Brandon: Welcome back to the Ed Tech Teacher podcast. My name is Brandon Hall. I am joined here by Tom Driscoll. Tom is the CEO of EdTech Teacher. Tom, welcome back to the podcast.
Tom: Thank you. So it's so awesome to be back this season. really excited to be co-hosting with you this year and just digging into all things ed tech. things happening very fast in this space. and we have a very exciting lineup of of episodes and and folks that we're gonna interview this year. So truly excited to dig in and get started, Brendan.
Brandon: Yeah, season three looking like it's gonna be pretty busy. and I would imagine that the biggest topic we're gonna see is AI.
Tom: How could it not be? I mean, so what for better or worse? I mean, that is the biggest change we're seeing on the you know, at least in the technology space. And it's going like I mentioned, it's going very fast in a lot of directions. there are a lot of opportunities. There are also a lot of risks and challenges. So it's something that every school in the world is grappling with right now. And I think the more people we can get around the table to talk through these issues, to share ideas, that's how we learn. So I think. one of my goals for this season of the podcast is to really get those conversations going, to explore this in more depth with practitioners in the field, with thought leaders. And I think we we couldn't get a better time. you know, this year I really do feel like AI is hating schools, whether they like it or not, and we need to dig in and and try to figure this out. And we're we're here to support you.
Brandon: Yeah, and I think most schools will be looking at two different types of things, right? One will be looking for pr professional development. How do you
Tom: Yeah. Yep.
Brandon: how can we best use AI safely with students? and the other will be looking at policies, how creating a district policy that makes sense for teachers and students regarding AI.
Tom: Yeah, and there's there are just so many different angles to this. And I think that's one of the challenges. And when I'm working with schools, you know, it's really about like what stakeholder group are are we working with? What are the outcomes? What are the goals? What are the challenges? Because again, like policy development for the administrators, that's a totally different thing than, you know, what are the AI skills students need to learn? Like there's
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: so many different conversations happening at once. I think something that's valuable is sometimes taking a thoughtful pause, say, what is it that we're actually discussing right now? 'Cause you can't just say AI in schools and have a discussion because there's too much there. It's like, what is it exactly that you want to discuss? What do we want to tackle? And and yeah, and it's just it's just really exciting times, even though it can seem a little bit people seem a little anxious, right? And I think that's that's normal, right? I mean, you've
Brandon: Yeah. Yep.
Tom: seen it, right, in in your travels.
Brandon: Yeah, and it's daunting, right? Where do you start? If you're an educator and you ha or you're a school district, where where is it that you start? and and for us in my school district it was let's you know, people are out using stuff, let's kind of get a sense of what it's like, then create a common sense user ag you know, user guide. on w the best ways to try and apply it in the classroom or have students use it. Right. And then on top of all of that, you're thinking student data privacy and and you're trying to make sure that you're also aware of screen time and how much screen time kids are getting in their classrooms.
Tom: Yeah, and I mean even right now, the two of us could just dig in for hours talking about this stuff. So I'm gonna pull us back out. one thing I do wanna remind folks too, though, is that ed tech isn't AI. They're two like they're not the same. So this is not just an AI podcast. There are a lot of other things I'd like to talk about too, right? So you know, whether it's design thinking, personalization, project-based learning, civics education. So there's a lot of things that that we'll be touching on throughout the year. So yes, AI is going to be a focus, but It's not everything, right? And I think that we still also need to be mindful of other ways that technology can enhance teaching and learning, other approaches, and not get too focused primarily on the AI space. and also I wanted to preview the way the year is gonna flow. So we're gonna have three different types of episodes. So we're gonna experiment a little bit with the formats. So if you've been listening to our podcast the past couple years, we primarily focus on long-form interviews. So we we usually try to keep what like a half hour brand in roughly. So that's a conversation with a practitioner that in the field trying some of these strategies that they want to share, thought leaders. And I think that that's an excellent way to kind of take a deeper dive and to learn from someone in the field. The other format that we're going to experiment with and actually today is going to be the first go at it is going to have sections for special topics and how-tos. Right. So we'll take a dive into a particular theme or topic or strategy and we'll go through it together. And we are going to be putting all of these on YouTube as well. So for some of those special topics, we will be doing some tutorials, light tutorials. So nothing crazy, but we will be showing how to do certain things. So if you're listening to the podcast feed, like if you're on your commute into work right now and you're listening to this and we go over a tutorial, just know that all of this will be in our YouTube channel if you want to check that out. and then the third format is we are gonna do an ask me anything style. so we'll have some AMA episodes probably every two to three months. so we will have a way to collect some feedback from you. So if you have any questions, honestly, the easiest way is to just reach out to us. So my email is Driscoll at edtechteacher.org. Just send me an email. We'll have a fancier way to collect feedback, I'm sure, at some point, but just send me an email, right? So I'll I'll get back to you and then we'll we'll put that into some future episodes. So, Brent, you wanna kick us off with our special topic for today?
Brandon: Yeah, the Google AI Educator series has really been built up over the course of the last six months or so. having gone out to California Bennett Mountain View, was invited out as one of the five or six Massachusetts educators that went out. we checked out what was the begin the very first of their badge-a-ton series. and they've rolled it out sort of globally now at this point. You can start earning AI badges. it's a really, really great program in that. It's easy to use. It's hands-on. and as you're working with someone, they give you the example, they show you how it works, they give you a chance to try it, and then there's a a short quiz and you earn your badge. I think the quizzes are between four and five questions. So th there's a it's a very light lift for educators. But what it does is it gives you an opportunity to see that AI that AI tool in action. And it's really impressive. it it's been it was a pretty Going out to Mountain View, number one, going out to Mountain View was unbelievable and was definitely like a bucket list item for me as an ed tech person, right? Like going to see Oz. the but be and being there, but then watching them the way they thoughtfully rolled it out, the way the process worked, the way we worked together as educators, trying to kind of break the tool a little bit and see what we could make with it, but then learning the process about how they wanted to share it with educators. And they took our feedback really seriously. it was it was really impressive. but at at the end of the day, Gemini is now baked into so many of Google's products from classroom and docs and sheets and slides, right down to the Gemini app itself.
Tom: Yeah, I've I've been really impressed. They've they've come a long way, even in the past six months. And I just love that it was based on the educator feedback, on you guys going
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: out. And and I've seen even when they they rolled out a couple weeks ago, some of the new ones. Actually, a few badges came out for September. They are super practical. They're based on what a teacher would actually do in a classroom, right? They're
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: not these big generic courses. It's it's it's a skill, it's a strategy. And I think that's brilliant because it it Cut it it gets right to the point, right? So how is this tool gonna help me do something in the classroom that's effective? Remember like the I think with Monica Burns, the tasks before apps, right? It's that whole idea, it's like, what is the task? What are we trying to do? and then build backwards from there. So in this episode, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a little bit of a tour through some of the new, newish tools and features within Google Workspace that are available to all teachers already. And I think one of the biggest surprises for teachers coming back into the classroom that I saw this year was a lot of folks had had no idea that these AI tools were built in. And even the ones that they'd seen before got a huge facelift over the summer, right? So even if you had, like for instance, notebook LM, huge changes since last spring. So they've literally changed the name of it. So
Brandon: Change the name. Yeah.
Tom: now it's a Gemini notebook, right? So yeah, so let's just kind of ping back and forth. we'll just pick a few different things. that we'd like to highlight. We can't cover everything of course in this episode, but just some things that stand out to you that educators have really latched onto that have been experimenting with even just since the start of school, Brandon.
Brandon: I mean, I I think it's it's right. The Gemini, the the the tool itself, right, everything is built off of Gemini. and I think it's really impressive what they've done to make Gemini more user-friendly. For me, my favorite of of all of them is Notebook, right? The the Gemini Notebook. It does so much. It's the Swiss Army knife of of this platform, and it really is built for education. I I think that whenever I talk with teachers here in coaching. ed tech coaching or you know I've given presentations on on accessibility. The it it comes back I always go back to have you tried Notebook LM now Gemini Notebook and have you looked at some of the working in a school. Have you
Tom: Yeah.
