Today on the educational duct tape podcast, I'm joined by the dynamic husband and wife duo, Adam Juarez and Katherine Goyette, better known as AdaKat, they are the coauthors of the complete ed tech coach, and they are leaders in educational technology integration. And together, we're going to tackle the question. What. What tool or strategy would you use to create a more flexible, accessible, and differentiated learning experience?
We dive into voice typing and Google Docs, accessibility features in Quizizz, as well as Mote, Immersive Reader. Goblin tools, mirror talk, and more. Plus we explore AI powered tools like perplexity AI, diffit, and schoolAI, as well as creative solutions like image generators in Canva and Adobe express.
And before we wrap it up, I also share some exciting updates, including interactive charts in Canva, new math and ELA certified content in Pear Deck and the launch of Google vids for Google workspace for education. Let's get into it. The first time I ever drove a car, I was 16 years old, I was in my dad's 1987 Chevy S10 pickup, and I was eager to learn and maybe impress a date for homecoming.
We had a long driveway on a dead end street, so my dad had me practice going up and down, turning around, and doing it all over again. Everything was fine. Until he told me to park. Instead of stopping, the truck leaped forward and slammed into our garage wall. Turns out I had one foot on the gas and one on the brake at the same time. But I didn't realize it then. I didn't learn it When it happened, I didn't learn that was a problem, then I learned it from reflecting on it afterwards.
And that's exactly what MirrorTalk.AI by Swivl today's sponsor is all about helping students and teachers grow through reflection, MirrorTalk.AI guides, spoken AI powered reflections to help students process learning and give teachers real insights. It works on iOS, Android web and mirror hardware, making reflection easy. Anytime. Want to try it? Reflect with me at bit.ly/reflectwithjake.
That's bit.ly/reflectwithjake, all one word and join my group to complete a quick reflection and you could win a one year mirror talk pro subscription and a poster pack for your classroom. Welcome in, Duct Tapers! I hope that you are doing well, whether you are a long time listener of the show, or you're tuning in for the very first time. Welcome in! My name is Jake, I am a personalized learning and ed tech specialist, nerdy guy, and former middle school teacher from O H I O, Ohio.
And by joining me here today, you are Are officially a duct taper. That means you're on board with the educational duct tape metaphor, which I say means seeing educational technology, not as the end goal, but as a powerful tool like duct tape that we use to solve problems, achieve goals. And meet learning standards. You know, my goal is to bring an episode to you weekly, sometimes with an interview and sometimes without an interview, uh, I missed last week.
Oopsies. Uh, but I hit the last two or three weeks before that. So three out of four, ain't bad or something like that. I'm not sure what it was. Maybe four out of five, who knows, but I aim for every week. And I hope that you will subscribe so that you don't miss any. Before we start, I want to give a huge shout out to some amazing members of the hashtag edu duct tape community over on Bluesky.
These awesome educators have been engaging with a show, sharing their thoughts and joining the conversation on this new, exciting social media platform. That is Bluesky. A big to Dean Meyer, Merav Anafi, uh, @Lausensei I hope I'm saying that right. Adam Sparks, former guest of the show. Andrew Robitaille, I know you in person, but I'm not sure how to pronounce your last name, buddy. I'm sorry. Eric Guise. Dan Gallagher. Molly Klodor. Dan Fitzpatrick. Cameron Ross. Dr. Brennan. Les Dinerstein.
Les? Same thing, buddy. We've had lunch together. Dinerstein. I think it's Dinerstein. I don't know, but thank you for, for connecting with the show. Les, uh, Stacey joy, Bryon Carpenter and the one and only Dr. Sarah Thomas. Thank you all. They are now officially.
In my Bluesky hashtag edu duct tape list so that we can all go connect with them and follow them and kind of have our nice little community on there's that list is there it's on my Bluesky profile you can find it and follow those folks and if you would like to be in that list and be mentioned here in the show it's easy just join the conversation on Bluesky use the hashtag edu duct tape i would love to give you a shout out and include you in that list so much
Last week, my oldest son got his learner's permit. That means he is officially old enough to start practicing driving with my wife and me. Let's just take that a moment to let that sink in. I had three immediate thoughts. Wow, what an exciting milestone. How am I old enough to have a 15 and a half year old? And Wow, this is terrifying. The idea of teaching him to drive feels overwhelming. He's a teenage boy and he comes with all of the hallmarks of teenage boy decision making.
And I'm supposed to teach him how to merge in the highway traffic? How to parallel park? But then I stopped myself. Look at what we've already accomplished. This is the same kid who rides his bike to school when the weather's good. Manages his own homework. Keeps track of his own baseball schedule and even does his own laundry. We taught him how to make scrambled eggs and load the dishwasher. We survived years of changing diapers and doing late night feedings and surviving toddler tantrums.
And so many first days of school, we made it through all of that. And if we can handle that, we can handle this too. It's funny how that we do this to ourselves, right? Every new challenge feels massive. Like there's so no way that we could possibly do it. But then. We figure it out just like we always have. This reminds me of a great comic by Liz Fosslein and Mollie West Duffy.
In it, it shows a person standing on a staircase, staring at three steps in front of them and saying, I'm still so far from the top, but when the image zooms out in the next frame, you see, they've already climbed dozens of steps. The message we spend so much time stressing over what's ahead. That we forget to think about how far we've come. It's the same in education. Ten years ago, Google Classroom felt impossible to many educators. A few years before that, using Chromebooks seemed crazy.
More than two years ago, the idea of using an AI tool like ChatGPT was downright scary. But now, we've taken those steps. Why can't we take the next ones too? So, yes, the next big thing, whether it's AI or a new instructional strategy or whatever else is coming, it might feel daunting. Take a breath and look back. You've tackled massive shifts before and you've come out stronger every time.
And when you do, you'll turn around, look at all of those steps behind you and say, wow, look at how far I've come. All right, today's guests, plural, are our first, Adam Juarez, who is an educational technology and integration studies consultant for the Telaire County Office of Education. He supports teachers through individualized coaching Demo lessons and professional development.
Adam is a Google certified trainer and innovator, a CUE Board member, a 2022 ISTE featured voice and co-author of the complete ed tech coach. Our second guest is the other co-author of the complete ed tech coach Katherine Goyette, who is an author, learner, and educational leader who advocates for inclusive educational opportunities for all students. Within the communities they reside.
She is, as I mentioned, the coauthor of the complete ed tech coach, an organic approach to supporting digital learning. Katherine was a primary writer for California's inaugural computer science standards, and has been a keynote speaker, a featured presenter, and a panelist for organizations across the globe. On a variety of educational topics.
And in the show notes, I'll have both of their, handles and links and everything for X and Bluesky and TikTok and Instagram and my space and email and websites and all of the things. So you can reach out to them, but more importantly, the show notes here, actually in the episode are Adam and Kat otherwise known as. AdaKat. Do you say "add a cat" or "ate a cat?" do you best Okay, it's "add a cat." I mean, it looks like it should be "ate a cat," even though your name is not "Ay-duhm".
