Practical Workshops

[M1] Build your school’s AI roadmap: a strategic framework for school leaders

Workshop Leaders:

Jamie Toner,  Director of Technology & Innovation, Singapore American School, Singapore
Chris Ippolito,  Emerging Technology Coordinator, Singapore American School, Singapore

"As artificial intelligence moves from novelty to necessity, educators face a triple challenge: How do we use it, how do we teach it and how do we evolve alongside it? This immersive, hands on workshop invites participants to view the AI revolution through three distinct lenses designed to provide both immediate utility and long-term strategic clarity.

First, we explore Teaching with AI, where participants engage in "Speed-Design" sessions - using generative tools to automate administrative workflows, differentiate materials in seconds and spark creative lesson hooks. 

Next, we pivot to Teaching about AI, defining what true "AI Fluency" looks like. We move beyond prompt engineering to discuss algorithmic bias, data privacy and the mechanics of LLMs, ensuring students are critical consumers of technology. 

Finally, we address Teaching in the Age of AI. This reflective segment tackles the human-centric core of education: How does the role of the teacher shift from content provider to high-level mentor? What uniquely human skills - like empathy, ethical judgment and complex collaboration - must we double down on to prepare students for an AI-augmented workforce?

Designed for secondary educators and school leaders, this workshop balances high-energy practical application with strategic foresight. Attendees will not just ""see"" AI; they will build a personal AI roadmap. You will leave with a curated toolkit of strategies and a clear vision for maintaining the human heart of the classroom in an AI-saturated world."

Key takeaways include:

• Identify everyday planning and admin tasks where AI can reduce workload and free up time for teaching and student support
• Design age appropriate lessons that help students understand, question and use AI responsibly and ethically
• Apply teaching strategies that build skills AI can’t replace, such as critical thinking, creativity, empathy and ethical decision making

Intended Audience: K-12 Educators and Leaders

[M2] Designing active learning with the CLEAR pedagogical framework

Workshop Leader:

This workshop is designed for educators who are interested in implementing an active and authentic approach to teaching and learning within their courses. In the course, participants will be introduced to a dynamic pedagogical approach that weaves together active learning, authentic assessments and peer learning through Contextualised Learning via Enquiring, Answering, and Reflecting (CLEAR) to increase student agency.

In this workshop, Assoc. Prof. Stephen Tay will share results from a six year journey in the implementation of CLEAR across courses, Departments, Colleges and Institutions with triangulated measurements (i.e. assessment scores, student feedback, sample of students’ work and feedback from lecturers). Briefly, CLEAR was developed from the existing student generated questions (SGQ) approach in literature through the following three improvements: 1) utilisation of higher orders of Bloom’s taxonomy, 2) development of answers to the questions developed and 3) employing industry as contexts for the questions for authentic assessments. 

Drawing inspiration from the experience and case studies shared during the workshop, participants will create personalised lesson/assessment plans and collaborate with peers to share innovative ideas for achievement of the desired learning outcomes. 

By the end of this workshop, participants will be empowered with practical strategies to create an engaging learning environment with CLEAR to foster teaching and learning in their respective classes.

Key takeaways include:

• Identify the elements and articulate the impact of CLEAR implementation across disciplines
• Develop personalised lesson/assessment plans to adopt CLEAR in their teaching
• Share and receive feedback to help improve the developed lesson/assessment plans

Intended Audience: Higher Ed Educators

[M3] The educator’s aura: thriving in the agentic era

Workshop Leader:

Your wealth of wisdom. Your values system. Your passion to nurture. These are more important than ever in affirming your unique flavour as an educator, especially in a world where disruptive tech tools are accessible to anyone; where anyone can posture as a content expert.

So join award-winning tech humanist and innovative educator Ryan, as he reports from various fronts on the ground: Raw realities of what education stakeholders are thinking, and productive playbooks to capture the hearts of new generations, while easing educators into the ever-evolving tech space.

Savour ideas to boost your unique aura as an educator - leveraging emerging tech fluidly to set your stage, to turn your worldview of knowledge into an art form of immersive gamification and storytelling, turning education into an experience beyond what we currently imagine. Don’t stop there – enable the magic to touch your student’s hearts and minds in ways they appreciate, via admin flows made smooth as butter.

Having a magnetic aura as an educator is half the battle won, commanding you more attention span and respect in your ecosystem and a more motivated student community. Your strategic leverage of GenAI tools, coupled with delivering the most engaging of emotional experiences towards human-centric goals, are what will keep you irreplaceable.

