiative, a bold effort under ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) to maximize digital learning opportunities and help school districts move quickly toward preparing students for success in college, careers and citizenship.
To learn more about ReadyAI and AI-in-a-Box, please visit www.readyai.org.
