BOOK RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT: Three titles -- including my own!

I've been fortunate to have my writing published over the years, starting of course with this blog, and continuing with other wonderful institutions.  I've also been quoted in a few books over the years as well (such as here and here). Recently, however, I've been a contributing writer to a few titles:

• In Dr. Karin Hess's Applying Depth of Knowledge and Cognitive Rigor (Teachers College Press, March 2025), I provided one of its "Stories From the Field" where I discuss my collaboration with Lexie Bewley-Gilley of Bullitt Central High School (Bullitt County Public Schools).  We took Lexie's tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) social studies activity and found ways to deepen its DOK.
• In a collection edited by Dr. Barbara J. Smith, I wrote a guest chapter about my journey with Kentucky Educators for Role-Playing Games.  I am humbled to join contributions from such educational luminaries like Rick Wormeli and Doug Reeves!  Look for Urgent Care for Educators: Situating Responsibility as a Way for Educators to Transform School Cultures (Brill) when it releases in July.

I didn't plan on the release schedule above to be a ramp-up of sorts -- or a thematic refrain on the topic of TTRPGs in schools -- but serendipitously, that's what it now appears to be. I'm excited to announce that my first education book will be published by McFarland, with a tentative release date of late 2025!

Promotional art only; cover art is still being finalized. For an online PDF version, click here.

Tabletop Role-Playing Games in the Classroom: Infusing Gameplay into K-12 Instruction will be part of McFarland's "Studies in Gaming" series.  For more details about the book's content, you can visit here.  To keep up to date on release information, including when the pre-order link goes live, please sign up here.

I will have plenty of thanks for many people that helped me get to this point of my educational journey where a published book was possible -- my Acknowledgements section will be lengthy! -- but for now, I'll just say that I'm humbled to have this opportunity to share my passion on how TTRPGs can positively impact student learning.

A Visit to Western STEM Magnet High School's new eSports Arena

Late last year, a video came across my LinkedIn feed.  It was a ribbon cutting ceremony at Jefferson County Public School's Western STEM Magnet High School, celebrating their newly built eSports Arena and multimedia learning space:

I was blown away by what I saw, and reached out to Western's Principal Melanie Weaver and Project Manager Greg Fehr about the possibility of facilitating a visit for OVEC educators (and others!) to see the space in person.  Melanie and Greg enthusiastically accepted, and on February 13, our caravan arrived!

Before discussing the eSports arena, I'll share some school demographics for Western.  This is Western's first school year as a district-wide magnet program, with four learning pathways: Culinary Science, Public Health Discoveries (Data Science), Computer Science, and - as the most relevant pathway tying into their arena - Digital Design and Gaming Development.  Western currently has over 400 students. As a sign of their diverse student population, their current freshmen class comes from 22 JCPS middle schools and represent 13 zip codes.

Melanie Weaver, Western's Principal

Greg Fehr, Western's Project Manager

At first, Western's arena project faced an uphill battle, as the school tirelessly problem-solved how to renovate an existing area with working tech at an agreed budget.  To share one of several challenges along the way,  they had to figure out how to consistently provide air conditioning to the space so that its high performing computers didn't overheat.  Vendors such as Creative-Image Technologies and Extron helped Western manifest their vision.  Finally, by December 2024, it was ready for students. 

Computer and tech specs, courtesy of Halston Turner with C-it.

The arena ended up at a whopping 4300 square feet, with a "shoutcast station," a competition area, a separate production studio room, and two instructional spaces that can serve multiple classes simultaneously.  Not only is Western's eSports arena easily the biggest in a Kentucky K-16 school, it would likely rival the size of many across the nation.  Greg mentions one of the design intentions was to have a "wow" factor for students, and it succeeds!   

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Besides all of the amazing technology, we can't forget about the learners!  We were able to interact with some students during their Game Design and Development class, and were impressed by their engagement and their level of rigorous work. 

