Ed Tech in Our Classrooms

My students say I am obsessed with this new tool, NotebookLM , but I believe it is the harbinger of a game-changing movement in education. This AI from Gemini and Google can take large chunks of text (we tried the whole of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in class) and will generate a 9-minute podcast. The two computer-generated podcasters' voices are clear and engaging, and you even hear them searching for just the right word as they work through a summarization of the text. I have tried it with a few other long documents. Here is an example from a Charter Workgroup Summary by a local City Council. https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/1a5f0635-987e-480a-8eb1-1ba626dc5028/audio

 Is it possible for a student to write an AI Prompt and generate a selfie? Yes, it is. The prompts needed a bit of work but the AI managed to capture some key elements (if you set aside facial hair and gender). 

 This year I asked ALL my students to add their faces to the group image. Well done, everyone. 

  Kahoot: Engaging and Rewarding!  As we near the end of another school year, teachers everywhere are on the hunt for *extra* engaging activities to help capture their students' attention!  Kahoot has your back!  Kahoot can be used to review important information, provide students with extra practice, and can even be used to collect formative assessment data - all while disguised as a super fun game.   Students will love picking a username, getting to use 1:1 technology devices, and won't feel the normal pressures associated with traditional quizzes.  Teachers will love browsing premade games and being able to create their own.  Kahoot is an incredible tool for both students and teachers and should be added to all teachers' toolboxes! 

 Some of my students have questioned how valuable Kahoot! is to learn as a new teacher. Last night, at Heritage Elementary School in Saline, I attended a Literacy Night. The whole school was open to parents to talk about literacy and to share reading experiences with their students.  In one activity, a teacher ran a Kahoot! on Women's History Month. Students were engaged and needed very little by way of instructions to get started. I played along for a while as "Reader Dude" but needed to move on. This is a tool you WILL use.

As educators, I think it is fair to say that there is already a lot of pressure and work on our plates. And adding Twitter into the mix would only escalate that.  For starters, Twitter is a platform with so much content that it is not only overwhelming to look at, but for me, it is too overwhelming to consider how I would make it safe for my students.  My four biggest issues are:  Online Safety Parent consent My responsibilities Relevancy Predators and just bad people online have gotten increasingly sneaky as the internet has continued to develop. And Twitter has little oversight to stop them from creating an online persona that my students would be exposed to. And while I can slightly control what is going on in the classroom, I fear that if they continue to use Twitter in their normal lives, they could be led to a dangerous place either virtually, or in reality.  Secondly, parent consent becomes an issue, sure, I can get their consent for their student to be on Twi...