I Tried to Flip My Class with Google NotebookLM... and It Failed- Episode 53
00:00:00 Jon Bergmann: How I tried to use Notebook LM to flip my class. That's today's topic on the Reach Every Student podcast.
00:00:14 Jon Bergmann: Hi, I'm your host, Jon Bergmann, and in the past few weeks I've been playing around with a lot of AI things. But one, of course, notebook LM A lot of you have been playing around with this, and I was dialoguing with a colleague and the idea came up as we were chatting is how could we flip our class with notebook LM? You see, one of the problem I was trying to solve was that if a student is, say, watching, consuming content in what in the world we call the independent space. The homework space, if you will, is, if a student's watching a video or reading some text or whatever it might be, or listening to a podcast. They don't have the opportunity to interact and ask questions. And so I spent some time dialoguing, if you will, if that's the right word with Gemini and say, what would be the best format? Because maybe you don't know this, but in Notebook LM, they have a new feature called the interactive feature. And so, here's what I did. number one, I uploaded my content to Notebook LM. So I uploaded, a couple of videos that my students would have normally watched. I also uploaded the contents of the textbook that our students use to notebook LM. And then I had it make a audio podcast. You could also make a video. I had to make a video too. And then what I decided to do is I wanted to then assign my students to interact with this, because then they could they I wanted to require that they would click this interactive button. They can interrupt the podcast hosts, the AI hosts and ask them questions. And so I said, I think this could work. I dialogued back and forth. I wondered, is there I could share this is where I could track how they did it. And between Gemini and this, you know, half hour conversation with Gemini, the the system that they came up with or we came up with, AI is not a real person. So the system that that that seemed to work in the context is, is that I had them. I shared the Google LLM with my students. This is the plan at least. And then I had my students. I was going to have my students listen to the podcast interrupt it, but I wanted some record of that. And because then what they could do and then I found a prompt, a particular prompt, and Jim and I helped me with this prompt. And then they would put this in the notebook LLM and it would summarize the conversation that they'd had. So it sounded like a good plan. And I said, well, let me first do it myself. And so I sat down and I took notes on the Google LLM podcast, and I interrupted it frequently and asked questions. And I really had a very satisfying experience. One thing I noticed is that when I was doing it, I didn't have like a concerted time. So this, this audio file was, let's say fifteen minutes long. I think it's about what it is. So it was about fifteen minutes, but I didn't have a full fifteen minutes devoted. I'm a teacher, right. So things get interrupted. And so I would just pause it and I would come back later. But it would. This is one of my beefs, is it? Didn't remember where I'd stopped, but I just interrupted and said, hey, can you start at this point? It had to do with like rockslides and landslides. Can you start where we transition from a rockslide to a slump? I've already listened to this part of this audio podcast, and they would they would pick right back up. And I had a very satisfying experience of interacting and learning with the notebook. So I said, all right, I'm ready to do this, right. So I set this all up. I explained to my students how they were going to do this, and it was a fail. I shared the notebook with all the students. By the way, this was a pain. I had to actually share it with each of the students. I couldn't just share a link to it because I created the notebook. One of the things in the dialogue back and forth with Jim and I was, if you're in notebook, l'm the person who owns the content is the person who has access to the data. So if a student uses my notebook, they can't I don't get their data because it sounds like a good idea from a, you know, FERPA thing or whatever is is I want, you know, we want to protect student data. So anyways, it the students had a lot of problems. They kept having to restart it. And then and sometimes it would randomly restart on them. And, and they did not like the fact they had to keep interrupting. And then for some reason, and it may be because of how I set things up. If you're listening and you figured this out, talk to me. It seemed to not remember, at least as the reporting of my students. And they really did try that when they would like copy this prompt which said, summarize all of the questions and produce a report. ET cetera. Etc.. And so the idea is they were going to do this prompt, and I had given them the prompt. Then they would copy and paste that into a Google form, and then I would have access to those and I could, I could then use AI to summarize the AI's summaries of each of the kids. That was that was the plan, but it just didn't work. And so as I think forward, what could notebook LM do? So Google, if you're listening to this, you need some improvements. is there a way to create another system where instead of if I create a notebook, could I not just share it, but like assign it to students? Could it be incorporated into sort of the same way that you have Google Classroom? Now? I don't use Google Classroom. I use our our our learning management system. D