¶ INTRO
Formative assessment is an important part of a teacher's repertoire, but what tools and strategies might we use effectively? In today's episode, we explore how EdTech can help us check for understanding in smarter, more engaging and more effective ways. Dan Niessen joins me to tackle the big question. What tool or strategy would you use for formative assessment? And we talk about five or six different tools and a couple of really cool strategies.
Plus I share some updates on Google Slides, Canva's Visual Suite 2.0, and how to cite AI generated content. Let's dive in. Welcome, welcome in Duct Tapers. Welcome and thank you for being here. Thank you for tuning into the Educational Duct Tape Podcast. If you're new here, welcome. You are now a Duct taper because you're here and hopefully believe in what I call the Educational Duct Tape metaphor, which is the idea that educational technology, it's like Duct tape.
It's a tool that helps us solve problems, help us meet goals, help us address learning standards in our classrooms. It's not the end all, be all. We don't. Set forth to use Duct tape, nor do we set forth to use, uh, educational technology.
We set forth to have great learning experiences for kids and to help them learn and have sound pedagogy, and sometimes we have challenges and things we want to achieve, and educational technology is a tool that could support us, just like Duct tape can help us repair that broken. I don't know, glass, don't, don't prepare broken glasses with Duct. Tape, that'd, probably be a bad idea. Uh, but today's episode is one where we have a guest, a wonderful guest. A very intelligent guest.
So the way the episodes work is this, these come out weekly. If I can get them out weekly. Uh, every other episode has a guest. So even numbered episodes like this one. We have a guest with us odd numbered episodes like the one you'll hear next week. There's no guest. There's me doing what I call a soapbox moment. and each episode after either the guest interview or the soapbox moment, I share three to five-ish, ed tech or education updates about things going on today.
I've got a couple of big ones, one from Google and a set from Canva 'cause they just had a bunch of big updates. So stay tuned at the end of the episode, for those two things. Uh, today's guest is my friend from here in Ohio, Dan Niessen. It's. Actually supposed to be, Bryon Carpenter. Dan's was supposed to appear two weeks from now, and Bryon's supposed to be today, we had a little, uh, recording issue during Bryon's interview. , I thought I had lost part of the audio.
Long story short, I tracked down the audio. Uh, so I do have that interview. I just started editing Dan's while I was waiting to try to figure out the issue with Bryon, so I. I flip 'em outta order. So today, Dan Niessen, two weeks from now, the great Bryon Carpenter from, fresh Air at five. So you'll be hearing that soon. You're gonna wanna subscribe so that you don't miss the updates that I share next week or the episode with Brian in two weeks, or the other episodes coming up after that.
So whatever podcast app you're in, or if you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe so you make sure you don't miss those upcoming episodes. And please do share these episodes with your friends. I, I, I share some. Uh, interviews with some guests who I think are incredibly intelligent and I love talking to, so your friends aren't gonna wanna miss that. Uh, and also I think that, you need a place to find the ed tech updates and I try to be that place for you.
Uh, so I think that's a powerful part of the episode too. So please do share with friends. Also in the show notes, you'll find a link to my newsletter. You can also. Subscribe there. I share the same kinds of things there too. I know different people learn in different formats. So if you want those Ed Tech and EDU news updates weekly in your email inbox, subscribe there so you don't miss that. Okay. Without further ado, let's talk to Dan Niessen.
¶ Today's Guest: Dan Niessen
All right. Today our guest is Dan Niessen. Dan is the Senior Technology Integration Specialist at NEONet, providing all sorts of ed tech PD for K through 12 teachers, administrators, and school staff. He started out as a high school social studies teacher at a few schools around the Cleveland, Ohio area, but then moved into his current position in 2018, which feels like a lifetime ago. Dan, he's always excited to share and learn about EdTech.
You could follow Dan on Twitter @Dan_EdTech or on Bluesky at @NEONetEdTech.bsky.Social as always. Those, contact info nuggets will be in the show notes, but not in the show notes. Actually, here in the show is Dan. What's up Dan? How you doing?
I'm doing great, Jake. Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, honored to have you on this show, Dan. So Dan and I have been running into each other at EdTech conferences in Northeast Ohio for years. This is our first time running into each other in a podcast though, right. This is new. Yeah, So, so it's been, I can't believe I, I didn't even fathom how long that's been that you, so NEONet is a, um, I'll let you explain what it is, but NEONet is local to where I live here. So I've known Dan pretty much since he started that position at NEONet in 2018.
But I, I. I can't believe it's been that long. That's crazy long, Dan.
yeah, yeah. So yeah, in 2018, I started at NEONet for people who don't know NEONet's and ITC, which is kind of similar to the ESCs, but we handle more of like the technology
Mm-hmm.
side of things. So like student information support. It, networking, support, that sort of stuff. And so I do, ed tech training, pd, mostly for teachers, but occasionally we throw in administrators and like support staff and
Yep.
and folks like that too.
Yeah, and you've done great stuff, and so you do a lot of stuff here locally in Northeast Ohio, but do you do stuff that's available outside of the local Northeast Ohio area as well?
Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, locally, yeah, we, our like geographic area is pretty big. then also we have our online content as well. in the past, you know, especially since Covid, it really, exploded and there was an explosion of, you know, virtual learning and we jumped on that train too to provide. More like PD on demand stuff for people to get to as well. So we have an LMS on our website and we also do weekly webinars that anybody in the world can come to.
And those are always fun too, 'cause we'll get people coming to come into these, webinars from all over the place. We'll get some people from d just different parts of Ohio,
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. California, and Texas,
and Florida. And I sometimes get people from New Zealand of all places. Uh, so it's really fun to, to Interact with those people and still be able to, hear about what, a little bit about what's going on in their classrooms, you know, across the, across the globe.
Yeah. When you get those folks from New Zealand, are you like, Hey, I do in-person stuff too. If you want me to come to New Zealand?
No, you know, I haven't really advertised that. 'cause I don't wanna sit on like a what, God, 15 hour flight or whatever it would be. You know? I'm okay. I'm okay. We can do it virtually.
Okay. All right. New Zealand folks, Dan, Dan will connect with you virtually. I'll be there. Send me, send me the email. I'll make the trip to New Zealand. I've never been. I want to go, I, would've visited all the places.
okay. Yeah. If, like, if I can then hang out there for a while and do like the Lord of the Rings
Oh yeah. like
tour or whatever that they have out in New Zealand, like, okay. All right.
Okay.
I'll check it out.
You'll, he'll visit, you'll go visit the Shire, right.
Yeah. that's
Yeah. for sure.
the trek.
Maybe, maybe not all the way to Mordor or anything like that. Like I love that. I love the reference there. I didn't see that coming.
that.
