How To AI The Right Way!

NotebookLM

@LisaBerghoff

AI is claiming to do a lot in education. From personalized learning, to tutoring, to differentiating. Yes, AI is an incredible tool and we absolutely need to understand it and teach our students how to be responsible with it. But if we're being real, at the end of the day we really just need our students to learn, to think critically, and to produce high quality responses to our questions and directions. At this point in the school year, assessments are ramping up and this is when we realize that many of our students are lacking basic study skills. As educators, we know the secret to deep learning isn’t just reading over the material—it’s interacting with it. But turning a dense PDF, a long research article, or a set of lecture slides into engaging study aids and accessible summaries is incredibly time-consuming and can be overwhelming, especially if the student has waited until the last minute. That's why I am beyond excited about NotebookLM, which is included with our Google license.

What Is NotebookLM?

This is Google’s personalized AI research and study assistant. I wrote a post about NotebookLM last spring, you can find it here. It gives a nice overview of how NotebookLM works. But at that time, it was not approved for all ages. 

Also, NotebookLM has recently rolled out some very impressive and useful features designed specifically for educators and high school students. This is NOT a generic chatbot; it’s an assistant that is grounded exclusively in the source materials you upload, ensuring every generated response is accurate and directly cited.

To get started, go to NotebookLM.google. Upload up to 50 sources. You can add anything from PDFs, video links, web links, slides, grab files from your computer, or grab files from your Google drive, or copy and paste. 

Then, let NotebookLM work it's magic. When it is ready, you will see three sections. On the left are all of your sources, in the middle is the chat. There will be a brief summary of the resources you added and at the bottom you can ask questions and it will respond based on the information you loaded. On the right is the studio. Click any of the tabs to have it create a study guide, flashcards, a video overview, an audio overview (podcast with 2 speakers), a mind-map, a quiz, and so much more. Within the reports tab you can choose from many options or you can customize and create your own.

Yes! You can share an entire notebook.

Yes! You can down load and share specific elements, like the audio overview. 

Ok, let's focus on what's new here.

What Is New With NotebookLM?

These new updates make it the ultimate tool for teaching and learning. 

1. Instant Study Aids: Flashcards and Quizzes

One of the biggest time savers is the Flashcards and Quizzes feature. Imagine uploading a full unit’s worth of readings, and having an entire, customized study set generated instantly.

• Flashcards: NotebookLM automatically creates digital flashcards from your sources to help students memorize key terms, dates, and core concepts. If a student struggles with a definition, they can click “Explain,” and NotebookLM generates a detailed overview, citing the exact location in the source material.

• Quizzes: You can generate comprehension quizzes customized by topic and difficulty level. This allows for targeted practice before a test. Even better, when a student gets a question wrong, the platform explains why the answer is incorrect, providing direct feedback and citation links for immediate review.

This is a powerful tool that aligns with tier 1 strategies, allowing you to share pre-made, high-quality study sets for every source used in class.

2. Dynamic Learning: Audio and Video Overviews

The new Audio Overview and Video Overview formats encourage students to engage with complex texts outside of the classroom.

• Audio Overview: This turns your uploaded documents (such as historical primary sources, scientific papers, or even class lecture notes) into engaging, podcast-style discussions. New formats include:

  • Brief: A single AI host delivers a concise summary of the core ideas.

  • Critique: Two AI hosts review material, offering constructive feedback—perfect for analyzing a student's essay draft or a complex policy paper.

  • Debate: Two AI hosts discuss different perspectives on a single topic, providing a fantastic pre-discussion activity for class.

• Video Overview: For a visual learning experience, NotebookLM can create video-like summaries complete with voiceovers and slide-deck visuals, perfect for sharing complex information in a format accessible to digital learners.

Practical Applications for Your Classroom

Here are some ways you can use these features. The following chart was generated by Gemini.

Application	NotebookLM Feature	Benefit for Teachers & Students
Lesson Planning	Use the new Report formats (like "Blog Post" or "Study Guide") to quickly outline key talking points for your lectures from new research.	Saves hours of content aggregation and summarization.
Primary Source Analysis	Upload complex historical documents or scientific literature. Generate a Critique Audio Overview.	Makes sophisticated, complex texts accessible and encourages critical thinking before the student even reads them.
Formative Assessment	Instantly generate a customized Quiz after a reading assignment.	Provides immediate feedback to students and helps you quickly gauge class comprehension.
Research Projects	Instruct students to upload all their research articles into one Notebook, then use the chat feature to compare and contrast arguments across sources.	Models advanced research and synthesis skills, all while maintaining strict citation integrity.

Are you ready to explore all that you can do with NotebookLM? Want a personalized demo? I would love to show you!