Key takeaways include:

• Personalise your own Educator's Aura profile
• DExplore the power of 'phygital edutainment' to deliver any topic with substance and style.
• Efficiently hyperpersonalise progress updates for future-ready student growth

Intended Audience: K-12 Educators and Leaders

[M4] No code, no limits: customising your own AI learning tools

Workshop Leader:

It can often feel like AI is happening to us and that we have little control. The reality is that AI can be easy to steer, within the right platform, and with thoughtful pedagogical intent. In this workshop, we will explore ways that educators can take control of AI to build their own learning experiences for students. From custom agents to specialised mini apps, we will see how to start with an educational context and goal, turn this into instructions for AI, and build interactive learning experiences for students.

This session reframes the educator's relationship with AI from passive consumer to active creator. We will unpack the surprisingly accessible architecture behind custom AI tools, demystifying what once seemed like the domain of developers and tech specialists. Through guided experimentation, participants will discover how clear pedagogical thinking translates directly into powerful AI behaviour and outputs, putting educator expertise at the centre of the design process. Whether you want to build a writing coach that asks better questions, a maths tutor that adapts to student misconceptions, or a history simulation that brings primary sources to life, this workshop provides an ideal starting point.

Key takeaways include:

• Design and build a custom AI learning tool aligned to a specific curriculum objective using a no-code platform
• Apply structured frameworks to translate pedagogical intent into AI-enabled learning activities
• Develop approaches to evaluate when custom AI tools add genuine value to learning

Intended Audience: Higher Ed Educators

[M5] Culture first, AI second: driving sustainable adoption

Workshop Leader:

AI tools offer powerful new affordances for teaching and learning, yet in many schools and organisations, adoption still lags behind what’s possible. The sticking point is rarely whether the tools work. More often, it’s culture: the beliefs, norms, incentives, and everyday routines that shape whether people feel safe to try, time to experiment and support to persist when early attempts are messy.

This workshop focuses on the “culture engine” behind sustainable AI adoption. Drawing from our school’s experience, we will share a practical, field-tested approach to shifting mindsets and behaviours - from cautious curiosity to confident, purposeful use. Participants will explore how we build trust and psychological safety, reduce friction in teachers’ workflows, and create shared language for what “good” AI use looks like. We will also unpack the systems that make change stick: leadership signals, professional learning structures, peer champions, quick-win pilots, feedback loops and lightweight governance that protects quality without slowing innovation.

Beyond sharing examples, this is a hands on planning session. Participants will diagnose their current adoption barriers and identify the cultural levers most relevant to their context. Using a simple strategy canvas, they will craft a customised adoption plan- including key messages, enabling structures, pilot ideas, measures of progress and a realistic action roadmap - so they can return to their organisations ready to lead AI-enabled change with clarity and momentum.

Key takeaways include:

• Explain why culture (not tool effectiveness) is often the main driver of AI adoption and identify the key cultural barriers and enablers in their own context
• Apply a set of practical culture-shaping strategies (e.g., psychological safety, norms for “good use”, peer champions, quick-win pilots, supportive structures) to increase teacher uptake and quality of AI use
• Design a customised AI adoption strategy for their organisation, including priority actions, stakeholder roles, communication moves and simple success measures

Intended Audience: K-12 educators, managers, school leaders, directors. Higher Ed are welcome too.

[M6] Mini AI Hackathon - using AI to build a working app to enhance your workflows

Workshop Leader:

Heard about AI transforming workflows, automating repetitive tasks and unlocking new efficiencies, but not sure how to actually make it work in your day to day role? This session is designed to move you from curiosity to creation.

In this fast-paced, hands on mini hackathon, you will use generative AI to design and build a simple, functional app tailored to your own needs. Whether you’re a teacher, school leader, or part of the operations team, you’ll explore how AI can help you streamline processes, better use your data and solve real challenges in your context.

Guided by practical examples and a simplified design process, participants will learn how to prompt AI to generate code, customise features and deploy a working tool within the session. No coding experience is required: just a willingness to experiment and rethink what’s possible.

While examples will include Google Workspace integrations, the workshop is open to all participants regardless of platform or technical background. The focus is on transferable concepts and approaches that can be adapted to different school environments.

To get the most out of this session, participants are encouraged to come prepared with a rough idea of a workflow they want to improve, or a dataset they would like to better utilise.

You will leave with a live prototype and the confidence to continue building and iterating beyond the workshop.

Key takeaways include:

• Build a functional prototype of an app to support a real workflow in your school or role
• Understand ways to use AI tools to write all the code for you - no coding knowledge required
• Apply simple deployment techniques to launch and test your app quickly

Intended Audience: K-12 educators and leaders. Higher Ed are welcome too.

