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[00:00:00] Shanna Martin: Thanks for listening to the tech tools for teachers podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I’m your host, Shanna Martin. I’m a middle school teacher, technology and instructional coach for my district.
[00:00:31] Fuzz Martin: And I’m her producer and husband, Fuzz Martin, and this ain’t your gamma’s podcast.
[00:00:39] Fuzz Martin: I don’t know. Uh, my brain is frozen and I’m just going to.
[00:00:45] Shanna Martin: Let it go. Let it go.
[00:00:47] Fuzz Martin: Let it go. Thank
[00:00:48] Shanna Martin: you. You’re welcome.
[00:00:49] Fuzz Martin: Uh. Cause
[00:00:50] Shanna Martin: it’s cold, but it’s sunny. We have sunshine. We had this glimmer of spring this week. Yeah.
[00:00:55] Fuzz Martin: It’s that hopeless, uh, uh, you know, it’s like, it’s first spring. Yeah. Yes, exactly. It’s first
[00:01:02] Shanna Martin: spring in Wisconsin.
[00:01:02] Shanna Martin: It looks,
[00:01:03] Fuzz Martin: it looks warm outside and then you step outside and it’s 11 degrees Fahrenheit.
[00:01:06] Shanna Martin: So that’s fun.
[00:01:07] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
[00:01:08] Shanna Martin: So many things we’re coming down spring break. It will be here before we know it. And we’re all holding on spring break is coming soon. But yeah, so I have a fun little AI tool to talk about this week and it is called gamma
[00:01:23] Fuzz Martin: gamma dot app
[00:01:24] Shanna Martin: and gamma dot app.
[00:01:26] Shanna Martin: And it is super fabulous for all of the things and it also is really.
[00:01:35] Shanna Martin: So like the things that like the cool things about it, like it’s a super time saver, cause lots of AI things are, it is, it says several different AI tools in it. So I use it for like building presentations, but it also can do PDFs. It can do, um,
[00:01:50] Fuzz Martin: websites,
[00:01:51] Shanna Martin: websites, it can do images, so it can, Cover the gamut of, items that you might need to help support you in your classroom.
[00:02:03] Shanna Martin: It does have, an education section, you can click that you’re an educator or a student. So it does, like, you can do that as well, which I appreciate because sometimes AI tools are. Strictly office focused. And this one is not, it’s easily edited. So once you have all the things created, you can easily edit it, which is nice.
[00:02:19] Shanna Martin: You can download, the presentations as you make them into PowerPoint or Google slides, which I appreciate it uses both. And it has lots of pretty design elements. So I. Cranked out some presentations for my social studies class. I was like, woo, this would be great. Not that I’m gonna use all of it at once, but with anything, AI is a great starting point to get you moving forward,
[00:02:40] Fuzz Martin: right?
[00:02:41] Shanna Martin: So when you go into Gamma as GAMA dot A, so Gamma do app create, I will say that you get a free, they kind of do like a, like a points system. Yep. So you get so many free. Points available to you. And then, once your credits and then once you use through those and you have to pay for it, but you can create several presentations, I think at least like eight to 10 presentations, depending on how in depth they are, for free, which is kind of nice.
[00:03:14] Shanna Martin: And if you decide you really like the tool, you can pay for it or not, or just create things that you’re going to use on a regular basis. I was thinking about some of those like baseline. Presentations like you may need the structure, shut up, set up. And then from there you can edit away when you have in Google slides.
[00:03:29] Shanna Martin: So that’s an option.
[00:03:30] Fuzz Martin: Sure.
[00:03:31] Shanna Martin: So when you go to create with AI, with the gamma app, you can choose. So either you can paste in your texts, like this is my notes or my outline of my information I already have that I want created. It will generate from scratch. You set up a really clear online prompt, which again, with any AI, you have to be really clear with those prompts to get what you want out of it, or you can import your own file or URL.
[00:03:53] Shanna Martin: So you can choose what you want to put in and then you can go ahead and create from there. So I am going to type in like basic overview of the great depression, eighth grade level. I want to see what information’s going to come out of this. The prom sets me up with eight cards, like eight slides in your slide deck.
[00:04:14] Shanna Martin: It’s in English, but you can change it to any language, which again, appreciated or, , our students that are speaking different languages in our classroom, you can absolutely help them out and support them in the classroom. Outline the great depression, America’s economic crisis. It goes through what it was causes life during it.
