If last week we had Bollywood, could Hollywood be far behind? Here is the fourth blog post from students in my class on Human Creativity x AI in Education, documenting what we do each week. The only edit I made to their post was including the image and description of the fractal images towards the middle of the post, the rest all in their words (and images).

The trend of making me the bad guy continues. I think it maybe time for me to throw down the infinity gauntlet!

Enjoy.

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The Avengers Part 5: The  Ed-Tech Midgame

By Team Energy: Kofi Wood, Yuktha Veeranki and Tanmay Vikhankar

Picture a vast, high-tech arena, Stark Tower meets your favorite university lecture hall. Enter Professor ‘Thanos’ Punya flanked by Nicole and Lindsey. They loom in the front like a trio of cunning supervillains, brandishing their dreaded slides. The rest of us, Earth’s Mightiest Grad Students, brace ourselves for the class session. Over Zoom, unseen “Watchers” (a squad of PhD observers) hover like cosmic entities, analyzing our every move.

Image: Professor “Thanos” Punya and his crew

Team Dreamers led by Kit and her sidekick Vincent leaps in first. Their weapon of choice? A “Patterning” superpower. They conjure a long-form prompt exercise that showcases how Large Language Models predict their next moves. Much like Hawkeye or Black Widow scanning the battlefield for weaknesses, Team Dreamers teaches us how to spot patterns and link them to our assigned reading on pattern recognition. We slip into lively discussions about how our unique backgrounds shape the patterns we see, like discovering secret lairs only we could uncover.

Image: Team Dreamers with the patterning superpowers

Meanwhile, we, Team Energy, lie in wait, coiled like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man, ready to strike. Our squad of three: Kofi, Yuktha, and Tanmay, channels the unstoppable synergy of an Avenger trifecta, quietly absorbing the knowledge bombs dropped by Professor Punya and his sidekicks – channeling the uber-Guru villain of them all—the Dreaded KayTee! The group chat hums with mentions of fractals, ancient Hindu temple architecture, perfect circles, and other marvels (pun intended). Somewhere between geometry and myth, patterns weave themselves into an Infinity Gauntlet of creative insight. 

Typographical fractals |  Fractals and Temple Architecture

Between the academic skirmishes, Team AI emerges, flaunting their Bollywood Blog Post creation, while heroes like Vincent (armed with verse), Karina (strategic plans), Kellie (deep insights), and Bret (critical questions) each add their signature moves to the fray. The tension builds: whose intellect will dominate this battleground?

Then it’s Team Energy’s turn to take the field. In classic Avengers style, we coordinate an onslaught of AI Tips & Tricks:

• Yuktha (Yuk-Thor) deploys “ChatGPT via WhatsApp,” a neat infiltration tool that brings AI powers right to our phones.
• Kofi (Captain Kofi) reveals his cunning method to transcribe long-form videos and unleash ChatGPT for deep analysis—like summoning an oracle to parse raw footage.
• Tanmay (IronTanmay) closes ranks, showcasing how AI can expand images in Photoshop, basically forging illusions worthy of Ironman in his hi-tech amour.

One by one, we land our hits, and the crowd roars in approval.

Image: The Superheroes Team Energy (Yuk-Thor, Captain Kofi and Iron Tanmay)

After a heroic break, like a quick regroup in the Quinjet, everyone returns for the next round. 

Nicole and Lindsey, eager to show off their super powers, take over to show us how to build “creative GPTs.” For 25+ minutes, we tinker with prompts and watch as new AI personas spring to life, evaluating each other’s work with a “What If?” approach reminiscent of parallel universes in the Marvel Multiverse.

Just when we think the dust has settled, Team Dreamers resurfaces for a second surprise attack—another patterning prompt, this time harnessing poetry. Using anaphora, each verse stands like a newly revealed power source, fueling the final chapter of this class session’s saga. A hush falls as one student shares lines so lyrical you’d think Shakespeare joined the Avengers.

Finally, Professor Punya storms back to center stage for the final showdown: class announcements and next week’s assignments.

With a sweep of his monstrous syllabus, he reminds us the battle continues. But for now, the Avengers of Ed-Tech, we, the heroic grad students, have triumphed for one more day. We close our laptops, confident that even in this swirling cosmic clash of knowledge and AI, our combined powers remain unstoppable.

Image:  Professor Punya storms back to center stage for the final showdown