😲 Look what you can create with NotebookLM …

I created all of these with NotebookLM!

Slides. Infographics. Video overviews. Audio overviews.

And that’s just scratching the surface!

WHAT IS NOTEBOOKLM: It’s Google’s free tool that helps you create all of these fantastic teaching resources.

The best part? They’re based out of YOUR teaching materials … PDF files, documents … even scan a chapter out of your textbook. It stays within the confines of the material you’re teaching.

💻 NEW ONLINE COURSE: Just this week, we just released a new online course — Getting Started with NotebookLM for Teachers.

🚨 EARLY RELEASE DISCOUNT: It’s on sale for $29 USD right now (that’s 25% off the normal price!) until the end of May.

It includes:

  • ~2 hours of video instruction from me, walking you through step by step

  • Downloadable PDF workbooks for every lesson

  • A certificate of completion for 2 hours of PD credit

  • Discussion boards where you can share and learn from other participants

  • … plus additional bonuses and resources!

HOW TO ENROLL:

  1. Make sure you’ve joined our free DTT online community. (That’s where we’re hosting the course. Do this first!)

  2. After you’re a member of the community, click here to view the course and check out.

  3. Get the course. Get started. See results!

PS: Group discounts are available! Just hit reply and I can provide you with a quote.

Now, for the rest of the newsletter …

We have some great resources that’ll help you push through until the end of the school year — like sites for students with free time on their hands, low-prep end-of-year activities, and 15 tech-free classroom activities.

📚 TOP SUMMER READS: Also: We’re sharing our top summer reading book selections in the FREE DTT online community. Jump in … see what others are reading … and share what YOU are reading! (Remember, click here to join first if you haven’t … then click here for the summer reads!)

Inside:

  • 📺 Register for SchoolAI’s FREE Road to ISTE webinars

  • 👀 DTT Digest: 4 resources worth checking out

  • 👥 Community: What are you reading this summer?

  • 💻 Tech Tip: New teacher app — Essay Eye

  • 💡 The Big Idea: 50 sites for students with free time on their hands

  • 😄 Smile of the day: My “I’m so happy for you” face 😬

  • 👋 How we can help

📺 Register for SchoolAI’s FREE Road to ISTE webinars

Generated by ChatGPT

SchoolAI’s “The Road to ISTE” is HERE — and you don't want to miss a single session.

This June, SchoolAI is sitting down with four of the most dynamic educators in the edtech world for a weekly webinar series built for every teacher — whether you're boarding a plane to Orlando or watching from your couch.

Each session is a candid, energizing conversation about AI in the classroom, what's happening at ISTE26, and how you can connect with these incredible advocates all summer long. It's free, it's live, and it's exactly the kind of PD that actually fires you up. Sign up for one or more — or all four!

Here's your lineup — register now before spots fill up:

  • 🎙 Rachelle Dené Poth | Author, ISTE-certified educator, EdTech Trendsetter of 2024 | Tuesday, June 2 at 7PM ET 👉 Register

  • 🎙 Donnie Piercey | Kentucky's 2021 Teacher of the Year | Tuesday, June 9 at 7PM ET 👉 Register

  • 🎙 Matt Miller | Ditch That Textbook and AI Literacy in Any Class | Tuesday, June 16 7PM ET 👉 Register

  • 🎙 The Merrills | Creators of The InterACTIVE Classroom | Tuesday, June 23 7PM ET 👉 Register

👀 DTT Digest

4 teaching resources worth checking out today

  • 2️⃣0️⃣ Low Prep End-of-Year Activities for Students — Looking for fun and engaging end-of-year activities for your students? This post offers 20 fantastic ideas, from virtual escape rooms to creative reflection projects, to make the last few weeks memorable.

  • 🛑 Stop doing too much! — What if instead of over-extending ourselves we used the “minimum effective dose” to strategically do less with the same result? Read this most to learn how to streamline your day.

  • ☀️ 9 First Day of Summer Ideas for Class — Use these ideas to help students feel the fun and excitement of summer!

  • ICYMI 🚫💻 15 tech-free activities to try tomorrow — There’s a lot to be learned — and some variety to be had — when we turn off the devices and do something fun, unique, and creative together. Here are 15 ideas.

