Computer Skills
Beginner
60 mins
Teacher/Student led
Learning Goals
Learning Outcomes
+80 XP
What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC or iPad/Tablet

Your AI Copilot — Prompting AI to Do Better Work

Learn to use AI assistants effectively as a Drafter, Critic, and Explainer on your own work. Master prompt patterns that get genuine results: being specific, giving a role, showing examples, and iterating. Practise on your Something Real project.

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    1 - Introduction

    Illustration for Introduction

    Welcome

    Earlier in the course you learnt how to verify AI: how to spot when an assistant is making things up. Today you learn the other half: how to drive it. AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini can genuinely speed up real work on your Something Real (drafting a pitch hook, critiquing a proposal, explaining a concept you can't quite teach back), but only if you prompt them well and decide for yourself what to keep.

    By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

    • Use an AI assistant in three useful modes: Drafter, Critic, and Explainer
    • Write prompts that get specific, useful output instead of generic filler
    • Decide what to keep, change, or reject from an AI response, and explain why
    • Recognise when AI help crosses into academic dishonesty
    • Apply the same patterns on ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Gemini, whichever your school supports

    Warm-up

    Think for 30 seconds: the last time you asked an AI assistant for help with something real, was the first answer actually useful, or did you have to rewrite your prompt to get anything you could use? What did you change the second time?

    👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

    +5 XP

    2 - Key Concepts

    AI assistants aren't magic. They're good at some specific things and bad at others. The five ideas below are what separate a wasted 10 minutes from a useful one.

    Read this first: the bold sentence in each row is the one-line takeaway. If you only remember five sentences from this lesson, make them those five.
    ConceptWhy it mattersExample
    Drafter mode — ask AI for a first version that you will then editA starter draft is always easier to improve than a blank page. Editing someone else's attempt also teaches you what "good" looks like.Ask AI to draft three alternative one-sentence hooks for a pitch about a TY bake sale to help fund the Galway trip
    Critic mode — paste your own work and ask AI to find specific weaknessesYou spot your own mistakes more easily when someone names them out loud. AI is a patient, free critic available at midnight before a deadline.Paste your {{code:04_polished_proposal}} and ask AI to name three sentences that are unclear and say what would confuse a parent reading them
    Explainer mode — ask AI to explain a concept at the exact level you needIf you can teach something back in two sentences, you actually understand it. That is the difference between freezing and answering confidently during your pitch.Ask AI to explain "break-even point" at Junior Cert business level, distinguishing fixed costs (for example, table hire) from variable costs (ingredients), with a worked euro example
    Prompt specificity — vague prompts give vague output; specific prompts with a role, an example, and real material give usable outputThe gap between "help me with my pitch" and a draft you can edit is about 30 extra words in the prompt."Help me with my pitch" produces generic waffle. "Act as a school communications coach. Rewrite this opening in 25 words for my year head: [paste sentence]" produces something usable.
    The honesty line — AI as support is fine; AI doing the work you were asked to do yourself is dishonestyCritique, explanation, and draft-to-edit are support. Submitting AI output as your own is cheating. The rule of thumb: if the point of the task is that you learn the skill, AI can't do it for you.Using AI to critique your own proposal draft is support. Pasting an assignment brief and submitting the AI's answer unchanged is dishonesty.

    👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

    +10 XP

    3 - Step-by-step Task — Three Modes, One Project

    You'll take one rough pitch sentence through all three AI modes (Drafter, Critic, and Explainer) using a sample TY bake sale for the Galway trip as the worked example. Then in the Portfolio Build you'll apply the same three modes to your own Something Real.

    +15 XP

    4 - Common Issues

    Common Issues

    Prompting isn't a magic formula. Here's what to do when it isn't working.

    IssueSolution
    The AI gave me generic waffle that doesn't helpYour prompt was probably too vague. Add a role ("act as a …"), the real material (paste it in), and a constraint (word count, audience, level). Don't restart; refine the prompt you just sent by adding the missing piece.
    The AI is confidently stating a fact that sounds wrongAI hallucinates. Every factual claim you plan to use in your portfolio must be verified against another source, exactly like the work you did for your {{code:02_research_page}}. If you can't verify it, don't use it.
    The explanation is still too confusing to teach back in two sentencesAsk one narrow follow-up targeting the exact part that confused you, for example, "I didn't get [X]; can you explain that bit with a different example?" Don't ask for the whole thing again from scratch; iterate.
    AI is refusing to help or showing a warningYou may have framed the request in a way the tool reads as sensitive. Rephrase with the purpose clear (school work), the audience clear (my year head, my class), and the constraint clear (one paragraph, Junior Cert level).
    I typed the prompt but the AI is still answering as if the placeholder was part of my questionScroll back and check you deleted the [paste your chosen sentence] text (brackets and all) and replaced it with your own sentence. If not, send a new message: "Ignore my last message. Here is the real sentence: …" and paste your sentence cleanly.
    +10 XP

    5 - Portfolio Build — AI Workbench

    Independent Practice

    Your goal: Practise using an AI assistant in all three modes on your own Something Real, so by the end of the lesson you know which parts of your pitch, proposal, and numbers AI can genuinely help with, and where you still have to do the thinking yourself.
    Time: ~20 minutes
    Task: Open your {{code:Digital_Portfolio}} folder and create a new document called {{code:07_ai_workbench}}. Work through three mini-cases on your own project: Drafter (ask AI to draft a one-sentence pitch hook for your upcoming pitch deck), Critic (paste {{code:04_polished_proposal}} and ask for specific criticism), and Explainer (pick a concept from {{code:05_project_budget}} or {{code:06_decision_chart}} you can't teach back in two sentences). Build the four-column template below in your document and fill a row for each case, so you don't have to design the page from scratch. Close the page with one honest line of the form "AI helped me most with X; AI was least useful for Y".

    How to find your Explainer concept: scan {{code:05_project_budget}} or {{code:06_decision_chart}} and look for a word you wrote down but would struggle to explain to a parent in 10 seconds. If nothing jumps out, try one of these starters: break-even point, target audience, opportunity cost, margin, or any formula you copied from a classmate without fully understanding.

    If time is tight: complete the Drafter and Critic rows in class — those are the highest-value cases for your pitch next lesson — and finish the Explainer row at home. A well-documented two rows beats three rushed ones.

    ModePrompt you sentAI output (summary is fine)Kept / Changed / Rejected — and why (one line)
    Drafter………
    Critic………
    Explainerfirst prompt + your follow-up…your own two-sentence teach-back
    Success criteria:
    • Your {{code:07_ai_workbench}} has at least two rows of the template filled in (three if time allows), each showing the prompt, the AI output, and what you kept, changed, or rejected, so a reader can see how you drove the AI rather than just copied it
    • The Critic row names at least one criticism you accepted and one you rejected, each with a one-line reason for the call you made
    • If completed: the Explainer row shows your first prompt, at least one narrower follow-up question, and your own two-sentence teach-back of the concept
    • The page closes with one honest line of the form "AI helped me most with X; AI was least useful for Y"
    +15 XP

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