So Yeah. I love that, that option If I go to a conference or a PD day here in Ohio, it's a pretty good shot that I'm gonna be seeing Dan there and he's gonna be put on a great session. But it's nice that folks across the state, across the country, across the world, can access that too. So we'll put that, Link to those webinars and the free courses and things like that. We'll have in the show notes. if anybody wants some quick, easy and high quality pd, about EdTech, it'll be there.
Thanks. Thanks for sharing that, Dan. Yeah, Uh, so now that. we are joking around about Lord of the Rings, let's get into, let's get into an actual game as folks on the Educational Duct Tape Podcast know, we, we always gotta start before we get into our actual ed tech talk, we gotta start with a game. And we're gonna start with a game of Which of the following is less torturous, which typically, for folks goes by a slightly different name. I'm not due to contract and copyright reasons.
I'm not able to call it by its more common name, I have to call it on the Educational Duct Tape Podcast. Which of the following is less torturous? So Dan, I'd like to know which of the following would be less torturous losing all of your hair or. Yeah. permanently having a really rocking mullet and there's nothing you can do about it. You cut it off, it grows right.
back into like the sweetest mullet you've ever seen, which are, which are you going with having the sweetest mullet ever, or losing all your hair.
oh
I mean, you still have facial hair, you know,
Yeah.
just, you're just bald.
You know, I, I do like to say that, uh, my, my hair is like one of my few redeeming qualities
few. I think you've had more than that.
So, you know, I, I guess I'd rather have a mullet than nothing. So I, I guess I'd be rocking a mullet uh, yeah, I mean, I guess if worse comes to worse, if it's like long enough, I, I could like stuff it into the backside of my shirt
Oh, that's a strategy.
you know?
Why is Dan always wearing turtlenecks and quarter zips? Well, he is. I heard there's a mullet hiding in there. That's that's good strategy there. You'll never tell he's got really curly mullet back. Why is Dan always wearing a hooded sweatshirt
it's
with the. It's 95
degrees outside. What
He's got the, he's got the hood up no matter what I heard, he's got a mullet and he can't cut it off no matter What he does That's a pretty amazing answer. I think I would probably, huh? I think I've got, I think my, my head would look odd bald. I don't think I could pull off bald. Um, so I think I'm going mullet too. Um, but I'm gonna wear it with pride. I'm not hiding it
back in fashion, you know, so
Right.
it'll come back around no matter what. Eventually it'll come back around to being in fashion again.
Yeah. right. I'm going for it. I'm like, like, like if the high school baseball players can rock mullets, I could, I could be the baseball dad on the sideline rocking a mullet. I don't know. I think I could do it. we'll be hanging out at the ed tech conferences with our mullets, we'll probably have a, we'll do a joint session together called like, um, uh, EdTech in 2025. Business in the front party in the back or something. I don't know.
okay. Yeah,
We'll bring in some mullet terminology. Yes, I think it is a good. plan. We bring 'em mullets. Back to EdTech. we're in,
That's right.
I am now going to use AI to generate a picture of you with a mullet for the, for the cover of this episode. right. The new chat. The new chat. GPT you proof. Nice. okay. So now that we are, now that we're getting. Entirely too silly and off topic of educational technology. let's redirect this train back to EdTech.
¶ Today's EduDuctTape Question: What tool or strategy would you use to formatively assess students' comprehension?
So I'm gonna ask you, Dan, what's called an Educational Duct Tape question for anybody who's new to listening to the podcast. An Educational Duct Tape question is where we think about a teacher goal or a teacher task, or something a teacher needs to accomplish or wants to do or solve, maybe a problem in their classroom. And we look at educational technology as a tool like Duct tape, that could solve that problem.
Now, I wanna point out as always that like the solution to all of our things in the classroom is not ed tech. Not always, but sometimes, it offers us a really good solution. So we're gonna focus on problems like. That. So the question I have for you today, Dan, and I'm sure you've got some good answers with this. Based on the work that you do at NEONet is what tool or strategy would you use for formative assessment?
¶ Formative Assessment during Reading
So what would you use to informatively assess students' comprehension.
Yeah, absolutely. So I always think of things, you know, in terms of my experience. Again, I was a high school social studies teacher. That's how I kind of contextualize everything.
Okay.
when I think about anything in ed tech,
Mm-hmm. that's just where
I go first. And then I,
Okay.
then I can learn from other subject areas and other grade levels and kind of work from them to extrapolate it out from there. But anyway, so, what I think of first off, for, assessment. In high school social studies is, there's a lot of reading and a lot of vocabulary,
Hmm.
that, that we need to make sure students know very important stuff, that they need to understand the vocabulary, to understand what the reading and kind of vice versa too. so, you know, the first challenge is just getting kids to comprehend the reading, to sit down and do the reading in the first place. And, you know, let's be honest, a lot of the time. It can be kind of boring sometimes reading a history or a government
Mm-hmm. section
of a textbook or whatever it is. so, what I like try to do is to try to make it as interesting as possible.
¶ Chunking Reading with Formative Questions
Make it as interactive as possible , add as many visuals as possible, chunk, the reading into smaller pieces and ask questions throughout. So I'm gonna start with that fir that first part for chunking. reading a part
Mm-hmm.
asking questions throughout. I love ai chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini and all those things,
Hmm.
those are perfect at achieving just that. You can just give ChatGPT, you know, a big old block of text from your textbook, or an article or whatever it is, and say, Hey. Put this into smaller pieces and between each piece ask one or two questions.
Nice.
and that's a huge time saver for teachers. 'cause you don't have to make up all those questions yourself. And that it's gonna help the students chunk that reading into smaller pieces. So it's, you know, a lot more consumable and they can, you know, split it up into smaller
pieces Right.
You know, the, the one thing I like, you know, you ever read a book and you like a chapter and then you kind of like look ahead in to see how long the next chapter
Yeah,
There's something in my brain that makes me mad when the chapter, the next chapter is like 50 pages long. I'm like, oh God, it's so long. But
not gonna start now.
like, yeah, but if I read like a different book, and I look ahead to the next chapter and it's only like five pages long. There's something in my brain that makes me happy. I'll still read the same like 50 pages in that same like reading session that I'm doing, but there's something about it being split up
Yeah.
pieces that there's something there. I
Yeah,
need to do some research as to why that is.
I think it makes sense.
Yeah, but I think there's a lot to be said for that, for, for student reading materials
Yeah.
splitting stuff up into smaller pieces, chunking it, asking formative questions as you go. And again, I think AI can be a really big help
Yeah.
handle all of that grunt work for you.
So I think, not only is it nice just to chunk it and break the text up, but it means that the kids. Number one are kind of changing what they're doing regularly throughout. Like we know when we're teaching a lesson we shouldn't do 40 minutes of lecture 'cause the kids can't handle that. We should be switching like the modalities of the things that we're doing. So you are going from switching to just reading to now a paragraph later, you're now answering questions about the reading.