Brandon: seen some of the things that are built into it that kind of it it casts a wide net. It's the things that you know we were going to four or five different websites to try and recreate this one thing. But now it's all there. It's all within Gemini Notebook. The the audio overview for me is the showstopper when you're giving a presentation and you can it's interact with the presentation. you know, it creates a podcast. The guy sounds just like me. People ask me all the time, like, are you is it wait, hold on. But it's you interact with you hit pause and you ask it a question, and it responds to you with the knowledge it has from Gemini and from the sources that you've put in. And I think the the best part of Gemini Notebook is that you put the sources in and you're the one who is controlling where where where it's looking for information to be able to build out that quiz or that infographic or those flashcards. and it seems like every time I open it up there's a new tool in there.
Tom: Well that's the thing too. I found that even for folks that have used it in the past, because some people have been using Notebook LM for a couple of years now,
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: they'll log back in in that c that studio section on the right.
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: Check it out. Like honestly, even if you if you are listening to this podcast six months from now, still go check it. There's probably way more now than when we're recording this, right? So
Brandon: There's a new one in there from when I just started like from the last time I was in there called Reports. I don't know if you have that.
Tom: N I haven't seen that one. So let me
Brandon: It's it's brand new to me. It says new reports and it'll generate a report based on what you've got.
Tom: Yeah. So so I yeah, highly suggest I'm I'm I'm with you, Brandon. That's such a great tool. And I like it also because it's like that walled garden, right? So you can take your resources, your curriculum, your stuff. And I think that that actually helps mitigate some of the fear that it's just gonna hallucinate and make things up because it's not. It's gonna pull from your resources. So that's super helpful. And then also click on their that little side carrot next to all of those studio items. There's a lot of hidden gems in there. Right. Not to be confused with gem gems, but if you click on that arrow, for instance, like the audio overview, now you can choose from four different audio styles. You can have a debate, you can do a critique, you can change the length of it, you can say what you want it to focus on. even the videos, there's different videos. So anyway, so the whole point is that go in there, check out the studio, click on that, those arrows, and just see what some of those different customizations are. The other thing I like is that they're integrating it into Google Classroom quite a bit. And I'll give you a story from my son. So my son's a high school student. And he was sharing that there was a a a notebook. Well, back then it was notebook LM, but now you can take those as an educator and share them with your students. So I think the way that the teacher did it last year with them is they he just sent him the link to it. But I think now you could actually assign notebooks as a material in Google Classroom. Brandon, have you seen any teachers try that out or do it?
Brandon: Yeah, we we have our our s our special education staff doing that and they're using it for usually for review material for students where they can put all of the things that they're supposed to be focusing on on the unit, dump it into there, and then give them the opportunity to try out one of the tools to share out an individual tool built on a notebook. flashcards have been very popular with our world language teachers and and the quizzes too. I know my own daughter who's a all who's a also a freshman in high school. went through had like a seven or eight page PDF last year for a biology unit that was it was daunting for her. and and I said, let's throw it in a notebook, let's throw it in Gemini notebook and we'll try and crack this, crack this open a little bit, right? We went the first thing we did was the 10 minute audio overview, basic overview of of cell structure in biology. And it gave her everything she needed to know in an understandable format. So and that she could listen to over and over and over again to pick up the material. Right. So I I think for accessibility, Notebook is is brilliant for that.
Tom: Yeah, in and the also it shows that the students can have some some autonomy with this too. Like they're using it as a tool to learn. And
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: that's one of the things that's really missing is those those ex examples of how AI can help kids learn something, right? Not just about saving teachers a couple hours a week. Like that we know that's important too. And we'll talk about a lot of those things. But how are kids using these tools themselves to learn? So that's I think Gemini Notebooks a I think a nice on-ramp to that. It's for high school at least. so if you're if you're listening, you're like, hmm, I'm not really sure about student use of AI. And don't know if what can they ex there's a lot of reasons why you might be concerned. This could be a good step one, like maybe create a notebook or have them create one to help study. You know, I I I think that that would be a good way to introduce them in a in a safe and secure way.
Brandon: Yeah, and you can even set your own notebook up with parameters. You can give it parameters and say you want your notebooks to look a certain way, basically to create settings for it, which is really nice. You can personalize them.
Tom: All right. So Gemini Notebook, I feel like we could do a whole deep dive just on that one, but we're gonna we're gonna move on. I'm just gonna go to straight Gemini for now. I think just the Gemini app, I think it helps if teachers just spend a little bit of time exploring. Learn the geography of the app, right? Like
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: what where where are the different buttons where there's in and it may take, you know, 15, 20 minutes, but there's so much here that you can leverage and work off of. And I think the The two things that I find that are a little bit more advanced uses of it that teachers are really latching onto are gems and the canvas mode. So those are the two, right?
Brandon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, those are the two that I was gonna say. Yep, yep.
Tom: So I'll I'm gonna kick it back to you. So I'll I'll cover the canvas in like some of that part, but you wanna share a little bit about gems, what you see, how teachers are using it.
Brandon: Yeah, two different things we had I was covering a a class at the end of last year and there wasn't a lesson plan. So
Tom: Yeah.
Brandon: tech director, haven't been in a classroom in, you know, 10 years or so, still understand students, right? We were c classroom teacher for 15 years. You kind of figure it out pretty quickly, like you gotta get up there and dance a little bit. and I asked them if they had ever heard of Gemini, and of course they said yes. And I asked them if they had heard of Gems. This is a group of eighth graders, and they said no. And I said, here's an opportunity for you to build a bot. Right. You it will do whatever you want it to do. You give it very specific instructions, but it will do what you want it to do. and we went over one together. We we created a bot that would edit your thesis statement, but not give you the final product. It would give you suggestions on how to write a better thesis statement. So I then turned it over. I showed them how it worked, I showed them the prompt, the tools that were included, and then gave them the opportunity to to create their own tool. And one of the kids who was he's way into cars, he's way into fixing cars, he wanted to create a gem that would If you put in the year make and model of a car, it would give you the the service intervals, what you needed to do at each interval, approximate costs, and then things that wear out quicker on on that particular car than other cars that you should be aware of. And like this kid was in i the eighth grader, came up with it this in 10 minutes.
Tom: That's wild.
Brandon: And then we're all throwing cars at him. We're like 1979 Buick Skylark. And he's like, okay, let's figure it out. And throws it in, right? And it's like 1989 Pontiac Le Mans throws it in and spits it out, right? It was unbelievable. We had we had a great
Tom: Yeah.
Brandon: time with it.
Tom: Yeah, it's just that that hearing you explain just how students just jumped in and started to build with it. That's what I think the value of these gems are. Is you can
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: you can build and create with them. In a way it's kinda like you're building an agent. I don't know if I I don't even know if Google would call that an agent, but it's similar type of workflows as an agent, really.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we and then as an administrative staff, we sat down. we created a prompt that we refined over and over and over again on teacher evaluation and look fors, on teacher evaluations. And eventually we used as its knowledge base our best practices and you know, our DCAP for our district. And eventually we created a prompt that was it is the most complicated prompt I've seen. It was a full page. Prompt and it was spitting out exactly what we wanted it to spit out if you put your notes in from a classroom observation. it was it was great and it's been a great use of our time and and I think it's gonna be really popular with administrators and it just goes to show that really it's a it is a blank canvas.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And and in the the use cases are almost endless. Like it's just your
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: own creativity or time are the constraint, right? Like that you can do so much with these tools. So I actually had an educator, actually weren't even educated, but it was someone who was giving some feedback saying like AI makes everything the same, AI homogenized everything. I'm like, not the way I see people use it, right? I see people use it to do wildly different and creative things. So
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: It's like any other technology. It's how are you using it? Could you use AI to shoot to the middle and make everything generic? Yes. Should you? No. Like that was a that's a terrible way to use AI, right? So I'll give you one quick example. A teacher from Foster Gloucester here in Rhode Island. I was working with them last spring, and I wish I could remember her name. But she shared with me a gem that she picked up from someone that she was using, but she called it the red pen feedback gem. And it was for her, right? It was to give her feedback because. One of the challenges of AI is sometimes it's a sycophant, right? It's gonna say how great your ideas are, right? So
Brandon: Mm-hmm. Right.
Tom: she actually made a gem in the instructions read right here, it says, whenever I propose an idea or argument, I want you to ignore your helpful persona. Instead, act as a hostile critic. Your only job is to find holes in my logic and assignment, point out three specific ways my assignment could fail, two assumptions I'm making without proof, and one counter-argument I haven't addressed. Don't be polite, be precise.
