Finally Catching Up to the New Models

There are some amazing things happening out there!

In late October, one of my family members had some major surgery. When I returned to the world three days later (THREE DAYS!), NotebookLM had completely changed—adding options to the visual overview and multiple languages. Then, last week I was sick with a seasonal crud and when my head cleared three days later (THREE DAYS!), the world was on fire with Nano Banana Pro, ChatGPT for Teachers, and NotebookLM (again). Seriously. If you aren’t on top of everything all the time, you are behind—well, at least I am.

So let me catch you up with what is going on so you aren’t left in the dust.

NotebookLM

Let’s start with the easiest one: NotebookLM. If you haven’t used NotebookLM or haven’t introduced it to your students—it is an ESSENTIAL study tool that every student should be using to prepare for classes, understand concepts, and make custom study materials. NotebookLM is a free tool from Google (who knows how long this will be free—it is such a helpful tool I can’t believe I can use this for no money!) The cool thing about NotebookLM is that the AI is focused ONLY on what you put in your notebook, so it doesn’t add any extraneous information. You can put your syllabus, all your rubrics and assignments, then provide it for your students and they can query the Notebook if they have any questions.

I am also using it as an alternative source for my courses—with class materials so students can more easily understand the content of my classes. It also makes amazing podcasts, visual overview slide shows, mind maps, reports, flashcards, quizzes, infographics, and even slide decks. Whenever you see a little pencil icon, you have options for that tool, including what seems like an overwhelming number of language options. My ESL students listen to podcasts and overviews in their native languages, then they can read and understand the English better. It is incredibly powerful and useful.

An aside: Google is working on a new vision for textbooks that can be easily differentiated based on the beautiful success for NotebookLM. You can get on the waiting list for that tool by going to LearnYourWay.withgoogle.com.

Here are two introduction to NotebookLM videos to catch you up if you are unfamiliar with NotebookLM, then I will get to the updates:

OK. Now you are caught up as far as late September, but those are already outdated because NotebookLM has already made massive changes. For example, this morning,

Rob Voss

made this comment on my LinkedIn feed:

I just can’t keep up. I will admit it. This is something I haven’t even thought of doing and I am hoping Robert will make an explainer video of this ASAP so I can wrap my pea-brain around it. It’s overwhelming, really, and NotebookLM is JUST ONE TOOL. Sigh.

Getting back to my update: NotebookLM is making infographics now, and not simple ones either. It is crushing infographics for my class. Remember those old literature infographics on Course Hero (which are still awesome, btw), now think about what you can do when you apply that idea to your course materials in specific cases. You want to explain to your students how to correctly integrate quotes? How adverbs work? What makes the Wife of Bath a feminist? You can do any of those almost instantly in NotebookLM.

Here’s an example of a specific use case. I am always harping on how literature is an expression of cultural values, and I wanted to make an infographic comparing Antigone with Medea. So, I used NotebookLM’s new infographic maker to compare Medea to Antigone. Here’s a very short example of how easy that is to do. (It took longer than it shows here, about 5 minutes, but I didn’t think you would want to watch a video of me waiting so I cut it):

I haven’t had time to try the slide deck, so I guess I will try that now! Here you go, first time! (Again, this took a lot longer to render than it shows. The slide deck took about ten minutes, so if you want some slides for your class you better think ahead at least that long! Haha):

These slides are a bit busier that I would want for a presentation deck—hence the choice between a “Detailed Deck” and “Presenter Slides,”—but these are great to share with students in an online course. Frankly, I prefer sharing the audio overview outputs for that, instead. It is so much cooler to have those friendly AI voices talking you through new materials.

Here’s a example of one of those video overviews in Vietnamese. This one discusses the Wife of Bath from Chaucer so that my Vietnamese student could get a good idea about the work before she tried to read about it in the course materials:

In order to make that video easily sharable, I downloaded it from my NotebookLM and uploaded it to YouTube.

Nano Banana Pro

Sticking with the Google tools for now, Nano Banana Pro (which you can use for free on Google’s AI Studio), is doing something that everyone has been waiting a long time for: it adds correct text to images. Now, if you are talking about just big general text, GenAI was capable of doing that a long time ago with tools like Ideogram (which is still my go-to image tool. I even paid for it!! Wow.) But Nano Banana Pro goes beyond what Ideogram and their ilk could do—it also gets the background text and all that tiny extra text right, not just the big title text and the banner text. It also produces pictures in stunning detail. It is uber realistic when you ask for it, but Nano Banana also has some baked in watermarks that make it detectable as AI generated (love the ethics, Google! Keep it up!!).

The release of this tool started a cavalcade of really cool stuff, like this now iconic infographic for how to make toast, by

Ethan Mollick

:

Please notice that the text is PERFECT. So, of course, I had to try this for myself. I didn’t do one of these crazy flowcharts (there are now hundreds for copy-cats of Ethan’s original out there). Instead, I turned my Nano Banana loose on making me an Infographic CV for my tenure file (Hey, I’m practically minded, OK?)

Here is the final image I decided upon, but this isn’t the one it started with. It took me a lot of iteration and a frustrating amount of time (even though I had fun doing it!):

Yes, it’s all pretty and all that, and it is pretty dang impressive, if I don’t say so (wouldn’t you want me to come to your school and make a presentation on GenAI? I mean, I’m pretty impressed with myself right now. I think I might hire me!!). Now you saw the end result, but here is the messy middle:

My son, Z, who is so good at all this, suggested that I should have asked AI how to write the prompt and it wouldn’t have taken me so long and it wouldn’t have been so frustrating. He is absolutely right. So, I fed my frustrating iteration with Nano Banana to my Comet agent and asked it to write me a prompt for the CV that wouldn’t take so many tries. You have to start with a traditional CV or resume. Here is that prompt:

Transform the attached CV into a stunning, vibrant infographic presented in portrait orientation. Integrate all text creatively and make the flow natural, with a friendly, elegant, and modern style.

Visual Theme: Use a defining image as the centerpiece. Make it colorful, but not overwhelming; prefer classy, slightly more vibrant hues.

Layout & Flow: Avoid blocky designs—ensure all sections smoothly integrate around the central image, with creative placement and clear connections.

Content: Include all essential sections, especially the contact information. Double-check and triple-check for spelling and word errors—accuracy is critical. Remove any citations and avoid hallucinated or extraneous text—only use provided wording. Incorporate examples and key highlights for maximum visual impact.

Style: Use smooth color transitions for movement. Ensure the result is visually innovative, friendly, and distinctly academic.

Final Review: Please thoroughly proofread the infographic’s text to ensure all information is clear and correct. The final product should be visually integrated, creative, and suitable for academic or professional presentation.

I hadn’t tried it, so here is my attempt using that prompt:

Seriously, I like it even better than my original. I might have to keep this one! Here it is in all it’s beauty:

So, here’s a little bit of criticism: if you make a mistake and ask it to fix it, it’s horrible. It usually makes all the rest of the text wrong. You should just start from scratch in a new conversation or put it in Adobe and fix it yourself.

OK. Well, that’s all for now! I think I better post this before everything gets updated again and it is out of date!