[W1] Taming the algorithm: maintaining pedagogical integrity in AI assisted lesson planning

Workshop Leader: 

Simon Hornbrook,  Head of Digital Integration,  St. Joseph's Institution International School, Singapore

The promise of the "10-second lesson plan" is alluring, but it brings a critical fear: are we sacrificing deep, constructivist pedagogy for behaviourist convenience? Early research suggests that without guidance, Generative AI defaults to formulaic, teacher-centred instruction. However, a recent study of experienced IB educators in Singapore reveals a different reality: expert teachers are actively "taming" the AI to serve, rather than replace, their pedagogical values.

In this intensive 2 hour workshop, we move beyond generic prompting advice to apply four evidence-based strategies derived from this "Human-in-the-Loop" research. First, participants will adopt the "Critical Curator" stance, engaging in a "Pedagogical Turing Test" to diagnose hidden bias in AI output. Next, they will practice "Pre-loading" (injecting pedagogical context before the prompt) and "Iterative Dialogue" (treating AI as a thought-partner rather than a vending machine) to restructure their planning workflows. Finally, the session culminates in "Transformative Design," where attendees flip the script to design student-facing AI tools that drive inquiry rather than just delivering content.

Attendees will leave not just with a lesson plan, but with a replicable framework to ensure their use of AI enhances, rather than dilutes, student agency and inquiry.

Key takeaways include:

• Confidently assess AI outputs to ensure they support strong pedagogy, not just speed or convenience
• Structure prompts so AI aligns with specific teaching approaches before generating classroom materials
• Design AI-supported activities that promote student thinking, inquiry and independence rather than passive use

Intended Audience: K-12 Educators (Middle/High School focus), Curriculum Coordinators and EdTech Integration Specialists

[W2] Beyond chatbots: designing and building learning centred AI agents

Workshop Leader:

Mui Kim Chu,  Associate Professor, Deputy Director of SIT Teaching & Learning Academy (STLA), Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore

Generative AI is rapidly entering university classrooms, yet many educators remain uncertain about how to move beyond using AI as a general-purpose chatbot or productivity aid. When AI is introduced without pedagogical design, it can unintentionally reduce student thinking, over-scaffold learning, or undermine intended outcomes. This hands-on workshop addresses this challenge by guiding educators through a pedagogy-first process for both designing and building AI learning agents.

The workshop begins by reframing AI agents as pedagogical artefacts, not tools. Participants will learn how to identify authentic learning problems, specify the target thinking they want students to develop, and select instructional strategies that legitimately benefit from AI support. Using a structured Faculty Design Input Template, participants will articulate the agent’s pedagogical role, boundaries, guardrails, conversation control logic, and fading mechanisms to ensure students ultimately perform independently.

Crucially, the workshop goes beyond design. Participants will translate their completed templates into actual system prompts and use them to build and test a working AI agent during the session. Through guided testing, participants will observe how different design choices affect agent behaviour, including when the agent should probe, redirect, summarise, or end an interaction. Common pitfalls—such as over-helping, answer dumping and dependency—are surfaced and corrected through live iteration.

By the end of the session, participants will leave not only with a pedagogically sound design blueprint, but also with a functional AI learning agent that is aligned to their teaching context and ready for classroom use or further refinement.

Key takeaways include:

• Identify appropriate learning problems and pedagogical strategies 
• Design and document a pedagogically supported AI agent 
• Build a working AI learning agent that supports defined learning outcomes

Intended Audience: Higher Ed Educators

[W3] Designing your school’s AI policy from strategy to implementation

Workshop Leader:

Sarah Anjum,  Head of Technology and Innovation, Stonehill International School, India

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming teaching, learning and assessment - yet schools face growing challenges around ethics, privacy, data security, copyright, safeguarding, misinformation and academic integrity. Beyond classroom usage, institutions must address questions of governance, risk, skill building and cultural readiness for an AI-enabled world.

This practical workshop will equip schools with a holistic framework to implement AI responsibly and confidently. Participants will explore real cases from K-12 settings, unpack risks such as hallucination, bias, deepfakes, dependency and data exposure, and examine emerging global trends in AI regulation and educational policy.

The session will also focus on digital citizenship in the age of AI, including media literacy, ethical prompt design, attribution, intellectual honesty and how to prepare students for AI shaped future pathways. Leaders will learn how to establish an AI Committee, define governance roles, select tools based on data handling standards, and co develop an AI Policy that balances innovation with safeguarding and academic integrity.

Schools will leave with practical templates, checklists and action ready guidelines that can be adapted locally. The workshop ultimately reframes AI not as a threat, but as a strategic opportunity; requiring thoughtful leadership, ethical foundations, and a shared commitment to preparing students for a world where AI is widespread, collaborative and human centred.

