AI large language models (LLMs) are here. And they're already starting to impact how we teach and learn.
- We're thinking twice about their role in student writing.
- They're causing us to reconsider the type of homework we assign.
- We're thinking about how they might support student thinking.
- We're considering how to avoid (or mitigate) AI concerns.
Google is coming to the table with new tools -- or revised tools -- to support the teaching and learning process.
At an event at the Googleplex (Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.), I learned about some new AI-powered Google tools -- and some new features for existing tools.
In this post, I'll share what I've learned -- and will update in the future as new tools and features become available.
NOTE: This post is classified as "AI-powered tools for the classroom." Some of the tools are designated for users that are 18+ years of age. For these tools, the teacher can always act as the end user, creating or using the tool as the hands-on user while students watch or read/consume whatever the AI creates. If students aren't old enough to use certain tools that you love, just keep an eye on the terms of use. They might change over time.
NotebookLM
Link: http://notebooklm.google
📝 Description: "Your personalized research assistant." Upload your sources (PDF, websites, YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Slides, etc). NotebookLM summarizes them and mades interesting connections between all topics. It'll create study guides, FAQs, executive summaries, and more.
FYI: We wrote about NotebookLM and how it can be used in the classroom here!
🧑🏫 How to use it in education: Create engaging resources related to whatever students are learning. Use sources like PDFs, textbook chapters, handouts, etc. Then create resources (as documents or audio summaries) and make them available to students in your learning management system (Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, etc.).
📜 Terms of use: Users must be 18+ years old (but teachers can create resources with NotebookLM and make them available to students in other platforms).
🔊 The audio summary: This is probably the most mind-blowing part of NotebookLM. Click the audio summary button in the notebook guide. It'll generate an audio file of two AI hosts discussing your topic. They banter back and forth, make analogies an comparisons, and break down complex topics. The natural language they use is pretty mind-blowing. You can download these audio files and make them available to students through Google Drive or your learning management system.
📄 "Slip the hosts a note": Use the "customize" button when creating an audio summary. This lets you give the AI guidance when creating the AI host discussion. Ask for things like "less technical," "for ___ audience" ... you can even give it your name and tell it to reference you!
⚠️ Caution: Double-check all of the resources that NotebookLM creates. I've found that it is very accurate with what it creates, but especially in cases where it doesn't have much source information to work with, it could make errors (called "hallucinations").
Read Along
Link: http://readalong.google.com
📝 Description: Reading program that listens as students read out loud -- and supports them when they get stuck. Choose from hundreds of leveled stories. Recommendations change as their reading improves. Students unlock stars and badges as motivation.
🧑🏫 How to use it in education: Pair students with Read Along to give them immediate, personalized reading practice. When used in Google Classroom (available with paid Education Plus and Teaching/Learning Upgrade), teachers get insights into student performance based on Lexile, grade level, or phonics.
📜 Terms of use: Read Along was developed for children aged 5-9. They can use a school Google account or use a Google Account with Family Link if under 13. Get more information about Read Along here -- and info about setting up Read Along here.
💻 Use the app and site for free: Read Along in Google Classroom is a paid premium feature. But going to the site -- readalong.google.com OR the Android/iOS app -- is free. Plus, the mobile version can be used without an internet connection.
📚 Variety of books: Read Along offers books about animals, family, your students' world, friends, and more. There are also books to support letters, phonics, and more.
⚠️ Caution: This app listens to and interprets children's pronunciation. It could provide inaccurate interpretations, so parent or adult supervision can ensure that they're not being misguided.
Learn About
Link: https://learning.google.com/experiments/learn-about
📝 Description: Grasp new topics and deepen your understanding with a conversational learning companion that adapts to your unique curiosity and learning goals. Ask questions. Upload material. Explore related topics that it curates for you.
🧑🏫 How to use it in education: Teachers can use it to explore material before teaching it. Students can use it to explore topics at their leisure based on their curiosity, but they need to be 18+ to use it (as of publication of this post). Ask it questions. Use the suggested questions to guide your inquiry. It's designed for learning.
📜 Terms of use: Users must be 18+ years of age to use Learn About. A Google representative at the event I attended said that they hope to make it available to younger audiences eventually.
