Finally...AI Slides That Look Good!

At the start of the school year, I posted about some new AI features in Google Classroom, including NotebookLM. Since then, NotebookLM has made some pretty significant improvements that I wanted to highlight. If you've ever tried to get AI to help you make a slideshow, you've probably been underwhelmed. In my experience, the content is usually mediocre and the graphics (if any are even created) are super generic. I find that it takes more effort to change what AI created than to just start from scratch or from a random template. But this week, I learned that NotebookLM can now generate slide decks, and they are REALLY good.

Full credit goes to a member of the SchoolAI Champions community named Derek Oldfield who posted this great pdf file explaining Mike Kentz's idea of teaching students how to work with AI by annotating their chats. When I first saw it, I thought...what a great resource! And I immediately shared it with a few colleagues. When I went back to the post in the community, I saw others who asked where the resource came from (probably something I should have thought about too...) and Derek said he made it with NotebookLM! I immediately wanted to know HOW he did it, so I did some research to find the Mike Kentz article and uploaded that into a new Notebook. Then I looked over to the "Studio" on the right side and saw two brand new resources...Slide Deck and Infographic:

Note the "BETA" tag next to each...this means they are essentially testing these features and you may run into issues or see frequent changes

I didn't add anything else beyond just the Mike Kentz link from above and then I just clicked the Slide Deck button. I could have clicked the pencil next to Slide Deck to customize it, but I just wanted to see what would happen. Here's what the customize window looks like for reference:

So what did I get with just a link to a website and a single click of a button? I got this. Here's an image of the last slide:

Pretty darn good if you ask me. Now...there are definitely some weird little AI quirks (misspellings, random photos added for the people referenced), but it is MILES ahead of anything I've seen in other AI tools. For this example, just the use of handwriting font, arrows, and underlines in the style of annotation is a fantastic touch based on the content.

Now for the downside...this seems odd considering NotebookLM is a Google tool, but this slide deck cannot (yet?) be sent to Google Slides to edit. It can be played as a slideshow or it can be downloaded as a pdf. At the time of this writing, you can't even ask NotebookLM to regenerate one of the slides. Your best option if you need to make changes is to upload it into Canva. The text won't be directly editable, but you can cover text with boxes that match the background color or you could use the "Text Grab" feature...I'll write about how to do that next week! I'm hoping that as they work on this new NotebookLM feature, they will figure out ways to export to Slides or make the slides editable within NotebookLM.

I mentioned briefly above that the other new feature is the Infographic...this one works exactly the same way - quickest method is to just click the button and it automatically creates an infographic for you. Here's what I got with my article:

You can also click the pencil icon to give more detail. Here's what I got after asking for a portrait orientation, concise infographic aimed at teachers that would be easy to read and understand:

As with the slide deck, the infographics are not directly editable, but again...just import it into Canva and make your edits there.

This is all certainly amazing technology, but there is one little detail (big detail) that bothers me about this, and that is attribution. You'll see the "NotebookLM" logo tagged onto every single one of these images, but what is missing from the very first slide deck (Derek's) and both of my infographics is something very important...and that is the name "Mike Kentz". These are his ideas. These resources were based off of his content. There should be a citation on every single one of these resources. My slide deck did feature his name on a couple of slides, but no links to the article. I hope this is something that gets added as they work through these features, but in the meantime...as an educator, it is your responsibility to add in a citation if your resources are based on someone else's work.

As you start exploring NotebookLM more, test out adding in multiple sources. Test out using your own lesson plans. What happens if a math teacher uploads a worksheet or quiz and asks for a presentation teaching students how to use and understand the relevant formulas? How well does it work with languages other than English? As is always my recommendation with AI tools (or any digital tools)...push the technology. Don't wait for someone to show you how to use it. Push buttons. Ask questions. Explore. And then SHARE what you learn!