Drawing on Kinship has been named the winner of the inaugural 2026 Rural Innovation & Impact Showcase! The showcase, hosted by the National Rural Education Association (NREA) at the National Forum to Advance Rural Education, celebrates bold ideas emerging from rural communities across the nation. Out of 50 national submissions, the initiative was named one of five finalists before taking home the top award following a live pitch competition.

Presented on the national stage by local school partners and technology leaders, the award recognizes the project’s groundbreaking, asset-based approach to middle grades computer science and computational thinking. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Drawing on Kinship is a collaborative partnership between Pikeville Independent Schools, Floyd County Schools, local software development company Bit Source, and learning sciences researchers at Digital Promise. It operates on the core belief that “Appalachia is a solution to be found and not a problem to be fixed.”

By showing that computing can build upon local ingenuity rather than replace it, Drawing on Kinship honors regional heritage while providing researchers and system leaders across the country with a scalable framework for place-based, rurally sustaining computational thinking pathways.

The project team recently sat down with the National Rural Education Association for an interview of the finalist prior to this year’s showcase. Find the article, including Drawing on Kinship, here: https://nrea.net/innovation-impact-finalists-2026/