It's Adam. How are you guys doing today? We're good. We're good. It's, uh, almost vacation. Yeah, almost vacation for us. So, but yeah, having a good time. It was a computer science education week last week, so that was exciting. That's you guys are giving everybody a peek behind the curtain that it's December. They're like, I know it's December cause it's computer science education week based on the, the birthday of, Grace Hopper.
Right. But yeah, it takes Jake a little while to edit these things. Yeah. So yeah, currently we're recording in December and here in Ohio. so far today, it is just afternoon. I started off with a, Adam is covering the M on his shirt. He's unfortunately got on a Michigan shirt right now, which I'm not happy about. Um, but currently here in Ohio, we started the day off with clear skies and about 40 degrees. and then within an hour, it was absolutely pouring rain and about 30 degrees.
And then shortly thereafter, it was like Christmas movie snow, like, like the perfect giant snowflakes look like when we're in a snow globe. And then an hour later, it was back to rain and there was no sign of snow on the ground, just slush. And now it's doing neither of those things. Like this is life in Ohio. Have you guys had any of those seasons happen where you are today? Not today. Here in Central California, this is the fog season.
So that's, it's like 40 degrees and you can't see more than a, uh, in a lot of places. A lot of foggy days. Yeah. hold your hand out in front of yourself and you can't see it. Uh, some places. Yeah, I think I would take that right now over Ohio right. Yeah, certainly. so we were reminiscing as we signed on before we pressed record about 2019 ISTE.
That was the first time I met Adam and Katherine and I think the last time I've seen you guys in person, was 2019 ISTE in Philadelphia, which was, we didn't know, we didn't know in 2019, those were the days we didn't know how Uh, magical and wonderful, life and, traveling to ed tech conferences was then, and then the world changed, less than a year later. Right. but yeah, great to reconnect with you guys. We, so we were talking about, the first night out. At least for me in ISTE that year.
and I felt like it's a long list of people who have been on this podcast before and people who should be on this podcast, right? So they were, there were representatives from some locations outside of California, which were me. And I remember Eric Curts. We were standing on a patio in Philadelphia and Eric pulled up in a, just suddenly out of the blue in an Uber and Eric walked out and we're like, it's Eric. And Jen Jen Giffen, I think was the organizer of the day.
or at least that's how I ended up there with, she messaged me. And I remember Sylvia Duckworth was there as well, at least at the beginning of the night, they were our representatives from, from the great North, right? and Jen, actually, we in the same hotel. We were, their room was right next to ours, actually. How fun that's, what's great about ISTE, right? Um, And then everybody else, it seems like, was from Florida, right?
There was like, there was like the whole CUE cohort was there with us. Not Florida, California, sorry. They're the same state, right? No, I'm kidding. Everybody, everybody else was CUE representatives. There were all of you guys there together. you guys, Joe Marquez, Paul Gordon, Jesus. I think Brian Briggs was there, but I don't remember if, um, Ryan I don't remember, I don't think I was there for that. Are they allowed to appear at places separately? Is that I don't know. Wow. that's rare.
That is rare. that was a sighting and Oh, that was such a fun night. And like, I was like, that was my very first ISTE. And I was like, is ISTE always this crazy that you get to meet all these people you've talked to all this time online? And it's kind of kind of true. It kind of is it that's the that's why I never want to miss at ISTE ever is because of the connections because I'll see people from California, but all of these contacts like yourself from across the US Yeah. is just is.
All coming at one into one place to connect is an incredible experience. So that's the main reason I go to ISTE to be completely honest. Yeah. It's those interesting connections. Like these people that you've known, I followed you for years before we actually met in person and then you get to meet, like for me, like it's a fan boy. Moment like I get to say, Hey, well, I thank you for sharing this resource. I really liked it. And a lot of the people that you meet, they're just like me.
I share things and I don't know who's actually really seen it. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but then like you get to appreciate someone for what they shared. and then people come up to me who I've never met, like, Oh yeah, I followed you and they'll tell me about one thing that I shared that I forgot about, or something that I just want to do a part of my job and, you know, It resonated with them.
So it's very affirming and then really cool just to give gratitude back to the people that in my PLN that I've been able to learn from Yeah. I 100 percent agree. Cause it's both ways where you're getting the affirmation of the things that you've done and also seeing people that you're like, Oh, that one blog post you did or that episode or your book or that one speech you gave or whatever. Yeah, it's cool. but anyhow, enough talking about our conference history and all that kind of stuff.
what I'd like to do right now. Is play a little game. So listeners to the educational duct tape podcast know that I normally play one of two games, which are either, which of the following is less torturous or the more common one, which is two truths and one lie. But real old school listeners know that when there's a duo on the show. I play my own version of the newlywed game, which I've played a couple times.
And so we've got to play it with you guys because you are co authors and you are officially AdaKat. are you comfortable with this? that's absolutely. Yeah. And we do live pretty closely. So we, we are married. So we'll see how this goes. Yeah. I love that you guys, not only do you have a couple name, like everybody's got to have a couple name, right? But you've got, it's like your consulting team and it's your name here in squad cast where we're recording. Right.
So we'll see, if you, how well you guys truly know each other, you're not newlyweds anymore, but we're going to play the newlywed game together. So what I'm going to do here, cause you guys are in the same room as I'm going to, who's going to leave the room first? Who's going to, who's leaving? Okay, Adam, Adam's going to leave. Make Alright, Kat, so I'm going to ask you two questions. First, I'm going to ask you these questions about yourself.
And then I'm going to ask you the same exact questions about Adam. Okay? So, my first question, we're going to see how well you guys know each other here. My first question, is he out of, is he out of earshot now? He's out of ear shot. And I want the listeners to know that you did not give us these questions ahead of time. So this is definitely a test. I did not. I want to know who was your favorite musical act, band, group, singer, whatever, when you were in high school.
Oh Gotta pick one from your high school years. in high school, I'm going to say Tupac. Tupac. Nice. That, you know what, he'd be pretty high on my list from high school too, when all eyes on me came out. Right. okay. California. So, there's that too. California love. That was like your theme song, right? Okay. Now I'm going to ask you the same question about Adam. What do you think Adam's going to say? He's probably going to say Wu Tang. Wu Tang. That would be my other one.
I was a huge Wu Tang fan. especially the early part of my high school years. okay. We'll see how he does when he comes back in. now my second question, a little bit more serious. What is your education superpower? So it could be for like being in the classroom or supporting teachers or your understanding of pedagogy or your understanding of tech tools. What do you think your superpower is? What do you bring to the table?
I think what I bring to the table is, I just don't take no for an answer when it comes to advocating for students. So, which, you know, sometimes people don't, always appreciate, but, you know, it's about the kids. So if someone tells me, no, we can't do that, I'll ask why. And I'll go ask someone else and someone else until finally we can get the support we need for students. So. What a good answer and not a prepared answer Like I literally just asked that question.