Despite creating such an incredible learning and competition space, Western is not resting on any laurels.  They expect to grow to 1000 students within the next few years, and soon want to have eSports tournaments both within JCPS and between other districts in the state.  Community partners like Louisville Geek are coming in to work with students. And the seniors at Western don't have to hang up their video game controllers when they graduate.  One of the day's guests was Mitch Greenwell, Director of eSports & Sports Administration Professor at Bellarmine University, and a consultant for the arena project.  Mitch reminded us that Bellarmine has an eSports Management Minor, and offers scholarships for players, as many colleges now do across the nation.

Overall, the visitors and I had all of our expectations surpassed, and left inspired.  Here's to more schools innovatively transforming their learning spaces like Western STEM Magnet!

Special thanks to Melanie Weaver and Greg Fehr for hosting our visit, to Greg for providing many of the background details on Western and their arena project, and for Western's student ambassadors for helping our visitors around the building.

Note: eSports is also often stylized as "e-sports" and "Esports" (as you can see even in this post); my choice was arbitrary, but I wanted to be consistent in my wording for this blog entry.

Cruise Ship or the Titanic? Leadership Lessons to Consider When Launching a New Initiative

Recently I was attending an OVEC role group meeting, where educators of a similar job position came together for fellowship and learning.   During an open forum discussion, the topic of implementing high quality instructional resources (HQIR) came up.  (In Kentucky, schools have been legislatively mandated to adopt HQIR for our core content classes that have been vetted and meet certain criteria.)  An educator shared their district's challenges with following through with such change, particularly for teachers already struggling with barriers to overcome, and especially when it feels like forced compliance from outside pressures rather than motivated from the inside.  (There were a lot of shared head nods from those in neighboring districts.)  The educator finished the lamentation with the remark, "At least at our district, we are all on the same boat."  I then quipped, "But is the boat a cruise ship, or the Titanic?"

We shared a laugh in the room, and I made a few points about leadership -- in short, when there are very few silver bullets to solve complicated problems, and change is always painful (even when it's perceived as a good thing), a major part of the success in a new initiative comes down to the tone set by leaders and how they model a positive stance.  At the same time, this is not to dismiss the genuine ache felt by educators, whether it is in HQIR implementation or whatever other major change you are trying to enact.  We riffed for a few minutes on the metaphor of "cruise ship or Titanic" before moving on.

After the meeting, I kept ruminating on the idea, and that led to today's blog entry.  In the initiative you are currently in, do you see signs you are on the Titanic, or a cruise ship?  As a leader, how can you shift from the former to the latter?   (By the way, an educational leader here is broadly defined.  Of course a superintendent or principal has positional authority, but leaders in a district or school setting come in many forms.)

Here are signs what ship you're on.  Come aboard!  We're expecting you!

Titanic

• Reacting to icebergs vs. proactively charting a course around planned-for problems.  The Titanic was only outfitted for enough lifeboats for a third of its passengers.  (Interestingly, at the time, this was over the legal requirement.  It was assumed such lifeboats would calmly ferry passengers from a sinking ship to a rescue ship over several relays.)  The captain of the Titanic received several warnings about icebergs from other boats in the Atlantic, but chose to ignore them.  There was pressure for the Titanic's maiden voyage to land in New York in record time, so a "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead" mentality was pervasive amongst its crew.  All of these short-sighted choices forced the crew and passengers to react to a catastrophic disaster in real time.  Imagine if a proactive approach for the journey was done instead.  How can we chart a course around our known icebergs?  What pivots can we make when an unforeseen iceberg looms?  Do we have enough lifeboats (i.e. resource support in all its forms: human capital, guidance, funds in the budget) for the perils ahead?
• First class versus third class perceptions.  Passengers from the third class of the Titanic perished at a much higher percentage than the first class, although the difference in voyage experiences between the classes was obvious long before the Titanic hit an iceberg. What is the perception on your ship?  Do the admin have a different view of reality than the teachers?  Are there some perceived as sipping champagne while others feel they are being shoved into steerage without sunlight?  Is everyone's voices being heard not just equally, but equitably?  (From an equity perspective, the ones who are actually doing the hardest work of the change -- likely, the teachers in classrooms -- need more representation at the table, not just "a" seat at the table.)
• Rearranging the deck chairs.   It's an old Titanic joke about pointless action that may avoid facing the true crisis at hand, but in education we can find ways to make it even worse.  We not only ask the teachers to shuffle the components on their already spinning plates, we often add to the plates.  In other words, we don't just rearrange the deck chairs, we double them.  If we are asking our staff to do work while implementing needed change, let's make it genuinely purposeful in a way that actually does what the point should be: to help students.  While we are at it, it would be better to not simply add more to the plate, but find ways to transform the plate itself.  Putting band-aids on a broken system is the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs while the boat sinks.  Let's build a new boat instead!
• "And the band played on."  The story of the Titanic musicians continuing to play while people were rushing to life boats is traditionally presented as an example of stoic courage -- a way of setting a calm tone in the face of panic.  But seen in another light, it could be perceived as pollyannish at best, or insensitive at worst; to mix our analogies, our plucky musical leaders could be seen as Neros fiddling while Rome burns.  Yes, let's set a calm and confident tone, but let's also make visible signs that we recognize the struggle of our shipmates and they are not being ignored.