Brandon: Wow.
Tom: And I'm like, that's a little harsh. I don't know if I would set mine up that way, but I love the idea that, like, look, give me harsh, honest feedback. Don't just tell me what I want to hear. And and she uses that for some of her like new assignment ideas. She's like, All poke holes in this. Where might this go off the rails?
Brandon: Yeah.
Tom: I just thought that was a very creative way for an educator to come up with a a gem.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt. I like the the idea of asking it to be critical of you.
Tom: Yes, right.
Brandon: because and I think that that a lot of people when they first use the AI, they realize, it's it's really easy, it's conversational back and forth, and it can have that persona if you let it.
Tom: Right. But yeah, but you can fine-tune it. You can fine-tune it any way you want, you know.
Brandon: Right. Right.
Tom: So awesome. So I would say suggest if you're not familiar with gems or if you're not even quite sure what we're talking about with gems, just take a few minutes. There's a lot of stuff out there online. just get some examples and I would say just test it out. You know, and actually I think Google has some pre-made ones you can just get started with right away. You just click the button and get rolling. so the one that I wanted to mention is not an actual app. It's actually just baked into Gemini, but that's turning on the canvas mode, right? So not to be confused with canvas the LMS. As soon as that term came out, I'm like, people are gonna get confused, right? And it happened.
Brandon: Yeah. I thought the same thing.
Tom: They are not the same thing. But if you go into Gemini and you do have to do a little digging, and Brandon, let me know if it's if it's different now, but you do have to go down into the drop down, you have to click the plus button when you're
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: in the chat.
Brandon: Yep.
Tom: On the left, there's a whole bunch of options now, but on mine, I actually have to go down to more tools and it's in there. But once you find the canvas mode, that's really designed for coding, writing, making slides, those types of things. Man, you can do so much with that. And if you've heard the term vibe coding, this is, I would say, the easiest way to just get started with it. You can vibe code
Brandon: Without a doubt.
Tom: and then one thing I gotta ask you about too, because a teacher was asked me, you can put these onto a Google site, you can share them with people. But now I think you can actually send things from Canvas that you build directly to classroom now.
Brandon: I did not know that.
Tom: Yeah, a teacher tested it out. It worked a couple weeks ago. I don't want to start shouting it from the rooftop because I don't know if it just accidentally worked, but I think
Brandon: Yeah.
Tom: now there actually is a way that you can, like when you vibe code something in the canvas mode, like say I worked with a Massachusetts school. We made a Massachusetts Phonics game and it had the, you know, the Worcester Red Sox, right? And all that stuff. But they
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: took that phonics game and there was actually an add to classroom button at the top. So if you haven't tried it recently or I say you've done it before and you're like, this is a great app I built in Gemini, I don't know what to do with it. I don't know to get it out. One, you could throw it on a Google site, or two, it looks like you can send it right to classroom to your kids, which would be a, I think a game changer if that was available.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt. And I've actually used Canvas to make games for stu for students to play. So what we do is we create the code in Canvas and then c copy the code and embed it into that Google site, right? So it's automatically hosted and it's easy to use. we were lamenting at the end of last year about how there wasn't a good free, safe typing game for anyone to play, for students when they had free time to learn some typing. And I said, Let's just make one. I have no coding experience whatsoever outside of Q Basic with Terry Prohaska at West Warwick High School.
Tom: Shout out to West Warwick Island.
Brandon: shout out West Warwick High School. That so that's my loan coding experience, right? and it's all if-then statements back then, but now with with Canvas, it's all written in JavaScript and I I don't even know what language it's written in. But the bottom line is I said I would like a typing game. I would like it to be in the style of asteroids, so that every time I type a letter. It shoots a little, you know, beam at the letter that's there and it blows it up, right? each level should be X number of seconds long. There should be a boss at the end, and to defeat the boss, you have to type full words. Right. It made three levels for me. It it is awesome. The kids have been trying it. They love it. The teacher loves it because it keeps them occupied. and now we've got something that we don't have to worry about a student data privacy agreement on because it's just the website. Right.
Tom: Right, 'cause it's no no student data. Yeah. This is perfect for those situations. You just want an activity, a simulation, a practice, just jump in, do it. And you can flip these things in like five minutes. You just say what you want. You say it and it makes it. Like, a a coup
Brandon: You need a tool, you can create it. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I needed to bulk download a bunch of YouTube videos. I had
Tom: Yeah, what?
Brandon: a I had a bunch of YouTube videos and I needed to pull the audio from them. and I need to do it in bulk. And there wasn't a tool that existed. So I wrote it with Canvas. Yeah. Yeah, it worked. It allowed
Tom: No way. And it worked? This is wild.
Brandon: for the batch download the whole thing. It cause at first it would only let me do 10 at a time and I'm like, Well, I have 44 videos. Can you let me do up to 50? And it was like, yeah, we can do that. Why not? You're in charge. Why not? Like, it's crazy.
Tom: Yeah, why not? Why not? Of course I can. right. Yeah. So I don't last tip, and because I'm sure some people are like, these guys are going down the rabbit hole. But
Brandon: Ha ha.
Tom: one tip that I found that I I just was tinkering and we were having some trouble with the formatting of the games we were building with the teachers. And finally I was like, All right, well, let's just how does the industry do it? Let's just say it, right? So I I said at the end of your prompt say. Use best practices and educational game design and mechanics. And just by putting that sentence at the end, it referenced the you know educational game industry's standards and applied it to the game we built. Right. So even some of those little things, like if you're not sure why or how, just say, what would experts in this field do and model that? Right. Just and
Brandon: Yeah.
Tom: just say that. And sometimes it works. It doesn't always work, but I just think as a tip, and for anything that you're building, tap into that other domain expertise. Cause that's one of the values of AI is that now you can dip into that without having to necessarily know all of it and bring that into some of the things that you're building.
Brandon: Yeah, and ed tech teacher colleague Sean McCusker at the Ed Tech Teacher AI conference, in his in his talk, said something to the effect of h at the end, when you're done, ask the bot, how could I have gotten here faster? Right? To
Tom: Yes. Yep. Yeah.
Brandon: analyze that.
Tom: Right. Analyze what what we've done so far. How
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: can we streamline or optimize this process in the future? Or how can I make like a cheat sheet for this that I can just or a template that I can use?
Brandon: Yep. Yep.
Tom: because why not? You know? Awesome. So I don't want to jump over Google Classroom entirely, but I but I do want to reference a couple things in here. If you haven't really explored Classroom much. Check out that Gemini section, right? There's a Gemini module now on the left that they're Google's doing a really good job of trying to bring everything together, right? So there's modules
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: in there that are that are baked in. In there are sentence starters, really. There's prompt sentence starters where you start there and it will shoot you to Gemini. but I think it's worth it. And they also have a section at the top, it says see examples. It's a little blue button. And that will actually bring you over to a Google Doc that actually has a bunch of sample samples that you can use. So my suggestion is if you haven't really explored that space, do it. And if you say, hey, I don't use Google Classroom with my kids, who cares? You don't need to. You could just use it as a tool to build stuff. Right. So I
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: was working with a school out in Chicago and they were they used Seesaw. It was an elementary school, and I think Seesaw is amazing, right? So, like, we're not gonna use Google Classroom Gemini and Why not? Like so they started to look into it and they could see all the things they could build as a teacher in Google Classroom in the Gemini thing. So again, don't dismiss it just because you don't use it with students. There's still a lot in there that you can use to build with.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt. they've done a really good job sort of modeling it after what magic school looks like. and it and it's everything's inside there. It's all right there. So you're not even going out to another. They're really encouraging people to stay within that environment.
Tom: Yeah, and for the most part, a lot of the use cases and the things that you would need an AI tool to do, there are a lot of great educational apps out there that have AI in them.
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: but I would say before you start burning through your Sunday afternoon trying to find all these other apps, start in Google. There's probably a lot of stuff in there that you can just do without having to use all these third party tools. So and I don't see that trend changing. I mean, I just I I mean let's just Say it how it is. I mean, they're gonna be building a lot of stuff within the platform in the next year or two.
