#Hackathons - Little Hackers Saving the World

Jim Taylor and I took a team of five students from Newlands Intermediate to participate in the 2024 AI for the Environment Hackathon. The event was sponsored by AI Forum. Over 320 Kiwis participated at six different venues across New Zealand. All were keen explore how AI could help us develop solutions to issues contributing to climate change. Our young team, the AI Earth Keepers, earned second place at the Wellington event and were chosen as one of four teams to present their solution at the AI Summit in Auckland. Sadly, we were unable to take the students, but they recorded their presentation and that was shared at the summit - proving viable solutions are not limited to grown-ups.

How did a group of intermediate students end up participating in the AI Hackathon? Well, as always, it takes a village.

Let's start with Jim Taylor and Theta. I met Jim at a 2017 hackathon for mixed reality. Jim was interest in developing a platform to allow users to create pop-up museums using the Microsoft Hololens. I was keen on developing a platform to to support students creating their own content. We teamed up, along with a talented group of university students, and we won!

Theta thought the work we did together was important enough to back. They asked Jim to build the prototype, with the caveat that he develop it with students. That started a unique collaboration between developers, students and educatiors. After six years, and three iterations, Mixiply is now a reality. It's pretty awesome, I hope you check it out!

When I considered taking a team of students to the AI hackathon, I was confident in students' ability to generate meaningful solutions to climate change. The challenge would be supporting the AI component. I knew from experience that Jim could skillfully bridge that gap. He is masterful at listening to what end-users say, as well as observing how they work. Most importantly, I knew Jim would be respectful in honouring the vision of the students. I extended the invitation for him to join our team as mentor and, thankfully, he accepted.

Next was gaining permission from the Newlands Intermediate senior administrators as well as the AI Forum to allow intermediate students participate. Both said, YES! I love the possibilities that come with that word.

Finally, and most importantly, I extended an invitation to the entire school for students eager to tackle climate change. An incredible group of young environmentalist responded, ready to make an impact.

It was hard for students to grasp the concept of a hackathon, so they leaned into what they did know -- how to do "school". They immediately began brainstorming ideas for the issues they wanted to address. Despite my attempts to encourage them to keep an open mind, they dove into researching topics and creating presentations. I later discovered one student had even written a speech. They had no clue about the adventure they were about to begin.

Our team was formed and we finally all convened, for the first time, at the hackathon. The first issue to address was that students showed up with different ideas, but the brief required each team to collaborate on a single solution. As our team debated how to resolve their differences, we were interrupted several times by a variety of experts popping in and out of our work space to intorduce themselves. Listenting to the students arguing and feeling frustrated by the interruptions, Jim suddenly asked the students, "What if you didn't have to choose one solution?" Jim explained how we could create our very own panel of experts using AI agents. The students LOVED the idea!

Jim demonstrated how to build prompts to create AI agents that could provide the same calibre of expertise as their real-life counterparts. We wanted the agents feedback to be robust but delivered at an age-appropriate level.

The most exciting moment was when we first tested our AI panel of experts by submitting work the students had brought with them. It was so fun to be in the room and watch students reaction as they got feedback they was specific to their respective plans and suggesting things they had not yet considered. It was the moment the students finally grasped the magic of hackathons.

This is why I love hackathons! It gives students an opportunities to step out of the classroom and gain a glimps into "real-world" problem solving. It gave them confidence that they could make a difference. And they are making a difference. The AI Earth Keepers are still going strong, working out how to execute their ideas.

Learn More

The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation met with Newlands Intermediate Deputy Principal, Simon McAtamney, and me to understand the pedagogy behind our young team’s success. That interview was featured in their February Newsletter, which focuses on AI in education in New Zealand.

Evelyn Davies, one of our young hackers, wrote an excellent description of her experience at the hackathon. It was posted in the August 2024 Edition of Newlands Intermediate Newsletter. I have reposted the article in it's entirety below.

You can explore all documentation of our experience on the Mixiply group, AI for the Environment Hackathon 2024.

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AI for the Environment Hackathon, 8-9 August, 2024 - Amazon Web Services (AWS), Wellington

AI for the Environment Hackathon

By Evelyn Davies

Aug 22, 2024

The hackathon began when each team gathered in a room to hear the rules and learn how it worked. Tim Bradley from AWS hosted it. He explained the problem, climate change, and asked us to come up with ideas that included AI to fix it.

