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SINGAPORE \u2013 Primary and secondary school teachers explored generating visuals from news articles to produce photorealistic advertisements, cartoon posters and anime-style comic strips using generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) at the SPH Media News Centre in Toa Payoh North. <\/p>\n
About 100 teachers from 45 schools attended The Straits Times\u2019 AI prompt engineering workshops held on Nov 11 for secondary school teachers and Nov 13 for primary school teachers. <\/p>\n
The workshops guided them on how to better use Gen AI like ChatGPT and Gemini to create classroom content, seamlessly integrating current affairs into their lessons.<\/p>\n
During the 2\u00bd-hour workshop, trainers from StoryLab Academy, a start-up that conducts language enrichment workshops using digital tools, showed attendees techniques to sharpen the prompts they wrote to generate classroom content, as well as to refine the output.<\/p>\n
The teachers then got hands-on, generating visual content for the classroom based on articles previously featured in Little Red Dot and IN \u2013 weekly student publications produced by ST\u2019s Schools department for primary and secondary schools respectively.<\/p>\n
Ms Fiona Prapta Utama, a teacher at Bendemeer Primary School, said: \u201cVisuals are important in maintaining students\u2019 attention spans these days. I think using AI can help students with narrative writing and other classroom activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs Tham Wan Churn, a teacher at Northland Primary School, said: \u201cUsing these techniques to generate creative writing prompts or visual text for comprehension can save (teachers) time searching Canva for images or drawing visuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s AI prompt engineering workshops are part of ST\u2019s yearly teachers\u2019 engagement sessions, which aim to provide them with refreshed ideas on how to use news and current affairs in their classrooms. Previous years\u2019 engagements included workshops on managing youth fatigue and infusing values-based lessons with current affairs.<\/p>\n
Ms Debra Ann Francisco, the news-in-education specialist of the ST Schools team, said: \u201cAI and the news complement each other as powerful tools for the classroom. Through this workshop on AI prompt engineering, we hope educators will be able to harness AI to transform current affairs into engaging visual and learning resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy doing so, teachers will be able to create materials that not only capture students\u2019 interest but also help them connect classroom learning to the world around them.\u201d<\/p>\n
St Stephen\u2019s School teacher Geraldine Pereira said she felt what she had learnt from the workshop would help her create better classroom content for her students. <\/p>\n
She added: \u201cI\u2019m a firm believer that AI can aid us in the classroom. I\u2019m excited to use these features to make things more fun and engaging for my students.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n