So their minds are kind of switching, switching lanes in what they're doing. And I think it's developing some kind of active reading and thinking strategies for them because they're not just, they're not just like it used to be. Like, think back to when we were in school, history class, at least for me was like, read these eight pages and then answer these four questions.
Yeah.
whereas. They could have taken those four questions and put them throughout the pages. and so that we're going back and forth. And so we're thinking about the specific takeaways as we're reading them, and that also helps the kids identify like, what's really important in here, in this section. So I think that's a really strong, suggestion there. I think I would level it up too and say, when I gave that text to.
The bot, whatever it is I'm using, whatever LLM I'm using, I'm gonna say like, these are the, this is the standard that I, that I, the kids are supposed to master here. You know, so they focus in on the right things. and maybe some of those, I forget what they call those, like, those are those other standards in the, in the content curricula that are more like the skills the kids are developing, you know, not just. About the specific topic, but just in general as a social studies student, right?
So I need the kids to develop this ability to reason about cause and effect, in, in, in all situations. So I, I put in as much of that stuff about those goals that I have for them. So that it's really like not only is it developing those formative assessment questions, but I know it really strongly aligns with what I need the kids to, to learn. Because that's what we lose by having the AI do the work for us, is we lose our brain thinking about what's important.
So if we could tell the AI what's important, then we save the time, which is what we needed to do in the first place while still putting our teacher knowledge in there. Our lens as the teacher of that class,
exactly. Yeah. E every time that I, you know, do any training sessions and, you know, PD on, on ai. I always bring up the 80 20 rule
Yeah.
time. It's 'cause it's so hugely important,
Yeah.
I think that's a good example. You know, again, AI can handle that 80% for you. It can write those questions for you. You
Right.
the context and the reason and all that stuff. But it can do kind of that grunt work
Yeah.
But you still need to come in for that last 20%. Make sure the questions are where you need them
Yeah.
sure they're assessing the right parts. Yeah. and again, that's can be a huge help. Uh,
Yeah.
Just a time saver for teachers who are, you know, running on fumes sometimes.
Yeah. So what are you doing with these questions next? Are you taking them and putting them into, like Google Forms or something like that? where are they going once you write them? inside of the LLMI.
Yeah. I mean, it, it's kind of up to the teacher for what they're comfortable with. sometimes it could be just like, Hey, let's just stick it to analog here and just print 'em out Normally. and just give 'em to students as an in-class
Yeah.
thing. it could be a jigsaw sort of situation where students are broken off into groups and, you know, different groups of students get different chunks of the text and they kind of, do their own parts and then they come back together and present on what they learned or, yeah. Anyhow, we can digitize it just to make it as, you know, efficient for the teacher as possible. Throw it into a Google form, and say, okay, here's here's our reading Quiz here.
Yeah.
to get, Make sure that kids have this information. Hey, they need to take some points too and get some data.
Right. Yeah. And that's kind of the, to me, that's the reason we use the, well, one of the reasons we use the technology tools for formative assessment is because it could assess the things faster than we can, it could show us that data and those trends, but we need to. Look at it. let it do the 80% to your point earlier of actually assessing and tracking and tabulating the kids' scores.
But then we need to do the 20% of thinking about that and deciding what lesson we need to teach next, where we, what we need to revisit, what we could skip over that. That's the formative part to formative assessment, right, is making those decisions. That's what we gotta do. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly right.
So you mentioned in there too that you kind of think of two different lenses when you think about, um, formative assessment and social studies. You think about reading, which is that, and you think about vocabulary
¶ The Fast and the Curious EduProtocol
if you're trying to get kids to master those, depth of knowledge, level one vocab stuff, which is important. what are you doing there?
Yeah. So I came across this video from Matt Miller, not to be confused with Jake Miller,
Correct? Yes.
all those millers running around out
there. was a lot of us.
so, so the guy from Ditch that textbook, and he made this video, a while ago that I came across where he was talking about those eduprotocols, which that's a whole nother topic,
Yes.
that's a whole nother. but essentially he was, describing one of the EduProtocols called the Fast and the Curious, and he's combining it, with Quizizz. And, you know, I'm a big fan of Quizizz. It's probably
my favorite Me too.
just like in GE general, a ed tech tools that's
Me too.
So the whole idea of this fast and the curious eduprotocol, uh, is essentially it's a different kind of approach to drilling vocabulary. Uh, so the way he describes it in the video is first thing when you introduce a new unit or a new topic is you drill the vocabulary right off the rip on the first day. Using Quizizz, then you look through all the data as you normally would, from Quizizz.
And that's, again, that's the nice thing about Quizizz is it gives you all that information into nice charts and graphs and stuff, right, right. When we're done,
Yep.
you give some, give a little bit of feedback to students, call out some certain things students did well, students needed to work on more, clarify any, you know, vocab terms, confusion, any of that sort of thing. And then you run the exact same, vocab Quiz again.
Yeah.
And then you will probably see a pretty big bump.
Yeah.
you repeat that same process multiple times throughout the week or throughout the unit as you go. And then eventually you're gonna see students essentially acing those vocab tests because one, because you've done 'em so many times and because they've gotten such. immediate feedback over and over again
Mm-hmm.
little confusions, those little misunderstandings that, that pop up between, you know, similar sounding vocab words or what, or just a word they've never seen before. When they get that immediate feedback and a chance to prove that they understand the feedback
Yeah.
they just got, that helps tremendously. So I'm a big fan of that approach. I think it's a really good approach. And the nice thing is it can be done pretty quickly. This is like a 10 minute thing. so it can be condensed down to a pretty short amount of time.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of that, one. So I, I used the fast and the curious protocol. Back when I taught science, I was teaching eighth grade science and obviously application of the science skills is what you're really going for, but they're gonna have to know what convection is and what a convection current is before they could start to apply it. And truly apply it at the level we want to, to talking about what's happening on the sea floor, for example.
So we do need to build that depth of knowledge, vocabulary, skill, the DOK one, I should say. And so, Yeah. EDU protocols was a, well, that specific edu protocol, the fast and the curious protocol was one I used a lot. Actually way back in the show, early on in the show had on, John Corripo, who was one of the two creators of the eduprotocols and, have never had on Marlena, I believe her last name's, Hebern, but was his co-author on that book.
But Yeah. lots of great things in the eduprotocols, books. That's a great one.
¶ Quizizz
kids enjoy it. Jon would tell you he recommends using Quizizz, but you don't have to use Quizizz. There's no reason you can't be doing this in Kahoot or Quizlet or, Curipod or Snorkl or like a name, any Google forms, whatever. but I agree Quizizz, the data in Quizizz is so strong. The ease of use of Quizizz is so strong. Kids enjoy it. Maybe not as much as they enjoy something like Blooket or Gimkit, but I think the data that you get in the free version is so rich.
and the accessibility features in Quizizz, have you seen the accessibility features that are in there?
