A book launch from Italy?!?
The publication of my new book, AI Literacy in Any Class, coincided with a spring break school tour of Italy and Greece with my daughter!
Exploring the island of Capri with my daughter, Hallie, on book launch day!
(We celebrated with gelato and desserts, by the way …)
Immediately it jumped to #1 best seller in all education books on Amazon — and in the artificial intelligence category, too!
An instant best seller!
If you haven't checked it out yet, if I'd love for you to get a copy. (Paperback available now … Kindle ebook available soon!)
I hope you enjoyed our series the last couple weeks about keeping students thinking in the AI age.
PS: After spending eight days in Italy and Greece (Colosseum, Pompeii, Sistine Chapel, Delphi, etc.), we have one more day — exploring Athens! We fly home on Tuesday. (I'm going to need a spring break to recover from my spring break!)
Now, it's back to business as usual! Today's 💡 Big Idea features one of my favorite DTT templates (with a makeover) — the Instagram Stories template!
Plus, we are starting a new, exciting project to get educators connected and to help them share strategies. We are looking for some early testers to help us kick it off. Check out the blue box below to sign up! 👇🏻
👋🏼 Hey, we're working on something really cool.
Want to go behind the scenes at Ditch That Textbook and see what we’ve got in store for you?
Inside:
🎮 Free, gamified state test prep
👀 DTT Digest: 4 resources worth checking out
💡 The Big Idea: Create Instagram Stories with Google Slides
💻 Tech Tip: Visual learning plus adaptive immediate feedback with Kami
😄 Smile of the day: Who is PJ day really for anyway?
👋 How we can help
🚮 Ditch the packet. Keep the prep.
Your students have spent all year learning to build arguments, cite evidence, and think critically. They're ready. The last thing they need before the state test is a packet that makes them forget they're good at this.
We built free, zero-prep Groovelit game collections for 9 state tests. 5-minute Do Now and Exit Ticket games where students:
🔥 Debate whether self-driving cars should protect the passenger or the pedestrian
🔥 Argue if schools should be allowed to read your texts to stop bullying
🔥 Decide whether shark-spotting drones actually make beaches safer
Every game targets the exact constructed response and vocabulary skills the test measures. But it feels like an argument they want to win, not a test they're studying for.
STAAR · SBAC · FAST · NY State · IAR · Georgia Milestones · Ohio · Virginia SOL · NC EOG
Completely free and zero-prep. Click a game link, hit "Use this game," and in minutes your class is writing
👀 DTT Digest
4 teaching resources worth checking out today
📒 Free AI literacy resources— Check out the official AI Literacy in Any Class companion page, designed to give you a set of practical, low-prep tools that supplement the strategies in the book, helping your students not just get by, but truly survive and thrive in a world full of AI.
🌸 Celebrate spring with this free explore board!— Embark on a world tour of spring celebrations, from the colorful Holi festival to the serene beauty of the Cherry Blossom Festival, and beyond in this Spring Celebrations Explore Board.
⬣ Get started with hexagonal thinking in class — If you’re looking for a way to get your students to make meaningful connections and have deep, thoughtful discussions, then hexagonal thinking might just be your new favorite activity.
🤦🏾 Strategies to help students get unstuck— When students are grasping at straws, these self-directed strategies from Edutopia help them to pause, make a plan, and pivot more effectively.
💻 Tech Tip
Visual learning plus adaptive immediate feedback with Kami
There are more and more AI writing coach tools for students on the market. The premise: Students write. Then they get feedback on the writing afterward.
I think there’s a better way …
What if we could provide students with adaptive, immediate feedback and deeper explanations right within the activities they are already doing?
In this video presentation from the Kami booth at the FETC Conference, I shared my vision — and how I use Kami & and NotebookLM to do it.
💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡
Create Instagram Stories with Google Slides
Instagram is a social media behemoth. It has eclipsed billions of users and remains a massive part of the digital landscape for our students. It’s a language they already speak—so why not use it for learning?
We know that Instagram Stories is a fantastic storytelling tool. Users capture moments and string them together for others to watch. But as teachers, we often run into hurdles when we want to bring that experience into the classroom: age requirements, school firewalls, and device equity.
The good news? If you want the experience that comes with the app, you don’t actually need the app! You can recreate the whole thing using a tool your students already have: Google Slides.
By using a our newly updated template, students can "post" as characters, historical figures, or even themselves. They can add "stickers," location tags, and even autoplaying videos to make the slides feel like a real, moving story. It moves students from just "doing an assignment" to truly creating.
📱 Instagram template in action: Real ideas from the classroom
It's one thing to have a template, but seeing it in the hands of creative teachers is where the magic really happens! Here is how teacher are already making these stories come to life:
Math Mindsets: Mrs. Jodi Hetman's students use the template to make "math stories" that teach others to think like mathematicians while solving problems like multiplying 1-digit by 3-digit numbers.
Literary Perspectives: In Kristin van Brunt’s English class, students created stories from the POV of Scout to share her perspective on various chapter events.
Career Inquiry: Brooksie Kramer’s sophomores used "Day in the Life" stories as a capstone for their career research, including specific roles like computer programming.
Historical Personas: Jenna Augustin suggests using the template for historical medical mysteries, like imagining a story from the perspective of "Typhoid Mary".
Digital Brand Challenges: Some teachers are even using it for a "Brand Challenge," where students find and "story" logos or slogans found on everyday household objects.
Here are 10 more ideas for using this updated Instagram Stories template in your class:
Interactive Reflection Exit Ticket: Instead of a paper slip, have students create a quick 2-slide story at the end of a unit. Slide one is "What I Think I Know" (using the question sticker), and slide two is "The Moment it Clicked" (using a photo and a brief caption).
Science Lab Play-by-Play: Use the template to document a science experiment step-by-step, using "stickers" to label variables or reactions.
Musical Mood Boards: When studying a composer or a specific genre, students can curate a story that "vlog-style" explains the emotional journey of a piece of music. They can insert video clips of performances and use stickers to label shifts in tempo or dynamics.
Vocabulary in Action: Have students take (or find) a photo representing a vocab word and use the "type" mode and stickers to explain its meaning.
Virtual Field Trip Log: After a virtual (or real!) field trip, students can curate their "best moments" and what they learned.
The Artist’s Process: In Art or CTE, students can document the progress of a project from the initial sketch to the final product.
Character Debate: Have two students create "Stories" from the perspectives of opposing characters (like Hamilton vs. Jefferson) to debate an issue through text overlays.
Foreign Language "Vlog": Students can practice speaking or writing by narrating a simple weekend "story" entirely in the target language.
Current Events Digest: Ask students to summarize a weekly news story using the template to highlight the "Who, What, Where, and Why".
Peer Feedback Loops: Use the "Poll" or "Question" stickers for students to gather feedback on a project idea from their classmates.
That's it! By tapping into a format students already love, you make the content relevant and the learning experience much more engaging.
😄 Smile of the day
And the students think we have pajama days for THEM 🤭
Source: Bored Teachers
👋 How we can help
There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:
Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.
Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.
Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!
