Top 10 AI Prompts and Use Cases and in the Education Industry in Raleigh

Raleigh-area educators and leaders are treating AI not as a future curiosity but as a present classroom partner: convenings at NC State's Friday Institute documented district and state leaders wrestling with AI's promise to cut teacher workload and deepen learning, while North Carolina's early state guidance offers a practical roadmap for safe, equitable use across PK–13 schools.

Local workshops and community-of-practice events have emphasized prompt-writing, curriculum redesign, and Universal Design for Learning to make AI tools genuinely useful for diverse students - echoing the warning that students already “carry generative AI in their pockets.” For teachers and administrators seeking hands-on skill-building, practical courses like Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work syllabus - Nucamp and its Register for AI Essentials for Work - Nucamp provide concrete prompt-writing and productivity training aligned to these North Carolina conversations and policies (see Friday Institute research for K–12 perspectives).

Program	Length	Courses Included	Early Bird Cost	Registration
AI Essentials for Work	15 Weeks	AI at Work: Foundations; Writing AI Prompts; Job-Based Practical AI Skills	$3,582	Register for AI Essentials for Work - Nucamp

"There are very few things that I've come across in my career that actually give time back to teachers and staff, and this is one of those things. This can cut out those mundane, repetitive tasks and allow teachers the ability to really sit with students one-on-one to really invest in the human relationships that can never be replaced with technology."

Methodology centered on North Carolina's own playbook: selections were vetted against the NCDPI guidebook's EVERY framework (Evaluate, Verify, Edit, Revise, YOU) and the five priority areas it outlines - leadership and vision, human capacity, curriculum and instruction, data privacy and infrastructure - so every use case could be judged for safety, equity, and classroom practicality; the review also drew on the NCDPI AI Resources hub and recent statewide activity (including the Wednesday webinar series and NC AI Summits attended by over 400 educators) to surface what districts are actually piloting and requesting support for.

Prioritization criteria emphasized (1) measurable teacher time savings and formative feedback potential, (2) alignment with AI literacy and AI-resistant assessment guidance, (3) data-privacy and accessibility guardrails called for in the guidance, and (4) scalability for both urban and rural PSUs.

Where relevant, choices reflect NC's framing of generative AI as an “arrival technology” that demands agile, equity-minded rollout; each recommended prompt or use case had to either improve student learning outcomes or free educators for higher-value, human-centered work (for example, automating routine admin tasks so teachers can spend more one-on-one time with students).

See the NCDPI AI Resources hub and the original NCDPI AI guidance press release for the templates and workshop materials that informed these selections: NCDPI AI Resources hub and NCDPI AI guidance press release.

Automated tutoring with ChatGPT-style chatbots can give Raleigh students personalized, on-demand help while stretching scarce tutor resources: educator surveys report strong classroom benefits (Mastery Coding analysis of ChatGPT in K–12 found 84% of teachers who used ChatGPT said it positively impacted their classes), students often prefer the speed and convenience of AI tutoring, and research suggests intelligent tutoring systems produce generally positive learning gains - so 24/7 support can translate into real improvements rather than gimmicks when paired with good pedagogy.

Practical wins include step‑by‑step problem breakdowns, reading‑level adjustments for multilingual learners, instant rubric‑based feedback, and offloading routine question-answering so human tutors and teachers can focus on higher-value coaching; a Stanford-linked study reported better student performance and an increased capacity for tutors when AI was used as an assistant.

At the same time, risks like misinformation, over-reliance, and academic integrity must be managed through clear classroom norms and verification practices. For deeper dives into classroom use, see Mastery Coding's look at ChatGPT in K–12, a systematic review of AI-driven intelligent tutoring systems, and K–12 Dive's coverage of Stanford's AI tutor findings.

"I think we should teach them how to use this tool. It's kind of like handing a kid a calculator… Hand them a TI85 - that's one thing, but show them how to use it? That's even more powerful."

Syllabus and assignment language about AI no longer needs to be invented from scratch: North Carolina's guidebook and accompanying workshop materials offer ready-made templates and concrete wording districts can adapt so students, families, and substitute teachers all see the same expectations.

