Diego Jofre Lieva remembers some of the language barriers he faced when he came to West Allegheny High School from Chile at the end of his freshman year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took language assessments, and a lot of my peers really struggled,\u201d said Jofre Lieva, now a senior at West Allegheny. \u201cI also helped students from Mexico, and that gave me insight of how bad it is when people don\u2019t know the ins and outs of the English language in education.\u201d<\/p>\n
So when the opportunity came to work with other high school students across the region, tasked with a challenge to use artificial intelligence to improve a problem in K-12 education, Jofre Lieva\u2019s idea was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n
On Thursday at the Manchester Craftsman\u2019s Guild in Pittsburgh, Jofre Lieva and students from Cornell, Peters Township and South Fayette high schools presented Lexic, an AI tool that provides adaptive reading supports for students below grade levels or other needs.<\/p>\n
Not only could the technology adjust a reading text to meet a student\u2019s needs, it could also translate it to different languages, Jofre Lieva said. It also addresses a need: high school seniors nationwide had the worst reading scores since 1992, according to a 2024 study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.<\/p>\n
West Allegheny coordinated the initiative from a $25,000 moonshot grant through Remake Learning. Other student projects were Simply Be, a tool to help students manage stress, Grade Mate, designed to support teachers with grading, therefore freeing time for student connection, Write On Cue, offering writing feedback and Altyst, personalizing Keystone and SAT test prep.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur superintendent said, let\u2019s bring AI into school better and give students more of a choice,\u201d said Katharine Roche, West Allegheny\u2019s academic principal and director of special projects. \u201cLet\u2019s do a project that empowers students to drive change.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKenna Griffith, a Cornell senior, said her group\u2019s project, Altyst, reviewed students\u2019 coursework and assignments and would identify strengths and weaknesses to know where students can improve before taking important tests. The Keystone exams, for example, are a requirement to graduate from Cornell.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf some of the projects are implemented, it can make a great impact on education,\u201d said Griffith, 17, who will study forensic science at Waynesburg University. \u201cIt\u2019s important to keep the human-to-human, teacher to student connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students met six times throughout the school year to brainstorm ideas and discuss projects. They also got experience learning about AI and technology careers, and worked with Carnegie Mellon University\u2019s Chris McComb, a mechanical engineering professor. Two CMU students pursuing doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering, Jessica Ezemba and Aslan Nourghasemi, provided mentorship to the high school students.<\/p>\n
Ezemba said the experience expanded her knowledge and understanding of AI. In education, there\u2019s a lot of stakeholders that make decisions like principals, administration and school board members, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSchools can utilize (AI) to get rid of busy work,\u201d she said. \u201cIt can also free up time for teachers and students to do things they want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Learning how to best utilize AI is important, said Jofre Lieva, who plans to attend Penn State Beaver and pursue a career in software engineering. The future could be \u201crocky,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s no education on how to use AI, or a lot of AI use, it\u2019s definitely going to be worse,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if it\u2019s in a way that it\u2019s integrated, and not for copying and for learning, that will be useful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diego Jofre Lieva remembers some of the language barriers he faced when he came to West Allegheny High…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-168648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-pittsburgh","9":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","10":"tag-pittsburgh-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}