{"id":262417,"date":"2026-06-02T17:39:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T21:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/elementary-students-backed-by-uts-ai-tennessee-advance-to-national-competition\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T17:45:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T21:45:33","slug":"elementary-students-backed-by-uts-ai-tennessee-advance-to-national-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/elementary-students-backed-by-uts-ai-tennessee-advance-to-national-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Elementary students backed by UT\u2019s AI Tennessee advance to national competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/news-releases\/1130597\">Elementary students backed by UT\u2019s AI Tennessee advance to national competition<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/news-releases\/1130597\">https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/news-releases\/1130597<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-02 17:39:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.eurekalert.org\">www.eurekalert.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p>With support from the\u00a0AI Tennessee initiative\u00a0\u2014 founded and led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville \u2014 a team of elementary students from Alcoa Intermediate School in Alcoa, Tennessee, will represent the state next week in Washington, D.C. Their success brings a classroom-driven vision for artificial intelligence in education to the national stage.<\/p>\n<p>The fourth- and fifth-grade students will be competing in the national finals of the Presidential AI Challenge June 7-10 after winning state and regional elementary competitions. The AI Tennessee initiative assembled faculty from UT and collaborating institutions to support K-12 students and teachers participating in the challenge, designed to foster AI interest and competency by inspiring students and educators to develop AI tools and methods addressing community challenges.<\/p>\n<p>UT, the University of Memphis, Middle Tennessee State University and Fisk University provided workshops, training sessions and ongoing mentorship for participating schools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAI Tennessee is considering how artificial intelligence is used across age groups, not just adults or college students,\u201d said Emily Holtz, assistant professor of elementary education in UT\u2019s\u00a0College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences. By facilitating professional internships for UT\u2019s pre-service teachers, she has built close working relationships with local teachers. For the Presidential AI Challenge, Holtz collaborated with Alcoa Intermediate School teacher Hope McDonald, who recruited 35 students to form a new AI club.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AI in a local classroom<\/strong><br \/>Before students began planning their team projects, Holtz and McDonald helped them understand what generative AI is, what it can and cannot do, and key ethical considerations around its use. \u201cStudents were able to see that human oversight is still needed and that they need to critically evaluate AI\u2019s outputs,\u201d Holtz said.<\/p>\n<p>Those foundational lessons&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/news-releases\/1130597\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elementary students backed by UT\u2019s AI Tennessee advance to national competition https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/news-releases\/1130597 Publish Date: 2026-06-02&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":262418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mediasvc.eurekalert.org\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/aad5d589-ba2b-4ef6-9f41-cd7f3004c819\/Rendition\/thumbnail\/Content\/Public","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-262417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-generative-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262419,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262417\/revisions\/262419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}