EDT120 Shantel Lott, Self-Assessment Tools, Snorkl, NotebookLM, Curipod, Knowt, and more

Episode Transcript
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Jake (00:00):
On this episode of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast, I'm joined by Shantel

(00:03):
Lott, Ed Tech enthusiast and leadlearning guide at FriedTech to tackle
an important question, how can we helpstudents self-assess their learning?
We dive into tools like Snorkl,NotebookLM, Curipod, Knowt, and more.
Plus she suggests a super cool applicationof MagicSchool's Custom Chatbot Builder.
And before we wrap it up, I've gotsome updates on using Google Gemini

(00:26):
in the classroom as well as newfeatures and Padlet Sandbox, and a
new tool for auto creating slideshows.
So right before I hit record, mydog Tuck, let out this big snore.
Honestly, every time I sit down toprep, or even while I'm recording,
tuck, our Boston Terrier is righthere, curled up on the floor, snoring
softly, occasionally lifting hishead to give me one of his looks.

(00:49):
He's got one that says, dad,that was a silly thing to say.
Another that says, you'reembarrassing me with those voices
and a snore that says this is.
Really boring At least, Ithink that's what he's saying.
But let's be honest, Tuck's not exactlygiving me clear, actionable feedback.
He's just my adorable,mostly quiet sidekick.
And that brings me totoday's sponsor, M2 by Swivl.

(01:13):
M2 is the intelligent co-teacher.
I wish I had like Tuck.
It could be quietly present whileyou teach, but unlike Tuck, M2
actually has something useful to say.
Sorry buddy.
Daddy still loves you, but withjust a tap and a voice command,
M2 gives real time support, liveteaching tips, and personalized
feedback to help teachers grow.

(01:33):
Check it out at swivl.com/M2.
That's swivl.com/m2, again, swivl.com/M2.

(01:53):
Welcome, welcome in Duct Tapers.
Thanks for being here todayfor episode 120 of the show.
I appreciate you for joining me today.
Uh, before we get to it, uh, we,I'm gonna go with a slight format
change in upcoming episodes.
I'm gonna rotate between episodesthat have a guest and episodes
that have a soapbox moment.
They both take a lot of time toprepare recording with a guest.

(02:15):
Editing the episode with a guest, makingthat all happen, and researching and
preparing for a soapbox moment andthen recording that soapbox moment.
So I'll rotate on and off again.
So today we've got an amazingguest, Shantel Lott next week.
Unfortunately, we don't have a guestyou've just got me to deal with, with
a soapbox moment and some EdTech news.
But I'm hoping that thiswill make it easier for me to

(02:35):
bring one episode per week.
To you.
Before we get to that interviewwith Shantel, I'd like to ask you
and remind you to share, share,share, share, share about the show.
I really hope to help as many educatorsas possible with the wisdom, uh,
and guidance that my guests share,and with the EdTech news that I'm
sharing, and hopefully they'lltolerate me in those soapbox moments.

(02:56):
So let your colleagues know.
Interact with the show on Bluesky,especially with the #EduDuctTape.
Or share your thoughts on some ofthe things you hear, uh, on the
show speak pipe page, which isspeakpipe.com/eduDuctTape or hop on social
media and use that hashtag edu duct tape.
Now, without further ado, let'sget to our guest for today.

(03:22):
today our guest is Shantel Lott.
Shantel is an ed tech enthusiast andlead learning guide at friedTech.
She is certified in Google andMicrosoft, and empowers educators to
integrate tech into their classrooms.
Whether in person or virtual Shantel's.
Passion is making, learning,engaging and innovative.
You could find her on.
All of the social medias @LottsOfEdTech.

(03:45):
That's Lotts.
L-O-T-T-S, like her last name of EdTech,like the thing that she talks about.
Uh, you can also find her onthe friedTechnology website at
friedtechnology.com and a link to heremail address and LinkedIn account, as
well as all of those other things are inthe show notes, but not in the show notes.
Actually, here in the podcastis the actual Shantel.

(04:06):
What's up Shantel?
What's, how you doing today?

Shantel Lott (04:08):
Hi.
I am doing good.
How are you?

Jake (04:11):
am doing great.
We were just reminiscing aboutseeing each other in Mississippi a
couple years back for a conference.
Yes.
Lots of fun.
Yeah,

Mississippi was awesome.
Not only do I love the food,my family's from Mississippi.
Fun fact, a lot of Lotts are from

Jake (04:26):
a lot of.

so lots of Lotts in Mississippi.
And so yeah, it was pretty cool tohang out there and not only get to
see, you know, everybody hang out,in Jackson, but we actually, we
went down to the coast like Gulf.
Port

Jake (04:42):
Yeah.

yeah.
And my family's from that area,Pascagoula, if you know Right.
Shout out to Pascagoula.
That's where my family's from.

Jake (04:49):
Like, I don't know what she's talking about right now.
It sounds wonderful.

Yes.

Jake (04:55):
It sounds like a place where I can get some wonderful
jambalaya in Pascagoula.
Is that accurate?

Yeah, gumbo.
I have a

Jake (05:01):
too.

about how my grandma one year had me over for, I think it
was like the Thanksgiving holiday orbreak or something, and she cooked
a whole pot of gumbo, no salt.
So grandma was tryingto be health conscious.
It was great.
It was great.
until I realized there was no, I was okay.
Okay.
So, you know, we're supportingwise choices, but I miss salt.

(05:23):
I miss

Jake (05:24):
You just like sneak your bowl out of the room and like add your own in there.

Add salt!
Yes!

Jake (05:29):
Just sprinkle a little bit extra in there.

Yes.

Jake (05:33):
so, so Shantel, you taught me a new term before we started recording.
I'm gonna ask you to sharethis term with all listeners.
So I was making sure I was pronouncingyour name right and you told me that
some people say Shantel and some peoplesay Shantel, and you're, and you don't
even, you just respond to both, right?
It's just like naturally youdon't even notice the difference.

I'm sound blind, sound blind there.. but that's
because the story is right.
My dad named me, and he calledme Sean, and my mom calls Shan.
So I am sound blind to both.
pronounce it Sean, because youknow, that's, you know, he named me.
So I go with
Nice.
am sound blind

(06:10):
you told me, you
Also, you know.
Or nose blind, you know,akin to nose blind.
Right.
when you don't smell something.

Jake (06:17):
see, I've never heard of nose blind.
That is a totally new term to me.
I've never heard this term.

Yes.
Well, you know, it's notgood to be nose blind

Jake (06:25):
Okay.

but you know, sometimes it happens.

Jake (06:28):
Like, that's like when my wife's like, did you smell that?
And I'm like, no, I don't smell anything.
I must be nose blind.
Apparently.

yes,

Jake (06:34):
This is

absolutely.

Jake (06:35):
to me.
You're teaching me new things.
Well, I think you're gonna teach ustons of new things today, when we get
into talking about some self-assessmentideas and self-assessment tools.
But first we, we gotta keephaving a little bit of fun.
Are you up for some fun?
Shantel?

Sure.

Jake (06:48):
Okay, we always start off with a game and we are gonna start with
a game of two truths and one lie.
As listeners to the show know, you'regonna tell me three statements.
Two will be true one will be a lie.
I will try to figureout which one's the lie.
I'll do a bad job of it.

(07:09):
I'll probably get it wrongand I'll probably forget to
figure out which one's the lie.
because I always butcher this game,even though this is episode 120,
and I've played two truths andone lie in probably 80 of them.
And I still, still will mess it up.
But you're gonna gimme those threestatements and I'm gonna do my best.
And regardless, we're gonna have fun.
That's the one thing that matters here,is we're gonna have fun when we do it.

