Students interact with Quasar and Nova during the AI Financial Literacy Pilot
Earlier this year, Green Our Planet set out to answer a simple question: Could AI make financial literacy more engaging and effective for elementary school students?
After months of testing, observing, and listening to teachers and students, we have an answer.
Yes.
Our AI Financial Literacy pilot, made possible by Aristocrat, Leslie and Tom Thomas, Western Alliance Bank, and Credit One Bank, brought the program into five elementary schools in the Clark County School District. In total, 109 students and 10 teachers across Las Vegas took part.
What happened in those classrooms was encouraging. Students learned more, stayed engaged, and, perhaps most importantly, teachers felt more confident teaching financial literacy.
The results give us a lot to be excited about. But they also give us something even more important: a reason to keep asking what is possible.
Students who took part in the pilot showed a 14% increase in financial literacy knowledge compared with their peers in a control group. Just as important, learning did not feel like a chore. 80% of students said they felt more engaged in the lessons, and in 83% of weekly classroom observations, teachers saw that same energy show up in real time. Perhaps most telling of all, 90% of participating teachers said they felt more confident teaching financial literacy and wanted to keep using the program.
Numbers like these are exciting on their own. But what excites us most is what they suggest about the future of financial literacy education, and how many more students could benefit from learning this way.
Making Money Skills More Relevant
Financial literacy is something every child will eventually need.
Saving. Spending. Budgeting. Making choices about money.
These are skills that follow us throughout our lives, but they can be difficult concepts for an elementary school student to understand when they are presented as abstract ideas on a worksheet.
Students work with Quasar and Nova in the classroom.
We wanted to try something different.
Through the pilot, students interacted with AI characters Quasar and Nova, giving them an opportunity to ask questions, make decisions, and see what happened next.
Instead of simply being told how a budget works, students could experience the choices that come with having one. They could think through a decision, see the outcome, and try again.
That made financial literacy feel less like something they were supposed to memorize and more like something they could actually use.
That shift showed up clearly in the data, but it showed up even more clearly in the classroom, where students leaned in, asked more questions, and stayed engaged in ways that surprised even their teachers.
Teachers are a Big Part of the Equation
There is an important distinction we want to make: this work has never been about replacing teachers with AI.
Teachers are still the people who know their students, understand their classrooms, and turn a lesson into a meaningful learning experience.
Quasar and Nova are tools that can help make that experience more interactive.
The teachers who participated in this pilot brought the technology into their classrooms, guided their students through the lessons, asked questions, and helped students make connections. Their willingness to try something new—and to give us honest feedback along the way—was a huge part of what made the pilot possible.
That is why the 90% teacher response is so encouraging.
If a technology makes a lesson more complicated for teachers, it isn’t solving the right problem.
But if it can give teachers another way to engage their students and help them feel more confident teaching an important subject, then it starts to become something worth paying attention to.
What’s Next?
The pilot was a first step. Now we’re ready to learn more.
This fall, 500 students across 12 Las Vegas schools will participate in a Tier II study. The larger study will help us better understand the impact of the program and build the evidence needed to eventually bring it to more schools across the country.
As AI becomes a bigger part of children’s everyday lives, we are asking a deeper question alongside this work: how do we use technology to strengthen learning while also strengthening kids’ connection to nature, to each other, and to the real world around them?
That question is leading us toward an idea we are calling AI + Nature—an approach that explores how technology, hands-on learning, and connection to the natural world can work together.
We are grateful to the 109 students and 10 teachers who helped us learn what works, what needs improvement, and what might be possible next. And we are especially grateful to the partners who made this work possible:
Aristocrat
Leslie and Tom Thomas
Western Alliance Bank
Credit One Bank
Thank you!
Quasar and Nova bring energy and curiosity to capture the interest and attention of elementary-age students
