Dora Palfi
Co-founder & CEO, Imagi
Built a company on the idea that every kid should get to make technology. Now she's putting AI build tools in students' hands.
Why this show
The biggest opportunity in K-12 is also its biggest opportunity cost
Schools weren't designed for a world where any student can build software. No test score, ranking or funding formula pushes them to adapt. So change depends on the educators who move first, and on everyone else seeing what they did.
What's possible now
- Students build real things.Apps, games and tools for their families, schools and towns, in days instead of years.
- It teaches the skills schools already promise.Problem-solving, creativity, collaboration and communication grow fastest through real work for a real audience.
- Every student gets to build.You no longer need years of syntax before your idea counts. Computing stops being only for future engineers.
- New paths open up.A student who can build something end to end has another route to a career, with or without a degree.
What waiting costs
- Nothing in the system rewards it.Subjects that are tested and funded get taught. This one isn't, so it rarely happens on its own.
- The gap grows every semester.What students can do with these tools keeps pulling away from what school is set up to teach.
- Educators can't teach what they haven't seen.Most teachers haven't watched a student build with AI yet. Seeing it is what changes minds.
- Some kids will learn it anyway.Students with tech-savvy parents will pick this up at home. Everyone else is counting on school.
How every episode works
Real people, honest obstacles, one thing to try
The opportunity
A classroom, district or program where students are already building with AI.
What's in the way
Time, money, policy, fear. Our guests say plainly what made it hard.
How they moved anyway
What they actually did, in their own words, so you can borrow it.
Your turn
One small project to run with one student or one class this week.
What to expect
Built for Monday morning
K12 BOSS is
- Educators and students who are building real software right now
- Practical, with something to try at the end of every episode
- Honest about what's hard, from budgets to bans
- A community where teachers share what their students made
K12 BOSS isn't
- A weekly roundup of AI news
- Hype about tools that will change everything
- Another debate about robots taking jobs
- A tidy curriculum with every answer
Season 1
Eight people already doing the work
A principal in Silicon Valley, a rural innovation director, the author of an AP course, a founder and the teachers putting it into practice.
Kelly Schuster-Paredes
CS teacher, Pine Crest School · Co-host, Teaching Python
Her middle schoolers write thousands of lines of Python. One of them built a fishing app with GPS waypoints.
Dr. Kip Glazer
Principal, Mountain View High School
Leads a school in Silicon Valley, where her students' parents build the AI that's showing up in class.
Jigar Patel
Director of Innovation, Tuscarora Intermediate Unit 11
Drives a Fab Lab on wheels across rural Pennsylvania and builds AI tutors that run offline on a $35 computer.
Dominick Sanders
South Carolina's first state CS supervisor
Brought coding into barbershops. He says "syntax or bust" is finally over for kids with big ideas.
Sabba Quidwai
Design thinking & AI strategist
Wanted to design video games, was told computer science was all math, and started building anyway. She teaches the SPARK method.
Kelli Etheredge
Co-author, MakeCode AP CS Principles curriculum
Helped write a course thousands of teachers use. Now she's asking what it needs to become.
Victoria Fudge
Director of instructional technology
Leads ed tech for 84,000 students. Her 10-80-10 rule shows exactly where students still need a teacher.
Episode lineup · Coming soon
The first episode drops November 15, with new episodes after that.
The K12 BOSS Workshop
Every episode comes with homework
Each episode ends with one small project. Try it once with a student or a class, then share what happened with the community. We'll talk about what comes in on the show.
The idea audit
Ask a student what they would build if they knew it was possible. Just listen and write it down. Then share the idea with us.
Find the gate
Find one place where a student's idea gets stuck on "how." Remove that barrier one time and see what they build.
Paper first
Sketch an app on paper, build it with an AI tool, then hand it to a classmate. Where do they get lost?
These are examples. The real projects come with each episode.
Who it's for
Everyone around a student
Teachers
STEM and computer science teachers, and anyone curious about what their students could build.
Administrators
Leaders who care about engagement, graduation and students who thrive after school.
Parents
Families who want to know what their kids could make and how to help them start.
Students
The point of all of it. We'll feature what students build, in their own voices.
Your hosts
A researcher and an educator
Dr. Kartik Mangalam
AI researcher · Founder & CEO, SigIQ.ai
Kartik earned his PhD in AI at UC Berkeley and did research at Google and Meta. He builds AI tutors for schools and has spent years watching the limits on what software can do disappear.
Nothing good is inevitable. It is brought about by people who really want it to happen.
Dr. Matt Callison
Director of Innovation, South Fayette Township School District
Matt is a learning scientist who leads innovation for a Pennsylvania school district. His job is to work out what new technology means for real students in real classrooms.
When students build for a real audience, they have to think. You can build bad ideas fast, and you find out fast.