[00:04:31] Shanna Martin: The dust bowl, Hoover’s response, Roosevelt’s response. So it’s just eight overview slides with. Accurate information and not too detailed, but my prompt wasn’t too detailed. So it gives me all of the things I need for the information, which is really nice. You can go through, you can then add your own cards to it.
[00:04:49] Shanna Martin: You can, add more information, whatever you choose to, and you can plug that right in so you can have your slide outline set up, which is nice. And then from there, you just scroll down and then you can customize your gamma and they have themes so you can pick and it will make your side deck beautiful for you right off the bat.
[00:05:09] Shanna Martin: You can choose to view more. They have light, dark, professional, colorful. You can pick and choose. And then once you have your theme picked later on, you can even adjust it even more. So they have tons of theme options for you to start with. And then you can pick it from there. Make your slides all pretty.
[00:05:26] Shanna Martin: And then content, you can choose how you want your text and images to look, um, if you want things to be like brief, or if you want them super detailed and then image sources, I thought this was interesting. You can choose to have an automatic or it will select the best image type that it thinks you should have.
[00:05:46] Shanna Martin: You can choose from web images specifically, or AI images or illustrations or animated gifs. I will say. If you use too many AI images, it takes more credits away. So that’s just something to be aware of that. If you’re going to be generating things, the more you’re having AI create for you, the fewer, or the more credits will be taken out of your account.
[00:06:09] Shanna Martin: So that’s just something to note as you’re going through stuff. So once you’re in, you’re in and you have your. Slide deck created and it is beautiful and amazing. And then once you have that slide deck in and created and you really like it, then what’s cool is you can go back through and edit everything that you possibly want.
[00:06:28] Shanna Martin: So my slide deck is all pretty great depression. I didn’t like the first image. I swapped it out. So you have like three little dots that give you, you can duplicate the card just like working in any Google slide deck or any slide deck. If you’re using PowerPoint. You can copy the card link. You can export just that card specifically.
[00:06:46] Shanna Martin: You can edit your card style. So I don’t like the accent image, or I don’t like the card color, or I want better alignment, or I want a different backdrop, you can add and edit all of those things. Car each card at a time once it’s been created. So I think for like time saving purposes, like, okay, it’s made this whole thing for me now I can tweak it and make it more personalized or I can adjust it as I want to.
[00:07:11] Shanna Martin: So like, as I was saying before, you can create a slide deck and then you can edit all the things and then change them. You can simplify your language, you can make shorter, you can translate. You can support for all different needs of your classroom, which is pretty cool. It also will convert things to a timeline, which is pretty cool.
[00:07:29] Shanna Martin: So you do have that option as well. Yeah, there’s just so many options when you go, you can present it right off of gamma if you want to, or when you go to share. You can share it with a workspace. If you want to, you can export it as you want to, or you can embed it. You can export it as a PDF. You can export it as a PowerPoint export as Google slides.
[00:07:49] Shanna Martin: You can export it as P and G’s.
[00:07:52] Fuzz Martin: Even so you can export it to LinkedIn and make it a LinkedIn post. I mean, not that your students will necessarily be doing that, but maybe, I mean, if they’re in a, you know,
[00:07:59] Shanna Martin: business class or something like that for sure. And if they’re looking for. Internships are if they’re looking for, yeah, different opportunities for summer and things like that.
[00:08:07] Shanna Martin: Right. Older students. Absolutely. So that was like, how many different ways can you use this? If as a teacher, you’re trying to save time. So I’m thinking, like, if you have daily slides in your classrooms, you have a daily slide deck that has The usual date calendar information, along with creating review basics.
[00:08:27] Shanna Martin: So maybe you have certain touch points in reading that you’re going through or certain things like your students write CERs all of the time, you can have a slide decorated for you that has all of those basic things in it looks really professional, looks great. And you can come back to it as much as you need to.
[00:08:42] Shanna Martin: And it just always created for you. So if there’s certain concepts that you need, or you can pull it so you can pull your standards out. Plug them into the AI tool and it will lay information out as you need to, or set up questions as you need to, something else we do like this time of year, especially in Wisconsin, we’ve got our state testing coming up and ACT testing comes up.
[00:09:00] Shanna Martin: So if you need testing practice slides or testing reminders, like, Hey, you need to make sure like these are study strategies or these are breaking down question strategies. This will create you a presentation that then you can share in all of these formats, your students to families, to parents, putting on the school website, your classroom website.
