NET Scheme News 2023 Summer issue 44

In the 2022/23 school year, the English teachers and the NET at Precious Blood Secondary School in Chai Wan launched the first Human-AI Creative Writing Contest. The contest aimed to increase student engagement with English and to develop students’ and teachers’ knowledge and skills to use artificial intelligence (AI) for learning. For the contest, each student composed a short story using their own words as well as words generated by an AI-writing tool that the student coded. At pre-contest workshops, students learnt Python programming language to code their own AI-writing tool. They also learnt to compose short stories using their own words along with the words generated by AI-writing tools. Teachers judged the quality of students’ stories. The contest was held at Precious Blood Secondary School and four other secondary schools in other districts. The English teachers and students who were involved reported on the benefits of participating in the contest. According to April Fung, English Panel Head at Hoi Ping Chamber of Commerce Secondary School, her students signed up for the competition hoping to use AI tools to improve their writing skills. Meanwhile, not many students had general knowledge of AI creation and its usage in daily life. In the workshops, Hoi Ping students were equipped with progressively challenging coding skills, and it was observed that even those who were uncertain about their abilities at the beginning managed to follow and reach higher levels of coding. The First Human-AI CreativeWritingContest for HongKong Secondary Schools In their post-workshop reflection, students expressed that the experience of creating an AI-writing tool was “new”, “incredible”, and made them feel “more confident” to write short stories. The process of writing prompted students to contemplate the relationship between AI and human creativity; some suggested that AI facilitated them to think outside the box, while some acknowledged that AI-writing tools served as complements to human creativity, which could not be replaced by machines. Robin Hedley, Deputy English Panel Head at Hong Kong True Light College,observed how students usedAI writing tools to provide better alternatives to sections of their existing stories that the students were not satisfied with. A student codes an AI-writing tool at Hong Kong True Light College. Interface of a student’s AI-writing tool, called My First Text Generator, on Hugging Face (identifiers removed) A winning story excerpt from Hoi Ping Chamber of Commerce Secondary School. The student’s words are in red; the words generated from their AI-writing tool are in italicised, black text. A winning story excerpt from Precious Blood Secondary School. 4 NET Scheme News Issue 44 Human-AI Creative Writing