Learn to talk to AI
Coding Without Borders, 2025
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SOWCoders
Dedicated to battling gender-based digital inequality in low and middle-income countries.
Global Impact
Impacted over 40,000 girls across 57 countries since 2018.
Empowering Through Support
Providing training, mentorship, and culture-specific infrastructure support.
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Course Overview
Here's a quick look at what you can expect from the program:
4 Classes
Dive deep into prompt engineering with a series of comprehensive lessons.
9 AM New York Time Every Saturday
Live sessions designed to fit your schedule.
1 Project
Apply your skills to a real-world project and build your portfolio.
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🌟 What is AI?
Making computers intelligent
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🤖 Examples of AI
YouTube recommendations
AI studies what you watch to suggest new shows
ChatGPT
AI that can read, write, and talk like a person
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⚠️ The Bad Parts of AI
Very high energy consumption
AI encouraging harmful behaviors
Misinformation and bias
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🌈 The Good Parts of AI
Intelligence at your disposal
Education
Creativity
Entrepreneurship
Day-to-Day Activities
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🧰 AI Tools
ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini, Claude
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💬 What is a Prompt?
A prompt is the instruction you give to an AI tool to tell it what to do.
It's how you communicate with AI.
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🎯 What is Prompt Engineering?
It is the skill of designing and refining instructions, or "prompts", to guide an AI model toward generating the desired output.
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🎯 Why Learn Prompt Engineering?
AI tools are everywhere — school, homework, future jobs
It's becoming a fundamental skill
Use AI in a way that helps people, not harms them
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📝 Your First Prompt
(Activity slide)
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🧩 Prompt Framework
Task → Context → Expectation
Task
What do you want the AI to do?
Context
Background the AI should know
Expectation
Format, tone, or output style
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🔄 Iterate
Revisit the prompt framework
Break it down into multiple shorter prompts
Phrase it differently
Use constraints
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🖼️ Creating an Image
Use the prompting framework but for images.
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🎙️ Multi-Modal Prompt
Include text, audio, documents, and images in your prompt for rich context.
Text
Audio
Documents
Images
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📚 Process Large Documents
Use AI to summarize, extract, and organize long text.
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🌀 Hallucinations
AI sometimes makes things up — and it can happen anytime.
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📊 Build Tables
Use AI to turn information into clean tables.
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🔗 Prompt Chaining
For bigger tasks, you can use an AI’s output as input for the next prompt. Linking prompts this way forms a chain—called prompt chaining.
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💭 Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Enhance AI performance and transparency by guiding it through a logical reasoning process.
Request Step-by-Step Reasoning
Understand the AI's Logic
Spot Mistakes and Refine
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Homework Submission and Reflection
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🛡️ What are some ways you can keep yourself safe from trusting AI answers that might be wrong or made-up (hallucinated)?
To mitigate the risks of AI hallucinations and ensure accuracy, follow these essential steps:
Ask an expert (teacher, parent, mentor)
Do a web search
Ask the AI tool for sources and verify them
Cross-check across multiple AI tools
Proofread and use your own judgement
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Meta-Prompting
Use AI to generate prompts
Direct Request
Simply ask the AI to generate a prompt for a specific goal or output.
Template
Provide a structured template for the AI to fill in or expand upon, guiding its prompt creation.
Image
Use an image as input and instruct the AI to generate a descriptive prompt for that image.
Prompt Reversal
Reverse engineer the conversation to produce a prompt
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Simulations Agents
Simulations agents enable a dynamic learning environment, allowing for iterative improvement and skill development through practical engagement.
Simulate Scenarios
Practice
Get Feedback
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The Red Team Technique
A powerful technique to generating the desired output by having the AI generate content, and then challenging it from a critical perspective.
Generate using AI
Flip to Critique
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Incremental Requirement Gathering
Use AI to gradually collect context for a task; especially when you don’t know what all should be given as context.
Ask AI to question you
Answer the questions
Review the context summary
Proceed with the task
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Appendix
Additional slides from the prompt engineering journey.
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Congratulations and Thank You!
Our classroom had students proudly representing:
- Colombia
- Egypt
- Haiti
- India
- Kazakhstan
- Nigeria
- Ghana
- Puerto Rico
- Cameroon
- Kenya
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Homework: Image Generation
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Your Questions
Can AI help us create apps or websites?
How can we use AI to make videos?
Do prompts need to be long?
What can we do when AI misunderstands our prompt?
How can someone create their own AI in the future?
Why do some AI images look unrealistic or “weird”?
How can AI images be used to help people or solve real problems?
How can we use AI to learn in a fun and efficient way?
How do we use AI without becoming too dependent on it?
How is AI affecting the environment?
Can AI track my conversations even if I don't have an account with it?
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Your Questions
Can AI ask us questions to reduce mistakes and hallucinations?
What long-term effects can AI have on humans?
How can we design an article with a creative anchor chart using AI?
What makes a good prompt better than a normal one?
How can I write better prompts for complex tasks?
Which prompting techniques give the most accurate results?
How can I learn more about using simulation in AI?
How can I tell when it is okay to use prompt engineering in a school project?
What are the benefits of using prompt engineering?
Can you explain again what we did in Class 3?
Will there be a test or quiz on what we have learned so far?
What AI tools can I use to create videos?
What AI tools can I use to create an app, presentation, or website?
How can we use prompt engineering ethically in school projects without depending on AI too much?
How can we design or improve a game using AI?
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Your Questions
Thank you for submitting your insightful questions. Let's explore them together:
Safety & References
- Is it safe to upload our photos to AI tools?
- Do you have to add references in the prompt?
Hallucinations & Learning
- How do you determine whether an answer is correct or a hallucination?
- How to use AI in a way that helps us learn without becoming dependent or less intelligent?
- Can you explain more about AI hallucinations?
AI Creation & Application
- How can I tell if a piece of writing was created by AI or by a human?
- How can I share an app prototype made on Google AI Studio?
- How to use a prompt generated using AI?
- How can we use AI to build apps?
- How can I create AI? What tools can I use?
Ethical Considerations
- How can using AI harm other people? E.g., How does a silly picture like a jumping cat be harmful?
- How can prompt engineering help in reducing hallucinations?
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Intro to Prompt Engineering