On April 29, the explAInED podcast co-hosts (including our own Digital Learning Leader, Renee Langevin) hosted the inaugural Vermont AI & Impact Student Symposium at Montpelier High School. This event challenged students to use Artificial Intelligence as a tool for genuine community good.
We are incredibly proud to highlight the Essex High School team—Myles Rowe, Priya Asher, and Jiya Asher—for their visionary project, Neighbor AI.
The EHS team identified a real-world challenge within our local community and designed a unique application to address it. While competition was stiff among teams from Montpelier, Northfield, and CVU, the work produced by Myles, Priya, and Jiya demonstrated exactly what happens when students lead with empathy and ethics.
The symposium also featured insights from national experts who urged students to view AI not as a replacement for human thought, but as a way to multiply human expertise. Keynote speakers and a panel of judges, including representatives from the Vermont Agency of Education, emphasized that students must understand Al's limits and potential harms to ensure they can truly harness its benefits to transform the human experience.
Events like these allow our students to explore emerging technologies through a lens of service and responsibility. By focusing on a community issue, our students proved that when AI is used with a human-centered approach, it can be a powerful force for positive societal impact.
Congratulations to our EHS innovators for representing our school with such creativity and purpose! You can view the video of the event, as well as the student projects by clicking on this link: Vermont AI & Impact Student Symposium.