🗑 NotebookLM's new features? 🤯

💼 Ready for Back to School? Join Figma for Education's FREE Virtual PD Series!

Figma for Education is kicking off the school year with an incredible lineup of virtual professional development sessions, you’re invited!

Join the Figma team for a Back to School livestream series featuring expert educators sharing practical strategies, creative classroom ideas, and hands-on tutorials—all designed to help you start the year strong with digital collaboration tools.

See what they have in store and RSVP here.

Some highlights:

• Aug 18, 4pm EDT: Ready, Set, FigJam! Kickstart Your Classroom with Back to School Templates.

• Aug 28, 4pm EDT: FigJam Mission: Matt Miller on the Moon – Quick Collab Launches with FigJam.

• Sep 10, 4pm EDT: From Lesson to Legacy: Showcasing Student Work with Purpose.

• Sep 16, 4pm EDT: The Curiosity Effect: Irresistible FigJam Activities with Tony Vincent.

They’re also giving away fabulous prizes at every session - don’t miss it!

🎯 QUICK TEACHING STRATEGY 🎯

🫱🏼‍🫲🏽 5 fun team-building challenges for the new year

Fostering strong relationships among individuals is crucial for creating a positive and inclusive learning or working environment. Team building activities offer a fantastic way to cultivate a sense of community.

Here are five fun physical team building challenges from this post at VirtualEscapeRooms.org …

1. Rock paper scissors tournament

Everyone knows how to play rock paper scissors. And even if they don’t it’s easy to learn. This is a fun twist on the classic game of rock paper scissors. It turns this simple game into an exciting tournament that will have your class cheering!

Learn more about rock paper scissors extreme here.

2. Human knot

Have students stand in a circle and hold hands with two different people across from them. The group must then work together to untangle themselves without letting go of each other’s hands.

Learn more from this step-by-step human knot guide.

3. Hula hoop pass

The goal is for a group, standing in a circle and holding hands, to pass a hula hoop all the way around without breaking their handholds.

Learn more about the hula hoop pass here.

4. Cup stacking challenge

Groups of five students are given six paper cups, one rubber band, and five pieces of string, which they must tie to the rubber band. The task is to build a pyramid with the cups using only the string and rubber band, without touching the cups with their hands. Teams have 10 minutes to build the pyramid.

Learn more: Cup Stacking Challenge PDF

5. Silent line-up

Give your students a specific criterion for lining up, such as:

• By birthday: from January 1st to December 31st.

• By height: from shortest to tallest.

• Alphabetical order: by their first name.

The Golden Rule: The only rule is that no one is allowed to speak. They must use non-verbal communication—gestures, pointing, hand signals, or writing in the air—to figure out their correct place in the line.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🤯 NotebookLM is blowing my mind

When I learned of NotebookLM last year, I was impressed. It seemed like a really helpful tool …

• Add sources (PDFs, links, slides, whatever).

• It answers questions based on your sources.

• It creates documents and reports based on them.

… and the most amazing feature at the time: custom podcasts. They’re called “audio overviews,” and the AI-powered podcast co-hosts discuss your sources as if they’re having an impromptu conversation about them.

Since then, Google has made some major upgrades to NotebookLM and has adjusted some of their policies around it.

So, of course, I needed to update our comprehensive NotebookLM blog post on it: Google NotebookLM for teachers: 10 things to know for educators

In the example below, I added a chapter from an anatomy and physiology textbook about tissues as my source. Just one source in this example … although you can add dozens of them.

(By the way … this is a nice feature of NotebookLM. When you do a search in a tool like Google Gemini or ChatGPT, it’s pulling its answers from anywhere and everywhere. NotebookLM will only answer from the confines of the sources you provide — in this case, just from a chapter in the textbook.)

📚 View my example notebook from that anatomy/physiology textbook here.

Here’s what it did with that textbook chapter on tissues …

1. Interactive audio overviews

These “podcast episodes” have gotten a major upgrade. Now, it’s almost like you can sit in the studio with the hosts and ask your own questions.

What it did before: NotebookLM took the info sources you provided it. It analyzed them and summarized them. Then, it created a script between two hosts and created an audio show — with realistic voices you could listen to.

What it does now: You can listen to the audio overview. But now there’s a “Join” button where you can interrupt them and ask a question.

Customize: If you click the three dots on the audio overview button, you can choose to customize your audio overview. That lets you give some custom instructions on how you want the AI to create the audio overview so it better suits your needs.

How you can use it: Now students have access to NotebookLM, so it could be a fun way for them to study and learn about new content. Or you could play it in class and have the class suggest questions to stop and ask.

2. Video overviews

Video overviews are a new feature to NotebookLM. It’ll create educational videos for you about the sources you upload to it.

Video overviews are kind of like using the audio overview (above) as a voiceover and adding slides to it as visual aides to create a video.

The good news: It’s the same interesting, engaging audio summary of your audio overview. It just adds visuals.

Of course, you’re going to want to watch it — preview it — to make sure that the AI generating the text got it all right and it’s in line with what you want to teach.

But really, this is a pretty cool way to create visual video teaching materials from whatever your source material is.

3. Mind maps

This isn’t completely brand new, but it’s still pretty impressive …

NotebookLM will take your sources and organize the ideas inside them into an interactive mind map. You can expand and collapse different ideas — and then you can save them as an image that you can share with students in their learning management system.

4. Terms of use

For a while, the terms of use for NotebookLM were for users 18+. That changed this summer.

According to this Google help page, anyone 13+ can use NotebookLM with any type of account.

And pretty much anyone of any age with a Google Workspace for Education account can use NotebookLM.

There are cautions and concerns we should have about allowing unfettered use of AI to young students — even when there are strict content policies in place.

If you’re not ready to turn this over to students, you can always create audio, video, mind maps and more for students — and then place them in your learning management system (LMS) for students to access. That way, they can benefit from having them without having to make them themselves.

5. Discover sources

In some situations, you’ll already have the source material for your notebook. In my example here, the source has been a chapter in a textbook.

If you need to find sources — or find additional sources to add to what you have — just use the “discover” button in the sources box in NotebookLM.

Give it a description of what you’re looking for and it’ll suggest some sources. You can check or uncheck any of them and add whatever you’d like to your notebook.

6. Featured notebooks

Google has curated some featured notebooks — examples you can use (or just learn from) to get you going quickly.

The options are pretty scarce so far, but they do give you some expert-created examples you can emulate. (It’s also a good way to test out how NotebookLM works with a solid list of sources already loaded.)

Learn more about NotebookLM

We’ve updated our extensive blog post — Google NotebookLM for teachers: 10 things to know for educators — with the latest updates and things to know for teachers.

👋 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.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!