The Teachers’ Training Programme on Artificial Intelligence as a Powerful Tool :Challenges and Opportunities ‘ was held on November 16, 2023 in the Don Bosco School Auditorium.
The day started at 8:45 am with the arrival of the keynote speaker, Fr. Sabu Thomas, Assistant Professor, Sacred Heart College, Kochi and Rev. Fr. Jose Manipadam SDB
The programme commenced at 9:00 am. An introductory hymn was sung & the prayer was said by our Rector and Principal, Fr. Hemlet Kujur. It was followed by the introduction and felicitation of the resource persons with a bouquet of flowers and a sash. The staff members were quite excited and looked forward to learn something new that would enable them to use the knowledge from the four sessions in their teaching methodology and interaction with the young Bosconians.
Session I unfolded at 9:10 am. The speaker explained the relevance of AI in 2023 and highlighted the difference between a Digitally Literate and Digitally Illiterate person.
The staff members were then divided into eight teams. Each team was asked to choose a title and a captain.
Information about the pros and cons of Free AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, Bing was disseminated using relevant examples.
Session II began at 11:20 am. Indepth information about AI tools such as ‘turn it in’ to check plagiarism and ‘Quillbot’ for paraphrasing, content writing or drafting research papers and articles was shared.
A tea break at 11:00 am and lunch at 1:00 pm provided networking opportunities.
In Session III, Fr. Sabu Thomas enlightened the attendees on additional Research AI Tools such as those found in MS office, Tome, gamina and co- piolet to generate Pdfs and PPTs to save time and effort.
A short break at 2:30 pm preceded the final session on Advanced AI Tools such as ‘Perplexity’, ‘Tome’ and ChatGPT Extensions, Google Extensions was explained.
An interesting part of the session was ‘leny’, the ‘doctor for free ai consultation at odd hours, mindsum’ for online psychological counselling and GPTMate, where a person could choose one AI character and converse on a wide variety of topics at wil with the chatbot.
Besides this, information on AI tools like ‘twee’ and ‘allthat’ to convert videos to audio or to generate text, was also provided.
During each session, questions were asked and activities were given based on the AI resource tools. The team that responded correctly or completed the activity first were awarded points. In the end the team with the maximum points was awarded a prize.
The programme concluded at 3:45 pm with a vote of thanks proposed by Ms. Shivali and our Principal, Fr. Hemlet Kujur, on behalf of the Staff and Management respectively.
Before departure, the feedback forms were filled and e-certificates were instantly generated. A group photograph was clicked along with Fr. Sabu Thomas and Fr. Jose.
All members of the staff expressed their gratitude to the resource person for the informative sessions.