Yeah, you can like tag accomodations
Yeah.
to
Yep.
students
Yep.
up every time that you run a, that's really, really awesome.
Yeah.
You know, similar tools to, to Quizizz, to use your Educational Duct Tape analogy. It doesn't matter the brand of Duct tape
Mm-hmm.
using,
100%.
this tool to reach the, it's a means to, to reach the ends that, that we need.
Yeah. For, Yeah. for sure. it's the goal that matters of what we're trying to achieve here, which is that, that formative assessment, that building of that skill, and that, It doesn't matter what tool specifically we're using. I think the cool thing here is a couple things are happening when we do the fast and curious protocol. One is the kids are self-assessing because they're seeing this data. They're thinking about how they're performing.
they're seeing how they're performing in comparison to the class. they're seeing their selves grow, which is kind of a growth mindset piece there too. and we are, and they're getting kind of. Interested in learning about, they're actually learning about the vocabulary through the activity that's formatively, assessing them. And then we know when it's time to be done right. We know, okay, you know, like everybody's at 95%, we could stop doing this one. You know what I mean?
We don't have to do this one every day anymore. We can move on.
¶ Jared Cooney Horvath's Insights
one thing that I always wondered about. When I was doing this back in the day in my science classroom, I had this other, author on years ago on the podcast, Jared Cooney Horvath, who writes about some brain science kind of stuff. And he talked when he was on, this is like 20, I don't even know, 2018 or something like that. He was on the show. he talked about.
How our brains, and he would say this much more intelligently than I will, but our brains connect, the things our brain connects, knowledge and content that we learn about to specific applications. So he gives us this example in the book. That's something like if you're preparing for the mcat, I'm not sure if that's what his example was, and you prepare by taping flashcards on your bathroom mirror and you look at them every morning when you're getting ready for school, you are going to learn.
Those vocabulary words really well, but you're going to know them better while you're standing in your bathroom than when you're sitting in your classroom that you've maybe never been, never like, never been in taking the test. So, Yeah. so he, he says that we really. We connect it to certain things.
And so if we always study that thing in the same way, in the same place, and then we go to a totally different place and are asked about them in a different way, we'll know some of it, but our brain's gonna have a hard time. Tracking back to that information is something you talked about. So what I always wondered was, okay, if the fast and the curious protocol Rapidly moves in a way that kids enjoy, moves them to that understanding of those words.
What do I need to do next to take that knowledge and kind of un-pair it from Quizizz and fast curious protocol. Does that make sense?
yeah. Absolutely.
¶ Nearpod and Pear Deck
And that's where, you know, I. That's where you can kind of get into more nuance and
more details Yeah.
and stuff from direct instruction, you know,
Yeah.
as a high school social studies teacher, surprise, surprise, I did a lot of direct instruction, you
Right,
and there's nothing wrong with that, uh, of
right, right.
of course, like, like you said, limit it so it's not the entire class period's, not just one big long lecture.
Yeah.
and you know, that's where, you know, things like Nearpod and Pear Deck can come in and that can fill, that nice, need there
Yeah.
to foster some, interactivity in there.
Yeah.
relating it back to, kind of the next step up vocabulary, not. vocabulary just seem like they're kind of just these, terms just kind of
Yeah.
there in space so kids actually connect them to the content that we're talking about. we can reinforce those vocab terms, throughout the direct instruction. And again, if we throw in just a little quick little Quiz, or knowledge checks
Mm-hmm.
from a Nearpod or a pear deck as we go throughout our direct instruction, that can help, you know. I'm a big fan of graphic organizers
Yeah.
so especially like Venn diagrams or Frayer models,
Yeah.
throw those into a pear deck or a Nearpod as you're doing your direct instruction to give kids five minutes to fill out, you know, a couple of Frayer models for those really important,
Mm-hmm.
terms. So they have to do the definition, but then they also have to do like examples or characteristics or
Yeah.
like that to kind of that kind of. Expands upon the vocabulary term. So it's not just simple term/definition, it adds more context to it. So it
Yeah.
you know, bridges that gap.
Yeah. I think what happens by doing all of those things is then that knowledge of that specific vocab word is no longer. Just attached to doing this in the Quizizz, it's now also attached to doing this in the pear deck. It's also attached to what they heard Mr. Niessen say during the lecture. It's also attached to what they wrote in their Frayer model. And in a Frayer model, you're doing these four different versions of. Of understanding of that vocabulary term.
So maybe it's, a drawing and it's a real life example, however you set up the categories on your Frayer. and so now that word and your knowledge of it is now connected to so many different things
Yeah.
I think, uh, what Cooney Horvath would say is that, you've now kind of solved that problem because that knowledge is now interconnected with a lot of different things. And so I think you've probably really well solved that problem there.
Absolutely.
yeah.
¶ Pear Deck Autograding
So in the Nearpod pear deck debate, I think they're both fantastic tools. Um, I used Pear deck, in my classroom. That's just what I had access to, so I've. You know, sometimes you have the thing that you're used to and you're familiar with, and it becomes your favorite. So I tend to lean towards Pear Deck, although I think Nearpod is fantastic too. but one thing that Pear Deck was always lacking was the ability to auto grade. It didn't do that. for me. now it does.
Did you see that they've added those auto grading features to it now?
Interesting. I didn't
know that Yeah. Yeah. so you could take like a, so it used to be the multiple choice question I think was just called a poll question, or maybe it was called Multiple Choice, but now they've split it out to two different ones. Now there's Poll or maybe I, maybe the other one's called quiz or Multiple Choice. but you can have some auto grade and some not auto grade, and they built in ai.
So going back to your earlier point, you can now say we're having a discussion about this topic and you know, what are some formative assessment questions I should be asking about them and pear Deck will now develop those, with the answers already programmed in so that you're getting that formative assessment as you're going.
Yeah. And, and, that, that's kind another idea too for, integrating AI as you are. Uh developing lessons
Yeah.
to kind of stuff that you already have. 'cause of course, nobody wants to sit there and reinvent the wheel when they don't really need to.
Yeah.
but when AI can come in and be like, Hey, I can make this. Thing easier
Right.
you don't really have to do that much to, to make it happen. so what I suggest people do is take, like a PDF of your, slideshows that something that you already have, something you've used maybe for years. it into chat GPT or Gemini and say, Hey, what would be some good formative knowledge check
Yeah.
that I can put in here? or if you wanna, you know, if you're kind of good on that part and you wanna move away from direct instruction, you can say. What would be some ideas to expand upon this topic
Yeah.
to dive deeper into whatever this topic is, what are some hands-on, student activities that could be connected to this content? And again, maybe throw in some standards in there too.