Cruise Ship

• Servant leadership.  A cruise line that hopes to stay in business knows they don't exist without their clientele.  Therefore, no one on a cruise ship, from the captain to the custodian, is above the main work of making the passenger happy.  One of the best things a leader can ask is, "How can I remove an obstacle in the way of your joy?"  A good leader listens; a great leader follows through with a promise to make things better.
• Personalized opportunities.  A popular cruise ship offers not just a single buffet table, but buffet tables of different cuisines for different levels of appetite.  A cruise director wants to not only offer a schedule of multiple activities, but makes sure there are entry points for a passenger regardless of their ability level (beginner, intermediate, advanced).  How can we make sure we personalize the learning for teachers in the face of our new initiative?  How can we guarantee there are multiple entry points, whether you are an excited innovator, a skeptical laggard, or somewhere in between?
• "All-inclusive."  Applicable to both vacation resorts and cruises, there is a real comfort (and joy!) knowing that every meal, drink and activity is already prepaid.  How can we make sure the total cost of the journey is factored in and taken care of before leaving the harbor?  We sometimes forget items like the cost of personalized learning (the facilitators, the staff stipends, etc. ) in light of only budgeting the annual subscription fee for the new tech platform.  Let's also remember that the "cost" to implement an initiative is not just money spent, but can also be calculated in time, sweat, and other metrics.  Furthermore, you should extend the idea of all items being included in the cost of our journey to all people being included.  Make sure the voices of the table are truly representative of who is affected by your initiative.  It's also better to fold in the skeptics early on to earnestly hear their concerns than to ignore them while they deflate morale from the margins.
• Docking for excursions.   (I thank OVEC's Chrissy Jones for this phrase!) Sometimes you just need to get off the boat, hit the shore, and see some new sites.  There's a psychological and physiological need why cruise ships build in visits to exotic ports into their cruising agenda.  Whether it's at the start of the initiative for inspiration, or in the middle for calibration and/or affirmation, or at the completion of certain phases to share and celebrate your successes, venture outward!  This could be visits to other schools or districts, or participating in conferences; this could be virtual or in-person.  That said, there is true power in the organic, natural bonding that occurs in a team that goes off-site together.  It's a social component that can't be replicated in a school hallway five minutes between periods, or in a faculty meeting jam-packed with need-to-know items.

It should be pointed out that in a school or district, there should be cruise ships within cruise ships: what is good for principals to do for their teachers is also good for teachers to do for their students.  Teachers should do their best to identify and remove barriers to student learning; they should be "guides on the side" to their students' personalized learning; they should intentionally plan ahead to include all learning styles and needs, while both hearing and empowering student voices; they should find ways to build community and extend learning of their students beyond the four walls of their building.

Let's end with a little levity.  As I gave a nod to already in a link above, while writing this entry I couldn't help but think of the theme song from one of television's "so bad it's good" series from the 1970's and 1980's.  Hum along with an excerpt of my parody lyrics!

Original image from this article; the copyright to the original logo art and theme song lyrics are reserved to their respective entities, and the parody image and lyrics are for educational purposes only.

