Episode 333: Exploring AI’s Impact on Storytelling and Learning: A Dive into Notebook LM
This week, Chris and Rachel share about NotebookLM.google.com, an AI website that will do things like create an actual “podcast episode” about an uploaded document or webpage! Chris and Rachel share some of the things they have created with this tool and ideas about how to quickly create engaging materials for your students.
Key Ideas this Week:
🔑 AI-generated content for educational purposes: Chris and Rachel explore the use of AI to generate podcasts and conversational content based on text inputs through the website NotebookLM.google.com. They discuss the potential of using this technology to make learning materials more engaging for students, like listening to two hosts discuss educational content with emotion instead of just reading.
🔑 Impact of storytelling in learning: Rachel emphasizes the importance of storytelling in helping people engage with and retain information. She highlights how AI-generated discussions can create narratives that make dry or complex content more accessible and memorable.
🔑 Potential and concerns of AI in professional and personal contexts: While the technology is praised for its ability to save time and increase productivity (e.g., turning a slide deck into a podcast), both hosts also express concerns about the ethical implications, such as deepfakes and the possibility of AI being used maliciously. AI’s potential for both positive and negative impact is a recurring theme throughout the conversation.
Links from this Week’s Episode:
Transcript of the Episode
Please Note: This transcript was generated using speech recognition & AI tools; it may contain some grammatical and/or spelling errors.
00:00:08 Rachel Madel
Welcome to talking with tech. I'm your host, Rachel Madel, joined, as always, by Chris Bugaj. Hey, Chris.
00:00:13 Chris Bugaj
Hey, Rachel. All right, I got something fun for you today. You ready for this? Okay, so I'm gonna pause here, and I'm gonna invite you to listen to some audio that you haven't heard before, and we'll just listen to it, and then I'd be really interested to hear your I reaction to it. Okay, so let me share my screen, and we'll put the audio in. I'm sure Michaela and Luke will put it in so that everyone can listen to it together right here in the episode. Okay, so share my screen.
00:00:41 Male AI
All right, so you're ready to dive deep into augmentative and alternative communication.
00:00:47 Female AI
Aac.
00:00:48 Male AI
Yeah. Aac.
00:00:49 Female AI
Great choice.
00:00:50 Male AI
You chose talking with tech to guide you.
00:00:52 Female AI
I was going to say, that's a really good pick.
00:00:54 Male AI
Right. So this is a podcast run by two speech language pathologists, Rachel Madl and Chris Bukosh.
00:01:00 Female AI
You'll be hearing that term, speech language pathologist.
00:01:03 Male AI
SLP.
00:01:04 Female AI
SLP. A lot in this field.
00:01:06 Male AI
A lot.
00:01:07 Female AI
They are the experts who help people with communication challenges find their voice. Literally.
00:01:12 Male AI
Literally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:01:14 Female AI
So, yeah. And what I think is so interesting about Rachel and Chris is that they don't just talk about the technical side of it. They bring in real stories. Like, there's this one episode where they talk about a young man named Leo who had been non speaking for years.
00:01:31 Male AI
Wow.
00:01:32 Female AI
And with the right AAC system and.
00:01:34 Male AI
Of course, the support.
00:01:35 Female AI
The support of his SLP, Leo was able to share his thoughts and feelings for the first time.
00:01:40 Male AI
Wow.
00:01:41 Female AI
He even ended up writing a poem about his experience that brought everyone to tears.
00:01:45 Male AI
Oh, my gosh.
00:01:45 Female AI
Yeah.
00:01:46 Male AI
See, that's what I love about this field. Like, those stories.
00:01:48 Female AI
Yeah.
00:01:49 Male AI
They're so powerful.
00:01:50 Female AI
Yeah.
00:01:51 Male AI
They really show what AAC can do. Like, how it transforms lives.
00:01:55 Female AI
It does.
00:01:56 Male AI
Okay, so let's get into what people are saying about talking with tech. Cause we've listened to it. We like it.
00:02:01 Female AI
Let's talk about it.
00:02:02 Male AI
But, like, what are other people saying?
00:02:04 Female AI
Yes, definitely.
00:02:05 Male AI
It's so cool how talking with tech is really connecting with listeners.
00:02:09 Female AI
Yeah.
00:02:09 Male AI
There was one review I saw.
00:02:11 Female AI
Okay.
00:02:11 Male AI
It said, this podcast made me feel seen and understood as a parent of a child with communication needs.
00:02:19 Female AI
Wow.
00:02:20 Male AI
And I thought, yeah, you so many people, probably.
00:02:23 Female AI
That's so true. Because feeling alone in this journey is a common experience, both for individuals with communication differences and their families. So when something like talking with tech comes along and gives that sense of community and validation. It can be so empowering.
00:02:40 Male AI
Absolutely.
00:02:40 Rachel Madel
Yeah.
00:02:41 Male AI
And, you know, they offer practical advice, too.
00:02:43 Female AI
They do.
00:02:43 Male AI
Which is so important.