(07:30):
Are you ready with your statements?

Yes, I'm

Jake (07:33):
I'm, I'm ready when you are.

Okay, so I drove to California by myself.
I've been to Disney four times by myself

Jake (07:44):
Mm-hmm.
Mm.

I've been to Mount Rushmore by myself.

Jake (07:49):
Whoa.
All of these things are by yourself.

Yes, solo dolo

Jake (07:53):
okay.
Wow, those are fascinating.
I'm curious of the why behindall behind the two that are true.

Okay.

Jake (08:01):
to California by yourself, went to Mount Rushmore by yourself, and
went to Disney four times by yourself.
Now I, before I make my guess, I waswith Victoria Thompson at the FETC
conference in Florida, in Orlando.
Do you know Victoria?

Yes.

Jake (08:18):
Yeah, so Victoria lives down there in Orlando and at FETC, there's like a
session on the first day where some ofthe featured speakers present to the
new attendees, just like to help themfigure out the schedule and like where
everything's at and stuff like that.
And so she and I were there together inthat, and I. Um, she was like, I think
I'm gonna go to lunch at Disney today.
And I was like, what?
You're leaving the conferenceand going to Disney for lunch?

(08:39):
And she said, yeah.
She said, that's why we moved to Orlandois 'cause we love Disney so much.
And I was like, and you're just gonnalike jaunt over there for a quick lunch.
And she's like, yeah.
We go like, like fouror five times a week.
Like sometimes just forlunch, just for dinner.
I was like, oh my gosh.
I like, I go like once every two yearswhen my wife makes me and I'm like,
I hate it here, but she is like, Igo, I'm just running over for lunch.

(09:01):
Although I guess if I wasjust running over for a jumbo
Turkey leg, I might like it.
Um, okay, but I'm gonna guess So shegoes to Disney by herself, but I'm
guessing that you going to Disneyfour times by yourself is a lie.

That is actually right.
Uh, I have been, okay.
Well,

Jake (09:19):
Okay.

I've been maybe.
two times by myself.
Yes.
And then, I feel like theother times I was with people.
So like the first time that I went bymyself, I, the first day I went with my
mom and some family members and then.
I stayed, like I had an extra day, so then

Jake (09:39):
Oh,

back by myself.
'cause I was like, okay, yeah,

Jake (09:41):
you right there?

I'm gonna go see another park or

Jake (09:44):
Yeah.

the other time, I think it was FETC, I got there a little bit
early and then I could go, you know,and just walk around and enjoy it.
And I, you know.
It's a blast.
I love it.

Jake (09:54):
Yeah.

I love Disney.
Um, I did not think that would besomething that I would enjoy, so I was
pleasantly surprised and I was like,I think, I think I am a Disney adult.

Jake (10:05):
Okay.

that realization of like, okay, yeah, this is a thing.
And I know people, it's, it'sa hot topic, you know, why go
to Disney instead of Paris?
But I felt like.
Uh, Disney's a little bit more accessible,

Jake (10:19):
Yeah.

you know, um, I mean, not to say Paris isn't on the list, it's on the
list, but Disney's a little accessible.
Well, I think I mighthave done this wrong.
Okay.
But also I didn't drive to California.

Jake (10:33):
Oh no.

it's two lies and a a truth.
I drove to Florida, but that was my,was my go-to and it by myself is true.
But I did stop like in, um, Louisiana.
So I feel like it wasn't like a straight

Jake (10:50):
That's okay.

stopping in Louisiana, which is a whole nother story.
But, I stopped there, you know, had.
Fun, I think.
I think I met up with some friends 'causethere was a festival and then I drove
the rest of the way to, um, uh, Florida

Jake (11:06):
FETC.

so

Jake (11:08):
okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jake (11:09):
Okay.
So, okay, so let's get this straight.
You're, we're both strugglingwith the game today.
Okay.
There's two lies.

two lies and a truth.

Jake (11:15):
To,
you're stacking the deck, actually,you're stacking the deck to help me.
This is like an accommodationfor Jake, but in two lies,
he'll be sure to find one.

scaffolded it.
It

Jake (11:29):
did.
You sure did.
Okay, so, so you've gone to Disney byyourself, but twice, not four times.
Okay.

yeah.
Yet.

Jake (11:37):
And wasn't it, you drove to California by yourself?

No.
Yeah, so I, it was actually Florida,

Jake (11:42):
Okay.

California, because I was like, I, well,
you know, you learn something.
Let's say that I'm notgood at two, two truths and

Jake (11:52):
We're we belong hanging out together.
Sh Shantel, we are both the same on this.
this is how this gamealways ends up for me.
And then the crazy thing is I wasrecently interviewing, Adam Juarez and
Kat Goyette, who are from California.
They were on the showrecently and I said something.
About them being from Florida.
So apparently me and you bothstruggle with Florida and California.

(12:16):
They're just pretty much the same.
It's warm there.

flip flop, it's coast,

Jake (12:20):
coast.

coast on

Jake (12:21):
there's, there's water.

Yeah.
Yeah.
They're basically

Jake (12:26):
Oh

the same.
No,

Jake (12:28):
goodness.

all the Florida people.
I don't want them to be like,

Jake (12:31):
Hey, hey, we're on.
The same as the California people.
We're different.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Floridians, I did go toMount Rushmore by myself.
It was a wonderful, experience.
I was out there, and I just hadthe opportunity to go for a day
and I did, and it was worth it.
I got to see Abraham Lincoln.
I was like, I should have put thaton there, that I met Abraham Lincoln.

Jake (12:55):
You met him, but he didn't meet you.

No, no, it was an impersonator, uh, there,
which I was not expecting.
But why not?

Jake (13:02):
Yeah.

on Mount Rushmore.
So, you know, impersonator,was pretty awesome.
He had the whole hat and everything.
I was

Jake (13:09):
Wow.

this is pretty cool.
And, it is very, it's a, it's in anational park and very, you know,
trees mountainous, beautiful.
but it did smell like an air fresheneras soon as I got outta the car, like
that strong pine smell, which I thoughtwas pretty cool, like, you know,

Jake (13:28):
You were not nose blind to that.

No, I was not.
It was, I was nose aware.

Jake (13:32):
You were nose aware is the opposite.
We actually had, when I teachmiddle school, we had a Abraham
Lincoln impersonator come tothe school to talk to the kids.

Okay.

Jake (13:44):
was like a super, he was super knowledgeable about Lincoln's life
and about all of his like policyachievements and all kinds of stuff.
And he kind of did an interviewas Abraham Lincoln, which
was actually was really cool.

Yeah.

Jake (13:57):
It was really neat.

own Lincoln.

Jake (14:00):
Yeah.

cool.

Jake (14:01):
And he looked like him too.
He was, yeah.
Yeah, it was, it was crazy.
Kind of neat.

a, that's interesting to find where you're like, you
know who you look like Abraham

Jake (14:10):
Yeah.

and then you're like, this is my thing.
Yeah,

Jake (14:12):
I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do that for a job now.
Okay.
I guess I, I'm tall and skinny.
Maybe I need to be a Lincoln impersonator.
I got, I've got a beard.
Maybe I could pull it off.
I just need a top hat.

There's definitely a, a, a following for it.
Everyone was happy to see Lincolnat the monuments, I'm sure

Jake (14:29):
There we go.
Okay, Shantel, now that we'rebeing silly and choosing my future
career as an Abraham Lincolnimpersonator, let's go ahead and
get into some educational duct tape.
I probably only have like three or fourmore episodes of this show, and then
I'm gonna pivot the podcast into myAbraham Lincoln podcast to, to really get

should.

