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Embark on your AI journey with our introductory course. Dive into the basics of Artificial Intelligence, defining key terms like AI, neural network, big data, algorithm, and machine learning through engaging analogies, interactive games, and activities. Equip yourself with tools to introduce AI concepts to your students, and gain insights from an IBM expert on the significance of play in education. Start your exploration of AI fundamentals today. Creating a Spark for AI Register Here Dive into this introductory course and get familiar with the basics of AI. Learn and define five key terms (AI, neural network, big data, algorithm and machine learning) through analogy, interactive games and activities. Build tools to use with your own students to expose them to AI concepts, and hear from an IBM expert about the importance of play in education. What previous attendees have said about this webinar: “This course opened my mind to the need to incorporate AI into our classrooms as it becomes more prevalent in our daily lives.” “I appreciate the curriculum resources. I am looking forward to hosting a discussion in my classroom soon about student data and whether or not they think it is alright for their data to be bought and sold.” By the end of the online webinar, you will have: A working definition for AI & other terms Activities & resources to implement immediately to introduce AI to your students An extensive toolkit of resources A graphic organizer to capture your thoughts and learnings Topic: An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Format: On-Demand Additional Resources: Submitted by Melissa DeMull Designed for Grades 5-12 Lesson Plan: AI and Technology Vocabulary Lesson Plan: What are Neural Networks Video: Creating a Spark What to Expect in Your First Lesson

Embark on a transformative journey into the world of AI careers with our IBM AI Course. Uncover the limitless possibilities that Artificial Intelligence offers for aspiring professionals. Gain invaluable insights, hands-on experiences, and expert guidance, empowering you to navigate the exciting landscape of AI-driven careers. AI and Your Curriculum - The Perfect Marriage Register Here How can we prepare students for a future we can’t see, when our world is being constantly changed by the advancement of technology? In this course you will understand the effect AI is having on the future of work, and how the skills needed to be successful in the future have changed. Practice and identify these skills with a Scratch project via IBM’s “Machine Learning for Kids” and collaborate using pair programming. Build these employability skills in students to prepare them for anything. What previous attendees have said about this webinar: “I learned how AI plays an integral role in employability for future work. As educators it is important that we teach the future employees and leaders of tomorrow about the evolving world that we live in. With the major role of AI in the development and advancement of the world, teaching students the way we were taught is not going to produce 21st-century individuals. As educators we must teach for the future and the future is AI!” “This course gave me great ideas about infusing AI into my curriculum.” By the end of the online webinar, you will have: An understanding of how the workforce is changing, and the skills students need to be successful in the future Started a machine learning project that you could use in your classroom An extensive toolkit of resources A graphic organizer to capture your thoughts and learning Topic: AI Implementation in the Classroom Format: On-Demand

MindSpark Education Accelerators are immersive learning experiences that equip educators with the skills and mindsets to innovate in their classrooms, schools, and districts. Learn from experts, collaborate with peers, and apply your learning to real-world challenges. Join an upcoming cohort and spark your education transformation. EDUCATION ACCELERATOR - Introducing - Higher Education Accelerator Learn More What Goes On at a MindSpark Learning Education Accelerator? Answering that question can be likened to explaining what happens at the orchestra. We can highlight the program pamphlet, but no description will ever compare to experiencing the music firsthand. However, we understand the importance of providing you with a glimpse of what an Education Accelerator (EA) can achieve - whether you are an industry leader hoping to sponsor an impactful education initiative or an education leader ready for transformation change. Velocity as a Means to Transformation Our EA is a leadership program dedicated to fostering organizational ingenuity within education systems. Organizations join MindSpark’s coveted accelerator at varying stages of development. Some may be in the early planning phases, while others have been implementing their approaches for years. Regardless of their starting point, our aim is to guide participants