00:02:44 Female AI
Yes, very.
00:02:45 Male AI
They have this framework called the ten cardinal rules to AAC implementation.
00:02:52 Female AI
Right.
00:02:53 Male AI
And it seems like it's been a game changer.
00:02:55 Female AI
Yeah, I bet.
00:02:56 Male AI
For a lot of their listeners, for sure. So I'm really curious about these cardinal rules. Like, thought about what makes AAC implementation successful.
00:03:05 Female AI
Oh, yeah, definitely.
00:03:07 Male AI
It's not as easy as, like, here's a device. Go talk. Right, right.
00:03:10 Female AI
There are so many factors.
00:03:12 Male AI
There's so many factors.
00:03:13 Female AI
And one of the cardinal rules that I find really interesting is the importance of presuming competence.
00:03:21 Male AI
Okay, what does that mean?
00:03:22 Female AI
So that means always assuming that an individual has something to say.
00:03:26 Male AI
Okay.
00:03:26 Female AI
Even if they haven't had a reliable way to communicate it before.
00:03:29 Male AI
Wow.
00:03:30 Female AI
Yeah.
00:03:30 Male AI
That's a big deal.
00:03:31 Female AI
It is.
00:03:32 Male AI
It's so easy to, like, underestimate what someone's capable of.
00:03:35 Female AI
Right.
00:03:36 Male AI
If they're struggling to communicate, you know?
00:03:38 Female AI
Absolutely. And when you presume competence, it changes how you approach AAC. It means giving lots of opportunities for communication, offering choices, and really listening to what the person is trying to say, even if it's not super clear at first. Right.
00:03:56 Male AI
Wow. Okay. So we've seen how talking with tech uses real stories like leos to show how powerful AEC can be. And then we've also touched on the more practical side with these ten cardinal rules and specifically presuming competence.
00:04:11 Female AI
Yeah. And it's that combination of inspiration and practical advice that makes this podcast so good, such a great resource for anyone who wants to support people with communication needs.
00:04:24 Male AI
Absolutely. And on that note, I want to say thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the world of AAC and talking with tech.
00:04:32 Female AI
It's been great.
00:04:33 Male AI
As you continue to learn about AIC, I want you to think about people in your life who could benefit from this. How can you advocate for accessible communication and help others find their voice?
00:04:45 Female AI
And remember, communication is a basic human right.
00:04:49 Male AI
Yes.
00:04:49 Female AI
Everyone deserves to be heard.
00:04:54 Chris Bugaj
Okay, so that was the audio clip that I invited you to listen to. What were your thoughts while listening to it?
00:05:02 Rachel Madel
My thoughts were, who are these people? At first, yeah, they sound pretty good, right? They sound pretty good. And then my next thought, because I know you, Chris, I'm like, what kind of AI tool has he discovered that has basically emulated a podcast?
00:05:19 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, that's exactly it. So this. Those two people are not people that. Those. They don't exist. That was created by AI. And get this, all I did. It took me less than two minutes to do, and all I did is, do you remember about six years ago, you and I authored a blog post for somebody, you know, on five, five signs that your child might need AAC, right? I found that old blog post. You and I had worked on it on a Google Doc, and that's all it was. I literally opened that document into this AI tool and then it created that, what, five or six minute podcast discussion between two make believe podcast hosts discussing our podcast and the content that we generated from that, from that Google Doc, which it wasn't hours of work to give them that information. I didn't have to upload nine different documents or whatever. It wasn't a 184 page PDF of my book or something like that. It wasn't scrub all of instagram to find Rachel Nadel's reels, you know what I mean? It was just one blog post that we wrote together ages ago that it. That it was trained on. So pretty amazing stuff, right?
00:06:46 Rachel Madel
Yeah. I was noticing the kind of overlap in the conversation. I feel like made it seem more natural. But also it happened to the point where I was like, it's happening a lot in ways that I'm like, hmm. Like, that's what, like, tipped me off a little to the AI and also the redundancy. They were like, oh, they like, kind of circled back to the same concepts, but super cool.
00:07:12 Chris Bugaj
I had that same thought when I first listened to it. It was like, this probably could be half the time they're repeating themselves. But still, it's crazy what it can do. Then. I've been thinking about, since I've been exploring it, the educational impact on this. If you could take some sort of PDF or Google Doc or something on some sort of content, and you load it up into this AI tool and then it produces this sort of podcast, and you could provide it to students as an option to listen to. Now you're multiplying the modalities that you could invite kids or people to learn from. So it's not just you have to use your reading abilities and your reading comprehension abilities to read this text, and you don't have to go find some sort of complimentary material that is a podcast or an audio version of this text or something. And you could now have the option of having to make believe people discussing the content. And could that help people remember it better? You know, like, oh, yeah, I remember when that person was talking about, well, that person, that fake person was talking about it and the way they put it and the way they described it and the way they summarized it, and the other person sort of agreed with it. You know, like when you and I are at a conference or anyone's at a conference, one of the ways we learn from a conference is those shoulder conversations we have outside of a session. Right. Because we're, you know, you, me and Sarah Gregory are all talking afterwards about the session we were in, and we're all brainstorming like, well, what did you think? What did you think? Same sort of ideas, that there's these two entities discussing it, and you could potentially remember the content better.