Jake (14:48):
as I should, to get my impersonation career off the ground.
But.

four score and duct tape or

Jake (14:54):
Four score and duct tape.
I think that's right.
that's exactly right.
A good plan four score and duct tape.
Four score, educational four score.
I don't know.
before we transitioned the show into theAbraham Lincoln podcast though, We're
gonna talk about educational technology,and so my question to you is, what tool
or strategy would you use to facilitatestudents self-assessing their learning?

(15:19):
Now, before, before I give you achance to share your answer to this, I
wanna point out to the audience, That.
I think self-assessing comesin a variety of different ways.
Like there's some really deepself-assessing where kids are really
reflecting on their efficacy in theirwork and they're thinking about where
they could grow and looking at rubrics andreally getting detailed into where am I
at in a learning pathway or on a learningprogression, what success criteria

(15:41):
have we met, that's certainly amazingand we wanna do that kind of stuff.
But then there's also some maybe.
Quote unquote lower level stuffwhere they're just answering
questions and finding out ifthey're getting them right or wrong.
And I think that's really powerfultoo, because we want them to just be
like assessing like, did I learn this?
Do I know this?
Do I understand that?
So any level of self-assessingis what we're talking about here.
there certainly are a variety oflevels, but I think there're all good,

(16:03):
there are a variety of levels of good.
Uh, and so we're gonna talkabout tools for self-assessment.
So what's one that you love?
What's the first one?

I would say I really love, Snorkl.
it's a pretty cool tool.
Like it's a whiteboard tool and studentscan, show what they know and explain maybe
a concept or something like that, or.
You know, draw out a problem and itwill, assess pretty much, you know, the,
it also record, you know, the studentscan explain as they're drawing it out.

(16:31):
and it will assess from that recordingand what they've drawn on the screen,
like if they've gotten the answercorrect or wrong, and give them
feedback, real feedback about, you know,you've got this part right, but you
know, you need to work on this part.
and kind of break it down tothem, like what parts they got,
right, what parts they need

Jake (16:48):
Wow.

So I really, really like that.
It's a pretty cool tool.

Jake (16:51):
Wow.

can students submit one, they can submit multiple responses.
So if you didn't get it right the firsttime, you can resubmit right to work
on, you know, a particular concept thatmaybe you're, you haven't grasped yet.

Jake (17:03):
Wow.
Okay.
So I am, I've heard of Snorkl.
I've seen kind of the hype around it.
I've done a little bit of exploringas to what it is, but I haven't
gotten in there and used it.
So I'm excited that you're sharingthis so that I can hear more about it.
So tell me about theassessment piece in there.
So you post a prompt to the kids, right?
they go in, they respond to it.
they're drawing on a whiteboard,kind of like you would do in,

(17:25):
I don't know, lots of differenttools offer like a whiteboard area.
they can't see what anybodyelse is answering, right.
They're, it just, they'rejust private to their own.

Yeah.
Yeah.
So they can't see anybody else'sanswer or anything like that.
And then you can actually, like, youknow, you can, if your prompt is just
a question, you can put that thereand they can, you know, respond to it.
Or you can even put like agraphic up and they can use that.
Like, so if we're talkingabout food chains, right?
There's a food chain graphic andthey've gotta fill in the different
parts of it, and then it will assessas they explain, you know, the,

(17:54):
you know, graph, you know, the.
eats the leaf and you know,the bird eats the caterpillar.
They'll have to explain that wholecycle and then it'll say, yes,
you got the, you know, the prompt,or no, you need to work on that.
Yeah.

Jake (18:08):
Wow.
Okay, so you, so it can assess evena drawing on top of another image.
Right.
Okay.
And by the way, props to you forhaving that food chain correct.
That was very good there.
The science teachers are like snappingtheir fingers right now at you for that.

So yes, I, you know, if it was anything else, I might
need a little bit help when itcomes to science, but food chain,

Jake (18:28):
You got it.

I feel like, I feel like that's a good

Jake (18:30):
That was really good.

You know, we still all kind of remember a
little bit of the food chain.

Jake (18:34):
That was good.
You did good.
now how is it assessing it?
Is this, it's using AI to assess it.
Does the teacher have to giveany information about what the
correct answer is for the a tolike for the AI to start with?

No, the AI literally, you know, assesses it based off
the prompt that you give it.

Jake (18:50):
Wow.

with the, you know, uh, graphic maybe that you provide

Jake (18:53):
Wow.

or whatever you might, you know, add and it will assess it, for you.
Mm-hmm.

Jake (18:58):
Whoa.
That's really cool.
That's really cool.
how accurate have you found it to bewhen you've used it or when you've
supported other teachers using it?
In terms of the assessments?

I found it to be pretty accurate, which is pretty cool.
Like, you know, I do, you know, havequestions about how does the AI know,

Jake (19:12):
Yeah.
It knows.

I feel like the, you know, how does it, but, uh, the feedback that
I've seen, you know, I've kind of playedaround with it, like normally spot on with
the feedback that it gives to students.

Jake (19:24):
That's cool.
And then do teachers get goodfeedback or good like formative
assessment data out of it as well?

Yes.
So on your side you're gonna see likehow, you know, did they get, you know,
three points out of the four points.
It goes like a four point scale.

Jake (19:38):
Hmm.

So you know, do they get a three out of four or two out of four?
And it kind of tracksthat as they go along.
And then it'll track itwith each submission.
So if they submit more than once,then you'll see that growth as well.

Jake (19:49):
Wow.
And then the, and the kids findout right away what they, if they
got it right or wrong, right.

Mm-hmm.
And it'll even, readthat feedback to them.
So if there, there's a feature whereit'll, you know, read that feedback
to the students if they need it.
I don't know.
I find myself using that often.
I feel like it's like thecaptions on the tv, right?
Like, if it can be read to me, I just

Jake (20:10):
Yeah.

ahead and go with it.
'cause it's like, you know, easierfor me, I'm an auditory learner, so

Jake (20:15):
Mm-hmm.

to kind of take in that feedback.
So it's pretty cool.

Jake (20:18):
Does it sound like a human talking to you when it reads it?

It's pretty smooth

Jake (20:22):
Yeah.

I'll say.
I am pretty impressed with

Jake (20:24):
Yeah.

AI reading capabilities there.
It's like kind of, it's kind of cool'cause you know, the computer generated
voices, what you're expecting to hear

Jake (20:34):
Mm-hmm.

you know, a little bit choppy and kind of
halted, but it's pretty smooth.

Jake (20:39):
I find that like, if it sounds like one of the old text to speech
tools, you know, from like five, fiveyears ago, I don't wanna listen to that.
Right?
Like, like,

No.

Jake (20:47):
like I, it was good for kids who needed it, you know?
and I'm glad there was somethingin there to kind of help with
leveling that issue for them.
But nowadays, the way some of these.
AI ones work where it's like speaks like,like, like NotebookLM for example, where
they, it creates this audio that soundslike real humans talking to podcasts.
Like, yeah, I could listen to that andthen if I'm getting feedback on whether I
got something right or wrong, I'd love forit to come from a voice like that where it

(21:09):
sounds like somebody really talking to me.
Yeah.

Yeah, which is pretty cool.
And they do have a beta.
If you haven't been on NotebookLM, theyhave a beta where now you can talk back
to the podcast and be a part of it.
super cool, love that.

