Building the next generation of collaborative designers

On a recent morning in Manhattan, third grade teacher Marina Beznos projected a digital social studies book on the screen at the front of her classroom at PS 77 in New York City. This wasn’t just any book. 32 Young Explorers and Everything They Learned Along the Way had been written and designed by her class as part of The GIANT Remix platform by The GIANT Room, a STEM-focused co-design lab that is engaging young people in the concept and process of collective design. 

“They were absolutely ecstatic,” Beznos recalls. Created using GIANT Remix, an AI-powered storytelling and publishing platform based on The GIANT Room’s methodology of creative STEM curriculum, the book features projects from the class’ social studies and writing unit on China, Nigeria, Egypt, and Peru. The project helped students develop writing, reading, and research skills – working in teams they explored nonfiction resources, took notes, and wrote about their findings. They also learned how to use engineering prompts to create avatars that act as tour guides through the book. And they got to share the finished work with each other and their families – digital copies are accessible to all and a printed copy lives in both their classroom and home libraries. 

In the last year, more than 500 New York City public school students have worked with classmates, a multidisciplinary team of artists, educators, and writers, and AI, to devise games and books that bring to life characters with special powers and identities as part of GIANT Room. 

“These creations are vehicles towards not only self-expression, but for connection with their peers, family, and community,” said The GIANT Room CEO Dr. Azadeh Jamalian, “Children  are learning to design their collective futures, and their creations provide opportunities for their families to get a better understanding of what their child is working on and learning at school, and celebrate those learnings.”

The GIANT Room is one of dozens of organizations, schools and school systems in CPRL’s Cohort on Tech-Powered Family Partnership that spent the last year designing, testing and measuring new ways of developing a tech-powered instructional core. Working with CPRL, and leaning on our Leading Through Learning Playbook, The GIANT Room has been exploring different ways of providing a platform for amplifying student and family voices in the educational design process. In short, they are creating the next generation of collaborative designers. 

“It’s so important to build trust and create a non-hierarchical culture when co-designing with kids,” Jamalian said. “This approach signals to all designers and decision-makers, both kids and adults, that their ideas are valid and worthy of exploration, and that their contributions make a difference. When we think about designing student learning experiences, if we don’t have students and families informing decisions and strategies, how can we be sure we are giving them what they need?”

The GIANT Room centers AI in their work, Jamalian said, because with AI rapidly reshaping industry, “It’s critical to provide opportunities for kids from underserved communities to work with AI tools and develop their AI literacy so they can better be prepared for the jobs of the future. That’s how we can create economic mobility.” 

Taking a systems approach: From professional development to measuring impact to sharing learning with the field

As The GIANT Room expands, it is focused on building systems for measuring impact, learning from that data, and adapting and improving its programming as it goes. In a new partnership with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame workshop, funded by the Robin Hood Learning + Technology Fund, The GIANT Room will design and facilitate workshops in classrooms in Queens’ District 24 for teachers and students to use AI to develop computational thinking and blended literacy skills. Teachers will have opportunities to develop their own AI literacy  and students will collaborate with GIANT creative tech instructors and researchers to design and create physical and AI-generated models of characters, settings, and plotlines for storybooks, which they will read and reflect upon together as a class. 

To ensure teachers are using the platform safely and effectively for each student, and in ways that enhance their schools’ core curriculum, researchers will map and examine measures including students’ narrative writing skills, ability to write effective prompts in AI, literacy, and computational thinking.  

The GIANT Room is also committed to sharing their learning with the field. The team is working with CS4ALL Software Engineering Program Junior, NYC Public School’s computer literacy program and teachers to create an AI Literacy guide to be introduced to classrooms this school academic year. Participating teachers will work with elementary and middle school students to use the GIANT Remix programs in their classrooms and examine outcomes in learning, engagement, and knowledge retention.