Brandon: And if there isn't something there, just ask for it. Either in the product feature updates or ask Gemini. I'm looking for this thing. You don't seem to have it. Can you help me make it? Right? Like
Tom: Yeah, can can we make it right? so one last tool I wanted to reference before we we wrap, I just wanna see if you have had any experience with it, but it's Google Workspace Studio. Have you tinkered with that much?
Brandon: Google Workspace Studio? I don't think so.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. So that's something to check out. We're actually gonna do it's gonna be part of our webinar series. I think October 20th, we're gonna do one on it. But essentially Workspace Studio is in a way, it's kind of like an agentic workflow creator for the operational
Brandon: okay.
Tom: part of the job. Right? It kind of reminds me of the old remember the if this then that website from like 10 years ago? It's kind
Brandon: I love that. Yeah.
Tom: of like that, but within your Google Workspace now. So you can say, hey, if I get an email from this sender, tag it with this. put the document in this folder, create a spreadsheet. So it think about any Google app that you have, you
Brandon: Mm.
Tom: can create automated workflows with it. So I think that might be a special topics episode for next month. yeah.
Brandon: I would love to dig in on this because w the FOIA requests that all exist within
Tom: yes.
Brandon: within Drive and within in in Gmail. It would be interesting to be able to pull that, use use this to create the pull for that.
Tom: Yeah. And then even basic stuff like summarize my emails or give me the five
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: action items that came through today or automatically draft email starters and just keep them in my draft like it seems basic, but it can save you hours if you can set it up right.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt.
Tom: So the way they they design it, it's called flows, right? So you'd set up a flow, right? So when you they have some pre-made ones that you can use, but you choose a starter. So like how does this thing start? Is it on a schedule like every morning? Is it when you get an email? Is it when a calendar event comes up, then you say, all right, that event started, that triggered it. Then what happens? What does it do? So do you want it to ask Gemini something? Do you want it to ask a gem? Do you want it to do an if then? Do you want it to create whatever? But it's you create your own if then workflows within Google Workspace. I still most people I talk to have never even heard of it. So it's still a very new tool. I feel like Google hasn't even really shouted it or out yet because it's still kind of new. But
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: especially if you're in school leadership, Check out that because there might be a lot of ways that your school leadership team would be able to w use work workspace studio. so again, we're not gonna get into the the details of it today, but just wanna throw it on your radar as something to check out in the future.
Brandon: I'm taking a note.
Tom: All right, take some notes. all right, so real quick heads up on a couple free webinars that we're gonna do, and then we're gonna finish up with a new segment on shout-outs. but first, I do want to share that very exciting. I actually just sent out a newsletter just before we started the pod. So if you haven't signed up for the EdTech Teacher newsletter, what are you doing? Sign up. A lot of free stuff.
Brandon: Easy.
Tom: Easy, just sign up and I send you cool free stuff. What's what's I'm bad about that? so anyway, so we're partnering with Google for Education, because we are a Google for Education partner. And as part of their Google AI Educator series, we are hosting two upcoming free webinars. The first one is going to be on October 8th from 7 to 8 Eastern Time. The second one is going to be on Tuesday, October 20th. both of them are gonna feature the Google AI Educator series. But what we're gonna do is during the session, we're gonna feature two topics each. And we are going to be as you go through, as Brandon was mentioning, you can earn your badges during the session. Or if you watch the recording after, you can do it on the side as you watch the recording. But for each one, you'll get your two badges. And the topics for each one, the first one we're gonna focus on creating scaffolds to support reading comprehension and designing assessments that capture student thinking. Right, so those are the two subtopics within Gemini. The second one, we're actually gonna do a deep dive into workspace. So, Brandon, you may not want to jump in on that one. so it's basically eliminating invisible work, an introduction to Google workspace. so basically, we're gonna identify high-frequency, low complexity digital tasks, and how can you automate those workflows? So we'll do a live demo of that. And then the second one is designing problem-solving scenarios that encourage critical thinking with AI. So both are free. if you want to sign up on our edtech teacher page, edtechteacher.org, at the top there's an events tab. Click on events, the webinars will be right there. You just sign it's just through Zoom. It's a Zoom registration. You guys have probably all done a ton of those. You'll get an email, put it on your calendar, and we would love to see you there. Lastly, shout-outs. It's gonna be a new feature of our podcast. I bring this up because I don't know if anyone listening remembers, but when I first got into the ed tech space, there used to be this podcast, maybe it still exists, I don't know. It used to be called the Google Educast. And it's when Google for Education was first starting, and they would always do shout-outs to folks in their community that were doing amazing things. So I'm like, that that makes sense to me. So I'm gonna kick things off. And the first shout I'm gonna do is to a school. So we're gonna do schools and educators, but mine's gonna be to Wilcott College Prep. If you're watching the YouTube video, they give me a sweet mug. So the call a coffee cup salute. Actually, that's a Rhode Island thing. Or the coffee cup salute. So if you're a Rhode Island educator, you know
Brandon: Nice. wow, yeah. He lived at the end of my street.
Tom: All right now we're getting really in the Okay.
Brandon: We're getting way, way too into it. Sorry, go ahead.
Tom: So if you in case you're not a Rhode Island educator, he was he was on the news and he would have he was a news anchor and he would always have his coffee cup salutes. Anyway, so this is my coffee cup salute to Wilcott College Prep out in Chicago. I had the true honor to to be able to work with them over the summer. Just an amazing group of educators and they work with students that you know some of them have just different learning needs, different neurodivergent you know, learning styles, things like that. And they do a phenomenal job at working with the students and they a lot of them getting into high-end universities and colleges, right? So it is a rigorous curriculum. They They they challenge the students but also support them in ways that sometimes they they wouldn't in other settings. So huge shout out to Wolca Welcutt College Prep, doing amazing things out there in the Chicago area. So keep it up and hopefully some of you guys are listening to the podcast.
Brandon: Yeah, my educator shout out is to a guy who works in the neck the district next to me, Neil Sonnenberg, in the Medfield Public Schools. Neil is an unbelievable educator, has been for a long time. every time I talk to Neil, I learn something new. Neil is the master of Google Sheets. if you've ever wanted to learn anything
Tom: I remember that.
Brandon: there is about Google Sheets, Neil knows it. I I've seen he does with
Tom: Doesn't he do a lot with like scripts in in a lot of the
Brandon: automations and scripts, yeah. Yeah, some really, really impressive stuff. I I was fortunate enough to learn with Neil when we went to Mountain View. and to be able to sit with him for two straight days and and and learn from him and with him was really impressive. and and we've been able to develop a a good back and forth now that we're in districts that are right next to each other, where I'm able to help him with some things, he's able to help me with some things. It it's been it's been great. So shout out to Neil Sonaberg and Medfield Public Schools.
Tom: Yeah, green shot. And they run a heck of a P D day. Do they still do that digital
Brandon: Yeah, that
Tom: learning day?
Brandon: digital earning I did. I I presented at it last year. It was excellent.
Tom: Yeah, so for those who aren't familiar, they've probably been doing that probably a decade now, where they have this
Brandon: Twenty five I think it's been twenty years.
Tom: 20 years. Wow. So for 20 years, they basically run it as a huge conference. They bring in speakers, they invite other districts. So, and if you're another district you want to replicate that, they're a district to check out because they know how to do it. They
Brandon: Without a doubt.
Tom: do it right. so shout out to those guys. Excellent. And if you're interested in how to connect with any of the folks that we do the shout outs, we'll we'll make sure that we add that to the show notes. and because again, like it. Back in the day, it's like, just follow this person on Twitter. Well, it who knows right now. That's gone. so we'll just put in the note. Most people are on LinkedIn, but we'll we'll make sure that we put put links at the bottom of the notes if you wanna connect with folks. Brandon, first one in the books. We did it. Season three.
Brandon: Great. Outstanding. Season three, episode one, check.
Tom: It's it's started. So thank you so much. If you made it to this point of the episode, thank you. You probably just have a long commute. but thanks for jumping in. And again, reach out to me or Brandon anytime if you have ideas, if you have some podcast guest ideas, if you want to jump on the podcast, reach out to us anytime. We hope to see you in the webinars coming up next month. And keep it up. I mean, we know this is a tough time of year, but you're doing great work. and and we are here to support you and we appreciate you listening.
