NSF FF: Planning: The Home-to-School AI Bridge: Democratizing AI Literacy through Physical Computing

This FINDERS Foundry award improves high school students' interaction with AI in the physical world beyond screens. While many students use AI online, rarely are they able to see how it can sense, act, and learn through real devices. This project creates a hands‑on toolkit with low‑cost sensors, microcontrollers, and simple parts that let students build and test physical AI systems. Students will explore community‑based problems, such as local safety, energy use, or environmental monitoring, to identify opportunities for AI to help meaningfully assist in solving real-world challenges. Through the co-designed hands-on toolkit, families, teachers, and students shape activities which are meaningful, age‑appropriate, and safe. By giving students the chance to design physical AI projects, the project increases learners' creativity, responsibility, and a deeper understanding of how AI works in everyday environments. This FINDERS Foundry award collaboratively develops early prototypes of a Physical AI Kit, design complementary curricular activities, and use participatory design research to identify community opportunities suitable for physical‑AI solutions. Specific device‑inventory specifications, curriculum mapping and the creation of low‑fidelity prototype wireframes are identified through co‑design workshops with students, educators, and families. Technical feasibility data on hardware and sensing components, validated user‑needs documentation, and a development‑phase plan for scalable integration into STEM courses are predicated on the iterative technical work. Through sensors, microcontrollers, and a variety of additional physical interactions, students deepen conceptual understanding of AI while applying locally relevant STEM applications in a responsible and accessible way. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.