Pittsburgh high school students design AI tools to address classroom challenges
Students from four Pittsburgh-area high schools presented AI tools Thursday designed to solve specific problems in K-12 education, from reading support to teacher workload. The projects emerged from a $25,000 grant that tasked students with identifying real classroom needs and building solutions.
West Allegheny High School senior Diego Jofre Lieva developed Lexic, an AI tool that adjusts reading texts to match student levels and translates content into different languages. Jofre Lieva, who transferred from Chile, saw firsthand how language barriers affect student performance. "I also helped students from Mexico, and that gave me insight of how bad it is when people don't know the ins and outs of the English language in education," he said.
The timing addresses a documented problem. High school seniors nationwide scored worst on reading assessments since 1992, according to a 2024 study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Five student projects presented
- Lexic - Adaptive reading support with language translation
- Simply Be - Stress management tool for students
- Grade Mate - Assists teachers with grading to free time for student interaction
- Write On Cue - Provides writing feedback
- Altyst - Personalizes test prep for Keystone and SAT exams
Cornell High School senior McKenna Griffith worked on Altyst, which reviews student assignments to identify strengths and weaknesses before high-stakes tests. "If some of the projects are implemented, it can make a great impact on education," Griffith said. "It's important to keep the human-to-human, teacher to student connection."
The projects came from six brainstorming sessions throughout the school year. Students also received mentorship from Carnegie Mellon University's mechanical engineering professor Chris McComb and two CMU doctoral candidates, Jessica Ezemba and Aslan Nourghasemi.
Ezemba said the collaboration showed her how schools can use AI to eliminate routine tasks. "Schools can get rid of busy work," she said. "It can also free up time for teachers and students to do things they want to do."
Jofre Lieva, who plans to study software engineering at Penn State Beaver, cautioned that AI adoption in schools requires careful implementation. "If there's no education on how to use AI, or a lot of AI use, it's definitely going to be worse," he said. "But if it's in a way that it's integrated, and not for copying and for learning, that will be useful."
West Allegheny's academic principal Katharine Roche said the district wanted to give students agency in shaping how technology enters schools. "Let's do a project that empowers students to drive change," she said.
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