Page 15 - 2nd Issue_Newsletter_online

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Nurturing Creators or or aesthetics. This year, Ms Ching put
Programming Extinction? this to the test with her Form 2 students.

The Teachers’ Perspectives Tasked with creating a four-panel comic,
the students were then told to use AI to
‘Right now, AI cannot replace us — that’s replicate their hand-drawn work. ‘They
t he ba s el i ne of ou r c re at iv it y a nd quickly realised that their own versions
uniqueness,’ notes our Visual Arts teacher were often much better,’ Ms Ching smiles.
Ms Joan Chik. ‘But if AI manages to ‘But I wanted them to notice the subtle
bre a k t h at? We r i s k b e c om i n g t he differences, which can ultimately lead
dinosaurs of the modern age.’ It begs to creative improvements.’ She a lso
a crucial question: are we nurturing encourages her students to explain their
the next generation of genuine creators, thoughts, noting, ‘Relying on predefined
o r pr o g r a m m i n g o u r ow n a r t i s t i c a nswers does not add dept h to t he
extinction? artwork, but using it in the right way

A s A I to ol s b e c ome s t aple s i n t he can lead to better learning.’
classroom, educators are tasked with an
unprecedented challenge: helping students
navigate technology while preserving
their unique style. To understand how
this balance is struck, we sat down with
ou r VA teachers Ms Joa n Ch i k a nd
Ms Cathy Ching.
Student’s work of four-panel comic (left)
There is no doubt that and the AI-generated version of the
AI is rapidly transforming comic (right).
t he creat ive process.
Rather than resisting it, However, technological advancements
Ms Ching encourages are not without their risks. In fact, one
students to maintain an of the major concerns is a decline in
open mind, viewing the independent creative thinking. How do
technology as a valuable we prevent students from over-relying
assistant. ‘Honestly, I on AI?
don’t have any strong
objections,’ she points For both educators, the answer lies in
out. ‘Once these platforms opened, I saw the irreplaceable nature of the human
how quickly text could turn into an image. touch. ‘At this moment, AI cannot help
It saves time on early-stage work, like us express personal feelings,’ Ms Chik
finding references or sketching out ideas remarks. ‘AI will give you nice results,
that might otherwise take hours to do but we still need to digest and transform
manually.’ By accelerating the iterative that output into our own work, which
process, AI allows students to explore and c a n even be ha rder t ha n doi ng t he
‘try out new styles’ to discover new patterns paintings by ourselves.’