Yeah.
and I really like to think of AI as a brainstorming partner. I'm a huge, fan of ai, as you could tell.
Yeah.
I especially really like it just to be someone to bounce ideas off of. that's a very, very quick and,
Yeah.
something that you can get immediate feedback from and also tell it to tweak whatever bits and pieces that you want after it spits something back out at you. You can say, okay, I like this idea, but I don't quite like that idea. Change this to that, and it will just kind of do it and it'll
Yeah.
possibly some ideas that you wouldn't have thought of just on your own.
Yeah.
¶ Today's Sponsor: M2 from Swivl
My son and I have gotten into prepping our family smoothies lately. We've got a bit of a formula, which essentially boils down to add enough kale, spinach, and broccoli to make it really healthy. And enough blueberries, banana and vanilla yogurt to keep us from actually tasting those veggies. It's a balance. If the smoothie's too green, no one drinks it, not even the dog. And I've been thinking that's kind of how screen time works in the classroom too.
The promise of screen-based learning sounded great a decade ago. Engagement, personalized pacing, one-to-one devices, but sometimes I worry that all that screen time leaves no room for what really matters. Reflection. Critical thinking and good old face-to-face connection. And I think that with technology, especially screens just like vegetables, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. That's why I love M2, the intelligent co-teacher from today's sponsor, swivl.
It's AI powered support that doesn't dump more devices into the room. M2 just listens quietly and steps in when you need help. Whether it's summarizing a lesson for late arrivals, or bridging between concepts on the fly. Teach smarter not noisier at swivl.com/M2. That's swivl.com/M2. Now back to our interview with Dan Yeah. That, that idea of it being used as a thought partner, I think is a really good idea. it's the way I find myself using it a lot too.
I don't want it to do the thinking for me. but if it could be kind of another brain that I'm bouncing ideas off of or that it's helping me, it's sparking thinking for me. I agree that there's a lot of potential there. Do some
of the grunt work as,
Yeah.
I
like
to say. say
Yeah, for sure. I like that. I like that. In your point about giving it your slides and having it develop the formative assessment, you're making sure that it's still, because we know that AI's not perfect, right? But we're giving it the content, saying these are the, this is the important knowledge that's coming to it. You could even potentially record your lesson and give it to it, or, you know, turn our voice to text and give it your lesson and say like, here's exactly what I'm gonna say.
Say to my kids, here's exactly what they're gonna see on the slide. what questions should I be asking them along with that? Because then you know that it's really focusing in on your thinking. And it's really just to your point, just doing the grunt work for you.
Absolutely. . One of the PD sessions I do, is called, PBL in the AI era,
Hmm.
in that session I essentially just explain that we can use AI as, as a thought partner, as a brainstorming partner to help us develop, you know, activities and projects and assessments and stuff that. Hard to think of and hard just to put all the resources together to actually make happen. Uh, and they can save us a significant amount of time, as opposed to us putting all that stuff mainly together ourselves or
Yeah.
the internet to try to find the exact thing that I'm looking for. you know, and I'm sure you've been to PDs, I've been to PDs, you know, about all the great stuff on, on project based learning. which is great, I mean, but, it's very theoretical
Mm-hmm.
you know, At the end of the day, if a teacher goes to one of those sessions, they're like, wow, that's really cool. And then they hit, they're hit with the reality of, okay, how do I take all those ideas and implement it into these specific content points that I have to teach next week?
right.
And it's just really hard to connect those dots. And
Yeah.
back to AI, being the brainstorming partner, well. ChatGPT. Gimme some ideas for how I can connect these dots
Right.
me start to put a plan together. And that,
Yeah.
That's a big way that AI can really be a help to, to educators.
To me, I always think about like when somebody might say no, the teacher should be the one coming up with those PBL connections and those questions and that format and stuff like that. and I think I, I see what they're saying, that it's gonna be better if it's coming from a teacher brain. And it's important for the teacher to be a part of that process. But one thing I often come back to is like, what's the alternative?
Like. Meaning, in that situation, if the teacher doesn't have time to do that work, right, to think about those that PBL application and the alternative is not doing the PBL at all, then I want them to use the AI to help them. Because if the alternative is not doing it at all, We want the AI help there. And to your point, sometimes the teacher can do the thinking but have the AI just support them in doing that and be that kind of thought partner there. So I think it's a big one there too.
We all have, you know, just so much mental bandwidth that we
Yep.
at
Yeah. Yeah,
and so AI can kinda lighten the load, right?
yeah, for sure. and that's where I come tend to come down on is let it, let's let it help us, right? we gotta be realistic. We can't do all the things. so in terms of tools, we talked about Quizizz, we talked about Pear Deck and Nearpod, which I love as well. I love that those embed formative assessment right into the lesson experience. are there any other ones that you're excited about or you see teachers being excited about when you work with 'em?
¶ AI Tutors
Yeah. So, I, sticking on the AI train, because that's been my life for the past, you know, year and a half now, I'm a fan of these like AI tutors
Mm-hmm.
there. again, they have to be, you know, set up correctly and everything. But I like the MagicStudent, the part of MagicSchool.
Mm-hmm.
school ai. I think they do a good job of having a kind of a new spin on helping students develop skills and knowledge. And the nice thing about them is the, these companies have set them up in a pretty smart way
Yeah.
where students aren't giving away any of their personal information. When they sign in, they don't actually log in with an account. All students. Really just join as guests
Yeah.
and the whole time teachers get a, a transcript of everything, the entire interaction between the student and the AI bot. And even though like the AI will like, give a summary of the conversations between the student and the ai, And I think that's good for two main reasons. one, it helps with the content itself
Yep.
students can be given an AI chat bot that's focused on a certain topic or maybe it's, you know, impersonating a historical figure or something like that. Um, it's kind of funny 'cause even if like a student tries to take it off task.
Yep.
The AI bot will always like, bring it back around to the conversation at hand. It actually does a really good job of
It does. Yeah.
it a lot and trying to make it mess up and like go off on a weird tangent, but it always does a really nice job of just coming back to the content at hand.
Right.
and then the other part is getting kids comfortable with ai. You know, like it or not, there's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube
Right.
for ai. kids are gonna have to get used to talking to ai. I'm sure they don't really have a problem with it. I think we have, I think it's more of educators getting used to kids getting used to to
Right. talking to
ai, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
it's gonna, it's here, it's gonna be here, it's gonna stay here. It's getting just more and more integrated into everything that we have. for better or worse. Of course,
Yep.
misuse and there's bad examples and bad actors of course, out there. but. We can't, you know, put our head in the sand here and tell kids to ignore it and, tell 'em just to pretend it doesn't exist.
