Palmer Trinity School: AI Buildathon That Built Its Own Tools
A two-day AI buildathon at Palmer Trinity School where students and faculty co-designed and built custom AI tools for learning, assessment, and school operations—while learning how to safely and creatively use generative AI.
Palmer Trinity School
Education
Company Location
Miami Florida
Company Size
500-1,000 Employees
About Palmer Trinity School
Palmer Trinity School is an independent, coeducational Episcopal day school located on a 60-acre campus in Palmetto Bay, Miami-Dade County, serving approximately 800 students in grades 6–12. Founded in 1991 through the merger of Palmer School (1972) and Trinity Episcopal School (1981), it emphasizes academic excellence, global citizenship, and ethical leadership through programs like the International Baccalaureate and Round Square initiatives, The campus blends South Florida’s natural environment with modern facilities, including innovation labs and a humanities building, fostering a balance of mind, body, and spirit. Under Head of School Patrick Roberts, Palmer Trinity continues to cultivate “ethical leaders” and “global citizens” while maintaining a 1:15 teacher-student ratio
Project Duration
February 2026 - February 2026
Project Status
completed
Services Provided
In early 2026, Palmer Trinity School partnered with us to run an AI Buildathon: a hands-on, two-day experience where students, teachers, and administrators learned to design, prototype, and deploy AI tools tailored to their own needs.
Instead of just talking about AI, participants built:
- Classroom copilots for lesson planning and differentiation
- Research assistants tuned to school-approved sources
- Workflow automations for attendance, communications, and feedback
The event doubled as both professional development and student innovation lab, leaving the school with a reusable toolkit, templates, and governance guardrails for future AI projects.
Challenge
Palmer Trinity wanted to move beyond abstract conversations about AI and give its community practical, guided experience building with it.
Key challenges:
- Bridging the gap between AI hype and concrete, classroom-ready use cases.
- Ensuring safety, ethics, and academic integrity while experimenting with generative AI.
- Designing an experience that was equally valuable for students and faculty, with different comfort levels and technical backgrounds.
- Leaving behind more than a one-off event: the school needed reusable tools, templates, and governance structures to keep building after the buildathon ended.
Approach
We designed and facilitated a two-day AI Buildathon tailored to Palmer Trinity’s context.
Day 1 – Discover & Design
- Lightning talks on AI capabilities, limitations, and ethics in education.
- Mixed teams (students, teachers, staff) formed around real problems: workload, feedback, differentiation, research, and communication.
- Guided design sprints: problem framing, user journeys, and success metrics.
- Low-fidelity prototyping of AI workflows and interfaces.
Day 2 – Build & Launch
- Hands-on build sessions using no-code and low-code AI tools.
- Creation of custom prompts, workflows, and reusable templates.
- Quick user testing with peers and facilitators.
- Showcase session where teams demoed their tools and reflected on impact and risks.
We also delivered:
- A starter library of AI prompts and workflows aligned to Palmer Trinity’s subjects and policies.
- A lightweight AI governance playbook (usage norms, data privacy, academic integrity guidelines).
- Documentation so the school can run future buildathons independently.
Key Features & Highlights
Core capabilities and innovations that define this project
Two-day, on-campus AI buildathon tailored to Palmer Trinity’s needs
Mixed student–faculty teams to ensure tools worked for real classrooms
Design sprint structure from problem discovery to prototype
Hands-on build sessions using safe, policy-aligned AI tooling
Reusable prompt libraries and workflow templates for teachers
Introductory AI literacy and ethics modules for all participants
Lightweight AI governance and usage guidelines for the school
Facilitated demo and reflection session to consolidate learning
Results
Student–faculty teams produced over ten usable AI tools for lesson planning, feedback, research support, and school operations.
Students, teachers, and staff engaged in hands-on AI design and building over the two-day event.
Post-event surveys showed all respondents felt more confident using and evaluating AI in an educational context.
Testimonial
The AI Buildathon transformed AI from an abstract topic into something our students and teachers could actually shape. In just two days, we went from questions and concerns to concrete tools we can use and improve together.
Technologies Used
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