How the course runs
Five sessions of two hours each, run live in Teams. The order is deliberate: we start with staying safe and understanding AI, then move into creating documents, working together, handling data, and finish with a relaxed wrap up. Every session has its own page below, laid out as a running order from start to finish.
Throughout the sessions you will see buttons that open a hands-on tool. Each one opens in a new browser tab, so this page stays put and you can flick back to it. The tools also live in the Simulation Tools catalogue, so you can return to any of them after the session.
The sessions
AI Literacy, Information Security, and Getting Started with Copilot & Word
Where the training sits in the council's AI direction, what stays out of AI tools, what Copilot is and how to prompt it, and setting up clean Word documents.
- Copilot as the council's approved tool, and why it matters
- Recognising personal and sensitive information
- Five prompts to try, plus Word heading styles and a table of contents
Microsoft Teams: Meetings, Presenting, and Minute Writing
Joining and hosting Teams meetings, presenting a deck, recording with consent, and turning a Teams Premium recap into usable minutes.
- Meeting controls, hosting, and recording with consent
- Presenting a deck with screen share and PowerPoint Live
- Transcripts and recaps into minutes and tracked actions
A homework week. Staff gather their information and build their orientation deck, ready to bring to Session 3.
Microsoft 365 in Practice: Presenting, File Sharing, and Copilot for Email
Presenting your deck live in Teams, sharing files with the right permissions, and using Copilot to draft and refine email.
- Present your orientation deck in a Teams meeting
- File sharing, and the right permissions for the right people
- Copilot for email, with the documents linked
Microsoft Excel with Copilot
Sort and filter, your first formulas, how Excel stores dates, and Copilot as a patient tutor for functions and formulas.
- Sort and filter to find your answer
- First formulas, and how dates really work
- Copilot to explain functions and suggest formulas
Wrap Up, Questions, and AI Image Generation
A relaxed close, open questions, and a memorable activity that shows what generative AI really does.
- Everyone generates the same picture, and none match
- How image generation works, in plain English
- Open floor: revisit any tool, ask anything