Brandon: Thanks a lot, everybody.
Tom: Thank you. So it's so awesome to be back this season. really excited to be co-hosting with you this year and just digging into all things ed tech. things happening very fast in this space. and we have a very exciting lineup of of episodes and and folks that we're gonna interview this year. So truly excited to dig in and get started, Brendan.
Brandon: Yeah, season three looking like it's gonna be pretty busy. and I would imagine that the biggest topic we're gonna see is AI.
Tom: How could it not be? I mean, so what for better or worse? I mean, that is the biggest change we're seeing on the you know, at least in the technology space. And it's going like I mentioned, it's going very fast in a lot of directions. there are a lot of opportunities. There are also a lot of risks and challenges. So it's something that every school in the world is grappling with right now. And I think the more people we can get around the table to talk through these issues, to share ideas, that's how we learn. So I think. one of my goals for this season of the podcast is to really get those conversations going, to explore this in more depth with practitioners in the field, with thought leaders. And I think we we couldn't get a better time. you know, this year I really do feel like AI is hating schools, whether they like it or not, and we need to dig in and and try to figure this out. And we're we're here to support you.
Brandon: Yeah, and I think most schools will be looking at two different types of things, right? One will be looking for pr professional development. How do you
Tom: Yeah. Yep.
Brandon: how can we best use AI safely with students? and the other will be looking at policies, how creating a district policy that makes sense for teachers and students regarding AI.
Tom: Yeah, and there's there are just so many different angles to this. And I think that's one of the challenges. And when I'm working with schools, you know, it's really about like what stakeholder group are are we working with? What are the outcomes? What are the goals? What are the challenges? Because again, like policy development for the administrators, that's a totally different thing than, you know, what are the AI skills students need to learn? Like there's
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: so many different conversations happening at once. I think something that's valuable is sometimes taking a thoughtful pause, say, what is it that we're actually discussing right now? 'Cause you can't just say AI in schools and have a discussion because there's too much there. It's like, what is it exactly that you want to discuss? What do we want to tackle? And and yeah, and it's just it's just really exciting times, even though it can seem a little bit people seem a little anxious, right? And I think that's that's normal, right? I mean, you've
Brandon: Yeah. Yep.
Tom: seen it, right, in in your travels.
Brandon: Yeah, and it's daunting, right? Where do you start? If you're an educator and you ha or you're a school district, where where is it that you start? and and for us in my school district it was let's you know, people are out using stuff, let's kind of get a sense of what it's like, then create a common sense user ag you know, user guide. on w the best ways to try and apply it in the classroom or have students use it. Right. And then on top of all of that, you're thinking student data privacy and and you're trying to make sure that you're also aware of screen time and how much screen time kids are getting in their classrooms.
Tom: Yeah, and I mean even right now, the two of us could just dig in for hours talking about this stuff. So I'm gonna pull us back out. one thing I do wanna remind folks too, though, is that ed tech isn't AI. They're two like they're not the same. So this is not just an AI podcast. There are a lot of other things I'd like to talk about too, right? So you know, whether it's design thinking, personalization, project-based learning, civics education. So there's a lot of things that that we'll be touching on throughout the year. So yes, AI is going to be a focus, but It's not everything, right? And I think that we still also need to be mindful of other ways that technology can enhance teaching and learning, other approaches, and not get too focused primarily on the AI space. and also I wanted to preview the way the year is gonna flow. So we're gonna have three different types of episodes. So we're gonna experiment a little bit with the formats. So if you've been listening to our podcast the past couple years, we primarily focus on long-form interviews. So we we usually try to keep what like a half hour brand in roughly. So that's a conversation with a practitioner that in the field trying some of these strategies that they want to share, thought leaders. And I think that that's an excellent way to kind of take a deeper dive and to learn from someone in the field. The other format that we're going to experiment with and actually today is going to be the first go at it is going to have sections for special topics and how-tos. Right. So we'll take a dive into a particular theme or topic or strategy and we'll go through it together. And we are going to be putting all of these on YouTube as well. So for some of those special topics, we will be doing some tutorials, light tutorials. So nothing crazy, but we will be showing how to do certain things. So if you're listening to the podcast feed, like if you're on your commute into work right now and you're listening to this and we go over a tutorial, just know that all of this will be in our YouTube channel if you want to check that out. and then the third format is we are gonna do an ask me anything style. so we'll have some AMA episodes probably every two to three months. so we will have a way to collect some feedback from you. So if you have any questions, honestly, the easiest way is to just reach out to us. So my email is Driscoll at edtechteacher.org. Just send me an email. We'll have a fancier way to collect feedback, I'm sure, at some point, but just send me an email, right? So I'll I'll get back to you and then we'll we'll put that into some future episodes. So, Brent, you wanna kick us off with our special topic for today?
Brandon: Yeah, the Google AI Educator series has really been built up over the course of the last six months or so. having gone out to California Bennett Mountain View, was invited out as one of the five or six Massachusetts educators that went out. we checked out what was the begin the very first of their badge-a-ton series. and they've rolled it out sort of globally now at this point. You can start earning AI badges. it's a really, really great program in that. It's easy to use. It's hands-on. and as you're working with someone, they give you the example, they show you how it works, they give you a chance to try it, and then there's a a short quiz and you earn your badge. I think the quizzes are between four and five questions. So th there's a it's a very light lift for educators. But what it does is it gives you an opportunity to see that AI that AI tool in action. And it's really impressive. it it's been it was a pretty Going out to Mountain View, number one, going out to Mountain View was unbelievable and was definitely like a bucket list item for me as an ed tech person, right? Like going to see Oz. the but be and being there, but then watching them the way they thoughtfully rolled it out, the way the process worked, the way we worked together as educators, trying to kind of break the tool a little bit and see what we could make with it, but then learning the process about how they wanted to share it with educators. And they took our feedback really seriously. it was it was really impressive. but at at the end of the day, Gemini is now baked into so many of Google's products from classroom and docs and sheets and slides, right down to the Gemini app itself.
Tom: Yeah, I've I've been really impressed. They've they've come a long way, even in the past six months. And I just love that it was based on the educator feedback, on you guys going
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: out. And and I've seen even when they they rolled out a couple weeks ago, some of the new ones. Actually, a few badges came out for September. They are super practical. They're based on what a teacher would actually do in a classroom, right? They're
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: not these big generic courses. It's it's it's a skill, it's a strategy. And I think that's brilliant because it it Cut it it gets right to the point, right? So how is this tool gonna help me do something in the classroom that's effective? Remember like the I think with Monica Burns, the tasks before apps, right? It's that whole idea, it's like, what is the task? What are we trying to do? and then build backwards from there. So in this episode, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a little bit of a tour through some of the new, newish tools and features within Google Workspace that are available to all teachers already. And I think one of the biggest surprises for teachers coming back into the classroom that I saw this year was a lot of folks had had no idea that these AI tools were built in. And even the ones that they'd seen before got a huge facelift over the summer, right? So even if you had, like for instance, notebook LM, huge changes since last spring. So they've literally changed the name of it. So
Brandon: Change the name. Yeah.
Tom: now it's a Gemini notebook, right? So yeah, so let's just kind of ping back and forth. we'll just pick a few different things. that we'd like to highlight. We can't cover everything of course in this episode, but just some things that stand out to you that educators have really latched onto that have been experimenting with even just since the start of school, Brandon.
Brandon: I mean, I I think it's it's right. The Gemini, the the the tool itself, right, everything is built off of Gemini. and I think it's really impressive what they've done to make Gemini more user-friendly. For me, my favorite of of all of them is Notebook, right? The the Gemini Notebook. It does so much. It's the Swiss Army knife of of this platform, and it really is built for education. I I think that whenever I talk with teachers here in coaching. ed tech coaching or you know I've given presentations on on accessibility. The it it comes back I always go back to have you tried Notebook LM now Gemini Notebook and have you looked at some of the working in a school. Have you
Tom: Yeah.