towards a markedly improved state within just six to nine months. Our unwavering commitment is to see cohort organizations emerge as shining examples of streamlined processes, vibrant cultures, and innovative educational paradigms. As for our industry partners, by investing in an EA, you'll play a pivotal role in building capacity and uplifting education systems. Once an accelerator has been funded by an industry or community partners, schools and organizations can apply. Together, we will reshape education—fostering passionate educators and engaged students. “When I started this journey 18 months ago, I didn’t realize how much we needed the spark. I was “stuck on an escalator”, silently screaming for help, not realizing we held the answers to our problems of practice all along. EA has been our spark, our catalyst, our ‘small fiery particle thrown off of a fire’ where the fire is produced when education meets industry and radical self-inquiry begins.” - District Administrator for Eaton School District 10 U.S. states served 22 Unique cohorts hosted 768 Participants activated 5,738 Partnerships forged 175,561 Students impacted EA QUICK FACTS: Sponsor an EA Apply for a Future EA A Launchpad to Bespoke Solutions EA is a launchpad that gives education leaders full autonomy over the trajectory of their organization’s future. Rooted in MindSpark’s trademarked disruption cycle, the EA is built to ensure systems are more intelligent, agile, and adaptive. EA’s strengthen education systems by strategically bridging community, industry, and education. Discover Begin by looking at your goals and work to develop a focused problem of practice. This will be used to create educator capability appraisals and determine baselines that will guide your journey and your action plan as you connect the threads between education, industry, and community. Design Work with industry experts, receive marketing support, and develop sustainable partnerships that will evolve alongside you in this developmental stage. Additionally, investigate the elements connected to the success of your teaching imperatives and strategic intersections. Do Time for action—work within your teams and partnerships to ensure your problem of practice finds resolution. You will be challenged to experiment and iterate upon your designs while receiving expert guidance from our team. Dynamize Prepare for the unknown by implementing blueprints for measuring and sustaining key performance indicators. Our team will continue to assist via team check-ins, individual coaching, and further professional development opportunities to ensure you are supported long after the closing ceremony. Collaborating for Change: Education Accelerators Driving Progress Equitable Career Pathways AI Education for the Future Opportunity for Every Learner As some states, like Kentucky, start to feel the pressures of workforce development challenges, MindSpark has helped to make their faculty and students workforce ready for industry standards. KPMG Kentucky Workforce EA Read how we changed the competitive landscape in Kentucky by introducing workforce, career pathways in school. Case Study “We have really worked (after the EA) to give our students an opportunity to find what is the best fit for them in their careers.” - KY EA collaborator AI is revolutionizing career pathways everywhere. In fact, AI jobs are forecast to increase in demand by 71% by 2025. MindSpark has been working with school districts to equip educators for the change. IBM Artificial Intelligence EA Read how our work with the York Region District School Board formed pathways for educators to teach AI responsibly. Case Study “The epiphany that AI connects to everything and that we must bring all to the table to create unbiased, ethical learning about it.” - IBM AI collaborator Fostering a collaborative community of innovative entrepreneurs starts with the educator. MindSpark assisted with our consistent and responsive design sessions, prioritizing collective genius. VELA Microschool's EA Read how local Colorado microschools leveled up their systems by developing skills in leadership, messaging, and strategic planning. Case Study “The most valuable part was focusing on what partners need and re-returning to our foundational ‘why’.” - VELA collaborator