Like I felt a little bit bad because it was a hard question and you were it was, it. was a tough one. True. Wow. And that was a good answer. Like, you're not gonna look back on this later and say like, why did I say my superpower is using the copying machine? Like .You're gonna be like, my superpower is advocacy for students. Like, you're never gonna regret that one. That's a good one. good answer. Okay, so what is Adam's education superpower?
I would say, really connecting with, students in regards to like their lives, like making content relevant for them. what they actually care about hmm. don't always care about, you know, he taught history, social studies, right. And a lot of kids. That's not their interest. but he made a really good, he has like hashtag learning is one strategy he uses where they come up with a hashtag from something from their life that relates to the content.
And there's a blog post on it if anyone's interested, but, yeah, so those connections. Another good answer. Look at that. We're advocating for students. We're connecting with students and we're making the work relevant for the students. You guys are like, this is my jam right now. Oh yeah. Well, that's why we're here. We, we, we want to, we want to talk with you because we know you were on the same page with us. Yes. Right. Like my jam in high school was either Tupac or Wu Tang.
My jam right now. is advocacy for students, There we go. and relationships. You got, like, nailed it. Okay, so we're gonna have Adam come in now. You could stay and listen. You've just got to, like, no, no cuing or anything like that when he Oh, I stay. Okay. You could stay, yeah, because he's, because you've answered both sides of the question now. All right. Let me let him know to come back, back in?
Alright, Adam. Katherine is to stay and see, and she's going to be silently judging you while you I'm going to look away. Okay. She'll just want to give a tell. Okay. So I'm going to ask you two different questions. I'm going to ask them about you and then about Kat as well. And you're going to answer them from both of those. So my first question is what was your favorite musical group or band or act or, singer, rapper, whatever, when you were in high school? Wu-Tang Well, there it is.
And Katherine, what was your answer? nailed it. Yeah, I knew she'd get that one. Wu Tang for life. Wu Tang is for the children. That's I have I have a t shirt that says Wu Tang is for the children. And my kids are Oh, no, CUE Tang. Did you ever get the CUE-Tang one? I know. I, yeah, you guys are in queue with the CUE Tang Ohio. Like we can't do that. Like, how are we going to, how are we going to fit Wu Tang in an Ohio name? We can't.
That actually was born with me and Eddie Campos years ago when we work at the same school, just sitting there eating burritos for lunch and just kind of just riffing like that. We just said that just as a joke. And then we kind of stopped like, Oh, we're on to something. And then Eddie went out and made all the merch and Yeah, I remember. I've seen the merch. That's cool. I need some of those stickers. you had me at burritos, but then you really won me over CUE Tang. The CUE Tang clan.
Alright, so my next question is, what was Kat's answer for herself? What was her favorite musical act when she was in high school? Musical act. Wow. that's a tough one. She's a, she likes a very eclectic mix of music. So there's a lot of directions I can go. wow. He's, like, for the listeners, what you can't see is that Adam is sweating profusely right now. Like, you could see it dripping down his face, like, in that one gif.
I know she shares a similar affinity to me for all things, Dr. Dre from the 90s. but I can also say she might say something, some kind of like a Disney show tune. It's gonna be one of those two, but I think I'm gonna, since we're thinking back to teenage years in the 90s, I'm gonna have to go with the Dr. Dre. Uh, okay. Katherine, Katherine, give him a grade and tell him how'd he do. Would you That was, I mean, it was close. it was close.
So I will say, as you were talking about my eclectic sense of, taste in music, that's why it took me some time to even answer to be completely honest. and yeah, Dre is definitely, up there, but I did say Tupac. Okay. I was there. I was in the right genre. I was But we, we did talk about California Love and All Eyes on Me album, which was Death Row Records and Dr. Dre was on one of the songs and produced some of them. So I think you get, I think you get 75 percent points for that. think so.
I'll take it. It's passing, right? That's passing. Nice. Okay, my second question. What is your education superpower? So what is like, if you're putting on the top of your resume, what makes you special in the education community could be in the classroom, could be how you show up with teachers. It could be your knowledge of pedagogy or ed tech or curriculum or whatever. what is your superpower there? What do you bring to the table? I think mine would be to build teachers from where they're at.
I mean, with edtech, obviously, but you know, just whatever your teacher toolbox is, I want to build from there and we're going to upcycle from there. That's kind of what I try to do. Meeting them where they are and taking them to somewhere within their zone of proximal development. Right? I like that. that was not the answer that Kat gave about you, but that was a really good one. What do we, I did think about it. I will say I considered it. Kat, do you want to tell him what you said?
Sure. I talked about connecting with students. So making the content actually, you know, something that connects. So I focus more on the coaching consultant. Right. Okay. Right. In the classroom. Yeah, I would agree. that's what I've tried to do when I'm in the classroom. So I love both of those answers though. They're both really good answers. Okay. What do you think is Kat's education superpower? Okay. there's a lot there. It's hard to really hone in on one.
Oh, that was, that was, that was either being really nice or trying to get out of knowing the right He might be stalling, but that's the right do, we do share pretty much the same philosophy on this, but I would say, um, just currently based on her job now, it's bringing computer science to the masses and showing how beautiful it is and how it's not just for CS people and like coding, there's so much more to it. That's what she's doing.
So that's where I'm going to go with this That, that is definitely a superpower. And as one of the primary writers for the, for California's inaugural computer science standards, I think that definitely is valid. And I think it actually kind of connects to what, to what you said. I it kind of does. So, what I said was, I just don't give up on, on students. So if someone tells me no, then I ask a different way or I ask someone else or whatever. And I ask, keep asking why, why, why.
And, so that's like the computer science, you know, because you advocated for computer science for advocated and supported legislation to, You know, try to get a graduation requirement going. Didn't pass, went to all high schools offered, didn't pass. We're trying again. We're going to other avenues, like not giving up. there it is. I think you guys passed. I think that's like, I'll add in post edit some music here. That's you guys celebrating your win on the newlywed game.
But I think this was a good showing for you guys. I think you should give yourselves a pat on the back. I think you did well there. What do you think? I think you did good. I think it was good. it was fun too. So now we're going to take your advocacy for students Kat, and we're going to put that into our educational duct tape question for today. So, in educational duct tape, when we think about educational duct tape, we're always trying to think about. Not just what's the technology.
We're trying to think, what are we trying to achieve what's the teacher trying to do often for the learners, but it could be a curriculum thing or a thing that's really student facing, but a teacher task teacher need a teacher goal. And how can we have ed tech support that? Okay. So my specific question today is what tool or strategy would you use? And this is going back to that advocacy piece to create a more flexible, Accessible and differentiated learning experience for learners.
So it really is the heart of Universal Design for Learning. So what we're thinking about, what are the things that some of our learners might need that we can make available to everybody universally available to make things more flexible, accessible, and differentiated to their needs. I'll let you guys decide who's going to talk first, but we'll see what are your recommendations, uh, for what you'd use there? Well, we had quite a few. I'm actually today.