00:08:58 Rachel Madel
The other capacity that I feel like is huge is similar to your point. I feel like we learn through kind of those thoughtful discussions and conversations. We also learn through storytelling. And so how cool is it to take kind of dry or boring content and then help create some type of story around it? I think that helps people stay engaged with information. I think it helps people remember information. And so I bet you there's, like, some really cool ways to incorporate storytelling and that those things matter. Like, we don't. We always talk about it when we're talking about presenting, too. It's not just the information that you are presenting. It's how you present the information, the way that you present it. And if it's engaging and, you know, has people's attention, that's a huge piece of, you know, a good presentation and definitely a principle of adult learning. And I think there's so many possibilities with this tool.
00:09:57 Chris Bugaj
It's so interesting that you mentioned the storytelling, because, of course, one of the other things I did with the podcast or this tool, and creating a podcast, you know, a segment of audio of two people sort of doing a podcast is, you know, I play dungeon and dragons once a week with my friends, right? And what we do is we keep, like, a little notes of what's happening in each part of the story of that session that we did. Right. So I took the notes from our last play session, copied it out of Google sites, put it into a Google Doc. Again, one and a half pages of what we are, just our random notes on what happened in the story, loaded it into this. And again, it was a podcast of two people talking about the story and our characters that we generated. It was mostly right. There was some little details wrong. But in the same way that if you've, you know, if you've been interviewed for some sort of article and then you go back and you read what they wrote, it's like, well, it's mostly right. That's not exactly what I said, like, you know, anytime you see some sort of news article, you kind of get the feeling like, that's probably 95% accurate, but there's a little bit of twist or something they got wrong. Same thing here with the story element was like, my character isn't that, but it's this, but it's, you know, close enough. And I shared it with my, you know, my long time friends, and we were talking about it. They were all amazed and stunned by it. And my one friend said, he goes, I had this really, this emotional reaction to it, Chris. He's like, I remember ages ago sitting down with my mom and showing her Google maps for the first time and zooming in on our house that we grew up in. And that was, you know, we've lived in for ages. And she started crying when she saw it on Google maps. Like, wow. Like, this is profound. How is someone else who's not us, taking a picture of something from the sky? And I can zoom around and see the neighbors, and it just was. And it's all connected. The whole world is connected via this one tool, this map, and I can zoom out and in. And it just was blowing her mind how technology was personally affecting her. And he said, I had a very similar reaction when I was listening to these two again, I'll put it in quotes. People or entities discussing the story that only eight people on the planet know and doing it in a way that we couldn't have done because we're so close to it. So he was like, it hit me like a ton of bricks. There's so many possibilities here for storytelling and for recapping storytelling and for understanding the story in a different fashion or learning stuff about a character that you otherwise maybe haven't analyzed. And the list goes on. So, yeah, so fascinating that you brought up the storytelling element.
00:12:55 Rachel Madel
What is this tool called?
00:12:57 Chris Bugaj
Okay, well, let me. Let's do a little walkthrough of it. So people like. Because they're probably like, yeah, just like you like, okay, so what is this, Chris? Yeah. How much does it cost? How do I get in? Well, of course, it's free. You know, we rarely talk about paid stuff here, and so how about we do the thing where you share your screen, and we'll have you create one here alive with us, so that if people are listening to the podcast, they could also sort of follow along with the instructions. How does that sound?
00:13:23 Rachel Madel
Sounds great. Okay.
00:13:25 Chris Bugaj
The only thing. The only thing you really need with beforehand is a Google, a Google account, which I know you have, and then be thinking about what is some sort of Google Doc you could use to link this to. It doesn't have to be. There's other things you can load up to it, or you could use YouTube videos that you can link it to. But in this case, just to replicate what I did with the Google Doc. Can you think of some Google Doc that you've been working on recently, maybe for AAC Ally, putting things together or some other blog post? Do you have. Do you have something like that?
00:13:57 Rachel Madel
I do. I mean, I could guess AAC Ally, we have our landing page, like the sales page that we worked on before we launched the course.
00:14:05 Chris Bugaj
Okay, perfect. All right, so if you'll share your screen, I'll walk you through it. Okay, so the website is notebook LM, the letters lm dot google.com. and when you first get there, it gives you a little welcome screen. Hey, welcome to notebook LM. And so there's. There's. What we're looking at here is a screen that just has a big create button in the middle of it, and you can just get started without even kind of reading any. Any of the other content. Notice in your case here, you were already signed into Google Chrome. It sort of linked you all together. There might be a phase with people listening. Like, well, I have to input my Google information, my Gmail, and my Google account information, but you're already logged in here. And then below this create button, there's some, like, four gray boxes that are sort of samples that you could, like. Okay, I'm just exploring this. What does it do? You could look at some samples that I already created, but in this case, you already heard a sample that I just shared with you. So I'm going to invite you to hit that create button in the middle of the screen.