Using the NCDPI AI Resources hub for PSU guideline templates makes it easier to add clear acceptable‑use and academic‑integrity clauses that state when AI is permitted (for drafts, citation practice, or language supports) and when it's banned (high‑stakes assessments), while the guidance's EVERY framework - Evaluate, Verify, Edit, Revise, YOU - gives teachers a short checklist to assess AI outputs before grading.

Practical benefits include saving time on routine attribution language and embedding AI‑literacy prompts into assignments so students must show their process, not just a final product; the guidance also urges AI‑resistant assessments that raise the bar for critical and creative thinking.

Districts are encouraged to customize model clauses from NCDPI and communicate them widely so expectations are consistent across classrooms and communities: see the NCDPI guidance on AI in schools and the NCDPI AI Resources hub for templates and examples.

“Generative artificial intelligence is playing a growing and significant role in our society. At NCDPI, we're committed to preparing our students both to meet the challenges of this rapidly changing technology and become innovators in the field of computer science,”

For Raleigh schools looking to streamline assessment without losing the human touch, Microsoft 365 Copilot offers a practical path: it can generate diverse question types, draft clear rubrics, and produce multiple versions of constructive feedback so teachers spend less time marking and more time coaching.

Educators can prompt Copilot to "create a rubric for a 10th‑grade persuasive essay" or to draft three levels of feedback for weaker responses, then quickly edit for local standards and integrity checks - real-world pilots report big time savings (one trial found an average of 9.3 hours saved per week) and industry summaries suggest grading workloads can shrink substantially when Copilot helps with initial scoring and comments.

Because Copilot draws on your Microsoft 365 tenant and includes admin controls, Raleigh districts can pilot small educator groups, measure impact with built‑in dashboards, and keep data governance and privacy aligned with local policy.

For practical how‑tos and classroom prompt examples, see the Microsoft 365 Copilot documentation, read the Microsoft Education "Mastering Microsoft 365 Copilot in Education" guide, or read Edutopia's classroom tips on using Copilot for lesson design and assessments.

“We're seeing a clear link between Copilot-assisted learning and student success. Students are more engaged, more confident, and achieving better grades.”

For Raleigh districts aiming to boost family and student outreach without adding hours to staff workloads, Delve AI's Social Persona tools can instantly turn social accounts and web traffic into rich, actionable audience profiles - combining demographics, psychographics, behaviors, geographies, influencers followed, and even the hashtags your communities use - to reveal who to message, where, and how (Delve AI Social Persona tool for audience profiling).

That granular segmentation helps craft tailored campaigns for parents, multilingual families, high-school juniors, or community partners and points staff to the best channels and content types rather than guessing; Delve's how‑to guide lays out recommended persona dimensions and platform habits, plus timing and content-format tips for each network (Delve AI how-to guide for creating social media personas).

Schools can use those insights to identify local influencers, optimize ad spend, and create shareable posts that meet families where they already engage, tying outreach back to district strategy and the practical next steps recommended in Nucamp's Raleigh AI guide for education leaders (Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus for education leaders).

The payoff is clearer messaging and higher response rates from the very people educators most want to reach - students and caregivers - without reinventing outreach from scratch.

North Carolina educators can speed up thoughtful curriculum redesign by tapping the NC AI Collaborative content and the state's micro‑credentialing framework: NCDPI's AI Resources hub hosts a “treasure trove” of ready‑made lesson modules, templates, and webinar recordings from the Spring 2024 cohort that teams can remix into course maps, while the State Board's 2024 Micro‑Credential Quality Assurance Standards ensure those bite‑sized badges are meaningful, portable, and evidence‑based for teachers, paraprofessionals, and leaders (paths explicitly include Artificial Intelligence for Educators and Artificial Intelligence for Students).

Together these resources make it practical to scaffold AI literacy into unit plans, align assessments to digital learning standards, and document staff competency without reinventing materials - so a district can realistically pilot a stack of micro‑credentials, use webinar recordings for PLC learning, and have concrete artifacts to show impact during curriculum reviews.

See the NC AI Collaborative content and the Micro‑Credentialing guidance for implementation details and templates.