I'm working on putting the final touches on a kind of like the 2. 0 version of a two day workshop. I'm going to be co facilitating with one of my fellow E. L. D. consultants over here at the county office. And this workshop is, it's AI and ed tech to support English learners. So, in California, we have the exam, which is designed to designate and hopefully redesignate our English learners. And there's a lot of tools really, we're focusing on a lot of different AI and tech tools.
They're going to give, not only help generate resources to make them successful in the ELD class and when they prepare them for the ELPAC exam, but also make content much more, Much more accessible. It doesn't have to be anything fancy.
People think there needs to be some fancy tool and there's a lot of tools that they already know how to use with features hiding in plain sight, that we try to focus on that you can use this to really help give your English learners access regardless of their language. And I will say, Jake, one of these things that I do feature you.
In one of my slides, you put out a gif months ago showing, I use a gif that you posted that shows, how to use Google Docs voice typing Oh, they can use that, especially when it, when it comes to things like decoding and stuff and enunciation of words, and so the kids can get that real time feedback. So that's just one simple way.
like in this workshop, I feature a lot of Quizizz, because a lot of the districts that I support, they have the premium Quizizz, which allows you to do a lot more than the free, especially with the voice input for both the teacher and the student, that can be adapted to a lot of the listening and speaking tasks, that our English learners have to engage in. so those two right there, Mote is another one that, teachers. Don't even realize exists.
And I show how you can use that to really, cause you may have a, an English learner who struggles decoding maybe this piece of text or these instructions, but if they click the little Mote button and they hear it read to them, okay, now I better understand it. Um, the quite a few other little simple translation tools to help, You know ELs, access, you know, certain text in, in both English and their language. I like to do like a side by side translation model where they see them both.
If I just give them in their home language, my philosophy has been, I'm not helping them with English. so I want them to see them both. So maybe they can decode it in English. Then they read it in their home language. They're like, okay, now I'm starting to make some meaning in some, some, connections across languages. So, yeah, those are some of the kind of my go to as I support, you know, a variety of different, educators in that space. those are great ones. Let's talk about a few of those.
So first, the first one you had there was the voice typing in Google. So it's just a tool built into the, I think it's in the tools menu and you go down to voice typing and you can type right there. and it turns into a text as you're going. So it's not actually recording audio. it's literally just typing via voice, which is really cool for a learner who maybe has learned how to speak the language, but not quite write in the language, which I think is really powerful.
it's great for, and actually this is, that's. That's at the heart of Universal Design for Learning. A kid who's an English language learner.
Who's at the point where they could speak with English, but can't quite type in English just yet For a variety of reasons need that tool But then if we make that available to everybody because I mean it's right there in Google We just tell everybody about it Then kids who maybe just process faster verbally than they can then they could type like it benefits them so it's Not just for kids who have like a stated need that requires them to have that. It could be for everybody.
And that's really cool. You ever have one of those moments where you only realize what went wrong after it's over? When I drove my dad's pickup truck into our garage, I knew something had gone very wrong. But it wasn't until I reflected on it that I understood why and what I had done wrong. It's like John Dewey said, we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. And that's exactly why I love MirrorTalk.AI by today's sponsor Swivl.
It's an AI powered tool that makes reflection a natural part of learning for both students and teachers using talk based AI guided reflection, mirror talk helps students process what they've learned so And gives teachers deeper insights into their thinking. It works on iOS, Android web, and the mirror hardware. So reflection can happen anywhere, anytime. And here's the best part. You could try it right now. Reflect with me at bit dot L Y slash reflect with Jake. That's bit.ly/reflectwithjake.
With Jake, just join my group, complete a quick reflection, and you'll be entered to win a one year mirror talk pro subscription and a poster pack for your classroom. All right, now back to our episode. I wanted to point out too, while you were saying that, have you messed with the thing in Google search, where if you search for a word, it'll help you learn how to pronounce it. Have you seen that before?
I haven't no. Yeah. So if you just like Google, like, pronounce football, you'll see this little, like, I think it's any word I've every time I've tried it's worked, it just comes up in the regular Google search and you see like a picture of a mouth and like a play button. And when you click play, you hear it and you see the mouth make the movements and then you could practice it and say it back to it. And it tells you how you did. Wow. That's pretty cool. I'm going to check that one.
Yeah, just right there in the free one. that came up in my mind recently when, I was talking to a teacher who uses a tool and I'm going to totally blank on the name of it. That's an AI tool that allows kids to, she was a second grade teacher and kids were learning, you know, they were practicing their reading skills and verbally, you know, reading. and so the kids were talking into it and it was grading their pronunciation, for their fluency. But she was finding that it was.
Saying the kid was wrong. If the kid had like, she had one kid who had a British accent, which I wanted my class to second grade with a British accent, because that sounds adorable, but anyhow, it was saying that kid was wrong and they have a couple of kids in that community that were from, you know, that were English language learners and they were, their pronunciation was right, but the AI tool wasn't picking it up as right. And so there were some issues. And that's a problem, obviously.
So fortunately the teacher identified it and now doesn't have that kid use that tool. They have those kids just read to the teacher, whereas everybody else uses it. So I think that's a great plan for how to handle it. but I was showing her that Google tool, because that would help if the kids struggling with part of the pronunciation, that's a simple, easy way to do that. And then Google has some other tools that are like that. Yeah. But that's a cool one.
in Quizizz, which I'm a big Quizizz fan. Do you know, off the top of your head is voice input. I think is voice input for teachers free and for students is premium. Is that right? Yeah, for teachers, I can import, I think it's up to 3 minutes of audio. if I want to do a read aloud of a question, or even a text for free, but To get the students to do their input for like listening and speaking tasks, you would have to have the premium, unfortunately.
yeah, which I mean, it's going to cost a lot of money to run the, the servers that handle and store all of that audio that the kids are submitting. So at least we know where the money is going. Like it makes sense that, that there's gotta be payment for it. So I get that. yeah, what a cool way for Universal Design for Learning, for it to hear the kid's voice also to, as you pointed out, like your question can be text and have audio too, so that they could get the question either way.
Do you know when the kid responds, can they do audio or type or is it, you're saying this is an audio question. Do you I believe it's, you're kind of a shoehorned into one option, so you can do the tech, the open response, you can do audio, and you can also do video as well.
so that's also an option there, and that's kind of what I've defaulted to since the, the, the collapse of Flip, because that was one of my go to's for that, those kind of tasks, so I'm glad that, you know, Fortunately, a lot of districts that I support do have premium Quizizz. So I can, I feel better about having them use this tool. Yeah, that's a power tip right there. Cause a lot of people are looking for like, what's that replacement to Flip and using Quizizz with the video feature.
That's a really good one. that's, I had not thought about that. I know that when you were saying that it made me think of, how an Edpuzzle you, cause I use, I used Edpuzzle a lot when I was teaching science, you could have kids respond in text or audio. Like they could choose when they got to that point.
Most of my kids preferred text, but if they were giving a longer response and they'd rather record it, I told them, like, I just want to see if you understand, like, I don't care whether you type or record. so I think that's really powerful. and then the last one you mentioned was Mote. I love mote as well. It's an audio tool. is it's freemium, right?