Brandon: seen some of the things that are built into it that kind of it it casts a wide net. It's the things that you know we were going to four or five different websites to try and recreate this one thing. But now it's all there. It's all within Gemini Notebook. The the audio overview for me is the showstopper when you're giving a presentation and you can it's interact with the presentation. you know, it creates a podcast. The guy sounds just like me. People ask me all the time, like, are you is it wait, hold on. But it's you interact with you hit pause and you ask it a question, and it responds to you with the knowledge it has from Gemini and from the sources that you've put in. And I think the the best part of Gemini Notebook is that you put the sources in and you're the one who is controlling where where where it's looking for information to be able to build out that quiz or that infographic or those flashcards. and it seems like every time I open it up there's a new tool in there.
Tom: Well that's the thing too. I found that even for folks that have used it in the past, because some people have been using Notebook LM for a couple of years now,
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: they'll log back in in that c that studio section on the right.
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: Check it out. Like honestly, even if you if you are listening to this podcast six months from now, still go check it. There's probably way more now than when we're recording this, right? So
Brandon: There's a new one in there from when I just started like from the last time I was in there called Reports. I don't know if you have that.
Tom: N I haven't seen that one. So let me
Brandon: It's it's brand new to me. It says new reports and it'll generate a report based on what you've got.
Tom: Yeah. So so I yeah, highly suggest I'm I'm I'm with you, Brandon. That's such a great tool. And I like it also because it's like that walled garden, right? So you can take your resources, your curriculum, your stuff. And I think that that actually helps mitigate some of the fear that it's just gonna hallucinate and make things up because it's not. It's gonna pull from your resources. So that's super helpful. And then also click on their that little side carrot next to all of those studio items. There's a lot of hidden gems in there. Right. Not to be confused with gem gems, but if you click on that arrow, for instance, like the audio overview, now you can choose from four different audio styles. You can have a debate, you can do a critique, you can change the length of it, you can say what you want it to focus on. even the videos, there's different videos. So anyway, so the whole point is that go in there, check out the studio, click on that, those arrows, and just see what some of those different customizations are. The other thing I like is that they're integrating it into Google Classroom quite a bit. And I'll give you a story from my son. So my son's a high school student. And he was sharing that there was a a a notebook. Well, back then it was notebook LM, but now you can take those as an educator and share them with your students. So I think the way that the teacher did it last year with them is they he just sent him the link to it. But I think now you could actually assign notebooks as a material in Google Classroom. Brandon, have you seen any teachers try that out or do it?
Brandon: Yeah, we we have our our s our special education staff doing that and they're using it for usually for review material for students where they can put all of the things that they're supposed to be focusing on on the unit, dump it into there, and then give them the opportunity to try out one of the tools to share out an individual tool built on a notebook. flashcards have been very popular with our world language teachers and and the quizzes too. I know my own daughter who's a all who's a also a freshman in high school. went through had like a seven or eight page PDF last year for a biology unit that was it was daunting for her. and and I said, let's throw it in a notebook, let's throw it in Gemini notebook and we'll try and crack this, crack this open a little bit, right? We went the first thing we did was the 10 minute audio overview, basic overview of of cell structure in biology. And it gave her everything she needed to know in an understandable format. So and that she could listen to over and over and over again to pick up the material. Right. So I I think for accessibility, Notebook is is brilliant for that.
Tom: Yeah, in and the also it shows that the students can have some some autonomy with this too. Like they're using it as a tool to learn. And
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: that's one of the things that's really missing is those those ex examples of how AI can help kids learn something, right? Not just about saving teachers a couple hours a week. Like that we know that's important too. And we'll talk about a lot of those things. But how are kids using these tools themselves to learn? So that's I think Gemini Notebooks a I think a nice on-ramp to that. It's for high school at least. so if you're if you're listening, you're like, hmm, I'm not really sure about student use of AI. And don't know if what can they ex there's a lot of reasons why you might be concerned. This could be a good step one, like maybe create a notebook or have them create one to help study. You know, I I I think that that would be a good way to introduce them in a in a safe and secure way.
Brandon: Yeah, and you can even set your own notebook up with parameters. You can give it parameters and say you want your notebooks to look a certain way, basically to create settings for it, which is really nice. You can personalize them.
Tom: All right. So Gemini Notebook, I feel like we could do a whole deep dive just on that one, but we're gonna we're gonna move on. I'm just gonna go to straight Gemini for now. I think just the Gemini app, I think it helps if teachers just spend a little bit of time exploring. Learn the geography of the app, right? Like
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: what where where are the different buttons where there's in and it may take, you know, 15, 20 minutes, but there's so much here that you can leverage and work off of. And I think the The two things that I find that are a little bit more advanced uses of it that teachers are really latching onto are gems and the canvas mode. So those are the two, right?
Brandon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, those are the two that I was gonna say. Yep, yep.
Tom: So I'll I'm gonna kick it back to you. So I'll I'll cover the canvas in like some of that part, but you wanna share a little bit about gems, what you see, how teachers are using it.
Brandon: Yeah, two different things we had I was covering a a class at the end of last year and there wasn't a lesson plan. So
Tom: Yeah.
Brandon: tech director, haven't been in a classroom in, you know, 10 years or so, still understand students, right? We were c classroom teacher for 15 years. You kind of figure it out pretty quickly, like you gotta get up there and dance a little bit. and I asked them if they had ever heard of Gemini, and of course they said yes. And I asked them if they had heard of Gems. This is a group of eighth graders, and they said no. And I said, here's an opportunity for you to build a bot. Right. You it will do whatever you want it to do. You give it very specific instructions, but it will do what you want it to do. and we went over one together. We we created a bot that would edit your thesis statement, but not give you the final product. It would give you suggestions on how to write a better thesis statement. So I then turned it over. I showed them how it worked, I showed them the prompt, the tools that were included, and then gave them the opportunity to to create their own tool. And one of the kids who was he's way into cars, he's way into fixing cars, he wanted to create a gem that would If you put in the year make and model of a car, it would give you the the service intervals, what you needed to do at each interval, approximate costs, and then things that wear out quicker on on that particular car than other cars that you should be aware of. And like this kid was in i the eighth grader, came up with it this in 10 minutes.
Tom: That's wild.
Brandon: And then we're all throwing cars at him. We're like 1979 Buick Skylark. And he's like, okay, let's figure it out. And throws it in, right? And it's like 1989 Pontiac Le Mans throws it in and spits it out, right? It was unbelievable. We had we had a great
Tom: Yeah.
Brandon: time with it.
Tom: Yeah, it's just that that hearing you explain just how students just jumped in and started to build with it. That's what I think the value of these gems are. Is you can
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: you can build and create with them. In a way it's kinda like you're building an agent. I don't know if I I don't even know if Google would call that an agent, but it's similar type of workflows as an agent, really.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we and then as an administrative staff, we sat down. we created a prompt that we refined over and over and over again on teacher evaluation and look fors, on teacher evaluations. And eventually we used as its knowledge base our best practices and you know, our DCAP for our district. And eventually we created a prompt that was it is the most complicated prompt I've seen. It was a full page. Prompt and it was spitting out exactly what we wanted it to spit out if you put your notes in from a classroom observation. it was it was great and it's been a great use of our time and and I think it's gonna be really popular with administrators and it just goes to show that really it's a it is a blank canvas.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And and in the the use cases are almost endless. Like it's just your
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: own creativity or time are the constraint, right? Like that you can do so much with these tools. So I actually had an educator, actually weren't even educated, but it was someone who was giving some feedback saying like AI makes everything the same, AI homogenized everything. I'm like, not the way I see people use it, right? I see people use it to do wildly different and creative things. So
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: It's like any other technology. It's how are you using it? Could you use AI to shoot to the middle and make everything generic? Yes. Should you? No. Like that was a that's a terrible way to use AI, right? So I'll give you one quick example. A teacher from Foster Gloucester here in Rhode Island. I was working with them last spring, and I wish I could remember her name. But she shared with me a gem that she picked up from someone that she was using, but she called it the red pen feedback gem. And it was for her, right? It was to give her feedback because. One of the challenges of AI is sometimes it's a sycophant, right? It's gonna say how great your ideas are, right? So
Brandon: Mm-hmm. Right.
Tom: she actually made a gem in the instructions read right here, it says, whenever I propose an idea or argument, I want you to ignore your helpful persona. Instead, act as a hostile critic. Your only job is to find holes in my logic and assignment, point out three specific ways my assignment could fail, two assumptions I'm making without proof, and one counter-argument I haven't addressed. Don't be polite, be precise.