Micro‑Credential Pathway	Primary Focus
NCDPI Artificial Intelligence for Educators micro-credential	Classroom AI pedagogy and tool use
Artificial Intelligence for Students	Student AI literacy and ethical use
Data Privacy for Educators	Safeguards and governance
Embedding the Digital Learning Standards	Curriculum integration and UDL

“I chose the NEA micro-credentials specifically because of the reputation of the organization. Unlike private firms who offer micro-credentials for a cost, I knew that the NEA had the best interest of educators in mind and that they would be consistent and reliable.”

Instructor productivity in Raleigh classrooms can get a practical lift from Google's Gemini: built to kickstart lesson planning, Gemini can draft standards‑aligned lesson plans, generate quizzes and rubrics, re‑level texts for different reading abilities, and spin a single prompt into a full slide or activity in under a minute - so prep that once ate up evenings becomes usable class time with students.

Because Gemini for Education is included for qualifying Google Workspace for Education domains and offers enterprise‑grade protections (your school data isn't used to train models), district tech teams can pilot features while keeping age‑based controls and Vault search for oversight; admins can enable Gemini in Classroom and use the Slides side panel to insert generated slides, images, or summaries directly into lessons.

Features like Gems, Gemini Canvas, Deep Research, and Gemini Live make it easy to personalize materials and create custom AI experts grounded in course files, and Google's how‑tos show step‑by‑step workflows teachers can adopt quickly.

For implementation details and hands‑on examples, see the Gemini for Education overview and the guide to using Gemini in Google Slides: Gemini for Education overview, Using Gemini in Google Slides guide.

Feature	What it does for instructors
Lesson plan & quiz generation	Drafts standards‑aligned lessons, assessments, and answer keys from a prompt
Differentiation tools	Re‑levels text, creates practice sets, and personalizes supports for learners
Admin & privacy controls	Workspace integration, admin enable/disable, Vault search, and data not used to train models

“With Gemini, my planning is so fast and easy. I can adapt my lesson plan to the needs of my students, and it can give me more ideas. I feel like I can give more attention to my students and projects using AI rather than spending my whole afternoon or weekends working on the planning.”

Administrative automation in Raleigh campuses can move from hope to practical gains when districts adopt a Work AI platform like Glean: its permission‑aware search and knowledge graph stitches Google Drive, Microsoft 365, Slack, and other systems into one campus‑wide assistant so staff find policies, vendor contracts, or grant templates in seconds instead of hours; built‑in agents and assistants can also automate recurring tasks - ticket triage, scheduling, document summarization, and multi‑step workflows - freeing administrators to focus on student supports.

Realistic pilots should start small, measure reclaimed staff time, and keep governance front and center using Glean's Protect features; for concrete campus use cases and integration guidance, see the Glean Work AI overview, the Glean higher‑education guide, and review the recent Glean–Internet2 collaboration that centers research and education needs.

Claim	Metric
Time saved per user	Up to 10 hours/year
Onboarding efficiency	36 hours saved per employee
Internal support reduction	~20% fewer support requests
Adoption	93% in 2 years (reported)

“Glean helps you get work done, rather than just find information. The moment we launched Glean, there was so much positivity.”

Raleigh districts that want to harden human defenses can put Microsoft Defender's Attack Simulation Training to work as a practical, school-ready program: administrators can create dynamic groups that auto‑target high‑risk roles (finance, HR, new hires), schedule randomized simulation automations so phishing tests arrive at unpredictable times, and automatically assign localized follow‑up training in the user's language to reinforce learning - features explained in Microsoft's step‑by‑step guide and in the practitioner playbook for Attack Simulation Training (Making the Most of Attack Simulation Training: dynamic groups, automation, and user guidance, Microsoft Attack Simulation Training documentation and simulation reference).

Schools should budget for Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 / M365 E5 licensing or try the 90‑day trial, start with one automated campaign for a single dynamic group, and use built‑in reports (predicted vs.

actual compromise rates, repeat offenders, training completion) to show measurable behavior change - so phishing resilience becomes a data‑driven part of district safety plans rather than a one‑off checkbox.

