Prompt-a-thon

We recently ran our first school-wide “Prompt-a-thon” event at Summit Atlas High School in Seattle.

The AI for Education team facilitated a day where students and teachers came together to solve community problems using generative AI, guided by the principles of both design thinking and liberatory design.

This methodology prioritizes equity at the heart of design thinking and shifts the relationship between those traditionally holding the reins of design to those impacted by these designs.

For our Prompt-a-Thon this enhanced design thinking process provided the framework for these students to come up with their solutions before then using Gen AI to augment their ideas at each stage in the process. School Principal Dan Effland even provided each team with 1-2 GPT-4 Teams accounts and we were also lucky to have Sutton Wunderle, AI Product Manager from Microsoft Education, here as a mentor.

The synergy between students and teachers, enhanced with the capabilities of generative AI, produced some truly inspiring work as they focused on tacking problems including:

💡 Literacy/reading
💡 Invasive species in the region
💡Affordable housing
💡Helping schools move from punitive to restorative practices
💡Connecting low income Seattleites with resources
💡Building a school gym to support social-emotional learning and mental/physical health

The creativity and impact as teams explore diverse applications of AI is really great to see. Summit is a terrific example of what schools can achieve when they embrace both innovation and equity.

If you envision hosting a similar transformative event at your school or district, reach out to us!

Image by Ideogram 1.0, which just launched a great text to image generator.