Brandon: Wow.
Tom: And I'm like, that's a little harsh. I don't know if I would set mine up that way, but I love the idea that, like, look, give me harsh, honest feedback. Don't just tell me what I want to hear. And and she uses that for some of her like new assignment ideas. She's like, All poke holes in this. Where might this go off the rails?
Brandon: Yeah.
Tom: I just thought that was a very creative way for an educator to come up with a a gem.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt. I like the the idea of asking it to be critical of you.
Tom: Yes, right.
Brandon: because and I think that that a lot of people when they first use the AI, they realize, it's it's really easy, it's conversational back and forth, and it can have that persona if you let it.
Tom: Right. But yeah, but you can fine-tune it. You can fine-tune it any way you want, you know.
Brandon: Right. Right.
Tom: So awesome. So I would say suggest if you're not familiar with gems or if you're not even quite sure what we're talking about with gems, just take a few minutes. There's a lot of stuff out there online. just get some examples and I would say just test it out. You know, and actually I think Google has some pre-made ones you can just get started with right away. You just click the button and get rolling. so the one that I wanted to mention is not an actual app. It's actually just baked into Gemini, but that's turning on the canvas mode, right? So not to be confused with canvas the LMS. As soon as that term came out, I'm like, people are gonna get confused, right? And it happened.
Brandon: Yeah. I thought the same thing.
Tom: They are not the same thing. But if you go into Gemini and you do have to do a little digging, and Brandon, let me know if it's if it's different now, but you do have to go down into the drop down, you have to click the plus button when you're
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: in the chat.
Brandon: Yep.
Tom: On the left, there's a whole bunch of options now, but on mine, I actually have to go down to more tools and it's in there. But once you find the canvas mode, that's really designed for coding, writing, making slides, those types of things. Man, you can do so much with that. And if you've heard the term vibe coding, this is, I would say, the easiest way to just get started with it. You can vibe code
Brandon: Without a doubt.
Tom: and then one thing I gotta ask you about too, because a teacher was asked me, you can put these onto a Google site, you can share them with people. But now I think you can actually send things from Canvas that you build directly to classroom now.
Brandon: I did not know that.
Tom: Yeah, a teacher tested it out. It worked a couple weeks ago. I don't want to start shouting it from the rooftop because I don't know if it just accidentally worked, but I think
Brandon: Yeah.
Tom: now there actually is a way that you can, like when you vibe code something in the canvas mode, like say I worked with a Massachusetts school. We made a Massachusetts Phonics game and it had the, you know, the Worcester Red Sox, right? And all that stuff. But they
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: took that phonics game and there was actually an add to classroom button at the top. So if you haven't tried it recently or I say you've done it before and you're like, this is a great app I built in Gemini, I don't know what to do with it. I don't know to get it out. One, you could throw it on a Google site, or two, it looks like you can send it right to classroom to your kids, which would be a, I think a game changer if that was available.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt. And I've actually used Canvas to make games for stu for students to play. So what we do is we create the code in Canvas and then c copy the code and embed it into that Google site, right? So it's automatically hosted and it's easy to use. we were lamenting at the end of last year about how there wasn't a good free, safe typing game for anyone to play, for students when they had free time to learn some typing. And I said, Let's just make one. I have no coding experience whatsoever outside of Q Basic with Terry Prohaska at West Warwick High School.
Tom: Shout out to West Warwick Island.
Brandon: shout out West Warwick High School. That so that's my loan coding experience, right? and it's all if-then statements back then, but now with with Canvas, it's all written in JavaScript and I I don't even know what language it's written in. But the bottom line is I said I would like a typing game. I would like it to be in the style of asteroids, so that every time I type a letter. It shoots a little, you know, beam at the letter that's there and it blows it up, right? each level should be X number of seconds long. There should be a boss at the end, and to defeat the boss, you have to type full words. Right. It made three levels for me. It it is awesome. The kids have been trying it. They love it. The teacher loves it because it keeps them occupied. and now we've got something that we don't have to worry about a student data privacy agreement on because it's just the website. Right.
Tom: Right, 'cause it's no no student data. Yeah. This is perfect for those situations. You just want an activity, a simulation, a practice, just jump in, do it. And you can flip these things in like five minutes. You just say what you want. You say it and it makes it. Like, a a coup
Brandon: You need a tool, you can create it. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I needed to bulk download a bunch of YouTube videos. I had
Tom: Yeah, what?
Brandon: a I had a bunch of YouTube videos and I needed to pull the audio from them. and I need to do it in bulk. And there wasn't a tool that existed. So I wrote it with Canvas. Yeah. Yeah, it worked. It allowed
Tom: No way. And it worked? This is wild.
Brandon: for the batch download the whole thing. It cause at first it would only let me do 10 at a time and I'm like, Well, I have 44 videos. Can you let me do up to 50? And it was like, yeah, we can do that. Why not? You're in charge. Why not? Like, it's crazy.
Tom: Yeah, why not? Why not? Of course I can. right. Yeah. So I don't last tip, and because I'm sure some people are like, these guys are going down the rabbit hole. But
Brandon: Ha ha.
Tom: one tip that I found that I I just was tinkering and we were having some trouble with the formatting of the games we were building with the teachers. And finally I was like, All right, well, let's just how does the industry do it? Let's just say it, right? So I I said at the end of your prompt say. Use best practices and educational game design and mechanics. And just by putting that sentence at the end, it referenced the you know educational game industry's standards and applied it to the game we built. Right. So even some of those little things, like if you're not sure why or how, just say, what would experts in this field do and model that? Right. Just and
Brandon: Yeah.
Tom: just say that. And sometimes it works. It doesn't always work, but I just think as a tip, and for anything that you're building, tap into that other domain expertise. Cause that's one of the values of AI is that now you can dip into that without having to necessarily know all of it and bring that into some of the things that you're building.
Brandon: Yeah, and ed tech teacher colleague Sean McCusker at the Ed Tech Teacher AI conference, in his in his talk, said something to the effect of h at the end, when you're done, ask the bot, how could I have gotten here faster? Right? To
Tom: Yes. Yep. Yeah.
Brandon: analyze that.
Tom: Right. Analyze what what we've done so far. How
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: can we streamline or optimize this process in the future? Or how can I make like a cheat sheet for this that I can just or a template that I can use?
Brandon: Yep. Yep.
Tom: because why not? You know? Awesome. So I don't want to jump over Google Classroom entirely, but I but I do want to reference a couple things in here. If you haven't really explored Classroom much. Check out that Gemini section, right? There's a Gemini module now on the left that they're Google's doing a really good job of trying to bring everything together, right? So there's modules
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: in there that are that are baked in. In there are sentence starters, really. There's prompt sentence starters where you start there and it will shoot you to Gemini. but I think it's worth it. And they also have a section at the top, it says see examples. It's a little blue button. And that will actually bring you over to a Google Doc that actually has a bunch of sample samples that you can use. So my suggestion is if you haven't really explored that space, do it. And if you say, hey, I don't use Google Classroom with my kids, who cares? You don't need to. You could just use it as a tool to build stuff. Right. So I
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: was working with a school out in Chicago and they were they used Seesaw. It was an elementary school, and I think Seesaw is amazing, right? So, like, we're not gonna use Google Classroom Gemini and Why not? Like so they started to look into it and they could see all the things they could build as a teacher in Google Classroom in the Gemini thing. So again, don't dismiss it just because you don't use it with students. There's still a lot in there that you can use to build with.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt. they've done a really good job sort of modeling it after what magic school looks like. and it and it's everything's inside there. It's all right there. So you're not even going out to another. They're really encouraging people to stay within that environment.
Tom: Yeah, and for the most part, a lot of the use cases and the things that you would need an AI tool to do, there are a lot of great educational apps out there that have AI in them.
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: but I would say before you start burning through your Sunday afternoon trying to find all these other apps, start in Google. There's probably a lot of stuff in there that you can just do without having to use all these third party tools. So and I don't see that trend changing. I mean, I just I I mean let's just Say it how it is. I mean, they're gonna be building a lot of stuff within the platform in the next year or two.
