Help Build An Alabama AI Knowledge Base
The Alabama Earth Science AI Learning Foundry is assembling a library of trusted sixth-grade Earth science materials to power TerraBot™, an AI curriculum assistant for Alabama teachers. Anyone can submit a resource. Alabama educators review and rank every submission, and the strongest ones go into the library.
What the Foundry Is
A two-month planning project led by Geo Explorer Labs at Auburn University with McWane Science Center and AMSTI. Gather Alabama's best sixth-grade Earth science resources, have Alabama educators review and rank them, and use that library as the foundation for an AI curriculum assistant built for teachers.
Open to Everyone
Anyone can submit a resource: teachers, scientists, parents, museum staff, students' families. Alabama educators then review and rank each submission, and the ones that hold up go into the library.
Grounded in Curated Materials
TerraBot uses Retrieval Augmented Generation, which gives answers based on a carefully chosen library of Alabama Earth science materials rather than solely on general internet information.
Tied to the Course of Study
Reviewed against Alabama's Grade 6 Earth and Space Science standards: Earth's place in the universe, materials and processes, energy and weather systems, and human interactions with Earth.
Open Record
Every submission, ranking, and filtering decision gets posted publicly with contributor credit, including the resources that don't make the final library.
What We're Building, and Why
This FINDERS Foundry planning project will create TerraBot™, a new AI tool that helps Alabama sixth grade Earth science teachers plan strong, standards aligned lessons. Many new teachers want to teach Earth science well but do not always have enough time, resources, or trusted materials. Students also use AI on their own, but they often do not know how to use it safely or in ways that support real learning.
TerraBot will use a special AI method called Retrieval Augmented Generation, which gives answers based on a carefully chosen library of Alabama Earth science materials rather than solely on general internet information.
During the two month planning period, the team will work with teachers, families, and science experts across the state to collect resources, review them, and build an early TerraBot prototype. This work will help teachers trust AI tools, improve science instruction, and prepare students for future STEM learning.
Open Call for Resources
We are collecting 300 sixth-grade Earth science resources from across Alabama, and the call is open to everyone. If you have a lesson that works, a field site students remember, or a dataset that finally made a concept land, send it.
What counts as a resource
- Lesson plans, units, and warm-ups
- Labs, models, and hands-on activities
- Field trip guides and Alabama place-based lessons
- Datasets, maps, and imagery students can analyze
- Videos, simulations, and reading passages
- Formative assessments and anchoring phenomena
Who can submit
- Classroom teachers and instructional coaches
- Museum, park, and extension educators
- Earth scientists, faculty, and graduate students
- Parents and families
- Anyone else with a resource worth sharing
You do not need to have created the resource yourself. Most submissions will be material someone found and trusts rather than material they wrote, and that is expected. The form asks a few questions about where a resource came from and who owns it.
What happens to it
- Sorted and preserved for human review
- Reviewed and ranked by Alabama educators at a Curation Summit
- Confirmed by paid master educators
- Published with its ranking and your credit by role
The strongest resources for each standard become part of TerraBot's library. Everything else stays on the public record.
Where Your Submission Goes
Four steps from your submission to a lesson a teacher can use. Step through it.
Following one example resource through the process.
A three-day investigation using local outcrop photos and stream data to explain mechanical and chemical weathering.
Someone sends it in
A statewide call goes out to educators, scientists, families, and partners, and anyone can respond. A language model does a first pass at sorting submissions by type and topic, but nothing is discarded. Every submission is preserved for human review.
Target: 300 submissions from across Alabama
Alabama educators review and rank it
At one of three Curation Summits, reviewers read the submission, rate it against a shared set of criteria, and add structured information about it: which standards it covers, who it is written for, and what kind of resource it is.
75 reviewers across Birmingham, Auburn, and Dothan
Chunked, embedded, and indexed so TerraBot can retrieve it when a teacher asks about weathering.
Master educators confirm it
Five paid master educators re-check alignment, assign a final relevancy ranking, and flag gaps or anything that needs to come out. The approved set is then chunked, embedded, and loaded into a vector database.
At least 2-3 vetted resources for every Grade 6 standard
Three resources in the library address weathering at Grade 6: a stream table investigation, an outcrop photo comparison from the Talladega foothills, and a short reading with a sorting task. How much time do you have, and do you have stream tables available?