Mm-hmm. ' Dan Niessen: We gotta teach
em how to use it properly. And if we can put up some walls around a specialized version of an AI chat bot that focuses on talking about a historical event or whatever it is, well that's a good place to get them started.
Yeah. for sure. I think. And it's a great, like having them kind of do an assessment through that conversation, I think is really powerful. The we'll lose that data that we'll get out of like a pear deck or a Quizizz where we could see really quickly, hey, all the kids worked with this chat bot and they answered these questions in there. How they perform, where were the gaps. We're probably not gonna get that unless there's something in there I don't know of. But I think that's okay.
I think the kids are assessing through that conversation, the kids are learning through the conversation. I think that's really, really strong. Do you think it could. You were talking earlier about the, reading a passage and having it chunked and asking questions after it. Do you think you could take, the custom chatbot in MagicSchool, for example, and say, kids are gonna read this passage. I want you to prompt them to read one paragraph at a time.
After they read each paragraph, ask 'em questions about it. Once you're sure they understand, move them on. Tell them to read the next question. Ask them question or, I'm sorry, the rest paragraph. Do you think it would do that? Well?
So I, I tried to do that in SchoolAI. I haven't tried that in MagicStudent,
Mm-hmm. but I did try it
with SchoolAI it took some additional prompting, if you're not familiar with SchoolAI, it lets you go in and just give the custom instructions to your own AI chat bot and tell it to do whatever. So I did try that. It did work.
Yeah.
a little clunky, you have to like set it up. each like reading section that you're doing.
I see.
but the answer is yes. you
Yeah.
that.
And I think that's a pretty powerful way for kids to learn from reading is talking it through with a chat bot. I mean, ultimately we'd like them to be talking it through with their teacher, but we know that we're gonna be realists here and know that might not be possible all the time. so Shantel Lott was on the show recently and talked about making these like, learning pathways in the MagicSchool custom chatbot for students, where you say, you know. Answer this question.
If you get It, right, you're gonna move on to this. If you get it wrong, we're gonna ask you another one. and I tried it out with math. it worked really well. I was really impressed with it. that was all text-based, so I think I, I could see some students being a little bit bored with that, but still, it, it did a pedagogically speaking. It did a good job of doing it. And so I could see it doing this really well too. If you said, I want the kids to read this article.
And I want you to question them as after every paragraph. I think it could do a pretty good job at it. Yeah. There's some benefit there too.
of down to, to prompting the AI bot. With enough details to get the
Yeah.
that you want. It's not super hard to do, I don't
Yeah,
it's just, it's, it is kind of tedious as you're writing the directions to the AI
yeah.
feels weird when you first do it 'cause you're
Yeah.
it's a computer, it's not gonna understand what I'm talking about. Well, that's kind of the thing about ai. It does
It does. Yeah.
in natural language. That's kind of, its like whole thing.
yeah, for sure.
¶ Snorkl
another tool I'm excited about right now for formative assessment, is Snorkl, have you messed with Snorkl yet?
Yes, I have. Yeah.
what are your thoughts on Snorkl?
It's really, you know, it makes me think of Flipgrid funny enough.
Yeah, I can see that.
would, what I would like to see is, I. that is for Snorkl to like build in like flipgrids old features that
Yeah,
really cool. This is a,
that would be cool.
moonshot thing,
Yeah.
imagine if, Start with like a Flipgrid assignment. You know, a teacher poses a question to the students. The student responds back with video, but instead of having to wait for another kid or the teacher to respond to the kid's video, AI comes in and
Hmm.
Hey, I. here's your, grading rubric. Here's what you did. Well, here's what you did. Here's what you needed clarification on, or whatever it
Right.
And so it's like Flipgrid, but with that bit of AI feedback built in there too. But then you can still also have the community stuff where other students and the teacher can come in and also respond back and give feedback.
The first half of that is kind of what it already does right As the kid responds and it assesses, it just doesn't have that community piece in there. So that would be cool to add in there.
¶ Flip
it's interesting you bring that up because I actually think that Flipgrid or flip or nothing 'cause it's gone. unless you're a Microsoft school district, you have access to it through their tools. But I think it was kind of one of the ideals for formative assessment. It was, it took a lot longer to process and assess than something like Quizizz would take, right? Because it does, it's not multiple choice. The Quizizz does more than that. More than multiple choice. But it's not like auto grading.
It's not. Calculating averages and percentages and total scores and stuff like that. The way that a tool like that does,
Yeah.
Flipgrid, you're gonna have to go through and watch all of those videos individually.
¶ What Makes Snorkl Great
But the best way to formatively assess the kid is really to see what they're thinking. Not just did they get, did they get the Right. answer? What actually what elements of that answer do they know? And so that's what was really strong about a tool like Flip. which therefore makes a tool like Snorkl really strong because you're processing student, thinking, student speaking, student explanation, not just.
A, B, C, or D, you're like, really processing, of course it's the AI doing it, but processing it actually what they say and kind of taking a peek into their mind. So I think that's a really strong step.
Yeah. and that's, I think another example of why I'm so giddy about all this AI stuff is a lot of like the fast feedback that we can
do traditionally Yeah.
has to be, Quantitative in nature,
Mm-hmm.
A, B, C, or
D right
or wrong, and move on a lot of AI stuff. It can break things down like qualitatively
Yeah.
and see, okay, it has a lot more nuance that it
Yeah,
And, yeah, and I'm a huge fan of that capability because that's just way more time consuming for a teacher to do. But again, if you have an AI assistant in there in
yeah.
or another. To help you grade some sort of qualitative information that you have.
Yeah.
that's good stuff.
¶ Why Using AI for Formative Assessment Is Good
Because years ago if I had gone to a teacher and said, best practice for formative assessment is the kids get feedback as quickly as possible. and that they're being assessed on more than just the answering a multiple choice question. That they're actually explaining their thinking. The teacher's gonna say, I don't have time for All of that. And they don't. right. in most situations, they don't have time to do that. It's just not possible.
And so if we're leveraging these tools, it potentially could be doing those things for us. Now there's steps that the teacher needs to take to screen this work to curate what the tool is doing, to follow up with the kids that are struggling and not let it all be an interaction with the computer. But I think there's a lot of potential there to use AI to do these kinds of things. Yeah.
still in early days here. Right. So
Oh yeah. Isn't that crazy?
this, yeah, I mean, like, when did ChatGPT come out? Like publicly? Was that like end of 22
Yeah. I think November 22. Yeah.
Okay. So it's not that long.
Yeah.
But I mean, just so many AI apps in
Yep.
AI apps specifically for education have
Yep.
in that time. And so, I mean, you Know, uh, two and a half years ago or whatever.
