2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer Vision (CV) are at the forefront of emerging technologies. By understanding these technological concepts early in education, students can be provided with the resources to meaningfully understand and contribute to these fields, in addition to preparing students for future STEM opportunities. In middle schools, there are limited resources for students to understand CV. This paper presents an educational tool, “Kernel Crafter”, designed to align with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that assists teachers in teaching middle school students a fundamental component to image processing and convolutional neural networks (CNNs): convolutions and kernels. By creating a user-friendly tool with gamified elements, we help students understand how convolutions can alter an image in a fun, playful, and hands-on manner, engaging students in abstract mathematical operations in an interesting way. Currently, the tool is being developed and will be implemented with selected teachers/students to demonstrate that the gamified approach significantly improves student engagement and empowers students with fundamental knowledge for understanding AI-driven technologies.