“Teachers use AI to solve classroom problems”: Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education launches its first School AI Living Lab

[Financial News] The Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education is launching a hands-on AI education program that enables teachers to identify problems in their classrooms and use artificial intelligence (AI) to develop tailored solutions.
The Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education announced on the 5th that, starting on the 6th, it will run the “2026 School AI Living Lab Boot Camp” for 40 teachers in its lead-teacher group, online and at Pukyong National University and Busan National University of Education.
The boot camp is a program in which teachers practice the entire process of identifying problems they encounter at school and in the classroom, using AI to design and develop solutions, and then applying them in actual educational settings.
While previous AI training programs have mainly focused on learning how to use edtech tools, this course aims to help teachers grow from mere users of AI into AI problem-solvers who address challenges in educational settings.
This is the first time in the country that an education office has introduced and operated a Living Lab approach. A Living Lab is a “living laboratory”: a method in which field experts identify problems in everyday life, develop and apply solutions themselves, and then improve them.
Until now, schools have relied on edtech programs developed by companies, which has limited teachers’ ability to build the features they need themselves. The School AI Living Lab goes beyond this limitation by starting with teachers’ real-world concerns. Through a process that includes identifying problems, developing prototypes, applying them in the field, and feeding back the results, it creates solutions needed in educational settings and evaluates their effectiveness.
The training begins with online pre-training on the 6th. On the 7th, participants will share examples of solving problems in the field and practice design thinking and how to run a Living Lab. On the 14th, they will design AI agent workflows to address problems in educational settings and develop and present educational web apps.
On the 21st, participants will continue with hands-on activities using open-source hardware-based teaching aids. Elementary schools will use micro:bit, while middle and high schools will use ESP32 to design workflows and share their results.
The boot camp is also significant as a production-focused training program in which teachers carry out every step themselves, from defining a problem to developing and deploying an app.
Starting with this initiative, the Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education plans to develop three types of AI assistants in 2027, one for each school level: elementary, middle, and high school. It also plans to hold a “School AI Buildathon” competition and a results-sharing event to identify outstanding examples and spread them to schools.
Busan Superintendent of Education Kim Seok-jun said, “Teachers are the people who know the problems in the classroom best, and the solutions come from teachers, too.” He added, “I hope this boot camp will be a starting point for the lead teachers to solve problems in the field themselves using AI and share the results with all schools.”
[email protected] Kwon Byeong-seok Reporter