9 AI-Enhanced Back-to-School Activities

As the calendar turns to August, it’s time to start gearing up for the new school year. Depending on what you teach, the first few days of school are usually filled with going over rules and expectations as well as getting to know your students (as your students get to know you). Rather than make them fill out a worksheet or play some sort bingo game about summer break, try out a couple of these AI-enhanced back-to-school activities.

1. “My Faves” Activity

AI Tool Suggestion: Padlet “I can’t draw” feature

We all have favorites and things that make us uniquely us. I’ve used this activity for staff and students alike to get them familiar with AI image generation and also the importance of designing a solid prompt. For this challenge, I have students list out these 5 favorite things: Animal, food, hobby, location, and color. Then, I have them join my Padlet wall and locate the “I can’t draw” feature. (HINT: You can actually go into your settings and limit post fields to only use “I can’t draw”)

Once they’ve selected the I can’t draw feature they enter a prompt like this: Draw a combination of an [animal] eating [food] while [doing the hobby] at the [location] with a [color] sky.  The results range from hysterical to cute to somewhat disturbing. Here’s some results from a recent workshop. Be sure to showcase each image on the screen and ask students to “reverse engineer” the prompt.

2. 20 Questions About Summer

AI Tool Suggestion: Any LLM (like ChatGPT, Copilot, etc)

Large language models (LLMs) can be good at creating lists and ideas, but can they guess what you did this summer? In this activity, you’ll prompt your LLM to see if it can guess either what you did or where you went this summer. Start by having students write down the correct answer (i.e. “I went to summer camp” or “I stayed at home and did chores”). Then make sure they prompt the LLM correctly by asking it to “Play the 20 questions game to guess where I travelled to this summer” (or what I did this summer). Make it into a contest and see how many questions it takes for the LLM to guess correctly.

NOTE: For elementary teachers, do this as a whole class activity. Choose one student to share and then modeling on the screen with the class.

3. Animated Likes/Dislikes

AI Tool Suggestion: Adobe Express Animation

Getting to know students sometimes involves getting to know what they like and dislike. Whether it be a subject area or food or season of the year, you could just have them list them all of these on a piece of paper. However, another idea would be for them to express their likes and dislikes in animation form. Using Adobe’s Express Animation tool, have students choose their character and their backgrounds (they can even upload their own). Then have them use their own voice to share their likes and dislikes. For older students, have them create multiple videos and string them together either on a slideshow or in a movie editing program. When done, have them share with the class or with classmates.

4. Class Rules in Music Form

AI tool suggestion: Suno

There are all types of classroom rules and expectations. Sharing these on the first day of class become a rite of passage for most teachers and students. However, how much do they actually remember? In this activity, ask students to create a song over one of the classroom expectations. Using Suno, they can create a “heavy metal song about not turning in your work on time” or, as in the example below, “an uplifting 80’s synth pop song about the importance of wearing safety goggles in science class”. With younger students, I would start by modeling this and having students come up with suggestions for the song genre and rule/expectation.

5. KarAIoke Your Favorite Song

AI Tool Suggestion: Any image generator (Canva, Adobe, Padlet, etc)

I’ve written about this particular activity in more detail here, but the premise is: Use and AI image generator to create a visual representation of your favorite song. Start by showing a few examples for the students to guess then challenge them to find an APPROPRIATE song lyric or title that can be easily identified based on the images created. Have students post these on a Padlet or similar virtual wall so others can guess what the song is before revealing the answer. One thing I mention to students in this activity is that they need to tweak their prompt to get more exaggerated results. Instead of putting in “sweet child of mine” (for the Guns n’ Roses classic), they might have to put in a more descriptive prompt like “a person playing a guitar while holding a blue-eyed child with candy and sweets flying around them”.

6. Your Olympic Sport

AI tool suggestion: Haiper or Canva

The 2024 Olympics are in full swing (as of the writing of this blog), so let’s use that current event to create this next start-of-school activity. Using a text-to-video tool like Haiper or Canva’s Magic Media, have students create a short video of them performing their favorite Olympic sport. Text-to-video creation is still pretty immature in terms of outputs, so be prepared for some strange videos. Also, students will have to describe themselves to be in the video itself, which will lend itself to some awkward creations as well. Here’s my example of “An overweight white male with a black goatee and black hair wearing a business suit while attempting to pole vault in an Olympic stadium.“

7. Outrageous Autobiography

AI Tool Suggestion: ChatGPT, Copilot or LLM

Getting to know each other in class is a part of the first few days of school ritual. For this activity, we’ll use an LLM to create an autobiography about ourselves that includes part truth and part exaggeration. Start by giving it some prompts about yourself and then ask it to make an “outrageous and unbelievable” biography about you, the result might leave your mouth agape. Iterations of the prompt are the key to making the most magical, over-the-top, super hero-themed biography ever written. The joy comes in the aftermath of sharing the outputs or having the audience guess the individual based on the biography. For a little added spice, have students create an AI-generate image to go along with their story. Here’s my example using Copilot:

It goes on to reveal several other chapters but my favorite is the disclaimer at the end that it generated:

Just like with all the other activities, have students adjust the prompts and add in hilarious details like “being on stage with Taylor during the Eras tour” or “saving a truck full of king cobras that overturned on the highway”.

8. The Lego Version of You

AI tool suggestion: Ideogram (or other image generator)

Using AI to create an image of what you actually look like is much harder than you think. Rather than go for a human version of yourself, in this activity, students will use an image-generator to create a lego version of themselves doing their favorite hobby. They will have to include in their prompt the phrase “create a lego version of…” and then describe themselves and the activity or hobby. Here’s mine, see if you can guess the activity:

9. Story Book Character Movie Mashup

AI tool suggestion: Any AI image generator

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a big fan of image generators. They are great for visual learners and they help teach students the importance of adjusting prompts to get the right output. In this final back-to-school/getting-to-know-you activity, ask students to place one of their favorite storybook characters into a scene from their favorite movie. Then have other students try and guess the character and movie. You can try whichever AI image generator tool you want for this one, but for ease of use, I’ll go back to Padlet‘s “I can’t draw” feature to produce the following output:

These activities are really for students of all ages but should be adjusted based on the age of your students. Some need to be modeled with younger students, as many AI tools have age restrictions. Always check with your school’s policy before using them with your class (that’s the IT director in me talking :).

While I wouldn’t do all of them to start the school year, choose one or two help you get to know your students better while also teaching them the basics of AI prompting and its potential in your classroom for the upcoming school year. Enjoy and I hope you have a great year!