Key takeaways include:

• Evaluate ethical, privacy and data protection considerations when selecting and deploying AI tools in schools
• Establish governance structures, including an AI Committee and school-wide AI Policy that supports innovation while mitigating risk
• Integrate AI into digital citizenship frameworks to prepare students for ethical, safe and responsible AI use

Intended Audience: K-12 Educators and Leaders

[W4] Build, code, create - using AI to power real STEM Learning

Workshop Leader:

Dr Shen Yong Ho,  Advisor, Institute of Pedagogical Innovation, Research and Excellence (InsPIRE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

As generative AI becomes ubiquitous in education, how can we transform it from an answer generator to a genuine pedagogical instrument? This workshop presents three innovative approaches where prompt coding - systematically designing prompts to generate functional code - enhances STEM education.

Facilitators will demonstrate how prompt-coding enables educators to: (1) design educational games reinforcing key concepts, (2) create simulations and generate code controlling hardware for mini-experiments and (3) empower students to solve authentic problems by creating their own computational solutions. Through classroom implementation reflections, facilitators will share successes, challenges, and student responses.

Participants will have the opportunity to explore how to contextualise these approaches for their own teaching, identifying curriculum opportunities where prompt coding can enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. Designed for STEM educators at secondary and tertiary levels seeking to leverage AI as a tool that provides opportunities for student creation, experimentation and problem solving.

Key takeaways include:

• Transform generative AI from an answer tool into a pedagogical instrument through structured prompt coding techniques.
• Design technology enhanced activities that meaningfully deepen student learning
• Apply sound pedagogical principles to guide purposeful technology integration

Intended Audience: Higher Ed Educators

[W5] AI ambition vs reality: closing the gap that holds schools back

Workshop Leaders:

Shoaib Raza,  Director of Digital Learning & Entrepreneurship, Nexus International School (Singapore) ;  Noah McErlane , Director of Digital Learning & Entrepreneurship, Nexus International School (Malaysia)

Schools across the region are articulating bold ambitions for artificial intelligence. Yet daily practice often reveals a different story: fragmented implementation, unclear procurement decisions, pedagogical drift and mounting pressure on infrastructure. The gap between aspiration and reality is rarely about enthusiasm. It is about coherence.

This interactive workshop introduces a practical Coherence Architecture Model to help leaders and educators align AI ambition with the structural foundations that make sustainable change possible. Participants will examine how infrastructure, governance, digital standards and pedagogical design interact, and why imbalance between these layers quietly undermines otherwise promising initiatives.

Through guided diagnostics, real-world scenarios and structured discussion, attendees will identify where gaps exist in their own institutions and explore how to move from reactive adoption to disciplined design. This workshop also includes a practical vendor brief exercise to strengthen procurement clarity and a collaborative declaration task that sharpens institutional stance on what AI is for and what must always be protected.

Grounded in classroom reality and systems thinking, this workshop equips participants with sharper language, clearer criteria and greater strategic confidence. Rather than adding another tool, it offers a framework for ensuring that innovation strengthens, rather than fragments, human-centred learning.

Key takeaways include:

• Diagnose structural gaps between AI ambition and implementation using a coherent architecture framework
• Develop clear digital standards and procurement criteria that align infrastructure with pedagogical intent
• Articulate a principled institutional position on AI that protects learning quality while enabling sustainable innovation

Intended Audience: K-12 leaders and educators

[W6] One size fits none – personalising the learning journey

Workshop Leader:

Claire Simms,  Assistant Principal, Innovation and Technology, St. Joseph’s Institution International Elementary School, Singapore

If personalised learning is the goal, student agency is the engine: but in real classrooms, how do we design learning experiences that give every student a unique path, pace and voice without overwhelming teachers or fragmenting instruction?

This is not a lecture, it is a design lab focused on what personalised learning looks like in practice. Participants will step into the learner’s experience to understand firsthand how choice, pacing, and ownership can transform engagement and outcomes. The emphasis is on moving beyond theory, frameworks and buzzwords to confront the real constraints and possibilities of classroom practice.

Through guided design challenges, you will unpack the structures, workflows, and pedagogical decisions that make “one-size-fits-none” learning possible. Along the way, you will explore how digital tools, feedback loops and classroom routines can support meaningful personalisation without adding unsustainable workload.

This session is about shifting from aspiration to action, equipping educators with practical approaches to design learning experiences that are flexible, scalable and genuinely centred on student agency.

Key takeaways include:

• Redesign an existing unit or lesson into a personalised learning experience, using structured tools and practical design principles
• Master the mechanics and practice specific strategies for flexible pacing, tiered tasks and self-directed assessment
• Test-drive practical tech integrations that provide real time feedback and data informed pathways

Intended Audience: K-12 leaders and educators