CoCo's Little Language Models, a project developed by Lifelong Kindergarten PhD researchers Manuj Dhariwal and Shruti Dhariwal, and the App Inventor Mobile Data Science Toolkit, developed by RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education), are winners of the 2023-2024 Tools Competition. Both earned awards as part of the Preparing for 21st Century World track, which aims to support and prepare students to navigate the changing world.
Each track has three different award levels:
- Catalyst ($50,000): for early stage ideas or products
- Growth ($150,000): for products with some users and scale
- Transform ($300,000): for established platforms with 10,000 or more users
CoCo was the recipient of a Growth award and the App Inventor Mobile Data Science Toolkit was the recipient of a Transform award.
About the tools
Little Language Models is a co-creative AI education microworld for children (ages 8–16) within the CoCo platform. It is especially designed to be developmentally appropriate for young learners, helping them explore and engage early on with the foundational ideas underlying Generative AI systems—in ways that are co-creative, playful, and personally meaningful for them. The work also highlights a shift towards introducing 'Probabilistic Thinking (PT)' as a foundational fluency for children in the AI era, in addition to Computational Thinking (CT).