So I think you get like up to 30 seconds per recording in the free or maybe like, I think the free one's up to a minute, but you only get about, it's like 20, 20 or 25 recordings per cycle. And I don't know if that's a week or a month anymore. It has changed over the years. I have the premium one, and I use that for my demos just to show them what's possible. I'll show them both the free and the premium. it's actually, for the premium, it's actually a pretty good price point.
It's not, like most, yeah, schools. I show them a quote for their side of the school, and they're like, yeah, that's doable. And it's, it's been pretty popular with the teachers that I've piloted with so far. Yeah. and similar to with Quizizz with the payment, I used to get frustrated when tools weren't free, but now I kind of understand why they're not free.
Like number one, if we're not paying them, they're making money somewhere and that, and I think if the tool is free, it might encourage them to maybe not have the best data and privacy standards that we want. So that's one piece. And the other piece is like, there are those things that you're posting have to go on a server somewhere. And something's got to pay for that server and some person has got to manage it and somebody has got to add the features and so I get it.
Mote automatically transcribes. Does it transcribe in multiple languages or is it just English? With the premium. Yes. I believe there is one for the free. It's only in English. and they do recently, one of the coolest thing I saw is that now, when you just click on the extension and we'll drop down when you want to record something, you can record yourself or you can feed it your script. Hmm. And it reads it aloud.
So I think that's actually again, back to the whole thing about English learners using their, their AI generated voice. What gives the advantage over, I want the kids to hear my voice. But with an English learner, me being a native English speaker, there's a lot of pauses in my speech and ums and things that may throw an English learner off. But if I feed you the script that's read by AI, it skips all of that.
And that, that, that would be helping break down one of the barriers if we're taking a UDL lens. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people that maybe are not, experience with Universal Design for Learning or these kinds of flexible things that we're talking about say like, well, but we don't, we want that kid to, to practice their English speaking. And the answer is like, yes, of course we do.
But if we're measuring their mastery of a specific thing from social studies class, we don't want their ability to speak in English to be a barrier to measuring their mastery of the U S constitution or something. So, so these kinds of tools allow them to show mastery in a way that works for them, which I think is, I think it's awesome. Kat, any thoughts on those three or what would you add either? Yeah. you can go take this either way.
I'm thinking of, I, I love all that, you've been talking about with English learners. I think also, some of these tools can be helpful for we think about English learners. We think about students with disabilities, something that's sometimes forgotten is things like anxiety, things like students that are struggling with, perhaps ADHD and they're trying to figure out how they can. attack a problem, you know, breaking that problem into steps and such.
And so, I think that the key with UDL, especially for those older kids, like once we get to high school, I just spoke with some high schoolers, about AI. And one of the, one of the students said is AI cheating? Hmm. I said, well, What are you using it for? You know, is GPS cheating? You know, do you use your phone to figure out where you're going?
And, and so if we have these tools available and it's going to help students to better manage their emotions, maybe it's, to better under, you know, break down a project into tasks that are more manageable, to, you know, You know, help them remember when they need to take some breaks, you know, whatever it may be, those tools can really help. And so I think especially with, and this is even with teachers, right? Like I have, I love that.
I now have my, my pixel watch that shows me, If there's been like, spikes where like my heart rate went up or something and like, Oh, what happened then? Oh, you know, there was something where I needed to learn how to, you know, self regulate at that point or whatever. So I think that, there's just an opportunity to teach our students that utilizing any of these tools, is not cheating. It is a way to increase our effectiveness, right?
and so That's something that I see a lot with the questions, you know, around, around AI. one thing I also love to do always when I'm presenting, I always try to remember, to whether I'm in front of students or teachers to turn on closed captioning in Google Slides so that as I'm speaking, the text is there as well. I think that's really important. and it's, the more that we just start thinking About designing universally, the more conscious, we kind of become of it. So to speak.
That's Yeah, I love the point of the closed captioning Google slides. You just turn that on while you're presenting in front of a In front of a class or whatever, you don't even have to be using slides. You just bring up a blank slide and turn that on.
and you think about from the perspective of Universal Design for Learning, some people due to hearing loss or something like that need that closed captioning, other people might just be sitting towards the back of the room, or they might have a coworker sitting next to them. Who's talking and they can't hear really well. So having that piece in there helps. how effective do you think it is like, like in terms of accuracy? a great question. So it's. It's better than, you know, it used to be.
So I like to talk about how in 2010, I was told by native speakers to stop using Google translate because it would translate word for word, right? But because it is using machine learning and it's, started to learn how certain phrases, fit together in specific languages now it'll correct itself, Yeah. Oh yeah. You see, you kind go back and like, like edit Yeah. so I find it pretty effective. I mean, you know, people can use context clues.
and I let everyone know This is, you know, won't be 100 percent accurate, but it is meant to be a support, for those that, that that prefer it. So Yeah. I agree. and better than nothing. Right. Like certainly we, we want it to keep getting better and better, but if the alternative is not having closed captioning at all, then that's the right thing to do, I think. I love your point of, you know, the question of is AI cheating? and it depends on what you're trying, what you're doing with it.
What is the task? What's the goal and what are you doing with it? If the task is write an essay to show. Your understanding of this content and you go to the tool and say, write me an essay about this, then yes, then it's cheating. But if you say, here's my ideas, here's all everything that I want to say about it. Can you help what order should I put this in? Or if you say like, I wrote this, can you give me some feedback on it?
You know, if you're doing the thinking and let it do some of the doing for you, that's not the actual task that's being assessed. Then yeah, no, it's not cheating. Right. And I think we have to normalize that. I think that speaks to everything, right? we want learners who are less afraid to admit what they need to be successful. Right. We would like, like the closed caption and a presentation is a good point because if you said to the, to an audience, do you need me to turn on closed captioning?
The person who needs it might not say they need it. Right. Right. So you should turn it on. But also that means that we need to normalize the act of advocating for what you need for our learners. And so saying, you know, using AI to help yourself. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, as long as it's not taking the you out of the work, as long as it's helping you be successful, then it should be part of it.
will you elaborate on some of those tools you're using for like, whether it's the emotions or the chunking of tasks or any of that stuff? Yeah. So, I mean, to be honest, you can just go into like ChatGPT and say, I have this project, these are the things that need to be done. You know, it's doing six weeks, it's doing four weeks, whatever. Can you tell me how to chunk this out? I also think it's helpful for teachers to do that for students just in general.
but with older kids, you can teach them to do that. There is, a tool. I haven't played with it much. It's called Goblin Tools, goblin.Tools, and it'll break it down. So, you know, there are some that will do that. The Goblin Tools one is called, so each of the tools in Goblin Tools has a name. there's and that one's, that one's called Magic To Do. So you give it a task. I think, I think, is the one I'm Yeah, it sounds correct. then it breaks it down into manageable steps.