Jake (21:23):
Yeah.
Super cool.

And then like, they'll answer your question, so
maybe you have a question for thepodcasters and they'll answer it.
So it's pretty NotebooklM is pretty cool.

Jake (21:33):
Yeah, that's one of my favorites.
I, yeah.
It's so cool how they like copypatterns that are in real podcasts too.
Like the other day I had a podcast andthey were, the one host said to the other
host, like, oh yeah, we were talkingabout that before we started recording.
I was like, you were not, youare ai you were not talking
before we started recording.
you were.

we're in the back talking about it.
Right.
Just a couple minutes ago.

Jake (21:54):
We there,

you, you bring that up,

Jake (21:56):
it's just like two people at the Google offices, but like, they're just
like, that's what people do on podcasts.
So they just mimicked it, which is crazy.
okay.
So I clearly need to explore Snorkl, andspend some time with it, and learn more
about it 'cause that sounds really neat.
And I think I.
I I, I'm guessing that some people arelistening and they're going, Hmm, the
teacher should be the one assessingthat, that work, not an AI tool.

(22:19):
Um, and I hear them, Ihave a response to them.
I'm wondering if you havethoughts on that too.

Um, I think you always should be checking, um, you know, uh,

Jake (22:30):
Mm-hmm.

like, and, you know, keeping an eye on what, feedback
students are getting from ai.
I think like, as the teacher, you'rethe ultimate resource, you know,
and you're the ultimate expert inyour particular content, so you
know, know if it's on, you know.

Jake (22:45):
Mm-hmm.

Testing it out if it's spot on or it needs some work.
So I think, you know, you alwaysbe involved in seeing that and
you can always go in and see whatthe AI responded to students.
and maybe make any corrections atthe time and be like, Hey guys,

Jake (22:59):
Mm-hmm.

this is, you know.
Maybe there's something youneed to correct or whatever.
So I mean, ultimately theteacher's always the expert.
I think that's kind ofwhat I always say when it

Jake (23:10):
Yeah.

comes to ai.
Like, you are the expert, the personin the official voice in the room

Jake (23:15):
Yeah.

to your particular content.
So.

Jake (23:17):
Can the teacher overrule how Snorkl AI scored it?
if Snorkl AI said something waswrong, can the teacher go in and go
like, actually no, that was right.
Can they go in and change it?

I believe so.
I don't like,

Jake (23:28):
Yeah.

not a hundred percent 'cause

Jake (23:30):
We'll have to explore that.
Mm-hmm.

But I will say I believe

Jake (23:34):
Yeah, we'll have to explore.
That's a good, that's agood thing to think about.
And so these people that will saythat, and I, again, I hear what they're
saying there and I agree with them.
I think that what they'd say is notjust what part of, it's what you said
there, which is, we can't trust theAI to do the assessment accurately.
We should have some oversightover it, which I agree there with
what you said there, that theyshould be checking it afterwards.
But I think the other part of what they'dsay is that the assessing of the learner.

(23:57):
By the teacher is also important,like for the informing the teacher's
understanding of the learner's progress,you know, as a formative assessment tool.
And I get that and I agree.
I think there's a limit to howmuch a teacher can reasonably
do formative assessment.
Like there we, there's onlyso much time in the day.
We don't have time toformative assess everything.
Like I think there should be somework done in the classroom that

(24:19):
the teacher never assesses because.
It just the student should bedoing more work than the teacher
possibly has time to assess, right?
that's the way, that's the work, theway the workload should work out.
We want them informatively,assessing and acting on it as
much as possible, but I just don'tthink they could assess everything.
Um,

That's true.

Jake (24:35):
and the two main points with Snorkl here, one is.
The self-assessment power, which iswhat we were originally talking about,
that if the teacher was assessing thesethings, there'd be a gap between when
the kid did the work and when theyfound out if it was right or wrong.
Right?
And so that's, that's an issue, right?
it's still good to have teacher feedback,even if it's time shifted forward an

(24:56):
hour or 15 minutes or a day or whatever.
But like that immediacy of thefeedback is really powerful.
and the other part is, I think.
If I'm a teacher and I have tohand grade everything my kids do
and give them feedback on it, I'mgoing to, it's, I'm gonna do less.
Right.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna have less timeswhere I have them do these things.

(25:17):
and so then if the alternative is.
Less formative assessment,that's not good.
Right?
And if the alternative isstudents not getting immediate
feedback, that's not great either.
So I think that we need a balance ofusing these tools for their benefits,
which are, is that immediate feedbackand that it allows teachers to get
more formative assessment data and domore formative assessment than they

(25:39):
could do if they did it manually.
with sometimes where the teachersmay be conferencing with the
student about those results or theteachers doing some assessment.
That's on paper or somethinglike that where they're doing it.
So I fall on both sides of this issue.
So I think I, I, I understand whatthose people are saying, but I think
that if we don't use these toolswe're, um, I, we're not equipping
ourselves with all the abilitieswe could possibly have, you know?

Yeah.

Jake (26:02):
So, um, okay.
So Snorkl, we talked a little bitabout NotebookLM in there too.
Not really a self-assessmenttool, just something cool
that we're both excited about.
Although I guess you could, like,with that questioning feature,
you really could be, Sharing yourunderstanding of the thing that it made
the podcast on and asking it if youwere correct, and it probably would
give you some information on that.
I've never tried that, butyou really could probably do
some self-assessment in there.

(26:23):
what else would you use?
So let's say you don't have access toSnorkl and you wanna use something else.
What else would you try?

I've started to dabble in, MagicSchool in the custom, uh, chatbots

Jake (26:32):
Mm-hmm.

being able to kind of create a personalized pathway,
with a custom chat bot for students.
So, a way in which maybe theyhave a first question and if they.
that first question wrong, then it helpssupport them, with another question, you
know, with maybe like a video support ora resource, or here's what you need, you

(26:53):
know, to do, and then another questionthat's on that particular same topic
before you move on to something else.

Jake (27:02):
So I've gone in there and I've made the chat bot and I've
like given it some information.
Like for example, the other day I did oneabout volcanoes in a PD session and I gave
it like this doc, this PDF about volcanoesand I, pasted in some learning standards
about volcanoes and I pasted some textabout volcanoes and give it a website.
Said like, you're a volcanochatbot, you're gonna talk to kids

(27:23):
about volcanoes, that's all youcould talk to about is volcanoes.
and it went great.
It was really cool.
and what's cool with the MagicStudentchatbots is you send it out to the kids.
They don't have to havean account to use it.
they, if they have a MagicStudentaccount, great, but they could just
type in their name when they log in,and then you as the teacher could see
the whole conversation if you want to.
And I also love that the chat botwon't have alternative discussion.

(27:44):
So like, for example, in the example I didin this group, I asked as the student, I
was being the student, I asked a bunch ofquestions about volcanoes and then I said,
can you teach me a swear word in Spanish?
And the chat bot was like,no, that's not what I do.
Um, whereas had I had a kidasked Google or ChatGPT to do
that, it would've done that.
Just like it would've just told,thought to us a swear word in Spanish.

(28:05):
So that's the other part.
That's nice, but.
What I haven't done is this pathway idea.
So are you saying that you can makeit, you can give it specific questions
to ask the kids and it'll ask themthat question every time and then
prescribe what comes next based on that?

Yeah, so if you wanted to like create like a
personalized pathway, so not a mathteacher, but I demoed it with math

Jake (28:26):
Yeah.

