Google Vids (and other Google updates for Summer 2025)

Google has had a busy summer with plenty of updates, including a new product that I've finally had some time to play with: Google Vids.  But before we get to Vids, let's briefly cover some other territory that educators will find important to know.

If you're a teacher who has logged into Google Classroom lately, you've probably noticed that your workspace now includes Gemini baked in, and more specifically, has multiple tools at your fingertips to help you more effectively complete tasks.  It's clear that the popularity of the "custom bot dashboards" prevalent in several other AI learning platforms has encouraged Google Classroom to do the same. 

[Update 10/14/25:  Eric Curts created a deep dive video on the various pre-made AI tools inside Google Classroom, linked here (19:03)].

While the built-in capability of Gemini is currently only available for the teacher side of Google Classroom, Gemini itself is now available for students of all ages.  Additionally, Google NotebookLM (perhaps the most pragmatic AI tool I currently use) will also be available for "all ages in the coming months" (per a Google Workplace Team email sent June 17, 2025).  You can read more in Google's June 2025 blog announcement.  Of course, your Google Admin may choose to keep this toggled off for certain age groups (or for all of your students!) and/or for one or both tools; it's worth asking what your district's plan might be.  Remember that for educational accounts only, Google has made assurances that AI data and usage will remain private to the domain itself, usage will not train Google's AI machine, and inputs/outputs will not be human reviewed, as they first announced back in May 2024. 

Speaking of NotebookLM, it's perhaps no surprise that it continues to upgrade.  The output language can now be changed, and that can include the (in)famous "Audio Overviews."  You've likely been wowed by the Audio Overviews feature (and if you're like me, also a bit disturbed by its capacity for human mimicry); customization can now allow you to make them shorter or longer in length, or give the Overview specific topics to focus upon.  But perhaps the most dramatic leap for NotebookLM is the beginning of Video Overviews:

I was able to try this out on a personal free gmail account (upgraded features usually tend to chronologically lag behind for educational domains, so be patient if you don't see the feature yet).  I picked a Notebook with two sources that were focused on the topic of flexible learning spaces: a Google Slide conference presentation I did back in 2021 about the then just opened K-8 school Marnel C. Moorman in Shelby County, and a 2018 article in Edutopia. Despite only having those relatively short sources, the generation for what turned out to be a seven minute Video Overview took at least ten minutes on a Friday night.  While it's likely this will get better, or possibly be another incentive to go Pro (for faster generations?), I would caution you from expecting a Video Overview to load in the same short time it currently takes to generate an Audio Overview.  Yes, yes, you might be asking, but what was the quality?  Well...I was blown away, just like I was about Audio Overviews only a year ago.  As I'm still impressed and mulling over the possibilities of what an Audio Overview can bring to the table for learners, the Video Overview comes along. It basically creates your very own short documentary of your uploaded sources.  And like Audio Overviews, you can share or download the videos.  (In order to watch the video via a shared hyperlink, you have to share viewing rights to the entire Notebook.)  As always, the AI was not perfect, but I'll take some of the blame too. For example, my presentation had a quote from a different Edutopia article spoken by a teacher in a California school (attributed by the article name and hyperlink on the slide), but the video narrator mistakenly stated "as one of the MCM teachers Stacey Lamb said..," which, given the slide scanned superficially as is, seems a fair misunderstanding.  Watching the whole seven minutes, I found very little else to nitpick, especially considering if my goal was to create a sophisticated summarization of my sources.  Here's the Video Overview it generated for me, also downloaded and saved to my Google Drive:

Staying on the topic of videos: one of Google's tools getting some considerable press recently is Veo 3. This is another example of the continual evolution of text-to-video genAI in the marketplace; the outputs are longer, more sophisticated, and can now include AI-generated sound and dialogue.  It's impressive, and brings more ethical concerns, but I mainly passed it by for practical reasons -- it's not cheap, and therefore not likely to be in a typical K-12 teacher's classroom anytime soon.  (However, Google is offering a free year of their AI Pro plan to college students, if they redeem the offer by October 6.)

But if you are looking for a practical Google video tool for teachers and students, it's now finally time to discuss Google Vids.  In a nice flip, this is currently available for all educational users at no charge, but is not available for free/personal Google accounts.  Here's a quick elevator pitch to describe the tool: "An online video editor that's as easy to use as Google Slides."

Creating a new Google Vid is like creating most products in the Google Suite: it's an option for the New button in your Drive, or a choice on your waffle, or simply typing vids.new in your address bar.  There are templates you can choose from if you want to create your project more quickly.  

You can import media (such as Google Slide decks, audio files, and screencasts), make everything from scratch, or do a bit of both.  A tip: I think it's easier to "compose" the skeleton of your video by starting in Google Slides, then importing it into Vids. However, note that anything animated, or clickable, will simply "flatten" once it gets into Vids (after all, you can't hyperlink inside a video), much in the same way that Slides downloaded as a PDF may lose the same features.

Once in editor mode, you can easily add transitions between "scenes," or lengthen/shorten a scene by dragging it by the end.  You can also record a video or audio file to insert into your project, making choices like doing a voiceover a breeze.  One of my favorite features of Vids is Script, located in the sidebar.  You can type what you want to say and it will scroll like a teleprompter while you record your audio or video.  If recording a video, this also means you can look directly into the webcam while you speak.

This screenshot of creating a Script is courtesy of a Google for Learning course.

This screenshot of using a Script as a teleprompter while recording video is courtesy of a Google for Learning course.

Collaboration in Vids happens like a typical Google doc -- you can share viewing, commenting or editing rights to your project. If it's viewing only, the viewer will actually only be able to play the video from your project.  This deserves a bit of emphasis, because in a practical sense it means your Vid becomes a real-time living artifact just like a Doc or a Sheet; you could share a link just once and the viewer will always see the most recent updates, as opposed to having to delete an old video and resharing a new link to the latest uploaded version.  This alone can save significant time and increase workflow.  That capability aside, you can also download the final video as a MP4.

You can create Vids as an assignment in Google Classroom for your students!  First, create a template that you want students to customize and add their own text and materials. (One of the fun Inserts to consider is a "Video Placeholder," available in various cutout frames; when an editor comes across one of these icons, they can click on it to record their own video that will be automatically matted to the chosen shape.)  You can then assign it in Classroom, making sure it "force copies" for each student.  Students can open the assignment, edit it and turn in the Vid like any other Google doc.  Here's a short video about creating Vids assignments in Classroom, from a free Google for Learning course:

There is admittedly a cookie-cutter aspect that could occur when students are creating videos within the templated perimeters of Vids.  However, the intuitive ease of editing in Vids "in the cloud," as well as the ability to quickly share and collaborate, means that students should be able to spend more time on the content than on the clicking.  The bottom line: you can make polished videos in a fraction of the time it took before, and for free.  

This screenshot is courtesy of a Google for Learning course.

It's worth noting that if you pay for an upgraded AI license, you can also use Gemini inside of Vids to create genAI video content or voiceovers.  Here's a video (7:59) showing how Gemini integration with Vids works:

It used to be that improvements or new tools in Google were incremental -- you might be lucky to see something new every few years.  As with all edtech nowadays, that speed of change has rapidly increased.  By the time we hit spring 2026, I will expect new Google features that will likely make even the amazing ones in this blog entry seem quaint and "sooooo 2025."

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!