We went to a big conference room with an amazing view of the harbour, and got to work immediately. Evelyn, Kate, Sofia, and Izzy began to work on their Google slide about gardening in unused spaces. Rajbir, who was working by himself, began to work on his project about using mealworms to biodegrade plastic.

We met our mentor, Jim Taylor. He was there to help us with the AI part of our hackathon project.

Jim is an emerging technologies architect at Theta. He has lots of experience working with crazy-cool AI. With Jim’s help, we decided that the AI part of our project would be a panel of AI specialists. You could give it your ideas and a whole bunch of AI experts would give you feedback and suggestions or point out problems that you might face along the way. Some of the experts we needed were an environmental scientist, a funding expert, a project manager, etc.

Some of the best things about the hackathon were the free vending machine and small basket of snacks. We would sneak out and sneak crackers, popcorn, and whatever we could find into our pockets to take back to our room, hoping that the adults wouldn’t find out. But the front desk people definitely knew something was going on. 

We all thought that we were going to present our slides, show everyone what we’re made of, and win. Evelyn, Kate, Sofia, and Izzy looked at gardening on roofs, staircases, gardening underground, and gardening underwater. 

However, there was a flaw that they hadn’t seen, as the AI experts pointed out. Kate thought that the staircases would be inside, whereas Evelyn and Izzy thought that it would be outside. They settled on a solution to put plants vertically instead.

Now, Rajbir’s project had been going great. He had made an informational presentation and was learning all there was to know about mealworms. But when he put his idea into the panel of AI experts, they showed him a problem he had never seen before. It showed him that when mealworms feed on plastic, they let out carbon dioxide into the air, which doesn’t do anything to help climate change, let alone stop it. But he was determined to complete his task. He researched some more and eventually got himself on the right track.

Whaea Marianne and Jim told the girls that they needed to pick only one idea to showcase. They debated bamboo and rooftop gardening but eventually settled on rooftop gardening.

Back to the girls' work, it was their turn to get something out of the AI panel. Instead of getting problems back, they got benefits that they never realised for rooftop gardening. 

They learnt that it could-

• Reduce the urban heat island effect.

• Improve air quality.

• Increase biodiversity in cities.

They also realised they didn’t have to grow only herbs, spices, fruit, and vegetables in the spaces. They could also use plants in general to clear up the air, which they found very useful.

Both teams decided to work together to make one main goal to fit the hackathon criteria. If the AI experts Jim made helped us, it could help all eager kids with good ideas! Lots of kids are still stuck in my teacher telling me what to do, mode. They want to help but aren’t sure how to. We can share the AI resource our team created to help them. 

Day two, it was time to prepare our presentation. Evelyn, Kate, and Sofia auditioned to see who would present their ideas.

We decided that Kate should speak at the end of the presentation to explain our team goal. We rolled the dice to decide who would talk about roof gardens. Sofia won. Izzy and Evelyn went to work making some art to help polish the presentation.

Jim worked on the presentation’s layout, and we all eagerly got to work on our jobs. Izzy began photoshopping a picture of our ideas, and Evelyn got to work writing a report on the hackathon.

We made up the name of AI Earthkeepers for our group, ditching the original idea of calling ourselves Team Potato.

Rajbir, Kate, Sofia, and Jim practised doing the presentation under the five-minute time limit. 

Jim invited some professionals to watch and give some honest feedback. They told us that what we were doing was really good, but we needed to slow it all down. The time to present was coming closer and closer and we were really nervous.

When it was time to present, the first group had an idea of an app to help work towards a predator-free 2050. They made an app that allowed you to scan for possum tracks or poop. Another group made an app to predict whale strandings! The ideas that everyone had come up with were amazing! 

Finally, it was our turn. Jim told us they saved the best for last. Our presentation went a lot better than when we practised. We stood in front of a screen that displayed our work. Jim showed it on Mixiply. We pitched our idea and explained how it worked and how it incorporated AI. At the end of our presentation, we had two judges in tears.

It was finally time to catch our bus home. We grabbed our stuff and were about to step into the lift when Tim, our host and one of the judges, stopped us and asked us to stay. So we waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, the judges came back to tell us who had won. 

Tim said, “Thank you all so much for coming. We had so many great ideas. The winner will go to Auckland, and have a pitch-off with the other regional winners.”

“In third place is… Possum boots!”

Everyone cheered for the team that had made the possum poop app (scat chat).

“We discussed this for a while, so this team should be very proud. In second place… AI Earthkeepers.”

The team that came first really deserved it. They had figured out how to track the leaks in Wellington pipes using AI. 

We all went home that night exhausted and proud of ourselves.