00:15:09 Rachel Madel
Okay.
00:15:10 Chris Bugaj
Okay. And now it enters an interface that you're probably familiar with, where there's this sort of big rectangle that says upload resources or drag and drop. Like, you can drag and drop something. Drop something into this area, or you can choose a file that you upload, or down below it says Google Drive, and you can link Google Docs, Google Docs, Google Slides, can't Google Slides.
00:15:31 Rachel Madel
Chris, I feel like we could condense, like, one of our courses into, like, a podcast clip.
00:15:37 Chris Bugaj
Wouldn't that be awesome? We could try it. We could totally try it. I know. So whatever you want to do, Google Docs, Google Slides, a website, YouTube, copied text are all options, let alone things you can upload. What do you think? What's grabbing you today?
00:15:51 Rachel Madel
I kind of want to do, like, our coaching course slides.
00:15:55 Chris Bugaj
Okay, great.
00:15:55 Rachel Madel
Have you tried the slides yet?
00:15:57 Chris Bugaj
I haven't. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, so Rachel has clicked on the Google Slides link, and it brings you to, again, what might be a familiar interview where it's just a page of all these different Google Slides that you have worked on or folders that have Google Slides in them. Rachel found our talk on coaching and is loading it up. And so it's doing the thing where it's sort of spinning and analyzing. And again, I think your mileage might vary here depending on how much stuff you're loading into it. Like a simple one page Google Doc might be faster than a thing that has lots of pages, but here, in that short time, it loaded, right?
00:16:40 Rachel Madel
Wow. It has a summary that's so spot on.
00:16:44 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. So this tool, this notebook Lm, one portion of it is to create an audio file, but really what it is is sort of a mini version of an AI bot where you can interface by asking questions or summarizing or creating a table of contents or creating a study guide. You can essentially ask questions to the content that you've uploaded to this to notebook LM. And then the other option is to create an audio file. So over there on the right, it says, audio overview, deep dive conversation, two hosts. And at this point in time, when we're recording this, it's English only, and it's going to be those two same hosts. You're going to hear those two same voices, you click the generate button, and again, your mileage might vary here how long it takes for it to do, to do this conversion. But really, I think you're going to find it's like two or three minutes for the things that I'm inviting you to upload into here, link in here.
00:17:45 Rachel Madel
Look at all these other options. Chris study guide, FAQ timeline table. It's so cool.
00:17:52 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. And down below it says, start typing. And this is where, like other generative AI tools, you might put some sort of prompt. Same idea here is you might ask it a question, like, I don't know, put whatever you think in there about our coaching talk.
00:18:07 Rachel Madel
A question about the content.
00:18:09 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, maybe.
00:18:12 Rachel Madel
What are the benefits of coaching for AAC?
00:18:18 Chris Bugaj
Awesome.
00:18:19 Rachel Madel
Oh, wait, did I mess up our generate audio?
00:18:22 Chris Bugaj
I don't think so.
00:18:23 Rachel Madel
Okay.
00:18:23 Chris Bugaj
It just shrinks to give you a larger screen, but I think that's still working in the background. All right. What we see is that, you know, this sort of familiar chat looks a lot like text messaging. Where youre, your question became one of the in the message bubbles. And then below, what do we see?
00:18:41 Rachel Madel
So we see some bulleted points. Coaching can help communication partners better support individuals who use AAC. Training alone has not been shown to be very effective at changing people's behavior. That sounds familiar. Coaching can bridge the gap between theory and practice by providing guided practice and reflective questions to help people implement new strategies. Yes, that's directly from this course of ours, Chris.
00:19:07 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Now, something also interwoven in there are these little numbers in gray circles. So let's see what those are like. So next to a sentence, there's a number one. Next to another sentence, there's a number two and three. What happens when you click on those numbers?
00:19:20 Rachel Madel
Wow. So when we click on the numbers, it shows, it kind of cites the slide that it used. This is amazing. Let's try number two. Wait, hold on. Wow. This is cool, Chris. I love it.
00:19:37 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, you click on that number and sort of on a pane on the left hand side of the screen is a version of the slide deck, then takes you right to the slide. So very. I don't know. I think it's so cool, right?
00:19:49 Rachel Madel
I love this. I'm like, Arnie, my little wheels are spinning. Like, how could I use this in my business, in my clinical work? Like, I'm pumped.
00:19:58 Chris Bugaj
Now there's a copy button, so you can copy that text and paste it over to every place. I think a lot of people don't know about that, too. I think a lot of people are still, like, clicking at the top of text, holding it down and selecting. Yes, but there is a copy button. So it's a one click sort of thing. And I'll copy the whole thing. You can paste it somewhere else, but there's also a save to note button at the bottom of the text. What does that do?
00:20:23 Rachel Madel
I created a note.