❌ Defeating misconceptions: Learn About's AI model identifies misconceptions that people often make with the topic you're learning. Then it identifies it an debunks misconceptions.
🐰 Go down a rabbit hole: Learn About provides suggested topics, related content, and questions/prompts that you might want to use. A Google representative said these features show "the shape of a topic." Keep prompting to satisfy your curiosity.
⚠️ Caution: Human reviewers may read, annotate and process your Learn About conversations to improve their products. They disconnect conversations from your Google account before reviewers see them. But any confidential information you enter could be seen by human reviewers. Be careful -- and don't include any personally identifying information (PII) in Learn About.
Google Arts and Culture
Link: https://artsandculture.google.com/
📝 Description: It shares artifacts about the world's art and culture to preserve it and make it available to anyone, anywhere. They digitize, manage, and publish collections online from museums around the world. New AI technology is empowering Google developers to create new experiences with the artifacts in Google Arts and Culture.
🧑🏫 How to use it in education: Share paintings, sculptures, exhibitions, activities, and more from Google Arts and Culture with students. Help them to explore and better understand these artifacts with new AI features.
📜 Terms of use: Users must be 12+ to use Google Arts and Culture (although teachers could display it on a screen for younger students, if appropriate, while still adhering to the terms of use).
1️⃣ AI feature #1 -- Mice in the Museum: This AI audio experiment follows two curious mice exploring museums and discussing art. Load a painting and the mice (using AI models and natural language processing) will discuss and compare artwork.
2️⃣ AI feature #2 -- Talking Tours: An AI audio experiment touring cultural landmarks in Street View. Load a location and use Street View to maneuver around it. Then, choose a view to generate an AI tour guide description of what you see.
3️⃣ AI feature #3 -- Art Selfie 2: Use the Google Arts and Culture mobile app for this one. Using the app, snap a selfie and choose a style of art. The app will reimagine your photo in that style of art. It supports 25+ styles with more to come.
⚠️ Caution: Especially with Mice in the Museum and Talking Tours, the AI model is interpreting what it sees on screen and is making its best guess on how to interpret it. Because of that, take its commentary with a grain of salt.
Illuminate
Link: http://illuminate.google.com
📝 Description: Illuminate turns content from the web into an audio dialogue with two AI-generated voices discussing key points of the content. Save any audio discussions you like, or browse publicly-available, pre-created conversations. (If you've used the audio summary feature in NotebookLM, this is the same technology -- with more control over how you create the conversations.)
🧑🏫 How to use it in education: Generate podcast-style commentary about sources of information students are learning. Download the audio and provide it to students through Google Drive or your learning management system. Then, they can listen to this custom breakdown of the content on the go -- on the bus, in the car, on the train, while walking home.
📜 Terms of use: Users must be 13+ years of age to use Illuminate (unless through a school Google account or a Google account with Family Link, pursuant to FERPA, COPPA, or any other policies).
📚 Book talks: Illuminate already has short commentaries on lots of publicly-available books like Sherlock Holmes, Poe's The Raven, The Great Gatsby, and more. You can create commentaries of any book with a publicly available link (like gutenberg.org).
🌶 Spice up your textbooks: Publicly available textbooks like OpenStax can be used as sources. View the textbook online, grab a link to a particular chapter or section, and generate an Illuminate commentary.
⚠️ Caution: The AI model driving the hosts' discussion has to take lots of liberties to compare, make analogies, and make judgment calls with the content. You might not agree with their takes -- and they might make errors.
ShiffBot
Link: http://shiffbot.withgoogle.com
📝 Description: ShiffBot is an AI chatbot and downloadable Chrome extension. Built using Google’s Gemini API, it's augmented with Dan Shiffman’s inspirational teaching style and educational corpus to help learners overcome coding challenges when they’re working on their own in p5.js without just giving them the answer.
🧑🏫 How to use it in education: For students learning to code, this is a great resource to provide them that
📜 Terms of use: Users must be 18+ (per terms of use for generative AI APIs).
📺 The YouTube channel: Shiffman created a popular channel dedicated to learning creative coding called The Coding Train. ShiffBot is consistent with what you'll find in his YouTube channel.
⚠️ Caution: ShiffBot has been trained from Dan Shiffman's content, but the responses might not always be accurate.
