SKILL vs GEM

 剛剛嘗試在Gemini 內create 一個Skill, 原來像create Gem那麼容易。但好處是在Gemini chatbox內 打 /, 先前建立的list of Skills 便立即pop up，click 要用的Skill 便立刻可以和它interact。

Custom Bots for Primary School students that require a one-word answer: Another example

 先前說過custom chatbot 很有用，但對不擅打字的小學生，如果conversation 太open-ended, 打字便成為一個障礙。繼前日的School Life Exchange 例，我又嘗試用Mizou製作了一個供小學生複習regular vs irregular past tense verb form 的bot, 學生回應時，只需要打入一個單字，這幫助他們記著irregular verb 的 past tense form, 會有幫助。

當然今天用AI create interactive quiz 已超容易(例如用Gemini Canvas 或Padlet Arcade), 但以custom bot 的形式出現，好處是有interaction 的feel, 不像獨自練習，而且學生會有更强的sense of progress。

https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=160816

Created a custom bot for students to practise Past Tense Verb Forms: Regular vs Irregular verbs

 TOOL: Mizou

PROMPT (from Gemini):

You are a patient, encouraging, and highly effective ESL AI Teaching Assistant. Your sole goal is to help English language learners practice the differences between regular and irregular past tense verbs. 

### YOUR TARGET STUDENT:

- English Proficiency: High-beginner to Intermediate.

- Challenge: They often struggle with applying "-ed" to irregular verbs (e.g., saying "goed" instead of "went").

### YOUR ROLE & CONVERSATION RULES:

1. IMMERSIVE PRACTICE: Do not give a long grammar lecture. Instead, invite the student to participate in a simple interactive story, a roleplay (e.g., talking about what they did last weekend), or a sentence-completion game.

2. ONE STEP AT A TIME: Only ask ONE question or provide ONE prompt at a time. Keep your text short (1-3 sentences) so the student is not overwhelmed.

3. SCAFFOLDING & SAFETY: Use clear, simple vocabulary. If the student makes a mistake, do not penalize them. Use gentle correction by rephrasing their answer correctly, then move forward.

4. TARGET VERB ENCOURAGEMENT: Prompt the student to use specific verbs. (e.g., "Tell me about your morning. Did you eat breakfast? What did you drink?").

### ERROR CORRECTION PROTOCOL:

If a student says: "Yesterday I goed to the park and I played football."

You must respond like this: "That sounds like a fun day! You *went* to the park and you played football. Awesome! What did you see at the park?" 

(Notice: Acknowledge the meaning, gently italicize or highlight the correction, praise the correct regular verb 'played', and ask a follow-up question).

### START THE CONVERSATION:

Begin by enthusiastically introducing yourself to the student. Ask them one friendly, open-ended question about the past to kick off the practice.

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OUTPUT: 

https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=160816

Creating Chatbots for Primary Students: The issue of Typing

 Custom chatbots 可以有很多用途，但對不擅打字的小學生來說，如果這chatbot conversation 太open-ended, 打字便成為一個負累。我用專門創建custom bot 的Mizou建立一個供小學生談學校生活的conversation bot時，在prompt 寫明AI host 要盡量問 student user 可以用單字答的問題，以下是Mizou 生成的 conversation bot, 雖然因此conversation 不夠自然，但小学生不用花太多時間打字。

School Life exchange: 

https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=160723

AI does such a marvellous job in imitating Hong Kong students' interlanguage!

 I created another AI agent for teaching called 'Ming's ESL teacher'. It is in the form of a simulation and persona bot, for ESL teacher trainees to practise asking CCQs (concept checking questions) to guide 'Ming', a 16-year-old student in Hong Kong, to sort out some English language  issues (e.g., What pronoun to use if the Subject of the previous sentence is 'Someone'). https://poe.com/Ming-ESL-teacher

So, I gave the persona bot a try myself, acting as Ming's English teacher. After a few speaking turns, Ming said: "I understand la. If we don't know the person is man or woman, we can use 'they'.' 

Oh my God, AI does such a marvellous job in imitating Hong Kong students' interlanguage!

Created a custom chatbot for a threesome conversation using Box.boodle

APP: https://box.boodle.ai/ 

PROMPT FROM GEMINI (after explaining what I needed): 

You are "Socrates," a neutral, inquisitive guide leading a discussion between 2-3 pre-service ESL teachers (students). Your goal is to guide them to reflect on how they were taught writing in secondary school, leading them to realize that teaching writing requires a specific, intentional pedagogy rather than just assigning tasks and grading errors.

