AI integration case studies 

Philip has been using AI in his lessons with a variety of approaches and age groups. Here he shares with us three case studies of his AI use.

Rather than allow students to use general LLMs (large language models) such as Chat GPT to start their research, I created chatbots that were relevant to the project using Zapier. This narrowed the scope of the responses. Students were thoroughly engaged and used them to ask questions on the topic. They found a few irregularities which allowed me to explain some of the issues that LLMs have. We discussed “hallucinations” and bias.

Try our chatbots here:

Next, I introduced Adobe Firefly. This allowed students to explore image generation with fun prompts to see some of the limitations and variances in the tools to modify.

Sample prompts to have some fun:

“crazy sunglasses made from rubber”

“dinosaur on top of a mountain wearing glasses, realistic”

“snowman wearing sunglasses at the beach, cartoon”

Year 8 Design – Bluetooth Speaker

Design Brief - How many times have you wanted to listen to loud music but only have your phone? Or maybe, you have a speaker but you need to plug your phone into the AUX port... But new phones don’t have AUX jacks! Your challenge is to design, make, and evaluate a ‘Bluetooth Speaker’.

I introduced Bing Image Creator to year 8 design. Some students were aware of Gen AI, some had used it, and most were completely new to the idea.

I first showed some samples of images I had generated to help with their creativity. We then discussed how to prompt using creative and descriptive language. This was a heap of fun! I planned the activity to go for about 10 minutes, but we were having a blast and spent 25 minutes playing. I love to have fun in my classroom.

We then came up with a crazy idea together and built a prompt as a class. The AI then generated the crazy idea for a speaker.

I then Used ChatGPT + DALL-E3 to generate more images using detailed prompts to help develop their descriptive writing. This helped put their words into graphic concepts that could be developed further using CAD. In the demonstration, the images didn’t always generate what I asked which lead into discussions on how the image generators can also “hallucinate”. 

I also demonstrated Clipdrop by Stability.ai just to show the development of rough sketches to generate images. We had a few laughs with the results. images

Year 10 Engineering

I built an Engineering Chatbot using Zapier. Students explored and questioned the bot about ancient technologies and other engineering fundamentals, with pointers and explanations of issues surrounding LLMs and chatbots (they can’t always be trusted). A number of the more academic students really pushed the bots and found that while the speed of response is great, the accuracy of information varies tremendously.  The class liked the ease of use and creative thought process to help guide them to research the information. As one student put it “I knew what I wanted to look for, I just didn’t know how to ask. The chatbot helped me to ask Google the right questions.”

With an eye on the future, I'm excited to bring more AI into my class activities. It's a fantastic tool to boost creativity and enhance the design journey, without taking over the traditional methods. I'm particularly keen on using AI image generators in the divergent phase of the design process. These will let students use descriptive language to shape their ideas, adding a new dimension to their creativity. We'll introduce this after we've done hand sketching and rendering, blending old-school skills with emerging technology. It's all about guiding the students through the design process with a fresh, innovative twist!