LEARN, life's sweetest reward.

Let it flow, it floats back to you.

The LEARN Boat soon will be making another run,

the LEARN Boat promises something for everyone.

Set a course for adventure,

your mind on a new CLASSROOM.

LEARNING shouldn't hurt anyone:

it's an open smile on a friendly shore.

In the face of new initiatives and (often unfunded) mandates, let's do our best to create more open smiles and make the shores more friendly for our teachers and students.

The Potential Intersection of Megagames and Learning

What is a megagame (sometimes stylized as "Mega Game," "Megagame" or "MegaGame")?   Gen Con's 2024 program defined them thusly:  "Combining aspects of board games and [Live Action Role Playing],  megagames often involve dozens of players weaving interconnected storylines through multiple stages of play.  Each player is assigned a role (sometimes with a backstory, personality, or a secret goal), and as they play through multiple sub-games, the outcomes of their play drive the story of the larger game."  They are generally credited to have started in the United Kingdom by Jim Wallman in the 1970's, but the moment that really made the concept go viral was in 2014, when Wallman's megagame Watch the Skies was highlighted by Shut Up and Sit Down (warning: the article contains some adult language). In the last decade, megagames have become a staple of gaming conventions and major cities.  

The megagame definition could also be stretched to include other experiences.   For example, Andrew Ashby (proprietor of the game store We Geek Together in a Provo, UT mall) had a dream of beating the Guinness World Record of most Dungeons & Dragons players simultaneously playing the venerable tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), which stood at 500.   In April 2023, with the blessings of the mall owners and the help of a volunteer team of Dungeon Masters (DMs), Ashby staged a massive "megacampaign" across two hundred tables; each table had a DM and up to seven players battling through a scenario.  The battles and successes at each table contributed to an overarching narrative to defeat an ultimate "boss."  By the end of the day, Ashby achieved his world record dream by a country mile, with 1,227 players.  Another adjacent example closer to the classroom level are the dozens of role-playing historical simulations of Reacting to the Past (RttP), a curriculum first started by Mark C. Carnes of Bernard College (NY) over a decade ago.  Like a megagame, these simulations often involve 30+ college students in various, specific roles played over several instructional meetings.  While the use of RttP has spread to universities across the United States, they have recently also been adapted for high school as well.   

Nearly three month ago, I had the opportunity to attend my first megagame in person.  I had discovered Tony Dougherty and The Dukes of Highland last summer and periodically checked their website for the upcoming Kentucky megagaming schedule.  (The Dukes of Highland, while based in Louisville, have held events in multiple states and several cons.)  

Tony Dougherty, in costume as the "Lead Control."

Coincidentally, on one Saturday at the end of September, Dougherty was running It Came from the Skies, a variation of the classic Wallman scenario.  Although I was tempted to play, I instead thought it better to observe and take notes.  And with Dougherty's warm permission to join the fun, note-take I did.  

What first impressed me was the organization to keep nearly fifty players joyfully engaged.  Firstly, each participant was given a role of a near-present Earth nation which formed a team of four players (Head of State, Chief of Defense, Chief Scientist, and Foreign Minister); other options included playing as the Aliens, or as a member of the Press.  Dougherty was the Lead Control (a overall "Gamemaster"), with four staff members as the Control Team.  Each Control Team staff member ran one of the four role nation groups' "sub-games," where Aliens sometimes made appearances and the Press wandered around to cover the happenings.  (It's important to note that It Came from the Skies occasionally had dice rolling to determine outcomes, but megagames can either lean into or away from this mechanic.)  Over various turns, the nation players rotated in and out from their role group game back to their "country table" to share details and plan next steps, feeding into the mega-narrative.   As the day continued, the nations of the world had critical questions to answer:  Are the Aliens benevolent or here to invade us?  What should (and what can) we do about it?  And what diplomatic alliances should we make or betray along the way? 

Each nation team/table received a packet explaining rules, how their various roles worked, and more.

