Teachers are excited about Google’s NotebookLM … an app you can use to create incredible resources like audio overviews, video overviews, slides, infographics and more …

… and they’re all based on the sources YOU give it (articles, websites, your textbook chapter, etc.).

It can take a bit to understand how it works, but once you do, it can become a workhorse to make resources for you and keep your students engaged.

Today, we’re releasing our newest online course — Getting Started with NotebookLM for Teachers!

🎁🎁 BONUS: It’s on sale for 25% off through the end of May!

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ What Students Are Actually Saying About School AI Policies (via New Haven Register) — Students are asking districts for clearer AI expectations, more consistency between classrooms, and better communication around acceptable use.

2️⃣ Schools Are Becoming the New Battleground for AI Adoption (via Business Insider) — Parent backlash over Chromebooks, AI tools, and screen-heavy instruction is intensifying, putting pressure on districts to justify their technology decisions.

3️⃣ AI and Career Readiness: Why Schools May Need to Rethink “Future-Proof” Skills (via Axios) — Education and workforce leaders argue that communication, judgment, and directing AI systems may become more valuable than traditional technical skills alone.

Last week’s poll: Which is your favorite statement related to student AI literacy?

Which is your favorite statement related to student AI literacy?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Always be critiquing every output. (15)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Use lessons instead of bans. (11)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Model transparent AI usage daily. (8)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Invite students to the table. (9)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other ... (0)

Always be critiquing: While essential and easy to remember (ABC: Always Be Critiquing), it's not enough just to tell students to do it. They must be taught how to critique- what to look for and what to ask. — L. Crunk

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🗳 Poll: Best NotebookLM feature for admins

Instructions:

📝 NotebookLM for admins: 8 practical uses

If you ever feel like you’re drowning in documents, meetings, policies and information overload, NotebookLM can probably help.

NotebookLM (http://notebooklm.google) is Google’s research assistant tool. Here’s how it works:

We just released a new online mini-course — Getting Started with NotebookLM for Teachers — that shares how to use the tool but also the power tips and tricks to make the most of it.

(FYI: It’s 25% off through the end of May 2026.)

Here’s how to enroll:

Want to know how this powerful tool can impact your work as a school leader? Here are 8 of my favorite ways NotebookLM can support admins:

1. Make sense of long documents on the go with audio overviews — When you get a huge PDF file or a set of long documents and you need to make sense of them quickly, use NotebookLM. Throw them into a NotebookLM notebook as sources. Then use the chat feature to get summaries, quick answers, and explanations.

2. Get quick answers from policy documents — If you have handbooks or long policy documents, it can be a hassle to find a quick answer. But if you put them in a NotebookLM notebook, just use the chat feature to get your answer. Bonus: NotebookLM shows you where it found the answer so you can see it in context.

3. Create resources aligned with curriculum and standards — If you have curriculum and standards to meet, putting them in NotebookLM can help you to get standards- and curriculum-aligned answers — with guidance not just from one document but from all of them you’ve added.

4. Slides for presentations and PD — If you’re a school leader, you probably need to use slides to communicate with stakeholders — teachers, parents, board members, or other staff. NotebookLM makes beautiful slides that are aligned tightly with the sources you share. Bonus: You can ask for revisions to individual slides if you don’t like what it created.

5. Organizing information with infographics — Sometimes, in large documents, information about certain concepts is spread out throughout the document. Ask NotebookLM to organize all of the information about that topic in one infographic. Or ask for a side-by-side comparison of concepts that are discussed througout the document.

6. Prep for meetings — Gather all of your documents for a meeting together in one notebook. Use the “Reports” feature to organize information textually. Create infographics and slides that participants can take with them. And keep your NotebookLM notebook handy during the meeting for quick answers.

7. Analyze data — Testing data. School improvement data. Staff or parent surveys. School leaders have no shortage in data that can be analyzed. Use NotebookLM to quickly make sense of it, get insights into the most valuable points, and transform them into resources that help others to digest that data. (Note: Be sure there’s no personally identifying information (PII) in those files before uploading them.)

8. Make communication clearer and more visual — Infographics and slides can help your stakeholders comprehend concepts more easily. Video summaries can create understandable videos in “slides and voiceover” format about your content. Use the visuals — and anything else — you create anywhere you communicate, from emails to documents and beyond.

BONUS: Improve your AI literacy (and the AI literacy of those that work with you) — We’re always trying to better understand how AI works and its implications in our work. When we use NotebookLM to generate something, we can use the ABC Rule I share in my book AI Literacy in Any Class — “Always Be Critiquing.” Notice how AI handles its business. Ask critical questions. Be curious — and identify patterns that AI uses. This helps strengthen your AI literacy.

I’d love to hear about your experiences!

And, remember, if you’d like to check out the new NotebookLM online course, here’s what to do …