Brandon: And if there isn't something there, just ask for it. Either in the product feature updates or ask Gemini. I'm looking for this thing. You don't seem to have it. Can you help me make it? Right? Like
Tom: Yeah, can can we make it right? so one last tool I wanted to reference before we we wrap, I just wanna see if you have had any experience with it, but it's Google Workspace Studio. Have you tinkered with that much?
Brandon: Google Workspace Studio? I don't think so.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. So that's something to check out. We're actually gonna do it's gonna be part of our webinar series. I think October 20th, we're gonna do one on it. But essentially Workspace Studio is in a way, it's kind of like an agentic workflow creator for the operational
Brandon: okay.
Tom: part of the job. Right? It kind of reminds me of the old remember the if this then that website from like 10 years ago? It's kind
Brandon: I love that. Yeah.
Tom: of like that, but within your Google Workspace now. So you can say, hey, if I get an email from this sender, tag it with this. put the document in this folder, create a spreadsheet. So it think about any Google app that you have, you
Brandon: Mm.
Tom: can create automated workflows with it. So I think that might be a special topics episode for next month. yeah.
Brandon: I would love to dig in on this because w the FOIA requests that all exist within
Tom: yes.
Brandon: within Drive and within in in Gmail. It would be interesting to be able to pull that, use use this to create the pull for that.
Tom: Yeah. And then even basic stuff like summarize my emails or give me the five
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: action items that came through today or automatically draft email starters and just keep them in my draft like it seems basic, but it can save you hours if you can set it up right.
Brandon: Yeah, without a doubt.
Tom: So the way they they design it, it's called flows, right? So you'd set up a flow, right? So when you they have some pre-made ones that you can use, but you choose a starter. So like how does this thing start? Is it on a schedule like every morning? Is it when you get an email? Is it when a calendar event comes up, then you say, all right, that event started, that triggered it. Then what happens? What does it do? So do you want it to ask Gemini something? Do you want it to ask a gem? Do you want it to do an if then? Do you want it to create whatever? But it's you create your own if then workflows within Google Workspace. I still most people I talk to have never even heard of it. So it's still a very new tool. I feel like Google hasn't even really shouted it or out yet because it's still kind of new. But
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Tom: especially if you're in school leadership, Check out that because there might be a lot of ways that your school leadership team would be able to w use work workspace studio. so again, we're not gonna get into the the details of it today, but just wanna throw it on your radar as something to check out in the future.
Brandon: I'm taking a note.
Tom: All right, take some notes. all right, so real quick heads up on a couple free webinars that we're gonna do, and then we're gonna finish up with a new segment on shout-outs. but first, I do want to share that very exciting. I actually just sent out a newsletter just before we started the pod. So if you haven't signed up for the EdTech Teacher newsletter, what are you doing? Sign up. A lot of free stuff.
Brandon: Easy.
Tom: Easy, just sign up and I send you cool free stuff. What's what's I'm bad about that? so anyway, so we're partnering with Google for Education, because we are a Google for Education partner. And as part of their Google AI Educator series, we are hosting two upcoming free webinars. The first one is going to be on October 8th from 7 to 8 Eastern Time. The second one is going to be on Tuesday, October 20th. both of them are gonna feature the Google AI Educator series. But what we're gonna do is during the session, we're gonna feature two topics each. And we are going to be as you go through, as Brandon was mentioning, you can earn your badges during the session. Or if you watch the recording after, you can do it on the side as you watch the recording. But for each one, you'll get your two badges. And the topics for each one, the first one we're gonna focus on creating scaffolds to support reading comprehension and designing assessments that capture student thinking. Right, so those are the two subtopics within Gemini. The second one, we're actually gonna do a deep dive into workspace. So, Brandon, you may not want to jump in on that one. so it's basically eliminating invisible work, an introduction to Google workspace. so basically, we're gonna identify high-frequency, low complexity digital tasks, and how can you automate those workflows? So we'll do a live demo of that. And then the second one is designing problem-solving scenarios that encourage critical thinking with AI. So both are free. if you want to sign up on our edtech teacher page, edtechteacher.org, at the top there's an events tab. Click on events, the webinars will be right there. You just sign it's just through Zoom. It's a Zoom registration. You guys have probably all done a ton of those. You'll get an email, put it on your calendar, and we would love to see you there. Lastly, shout-outs. It's gonna be a new feature of our podcast. I bring this up because I don't know if anyone listening remembers, but when I first got into the ed tech space, there used to be this podcast, maybe it still exists, I don't know. It used to be called the Google Educast. And it's when Google for Education was first starting, and they would always do shout-outs to folks in their community that were doing amazing things. So I'm like, that that makes sense to me. So I'm gonna kick things off. And the first shout I'm gonna do is to a school. So we're gonna do schools and educators, but mine's gonna be to Wilcott College Prep. If you're watching the YouTube video, they give me a sweet mug. So the call a coffee cup salute. Actually, that's a Rhode Island thing. Or the coffee cup salute. So if you're a Rhode Island educator, you know
Brandon: Nice. wow, yeah. He lived at the end of my street.
Tom: All right now we're getting really in the Okay.
Brandon: We're getting way, way too into it. Sorry, go ahead.
Tom: So if you in case you're not a Rhode Island educator, he was he was on the news and he would have he was a news anchor and he would always have his coffee cup salutes. Anyway, so this is my coffee cup salute to Wilcott College Prep out in Chicago. I had the true honor to to be able to work with them over the summer. Just an amazing group of educators and they work with students that you know some of them have just different learning needs, different neurodivergent you know, learning styles, things like that. And they do a phenomenal job at working with the students and they a lot of them getting into high-end universities and colleges, right? So it is a rigorous curriculum. They They they challenge the students but also support them in ways that sometimes they they wouldn't in other settings. So huge shout out to Wolca Welcutt College Prep, doing amazing things out there in the Chicago area. So keep it up and hopefully some of you guys are listening to the podcast.
Brandon: Yeah, my educator shout out is to a guy who works in the neck the district next to me, Neil Sonnenberg, in the Medfield Public Schools. Neil is an unbelievable educator, has been for a long time. every time I talk to Neil, I learn something new. Neil is the master of Google Sheets. if you've ever wanted to learn anything
Tom: I remember that.
Brandon: there is about Google Sheets, Neil knows it. I I've seen he does with
Tom: Doesn't he do a lot with like scripts in in a lot of the
Brandon: automations and scripts, yeah. Yeah, some really, really impressive stuff. I I was fortunate enough to learn with Neil when we went to Mountain View. and to be able to sit with him for two straight days and and and learn from him and with him was really impressive. and and we've been able to develop a a good back and forth now that we're in districts that are right next to each other, where I'm able to help him with some things, he's able to help me with some things. It it's been it's been great. So shout out to Neil Sonaberg and Medfield Public Schools.
Tom: Yeah, green shot. And they run a heck of a P D day. Do they still do that digital
Brandon: Yeah, that
Tom: learning day?
Brandon: digital earning I did. I I presented at it last year. It was excellent.
Tom: Yeah, so for those who aren't familiar, they've probably been doing that probably a decade now, where they have this
Brandon: Twenty five I think it's been twenty years.
Tom: 20 years. Wow. So for 20 years, they basically run it as a huge conference. They bring in speakers, they invite other districts. So, and if you're another district you want to replicate that, they're a district to check out because they know how to do it. They
Brandon: Without a doubt.
Tom: do it right. so shout out to those guys. Excellent. And if you're interested in how to connect with any of the folks that we do the shout outs, we'll we'll make sure that we add that to the show notes. and because again, like it. Back in the day, it's like, just follow this person on Twitter. Well, it who knows right now. That's gone. so we'll just put in the note. Most people are on LinkedIn, but we'll we'll make sure that we put put links at the bottom of the notes if you wanna connect with folks. Brandon, first one in the books. We did it. Season three.
Brandon: Great. Outstanding. Season three, episode one, check.
Tom: It's it's started. So thank you so much. If you made it to this point of the episode, thank you. You probably just have a long commute. but thanks for jumping in. And again, reach out to me or Brandon anytime if you have ideas, if you have some podcast guest ideas, if you want to jump on the podcast, reach out to us anytime. We hope to see you in the webinars coming up next month. And keep it up. I mean, we know this is a tough time of year, but you're doing great work. and and we are here to support you and we appreciate you listening.
Brandon: Thanks a lot, everybody.
