Recorded BenQ Session - AI Games, Interviews & Activities for Student Learning

This year at ISTE26 I had the privilege to present a session at the BenQ Education booth where we explored using AI as an interactive partner for games, interviews, and activities for student learning.

These can be done with any grade level or subject, either as whole-class activities where the teacher manages the AI but the students still participate, or with students individually interacting with the AI for their own learning experiences. 

In this session we tried out a wide range of AI activities such as:

• 🎙️ AI Interview
• 🔠 “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories
• 🤔 "20 Questions" games
• ❌ “Two Truths and a Lie” Games
• 📓 Emoji Definition Game
• 🤐 Classroom Taboo Game
• ⚖️ AI Debate
• ✍️ AI Co-Writing

To learn all about using AI for engaging student learning activities, see below to watch the recorded 30-minute session from the ISTE26 BenQ Education booth and to access the resources from the session.

Thanks to BenQ Education for sponsoring my presentation at their booth!

New PD Session - AI Prompts for Language Arts

Educational technology is constantly evolving, so my PD catalog has to change as well to keep up with everything new. During the course of the year I typically add several new sessions to my offerings. 

At the moment my PD catalog has over 70 different sessions that I offer for schools, conferences, and organizations. You can see the full catalog here - https://bit.ly/curts-pd

Recently I added a new session that covers AI prompts for language arts. See below for all the details and session resources. Feel free to use these resources any way you need, and if your school or conference is interested in this session or others, please reach out to me to discuss options for me to join you in person or virtually.

✍️ AI Prompts for Literacy, Reading, Writing & Language

• Description: In this session we will explore practical AI prompts specific for literacy, reading, writing and language to see how they can be used for teaching and learning. Prompts we will try out may include Decodable Texts, Discussion Prompts, Poem Writing Coach, RAFT Writing Prompts, Reader's Theater, Reading Level Analyzer, Story Co-Writer, Text-dependent Questions, Text Rewriter, Vocabulary List, Vocabulary Tiers and more.
• Resource Doc - bit.ly/curts-elaprompts
• Slideshow - View Slides - Copy Slides

12 New EduGems from May 2026

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools.

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at edugems.ai where I currently have 145 Gems!

Each month I add new Gems to the site. See below for links to the 12 new Gems I added during the month of May 2026, along with a short description for each.

Feel free to share with others and please consider submitting your own Gems to the site.

12 New EduGems from April 2026

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools.

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at edugems.ai where I currently have 133 Gems!

Each month I add new Gems to the site. See below for links to the 12 new Gems I added during the month of April 2026, along with a short description for each.

Feel free to share with others and please consider submitting your own Gems to the site.

Recorded Webinar - AI Games, Interviews & Activities for Student Learning

I recently recorded a webinar about using AI as an interactive partner for games, interviews, and activities for student learning.

These can be done with any grade level or subject, either as whole-class activities where the teacher manages the AI but the students still participate, or with students individually interacting with the AI for their own learning experiences. 

In this session we explored a wide range of AI activities including:

• 🎙️ AI Interview
• 🔠 “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories
• 🤔 "20 Questions" games
• ❌ “Two Truths and a Lie” Games
• 📓 Emoji Definition Game
• 🤐 Classroom Taboo Game
• ⚖️ AI Debate
• ✍️ AI Co-Writing

To learn all about using AI for engaging student learning activities, see below to watch my recorded 1-hour webinar and to access the resources from the session.

Podcast Spotlight - EdTech Bites

I recently had the pleasure to be a returning guest on the "EdTech Bites Podcast" hosted by Gabriel Carrillo.

The first time I was on the podcast was six years ago when I was in Austin, Texas and Gabriel and I enjoyed a meal of fatty brisket at Black's BBQ and discussed well-being (and yes, I acknowledge the irony of that). 

You can listen to that blast-from-the-past interview here - EdTech Bites Episode 57

Now six years later, I got to sit down with Gabriel again, this time at the MACUL Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

If you are not familiar with his podcast, Gabriel describes it as follows:

EdTech Bites is a Podcast about all things EdTech and Food hosted by Gabriel Carrillo. He interviews teachers, leaders, and innovators to discuss the latest trends in educational technology. Many times, while sharing a meal together. So subscribe, tell a friend or colleague, and remember that great conversations happen when we break bread with great people.

I had a wonderful time chatting all about my EduGems website, examples of Gems, my process for creating Gems, the importance of sharing Gems, and a challenge to schools to create and curate their own libraries of Gems for their staff and students.

Take a look below to listen to the episode, access the resources that I shared in the episode, and explore more about the podcast.

