Google Gemini - Training and Ideas to use Gemini in Education

Save yourself a few hours each week, and enjoy the gift of a little more time for yourself

Getting Started in Gemini

This video is for anyone who has not yet used AI as part of their practice of teaching. This simple chatbot has the potential to save you several hours of work each week. If won’t feed your dog, or take your kids to hockey practice, but it can help you come up with ideas for your classroom, or create new resources. 

This video provides some tangible ideas to get you started in Gemini.

So take a deep breath and dive in.

Chatbots are like having an expert in all things, right at your fingertips. Just remember to read through the output that it generates in case there are errors.

Prompting Tips for Better Results

Prompting is not a difficult skill to develop, and certainly, it’s not a required skill for using generative AI, but a good prompt does improve your odds of receiving the output you are hoping for. 

This video suggests the CTR approach to prompting. Context, Task, Refinement. Tell the chatbot what the role is they are playing (e.g. an instructional designer for grade 9 social studies). Specify the task you want the chatbot to do (e.g. create a list of ten projects students could choose from to demonstrate their understanding of how urbanization can shift and shape a society.) Then tell the chatbot how you want the output to look (e.g. generate a list of the project choices along with a brief description of what the student would be asked to do). Including those three pieces of information will improve the result you get from the tool.

 

Deep Research with Google Gemini

Google Gemini has a feature called “Deep Research”, and this tool goes beyond the typical chatbot. This AI feature rapidly synthesizes extensive, detailed research into a cohesive, structured resource, allowing you to instantly generate the foundational text for a new unit of study. It can translate complex curriculum outcomes and guiding questions into complete, curriculum-aligned learning materials, significantly streamlining the resource creation process.

You can also see the list of references that it used to create the deeply researched output that it provides.