👥 FROM THE COMMUNITY 👥

📚 What are you reading this summer?

Summer is the time when you can finally get around to reading the books you’ve been excited about — education reads AND non-education reads!

What are you planning to read this summer?

I posed this question to the free DTT online community just an hour ago — and already we have lots of recommendations!

  • From Ashley Wilkinson: Teaching with Empathy by Lisa Westman

  • From Adrienne Langston: Remarkably Bright Creatures

  • From Colleen Rooney: A Teacher’s Guide to Using AI by Meeno Rami

Check out the list! Make sure you’re a member of the free DTT online community first … then dive right in!

💻 TECH TIP 💻

👁️‍🗨️ New teacher app — Essay Eye

Essay Eye offers feedback on student writing.

Just this morning, I got to talk to the creator of Essay Eye — Scott Isley, a current classroom English teacher. We had a nice conversation, and I love his story …

He’s not a big investor who wants to get into educational technology for business growth. He made Essay Eye as the tool HE wished he had for HIS OWN class.

He built what he needed for his own needs as a teacher.

I like the clean, easy-to-use interface. It offers quick feedback that you can use to inform your grading.

Plus, it has a Chrome extension so you can get writing feedback wherever you are in Google Chrome.

The free plan lets you do a lot — and the premium plan lets you create your own AI writing/grading assistants specific to what you want.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

✌🏽 50 sites for students with free time on their hands

At the end of the school year, it seems like students are either wildly busy or sitting idly with time on their hands.

After a project, test, or other task is complete, we've all heard that classic question: “I’m done … now what do I do?”

Early in my career, my brain would kind of short-circuit. But over the years, I learned the power of having high-quality, academic sites tucked away in my back pocket. You know, things that actually keep their attention and help them learn something cool.

Well, we’ve been doing some virtual spring cleaning and just updated our massive list of early-finisher activities—expanding it from 40 to 50 incredible tools! Here is a sneak peek at the brand-new resources we just added to the lineup (spots #40-50), featuring some mind-blowing AI experiments and gamified learning:

🚀 The Brand New Additions (#40-50)

40. Say What You See: This clever, game-based experiment challenges students to practice their descriptive language skills by writing image prompts to see if Google's AI can visually recreate a target image.

41. The Kids Should See This: A giant, kid-safe collection of awe-inspiring videos about science, art, and history answering the world's coolest questions.

42. Padlet Arcade: A super fun spot where kids can play custom classroom games like memory match and quizzes to climb the leaderboard.

43. Talking Tours: An AI audio experiment by Google Arts & Culture. Students explore landmark locations via Street View, snap a picture, and an AI tour guide instantly breaks down the history.

44. Most Likely Machine: A fantastic game where kids aged 10–14 build and weight their own sorting algorithms, opening up great classroom discussions about data ethics and bias.

45. Teachable Machine: A fast, hands-on introduction to machine learning. Students train their own AI models using a camera or mic—absolutely zero coding required!

46. Mice in the Museum: Introduce students to world-class art through the conversational dialogue of two animated mice, August and Pearl. Brilliant for encouraging close-looking and creative writing.

47. Beethoven Beats: Students tap out any rhythm on their keyboard, and this AI tool instantly pairs it with a corresponding melody from Beethoven's piano sonatas.

48. The Descent of the Serpent: An immersive, maze-like adventure game that challenges students to navigate historical levels to find lost Maya and Aztec relics.

49. Planet Hunter TESS: Let your students act as real-world astronomers! They analyze actual data from NASA’s satellites to help discover real exoplanets outside our solar system.

50. Disaster Master: An interactive, choice-based survival game by Ready.gov that teaches real-world emergency preparedness, rewarding kids with chapters of a graphic novel as they progress.

🎁 BONUS: Interactive Free Time Choice Board!

Want your students to choose their own adventure tomorrow? Give them the link to our interactive free time choice board included in the post. It guides them through a few quick questions and automatically suggests the perfect option based on their mood and interests.

😄 Smile of the day

Start practicing your “I’m so happy for you!” face.

Source WeAreTeachers

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

  1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

  2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

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