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Good practice Imported

Thunkable AI & Entrepreneurship Pilot — No-Code App-Building for West Virginia High Schoolers

United States of America · Charleston · See the United States of America profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 89% 27/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Thunkable's 2026 pilot brought AI-assisted, no-code app-building and entrepreneurship lessons to about 120 high-school students across three West Virginia counties; participants built roughly 80 mobile apps and 44% reported greater interest in starting a business.

120 students
Students engaged (2026 pilot)
80 apps
Mobile apps built
44 %
Participants reporting greater interest in starting a business
Thunkable AI & Entrepreneurship Pilot — No-Code App-Building for West Virginia High Schoolers

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Thunkable, with the West Virginia Department of Education and Rockefeller Foundation support
Period
2026 pilot, concluded September 2026
Keywords
AI literacy, entrepreneurship education, no-code app development

Context

Thunkable, a no-code mobile-app-development platform, ran a 2026 AI-literacy and entrepreneurship pilot with the State of West Virginia across high schools in Monongalia, Kanawha and Berkeley counties, aimed at students in grades 9-12 considered vulnerable to AI-driven labour-market disruption.

Activities

Students used AI-assisted, no-code tools to design and build their own mobile applications while learning practical AI concepts, problem-solving and entrepreneurship basics.

Results

The pilot, which concluded in September 2026, engaged about 120 students who built an estimated 80 working mobile apps; the programme's own reporting states 44% of participants said the experience increased their interest in starting a business.

Conclusions

These are self-reported, funder-published figures rather than an independently verified evaluation. The pilot sits alongside West Virginia's broader state AI and Digital Sciences Framework, the first such state-level framework in the US.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
Thunkable (platform provider), West Virginia Department of Education (state partner), Rockefeller Foundation (funding support)

Conditions for success

  • No-code tooling lowering the technical barrier to app-building
  • Alignment with the state's AI and Digital Sciences Framework
  • Targeting counties/grades considered vulnerable to AI-driven labour disruption

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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