00:20:25 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. So if you're familiar with Google keep, it's sort of similar to that. It shrinks things to, like, a sticky note size note, and it sort of pins it to this board in the idea that this thing is called notebook. It's like keeping notes in a notebook. And so now you've created a note around this particular thing. And then, of course, you could link new things and upload other things and have multiple notes. Right.
00:20:51 Rachel Madel
Okay, so how do I go back to the audio?
00:20:53 Chris Bugaj
All right, so down in the bottom right, there's a little asterisk, and it says notebook guide. And when you click on that, it takes you back to that screen that had helped me create a little summary and some suggested questions and gave you some things like you could create in FAQ. When you're playing with a tool like this and you don't even know where to start or what to do, this tool itself gives you some suggestions of how you can interact with it and what it can do. So, yeah, it's still generating the conversation. And again, I don't know, like, maybe when you did start the typing and you asked it that question, maybe it paused that conversion, but it literally says, this may take a few minutes, no need to stick around. Like, we can go someplace else and come back to it. So it makes me think that it's working in the background.
00:21:41 Rachel Madel
In the background.
00:21:42 Chris Bugaj
Um, but I. Here's a question. Do you know if you pull up the Google Slides, how many slides are in our slide deck? Um, for coaching, how about we ask the AI, how many slides are in this slide deck?
00:21:56 Rachel Madel
Why would we go searching for information where we can simply ask a question? Wow, 87 slides.
00:22:05 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. So I. I could sort of see why it might take a little while for it to parse through the content audit. You know, generate the audio of people talking, talking about it. And you know how we do our slides, Rachel, it's not a blocks of text, you know, it's a lot of images and then we're talking about those, and then we do a lot of interaction. You know what I mean? Like, I'll be really curious. You know, that we have one slide in there that's like, we need a volunteer. And it's just, you know, Katniss Everdeen volunteering for the Hunger Games, right? Like that meme. So what's it going to do when it gets to those sorts of slides that aren't really relevant to the content itself for trying to make this podcast that it's trying to do right. I'll be curious how it wrestles with it, but that's probably why it's taking so long, is that we've got 87 slides with many of those slides not having content that's going to help it create something relevant while it's spinning here and working. What other uses could you see for this?
00:23:07 Rachel Madel
Well, so we're using a lot of AI in my online business for creating emails, just like kind of, instead of having a blank piece of paper, we're using all types of content that we already have, or simply just a video of me either answering a question in someone's email, and then we're pulling the transcript, and then we're using that to make an email and then my team sending it to me. And, you know, then I can go in and kind of make it my own and create my own voice out of it. But we've definitely been using it for that. And I'm like, like, how cool would it be to just, like, synthesize one of my courses or one of my slide decks or even when I'm, like, sending proposals? Because, you know, Chris, you know, proposal life, like, we get asked to speak at a conference or some type of event, and then, of course, the next question is like, can you send us a proposal detailing what is this course? What's it all about? What are the learning objectives? I feel like it would be so easy to just be like, well, here's the course. I mean, oftentimes we already have some of these things, but if you're generating a new course, like AAC ally, my new treatment course, that's a new course. So I was like, okay, like, I need to write a proposal for school districts who want to sign up their whole team. And I feel like I could have simply just input in here or imported it into here and at least had some type of outline that I could use as a launching off point so that I don't have to kind of start from scratch.
00:24:34 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, right, right. If it gets you 80% of the way there and you have to take it the last 20%, you still saved 80% of your time. Right. And that just buys you more time to enjoy things in life. Right. Or, you know, in our case, do more work.
00:24:48 Rachel Madel
In our case, just keep doing more work and adding more to our to do list.
00:24:54 Chris Bugaj
I'll tell you, another use case that I experimented with is our school district has, and the team that I work with has generated four PDF's or Google Docs. That is our resource consideration guide. So these are guidance documents that our facilitators use to talk about, like, okay, what do you think we need to do here? What do we think is going to be least restrictive? This is built off of the work of the Wisconsin Assistive technology initiative and Joyce Aballis said framework. We took those things, synthesized and made them our own. How do we make this work for us anyway? So we have these four for documents that we use as guidance documents, and they're not very descriptive because we know what we're doing with these documents. Right. They're not really meant to teach other people. They're meant to on their own, I should say. They're meant to help us facilitate conversations. And there's a set framework table there or the feature matching tables that people have heard us talk about on this podcast, where it's like a blank table. And then our facilitator helps fill out that first column and helps people consider the options that would go in the next column anyway. Of a blank template, though, is what I uploaded to it, those four documents uploaded to this tool, and then click that audio button and sure enough, it generated, again a six minute or less audio clip of two people talking about our consideration guide process. And I was like, blown away because that audio was literally a way we could send to people to describe what our process is. When someone reaches out to us and goes, hey, I need help with a thing. We often have to write back, say, well, okay, let's meet and let's talk. And then we bring up the. And then we bring up these guides and walk them through it. So this could be a thing that we send out and be like, well, here's how we're going to help. This is a little training that we do on whatever, you know, imagine that loading up something on just specifically. Like here we're working on coaching. What if it was motor planning? What if it was descriptive teaching? Or what if it was aided language stimulation or, you know, aided language input? Whatever term you want to use, whatever thing you're trying to teach, you could send this out as like the pre work, right? Like, here's listen to this before you come to this session. It's a six minute thing that you can listen to while you're washing dishes. Right, but that's the primer for what we're going to be experiencing when you come to this event. Right? I think that could be a great way to do it. And then on the back end, same thing, like, hey, thanks for coming to this event. Just here's a quick summary of what we discussed, you know, of these two people, again, people outputting quotes, discussing the same content. I think that's another way you could use this. All right, the audio is done. I could see why it took so long. Rachel, do you see why it took so long?