And so like the first one I wanna do, like simple addition,
then that's the first, type ofquestion that pops up for students.
And then they answer that.
Either they get the answercorrect, then they move on to
maybe, you know, subtraction.
but if they get it wrong, thenit gives to them, it explains,
it says, oh, you got it wrong.
And then it can explain to them whythey got it wrong, and then give them

(28:47):
another addition question to practice

Jake (28:50):
Wow, that is so cool.
I'm, I'm, so, I'm looking in MagicSchoolright now 'cause I'm kind of geeking
out about this idea right here.
is it in, is it just the chat botand you're telling it to do that?
Or is there a specific toolthat's built for pathways?
Like, is this like a, is this a Shantelcreation or is this a MagicSchool feature?

Well, this is this, I guess like a Shantel creation.
I kind of thought about like, you know,could I do a personalized pathway?
So I'm just using thecustom bot, so I prompt,
it

Jake (29:16):
that's cool.

with, you know, okay, here is the first, you know, type
of question that I want you to ask,

Jake (29:22):
cool.

it generates that question.
I like it for math because ofthe, you know, it can just.
Generate, you know,different math problems.
And I don't have to necessarily tell

Jake (29:33):
Mm. Mm-hmm.

is the first one, but like for your volcanoes, you could give
it something very specific, like, youknow, I'm not a volcano wizard, but,
you know, some question about maybe,you know, the different types of rock or

Jake (29:47):
Mm-hmm.

Some, you know.

Jake (29:48):
That works.
That works.

or lava of magma or

Jake (29:50):
There you go.

those things, you get it prompted for that question, and if they
don't get it right, then it gives the,you know, okay, here's the support for,
you know, what magma is or what lava is.
Okay.
Now here's another type of questionabout volcanoes that's along that
same line, you know, molten rock

Jake (30:07):
Mm
mm.

or something.

Jake (30:08):
That's, so, that's, this is so cool.
This is such a cool idea.
I never thought about like telling ithow the conversation should flow, not
just what to talk to 'em about, you know?
'cause when I made that volcano one thatI made, it really was just like, I'm
here to talk to you about volcanoes.
what questions do you have?
And like, and it could have some coolconversations with the kids, but you're
really saying like, ask them this.
If they get it right, then do this.

(30:30):
If they get it wrong, then do this.
That's really neat.
Um.
Ooh, I love this idea.
I'm gonna go play with it right now.
Um, it's not gonna givethe teachers any data.
I wanna point out like Snorkl.
You're gonna be able tosee like right or wrong.
Whereas here, the teacher aren'tgonna get any data out of this.
but we're talkingself-assessment here, right?
We're really talking about sendingthe students and that's what we want.

(30:50):
Even though we want a teacherto do formative assessment and.
Craft the learning experiences basedon what's happening with the kids.
We also want the kids to be a driverof their learning like we want.
We want this to be learner driven.
We want kids in the driver's seat asmuch as possible, self-assessing and
finding out if they're right or wrong.
That's really neat.
That's cool.
Yah, and I'm

definitely thinking, you know, blending, like if it's math and
you know, they're going through thatdifferent pathway and then they've
gotta write down that question.
I mean, I love that idea, you know,of like them solving it that way

Jake (31:18):
Mm-hmm.

you know, being able to kind of blend the learning that

Jake (31:21):
Yeah.

of just like, you know, I mean, of course if you know
your mental math is, amazing, thenyou can go through it that way.
But I would love to, you know, see kidsjust like solving it out, writing it out.
And then when it does break down theproblem, it does show you like the steps.
It breaks it down.

Jake (31:35):
Yeah.
That's pretty neat.
That's really cool.
and I love that you could probably then.
In your prompt.
Like some math teachers are like, well,I haven't, we're solving these kinds
of problems, but we're solving themthis way and we haven't learned how
to solve them this other way yet we'retrying to master this specific strategy.
Maybe.
and I'd be worried that the chatbot would show the wrong strategy,

(31:56):
but you could probably prompt it.
This is how we're, this is how thesekids are learning to solve when you show
them a solution, use this strategy right.

probably.
Yeah.
I'm not a math teacher, so I justdabbled in it, but I'm, I'm pretty
sure you could prompt it by tellingit, you know, we're doing the, I
think it's a, what it window pane

Jake (32:15):
Mm.

window pane method or whatever

Jake (32:17):
Mm-hmm.

Um, instead of a, another way

Jake (32:20):
Yeah.

you know.

Jake (32:21):
Yeah.

They would solve it.
Do you ever have one of those moments,mid lesson where you're thinking, I.
Okay, how can I explain this better?
Or is this even making sense for the kids?
Yeah, me too.
My office buddy Tuck, the BostonTerrier, he can't really help with that,
but today's sponsor, M2 by Swivl can.

(32:42):
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Jake (32:44):
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It doesn't interrupt or take over.
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And when you need it, you click a buttonand say things like, ask M2 a question or
translate that, or even tell me a joke.
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(33:27):
That's swivl.com/M2, again, swivl.com/M2.
Now back to our interviewwith Shantel Lott.
Um, yeah, this is really neat and I thinkI would also point out that to do this
really well, I bet that's a pretty timeconsuming process to, to craft that chat

(33:49):
bot to, to do this pathway really well.
however.
You could use a tool like ChatGPT orlike Claude, to help you build the
prompt that you give to MagicSchool.
Right?
You could kind of flesh it out a littlebit and then ask ChatGPT to kind of
fill in the pathway, bring it intoMagicSchool, tweak it a little bit, and
then that chatbot is created that way.

(34:10):
That'd be kind of neat to do.
Know.
You

really can use any of those to help.
Like, if you have a kind of an idea aboutit, it will help you with that prompting.
But even Raina, inside ofMagicSchool, she'll also help you

Jake (34:21):
Oh yeah.

up with that prompt.
Like, 'cause I, and then it's a,it's kind of like a trial and error.

Jake (34:26):
Yeah.

I've done it before, and like if you, you'll put it
in and then you'll be like, no.
That's not how I want it to go.

Jake (34:33):
Yeah.

and you fix your prompt.

Jake (34:35):
Yep.

Right.
to get it, to go the way that you want.
but yeah, it's the, once you haveit, you know, and the structure,
you're kind of good to go.
So.

Jake (34:45):
Yeah.
Now does Raina come up right there inthat chat bot to talk to, or do you,
do you have to go separately to likethe Raina tab and then come back?

she should pop up underneath,

Jake (34:55):
Okay.

you're doing your chatbot,

Jake (34:56):
Yeah.

the way I did it, I just went to Raina first and helped
like, and there I think there'ssomething, there's a tool to help

Jake (35:04):
Mm-hmm.

So, you can either use one that, that tool or Raina and
then, you know, flesh it out there.
And then when I was doing it, and Raina,It generated the chat, the chat bot for me

Jake (35:16):
Yeah.

I could kind of like

Jake (35:17):
Oh yeah.

with it first, and then be like, oh, no, no, that's not what I

Jake (35:21):
Yeah.
What's cool about doing it with Rainais that for those people listening that
don't know what Raina is, Raina is kindof like the teacher chatbot inside, they
call it the instructional coach, insideof MagicSchool that the teacher could
talk to get ideas, for how to, you know,what, whatever, any classroom ideas.
and it's built on a lot oflike pedagogical knowledge.
So whereas ChatGPT doesgreat stuff, ChatGPT is not.

(35:44):
Built specifically as a teachertool and Raina is right.
So it's seemed give youreally good teacher advice.
And I think as I was asking that question,I realized I think in the free MagicSchool
you have access to Raina just in likethe Raina tab that you were using.
But you don't have access to Rainawithin the chat bot creation tools,
but you'd be able to do what you'resaying, which is go to Raina, craft the

(36:05):
prompt there and then come back over.
So it would work out perfect.
Wow.
This is really cool.
Shantel.

