AI skills are the new Office skills
A few years ago "good with Excel" separated candidates. Increasingly it is "can use AI well" — not as a buzzword, but as the practical ability to get reliable, useful output from tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot and to know when not to trust them. Most people poke at these tools once, get a mediocre answer and stop. One-to-one training gets you past that plateau in the first session.
The course is taught by Kevin Johal, a qualified teacher whose MEd in Educational Technology and Learning Design focused on exactly this intersection: technology, and how people actually learn to use it well.
What you learn
- Prompting that works — how to ask so the answer is genuinely useful, and how to iterate instead of accepting the first draft
- Real tasks — emails, letters, CVs, reports, summaries, planning, research and spreadsheet help
- AI at work — Copilot in Word, Excel and Outlook where available; drafting, meeting notes and document summaries
- Judgement and safety — privacy, what never to share, spotting confident nonsense, and checking facts before they travel
Who this training is for
Working adults and professionals who want a real productivity edge; small business owners doing their own marketing and admin; parents who want to understand the tools their children already use and how to steer schoolwork use honestly; students learning legitimate, disclosed ways AI can support revision without doing the work for them; and older adults who want a patient, practical introduction.
Taught with a teacher's judgement, not a salesman's
AI tools are genuinely useful and genuinely overhyped at the same time. A teaching-first course is honest about both: you learn where these tools save real hours, and where they confidently make things up. That judgement — not the clicking — is the skill employers are starting to pay for.
Mid-July 2026: a sensible moment to learn this properly
By mid-July 2026, AI assistants are embedded in the tools most workplaces already pay for, and September job adverts increasingly assume familiarity. A short summer block — three to five sessions — is enough for most learners to move from curious to competent, with safe habits built in from the start rather than retrofitted.
Search intent this page is built for
This page is written for searches like how to use AI, AI training Birmingham, ChatGPT course near me, AI for beginners Smethwick and AI skills for work. It pairs naturally with Microsoft Office training for a complete modern workplace skill set.
Next Step
Call 07909 274901 or book a free trial session. Bring one task you do every week — you will leave the first session doing it faster.