Google NotebookLM Podcast Creator and What it Means for Academia

[@sovorel-EDU]

Here is the URL to Google's NotebookLM tool: notebooklm.google.com - Please make a podcast of your own and share your experience and thoughts. Additionally, here is a link to the book "9 Point Action Plan: for Generative AI Integration into Education" - I used chapter one to make the podcast example within this video: www.amazon.com/Point-Action-Plan-Generative-Integration/dp/B0D172TMMB

[@roxannr]

WOW Moments! I had many watching your newest AI literacy video! Having immersed myself into the podcasting world a couple of years ago, I would have never imagined this would be manifested so quickly by Google! While the skillset and associated sub skillsets of designing/creating a podcast are definitely worthy of unpacking, to look under the hood, so to speak, I also agree is necessary when venturing into podcasting. The question of when to use or create a podcast should be taken into consideration initially. Answering the basic W's, who-audience, why- purpose, when- time / maybe even time sensitive content +, , important in almost every way, the notebooklm model has incredible potential for educators. Students, I imagine, for example, will be able to create their own study guides, and there seems to be unlimited potential with this new AI model! I am looking forward to having the option to use your own voice and you mentioned that already as promising! TY so much!!!! A definite huge leap forward for making audio centric content motivational and engaging! This checks many boxes in teaching and learning possibilities.

[@sovorel-EDU]

You are very welcome Rox and thank you for making such great points. Yes, there is so much potential with this new tool. I am hoping they will continue to enhance with different voices and even the use of one's own voice like you mentioned. Time will tell. I can't wait to test it out with many different types of documents just to see how it addresses it: instructional manuals, military manuals, academic books, adventure books, The Bible, a glossary, all sorts of possibilities for a completely different educational experience. I'm glad we are in this adventure together!

[@E.T.S.]

NotebookLM is very helpful. Our new Dutch government released their plans last week, it was a lengthy PDF (and in Dutch even). Within a few minutes I was listening to a podcast where the contents were discussed.

[@sovorel-EDU]

Yes, that is a great use for this powerful tool, E Core. I think using it for dry/stiff/boring info could become much more interesting by turning it into a podcast like this. It makes the content much more digestible and in some cases makes it easier to understand as well. Thank you for sharing.

[@m.davidrice7698]

Is it possible to control the length of the podcast. I have been exploring and can't seem to find an option to control the length.

[@sovorel-EDU]

Hello David. Great question. I haven't been able to find out. It is still experimental and the Google trouble shooting info is a bit sparse right now. I am sure they are working on that. My guess is that it is some how correlated to the length of the material you give it as a source. I also think that they will add more features soon and hopefully provide the ability to select a specific length for the podcast. If I find out more, I will post here. Thank you for your post.

[@m.davidrice7698]

@@sovorel-EDU Much appreciated. Along with that I think they have to allow custom voice. Imagine if thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of businesses use the same podcast voices. People will get fed up quickly. Lastly, I am the Executive Director of the Future of Marketing Institute. Please check us out and keep up the great work.

[@sovorel-EDU]

@@m.davidrice7698 Thank you David and I will for sure check it out. I wonder if they might turn this tool into some sort of subscription based service. These initial voices could be offered for free and then to use custom voices or different features it would be part of their Google One AI Premium plan. Just some possibilities, only time will tell.

[@raymondlines5404]

You uploaded a chapter of your book. I have Gemini at my institution. My administration has told us not to put anything in Gemini that is sensitive or proprietary because doing so makes the content public domain. Is this accurate? Did you just lose ownership of your book chapter by doing this? Would the students be violating copyright by submitting copyrighted materials?

[@sovorel-EDU]

Hello Raymond, thank you for your comment. The information expressed by your administration is generally good information to express. It is important to always read terms of service for any AI system being used. Thank you for bringing that up, which is an aspect of AI Literacy in itself. I didn't lose ownership of my book chapter but submitting it, it doesn't work that way. I did it for the purposes of demonstrating how it works. Google specifically states that "Google only uses content that you import or upload to our model tuning feature for that express purpose. Tuning content may be retained in connection with your tuned models for purposes of re-tuning when supported models change. When you delete a tuned model, the related tuning content is also deleted." I'm not a copyright expert so I can't give you specific legal advice, but if a student uploads content for it to be changed into a podcast like this, for their own edification or as part of an assignment, I wouldn't believe that it would be a violation.

[@paulmetcalfe4054]

It still hallucinate unfortunately

[@sovorel-EDU]

Yes, that is a good point Paul. It isn't perfect and can sometimes get some things wrong. This is getting less and less common but is still a possibility. It is important for us to always be aware of this and to always verify any content created by an AI. This is part of good AI Literacy. Thank you for that important reminder Paul.

[@rdumiak]

Thanks for the update - I've using NotebookLM with some of my courses to allow students to "ingest" multiple documents and then generate summaries and even options for cases studies. I had just never pushed the "Generate" button - really great stuff. I have to start making more time to start pushing more buttons on these AI Apps. Thanks again.

[@sovorel-EDU]

Thanks for the comment Roman. Yes, NotebookLM seems to also be really great for interacting with the documents themselves. Can you tell me more about how you use it for case studies. Case studies is an awesome pedagogical approach. The podcasts created are very impressive. I'm still in shock as to how realistic it sounds and am looking forward to testing it with many different types of documents and text in general.

[@rdumiak]

@@sovorel-EDU Last quarter I used NotebookLM for a Digital Transformation class. I like the idea of case studies to inject real world situations into the class, but typical case studies are neatly packaged summaries. Also, there's often no way for the reader to get additional detail information beyond what's written in the paper. In real life, if you come into a company in the middle of a transformation you need to do lots of interviews and review all kinds of documents (ranging from strategy white papers to bi-weekly communication memos). NotebookLM allowed the students to quickly come up to speed with past and current activities and then start applying tools and techniques we discussed in class. Basically, they had the ability to query the AI as if it was a real person that had been working on the transformation from its inception and could provide any background information they needed.

[@sovorel-EDU]

@@rdumiak That is a great implementation and makes a lot of sense. If you don't mind me asking, is this for a high school course or for a university course. Additionally, is this course for a specific major? If so, what major? I really like this implementation because it makes a lot of sense. This seems perfect for a business major but has many different applications as well. I greatly appreciate your comments with this Roman.