A rushed idea before work became a 30-building timeline of Hong Kong across my classroom wall. AI helped plan it, and later, almost by accident, it helped colour it in.
My Year 7 class (MYP 1, their first year of secondary) starts the year in Individuals and Societies with a local history and geography unit about Hong Kong.
The idea arrived at 7am while I was getting ready for work: a timeline of Hong Kong's buildings, drawn by the class and running across the wall from the oldest to the newest. I thought it was a cool idea, because I'd seen a few of them doodling in their books, so I knew some of them liked to draw.
Still getting ready, I quickly described it to an AI chatbot:
By the time I left the house, I had a task sheet, although I did miss the bus.
Scale was the part I couldn't solve in my head. Everyone starts with the same A4 sheet, but a Ming dynasty pagoda and a 484-metre tower can't be drawn the same size. The AI's answer was simple: six size bands, based on each building's real height. Your band tells you how much of the page your drawing should fill.
Only one building gets XXL: the International Commerce Centre, Hong Kong's tallest.
The list ran in order of the year each building was completed: walled villages and temples, colonial buildings, post-war towers, then the glass and steel skyscrapers of the last 40 years. Each came with a date, a size band and a fun fact. A few low modern buildings, like the Space Museum's dome, were mixed in so the class would notice that newer doesn't always mean taller.
I used it as the closing task of a long 80-minute inquiry block. At the very start of the lesson, after the register, I gave each student a mystery number. We then worked through two other episodes of tasks, with the class in suspense the whole time. Finally I revealed what the numbers were for: each one matched a building on the list. After a short explanation, they had about 25 minutes to draw.
I chose squared paper on purpose, based on the motor and drawing skills of this age group. Students who don't need it can turn the sheet over and still see the squares through the paper as a guide. In the end, many drew straight onto the squares, counting them to get the size right.
Once the drawings were finished, I started thinking about the display. How would 30 pen and pencil drawings look on a wall? Would anyone see them from the other side of the room?
Then, out of nowhere, I had the idea: what if I photographed them and asked AI to colour them in?
I wasn't very good at it at first. I just dumped four or five photos into the chat at once and told it to colour them. The AI got confused by the squared paper and coloured in blocks rather than following every line. I didn't mind, because the block shading actually made the buildings easier to see. With later batches, I told it which building each drawing was, and the colours became much more realistic.
Here are more of them, in the order they were built. You can see the colouring improve once I started naming the buildings.
These all work in a similar way: upload a photo of the drawing and describe what you want changed.
Upload a photo and ask it to edit the image. Many schools already have it through Google Workspace, if your admin has image features switched on.
Free for teachers. Magic Edit lets you brush over part of an image and describe the change, which is useful for colouring one area at a time.
Upload the photo and ask it to colour the drawing. Good results, but check what your school allows.
Two tips. First, image tools like to "improve" a picture, so say clearly: "Keep every line exactly as drawn. Only add colour inside the shapes." Second, check your school's policy before uploading students' work to any AI tool, and crop out names first.
I printed every picture separately, on ordinary paper. I was amazed at how they came out: darker, richer and slightly glossy, much bolder than they looked on screen.
The class mounted their pictures on scrap card, and I cut them out. Then came the puzzle of fitting them together: the pieces had to tessellate into a skyline while staying roughly in date order. I mounted the whole timeline on green card, because that's Hong Kong: skyscrapers juxtaposed against jungle-covered mountains.
One student finished early, so as an extension I let them choose any building they liked. They picked the Peak Tower, and it's now on the timeline too.
Everything is now up on my classroom wall, but it isn't finished:
The idea and the teaching were mine. The AI did the jobs that would have eaten my evening: choosing 30 buildings across 500 years, checking dates, and working out a scale system that fits on A4. Then, when I hadn't even planned it, it turned a set of pencil drawings into a display you can see from across the room.
Sign up and I'll send you:
Subscribe and you'll go straight to the prompt. Unsubscribe at any time.
How I build my own custom classroom games with AI. Join the list to get it when it's out.