Thank you.

Jake (36:12):
You got me geeking out on this one a little bit.
so I don't think we need, reallyneed to share any other ideas.
I think the Snorkl idea and thisMagicStudent like uh, custom
pathway bot are great ideas, but
what other like rapid firelittle ones would you throw in?
Like, so if we want kids, we wannaempower kids to know where they're at
in their understanding on a concept.
what other tools would you use?

Um, okay.
Rapid fire.
Uh, I like, Um, Curipod.
I mean, that's

Jake (36:38):
Hmm.

taking you through, the lesson.
But you've got those momentswhere like you can ask questions.
Whole group students get their feedback,whether they, you know, got it right or
wrong, or we poll and we ask, you know,like, what, do you guys see the answer is?
And then we can address it there.
So it's got some nice,

Jake (36:57):
Mm-hmm.

options there for activities throughout your lesson, but then it
does have, It's got the, the reflectionor the AI feedback part where you
can have students respond to a promptand then, it will give them feedback.
Right.

Jake (37:11):
Mm-hmm.

while we're going through.
So like, you know, if I'm going back to, afood chains or the water cycle, whatever,

Jake (37:18):
Okay.

you give it, you know, we've been learning about it.
Now tell me, you know, like.
an ending question or an exit ticket,if you will, about like what you've
learned today and the water cycle or,you know, whatever the prompt might be.
And then, it'll give them feedbackreal time, like, you know, to
the whatever they wrote about.

Jake (37:35):
Yeah.

argument here is strong.
You need to work on this.
Or, oh, great job with this.
But, you know, make sure to,you know, cite some evidence
here, or whatever it might be.
Um.
So I like that AI feedback piece there.
they also have an AI whiteboardas well, so you could also, you
know, have the students draw Right.
the water cycle and then getfeedback off of that as well.

Jake (37:57):
And does it auto grade it kind of in the way Snorkl does.

It does.

Jake (38:00):
Oh cool.
Yeah, so Curipod, for listeners thatmaybe aren't familiar with Curipod started
during the whole, like ai, like explosion.
They were kind of one of the firsteducational tools on the scene, and what
they were doing then was really just.
Automatically generating presentationslike that was pretty much all
he did, which was really cool.
Like you'd go like, I needa slideshow on this topic.
It would create it.
And now it's built in some of the kind oflike Nearpod Pear Deck kind of features

(38:25):
where it's like you're, it AI generatedthe work for you and you could tweak it.
but now you could then craft a lessonthat kids go through with you either.
Synchronously or asynchronously, I think.
but I didn't realize it had theseAI pieces in there too, with
the feedback and whiteboard.
I knew they had some updates coming up.
That must have been, amongst the updates.
Yeah.
so I love these tools that give the kidsinstantaneous feedback, which is kinda

(38:47):
the self-assessment point, but thenalso give us good formative data too.
so it's kind of doingboth, which is great.

And then you could also do Knowt, which is, a newer tool and it's
basically flashcard so you could, studentscould upload their notes on there.
It'll.
Generate flashcards for them andquiz them on different things.
Or you, as the teacher cangenerate a set of flashcards to
quiz students over information.
And it can be AI generated, like I said,from a resource or notes or whatever.

(39:15):
You maybe have a PowerPoint or A PDFor whatever it might be, and it'll
generate, flashcards off of that.
And then it has all of the differentmethods in which students can like,
you know, quiz themselves on it.
Uh, different little games matchingand all that kind of stuff in there.

Jake (39:30):
Okay, you're gonna have
to spell Knowt for everybody.

K-N-O-W-T

Jake (39:36):
So it is like, know, like I know that with the t on the end,
but it sounds like it's NOTE.
Everybody just Google that and they'relike, I can't find Knowt anywhere.
Shantel, I, this is another onethat's new to me, like I've heard
of it and I've seen it out there,but I haven't messed with it.
their site calls themselves the numberone free Quizlet alternative, like

(39:57):
throwing some shade right there.
But I, it's okay.

a little bit of shade.
Yeah.

Jake (40:00):
Actually, I'm now looking at the page right now.
And they've got their Knowt likeDragon standing in front of a
tombstone that says RIP Quizlet on it.
Have you seen this?

Yes.

Jake (40:11):
Wow.
Okay.
And you could just pull yourQuizlet games right into there too.
Um,

I think his name is Kai, right?
Kai the

Jake (40:19):
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I'll have to check 'em out.
but yeah, AI, flashcards, AI summarize,I got, I gotta explore this one.
This is cool.
Um, and all, all free.
Sure.
Looks like it is

Free 99.

Jake (40:32):
free.
99. Hey, if it's 99 cents, if it's freedollars and 99 cents, I think that's fine.
This is cool.
Yeah, so this is a good one too.
Look at that rapid fire you gave me twoamazing ones with Curipod and Knowt.
other ones in that, that, thatmagic brain of yours there?

I mean, of course, you know, Adobe Express has portfolio,
so that's always like a coolone, for your students to kind of
reflect on their learningif you're looking
Mm-hmm.
for
something that's like visual or, you know, kind of them
putting together some kind of, uh.
end reflection of what they'velearned, like maybe if they're doing
like a science experiment and likewhat we researched and kind of what

(41:10):
we found along the way kind of thing.
So their portfolios arepretty, cool for that.
And then, of course, Padlet, youknow, Padlet's a tried and true
way for students to kind of reflectabout their learning and post.
And now they can do it in multiple ways.
You know, video, audio,post an image, whatever.
I mean, now there's built-in, you know,AI image generation in there as well.

(41:32):
So some cool stuff.

Jake (41:34):
That's nice.
I love that.
those last two, you're pointingout kind of a different version of
self-assessment, which you're notgonna go into Adobe Express and make
a portfolio or into Padlet and dosome reflections and have it like.
Tell you if you're right or wrong, right?
This is kind of a different thing, adifferent piece of self-assessment.
One piece of self-assessment isjust knowing, am I right or wrong?
But the other is just the reflectionand the thinking about where

(41:55):
you're at in your learning journey.
And so, so those tools are really goodto document your learning process,
and reflect on where you're at 'causereally, While we love these things
that auto grade and I think they arereally powerful, there's also some
benefit in the kid having to self grade,you know, essentially, which is what
self-assessment really is for them to lookat, a learning progression or a standard

(42:17):
or a rubric or something like that.
And think about like where.
Where am I at?
Do I understand this?
Do I get this like with,without having it auto graded?
So I think there's kindof two pieces to it.
Um, and that's a really strong point thatsome of those tools where they're showing
what they've done or reflecting on theirjourney would be really powerful too.
I like that a lot.
Yeah.
I want to throw into like someof the old school ones still

(42:38):
have some value here too.
like even though Knowt throws someshade at them, uh, using Quizlet
to do flashcards, like if you'vegot access to Quizlet and you're
using that, nothing wrong with that.
I'm a Quizizz fan nice.
Because I could just send out a link andkids could just practice in a variety
of different game modes and thingslike that to get some data in there.

What I like about Quizizz is that, you can use a, like, the AI to help
you with explanations for the question.
So why did I get it right?
Why did I get it wrong?

Jake (43:05):
Oh, that's a good point.

that it can be built in there.
and then they also have thelike cool accommodation profile
that you can set up for students

Jake (43:12):
Yes.

who need that support.
So,

Jake (43:14):
Yes.
Yeah.
Two, two great things that they'veadded in recent years that those,
that AI feedback, And the, andyou can use AI to generate your
questions and things like that too.