00:27:46 Rachel Madel
Yeah, it's 29 minutes.
00:27:49 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, that's the longest one I've seen so far, but a 29 minutes podcast about coaching based on our 87 slides. I'll be very curious what this sounds like. You want to have a listen to the first few minutes of it?
00:28:02 Rachel Madel
Let's do it.
00:28:04 Male AI
Okay, so get ready to dive into the world of coaching for AAC.
00:28:09 Female AI
And we're talking specifically about coaching those incredible people who support kids who use AAC.
00:28:15 Male AI
We've got a treasure trove of slides here from a training presentation. It's gonna be good.
00:28:20 Female AI
Let's unlock those golden nuggets of wisdom together, shall we?
00:28:24 Male AI
Sounds like a plan. I'm ready when you are.
00:28:26 Female AI
One of the first things that jumps out from these slides is this idea.
00:28:30 Male AI
That just handing someone an AAC device and saying, you know, go to town isn't really enough, is it?
00:28:37 Chris Bugaj
Right.
00:28:38 Female AI
It's like handing someone a paintbrush and expecting them to be the next Picasso.
00:28:41 Male AI
Exactly. And there's this hilarious slide with an otter.
00:28:44 Female AI
Right. Clearly over the moon about their 1 hour AAC train.
00:28:49 Male AI
Oh, yeah, I remember that one. It's a classic case. Attended the training. Check the box. Ready to roll. But as we all know, it takes a bit more than that to truly master the art of AAC, right?
00:28:59 Female AI
Absolutely. It's not a one and done kind of deal.
00:29:02 Male AI
These slides actually compare those kind of scattered training efforts to a Jackson Pollock.
00:29:09 Female AI
Painting full of energy, maybe even a little chaotic, but not exactly a model of focused instruction.
00:29:15 Male AI
But the perfect analogy. You might end up with something interesting, but it's not necessarily gonna be effective communication, is it?
00:29:21 Female AI
Not quite the masterpiece we were hoping for.
00:29:23 Male AI
So this is where coaching comes in, right? Instead of just delivering information, coaching is.
00:29:28 Female AI
About empowering those communication partners to find their own strategies, their own aha moments.
00:29:34 Male AI
It's about guiding them to uncover those hidden talents and become those communication champions we know they can be.
00:29:40 Female AI
I love that. Communication champions. That's what it's all about.
00:29:43 Male AI
And there's this vent.
00:29:46 Chris Bugaj
Unreal.
00:29:48 Rachel Madel
I mean, it doesn't sound like us, Chris, but it does sound like us.
00:29:53 Chris Bugaj
Right, because that's exactly the otter slide, is that. It's a meme with an otter saying, hey, you get an hour of training and good luck with these AEC devices. And they literally understood. They, this AI understood that. That's why we. How we're using that. Not to promote that that's how it should work, but that there's. That's a problem. And that there's this coaching as a way to, to address it. What do you think about, as you're listening to it, the pauses and the way they sort of changed their voice? The one voice added some emphasis, and it added a little jokey tone to it. What are your thoughts on that?
00:30:38 Rachel Madel
I think the thing that resonates with me the most here is that, that you can hear the energy in their voice, the emotion in their tone, and like, I'm bought in. I'm like, yes, I believe it. You know, like, I feel like there's, like, this energy and emotion behind it that makes me believe what they're saying. And, I mean, I happen to believe it because we created that course and I believe what we created. However, like, if we were, I mean, oftentimes we're presenting that course to people who maybe haven't thought about coaching, maybe don't know much about it. And I feel like the energy and emotion behind it, the passion behind the words and the information, is what really resonates. And I feel like this does a beautiful job of exuding emotion.
00:31:27 Chris Bugaj
Agreed. I mean, agreed. That was something kind of. So those of you that are only listening to this and not seeing the video, our faces, Rachel and I are making faces as we're hearing this, these excited, like, can you believe what that sounds like? And if you've seen us present, we present, I think, with lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm and, you know, this fun element to it. I'd be really curious. If you were to take a boring slide deck that has, you know, five or six bullet points per slide and there's no images and it's just, you know, the dry, mundane content, and you loaded that up here to notebook lm, would it have the same energy, would provide that same enthusiasm?
