A.I. and Me

A.I. and Me: How I’m Using Artificial Intelligence in 2025

I’ve been hands-on with educational technology since the early days — from BBC Micros in British classrooms to Moodle rollouts in international schools across Asia. These days, retired and based in Chiang Mai, my relationship with tech is less about troubleshooting and more about creating. And right now, that means A.I.

Artificial Intelligence has quietly become one of my go-to tools — not just for writing and publishing, but for archiving, teaching, and experimenting. It’s something I talk about regularly in the CMGeeks group I help run here in Chiang Mai, where a few of us meet monthly to share tech tips, frustrations, and discoveries. A.I. has been a hot topic lately — for good reason.

Writing with a Machine Partner

When I’m working on a new book — whether it’s a grief guide or a satirical colouring book from the 1970s — I use tools like ChatGPT to help organise thoughts, polish prose, and break through the dreaded blank-page block. It doesn’t write for me, but it absolutely speeds things up. I still do the thinking. It just nudges me forward.

Digging into the Past with A.I.

A lot of my current work involves restoring and reimagining archives: old student RAG mags, forgotten school newsletters, fading black-and-white photos from my early teaching years. A.I. tools have helped me upscale grainy scans, colourise monochrome pages, and even generate new artwork that keeps the original spirit alive. My book Out of Order — a parody created by teachers in Hong Kong in 1975 — came back to life this year as a colouring book thanks to a mix of nostalgia and generative tech.

Visual Experiments

Text-to-image generators like DALL·E and Midjourney have opened up a world I never used to work in: illustration. I’ve used them for book covers, story visuals, and even tiny assets like favicons for websites. Some are for fun. Some end up in real projects. The speed and quality are improving every month, and it feels a bit like having a visual sketchpad with infinite pencils.

Playing with Prompts

One of the most useful skills now is learning how to talk to these tools — writing prompts that actually produce useful results. It’s something we explore at CMGeeks as well. I test out educational prompts, creative writing ideas, lesson frameworks, even a few just-for-fun generators. The right prompt can save hours. The wrong one teaches you something anyway.

A.I. isn’t replacing what I do - it’s enhancing it. At this stage of life, that’s a gift. It’s helped me revisit unfinished projects, create new ones, and share tools with others in the same spirit I had back when I first started building online resources for schools.

If you're ever in Chiang Mai (Thailand) and want to chat A.I., come by a CMGeeks Tuesday lunch and meet-up. Or drop me a message. Always happy to share what I’ve learned -  and still learning.