ChatGPT demo 1: study helper
Weak prompt: Help me study science.
Why weak: It does not name the topic, age, format, or what would make the answer useful.
Improved prompt: I am 15 and reviewing photosynthesis. Explain it in five short bullet points, give one everyday analogy, and end with two quiz questions.
Teaching point: Prompt quality often comes from clear purpose, audience, format, and limits.
Optional learner follow-up: Change the subject to geography or biology and keep the same structure.
ChatGPT demo 2: weekend planner
Weak prompt: Plan my weekend.
Why weak: It is too open-ended and gives no budget, location, style, or age context.
Improved prompt: Plan a low-cost Saturday for a teen in Vancouver with one outdoor idea, one indoor backup, and one snack stop. Keep the whole plan under $25 and list it as a simple timeline.
Teaching point: Specific constraints often make a response more practical.
Optional learner follow-up: Remix it for a rainy evening or a family outing.
ChatGPT demo 3: tone and audience rewrite
Weak prompt: Rewrite this email.
Why weak: It does not say who the email is for, how it should sound, or what to keep short.
Improved prompt: Rewrite this email so it sounds polite and clear for a teacher. Keep it under 120 words, make the ask obvious, and remove dramatic wording.
Teaching point: Audience and tone can matter as much as topic.
Optional learner follow-up: Change the audience to a team leader or event organizer.
Image demo 1: camp poster
Weak prompt: Make a camp poster.
Why weak: The tool has to guess the mood, style, colours, and layout.
Improved prompt: Create a friendly poster-style image for a scout campfire night at dusk with warm lantern light, navy and gold colours, pine trees in the background, and space at the top for a title.
Teaching point: Image prompts improve when the request includes scene, style, mood, and layout clues.
Optional learner follow-up: Remix it for a daytime family picnic poster.
Image demo 2: round sticker
Weak prompt: Make a cool sticker.
Why weak: Cool means different things to different people and gives no design direction.
Improved prompt: Design a round sticker with a mountain, a compass, and a small spark icon using bold flat colours, thick outlines, and a clean badge layout.
Teaching point: Style words and layout words help image tools narrow the result.
Optional learner follow-up: Remix it for a camp mug graphic or social tile.
Facilitator-only Codex demo
Weak prompt: Build me an app.
Why weak: It does not say what kind of app, what size, or what success looks like.
Improved prompt: Make one small HTML page for a scout checklist with a heading, three checklist items, one Complete button, and a short explanation of the changes. Keep it in one file.
Teaching point: The same prompt lesson applies to coding assistants: clearer requests reduce confusion.
Optional learner follow-up: Ask how the same prompt could be adapted for a bug fix.