You could say, I need to write this five paragraph essay. that's too big of a task for me. What should I do first? Right. Like, and it essentially makes the to do list for you. But yeah, you're right. chatGPT would be great for that. have you seen, do you use MagicSchool much? Not much. Adam does. I support a school that has a subscription, so I'll do some demos and some co teaching around that. so yeah. MagicSchool is great. SchoolAI does something similar.
Yeah, they have, something, some kind of chunking tool in there where you give it a big task or big topic and it chunks it for you. So that's another one to think about there too. Yeah. Lots of great ideas with the chunking and again, Universal Design for Learning a, an on level kid who's getting A's in class and always achieves, there's no reason they shouldn't have access to something that could chunk an assignment for them. because we're not.
We're not evaluating them for their executive functioning skills. We're trying to evaluate them for mastery of content. you mentioned the emotions things, whether it's an anxiety or Oh, yeah. thing. What, where would you go for that? What would you use for that? So that's interesting. There are some tools. I know, when I was at ISTE last, there are tools where kids can go in and like. have this like virtual experience where it calms them down, which was really interesting.
but in regards to like tracking emotions, there are a lot of free, like, some teachers will just ask kids, you know, to reflect on their own mood and they'll use like a mood chart or something like that. But there are a lot of free apps, that can do that as well. with the bird? There's something with a bird, Finch. is that, am I thinking of the right thing? Have you seen that one before? I'm not familiar with, it. Finch.
I know there's like e moods and there's, there's like these, there's a lot of free ones that kids can get on their phones to be honest. To that point, there's a company that's there, they're currently, um, in beta right now. factors education, they used to be called an EI amplified. So I, uh, forgot exactly. They've rebranded, but they have a, an AI kind of like a feedback tool that you can customize. So it's great for, if you want to do some SEL kind of stuff, or you.
Give them the kind of feedback that you want to elicit from kids. And then it has a bot that kind of, will turn it, the survey into more of a conversation rather than your typical Likert scale. And it feels, and so a lot of kids I've noticed in the adults to feel more comfortable, kind of just having the conversation with the bot and they'll probably be more honest and it's easy to get those thoughts out in that format rather than a simple, you know, Google form.
And then when you look at the data, You can, it'll show like how positive or negative, or you can filter it through different kind of like, based on the responses, it gives you some really good analysis of it. that's a company I'm going to be, doing the piloting, their product for some of my upcoming workshops. I know CUE has already started using that as one of their, their formats for receiving feedback, at their events. So it's a pretty cool. Yeah. They're, they have some lesson plan.
Design, tools that they're currently developing, but it's the feedback survey using AI is probably my favorite of their products and well, the cool part is that It's taking the qualitative data and it's showing you the trends in regards to. Yeah, like you said, this is a positive response. This is a more negative response. This is more neutral. which is really powerful. I know that's happening even, like communications departments in, you know, not in the education space.
At the Department of Education. That's one thing is like we're able to now use a tool that tracks all of like the social media posts about the department, right? And see where are there. What's the public think? Like, what are their thoughts? Which is kind of fascinating. So I think a lot of these things are going to take some time before they are, before they become like ed tech tools, like technology's first, right? And then it becomes an ed tech tool, right?
Like ChatGPT was kind of like the first open source. AI tool. Now we have SchoolAI. Now we have MagicSchool. So for me, I like to see what's on the horizon outside of EdTech because I know it's going to be coming, right? so things like that, I think are pretty, pretty exciting. So one thing I forgot to mention earlier, I was thinking about it, going back to UDL. And again, for me, a lot of my work I do centers around English learners.
it was a little over a year ago, I wrote this great blog post touting, Microsoft Immersive Reader. And I got a lot of mileage out of that. There was a Chrome extension for it. I would show that to everybody who would listen. I wrote a blog post about it touting it. It was one of my most well read blog posts in the last year. And then I believe it was the. On January 1st of this year, the developer who's a third party stopped supporting it.
And all of a sudden I get all these emails and text me, well, Hey, what's wrong with can you help me fix it? So I, I messaged, Mike Tholfsen at Microsoft. I go, Hey, what's up with this? He's like, yes, third party. We have nothing to do with it. sorry about that. All right. so I spent a week, like I need a immersive reader. alternative here. And I kept searching and I came across a Chrome extension called Helperbird.
And it does a lot of accessibility things for people trying to read things online. But then it has a back door into immersive reader. And I really only use it for immersive reader. So I can be reading. I can give my students, I get, I would have to push this Chrome extension to their browser. But once I train them, I'm going to send you an article and read online. If you have trouble with this, because language is a barrier. They can highlight any section of the text.
I think it's up to like 10, 000 characters. They right click on that selected text, and then they'll see Helperbird in the little menu that pops up when they right click. And then it'll say, Oh, view an immersive reader. And boom, you're back in immersive reader and all those bells and whistles, amazing translations and read alouds. And you can click on, on, see the parts of speech, picture dictionary, i like that part, yeah. Yeah, all that is available.
So that would kind of like save my bacon when I was promoting this, there's a tool that again, where I work, most people are, we're all Google out here and we don't have Microsoft. So again, Microsoft had this great tool. Now we have this back door to get back into it and, and use that for accessibility.
Yeah. Yeah. So immersive reader, it's still available and free through, Microsoft, but the Chrome extension, I guess I was always shocked that Chrome extension existed because I was like, Google and Microsoft playing nice. but so the Chrome extension went away and yeah, Helperbird's a great one. I didn't realize that immersive reader was in there. but it's got other great. Stuff in there, you know, text to speech and things like that.
As you said, the picture dictionary and stuff just built into Helperbird itself. Yeah, those are two, two great ones. Immersive reader is amazing. so much good content in there. If you're in a Microsoft. Either on a Microsoft device or account or edge browser or just a tool that links into it. Like I'm trying to think of which ones have it in there. I know Flip, for example, used to have it in I was gonna say, yeah, I used to. have it. There's, and there's others, that have it in there too.
yeah, but Immersive Reader's a great recommendation. I'm really interested in Factors Education. I had never heard of that one before. I think that's got a lot of potential there. That's really cool to turn in the qualitative feedback and Into like showing me the trends in it. Because I don't know about you guys. Like I always ask for feedback after I do a professional development session and there could be 80 people in there and I always ask them like, what can I improve?
And so I'm telling them like, tell me something to improve and like, 75 people say nothing, um, nothing. It was all great. Even though I asked them to tell me something. And then one person is like, you talk too fast. And I'm like, Oh, I, Oh, I didn't know that. And then I'm like, when in reality, in the scheme of things, like maybe I should think about that, but really it's actually not an issue.
Like I should just think of how do I make this universe accessible for somebody who feels that way, even though it's not a major problem, but that piece of taking that qualitative feedback. And seeing like, Oh, that's only the way that's how 3 percent of people felt. You know what I mean? Like, like seeing that, like, that would be really powerful. it kind of reminded me as you were talking about a little bit of Mirror, MirrorTalk through from Swivl. Have you guys seen that one before?