Feature	Classroom or District Impact
Dynamic groups	Auto‑target relevant staff and new hires without manual lists
Simulation automations	Randomized, recurring campaigns that build lasting awareness
Localized training	Deliver modules in users' languages to improve retention
Insights & reports	Measure PCR, repeat offenders, and training completion for accountability

Accessibility and multilingual supports are the linchpin for equitable AI use in Raleigh classrooms: pairing conversational tutors like Khanmigo or LinguaBot with proven NC best practices - clear alt text, captions, transcripts, and properly structured headings - turns flashy features into genuinely usable supports for students who are blind, hard of hearing, or English learners.

Practical steps include adding concise, context‑aware alt text (use the alt‑text decision guidance from NC State), running accessibility checkers like Grackle for Google files and Brickfield for Moodle, and captioning videos with Panopto or a captioning contract so non‑native speakers can search transcripts instead of guessing at spoken words - an approach that helps a student in a noisy home find the five‑minute demo they missed.

Be wary of automated translation limits (machine translation can miss nuance), and always pair any generated description or translation with a human check; local resources and DPI templates walk districts through workflows for accessible PDFs, slides, and multimedia.

For step‑by‑step authoring tips and compliance practices, see the NCDPI guide on creating accessible digital content and NC State's alt‑text recommendations.

“The basic premise of using alt text is to ensure that all users can read the same information and have the same interactions with a web page, regardless of whether or not they can see the images.”

University of Toronto research and related reviews show that conversational agents can serve as a practical first line of student mental‑health triage - offering empathetic responses, brief motivational interviewing, and guided mindfulness that help students reflect and access supports when human counselors aren't immediately available - while also demanding careful design, oversight, and verification; see the University of Toronto MI chatbot project for how generative reflections nudged readiness to change and the Discover Psych overview of AI chatbots for wellness for examples of empathetic, guided interactions (University of Toronto MI chatbot project, Discover Psych: AI Chatbots for Wellness overview).

Rigorous validation work also matters: an experimental JMIR study found chatbot assessments can match paper and web modes on validity but typically take more time and cognitive effort, underscoring the trade‑offs Raleigh schools should weigh when piloting bots for screening, scheduling follow‑ups, and routing crises to live clinicians (JMIR study on chatbot validity for mental health assessment).

Thoughtful pilots that pair AI triage with clear escalation paths, human review, and transparent privacy safeguards can turn a 24/7 conversational assistant into a durable companion for early intervention rather than a replacement for licensed care - imagine a calm, nonjudgmental check‑in available at 2 a.m.

when other options are closed.

Source	Key findings
U of T MI chatbot	AI-generated reflections increased readiness to quit (≈ +1.0–1.3 points); helpful when paired with clinicians
Discover Psych	Chatbots provide empathetic responses and guide mindfulness as first-line support
JMIR validity study	Chatbot assessments show high convergent validity but require more time and effort than web/paper modes

“If you could have a good conversation anytime you needed it to help mitigate feelings of anxiety and depression, then that would be a net benefit to humanity and society.”

Raleigh educators and leaders should treat the playbook and training resources already assembled across the state as a practical roadmap: start with the NCDPI living guidance and the NC AI Resources webinar series to draft a one‑page district playbook and run a single-school pilot that tests approved tools, data safeguards, and clear classroom norms; use NC State Extension's AI guidance for best practices around prompts, approved tools, and data classification so staff know to use institutional accounts and avoid sharing sensitive information (NCDPI AI Resources and Guidance for Schools, NC State Extension AI Guidance for Educators).

Pair pilots with job‑embedded professional development and measurable goals (time saved, student engagement, assessment quality), and consider short, practical courses that teach prompt‑writing and workplace AI skills - such as Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work - so educators move from cautious curiosity to confident, equitable implementation (AI Essentials for Work – Nucamp Registration).

Small, well‑documented pilots that protect privacy and center AI literacy will let Raleigh districts converge on consistent policies while keeping flexibility for classroom innovation.

Program	Length	Courses Included	Early Bird Cost	Registration
AI Essentials for Work	15 Weeks	AI at Work: Foundations; Writing AI Prompts; Job-Based Practical AI Skills	$3,582	AI Essentials for Work – Nucamp Registration

“Generative artificial intelligence is playing a growing and significant role in our society. At NCDPI, we're committed to preparing our students both to meet the challenges of this rapidly changing technology and become innovators in the field of computer science,”