Then the outcrop comparison is a better anchor, since it puts both kinds side by side. Would you rather open with the photo comparison and build toward a sorting task, or start from the misconception you saw in the report data?
A teacher and TerraBot work it out together
TerraBot is not a vending machine for lesson plans. It surfaces the curated resources that fit the gap a teacher describes, asks about time, materials, and what students actually struggled with, and works through the options alongside the teacher.
Because it gives answers based on a carefully chosen library of Alabama Earth science materials rather than solely on general internet information, teachers can see what it is drawing from and judge it for themselves. The teacher makes the calls.
25 educators test the prototype against real visit-report data
Earth Science Curation Summits
Three in-person working sessions where Alabama educators, scientists, and families decide together what belongs in TerraBot's library. Seventy-five seats across the state.
Hosted in partnership with McWane Science Center for north and central Alabama participants.
At Auburn University, home of Geo Explorer Labs and the Department of Geosciences.
Serving the Wiregrass and south Alabama, so the library reflects the whole state.
What Happens at a Summit
Participants spend the session working through what came in from the open call and deciding, together, which resources genuinely support sixth-grade Earth science. Reviewers rate each resource against a shared set of criteria and add structured information about it, including the standards it addresses and who it is written for.
The result is a ranked pool of materials, with the reasoning behind the rankings visible to everyone. No prior experience with AI is needed and no one is asked to evaluate the technology. The question on the table is a familiar one: is this good sixth-grade Earth science?
The Two-Month Plan
Four phases, from open call to prototype. Results from each phase are posted publicly as we go.
-
1Weeks 1–3
Open Call
A statewide invitation to submit sixth-grade Earth science resources, reaching educators, scientists, families, and partners through our networks and every leadership partner's distribution list.
300 submissions -
2Weeks 3–5
Curation Summits
Three in-person sessions in Birmingham, Auburn, and Dothan where participants review submissions, rank them against shared criteria, and add structured information about each one.
75 participants, 3 cities -
3Weeks 5–7
Master Educator Validation
Five paid master educators confirm standards alignment, assign final relevancy rankings, and flag gaps or content that needs to be removed.
20+ vetted resources per standard -
4Weeks 6–8
Prototype Build and Evaluation
The validated library is chunked, embedded, and loaded into a vector database. Educators then use real Geo Explorer visit reports to work with TerraBot on lessons addressing the gaps in that data, and evaluate what comes back.
Working prototype, 25 evaluators
Frequently Asked Questions
If your question is not answered here, email us and we will get you an answer.
No. The open call is open to anyone. Parents, scientists, museum and park educators, extension agents, graduate students, and community members are all invited to submit. Reviewers see the resource and the contributor's role, and a strong resource is a strong resource wherever it comes from.
No. Most of what we expect to receive will be material someone found and trusts rather than material they wrote. The submission form includes several questions about where a resource came from and who owns it, so answer those as best you can and we will handle credit and permissions from there.
It stays on the public record. We are posting every submission, its ranking, and how it was evaluated at each stage, including the ones that do not make it into the library. Being transparent about what was filtered out is part of why educators can trust what was left in.
Contributors are credited on the public results site, with role noted, such as educator or parent. The submission form is where you tell us how you would like to be credited.
TerraBot uses Retrieval Augmented Generation, which gives answers based on a carefully chosen library of Alabama Earth science materials rather than solely on general internet information. It also shows which resources it drew from, so a teacher can look at the source and judge it directly rather than taking the answer on faith.
Not in this phase. TerraBot is built for teachers first, to help early-career educators produce standards-aligned lessons without spending planning time verifying what a web search turned up.
A prototype will be tested by about 25 educators at the end of the planning period. After that, early-career Alabama educators receive free access to the beta. Join the update list in the submission form and we will tell you when it opens.
Send Us a Resource
TerraBot's library will only be as good as what Alabama sends us. Submit a resource, share the call with a colleague, or join us at a Summit to help review what comes in.
Open the Submission PortalQuestions about the project? Email dsb0041@auburn.edu
Award #2627487
This project is supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Award #2627487 and led by Geo Explorer Labs at Auburn University in collaboration with McWane Science Center, and the Alabama Department of Education’s Math, Science, and Technology Initiative. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the project team and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.