12 New EduGems from March 2026

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools.

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at edugems.ai where I currently have 121 Gems!

Each month I add new Gems to the site. See below for links to the 12 new Gems I added during the month of March 2026, along with a short description for each.

Feel free to share with others and please consider submitting your own Gems to the site.

Googley Poetry Projects and Tools

April is the time of year

For kids to write a poem.
There's loads of fun activities
Here for you to show 'em.

Google tools can be used
To make the perfect rhyme,
With templates, tools, and writing prompts
To save your students time.

Draggable Drawings, random Sheets,
And Google Docs highlighting
Will give your students inspiration
For their creative writing.

So look below to find out more,
Then get your students on it,
Writing their ode, haiku, free verse,
Their ballad or their sonnet.

Recorded Webinar - Creating and Sharing Gemini Gems

I recently recorded a webinar about creating and sharing Gemini Gems.

If you are not familiar with Gems, they are reusable, custom prompts that save your best AI workflows for instant access, and they are a game-changer for educators!

In this deep-dive hands-on session we covered the following topics:

• 🔎 Explore Google's pre-made Gems and the 100+ Gems on my EduGems site
• 🛠️ Create new Gems from scratch
• 💬 Learn tips for effective prompting, reference files, and tool selection
• 🔗 Share the Gems we create
• 🗃️ Discover how to build a high-quality Gem repository for your staff and students

To learn all about creating and sharing Gems, see below to watch my recorded 1-hour webinar and to access the resources from the session.

18 New EduGems from February 2026

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools.

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at https://www.edugems.ai/

Each month I add new Gems to the site. See below for links to the 18 new Gems I added during the month of February 2026, along with a short description for each.

Feel free to share with others and please consider submitting your own Gems to the site.

Upcoming Webinar - Creating and Sharing Gemini Gems

I am excited to be presenting a free webinar about creating and sharing Gemini Gems.

If you are not familiar with Gems, they are reusable, custom prompts that save your best AI workflows for instant access, and they are a game-changer for educators!

In this deep-dive hands-on session we will:

• 🔎 Explore Google's pre-made Gems and the 100+ Gems on my EduGems site
• 🛠️ Create new Gems from scratch
• 💬 Learn tips for effective prompting, reference files, and tool selection
• 🔗 Share the Gems we create
• 🗃️ Discover how to build a high-quality Gem repository for your staff and students

See below for details to participate in this training:

• 💎 Your AI Treasure Chest: Creating & Sharing Gemini Gems
• 🗓️ Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026
• ⏰ 3pm ET / 2pm CT / 1pm MT / Noon PT
• ▶️ The webinar will be live-streamed and also recorded for those who can't attend live
• ✅ Register at bit.ly/mar3gems or in this Google Form

I hope you will join me for this exciting webinar!

100 of the Best Gemini Gems for Schools

Four months ago I launched my EduGems website as an easy way to share some of my favorite Gemini Gems for schools. In case you are not familiar with Gems, they are basically just custom prompts that can be saved and shared and used anytime you need.

When the site launched, the collection of Gems was pretty small, but I hoped it would grow over time. 

Well since then I have pretty much become obsessed with creating new Gems for educators and students. I have also been so fortunate to have amazing educators share some of their own custom Gems for me to use.

And now … drum roll please … EduGems now has 100 Gems!

These Gems cover a wide range of topics from Exit Tickets to KWL Activities to Daily Bell Ringers to Lesson Hooks to AI Debates to Learner Scaffolds to Student Reflections and so much more!

If you haven't checked out the site yet, or if it has been a while since you were there, be sure to pop back over to EduGems at https://www.edugems.ai/ and explore all the amazing Gems ready to support you and your students.

Google AI for the New Year - Recorded Webinar

Recently I had the privilege to offer a free online session for the Teacher Innovation Network "EdTech Playground" series titled "AI for the New Year" where the theme was AI updates for schools.

For my session I presented on new AI features for Gemini, NotebookLM, and Google Classroom from the last few months, and how they can be used for teaching and learning. This included:

• 3️⃣ New Gemini 3 model
• 🍌 Nano Banana 3 Pro for advanced images and infographics
• 🖼️ Slideshow creation in Gemini
• 💯 SAT Practice Tests in Gemini
• 💎 Gem sharing and the EduGems website
• 🔊 Audio lessons in Classroom
• 📊 NotebookLM infographics, slidedecks, and data tables
• 🗯️ NotebookLM for graphic novels

The Teacher Innovation Network was kind enough to make the recorded video available for people to view if they were not able to attend the live session. See below to watch the recording, as well as access the resources I shared in the session.