00:32:13 Rachel Madel
Chris, I just had an idea. What if we imported research, like, a research study into this? Like, I feel like there's nothing more, like, dry and boring than reading research. Like, how cool would it be to, like, listen to two people talking back and forth about a research study? I feel like that would be so great.
00:32:35 Chris Bugaj
Totally. It would not feel like taking your medicine. It wouldn't feel like. Like struggling through the words. And what do they mean by that? Right. Like, it would just be a more pleasant experience, and you'd still leave with a close enough explanation of what the research was saying, you know? Okay, well, what do you think? Do you want to listen just a little bit more and see, or are you ready to wrap it up?
00:33:01 Rachel Madel
I don't know. We can listen to a little bit more. Should we, like, fast forward? What do you think?
00:33:05 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, let's jump towards the end and see. Maybe not the very end, because I'm sure they'll just summarize, but, yeah, somewhere.
00:33:13 Rachel Madel
23 minutes, mark.
00:33:14 Chris Bugaj
Perfect.
00:33:15 Female AI
Okay, I'm intrigued. Tell me more.
00:33:17 Male AI
Well, Daniel Pink, in his work on timing and productivity, he talks about how.
00:33:23 Female AI
Our energy naturally ebbs and flows throughout the day.
00:33:26 Male AI
We have these peaks and troughs.
00:33:27 Female AI
Like an energy wave.
00:33:28 Male AI
Exactly. And those peaks and troughs, they play a huge role in how effective. We are at different tasks.
00:33:35 Female AI
Okay, so there's a graph here showing.
00:33:36 Male AI
Mood throughout the day, peaking in the late morning.
00:33:39 Female AI
Are you suggesting there's an optimal time for coaching, like right after that second cup of coffee?
00:33:44 Male AI
Well, according to Pink, that peak time from around eight to 11:00 a.m. that's.
00:33:50 Female AI
Actually best for those analytical tasks that require a lot of focus and brainpower.
00:33:54 Male AI
So not the time to be asking someone, what did you notice about your wait time in that interaction?
00:34:00 Female AI
Probably not the best time for that now.
00:34:02 Male AI
Gotcha. So when is the best time for those coaching conversations?
00:34:06 Female AI
Pink calls it the recovery phase, which typically falls later in the day.
00:34:10 Male AI
Recovery. So, like after lunch, when we're feeling.
00:34:12 Female AI
A little more refueled. Exactly. That's when our brains are primed for brainstorming, for creative problem solving, for those aha.
00:34:21 Male AI
Moments that are so essential to effective coaching.
00:34:25 Female AI
Because coaching is all about collaboration, thinking outside the box, coming up with those tailored solutions.
00:34:31 Male AI
It's about sparking those creative fires.
00:34:33 Female AI
That's such a practical tip. I'm already thinking about how I can rearrange my schedule to capitalize on those recovery windows.
00:34:39 Male AI
Well, schedule shifting can go a long way.
00:34:42 Female AI
But I have a confession.
00:34:43 Male AI
Confession time.
00:34:44 Female AI
I'm listening.
00:34:45 Male AI
Even with all this knowledge about coaching.
00:34:47 Female AI
I still get that little hesitation sometimes.
00:34:49 Male AI
That voice in my head. Maybe I shouldn't say anything. Oh, I think we've all been there.
00:34:54 Female AI
That fear of awkwardness, that worry that.
00:34:56 Male AI
We might offend someone, especially when it's.
00:34:58 Female AI
Someone we work closely with.
00:35:00 Male AI
It's natural to feel that way. But here's the thing.
00:35:03 Female AI
Lay it on me.
00:35:05 Male AI
These slides remind us that we have a choice.
00:35:08 Female AI
A choice.
00:35:09 Male AI
We can either stay silent and let.
00:35:11 Female AI
Those opportunities for growth pass us by.
00:35:14 Male AI
Or.....
00:35:15 Female AI
Or we can step outside our comfort.
00:35:17 Male AI
Zones, embrace those moments of vulnerability and.
00:35:20 Female AI
Trust that our feedback, delivered with kindness and respect, can make a real difference.
00:35:29 Chris Bugaj
Okay, so now I have some even more thoughts. I'm glad we continued because I don't know that I could listen to 30 minutes of this, right? Like I could listen to six minutes of it and get some content and sort of understand what we're talking about. Like the beginning of of this, but 30 minutes of some of that, it seems like filler, right? Like it's just banter back and forth. It doesn't really go anywhere.
00:35:51 Rachel Madel
I wonder. Yes, I wonder if you could create a briefing doc from the slides and then input the briefing doc as a way to get the conversation in the cliff notes. Like, I wonder because I feel like that's what I want here. I want to be able to say, like, okay, make this, like, all the biggest points in, you know, three minutes. Like, I want to, like, have it tailored to that.
00:36:17 Chris Bugaj
Well, yeah. And if you think about what would we do with that audio, you would like an AAC Ally, right? You break things down into small chunks, and it's not, hey, it's a, it's a nine hour video that you're watching, right. It's all these short clips or shorter experiences. Right? Is that fair? So same thing here. Like, if you had a briefing document and said, okay, just make a piece of audio for this point and then make another piece of audio for this point. Another piece of audio for this point. And you essentially had a playlist that you could jump around in and. And put it into, like, a table of contents. I could see how that could be really useful.