Like gamemasters (GMs) of a typical TTRPG, Dougherty and his Control Team offered guidance, made rulings, and imposed gaming structures, but the story was truly co-created by all the participants; the ending could not be pre-determined, nor could a "win" or "loss" for Earth be neatly defined.  That sense of uncertainty, urgency, agency and play added to a giddy feeling that stayed with the megagame until its conclusion.  Afterwards, Dougherty, the Control Team, and the players socially debriefed at a local bar, sharing the behind the scene conversations they didn't hear and reflecting on choices they did or didn't make.  

I've joined Bluesky!

 Bluesky is a social media app that began in 2023 as an "invite-only" platform.  When it became publicly available in February 2024, it had three million users.  Since then, Bluesky has had rapid growth. In September 2024, it hit ten million users; last month, it achieved thirteen million users; this month, it has crossed over twenty million users and was the number one download of the Apple and Google Play app stores.  (Bluesky's growth is impressive, but to put that total number in perspective, X currently has 586 million monthly active users and Instagram has two billion MAUs.)

Generated with Gemini AI. Digital image, 11/23/2024.

In the last few weeks, I checked out the platform, liked what I saw, and decided to sign up.  It's free of course, and what could be seen as a positive sign of its current corporate independence, there are no Google or Facebook or Apple shortcuts to create an account; you have to provide an email address and date of birth.  My two new Bluesky account handles mirror my two main social media handles across multiple platforms:

• watsonedtech: bsky.app/profile/watsonedtech.bsky.social
• kyedrpg (Kentucky Educators for Role Playing Games): bsky.app/profile/kyedrpg.bsky.social

After using Bluesky for a bit, I wanted to share some quick thoughts and initial findings.  I should point out that last year I signed up for Threads (under the Meta umbrella of apps), and as you'll see below, I can't help but make some comparisons between the two.  

• The interface is very, very similar to X, which is not a shocker when you learn that Bluesky was started as a Twitter project under Jack Dorsey before Bluesky cut ties and went its own way.
• There doesn't yet seem to be options to post from Bluesky to other social media platforms, or vice versa.  This is in contrast to being able to choose for an Instagram post to simultaneously also post on your Threads, or quick shares of an article or Amazon item to X.  I imagine this will change as the popularity of Bluesky grows.
• You can text up to 300 characters!  (For X, it's 280, unless you pay for a premium account.)
• The browser interface is as adept and robust as the mobile app, an issue that plagued Threads when it first launched.
• There are more filters and options to choose what shows up on your feed than with most other major social media apps.
• Multiple hashtags work just fine and in the way you are used to experiencing them on X, Instagram, or Facebook.  A popular one for educators is #EduSky.  (That still remains a sticking point for me about Threads -- it launched without any such tagging, and even now only allows one "topic" per post.)
• My favorite part of Bluesky is the opportunity to create or find "Starter Packs."  Basically, creating a Pack means choosing a title, writing a description, and adding a group of users that fit around your described theme or topic.  (You can edit all of these elements at any time.)  Other users can see your Starter Packs under your profile, and when looking at its list of accounts can "follow all" or individually choose people to follow.  A nice bonus feature is that when looking at your Starter Pack, you can see only the posts made by the users listed in the Pack.  Here's one I made of Kentucky educators I have learned from over the years, and I'll likely add new friends as they join the platform.

Hope to see you where the blue wings flap!

What are your thoughts on Bluesky?  Post a Comment below.

Aurora Institute Symposium 2024

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be in New Orleans attending the annual Aurora Institute Symposium.   It was my fourth time over the last decade, and my second time presenting!  I discussed tabletop roleplaying games in the classroom, particularly from the perspective of personalized competency-based education (CBE) and equity.

Special thanks to my colleague Kathy House for taking photos of my session.