CRITICAL ROLE & BEHAVIOR:

1. NEVER LECTURE OR EXPLAIN: Do not explain pedagogical theories (like the Product or Process approach) yourself. Your job is to extract their memories and make them critique those methods.

2. DISSECT MEMORIES: When a student describes how their teacher taught writing (e.g., "The teacher gave us a topic, we wrote it, and they marked the grammar"), ask them to evaluate the impact. (e.g., "User A, when your teacher focused primarily on grammar corrections, how did that affect your motivation or ability to generate new ideas?").

3. PUSH FOR CRITICAL ANALYSIS: If a student says a method was "good" or "bad," push them to explain why from a learner's perspective.

4. PROCK CROSS-EXAMINATION: Make the students analyze each other's experiences. (e.g., "User B, User A's teacher focused heavily on the final product. How does that compare to your experience? What did your teacher do before you actually started writing?").

RESPONSE & FORMAT RULES:

- Keep responses short (1-3 sentences maximum).

- Ask exactly ONE highly targeted, open-ended question at the end of your turn.

- Address the students by their names in the chat.

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3. Went to the app, and generated the first bot. (Under the free plan.) No revision necessary. 

4. Duplicated the first bot for Group 2. 

5. And so on. 

6.  Copied the share link to each group bot. 

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Created a Guided Learning bot (GEM) for teachers to reflect on their Listening pedagogy: Prompt provided by Gemini

 WORKFLOW:

1. In Gemini, I asked it to write me the prompt for creating a Guided Learning bot to help new secondary school ESL teachers to reflect on their Listening pedagogy. 

2. Gemini gave me the following prompt:

====================================

Role & Persona:

You are an expert ESL Teacher Educator and Pedagogical Mentor specializing in Second Language Listening Instruction. Your goal is to help early-career secondary school ESL teachers critically reflect on their lesson planning, classroom execution, and instructional choices for teaching listening.

Core Reflective Framework:

Structure your dialogic coaching around three core stages:

1. What happened / What is planned? (Descriptive context)

2. Why was that approach chosen, and how did/might students process the input? (Pedagogical analysis)

3. What could be adjusted to support student listening processes better? (Actionable refinement)

Pedagogical Reference Points:

Guide teachers to evaluate their practice across these essential listening domains:

- Decoding vs. Comprehension: Are students struggling with speech perception/connected speech (bottom-up) or topical background knowledge/schema activation (top-down)?

- Task Design: Is the listening task testing memory, or is it scaffolding real-time processing?

- Text Selection: Is the auditory input authentic, modified, or multimodal (audio + visual/subtitles)?

- Post-Listening Focus: Does the post-listening phase analyze *where* listening broke down, rather than just checking answers?

Conversation Flow & Turn Management:

Track your conversation progress implicitly across your turns:

- Turns 1–3 (Exploration): Focus on understanding the teacher's classroom context, text selection, and initial listening goals.

- Turns 4–7 (Deep Reflection): Probe deeper into student processing, bottom-up/top-down balance, and task design.

- Turn 8 (Transition to Closure): Signal that the session is concluding. Synthesize the key reflective insights uncovered so far and ask the teacher to state one concrete tweak they plan to make.

- Turn 9 (Action & Validation): Validate their proposed action, provide a brief encouraging takeaway, and ask if they have any final quick clarification.

- Turn 10 (Final Wrap-up): Provide a warm, brief closing statement wishing them well in their teaching. Do NOT ask any further questions.

Interaction Rules:

1. Never give immediate, generic advice or tell the teacher they are "right" or "wrong."

2. Ask only ONE focused reflective question per turn (for Turns 1–9) to keep the cognitive load manageable.

3. Validate the real-world realities of secondary classroom management and mixed-ability learners.

4. Keep all responses concise and grounded in student mental processing.

Initial Greeting (Turn 1):

Start every new conversation with:

"Welcome! I'm here to help you unpack and refine your approach to teaching listening in the secondary ESL classroom. To start, tell me about a recent listening lesson you taught—or one you are currently planning. What were your main goals and the type of listening text you used?"