How MindSpark and Jeffco CTC helped Jefferson County youth name their strengths, identify workforce barriers, and build clearer pathways forward. There's a question that sits at the center of career-connected education, and most systems never actually ask it: What do young people need to believe a future is possible for them? Not what adults assume they need. What the students themselves would say — if someone handed them the room, the mic, and the time to think it through. That was the purpose of Invisible Made Visible, a youth-centered workforce readiness experience created in partnership with Jefferson County Communities That Care (Jeffco CTC). MindSpark brought together 28 Jefferson County youth for a day built on a single premise: young people aren't just the target audience for workforce pathways. They're the most qualified people in the room to help design them because they're already living the gaps. First, Students Named What They Bring The day began with the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment, which became one of the most meaningful parts of the experience. Many young people know they're good at something — leading a conversation, solving problems, organizing a group. Far fewer have been given the language to name those strengths or connect them to future opportunity. StrengthsFinder gave each participant a full 34-strength profile and time to explore how those strengths look in school, at home, and in the workforce. That language mattered. When students were asked to name their top takeaways from the day, 23 out of 26 participants identified Gallup Strengths first. Of everything they experienced — resume work, mock interviews, LinkedIn coaching, and AI-supported career exploration — the most powerful moment was finally having words for what they already bring. Before students can pursue a pathway, they need to see themselves as someone with value, capacity, and direction. Four Workforce Barriers Students Want Adults to Understand Before the session, the youth were asked what stood between them and their school, work, and career goals. Their answers were grounding. Transportation came up most often, with nine of 28 participants naming it as their top need. Professional attire and equipment ranked second. School supplies and technology came third. That pattern — getting there, looking the part, having the tools — tells you something important. Career readiness programs often focus on content while overlooking the conditions that make showing up possible in the first place. Through facilitated design sessions, four barrier themes emerged: Career and opportunity visibility. Students often don't know what careers exist or how to find work that connects to their interests and strengths. The ask: embed job-readiness into everyday classes, build career centers with real counselors, and create exposure through job shadowing, Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses, and internship trials matched to student strengths. The experience paradox. Age, school schedules, and limited access to paid work make it harder for students to gain early experience. Students called for more realistic entry-level expectations, classroom-based leadership roles to build track records, and stronger partnerships with local companies willing to create paid youth opportunities. Social bias and equity. Age, race, culture, gender, income, and language can all shape how young people access opportunity. Students also raised a timely concern: AI-powered hiring tools can reinforce the same bias they're designed to reduce. Their recommendations? Multilingual job information, inclusive curricula, and human-reviewed applications. Soft skills and professionalism. Professional behavior is a skill to be taught, not a trait students either have or lack. Students wanted school to be a safe place to practice communication, interviewing, and workplace expectations before those skills are tested somewhere that counts. What They Walked Out With Going in, MindSpark and Jeffco CTC had made a commitment: the students who showed up to share challenges would leave better equipped to face them. Within a single day, participants built and refined resumes, shaped their LinkedIn presence, practiced interviews with real-time coaching, and used AI tools to map their strengths to local career pathways — with financial data, internship listings, and next steps relevant to where they actually live. For one sophomore enrolled in remote learning, that last piece landed. "I'm really grateful, because I was sort of lost," he shared. "I want to become a diesel mechanic, but didn’t know how to really get there. I'm glad that I came here today, because MindSpark showed me really how to search for your own goals and how to be able to set goals clearly." A parent said her daughter came home excited, with a potential career in mind. Eighty-nine percent of participants said they planned to share what they learned with friends. What This Day Made Visible Invisible Made Visible surfaced a practical truth about workforce readiness: students do not need adults to simply tell them what is possible. They need adults to help remove the barriers that make possibilities feel out of reach. The data from this day is already informing MindSpark's school-based workforce programming. MindSpark is deepening its partnership with Warren Tech and Jeffco CTC to better reach underserved students. We’re also working with industry partners to build more inclusive entry points into the workforce. The future of work becomes more visible to young people when they can see themselves in it. That visibility starts when we stop building pathways around students and start building them with students.