Besides my gratitude at being able to lead a session, there were plenty of memorable learning experiences, from keynotes to breakout sessions to chance encounters in the hallway.  Here are a handful of highlights:

• Rhonda Broussard was a keynote speaker. (Later, I purchased her book One Good Question and was excited to get it signed!) She helped me think differently about classroom inquiry by posing the following three characteristics of what makes a good question for students: 
• It's not about the teacher (don't reveal your own teacher bias).
• Anticipates multiple perspectives.
• Requires mixed-methods reflection (needs sources outside of yourself).
• There was a student panel (led by Broussard) which generated some great quotes.  Samarah Bentley, a freshman at LSU, pointed out that when looking at what we value in school, an educator's "investments reveal your intentions," and when including students in your learning space, it should be beyond tokenistic representation in your curriculum or just asking survey questions, but a true dialogue: "Not just input, but an exchange!"  When Broussard asked the students to pose one good question for us in the audience, David Ramirez (a student at New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics High School) gave a powerful plea: "Will you listen?"
• Representatives from CAST -- Melissa Sanjeh (Senior Professional Learning and Implementation Specialist) and Sherann Jackson-Alkins (Head of ABCD University HS, an alternative school in Boston) -- shared some wonderfully pragmatic and effective tools when universally designing for learning (UDL).    I particularly liked the website's interactive guidelines, as well as the idea of "journey mapping" to see the lesson/unit from the perspective of different students to determine barriers and plan for scaffolding.
• Another keynote by Sabba Quidwai on artificial intelligence reminded us that our concern that AI is producing the work and not the human doesn't quite fit how we treat assistive, collaborative writing in other contexts: "Politicians have speechwriters. Authors have ghostwriters. Musicians have songwriters. Entrepreneurs have investors."
• A panel on "Advancing Equity Through Grading Reform in K-12 Education" was led by Starr Sackstein (Mastery Portfolio), Bryanna Hanson (Learner Centered Collaborative), and Sierra Holtzheuser (SpacesEDU).   Among many good points and shared resources, I particularly appreciated Mastery Portfolio's glossary of equitable grading terms, Learner Centered Collaborative's CBE Reporting Playbook site, and Holtzheuser's reminder that digital portfolios should avoid a "scrapbook mentality." 
• Finally, it was good to run into old friends. Laurie Gagnon and Chris Sturgis reminded us where we've been and where we are going with CBE.  Karin Hess, Jonathan Vander Els, and Brian Stack have recently published a wonderful new book Elevating Competency-Based Learning in a PLC at Work (full disclosure: I'm quoted in the introduction and first chapter!) and ran a helpful session about effective professional learning communities.  With an introduction from David Cook (former Kentucky Department of Education Director of Innovation), Adrienne Usher, Jesse Bacon, and Michael Ekbundit shared how strategically and intentionally they have involved the Bullitt County community with implementing their Graduate Profile.  Sarah Snipes (the current KDE Director of Innovation), along with members of the University of Kentucky's Center for Next Generation Leadership (Susan Dugle, Karen Perry) and the Center for Innovation in Education (Gretchen Morgan), discussed Kentucky's journey toward a local assessment accountability system.  Last but not least, my OVEC colleagues Carmen Coleman, Lacey Eckels, and Rachel Albright presented on their portrait of a learner work with Kentucky's Fayette County Dixie Magnet Elementary School.

My embedded Wakelet collection below has an expanded story of my Symposium experience with additional resources and links.   Be sure to also check out social media posts from the event using the hashtag #Aurora24.

Google's NotebookLM

In the last several months, Google has noticeably stepped up its artificial intelligence AI game to compete with ChatGPT and others.  However, it is Google's latest release, NotebookLM -- still considered to be in its "Experiment," or beta, phase -- that is truly a showstopper.  

Your ability to access NotebookLM may depend on your Google Admin's controls, as well as the typical slow rollout of new Google apps to domains.   As I've done PD and demonstrated the tool over the last few weeks, I'd say half of the school districts in the room could use it, and half could not.  If you currently cannot access it, check back weekly and/or put in a ticket for your head IT admin.  (Like many optional Google products, your Google admin can choose whether only teachers should access it or if/when students can.)

How does it work?

Using NotebookLM requires being logged into your Google account.  After going to the platform's website, you are asked to create a new Notebook or play with several pre-made examples.  (After you create your first Notebook, you will go straight to a page where you can edit/view your Notebooks, create a new one, or explore the examples.)  From the beginning, it's important to point out that Notebooks created in educational domains may not be able to be shared or viewed outside your own district -- at least for now.  (Interestingly, that's not an issue for Notebooks made by a personal Google account.)