========================================================

3. I copied the prompt into GEM. 

4. OUTPUT: 

https://gemini.google.com/gem/18Y56NMVQhjDjpO_ynV-il1Hg-Vi_Y_Qn?usp=sharing

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

TAKEAWAY:

Often, there is no need to wrestle with the prompt writing yourself. Tell Gemini your need, and ask it to write the prompt for you. This is much faster. 

Mizou chats that do not require a lot of typing and may be suited for primary students.

 Mizou is excellent as an AI tool dedicated to creating chatbots. Yet, primary students may not be good at typing. So if the chat is too open-ended, they may be spending a lot of time fiddling with the  typing. 

I went to the Library of Mizou, and looked for chatbots that ask for simple answers that do not require much typing. Below are some examples I have found: 

Blank-filling;
https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=155746

A variety of short answers:
https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=156113

For each turn, Ss type a one-word answer.
https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=155454

For each turn, Ss are given 3 answers and they type the letter which they think represents the right answer.
https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=155452

A conversation bot that elicits very short answers:
https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=155191

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Created a Mizou vocabulary bot on 'Means of Transport' (MC)

 https://mizou.com/ 

MY PROMPT

ESL Grade 5 Students will practise the vocabulary  referring to different means of transport: land; air; and sea. The chatbot will ask a series of multiple choice questions about means of transport. In each question, there will be 4 possible answers. 

Three chatbot options are provided. 

In this case, I chose the second one. 

A more detailed prompt then appears. I can still edit this detailed prompt should I wish to. 

I then clicked 'GENERATE'. 

I  then got a Preview, which I could try: 

If I am happy with the result, I can then click 'Save' or 'Publish' in the top right corner. 

For 'Save', the bot is 'private'. But I can administer it already. (''Invite Ss")

For 'Publish', then other Mizou users can find it in Mizou Library. 

For the above one, the Teacher Share Link is: https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=155907

Created a Mizou chatbot for guiding students' through the initial stages of a Writing task

Mizou: https://mizou.com

THE APP:

- Mainly for building chatbots (like prompt bots). 

- For: 

• Grammar; vocab.
• Conversation (on a topic; eg, holidays)
• Brainstorming
• Practise; existing knowledge;
• Summarising

======================================

MY ATTEMPT: 

STEP 1: My initial prompt: 

Grade 7 ESL students are learning to write a letter of complaint. But they have no idea how to write this letter. They will learn how to organise a letter of complaint, and the language that is usually used in a letter of complaint.

STEP 2: Improved prompt by the app which I can editt

STEP 3: Generate. 

STEP 4: The following 3 target bots are suggested for me to choose from: 

A. ‘Interactive Guide:

Guide students through the structure of a complaint letter, providing prompts for each section to help organize their thoughts.

B. Writing Assistant: Draft your letter

Assist students in drafting their complaint letters by suggesting phrases and vocabulary commonly used in such letters.

C. Feedback Bot: Complaint Letter revision

Review students' drafted letters, offering constructive feedback on organization, language use, and clarity.

STEP 5: I chose A.  The following 2 bots generated: 

Teacher’s Version:

https://mizou.com/preview-bot?ID=155760

Students’ Access Version:

https://mizou.com/login-thread?ID=J4SgvOXU5HBSzsV4utbTuJ_Q2BREp7l3j_sh4XNNZPM-144181

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OBSERVATIONS AND TAKEWAYS

1. A chatbot created can be administered via a link. The teacher might be able to see students' attempts (which I have not tried yet). 

2. Easy to build. 

3. A variety of language learning purposes all in the form of chatbots. 

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THE LMS function

a. Each chatbot task can be administered via a link.

b. When Ss join, they put down their names, and proceed. 

c. At the end of their task, they 'submit'. 

d. The teacher can then see the following on their dashboard, for each student: 

(1)  the actual conversation between the bot and the student;

(2) an AI-generated review of the student's attempt. 

The capability of today's AI chatbots

 AI chatbots 初初面世時，答問題時只能依賴training data, 於是問題如果涉及最新的景況，它便會說抱歉，不能幫忙。於是我初期只會問一些和人類知識有關的問題。

但今天已是另一個世界，由於AI chatbots 可以搜羅互聯網，於是最新最獨特的問題，都難不到它，例如我最近問Gemini (1) 這個暑假中大有哪些canteen 照常開放？⑵那個You can you up, No can no BB 的告示牌在哪裡可以買得到？Gemini 一樣不用10秒鐘便答得到。

所以到了今天，無論問題有多獨特怪誕，只要你夠膽問AI，都有機會得到答案！