Making AI Useful: Hands-on workshop

Making AI Useful

You already use AI to draft an email, summarise a document or answer a question. Now it’s time to go further. Making AI Useful is a small, hands-on workshop for people who have some experience with AI and want to move beyond the basic chatbot. You’ll learn how to give AI better context, connect it to useful information and create repeatable ways of working. The focus is practical: using AI more effectively across work, home and everyday life. This won’t be a presentation about AI. You’ll bring your laptop, open the tools and learn by doing.

What we’ll cover

Together, we’ll explore how to:

• improve your prompting, including when to give AI instructions and when to get AI to ask you questions

• understand the difference between an AI model, Copilot, an agent, a Claude Project and a NotebookLM notebook

• build a Microsoft Copilot agent for a repeatable task

• use Copilot’s Prompt Coach to help create better agent instructions

• use Microsoft Teams transcripts and Copilot to capture summaries, decisions, actions and risks

• build a Claude Project around a real task or interest, with its own instructions and reference material

• understand Claude connectors and skills, including how they can create more repeatable ways of working

• explore NotebookLM and see how trusted sources can become summaries, audio, video, slides, quizzes and other useful outputs

• choose the right AI set-up for the job, rather than using a chatbot for everything.

Who is it for?

This workshop is for people who already use AI, but mainly as a chatbot, email drafter or document summariser. You don’t need to be technical. If you’re comfortable entering a prompt, reviewing the response and experimenting a little, you’ll be fine. By the end, you should have built something yourself and have a much clearer understanding of agents, projects, connectors, skills and notebooks, and when each is useful.

What to bring

Bring your laptop and charger. Before the workshop, you’ll receive a short preparation checklist. Ideally, you’ll have:

• access to Microsoft Copilot through your Microsoft or workplace account

• a Claude account, free or paid

• a Google account for NotebookLM

• an idea for a task or project you’d like AI to help with.

Some features depend on your licence and workplace settings, so I’ll demonstrate anything people can’t access themselves. Please don’t bring confidential workplace, client or personal information for the exercises. We’ll use safe or non-sensitive examples while learning. A printed Plain Speak AI Literacy workbook is included, with guided exercises, prompts, project ideas and practical resources to take home.

Small group, practical learning

The workshop is capped at 15 participants.

The aim is simple: leave knowing how to move beyond the chatbot and start setting up AI to do more useful, repeatable work for you.

Wednesday 18 November
6.00pm to 8.00pm
St Bede’s Primary School library, Red Hill
$129 per person | Maximum 15 participants
Printed workbook included

This workshop is independently delivered by Plain Speak AI Literacy and is not a St Bede’s school event.

Photographs:I take occasional photos of hands, screens and workbooks during sessions. If you’d prefer not to be included, just let me know on the night.