What a great experience at the second annual AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium at Connecticut College! So good to meet new colleagues and reconnect with friends, and so much to take away from the excellent sessions, conversations, and exchange of ideas with people working at the intersection of generative tools and the liberal arts.

I gave a short presentation which I subsequently recorded:
Tools of One’s Own: Portable Prompting and the Iterative Craft of Professional Identity

There was only one slide since the presentation was the Crafting Digital Identity course site itself. I shared reflections from teaching the class for the first time, a skills-based studio course at Skidmore College exploring how students can take ownership of their digital presence, develop their emerging professional identities, and use generative tools to support creativity, reflection, and self-discovery.

A central idea is portable prompting: developing the ability to guide, question, evaluate, and refine interactions with generative tools across platforms and contexts. Rather than learning one particular system, students develop transferable skills and judgment they can carry into other areas of their lives.

Through digital portfolios, multimedia storytelling, and designing their own AI assistants, students move beyond consuming technology toward creating tools that serve their own purposes.

At its heart, the course is about craft, authorship, and agency, helping students discover who they are, communicate who they’re becoming, and shape their own digital futures.

The output belongs to a moment. The craft travels with the student.