For a new Notebook, the first step is sharing resources.  Those fall in four buckets: uploading a file from your hard drive (for example, a PDF, TXT or MP3), sharing a Google file from your Drive (currently, only Google Docs and Slides), a URL of a website or YouTube video, or pasting some copied text.  There is a limit of fifty (!) sources you can share for a single Notebook.

After some seconds of analyzing your sources, you land on the "home" page of your Notebook, called the "Notebook Guide" (see the blue asterisk/text in the lower right, where you can switch back and forth from this to your "Notes" page).  At this point, you can edit the name of the Notebook at the top.  At the bottom, you see a field to put in your own questions or tasks about your sources.  It's important to note this is not a search engine; you're using the power of Gemini AI to delve into just your chosen sources!  You also see four other choices for exploration:

• Help Me Create:  several buttons to autogenerate certain structures related to your sources, such as a FAQ, Table of Contents, and a Study Guide.  Note that some of these, such as the Table of Contents, actually generates a ToC for each source, not everything you've attached.  Generated content goes on your "Notes" page.
• Summary: An overview of your sources.  
• Suggested Questions:  Notebook suggests three possible inquiries of your sources using Gemini AI to answer if clicked.  These can become part of your "Chat History" alongside any other custom questions or tasks you posit; this history is viewable by clicking the lower left text ("View Chat").
• Audio Overview:  this feature is too mind-blowing to just whiff over, so more on it in a moment.

On the Notes page, you see potential saved responses as discussed above, or you can "Add Note."  At first, this may seem like a typical text note, but when completed, you can checkmark one or more of these notes and blue buttons will appear below to "Help Me Understand," "Critique," "Suggest Related Ideas," or "Create Outline."  These are, of course, all AI powered.   Note the Gemini-powered input bar to type questions or tasks remains below as before.

Are you ever annoyed that AI provides output of info but you don't know where it came from?  That was an early complaint I had about ChatGPT (although to be fair, some later genAI like Microsoft Copilot has such transparency built in). NotebookLM tackles this by not only adding footnotes to its outputted inquiries to show its source, but with a click, you can go to that part of the source document!

Hover over the number, and its location in the source is previewed...

...and if you click the number, the source appears on the left, going straight to where it occurs (in this case, a particular Slide).

We now have to finally address Audio Overview.   While all of the previously described aspects of NotebookLM are pretty impressive, it's Audio Overview that gets the most oxygen when people discuss the tool.  In the upper right of your "Notebook Guide" page, hit "Generate" to create a "deep dive conversation."  This can take a few minutes to render.  Once ready, hit play, adjust the playback speed if you like...and I dare you not to close the lid of your laptop like I did, just to process what I just heard.  Google pointedly does not call it a "podcast," but it's hard not to think of one when you hear two hosts who sound very much like a man and a woman talking about the sources you've attached -- complete with informal interjections, thoughtful pauses, stutters, human-like rise and fall of intonation, and even laughter.  (It's also not a perfect simulation -- over the course of 8 to 10 minutes, there are several strange pronunciations, moments of flat affect, glitchy audio, and/or sound dropouts.)  I've marveled at quite a bit of AI over the last few years, but this feature had me floored.  Another interesting thing is that Google has apparently trained its AI on a significant amount of podcasts to recognize certain algorithms. For example, I created a Notebook around one PDF of how a teacher uses TTRPGs in his own classroom.  I never explained what a TTRPG was in the PDF, as this was considered given schema in its original context.  And yet, the Audio Overview took pains to define what a TTRPG is at the start, just as you would likely expect in a typical podcast for a general audience.  At the end, it even dreamed of other ways you could use TTRPGs in other classrooms, although again, that was not anywhere in the original PDF.   Last but not least, when the Audio Overview uses the second person, the audience is clearly "you" -- that is, the Google account who made the Notebook.  It's not a human podcast, but it may be the world's first personalized learning, machine-generated podcast.

