Session 7.03
Tracks
Track 3
| Friday, June 19, 2026 |
| 1:55 PM - 2:55 PM |
| McNamara Room |
Overview
Designing with AI — A cross-curricular game design task for Years 7–8
Details
This session is suitable for: Beginner
Bring a laptop to this session – it will be advantageous for attendees to have access to the free versions of Claude AI and Canva AI on their laptop.
Speaker
Nicolette Wheaton
The Glennie School
Designing with AI — A Cross-Curricular Game Design Task for Years 7–8
Presentation description
This workshop introduces a Term 1 Design & Technology assessment that challenges students to use Claude AI as a creative and technical partner in designing browser-based educational games. Built around the real-world issue of declining bee populations, the task moves students through a structured design thinking process: researching genuine biological threats and agricultural impacts, setting learning goals, crafting detailed AI prompts, evaluating generated outputs, and prototyping a physical Makey Makey controller for a specific stakeholder.
The activity is designed to develop prompt literacy — the increasingly essential skill of communicating precisely and purposefully with AI tools. Students quickly discover that the quality of what AI produces is directly tied to the quality of their thinking beforehand, making rigorous pre-planning genuinely motivating rather than perfunctory.
The task integrates Design & Technologies, Digital Technologies, and Critical & Creative Thinking strands, while also building research and persuasive writing skills. It is readily adaptable to other curriculum contexts, ecological topics, or audience briefs. Participants will leave with the full student scaffold, assessment rubric, and practical strategies for facilitating AI-assisted design projects in their own classrooms.
The activity is designed to develop prompt literacy — the increasingly essential skill of communicating precisely and purposefully with AI tools. Students quickly discover that the quality of what AI produces is directly tied to the quality of their thinking beforehand, making rigorous pre-planning genuinely motivating rather than perfunctory.
The task integrates Design & Technologies, Digital Technologies, and Critical & Creative Thinking strands, while also building research and persuasive writing skills. It is readily adaptable to other curriculum contexts, ecological topics, or audience briefs. Participants will leave with the full student scaffold, assessment rubric, and practical strategies for facilitating AI-assisted design projects in their own classrooms.
Biography
Nicolette Wheaton is an Australian Churchill Fellow with over 20 years of teaching experience across all science disciplines in Queensland and New South Wales, spanning independent, Catholic, and public sectors. A nationally recognised educator, she has received numerous awards, including the 2017 National Excellence in Teaching Award and was highly commended for the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science.
Nicolette is passionate about collaborating with teaching peers to create engaging, purposeful, and enriching learning experiences for students. She is committed to cultivating a Culture of Thinking in her classroom by integrating Harvard University's Project Zero frameworks, particularly the Eight Cultural Forces, to make thinking visible and develop students' intellectual character. Her approach focuses on creating learning environments where curiosity, reasoning, and reflection are valued and explicitly taught, empowering students to become independent, critical thinkers who can tackle complex problems with confidence and creativity.
