WN #24

Add This to Your AI Toolkit

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write one of these, but in the meantime I’ve still been keeping up with the latest AI developments and have lots of things I’m excited to share with you all that I think can bring real value to your classroom, prep time, and beyond. 

One of the things I’ve learned in my time playing around with AI tools and platforms is that they all have cool demos, but it’s not always apparent at the outset which ones will have real utility for me. That can be one of the most daunting parts of AI for newcomers, and one of the most common questions I get from educators: 

“OK, so which one do I use?”

My answer is always that, ideally, it should never be just one. You can have your go-to that you are most familiar with, and maybe even have a subscription to through a personal account or through your school. But there are lots of other tools and platforms out there that can add additional value, often for free, that will help optimize your AI abilities for specific tasks or situations, like having a wrench to turn to when a screwdriver won’t cut it, or even just having a couple variants of that screwdriver that might be a better fit for a particular scenario.

One such (free!) tool to add to your toolkit is Google’s NotebookLM, which has been on my radar for a while now but is one that I only recently started exploring in depth. Over the past couple of months it has become a stable part of my rotation, particularly when it comes to working with documents. Why?

• It provides a dedicated AI workspace (a “notebook”) for working with a particular source, or sources, that you upload (PDF, txt, audio, Google Docs, Google Slides, website links, YouTube videos, copied text, or Markdown).

• It utilizes Gemini 1.5 Pro, Google’s premium AI model that excels at processing and analyzing large amounts of information and is normally only available through paid subscriptions, but through NotebookLM you can use it for free.

• It summarizes your uploaded sources automatically and provides a variety of one-click options for creating things like FAQ’s, study guides, a table of contents, a briefing doc, or, my favorite, a short podcast. Yes, a highly realistic, customizable podcast where two “hosts” break down your source(s) for you in a familiar, engaging style (see “The Lab” section below for an example).

• It includes a chat interface where you can chat with Gemini 1.5 Pro about anything related to your source(s). Responses include clickable citations that guide you to the specific part(s) of your source(s) that it used to generate its response, making it easy to verify or dig into with your own eyes.

• You can save any AI responses as notes that can be pinned to your notebook, or you can write and save your own notes.

• You can share notebooks and collaborate with others.

I also appreciate that NotebookLM provides value for me outside of school as well. As busy educators, it can be hard to find time to learn new tools in the midst of the school year, but it becomes a more worthwhile investment when you can add to your teaching toolkit while simultaneously tackling tasks in your personal life. As an example, I’ve actually been learning to use NotebookLM while preparing for the upcoming election.

My state has 10 propositions on the ballot that all come with their own set of documents: overviews, legal text, arguments for and against, financial impact statements, etc. I created a notebook for each proposition, downloading the documents from the state website and uploading them to their respective notebooks.

Once the sources were uploaded, I created a podcast for each proposition (it takes only a couple of minutes) and downloaded the completed podcast to my phone for listening on-the-go. Then I can open each notebook to ask additional questions, with responses rooted in the documents themselves (complete with citations), and pin notes, thoughts, and considerations as needed.

Though NotebookLM isn’t yet available for students under the age of 18. I see a variety of ways it could be useful to me as teacher, such as:

• Lesson and curriculum planning sessions (see “The Lab” section below for an example)

• Professional development

• Creating materials and resources for students

• Collaborating with colleagues

I highly recommend giving it a try. I think you’ll find plenty of opportunities to make use of it, both for and outside of work.

Can Teachers Identify AI-Generated Content?

A recent study examined teachers' ability to identify AI-generated content in student work. A quick summary of the findings: teachers aren’t good at it, tend to be overconfident, and it’s pretty easy to get AI to produce something that is far less detectable. And no, AI detectors aren’t the answer.

The Problem with “AI English”

On a related note, in trying to detect AI-generated content, teachers often hone in on words and phrases that tend to be overused by AI. Many employers are doing the same to flag AI-generated content in resumes. But why does AI use words like “delve” so much more often than we would expect from human writers? One reason is that AI companies rely on outsourced workers from the global south to help train their chatbots, including from regions that use words like “delve” more commonly than we do in the US or England. So if AI English reflects linguistic patterns in the global south, then linguistic patterns in the global south become more likely to be flagged as “sounding like AI.” This is a problem.

Califorina Puts AI Literacy Into Law

California passed a new law requiring the state’s Instructional Quality Commission to incorporate AI literacy into school curricula, including how AI works, applications, limitations, and ethical issues. It also calls for AI literacy to be a factor in reviewing textbooks and teaching materials. California has also announced a new initiative in partnership with AI tech giant NVIDIA to provide AI training and access to students, educators and workers to help them build new skills and advance their careers, with a focus on community colleges.

📌 A Prompting Guide for Educators

Code.org put together a helpful Prompting Guide for educators as part of its AI 101 for Teachers series

📌 Presentations Built with AI

Pear Deck, which lets you build interactive presentations through Google Slides, has added an AI feature this year that will create an interactive slide deck for you based on chosen topics, standards, and/or files, though it’s often better to treat these as initial drafts rather than finished products. MagicSchool also recently added a presentation generator tool, and Curipod offers several AI features to bolster your slideshows.

📌 New ChatGPT Features

ChatGPT subscribers have a slew of new features to play with, including the “o1-preview” model which spends more time thinking before responding and is thus better at reasoning through complex tasks, a “Canvas” feature that generates editable documents in a separate panel alongside your chat (much like Claude’s “Artifacts”), and “Advanced Voice Mode” on the mobile app which allows you to have a more fluid and dynamic verbal conversation with ChatGPT.

Using NotebookLM Podcasts for Planning

As mentioned above, Google’s NotebookLM has lots of potential uses for a busy teacher. The podcast feature, in particular, is super helpful, and can be fine-tuned to fit your needs. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you want your class to read a short story (say, this one), and you want some help designing a lesson around it that incorporates Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. You decide to generate a podcast using NotebookLM so you can get some ideas while you are using the elliptical machine at the gym, commuting to or from work, or walking the dog.

I highly recommend customizing the podcast to help make sure it is useful for your needs. Simply use the “Customize” button in the podcast generator and add a helpful prompt like:

Of course, you can also enter the above prompt into the chat to get a written response, or even copy that written response and paste it into the source upload tool as an additional, focused source for your podcast to draw from (sometimes this seems to be helpful).

You can listen to an example of a podcast below (if you are reading this as an email, it will take you to the web version of the newsletter where you can listen to the audio).

More Ideas…

You can use AI to help students gather ideas for creative writing, or even have it create stories that students must finish or revise. You can use a form of the prompt below to create a custom chatbot for students to interact with on platforms like MagicSchool or SchoolAI, or have them enter it at the beginning of a chat on the platform of your choosing.

• Spotify now gives you the option of creating AI-generated playlists based on text prompts

• If you’ve always wanted your coffee table to be able to walk, AI has helped make that possible.

• You can now wear an AI pendant that is just there to keep you company.

• One company that will not be using generative AI: Nintendo.

That’s all for this week! If you appreciate the content in this newsletter, consider subscribing for free, or sharing with people in your network who may find value in it. If you are looking for more, feel free to check out the archive to catch up on any editions you may have missed.