Sparky AI : delivering universal access to gamified & personalized education for learners worldwide
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Overview
Unlock the future of education with Sparky AI, where personalized learning pathways empower every student to thrive, regardless of their background.
Table of contents
- The problem
- What's already in place
- Project scope
- Users and functionalities
- Success vision
- Supporting resources
The problem
Problem statement
Problem Statement: In the US, 54% of Gen Z K-12 students are lacking engaging school experiences and over 2 million drop out annually (which is five times for likely if you are low income).
55% of teachers say they are considering leaving the profession earlier than planned due to burnout and administrative workload, including lesson planning, grading, data tracking, and reporting.
There is a lack of gamified AI-enabled learning platforms where course creators can digitize, manage, and scale their courses.
Project details
Project Details: Cambio Labs built Journey, a gamified learning platform, to make learning engaging and fun for students, and repeatable and scalable for instructors and administrators. In order to revolutionize the usability and scalability of our Journey platform, our team is now developing and piloting Sparky: an AI bot that can personalize and credentialize learning for students at scale, and that can assist teachers and program administrators with curricular development, instructional coaching, assessment, and reporting.
The creation and implementation of Sparky AI will improve the effectiveness of our Journey platform and unlock the following capabilities:
- Enable more self-paced and asynchronous learning, allowing for users to learn independently during non-traditional hours and in non-traditional spaces
- Enable personalized learning and coaching by pulling from user-generated submission data
- Enable easy lesson planning, auto-assessment, skills-tracking, auto-certifications, and auto-reporting - reducing major administrative burdens for overworked teachers
- Enable expert and personalized coaching for course creators that want to use Journey to deliver courses in their own communities
The goal of this project is to launch the first iteration of Sparky and to test it among our growing, global population of Journey users.
Shorter term project goals include:
- Technical functionality of Sparky bot
- Positive data on satisfaction with Sparky and recommendation to others
- Collect qualitative evidence of personalized learner and instructor support
- Successful program completion, certification, and income generation across courses
Longer term project goals include:
- Recruiting more technical staff to maintain and develop Sparky
- Creating a mobile responsive version of Journey and Sparky
- Delivering access to Journey and AI to the most remote and marginalized communities
- Universal access to education through cross-sectoral collaboration
What's already in place
Hosting and domain Content (images, text) Data set(s)
Team
Our technology staff includes:
Andrej Hakansson - Full Stack Developer:
Andrej brings over 20 years of experience in software development and systems architecture. At Cambio Labs, he plays a key role in developing and maintaining the Journey platform. His expertise in Java, IntelliJ IDEA, and Linux, combined with a background in computer engineering from The Institute of Technology at Linköping University, enables him to build scalable, secure, and user-friendly software solutions. With a strong track record in developing medium-sized applications and managing projects from inception to completion, Andrej integrates multimedia content, interactive challenges, and real-world incentives to enhance user engagement.
Angelo Orciuoli - Data Science & AI Fellow:
Angelo Orciuoli, a current part-time M.S. Data Science student, brings a full-stack data skillset with a mindset of always striving to learn the newest cutting-edge technologies. From preprocessing data, building natural language and predictive regression models, to deploying web applications, Angelo can use a variety of techniques to develop scalable solutions. He focuses on leveraging AI tools, specifically by integrating RAGs and LLMs with continuous fine-tuning. Angelo is deeply committed to applying his data skills to missions focused on supporting underserved populations, and believes education is a primary catalyst for positive change.
Richard “D-cal” Dacalos - Director of Product and Innovation:
Richard has over a decade of experience as an international consultant, entrepreneur, educator, and coach. Over the last 15 years, he has worked with individuals, startups, and organizations to improve performance and launch new projects & businesses. He is also the creator and co-founder of Upstart: The Board Game, which simulates what it is like to start up a business without the risk. D-cal is also an alumnus and former impact advisory council member of the Global Shaper Community.
Project scope
Tasks:
- Data Infrastructure Development: collect, organize, and analyze user-generated and public data
- AI/ML Development: Integrate OpenAI LLM API with existing Journey platform architecture
- Journey Platform Integration: Integrate Sparky AI assistant into existing React/TypeScript SPAs
- Technical Infrastructure: Scale AWS infrastructure (EC2, S3, RDS) to support AI workloads
- Testing & Validation: Conduct summer 2026 pilot testing with user satisfaction surveys
Users and functionalities
These are real Journey platform users that will benefit tremendously from Sparky AI in the following ways:
- Barba, a teen from the South Bronx that does not perform well on standardized tests, excels in an entrepreneurship course where Journey made his learning engaging and fun. Sparky coached him on how to prepare for his business pitch, and taught Barba, step-by-step, how to make a simple financial statement.
- Mona, a new teacher, is struggling to keep up with prepping lessons, teaching to an overcrowded classroom, grading, and reporting to the parents and school. Sparky guided her in prepping lessons, coached her though teaching scenarios, and automated grading and reporting according to a rubric and format that Sparky helped Mona create.
- Anthony, an unemployed young adult living in public housing, enrolls for a solar jobs training program that used Journey. Sparky helped him research and navigate solar jobs that he could apply for, helped draft his resume, and even conducted a mock interview with Anthony before he approached potential employers.
- New York City Center, a nonprofit theatre company, uses Journey to deliver a great arts administration programs to local schools - but they want to roll out the program nationally. They worked with the Cambio team to train Sparky to deliver a "Theatre Teacher Bootcamp" course - where teachers from all over the country learned remotely and asynchronously on how to deliver NYCC's courses in their local school districts. Each lesson was explained by, and discussed with, Sparky - resulting in stellar platform engagement and submission rates.
- Make a Difference, a top NGO in India, uses Journey to train and monitor the performance of their network of staff across 18 cities - collectively providing care and mentorship to thousands of children. Journey provided them will useful data about fundraising, volunteer recruitment.
Success vision
Internal Impact:
From an operational perspective, Sparky AI will save so much time and spare major administrative pain for the Cambio Labs operations team.
Tracking student data, assessment, and reporting that would typically take our instructional team up to 7 hours per week can be achieved automatically.
Perhaps most importantly, the comprehensive data collection and analytics capabilities will create a continuous feedback loop that allows for real-time program improvements based on actual student behavior and learning patterns, rather than relying solely on periodic surveys or instructor observations.
Integrating Sparky represents a paradigm shift from instructor-dependent program delivery to a scalable, data-driven education model. Journey and Sparky also benefit partner organizations for scale: automating assessment, standardizing learning outcomes across different courses and geographic regions, while simultaneously reducing per-student program costs.
External Impact:
Sparky AI will transform how underserved communities access learning and workforce training by creating personalized learning pathways that adapt to individual communication styles, learning preferences, and progress patterns. Unlike one-size-fits-all approaches, or set-in-stone curricula, our AI assistant will provide coaching support tailored to each learner's unique skillset and goals, and continues to become a more personalized, and therefore more effective, tutor as students progress through Journey courses. It is vital that this type of technology is accessible and geared towards BIPOC and low-income communities who have historically lacked access to quality education.
With the integration of Sparky AI onto our Journey platform and courses, and by unlocking self-paced learning, we expect to expand our current reach of 800 learners to 3,500 by the end of 2026, and to 11,000 by the end of 2027.
Supporting resources
Cambio Labs
We economically empower low income youth, social entrepreneurs, and workers through educational courses and learning technology. We created the Journey platform to deliver & scale our impact.
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