Yeah.
what's it gonna look like in another
Oh gosh.
years?
I, dunno if I, want to know. It's like it's gonna be so hard to keep up with,
Yeah, so of course that's what makes this whole, ed tech industry very interesting to follow is
that's for sure.
evolving very quickly. There's a lot of cool stuff out there that, that can legitimately make education better.
Yeah. Well, I think I'm gonna point out here. That if folks as during the next three years, if they want to keep up with all the things happening in EdTech And the evolution with ai, they could certainly keep listening here to the Educational Duct Tape Podcast or not, or. And
And
keep listening and go to the link in the show notes to the NEONet tech integration page so that you could watch those webinars. Dan does see the courses Dan leads because you do a really good job at going like, here's this new. Here's school AI came out, or this new feature came out, or Canva added this, or Pear Deck added that, and you're doing courses and doing videos and webinars about those things to keep us up to date on the things that are happening. So that's.
a really strong resource that'll be linked in the show notes for sure.
absolutely.
Dan, thank you so much for all of your wisdom and all of your sharings. There's a lot of fun buddy.
Thank you so much for having me. It was a great time.
Yeah, I'm gonna give you back the rest of your day and not take all day listening to all of your wisdom 'cause there's a lot to share. but I know I'll be heading over to that site and bookmarking it, making sure I'm following up on those webinars. I hope everybody else does as well. Thanks for being here today, Dan.
Thanks
Thanks. Isn't Dan great? What a great episode. Great chatting with him. I've really respected his work for years and learned a lot from him at conferences and things like that, and I'm glad to have shared his insights on the show. I hope you'll follow him. I hope you'll check out that webpage where he has the webinars and updates and things like that so you can keep learning from Dan. As you can tell, he's got a lot of wisdom to share.
and now, as always, before we wrap up the episode, let's share some ed tech and education news. Updates. Uh, got a couple big ones today.
¶ Google Slides Updates
So first up, uh, you ever had that feeling, uh, where you open up one of your regularly used tech tools, like something you use almost every day? You open it up, you're in a big rush to get something done. Like you got your lesson coming up in 15 minutes and you just gotta get this thing ready for it, and you open up that tool and you're confronted with a popup. About some new features in that app or website, and you have those mixed feelings. One part of the feeling says, get outta my way.
I'm in a rush. And the other feeling is, Ooh, new features. And you have both of those feelings at the same time. Well, that happened to me recently with Google Slides. I closed the popup. Because I was in a rush, but I immediately felt some remorse. 'cause I was like, oh, but I wanna know what that update was. So I came back later, uh, to learn more about it and boy was I glad I did.
because Google has added a lot of stuff to Google Slides, you probably all know at this point, but they just rolled out a new design sidebar in slides, and it's packed with stuff that I'm pretty psyched about. we're talking templates, a searchable stock image library, building blocks, and even AI generated images.
Uh, but I'll get to that one in a second Now, this sidebar will look different for different users, and if you have multiple Google accounts, it may even look different on each account. So listen closely to understand what you do and don't have on your account. So we'll start with the things that everyone should have. First up is a stock image library.
¶ Stock Images in Google Slides
So over on the right side of your screen in Google Slides, you'll now see a sidebar. One of those buttons is a stock image library. Um, it's totally searchable, so you can grab legit free to use images without opening a new tab or falling into an image. Search rabbit hole on Unsplash or in Google Images. Um, and they add 'em right into their slides. I do wish it automatically added a citation to your slide, saying where that image came from.
But the info is available in that sidebar that comes up if you want to add it manually, which in my opinion, you should, we should model these things for our kids, even though it's free to use. Somebody did take that picture, and so I think we should cite that. Uh oh. And you could also access this from the insert image menu up at the top in the toolbar, not just from the sidebar.
¶ New Templates and Themes in Google Slides
Next up templates and themes. So I've always felt like the default themes and slides were a little, *yawn*, boring compared to slide templates from slidesmania, or presentations made in Canva. But this update to the templates and themes available is a definite step up. So in the new sidebar, you could browse themed slide decks with titles like Workshop Facilitation Classic or Portfolio Bold. And each one includes multiple slide types that stick to that theme. So each one of those.
Features, like, I don't know, 10 or 12 different actual slides within it. Same theme, same purpose, uh, and then you can pick and choose which ones you want to use, and you can modify them as needed.
¶ Building Blocks in Google Slides
Then there are also building blocks available now in that side menu, uh, think of them as the smaller cousins of templates. So they're not full slides that are laid out for you. They're slide components, like some fancy text boxes or some charts or tables or callouts for quotes or titles and things like that. there are 13 different categories in there at the moment. There's agendas and key stats, quotes, text call outs. Badges and more, uh, 13 total.
, and then each of those has a handful of different things in there, and then you can modify them once you get them on your slide. They're perfect if you just need to zhuzh up a few slides without rebuilding the whole deck. And then you can keep them like on theme with colors and things like that, and they look pretty great. Now the next few updates I'm a little meh on, so I'll explain while we go.
¶ Proportional Scaling Groups in Google Slides
The first one that I'm meh on is proportional scaling. The blog from Google says that you can now resize grouped elements proportionally. So if you group multiple things, then you go to resize them, they'll resize proportionally, but. I'm feeling meh about this because I thought we could do this before. , but hey, maybe I'll spot the improvement next time I'm editing and I'll realize, oh no, we couldn't do it. Now we have this nice feature, but I, I thought this was something we could do
¶ Speaker Spotlight & Slides Recording in Google Slides
the other updates are meh for me because of their availability rather than their usefulness. They're very useful, but they're not available to everybody. So two of these new features, the speaker Spotlight and slides recording, let you show your video in the corner during a presentation. Or, and or record yourself presenting directly from in slides. You don't have to go to Screencastify or something like that to record. You could do that right in slides.
But these are only available to folks with Education plus licenses. So if you don't have education plus you don't have this, if you've ever wondered if your account is Education Plus or not, just go into a slideshow and see in that sidebar there, if these options for speaker spotlight and slides, recordings are there or not. If you see them. Congratulations, you have an Education Plus account. If you don't, well you don't.
¶ Imagen 3 AI Image Generator in Google Slides
So there's a third and final meh feature for me, and I teased this one earlier. This is an AI image generator built right into Google Slides. It's not meh again because it works poorly. It, it's actually pretty awesome. I tried it out, uh, but it's not available to everyone, so that makes it kind of meh. Anyhow, it's called Imagen 3 Imogen. Imagine. Image N uh, it's I-M-A-G-E-N. I don't know how they pronounce that. Uh, imagine, I guess three, let's just say imagine. Maybe I'll just be wrong.