Feel free to share with others who may benefit, and let me know what AI updates you are most excited about.

New EduGems from January 2026

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools.

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at https://www.edugems.ai/

Each month I add new Gems to the site. See below for links to the 13 new Gems I added during the month of January 2026, along with a short description for each.

Feel free to share with others and please consider submitting your own Gems to the site.

Making Graphic Novels with Gemini and NotebookLM

Graphic novels have long been an excellent medium to engage students in reading. Some of the benefits of graphic novels include:

• Dual-Coding - Having both a visual representation and a text description provides students with two ways to consume, process, and recall the information being presented.
• Inference Skills - Students have to mentally bridge the gap between Panel A (a character reaching for a doorknob) and Panel B (the character standing in an open room), which encourages high-level cognitive participation in the reading process.
• Accessibility - The visuals help reduce cognitive load, allowing students to focus their mental energy on the text itself. Also the "chunked" nature of the text is often less overwhelming than a wall of words, helping them maintain stamina.
• Introductions - Graphic novels can also be the gateway for students to larger texts. Reading a graphic novel version of "Tuck Everlasting" may prompt a student to take the full novel for a spin.

As easy as graphic novels are to consume, creating them is a much more challenging task. Certainly the best graphic novels are going to be created by skilled and hard-working authors and illustrators, and I strongly encourage everyone to support them in this work.

However with new AI tools, educators and students now have free options to enter into this world and create basic, but good, graphic novels of their own. This is something I have been working on recently with Gemini and NotebookLM, and I am excited to share with you both the results that I have made and the tools and directions for you to do the same.

See below for all of the details. And as always feel free to share with others, and please share with me your creations, comments, questions, and suggestions.

New EduGems from December 2025

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools.

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at https://www.edugems.ai/

Each month I add new Gems to the site. See below for links to the 18 new Gems I added during the month of December 2025, along with a short description for each.

Feel free to share with others and please consider submitting your own Gems to the site.

EduGem Spotlight - DOK Analysis

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools. 

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at https://www.edugems.ai/

I am always excited to announce new Gems, and today I am highlighting the "DOK Analysis" Gem.

📊 DOK Analysis

This Gem helps you quickly analyze any assessment to determine the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) level for each question, using the DOK 1-4 framework. This is perfect for gaining a clear understanding of the cognitive demands of your materials, identifying primary verbs, and ensuring your assessments promote the appropriate level of student rigor.

To use this Gem, you will have a collaborative conversation with Gemini. You'll start by providing the grade level and subject area and the specific assessment (which you can paste or upload). Gemini will then analyze each question on the assessment and provide:

• A direct quote of the original question
• The primary verb/cognitive task from the question
• The assigned DOK level for that question
• And the justification for that DOK level

After all the questions are analyzed, the Gem also provides a summary for the entire assessment with a total and percentage for each DOK level.

See below for a short video demonstration of this EduGem, as well as the link to access, use, and copy the Gem.

Using, Creating & Sharing Gems in Google Gemini

As I have shared before, Gems are a great feature of Google Gemini where you can save a common prompt to use anytime you need.

In addition to using the Gems yourself, you can also share them with others so they can benefit from them too.

To help explain all the details of Gems and how they work, I recently recorded a short 12 minute tutorial video about Gems that covers the following topics:

• ❓ What are Gems?
• 🎁 Premade Gems from Google
• 🛠️ Creating a Gem
• 💎 Using a Gem
• 🔗 Sharing a Gem
• 💻 My EduGems Website

See below to watch the video, and be sure to visit my new EduGems.ai website where I share dozens of my favorite Gems for schools.

Introducing EduGems

Gems are a great feature of Google Gemini where you can save a common prompt to use anytime you need. Rather than having to copy and paste or retype the prompt each time you need it, you can simply click on the Gem to launch the saved version of the prompt.

Recently Google released an update for Gems that makes them better than ever. Now any Gems that you create can be shared with others. You can share a Gem with specific people, or your whole school, or the entire world.

This is significant because now schools can create and curate their own collections of educational Gems to share by department or grade level or with all staff. I am excited to see schools begin to do this.

Inspired by this new feature, I have put together my own collection of favorite Gems that I have created or collected. You can find them at my new "EduGems" site at:

edugems.ai

Note: If the main link does not work for you, you can just go to the Google Sites link for the site here - https://sites.google.com/view/edu-gems/home - It looks like Squarespace may have a DNS issue, so I am working with them to get that fixed.

See below for more details about this new site and how you can submit your own Gems.