two L Brightspace it doesn't matter. Find a way that it's shareable but then somehow trackable to what students do and I can assign portions of it. I also had to create the video, and the students had access to the video, and they could do all this stuff because, see, I've uploaded these contents for them to have access to. Now, I know the students can do that, but that feels like more of a heavy lift. There's a very specific, narrow thing. It was one lesson, and I've done it once. And so that would be my recommendation. I think another thing I would love to see is that if you're in interactive mode and a student listens to the video or the podcast, the audio file, then what I would like is it to know that they listen to the first ten minutes, interacted with it, and they just, hey, maybe the prompt could be, hey, do you want to pick up where you left off? And I think that could not be that difficult for them to do. like I said, my the thing I'm trying to do is build an interactivity in the independent space. And so I wonder if there is some other way that this could be done, Maybe GoogleLM is not the answer to do this. So recently on one of my X accounts, I posted about how I was going to be flipping with notebook or at least make an attempt. And one of my followers, Hani Fidel, he has said that there's this new tool out there. It's called Sky low Skylo Dot AI, Sky AI. And this is the idea, I think they're trying to solve this problem. So maybe the problem that I am trying to solve where they have like interactive video. So I need to go play with this. My next tool to try out. I think there's a lot of power. This is a this is a niche that could be really filled as a way for students to interact with with, with video content, with an AI kind of in the background. So anyways, I, I'm trying to solve this problem. I'm really loving some of the features of notebook. I am going to be using Notebook LM even this week. So our students we are approaching finals week. This is we have two weeks before finals. We have one more week I guess, and then finals week. And I have created a review guide. So they have access to all the resources. And I'm going to have them create their notebook LMS to prepare for their final exams. And I think that's going to be very useful for the students. And that's really the plan for notebooks. So maybe I'm using, you know, I'm putting a square peg in a round hole. And and again, you know, I was talking I was in a group last night talking with some colleagues, about AI. And as we were having a conversation, one thing that one of the guys really said made a lot of sense. He's devoting about a half an hour a day to just reading about AI or playing with an AI tool. I am convinced that AI is going to be where we're at in the future. There are lots of problems with it. There are lots of issues that we're facing with AI. I think ethically, in so many ways, there's there's the real chance that it could cause stupefaction and loss of critical thinking skills. Unless we really think this through carefully, we do not want to do what we've done to our students with social media and just let it happen willy nilly. That was a disaster for students and mental health and all the kinds of things that that brought and that can happen. And honestly, it will happen with AI things for many students. But those of us who care about our kids, we want to find good ways to use AI because they're going to get into the job market someday, and they're not going to be just having to work independently with just their brain. They will have a copilot with them AI to help them, and think and whatnot. So it's important that we teach them how to use it in a way that's that's that's good. Not just from a, you know, academic integrity perspective, but from the way in the perspective of how to help kids navigate this new world. This is, as I've written in other places, this is the fourth industrial revolution, and we need to rethink about what that's going to look like. And it's going to change the world in ways we can't even conceive at this point, whether you like it or not. So it's so important that we teach them how to use it in ways that are going to help them thrive and become better humans more than we than anything else. I mean, that's that's that's my heart is how do we teach them to use that? And yeah, so I diverted from the main topic about notebooks. But that's kind of the point is I want to teach the students good uses of, of AI so that that will help them rethink, just get used to using the tools in ways that are productive and not destructive to their to their, to their brains. So anyways, maybe the title of this podcast should be. I tried to flip my class with notebook buck LM and it was a fail. Which it was. I may go back and try to do it again and tweak the settings, but at this stage I'm a little bit not hopeful, at least in this instance. And so my next little half hour stint I think, is this sky flow thing. I want to try it out and see if that, solves the problem I'm trying to solve. Right. Getting students to have a ways to interact with a flip video when the teacher is not present. That's always been one of the weaknesses of the flipped classroom is that when a student is stuck and they are watching a video at home or whatever, they can't ask a question. But AI should be able to solve this. Maybe this new tool is is the bee's knees. We'll see.
00:10:59 Jon Bergmann: Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like it, share it with a friend. Click the subscribe button. You know the deal. Have a great, great day. Hey, Jon Bergmann out.