[00:09:19] Shanna Martin: Like these are, this is pieces of information that you can create, share out. Everybody has it. Um, and it would be super fast to do because all of these things are on top of your regular teaching.
[00:09:31] Fuzz Martin: Yes. Like so many things,
[00:09:33] Shanna Martin: so many things. So this could create some sort of like, all right, you know, this information needs to get families quick.
[00:09:41] Shanna Martin: It should look professional. I don’t have time to do that. So these are the points I need to put in the presentation. Boom, share it. It’ll make it pretty for you and then you can push it out however you need to. So I feel like this obviously can be used in any content area, for a number of skills, whether it’s teacher created and then older students could use it again, like obviously we’re always aware of like how much AI our kids are using.
[00:10:04] Shanna Martin: But for this purpose, if they’re plugging in all their own content, or like their outline of information and they can share it out, even clubs and organizations, our FFA kids have all these presentations coming up, like just different ways to use it. But of course, always now teaching our older kids how to cite that they use AI for something as well.
[00:10:23] Shanna Martin: So yeah, all of these things are offered in a very short amount of time. And again, like I said, you have your credits to work from, but if you set it up, right, you can use it in a lot of different ways.
[00:10:35] Fuzz Martin: And some of the images that have pulled for you or needed to be
[00:10:38] Shanna Martin: edited. Yeah. As I went through, I was like, While these are like accurate to the Great Depression, they would probably not be appropriate for eighth grade.
[00:10:44] Shanna Martin: So just, obviously, like anything in AI, always going back through, and making sure it’s exactly what you need. But it was such a great starting point that this I now have created, I can go through, I can add more of my own information as I need to. But that whole like basic guideline is set up for my students, which it’s a great starting point and a time saver, which we always love to save our time, which is helpful.
[00:11:10] Shanna Martin: Yeah, exactly. And if you love it, you get all these credits. I tried out, test it out, see what you can do.
[00:11:16] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, again, you built one in like five minutes, I think.
[00:11:19] Shanna Martin: Yes, or less or less. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I’ll tweak this. Tweak. This is a great starting point. It’s not going to be like my whole.
[00:11:26] Shanna Martin: Like units, but it’s just a great introductory piece and I can translate it for my students that need it in other languages. So that way I can support them and they will have the same content that my other students do, which
[00:11:39] Fuzz Martin: is fantastic. And if, when you’re building these, if you’re looking for images, if you’re doing a history project or something, you can always go to archives.
[00:11:48] Fuzz Martin: gov and get the free creative commons. All right, public domain images. Your students can use that and cite that and, great way to build that out without using up all the credits. Yes.
[00:12:03] Shanna Martin: So there you go. So check out gamma. app, check out this tool. It’s really awesome. It will save you a bunch of time and just to try it out.
[00:12:14] Shanna Martin: Like it’s one of those where I say it may not be for you, but it also could just be like this huge time saver that you’re like, oh my gosh, this is really cool. And again, you can make quite a few presentations, with just trying out the free version of it, which I always appreciate because. And you can see how it’ll work best in your classroom.
[00:12:30] Fuzz Martin: Absolutely.
[00:12:31] Shanna Martin: So there you go.
[00:12:33] Fuzz Martin: Over the river and through the woods to Gamma app we go. Thank you.
[00:12:37] Shanna Martin: And we’re marching on through. Oh
[00:12:40] Fuzz Martin: yeah, look at that. We’re marching on through because you know.
[00:12:43] Shanna Martin: It’s March. It’s
[00:12:44] Fuzz Martin: March. Great word. We’re
[00:12:48] Shanna Martin: doing fabulous here. Thanks for tuning in. This has been the tech tools for teachers podcast.
[00:12:53] Shanna Martin: If you ever have any questions, you can find me on blue sky threads, Facebook, Instagram at smartinwi and if you want to get more information on the links to the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit smart in WI. If you’d like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or two, visit buymeacoffee.
[00:13:10] Shanna Martin: com slash smart and WI or visit smartinwi com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going new episodes each week. But probably not next week. Thanks for listening. Go educate and innovate.
[00:13:25] Fuzz Martin: And I highly recommend that you buy Shanna coffee. Cause I made really bad coffee this morning and she hasn’t had enough.
[00:13:31] Fuzz Martin: The ideas that opinions expressed on this podcast and the smart in WI website are those of the author, Shanna Martin, and not of her employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we sure hope they do.