No, So, remember Swivl like they, they, and they were the people behind recap and then, focusable and there was an audio tool in there too. I forget the name of the audio tool, but they've got this great platform out now called Mirror and Mirror. There's actual physical Mirror that you could buy where you, where it's like you're looking at a Mirror reflecting in it.
Like it could be a station in your classroom where you, where the kid reflects and kind of records into that Mirror and get some feedback on their reflection. Or it's just an app you could use on your phone or on your computer and it takes you through. A reflection process to help you be more metacognitive. I think it's got a lot of potential there too.
and to your point, Kat, where we started talking about this was kids with maybe some anxiety or things like that, or maybe struggling with chunking of work if we're getting them to reflect regularly using this AI tool. To your point earlier, it's interesting talking to an AI tool because it allows us to say things that we're maybe not comfortable saying to a real human, but also. Not comfortable just typing into a, to a chat.
Like it's like intermediary thing where it feels like a human, but we're comfortable talking to this human. If that makes sense. Like if that, Yeah, which which is good, but also means there's a line that we need to be careful of. Right. Because, I was listening to a webinar in, about AI and ethics and such. And so, someone was talking about little kids that say, Alexa is my friend. Right. It's like, well, let's talk about what a friend is. Right. So, it, but what it really shows is that.
All of these tech tools, I am a huge advocate for ed tech for utilizing any tool that's going to be helpful. that's going to increase access for students, but we just always have to remember that the humans, we need to be the ones in control. Like we, and that relationship between the teacher and the student, the importance of that will never go away, right? We are there, an AI bot can never make that spiritual connection that, that, you know, an AI is not going to be able to.
Feel, feel love and, acceptance and, you know, all of these things. So, Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. so I've used a whole bunch of your guys's time, so I appreciate that, but what I'd like to close off with before we wrap up is like a speed round.
Like, are there any, like, like either Adam, when you think about that presentation that you've got upcoming that you were talking about, or just Kat and the general work you're doing supporting teachers, are there any tools So we talked about immersive reader. We talked, factors. We talked to that closed captioning in Google slides. We talked Goblin Tools. We talked chat, GPT, Helperbird, immersive reader, voice typing, Quizizz, Mote. That's a lot.
So we don't need any more, but people are like, you know, you know, teachers were hungry for the ideas. Are there any other tools that just speed round that you, you want to put on people's radar? We don't need to tell them anything about it, but just like some things that they might want to have on their radar. Any thoughts? kind of building off those, I would say to real quick. 1 would be perplexity.
Yes. love Perlexity for teaching kids how to research and then you can kind of ask a question and you're not going to copy and paste that question into your writing. You're going to see what the sources are and see the videos and really kind of do your own research. And it's so much more dynamic than a, your Google search. and it's 13 and over. So pretty much kids 7-12, for the most part, can use it. and, So yeah, Perplexity. And the other one, I think more for teachers.
and I still mind boggling how many teachers don't know about Diffit, like Diffit, man, as far as like you, I've been there where I look at my curriculum, like, man, I just need more. it's not enough. Diffit can take those concepts from the, from that curriculum and then help you create a whole treasure trove worth of, new resources. I mean, the. And then when you sign up, you have two months free premium access. And so you get to save all those things for, for your, for yourself.
And, they just added a bunch of EduProtocols, which I think is pretty cool. And a few other, different type of, strategies that are in there. So it's such a powerful tool. Yeah. I agree. one of my favorite features in Diffit, one that amazes me is that feature where you can take a, Language arts standard, like maybe it's a comprehension skill, reading comprehension skill, and then give it a topic that a kid is interested in, which is kind of another part of UDL that we don't talk about often.
With UDL, we often talk about how they access and how they express, but we don't talk as much about how they engage with things, like what motivates a learner, and so that's the other piece. piece of UDL. And so if I could take, if I want you to practice this reading comprehension skill, and you're not interested in learning about it, but I can make the paper be the article be about Travis Kelce or Wu Tang clan or Tupac or whatever.
If I can get your interest in there, I think that just amazes me how it does those standard skills with those tools. So yeah, I'm a big Diffit fan as well. Kat, any other, any things you throw in there? I I would just say, that as we are, moving toward using more and more chatbots and AI tools and such, it's really, it's awesome to get kids utilizing some of these as well.
So, for example, I love to use just the text to image creator in Canva or Adobe Express so that kids can start to So that they can be critical of it, to be completely honest. So that not only can they create something, you know, if I'm someone who doesn't feel that I'm a great, visual artist, I also haven't practiced being one, so that's a thing. So growth mindset, but, you know, if I want to represent something, I can have AI make it for me.
And then that also helps to, you can have some conversations about bias and things like that. because those inevitably, it doesn't. If it's something they know really well, there's gonna be mistakes, right? and then, I also love to, show kids, Google's Teachable Machine because they can train a model about something that they learned in their content area class, right?
So if I learned the difference between, a sphere and a cube, In first grade, I can go up to the teachable machine and teach it what's the difference. And well, why did it say that this was a cube, but actually it's a sphere. Oh, it's because we had the same colors and what we trained it on. We now, so they start to really, do some critical thinking around that. So that's fun as well. computer science background is showing right now, Right. I, yeah, I can't help it. It's just I love those.
I need to play more with the teachable machine. I love anything like teachable machine or like you said, just using an image generator or. With AI and thinking about the conversations that are possible there to help kids really understand the implications of AI, how it works, what it's doing, what fair and appropriate use is, where it's appropriate, where those biases are, and be critical of it. Cause we need those critical thinkers. We need our learners to be critical thinkers for sure.
I'm going to throw three more in there for people. Adam, you mentioned SchoolAI. Uh, but I want to make sure that people hear that one. It's a great tool to explore. brisk teaching. I'm a fan of, I would like brisk a lot, for a lot of different accessibility reasons and also for the things that can help teachers do. and then NotebookLM from Google. I use a lot. If I like, I don't like to read really dense. Information, especially online.
and so if I have something I've got to read for work and it's 20 pages long, it's a PDF and it's really dense. I might put it in a NotebookLM and use the podcast to generate and ask it some questions and get some, any tool that does that kind of stuff. But I think that's accessibility right there too, don't you think? absolutely, absolutely Wow. So we are going to have a ginormous list of amazing things coming out of this episode.
So I appreciate you guys sharing so many awesome ideas and sharing such information. I will have a list of everything in the show notes for everybody. We'll also be turning this into a blog post so everybody can see all this stuff. I won't have information about. Kat and Adam being huge Wu Tang and Tupac fans and also Disney musical fans. But it will have the information about all these things. Yeah. All right. Okay. So that information will be out there.
but you can also reach out to Adam and Katherine via the contact information. They are both, really involved in supporting educators as they support learners, with educational technology. So, honored to have you guys on the show. Can't wait to run into you guys again, someday at ISTE, and have some fun hang out and everything, but I really appreciate you guys being on with us today. Thank you guys. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. Good times.
