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GitHub Copilot session at Cédille (with GitHub & Arctiq)

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Copilot comes to the classroom · 2:17 · AI-written script, synthetic voices

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Ava: Fall 2022. A university room full of students, laptops open, and a question on everyone's mind: what happens when your editor starts writing code alongside you?

Andrew: That was right when AI pair programmers were brand new. Who hosted this?

Ava: Cédille, the consulting club at ÉTS, where students build real projects for outside clients. They invited GitHub and Arctiq to show Copilot and the AI tools around modern development, straight from people who ship the product.

Andrew: So not rumors, but the actual tool.

Ava: Right. Students wanted to know where Copilot fits: internships, data labs, code review. Hearing it from the source cleared that up.

Andrew: What did they actually show?

Ava: Three things. Copilot Chat, which explains and refactors code right in the editor, not just autocompletes. A command called createNotebook. And GitHub Next, a sandbox for experimental features.

Andrew: What does createNotebook do?

Ava: It was the crowd favorite. You point Chat at a module in your repository, ask for a Jupyter notebook that imports and demonstrates it, and you get a first draft much faster than copying cells by hand. For courses and data exploration, that makes the blank notebook a lot less scary.

Andrew: And the presenters did it on a real repo?

Ava: Yes, no slideware only. They refactored a messy function in place: take the suggestion, check it, tweak it. Thierry Madkaud and Eldrick Wega presented, and the room was in a show-me-something-I-can-try-Monday mood.

Andrew: What questions came from the audience?

Ava: Practical ones: what leaves your machine, who is responsible for the license of generated code, and whether it works offline. It doesn't, so Wi-Fi was part of the demo plan.

Andrew: What did Antoine take home from it?

Ava: Copilot is an accelerator, a fast first draft, while the person who commits stays the reviewer. Notebooks deserve to be taught together with Chat. And GitHub Next is a good place to preview features. His favorite first win for students is explaining unfamiliar code and generating test scaffolding.

Andrew: A good habit to start with.

Ava: It is. The full write-up has photos of the room and links to his later diagram tooling.

GitHub Copilot session at Cédille (with GitHub & Arctiq)
Table of contents

Cédille (ÉTS consulting club) hosted GitHub and Arctiq for a session on Copilot and the AI tooling around modern dev workflows — fall 2022, when “AI pair programmer” still felt novel in a university room.

1. Why Cédille hosted it

Cédille is the ÉTS consulting club — students ship real projects for external clients and need credible tooling opinions, not TikTok hot takes. Fall 2022 was peak “is Copilot cheating?” energy on campus. We invited GitHub and Arctiq so the room could hear licensing, privacy, and roadmap from people who actually ship the product.

2. Why we ran it

Student teams wanted to know if Copilot was allowed on internships, useful for data labs, or a shortcut that gets you failed on code review. Bringing vendor voices in cut through rumor: here is what the tool is, here is what GitHub ships today, here is where experiments live on GitHub Next.

3. Advice I still give students

QuestionShort answer
Can I use it on assignments?Follow your course policy; assume you must cite and understand every line you submit.
Does it replace tests?No — run the code, read the diff, reproduce the bug without AI once.
Best first win?Explain unfamiliar code + generate test scaffolding, not “write my entire lab.”

4. What we saw live

TopicWhy it mattered
Copilot ChatExplanations and refactors in-editor, not only tab completions
/createNotebookBootstrap a Jupyter notebook from existing repo code — huge for courses and EDA
GitHub Next[1]Sandbox for features that may never ship as-is — worth bookmarking

The /createNotebook demo was the crowd reaction moment. You point Chat at a module, ask for a notebook that imports and demonstrates it, and you get a first draft faster than copy-pasting cells by hand. Not magic — you still verify paths and versions — but it lowers the “blank notebook” barrier.

5. Session photos

Room was full — mix of software, data, and curious management folks.

GitHub Copilot session at Cédille — room view

Wide shot of the room — ÉTS students up front, laptops open. The energy was “show me something I can try Monday,” not passive keynote mode.

Copilot session — presentation

Presenters walked through Chat flows on a real repo, not slideware only. The memorable beat was refactoring a messy function in-place: accept suggestion, run tests mentally, tweak. That rhythm is what I still recommend to juniors — Copilot as a fast draft, not an oracle.

Copilot session — audience

Audience questions were practical: privacy (what leaves the machine), license on generated code (still your responsibility to comply with project policy), and whether Copilot works offline (it does not — plan demos with Wi‑Fi).

Thanks to Thierry Madkaud and Eldrick Wega for presenting, and to everyone who showed up.

6. What I took home

  • Copilot is a accelerator, not an author — review still belongs to the human who commits.
  • Notebooks are first-class — data curricula should teach Chat + notebooks together, not as an afterthought.
  • Next vs product — GitHub Next is where you look for preview features without betting your thesis on beta APIs.

I later built diagram tooling in the ChatGPT plugin era — see D2C OpenAI diagram plugin and Diagram prompts with AIPRM.

References

  1. GitHub Next. (). [Web page] githubnext.com.

References use this article’s publication date.