Students show ‘Hubble-quality’ images as district outlines AI, robotics and makerspace plans

Gig Harbor High School students demonstrated the high school’s observational-astronomy program and district staff outlined expanding robotics and AI work at the Peninsula School District Board of Directors meeting on Jan. 21, 2025.

The student team showed colorized, stacked images of deep-space objects and described the technical process used to capture them. Seamus Roberts, a Gig Harbor student who presented the images, said the program uses narrowband filters and long exposures and called the results “what we believe is Hubble quality imagery.” Mia (student presenter) explained that each gas — hydrogen alpha, sulfur and oxygen — is captured separately in black-and-white, then colorized and stacked to reveal gas composition and structures.

The district’s technology leaders framed those student projects as part of a larger innovation strategy. Mel Benner, coordinator of innovation and technology support, described robot and elementary robotics expansion under the FIRST program and said the district intentionally brought elementary robotics into classrooms to broaden student access. Benner introduced a group of elementary students who described building and coding robots and presenting a project about eco-friendly tires designed to help orcas.

Chief information officer Chris Hagel described a district “tinkery” approach for AI exploration and said the district used AI tools to analyze student advisory focus-group transcripts. Hagel said the district transcribed student conversations, ran those transcripts through generative tools with prompts intended to surface themes and then produced an executive summary and an 18‑minute podcast version of the findings. He said the district will bring that AI-generated report back to students for feedback.

Hagel also said the district will publish a new web resource, psd401.ai, as a public repository of the district’s AI work and tools. He said superintendent staff and a small team were invited by Stanford University to participate as early adopters studying K–12 AI uses. Mel Benner said Stanford encouraged the district to iterate prompts and “meta‑prompt” to improve the analytic output.

Students and staff spoke about tools and funding. The observing program presenters described exposures of 5–15 minutes per frame, stacking hours of imaging per filter and software such as Stellarium and PhD2 for plate solving and tracking. Students credited a teacher and a donor — identified in the presentation as Mr. Wogemuth — with providing the telescope and funding that enabled the work.

On robotics, Benner said Peninsula is using the LEGO Spike platform and FIRST program guidelines emphasizing “gracious professionalism” and real‑world problem research. Students described prototyping several robot designs, coding during recess and advancing to regional semifinals. Benner said the district is focused on building sustainable programming across grade levels.

Why it matters: district leaders said the demonstrations are intended to show how classroom technology and extracurricular robotics feed into larger curriculum goals and workforce pathways, and to illustrate how AI can help staff process rich qualitative feedback from students faster than manual review.

“By stacking the photos and taking long exposures, we’re able to get very, very high amounts of detail,” the student presenters said during the board meeting, and district staff added they plan to use the district AI tools to inform next steps with students and staff.

Looking ahead, Hagel said district staff and two board directors will represent Peninsula at a national conference, and the district will pilot the psd401.ai site and further refine how it uses AI in advisory work. Mel Benner said the goal is to scale robotics, coding and AI “in a way that really represents all of our students.”