Foundations
Generalist AI Bootcamp
Walk in curious about AI. Walk out building with it.
A practical introduction to AI thinking, creative experimentation, and first prototypes for curious students.
- Age range
- 13–18
- Duration
- 4 or 8 weeks
- Format
- On-campus or online
- Level
- - Foundation
- Cohort
- 12–16 students
- Outcome
- Weekly artefacts + AI project + showcase
What is the Generalist AI Bootcamp?
A stepping stone into practical AI capability.
The Generalist AI Bootcamp is Edison AI Academy’s entry program for students who want to understand AI in a structured, practical way.
All students begin with the same 4-week foundation in generative AI, structured prompting, responsible use, and guided project-building. Students can complete the 4-week Foundations Sprint with a first AI project, or continue into the 8-week Foundations Program to explore workflow automation, agentic AI, and a deeper self-directed build.
The Bootcamp Capability Stack
Capability layers
Five layers that build practical AI capability from foundations through workflow design, automation logic, and public presentation.
Assembly
- 01
AI Foundations
Students learn what generative AI is, how large language models work, why context matters, and why AI can produce confident but incorrect answers.
- 02
Prompting Engineering
Students learn how to give clear instructions, test outputs, improve responses, check sources, and identify weak reasoning.
- 03
Workflow Thinking
Students learn how work moves through an organisation: inputs, tasks, decisions, handoffs, outputs, and bottlenecks.
- 04
Agentic & Automation Logic
Students explore how AI can support repeatable work through tools, instructions, memory, planning, routing, drafting, summarising, analysing, and checking.
- 05
Project Building & Public Speaking
Students design, document, and present an AI-powered workflow or project, explaining the problem, AI role, risks, and value created.
The learning pathway, week-by-week
The bootcamp begins with a shared 4-week foundations sprint. Students build core AI literacy, structured prompting skills, and a guided AI project. Students continuing into the 8-week track move into workflow automation, basic agentic foundations, and a deeper self-directed build.
- W01
Week 1
The AI Shift
Students learn what generative AI is, how it works under the hood, and why it is changing the way people learn, create, and work. They unpack language models, probability, and context windows in plain language, then examine why AI can sound confident while still being wrong. By the end of the week, each student completes an AI capability baseline and produces a first structured prompt with clear intent, constraints, and output criteria.
- How AI works
- AI literacy
- First structured prompt
- W02
Week 2
Prompting with Judgement
Students learn how to communicate clearly with AI systems. They practise role framing, context, constraints, examples, iteration, critique, and fact-checking. The focus is not just better prompts - it is better thinking.
- Structured prompting
- Output evaluation
- AI judgement
- W03
Week 3
Generative Systems
Students explore how generative AI works across text, image, audio, research, data, and code-adjacent tasks. They learn how different AI systems produce outputs, where each format is useful, and how to combine tools into a simple workflow.
- Multimodal AI
- Tool fluency
- Mini-project
- W04
Week 4
Foundations Showcase
Students bring the first four weeks together through a guided AI project. They define a problem, use AI tools responsibly, improve their outputs through feedback, and present what they have built. This is the completion point for the 4-week Foundations Sprint.
- Guided AI project
- Presentation
- 4-week completion
- W05
Week 5
How Work Works
Students learn how organisations function and how work moves through people, tools, decisions, and systems. They map a simple workflow, identifying inputs, tasks, handoffs, bottlenecks, and outputs.
- Organisation mapping
- Workflow thinking
- Systems view
- W06
Week 6
Workflow Automation
Students learn how AI can improve repeatable workflows. They identify where AI can summarise, draft, classify, analyse, route, check, or report information - and where human judgement still matters.
- Automation logic
- AI opportunity map
- Process improvement
- W07
Week 7
Agentic AI Foundations + Build Sprint
Students are introduced to agentic AI: goals, instructions, tools, memory, planning, and multi-step execution. They then begin building a deeper AI-powered workflow, assistant, or project concept.
- Agentic AI
- Build sprint
- Prototype
- W08
Week 8
Showcase + Pathway Review
Students present their final project and explain the problem, workflow, AI role, risks, and value created. They receive feedback on their project, communication, and readiness for Edison's longer academy pathways.
- Final showcase
- Portfolio evidence
- Pathway recommendation
A practical artefact every week.
Our bootcamp series is built as a climb. Every week, students produce practical arterfacts using learnt knowledge that shows their progress, not just through attendace, but through the quality of their thinking, judgement, and project work.
Every artefact becomes portfolio evidence - a visible record of what the student explored, designed, built, and learned to explain.
Learn world-class tools modern enterprises actually use.
The Generalist AI Bootcamp toolkit is curated to match the depth and ambition of this program. Students learn to choose, combine, and switch between tools, not memorise a single platform.
Category
AI Assistants
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Gemini
Category
Creative Building
- Canva
- Figma
- Lovable
Category
Research
- Perplexity
- NotebookLM
Tools evolve. Edison teaches the durable thinking, choosing the right tool, combining tools well, and switching when a better tool emerges.
Edison AI Academy
Founding faculty
Students learn directly from Edison Ngu, Founder and Head of Curriculum at Edison AI Academy.
Edison is a passionate, high-energy educator with a background spanning elite strategy, higher education, curriculum design, startup-building, and AI capability development.
He previously taught more than 300 undergraduate students at The University of Melbourne, helped design and deliver 12+ higher education courses, worked as a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group, and has experimented with 200+ AI tools, workflows, and project concepts across education, productivity, automation, and creative work.
His teaching style is rigorous, energetic, and deeply practical. Cohorts are intentionally small, so students are seen, stretched, coached, and expected to produce real work.
We teach young people how to think, build, and lead with AI, not just how to use it.
Edison AI Academy is a selective program. Fees reflect the small cohort size, mentor ratio, and the depth of the work students complete.
Flexible payment plans may be available for accepted students. Bursaries and scholarships are reviewed individually as part of the admissions conversation.
We frame this as an investment in your child's future readiness, not a transactional fee for content delivery.
Generalist AI Bootcamp. Answers we get asked most.
Not sure if Generalist AI Bootcamp is the right fit?
Speak with Edison AI Academy about your child's goals, current skill level, and best-fit pathway. We will recommend the right program and the next available cohort.
Three short steps. We'll match you to the right Edison pathway.
Our admissions team reviews every application personally and replies within one business day. The form takes about two minutes.
Your Generalist AI Bootcamp preference travels with you to the application form. We'll know exactly what you're interested in.