AI in the Italian Classroom – ILC's Professional Development Workshop 2026

How Queensland’s Italian language teachers embraced Artificial Intelligence to teach smarter, save time, and inspire their students.

At ILC, we believe that great Italian language education starts with great Italian language teachers.

That is why we are proud to offer Professional Development Workshops throughout Queensland for Italian teachers in both State and Private schools.

Our PD Workshops offer practical, hands-on sessions designed to enhance teaching strategies, strengthen language proficiency, and spark fresh ideas from the classroom.

Our most recently completed PD workshop tackled one of the most talked-about topics in education today: “Artificial Intelligence as a Didactic and Linguistic Co-Pilot”

About the Workshop

As Artificial Intelligence becomes an increasingly present force in education, the question is no longer whether to engage with it – but how to do so in a way that is mindful, pedagogically sound, and truly beneficial for students.

This practical workshop was designed for Primary and Secondary teachers of Italian, guiding participants to use AI as a powerful support for lesson planning and linguistic quality – while always keeping the teacher firmly at the centre of the educational process.

Whether the goal was to work more efficiently, save valuable preparation time, or offer more effective and engaging materials to students, this workshop delivered practical, immediately applicable skills for every participant.

What Teachers Discovered

Across the sessions, teachers explored an impressive range of AI tools and techniques, including:

Designing engaging listening, reading, speaking, and writing activities using Padlet, and exploring the pedagogical foundations of Google NotebookLM with concrete classroom applications.
Creating a chatbot using Google AI Studio to reduce students’ speaking anxiety and support oral practice with meaningful, guided feedback – a game-changer for building confidence in the Italian classroom.
Generating high-quality audio and video resources using Google AI tools, and using ChatGPT prompts to differentiate learning across proficiency levels – from beginners through to advanced students – including visual prompts for speaking tasks.
Implementing Socratic questioning techniques to develop students’ critical thinking skills, and creating interactive storytelling experiences with Gemini StoryBook, complete with comprehension activities built in Canva for learning data collection.
Designing custom AI tools using Gemini GEMs to support daily work in a language classroom, and exploring the new Microsoft “Teach” Suite for unit and lesson planning.

And finally – one of the most creative highlights – using Suno and Gemini to create original songs targeting specific grammar features and vocabulary, bringing language learning to life in a way students absolutely loved.

By the end of the sessions, teachers left equipped to improve the accuracy, naturalness, and register of their teaching materials; create multimodal and interactive lessons ready to use immediately in the classroom; and support students’ writing, speaking, and pronunciation in ways that were both innovative and manageable.

The benefits of ILC Professional Development Workshop

Our PD workshops are designed with busy teachers in mind. Here is what participants consistently took away:

Improved quality of teaching materials,
Reduced lesson preparation time,
Increased student engagement, and
A toolkit of transferable, reusable professional skills that extended well beyond the Italian classroom.

Most importantly, every workshop was built around the belief that technology supports great teaching – it never replaces it.

Inspired by what our teachers experienced?

We would love to see you at our next Italian Teachers’ Professional Development Workshop. Whether you are an experienced Italian teacher looking to refresh your practice or someone just beginning their professional development journey, our PD workshops offer something valuable for every stage of your career and are open to Italian language teachers in State and Private schools across Queensland.