NotebookLM Will Change The Way Students Study & Learn
It’s not very often that I find a new piece of technology and need to pause for a moment or two to process what I am seeing. Further, when a new technology has the potential to transform the way that students learn and teachers teach, I tend to get very excited. NotebookLM, from Google, is a transformative new AI tool that has been around for a while now and in my opinion, it will change the way that we teach and deliver our instruction as well as prepare our students for exams. I learned about it from my daughters who use it regularly to study for exams. My daughter Abby used it to study for her LSATs, and my daughter Izzy is using it in her studies at the University of Miami. What separates this AI tool from others is that it doesn’t do the assignments for students at all; it simply generates a variety of ways to study for exams - from organizing class notes into a custom interactive study guide to generating audio study guides that truly sound like professionally produced NPR-style podcasts. It is incredible. Here is a video overview about how it works, led by one of my favorite authors, Stephen Johnson, who now works for Google on this project.
Pretty impressive, huh? Recently I had a conversation with two of my dear friends, Dr. Andrea Maas and Dr. Cara Bernard, about NotebookLM. Their students were using it in their studies and they wondered whether I knew about it. That conversation led to this post. In the example below, I’ll demonstrate a very simple way to use NotebookLM to create a podcast about distributing podcasts on Spotify, based on a blog post that I wrote a few weeks ago.
The first step is opening up the NotebookLM site. There is no login required and everything I’ve done below is completely free to do - at least for now. Once on the site, I clicked on Try NotebookLM and landed on my personal Notebook. I then clicked Create New.
Next, I landed on the page that is show below:
You will see several different ways to upload various types of content - drag and drop PDF and audio files, upload files from your Google Drive, paste in web links or YouTube videos, or simply paste in text that you’ve copied from another application. You can upload multiple files - as many as you’d like. This is the place to gather content that you are either teaching or studying, including class notes, teacher generated study guides, educational podcasts or videos, etc. Once you’ve uploaded everything, you’ll see a page like the one below:
You’ll see a variety of options on the left under the Notebook guide heading, including a Study Guide, Timeline, Briefing Doc, etc. On the right, you can generate an audio overview. You can either click on the Generate button for a Deep Dive conversation OR you can customize what you’d like the hosts to focus on by writing in your own prompt.
I decided to upload a blog post that I did recently about Distributing Podcasts on Spotify - a step-by-step lesson plan that teaches students what is involved with getting a finished podcast from a computer to Spotify. I clicked on the Generate button, and after about 5 minutes of waiting, a brand-new podcast that is 18:07 in length appeared, ready for me to listen (see image below).
I have to admit, the quality of the podcast that it produced is absolutely mind blowing. I would never know that it wasn’t a professionally produced podcast episode. Don’t believe me? Click play below. I didn’t write that script, I didn’t even give it a prompt about the laid back style and cohesion of the two hosts. NotebookLM used its AI engine to generate a very believable podcast with two knowledgable hosts who provide numerous easy to understand analogies to explain how podcast distribution works. I dare say that the podcast is WAY better than the actual lesson plan that I wrote.
Am I right? Amazing. Think of all the ways that you could use this in your teaching:
Create podcasts of study guides that you’ve created
For students with dyslexia or neurodiversity, create podcasts of class notes, presentations or study guides to help them learn
Upload a chapter of a text that you’re studying and ask it to provide key insights and themes
Upload an article that you’ve been assigned for a graduate class and ask it to summarize it for you
Upload a User Help Guide from a software program that you are using and have it create a Top Ten features to know podcast to help your students (or you) learn the software
Upload the Student Manual for your music program and publish it as a podcast
Upload any set of instructions (from directions on how to get to a regional audition site to concert etiquette) and have NotebookLM create an easy to understand podcast
Upload the libretto of an opera and have it create a study guide or podcast that provides a synopsis of the story
All I know is that if I were still a student, NotebookLM would be right at the top of my list of study tools. And the same goes for if I was still teaching. This is a perfect way to differentiate instruction for students who may learn differently than others and it isn’t cheating.
I hope that you’re as excited as I am about this incredible learning tool. I urge you to try it out for yourself right now.