And, Adam, after we're done, go change that shirt into an Ohio state shirt. But I, I'm, we said, I'm going to put in post production. I'm going to put the red X over top of it. Like we do on the game day. Thank you guys. Yeah, thank you. How great were Adam and Kat? Seriously, such awesome educators and awesome people. They were on my list of folks to have on the show, uh, back in 2021 or whatever it was before I went on my first long hiatus there.
They were like, like the last 10 people I was about to invite on. So as soon as we came back here in 2024, 2025, I knew I had to get Adam and Katherine on the show, team AttaKat, and they delivered for sure. All right. I've got three exciting ed tech updates for you today. As always, I would love to hear what you think about these updates, especially if you've tried these features out, I would love to hear how it goes. You can share your thoughts on Bluesky or X using the hashtag edu duct.
Tape, or you can even leave me a voice message at speakpipe.com/eduducttape. And you might hear your voice in the show. I do. If you're, if you prefer the regular social media stuff, prefer Bluesky, but Hey, I still peek into my ex now and then. So if you're still there and you prefer that platform, feel free to post there. And I still check my notifications and look for that hashtag there. First up, Canva is making data visualization way more engaging with their new interactive charts.
So I've always felt like statistics and graphs were one of the few weak spots in canvas toolbox, but not anymore. Now, instead of just pasting in a static bar graph, you can create animated dynamic charts that bring numbers to life. They've even added some cool new chart types. They're called sunbursts and dot plots and radar charts. You've got to check them out. They're super cool.
And with smooth transitions like their match and move animations, your charts won't just sit there, they'll actually help tell a story. Captivate your learners attention for teachers. This is huge. Imagine breaking down complex stats or tracking trends in a way that's more engaging for your students. I could see these interactive charts making lessons more visual, more dynamic, more fun. And I'm a data nerd, so I'm going to eat this up. Have you tried them out yet? I'm curious.
I would love to hear how you're using them and what you think of them. Again, hit me up on Bluesky or X or wherever you're at with a hashtag edu duct tape, or drop us a message at speakpipe. com slash edu duct tape. Next, let's talk about Pear Deck, one of my very favorites, because they just made it easier, even easier to bring high quality standards aligned lessons into your classroom. And you know, I'm always excited to see tools that make teachers jobs easier.
So Pear Deck launched what they call certified content for ELA and math, which means you can grab ready made Fully customizable lessons that already are set to align with common core texts and other state standards. You just click into what they call the content orchard, get it the content orchard, because their company's called Pear Deck Pear orchard, the content orchard, get it. I'm a sucker for a dad joke.
Anyhow, once you're in there, you can filter by grade or by subject or by standard and instantly find quality lessons that fit your needs. Now I've got to be honest. I'm a bit of a control freak, especially with content that I present or use for instruction. And. And I often find that content created by another source, whether it's AI or somebody else in general is never quite what I want it to be.
And if you're like me, the good news here is that you can modify these lessons before you use them. So you get a good, solid starting point that's standards aligned, but then you still have the flexibility to make them work for you. And for your students and the way you teach, but it gets even better. Pear Deck also introduced these math and ELA quick checks, which let you assess student understanding in real time and adjust lessons on the fly.
So they're really quick, little formative assessments that are also standards aligned. And if you listen to the recent episode with Adam Sparks, you know, That formative assessment and meeting learners where they are is my jam. So the fact that Pear Deck is offering ready made formative assessment tools is a big deal in my book. So if you're using Pear Deck, I think both of these things are a game changer.
If you've already tried them out, or if you try them out today, um, I would love to hear what you think of them again. Tag me on Bluesky or X use the hashtag edu duct tape, or leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/eduducttape. All right. Last but not least, Google is making video creation ridiculously easy with their new tool, Google vids. So back in the day, I'd recommend teachers record screencasts so the kids could access content whenever best fit their learning path.
But many teachers thought that recording videos seemed like a daunting task. I get it. Editing, finding the right tools, making it look polished, feeling comfortable in front of the camera. It could feel really overwhelming, but Google just made it a whole lot easier for us. Google vids is officially here for education plus. And Gemini for workspace customers. So again, this is another one of those situations where Google folks, if you're not education plus.
Or Gemini for workspace with your account. I'm really sorry. Skip forward like a minute or so until this is over. I hate to make you feel sad on this one. But again, as I always say with paid plans and things like that, if they're letting us record and edit videos on their platform and host them on their platform, that requires server space.
And something's got to pay for those servers and the people that monitor Ridiculous amounts of air conditioning or whatever that, that cools them down, all that kind of stuff. So it kind of makes sense, even though I wish it was free for you, but anyhow, so if you have access, Google videos works just like Google docs or slides or sheets. They work right in your browser. That means you can create instructional videos.
Assign video projects or even enhance your school newsletters or things like that, your classroom newsletters without needing fancy software or any advanced editing skills. It comes with ready to use templates. It comes with animations, transitions, even stock media library so that it's all ready to be used and you don't need permission to use it. It's already built in there. It's stock media so that you and your students can put together polished videos.
And the Google classroom integration makes assigning and sharing those videos a breeze. And that's rad too. Now, here's where it gets really cool. If you have a Gemini education plan or education premium, Um, you can like Like liner notes to figure out which things you have here, which is you don't, I apologize for the complexity. It's not me. It's Google. But if you have one of those two plans, you also get access to AI powered video creation within Google vids.
So not just the Google vids features, but AI powered video creation, just give it a prompt or even upload a doc from Google drive and Gemini will generate a fully editable video storyboard complete with suggested scenes. And text and stock media and background music. It prepares it all for you. You just have to record yourself saying the things now I haven't had a chance to try this out myself yet. And I, to be honest, I'm not even sure if I have access to this.
I've got so many different Google accounts. Are any of them, these kinds of plans? I'm not sure, but if you try it out, I would love to hear from you. So if you test Google vids, let me know what you think. Is it worth it? Is it awesome? Does it live up to the hype? Is it better than the video, other video platforms out there? Are you switching to it or are you sticking with what you've always been using? So that wraps up this round of education and ed tech news.
If any of these updates caught your attention, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Hop over to Bluesky or X and use hashtag edu duct tape. Or better yet, leave me a voice message at speakpipe. com slash edu duct tape. And you may just hear your voice in an upcoming episode. Well, it's time to shift this episode into park, but let's hope I do a little better parking this episode than I did during that first driving experience. But what did I learn from crashing my dad's truck into the garage?
First, I learned to only use one foot and not put your left foot on the brake and your right foot on the gas. But then I learned that reflection makes all the difference because that's when I figured it out. Not as it happened. I learned it by reflecting. I said, what went wrong there? And that's exactly what mirror talk by today's sponsor Swivl does for teachers and students. It turns experiences into meaningful learning by building in the reflection piece.
And remember, there's a big prize at stake if you reflect with me at bit. ly slash reflect with jake. That's bit.ly/reflectwithjake. Join the group, complete a quick reflection, and you'll be entered to win a one year MirrorTalk Pro subscription and a poster pack for your classroom. Because real learning doesn't just happen. It happens when we reflect.