Maybe it's Imogen. I'm gonna go with Imagen. Anyhow, it lets you type in a prompt to generate high quality photorealistic images right inside of slides. You can even request certain shapes, like square or vertical or portrait or whatever, or certain styles, like certain kinds of pictures. Or have it adapt to your slide deck style and theme, but, and this is a big one, it's only available if your school has the Gemini education or Gemini Education Premium.
Add-on, again, you'll know if your education account has that add-on or not. By checking to see if this appears in the insert image menu at the top. Or the sidebar on the right. So if it's there, you have the Gemini education or the Gemini Education Premium add-on. If you don't see it, you don't have those add-ons, so you don't have it. So of these updates, which ones have you tried? What have you been impressed with? Can you tell me why I should be excited about the proportional scaling thing?
Hit me up on Bluesky with a #eduDuctTape or leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.
¶ Canva Visual Suite 2.0
On the topic of tools, getting a glow up, Canva is not willing to be outdone by Google. They did their new yearly tradition where they host an extravagant live stream called Canva create where they announced so many features. That it leaves people in charge of helping other people learn about tech like myself, breathing into paper bags like that one GIF of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. So many updates, so many like a hyperventilating level of updates.
How am I gonna tell my coworkers about all of these things? So the first one from this year's Canva create event is their Visual Suite 2.0. So not too long ago, Canva expanded from being just like a graphic design, like, you know, make the invitation for your kid's third birthday, um, tool to offering a whole bunch of things like docs and whiteboards and presentations. That was just a year or two ago and video editing, all kinds of stuff. And that was really exciting when they did that.
That's the Canva we've come to know and love. But what they've added now with what they're calling Visual Suite 2.0. Is the ability to have each of those things within the same project. So picture this, you're on slide one of a presentation, and you decide that you now need a doc for the next piece of the project. So you click the plus button in the bottom right corner and instead of automatically getting a new slide. You get choices for what to add.
Maybe it's a doc, maybe it's a whiteboard, maybe it's a presentation, maybe it's a slide, and so on. So you add a doc after that, maybe you decide next I actually need a video or a whiteboard or another presentation slide. And you could do that all in one project. And again, collaborative. 'cause it's Canva, it's mind boggling. And it's really cool. And I haven't dug in yet, but I'm really excited to try it out. I actually don't know if it showed up in my Canva account yet.
Uh, but it sounds really cool.
¶ Canva Sheets
Now I left out one important piece of the features in Visual Suite 2.0. That's because they've added a new tool that also is one of those options that you could add inside of the projects. It's a tool that Canva has been missing, uh, but not anymore. That's right. There are now spreadsheets in Canva, and because it's Canva, it's totally different from what you get from Microsoft or Google. They look great. They have functions that we never even realized we needed.
They are called Canva Sheets, and I don't think they're trying to compete with Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel in terms of raw formulas and number crunching. Not to say that they're bad at those things, but that's really not the point of this tool. These are spreadsheets with design superpowers. Think color coordinated tables, smart drag and drop visuals built in charts that actually look good and get this. You can even add images and videos. Into the cells in your sheets. It's really rad.
It comes loaded with AI features like magic insights, magic charts, and magic formulas that mean you need less spreadsheet knowledge to benefit from your data. No more Googling spreadsheet formulas. Just describe what you want to the built-in AI and it'll handle it. It's pretty crazy and because it's part of the Visual Suite 2.0.
It means that your data can easily go into other Canva products, presentations, docs, et cetera, or content from there can easily come right into the sheet and they could be housed within the same project. So all that information is in one place. I honestly, as I'm telling you about this, I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of the Canva Create announcements. There were more announcements that I'll share in an upcoming episode.
Uh, there's also more features to sheets and things like that that I haven't even mentioned here. I need to dig in myself. And so that'll be coming in future episodes, but I am eager to see how they can be integrated into classrooms. That's what I'm really excited about. If you've tried any of them, I'd love to hear your thoughts, share about it on Bluesky with the #EduDuctTape, or leave me a voice message for the show at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.
¶ Citing AI-Generated Content
For our final update for the day, we have all been playing around with AI tools, text generators, image generators, maybe even video generators. , but here's a question that we should be thinking about, especially as educators. How do we say this came from chatGPT, or this was made by Canva, ai, things like that. How do we admit that? And we gotta model that to our kids.
So I haven't had to do this a ton myself yet, but I did come across a blog post from Kapwing, which is a video creation tool that clearly lays out how to cite AI generated content. I thought it was a really well-written blog post. They recommend noting the name of the tool. The prompt you used and when you generated it, pretty simple, right? Like this video was generated using blank with the prompt blank on April 10th, 2025. Boom. Transparent, easy to follow.
Everybody knows what you did and where it came from. , it's not just about giving credit. In this situation, it's about modeling responsible tech use for our students. , so I'm big on doing this. Uh, and this process, they're talking about doing it with videos 'cause they're a video tool, but it can certainly apply to AI generated images or audio or text, you name it.
, this should work well and all of those, I think we've gotta get ahead of this stuff and show our learners how to use these tools ethically, not just creatively. Now I'm wondering if right now there are some folks listening to me out there who have more expertise in copyright and educational fair use and citations than I do. I'm not an expert in this stuff. I'm looking at you library media specialists.
You might be out there saying like, Hmm, actually Jake, I would say you should do this as well or do it this way. Um, if you. It would propose some changes to what this blog suggests. Let me know. Share on Bluesky #EduDuctTape or drop a note at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.
So today's interview with Dan Neeson was much better than a kale only smoothie. Uh, but yeah, kale in a smoothie, great kale only smoothie, not so much. And as we said earlier, the same goes for screens in the classroom. We want them there, but not too much of them. Like kale tech can be powerful, but only when it supports not overshadows what actually makes learning stick.
Connection, reflection, and a real live teacher in the room. And that's why I love M2 from today's sponsor Swivl. With M2. You don't have to choose. Between embracing AI and protecting what makes your classroom special, you get the best of both worlds. Check it out at swivl.com/M2. That's swivl.com/M2. It's like putting that banana in your tech smoothie. It's best practice and it tastes great. . We just got a puppy about two weeks ago. oh. Look at that.
we got a Cavalier King Charles mixed puppy name is Charlie.
I, of course.
we got, we got very creative
Oh,
with his name.
yes,
I
I'm,
human names
yeah.
like
As human as possible, right? like Frank George,
yeah.
Steve, this is my dog, Steven.
yeah, See that's just funny.
It is funny. the more human, the name it like the like, and it can't be like super playful. Like, like it can't be like I, I don't know, Teddy. I think that Teddy's fine, but you gotta go like, this is Bartholomew. This is my dog, Bartholomew.
Yeah, we, we go back and forth between calling him Charlie and Charles
Charles Charles.
do a little, little bit of an accent on
Yes.
Charles.
No, Charles.