00:36:51 Rachel Madel
Totally. I have another clinical idea, Chris. So I'm working late. On me, I was like, wow, that's so lifelike. They also have, like, a such radio host voice voices. But what I was thinking about is oftentimes I'm working with some of my students on skills like conversational texting. So, like, oftentimes I'll pull up. I love using ifaketextmessage.com. it's just a free website where it kind of looks like a cell phone screen and you can kind of go back and forth. And I wonder if you were able to export a conversation because at the end of ten or 15 minutes, we have a conversation. I wonder what that would be like, them having a conversation as a way to do something fun with your student. After the conversation is already created, we'll go back and forth and we read it, and sometimes I'll record it. So I'll be the other person, and then my student will be one of the people and we'll go back and forth and record it and listen to it. But I just wonder what would happen if you hadn't put it into something like this.
00:37:59 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. All these fun things we could do to explore how to use it with students for professional learning to increase your own productivity. I wonder about since this, once you save this, right? It saves it as a note. And what happens when you have done this 50 times, 100 times? What is your sticky note page of all these notes look like and how can you use it? So I feel like we're just scratching the surface here of what can be done with this episode. I hope people go back, they play with it and have their thoughts about it and share their thoughts with us on social media or write us on our email@talkingwithtechmail.com. dot I have one more story to share about this, and that is, I just got back from the United Ability conference, which is in Alabama. I went last year. I got the opportunity to go again this year. Listeners of the podcast will know that we've interviewed a bunch of people from the United Ability conference that I met there last year, and there's episodes in the last year from people that participated in that conference. So one of the sessions that they invited me to do was on generative AI and using it for designing awesome experiences for everyone, including people with disabilities. And this tool was new to me. Like, I learned it on, what, maybe a Friday or a Saturday. I was playing with it, and then I was like, well, I'm going to show it in this presentation right at the beginning of the presentation, so, which was on a Tuesday. So I showed this to a room full of people, and then we opened it up in the same way that I just showed it to you and then said, let's talk about it for a second. And after I stopped playing the audio, the room was in this stunned silence. Like everyone was sort of just their mouth gaping open, their eyes wide with shock. And if I'm being honest, a little bit of fear. And I said, oh, okay. All, we're all in our different places when we're experiencing that, and they're all kind of slowly nodding like we're living in the future. It feels like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, what was just created here. And there was definitely this fear around. Well, deepfakes, if this can be generated and it sounds so human, and that's intentionally, why at the beginning of this episode, I didn't tell you what we were going to listen to. I didn't queue up the listeners that what we would be listening to. I wonder how many people listening right now thought it was two humans. And like you, it was like, well, I know, Chris, so there's something going on here. It's probably an AI tool, but if I hadn't done that, if it wasn't coming for me, if someone else presented it to you, could you pass it off as two humans, you know, and what other things are out there that exist like that, or that will be coming, that it becomes easier to do and easier to fix? And what kind of protections can we put in place? What skills do we have to teach the people we work with to help recognize those things? Like red flags? Like, hmm, okay, why are my hackles raising that this might not be real. You know, what kind of, you know, we are optimistic people. We generate, you know, we see a tool like this, you and I start to brainstorm all the different ways we can use it clinically in our professional practice and to help people. Right. But just like any other tool, there might be a little potential for danger or for tricking people. And I feel like that's just a part of something we have to talk about with anything with gender, of AI.
00:41:24 Rachel Madel
Totally. I mean, I think that it's wild to see what has happened in the world of AI in the last year or two. It's just like, it is a little scary because it is so real sounding. And even now, what they can do with, like, we have a public podcast with hundreds of hours of our voice, like, sharing and talking, and what they can now do with that data set and creating other generated AI with our voice, even it does become scary. It's crazy.
00:42:03 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. It is definitely a two sided coin. Right? There's this awesome side of it that would be, oh, my gosh, that could save me so, so much time if I could make a digital version of myself to answer an email that I get the same email ten times. And so we've created templates that you would, you know, and tweak it each time you send it. But sort of, what if it was the same thing with video, right? Here's this video that I could send off that's a version of me based that I didn't actually have to make. I used AI to create a version of me. Like, there's. That is exciting to me in a time saving sort of way. But then the other side of that coin is, well, what if someone else used it for something malicious and now suddenly I'm on the hook for it, you know, like, well, Chris, why did you say that this thing went well? I didn't say that. That's not me.
00:42:50 Rachel Madel
You know, totally, totally. I know, it's great. It's crazy.
00:42:54 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, yeah. All right, well, everybody, I hope you enjoyed this. Look at notebook lm. We totally invite you to go experiment with it on your own. See what you think, think, see what kind of usage cases you can come up with and then share that with us on social media or via email or however you want to reach out to us, because it is exciting if it's used for the powers of good.