Remember that you cannot currently share Notebooks outside of your educational domain.  However, click the three dots for the Audio Overview and you have the option to download it as a WAV file, which could then be shared however you like.  (Again, rules are different for personal Google accounts; in fact, NotebookLM allows you to create a URL you can share so that anyone can hear your Audio Overview streaming within a browser.)  Here's an example of an Audio Overview where my Notebook's sources included a Google Slides presentation I did at EdSpaces in November 2021 along with an Edutopia article.

Friends, we are in new AI territory.  And remember, NotebookLM is currently beta!

Google provides some informational disclosures on the Audio Overview feature.  The second bullet is particularly interesting, as I've already encountered "extra" information in my Audio Overviews.

Some findings and tips that have emerged as I've done some early (and albeit limited) tinkering:

• When you originally begin to start adding resources to a new Notebook, the process is different depending on the kind of source.  For example, if you select a hard drive file to upload, it will immediately begin building a Notebook after just one is selected; if it's a Google File, you could conceivably choose multiple Docs and Slides before Notebook creation starts.
• Once the Notebook is created, you can add or remove additional resources to your Notebook with the slideout panel from the left side. If you add or subtract any resources, however, the only way I've found to "reset" the Notebook with the updated info is to refresh and reload the entire tab.
• If you click on a single source on the left, Notebook will summarize just that one source; online articles are shown as a simplified version of the text.
• When connecting multiple sources, the amount of text/info in a long source may tend to dominate the others.  For example, I uploaded a 180 page PDF alongside my deck of 40ish slides, and my slide deck wasn't even acknowledged in the Summary.  When I uploaded the same slide deck with the Edutopia online article, both sources were singled out in the Summary and the outputs more balanced.
• When you leave and return to a Notebook, previously generated Audio Overviews are not immediately available to play, but have to be "retrieved" with a button push.  This usually is resolved much faster than the original time it took to generate, however.
• Could you break Gemini's attempt to find patterns and summarize if the sources (at least to human eyes) were random and in no way related?  Maybe.  It might be worth the experiment to see how Notebook perseveres to make sense of such chaotic data.

How could you use it?

From the student side, NotebookLM gives them the opportunity to create a body of content that they can interrogate with inquiry.  It clearly gives struggling students some scaffolding tools to wrestle with new material.  Imagine how much easier research can be if you use AI to scan a long document for particular information!   A teacher at a recent PD of mine pointed out that a teacher could create and share a Notebook as a kind of last minute "sub plans" activity -- have students interact with the notebook, including listening to the Audio Overview.  Since we know AI is not 100% accurate (although the footnoted sources to inquiries are a welcome touch of assurance!), I did a "yes and" to that idea and recommended a reflective analysis where students look for flaws either in programming execution or in the facts presented (by reading/listening to/viewing the original sources), but most importantly, how did NotebookLM better help them understand the content?

Downsides?

The ability to currently share your Notebook only within your own educational domain is a frustrating limitation, although considering that not all domains even have access to NotebookLM yet, it makes sense.  I also wish that if you clicked on a source in the left side panel, the source itself would open in a new tab (at least if it's a URL or a Google file).  Lastly, I think a large "reset" button after sources are added/removed would be more intuitive for a user.  Beyond these technical critiques (which, to be fair, may be addressed by the time NotebookLM goes alpha), AI makes us once again approach another instructional crossroads.  GenAI has already proven itself able to write essays, poems, and songs; what does it mean for students to learn how to synthesize and find themes when they can upload their three social studies primary documents to NotebookLM and produce a summary and a "podcast" within seconds?  The answer may be that NotebookLM can and will be used to produce first drafts where students analyze for errors and extend upon; to be a collaborative research partner; and models that students can learn from to imitate and improve.

I'll definitely be tracking this tool as it goes from "experimental" to full release in the months ahead!

 

This tool was first brought to my attention by Rebecca Simons of Murray State University's Kentucky Academy of Technology Education (KATE).  KATE has been around since 1996, and is a wonderful resource for emerging edtech tools, as well as opportunities for PD.  Consider joining the eduKATE community!