Yeah.

Jake (43:24):
and of course you want to check that, but then the accommodations
in Quizizz is just amazing, thedifferent features they have in there.
And you can say, this kid alwaysgets reduced choices in their
multiple choice questions.
And it just always eliminates two of thewrong answers or whatever for them, which
is really wonderful that it has, lotsof accessibility features built into it.
By design, which is great.

(43:44):
and then, Kahoot I know also doessome of that kind of stuff too.
So some other great features.
They're just doing some simplestuff where, they could self assess
and we just wanna give kids theopportunity to continually be
finding out, do I understand this?
Where am I at in I learning of this?
and put them in the driver'sseat of knowing that, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

Jake (44:02):
Yeah.
Wow.
This was great stuff, Shantel.
Lots of great ideas.
I expected maybe like Shantel wouldbring me one or two, like new ideas.
You're like blowing my mindwith all the new stuff.
I'm now gonna spend the rest ofmy day exploring all these things.

Well, I'm glad that I could, you know, derail your plans for the day.

Jake (44:20):
Anytime my plans are derailed to explore education things is a good day.
I am good with that.
Well, thank you so much for visitingtoday and for joining us Shantel,
and for all the sharing, like I saidearlier, Shantel's contact information,
will all be in the show notes.
Go in there, click follow, and andengage with her, ask her questions if
you got any, either about, Grandma's,gumbo recipe or, Mount Rushmore or

(44:43):
the Abraham Lincoln, impersonatoror about, one of these ed tech tools
or strategies that she shared today.
reach out to her.
Thanks so much for being here, Shantel.

Thanks for having me.
I had a blast, you know, talkingabout all things, ed, techy volcanoes,
you know, really pulling on myknowledge for some of these concepts.
No, I had a great time.

Jake (45:03):
Thank you for being here.
We appreciate it.

Thanks.
All right.
Such a fun time havingShantel on the show.
As you could tell from havinglistened, she had so much good
insight and was so fun to talk to.
I'm so glad I finally got to have her on.
I hope you'll all follow herand check out more of her work.
Uh, now I'd like to dive into some.
EDU or EdTech News, to share with you,I've got, four different pieces here.

(45:26):
First up in EdTech News, I recentlydug into Google's policies for
generative AI use with students.
Uh, a while back, , they made Geminiavailable for teens using their Google
Workspace for education accounts.
So teens that's 13 and up, if they'reon their Google workspace for education
school account, they now couldpotentially have access to Google Gemini.

(45:49):
Uh, if you haven't heard about thisyet, it might just be because your
school hasn't turned it on, but if yourschool chooses to do so, it's totally
free to set that up for them to use.
Google reports that this is a. Teenfriendly version, not the regular
version of Gemini, but a teenfriendly, school friendly version
built with safety front and center.
the blog post with the announcement,which I'll, I'll link in the show notes,

(46:10):
but the blog post with the announcementsays that there are content guardrails
to block age inappropriate material a.
Fact checking feature that encouragesstudents to verify info and
even some AI literacy resources.
So one of them is a short videothat's co-signed by two two groups
called Connect Safely and the FamilyOnline Safety Institute, FOSI.

(46:34):
I don't actually knoweither these organizations.
Well, uh, if you do let me know your take,but they position themselves as advocates
for Kids' Privacy and Safety online.
So it's good.
If those are good organizations, whichI assume they are, it's good having them
partner with Google to make sure thisstuff is safe for kids to have access to.
What really caught my eye aboutthis access to Google Gemini for

(46:55):
teens with their school accountsis this learning coach feature
that they're saying is coming soon.
It's not out yet as of the timethat I'm recording this, but they
say learning coach is coming.
They describe it as a custom Geminiversion powered by their tool.
LearnLM LM Standing for language model.
So we call somethinglike Gemini or Chat GPT.

(47:16):
Those are.
Large language models, LLMs.
This is a LearnLM, so it's their tool.
It's a language model for learning.
and they're saying that it helpsstudents study with step-by-step guidance
with quizzes and with games about thething that they're learning about.
So basically it's like an AI tutor now.
It's not out yet.
I haven't seen it.
I'm eager to see what it's like, butI'm excited about the potential of it,

(47:37):
whether that excites or concerns you.
However you feel about it.
It's definitely something tomake sure that you're aware of.
admins heads up.
I wanna point out, as I said earlier, thatthis whole feature set is off by default.
So you've got the wheelhere if you wanna enable it.
you have the ability to do that byflipping the switch in the admin console.
If you don't want kids to have accessto it, you've got that option too.

(47:58):
I should point out, I'm not a Googleadmin console person, but I'm guessing
that this falls under that changewe talked about in a recent episode
where schools need parent permission.
To allow student access tothese non-core student services.
I'm assuming this is non-core, so theyautomatically have access to Google Drive
and Google Classroom and Google Docs.
I'm guessing that this, uh, teen schoolversion of Google Gemini is not a core

(48:23):
service, which means parents will needto give permission for their kids to have
access to this as they probably should.
That, that should be the case.
so I'm sure some of youare hyped about this.
I'm sure others of you are side eyeingit hard, feeling a little suspicious
of it, and I wanna hear it all.
share your thoughts on Blueskywith the #EduDuctTape, or you
could send me a voice message atSpeakPipe.com/EduDuctTape and we could,

(48:47):
uh, share your insights in the show.
And hey, if you have tried anyof this with your students, I'd
especially love to hear from you.
So our next item is aboutcreating Google Slides.
Now, if you are anything like me withyour Google Slides, there are two modes
that you have when you make slides.
Mode one white background, black text.

(49:08):
Just get the content in there becausethere's no time to make it look nice.
That's my first mode with Google Slides.
Mode two is meticulously crafted slideswith a color palette that's totally
on brand and transitions that are.
Chef's kiss, but I barely finishedthe content because I spend
way too long in the visuals.
Those are my two modes, and Iliterally have no in between.

(49:31):
It's either.
White background, black text,no visuals or beautiful visuals.
Not all the content, no in between.
And in both cases, time isthe issue that's affecting me.
Either I don't have enough time tomake the slides look good, or I spend
so much time making them look goodthat I don't get all the content in.
So when companies in edtech tools talk about.

(49:52):
AI powered slide creation tools.
My ears perk up.
I'm definitely listen, listening,that's very interesting to me.
Um, so joining that list of AIpowered slide creation tools is a
tool I heard about recently calledAlayna AI that's A-L-A-Y-N-A ai.
It's an add-on for Google Slides,that generates full presentations from

(50:14):
prompts, articles, even YouTube videos.
So you tell it what you want or yougive it something to base it on and
it generates a presentation for youin Google Slides, meaning you can then
edit it, but you just type in thattopic or upload some materials or give
it an outline and boom, you've gotyour structured ready to go slide deck.
Now there are some AI slidescreation tools out there that

(50:34):
will do this, and you just get.
White background, black textcontent is relatively on point,
but they don't look pretty.
That's fine.
Uh, others, maybe it looks great,but it doesn't have the content.
That's great too.
But in Alayna ai, it's notjust like a rough draft or a sad
set of black and white slides.
It adds engaging images, detailedspeaker notes also to support

(50:54):
you as a teacher or presenter.
And it uses professionallydesigned educator friendly
templates to make it look nice.
So
basically, you're gonna get slidesout of this tool that don't scream.
I made this during the last fiveminutes of my planning period.
So the slides actually look good.
Uh, and it also supports allgrade levels and subjects, and you
can adjust content for differentlearning levels or even languages.