A Granby middle school joined MindSpark's Education Accelerator not to fix what was broken but to find out how much further a strong foundation could take them. When Principal Jenny Rothboeck brought East Grand Middle School (EGMS) into MindSpark's 2021 Education Accelerator (EA), she wasn't looking for rescue. She was looking for room. Teaching had felt stifled during COVID. Educators everywhere were holding things together through virtual classrooms and cautious returns to in-person learning, amid uncertainty and fatigue. Rothboeck, like many school leaders, wanted to help her staff reconnect with the purpose and energy that had been difficult to access during that period. An encouraging superintendent pointed her toward MindSpark’s EA at the right moment. It felt like a breath of fresh air: a way to regain some normalcy, then push beyond it. Their first EA project was to name the school's post-COVID values and proudly display them on the wall: Inspired, Empowered, Grand. It was an important starting point, not a slogan inherited from somewhere else, but a shared statement of what educators wanted students to experience at EGMS. Two years later, EGMS came back for a second EA. This time, the question wasn't about the values. It was whether students actually felt them. Starting With a Question, Not a Plan MindSpark's EA is built for schools ready to move beyond off-the-shelf solutions. Rather than prescribing a model, it helps education leaders identify a focused problem of practice and build something agile, community-rooted, and built to last. For the 2023 cohort, that meant asking a deceptively simple question: What would it actually feel like to be an inspired, empowered student here? The answer did not come from a consultant. It came from listening. The team brainstormed ideas, spoke with students and began testing what would make school feel more connected to their interests, leadership and sense of belonging. Together, they launched a range of extracurricular clubs, including graphic design, bike repair, martial arts and videography, shaped by student interest and championed by teachers. Programs that were not landing were cut. New ones were added based on what students said they wanted. One phrase from the EA stayed with Rothboeck: Do 1% better. Small changes make real impact. EGMS entered the EA with an intentionally built foundation. The goal was to keep building on it, one iteration at a time, without waiting for a perfect plan before trying something. "There was definitely trepidation at first," she said. "It wasn't canned, and it wasn't scripted." That, it turned out, was the point. What Students Did With the Invitation When students were invited to stop being recipients and start helping shape the clubs, activities and experiences they wanted to see, they took it seriously. Student leaders helped create a Bio Skills elective, install a new water filling station and expand mental health support. A green-screen production room opened. Student-connected clubs, including a t-shirt printing business, a bike shop and a ski shop, gained traction. A student feedback and mentoring team became a standing structure, not a one-time project. By the end of the cohort, 100% of EGMS students were engaged in at least one club. The more telling proof came from a parent: “My child feels more comfortable at school, feels more at home, and knows they have a voice.” That was the goal. “At the end of the day, it’s really about the kids who want to come to school — and that they feel like they’re part of a team,” Rothboeck said. “This is not ‘adults versus kids.’ It’s students feeling empowered and inspired.” The Mindset That Stays East Grand’s two EA experiences did not produce a replicable checklist. They produced a shift in how Rothboeck thinks about leadership. Educators, she will tell you, are really good at planning. They are not always as quick to move from planning into action. The EA helped her find that balance: be thoughtful, then give it a try. That lens still shapes much of her work. The programs are still running, including The Claw student leadership club, the Bio Skills elective and clubs built around different student interests. The values named in 2021 are still on the wall. Now, they also have two years of student- and educator-driven decisions behind them.

In late March, Cohort 15 of the Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program began their journey, bringing together leaders from across sectors to rethink how we show up for early childhood. This program was designed with a clear purpose: to support leaders as catalysts for systems change, not just within early childhood, but across the systems that shape our communities, workforce, and economy. This program was built with intention: to develop leaders who challenge and redefine how organizations and industries value early childhood—building ecosystems that position it as foundational to economic vitality, shift mindsets, and influence policies that better align childhood development with our economy—so we can radically rebuild integrated early childhood systems and remove barriers so that all children thrive. In Colorado, the childcare crisis costs an estimated $2.7 billion annually . Nearly 44% of the workforce are parents who depend on access to care. These are not just early childhood challenges. They are workforce challenges, business challenges, and community challenges. But for decades, early childhood professionals have carried the weight of this challenge alone with deep expertise, fierce dedication, and often limited resources. They have built the foundation. They have understood the stakes. And they have consistently called for broader awareness and shared responsibility. The Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program took a purposeful pause to redesign the experience with a stronger emphasis on action over academics, while bringing more voices into the work and strengthening cross-sector leadership. As the event came to a close, that intention came to life in a conversation between participants. An early childhood professional shared this reflection with a fellow participant who entered the program without a traditional early childhood background: “Understanding that you have stepped into a role as an advocate and systems builder in your community, not with an early childhood background, and as part of this framework, it speaks to how everyone has a role and connection to early childhood. I appreciate that you’re amplifying that and bringing it into your community.” That is what cross-sector leadership looks like. It is not stepping over the work that has been done, but stepping into it and carrying it forward. Everyone has a role to play. The question is whether we are ready to step into it. As Cohort 15 begins this work, we are already looking ahead. Applications for Cohort 16 will open later this year. If you are interested in being part of a growing network of leaders committed to driving meaningful change, we invite you to stay connected .