Planning: NSF FF: Planning: FINDERS AI Learning Foundry: Educator-Led and Community Co-Designed AI Literacy Innovation for K-12 Education

Award ID: 2627540

This FINDERS Foundry award supports the expansion of meaningful AI literacy learning for K12 students by creating a communitydriven, educatorled innovation model. Many schools struggle to adopt AI learning tools due to limited resources, unclear guidance, and uneven access. This project will bring together an interdisciplinary team to design a model for ethical, age-appropriate AI-learning that is easy to scale and grounded in everyday school realities. By centering community voices, this work seeks to strengthen future workforce readiness and provide schools nationwide with an adaptable plan for responsible AI instruction. This FINDERS Foundry award advances AI literacy for K12 learners through educatorled and communitycodesigned innovation. An interdisciplinary leadership team will collaboratively develop ecosystem structures, participatorydesign processes, and minimumviableprototype directions that support interdisciplinary AIliteracy learning. The project is guided by core questions regarding barriers to adoption and the ecosystem conditions required for scalable implementation. Intellectual merit centers on establishing AI literacy as a foundational, crossdisciplinary competency integrated into authentic learning pathways, ethical reasoning, workforce preparation, and community engagement. Broader impacts include building a replicable framework for communityinformed AIliteracy innovation, strengthening local capacity for instructional adoption, and supporting future workforce development. The project aims to produce an MVP that is usable, valued by stakeholders, and positioned for replication. 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.

NSF Program Director: Lindsay Portnoy