(51:17):
Super handy fordifferentiation, which is great.
With that language differentiationand learning level differentiation.
You can always make more slides.
Based on the needs of your learners.
Now, before you dive into using Alaynaai, a few things to know from their terms
of service and their privacy policy.
First of all, this is for educatorsonly because you've gotta be at
least 18 to create an account.
So you cannot use this with your students.

(51:39):
You can present the slides toyour students, but you can't have
them use Alayna AI to make slides.
Uh, it also has a limited knowledge base.
So unless you're using the web researchfeature, the AI's info stops at 2021.
So double check anythinginvolving current events.
And last, think about privacy.
Anytime you use an ed tech tool,definitely an AI ed tech tool.

(51:59):
Don't include student data.
Stick to general lesson content.
Understand that your prompts and thefiles that you're uploading are being
processed by third party models.
That's open.
AI and anthropic are the AI modelsthey're using, but they're not being
used to train the ai, so it is goingoff to that third party AI model
to process them, but they're not.
Then taking that in and using it to trainthe AI and finally your data, so those

(52:22):
things you upload and stuff like that isstored securely, which is good and stays
on there for 30 days before deletion.
So it's good that it's deleted.
But maybe most importantly withai, you know what I always say, AI
generated content is not always perfect.
So proofread what it gives toyou, make your tweaks, and then
let me know how well did it do.
I want to hear about it.
I, I've watched some videos, I'veexplored some resources, but I

(52:44):
haven't really used it that much.
So I'd love to hear from you.
How did it do when you triedAlayna ai, um, or if you prefer
an alternative to Alayna AI
let me know, I'd love to hear about it.
Uh, #EduDuctTape on Bluesky orspeakpipe.com/eduDuctTape to drop
a voice message to be on the show.
Next up, Padlet just added a littlesparkle to its sandbox feature, sparkle.

(53:08):
Sparkle.
So before I get into what the sparkle is,for those of you who are familiar with
Padlet, but haven't used Padlet Sandboxyet, let's talk about what that is.
Padlet Sandbox is theircollaborative digital canvas.
It's their Google Jamboard alternative.
Honestly, they came out with it rightaround the time Google announced
that Jamboard was going away.
So it's their alternative to Jamboard.

(53:29):
It's got more features thanJamboard, which can be a good
thing if you like features, or itcould be a bad thing if you really
like the simplicity of Jamboard.
but, Padlet Sandbox is designedfor drawing, writing, dropping
in media, building interactivelessons or presentations and more.
So you can do lots of stuff in here.
And now along with that, lots of stuff.

(53:51):
They've added some additional featuresto make Sandbox a little more fun too.
So what they've added are sound effectsand visual effects that you can have
trigger when students click on objects.
So you want some confetti whenthey pick the right answer.
You want some fireworkswhen they finish a project?
Want an applause sound when theyopen the next card in a slideshow.

(54:11):
All possible in Padlet Sandboxand all fun, uh, setup also is
super simple for doing this.
When you add an object, you'llsee a little FX button, the
letter's fx, you click that button.
You could choose from six differentvisual effects and 181 sound effects.
Yes, 181.
Why not stop at 180?

(54:31):
I don't know.
That other one must have been awesome.
Anyhow, I I, I'm fully expecting someonethat's listening to this right now to
build a lesson using only farm animalsounds from this effects library.
Please let that person be you.
I. And then please send me a link.
I should point out that these effects inPadlet sandbox only work in play mode.

(54:53):
So When you're editing, you'renot gonna trigger any of those
effects when you click on thingsin the edit mode, distraction
free, which I think is really nice.
But once you're presenting, then it'sgame on for all of these effects.
Moo, quack, applause, fireworks.
Ooh, ah.
They're all gonna come up when you're in.
play mode, presentation mode.
Uh if you want to see someexamples of what this looks like.

(55:14):
The blog post also shows examples likea clickable US climate map or a who
wants to be a Millionaire Quizizz thatreacts with the right or wrong sound
effects based on the answer you give.
Uh, is that your final answer?
Hmm.
Oh, wait, I didn't ask you a question yet.
My question is, have you playedaround with these features yet?

(55:34):
I wanna see what you came up with.
Tell me all about it.
Drop your ideas on Bluesky with#EduDuctTape, or send me a message
at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.
Bonus points, by the way, for anyonethat includes a goat noise in their,
in their Padlet sandbox, that'sbonus points in a game in which
we're not actually counting points.

(55:56):
Alright, we're gonna pivot alittle bit for today's final piece.
This is not your standard EdTech newsupdate, but it's actually a podcast
recommendation about EdTech ish things.
And trust me, it is worth a listen.
It's so worth a listen that I mayeven listen to this episode I'm
gonna share with you a second time.
I listened once.
I loved it.
I might go listen again.

(56:17):
Um.
It is an episode of the podcast searchengine, which I had not heard of.
I have not heard of their host PJ Vogt,I believe is how you say his last name.
Uh, I had not heard of him either,but recently I discovered that they
dropped an episode titled, whatShould We Do about Teens using ai?
To do their homework.
Now, this episode originally hadthe much cooler title, Playboi

(56:39):
Farti and Is AI Homework Machine.
And yes, that title alone did pullme in to listen to the episode
and you'll understand the PlayboiFarti reference when you listen.
Anyhow, the episode features a teenager.
That's where the PlayboiFarti part comes from.
Explaining his logic on why usingAI to do homework is totally fine.

(57:00):
And so I think you'll find itcompelling just to listen to that.
It also features an author named JohnWarner, who is an educator and author.
Uh, his book is headed more thanWords, which dives into this exact
topic and other angles on writingeducation and why writing is about
more than just the words, right?
Uh, the conversation is thoughtful.

(57:21):
It actually kind of hurt my brain.
But in a good way.
I didn't walk away from theepisode with any clear cut answers.
I don't think you will either.
But I did walk away thinking moredeeply about these issues and thinking
about it from some new perspectives.
And I think you will too.
Uh, especially in the last few minutesof the episode where the episode
lands on something that really stuckwith me, which is the importance

(57:43):
of talking to our learners about.
The use of ai.
So if you're feeling all kinds ofconflicted about AI in the classroom,
or just want to hear a teen make asurprisingly compelling case for never
writing another essay himself, oryou're simply curious about the Playboi
Farti thing that I mentioned, thisepisode is definitely worth your time.
I really enjoyed it.

(58:03):
Um, I'll leave a link in the show notesand after you listen, uh, drop your
thoughts on Bluesky with #EduDuctTape.
Or leave me a message atspeakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.
So Tuck may not offer much inthe way of real time feedback,
but he is an excellent snuggler.
M2 from today's sponsor, not ascuddly, but those happy digital

(58:27):
eyes on the screen, almost asadorable as tuck's puppy eyes.
You're gonna wanna gocheck this out on the site.
You'll see what I mean.
And once you do, you'll start imaginingthose sweet eyes watching you as you
teach ready to offer live support.
Or help you reflect withMirror Talk afterwards.
You can even sign up for afree demo in your school.
Just head to swivl.com/m2.

(58:48):
That's swivl.com/m2.
Again, swivl.com/m2.
Oh wait, Tuck's givingme a different look.
What's that one mean?
Oh, I think he's gotta go potty.
Bye everyone

Jake (59:23):
today our guest is Shantel Lott.
I said Shantel instead of Shantel,and I was planning on saying Shantel.
Uh,

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