Screen-free math games, free VR field trips, and the BBC’s Bluey library

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Here’s a sample of my weekly email newsletter for you. In the newsletter, I work hard to bring out some tools and ideas to help you think about what you’re doing. Maybe it is just encouragement to do something you’ve done before or maybe it is an idea that is new to you. The greatest teachers I’ve ever known are always trying, thinking, and doing new things. Here’s to you. In my experience, those are the types of people who get the most out of the what I write and share.

The newsletter is also where I share the articles and conversations that are happening that I’m reading if you want to keep up with the ai and education reform info that people are talking about. If you haven’t subscribed to the newsletter you can do that at www.coolcatteacher.com/newsletter. Enjoy!

Hello Reader,

Happy back to school for some of you. Whatever time of year it is, I hope you’ll work hard to notice kids doing great things. My goal has always been to make the first contact home a positive one. I mentioned this on X and Teach Up Education said,

Agreed. I had a new student one year who just transferred in. And when I called home to tell his mom how great it was to have him in group, she paused and then, with a lot of relief in her voice said, “I’ve been waiting years to get this phone call.” And now I work with her two youngest, and anytime I need something, she’s right there to support.

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Yes! That is awesome. I know it is busy and it is so so hard and exhausting to start the new school year, but working hard to notice positive things and call or email home is a great way to start the year.

In today’s newsletter, we’re going to talk about:

• Screen-free math fluency games, research, and differentiation
• Data Driven Leadership
• Free virtual field trip ideas
• How to use that VR headset in your classroom
• Free Bluey resources for teaching younger children SEL
• Formative assessment tips with 5 (you guessed it) no-screen formative assessment options
• Award Winning Principals series
• Hot stories in AI news and ethics that I’ve been reading and discussing with educators

OK I know that I do like technology but we also know that we need a mix of online and offline options to teach formatively so you’ll be getting more ideas. Some of these have been around for years!

Let’s get going!

Ideas for Elementary Math Classrooms

Elementary Math Fluency Ideas

Math Games that Build Fluency While Kids Have Fun with Dr. Gina Kling and Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams | Episode 962​

The authors of Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention have lots of ideas for screen free games to learn math. The companion site built by the Kentucky Center for Mathematics has more than a dozen games, printable board games, student recording pages, editable Google slides explaining the games, and assessment tools.

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Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Pandora | Spotify | YouTube | ​Audible ​

They also share their favorite games on the show notes including Salute (one player is the dealer and the other two each take a card and hold it on their forehead facing out without looking at it. The dealer looks at both cards and says the sum out loud. Each player looks at other players cards and figures out their own. They say kids love this one.) You can do this with the product instead of the sum as well. Lucky 13 and Go Fish For 10’s as well as other games are included in the show notes.

For those who want to discuss the common mistakes of teaching math facts (they say that the game “around the world” should be abandoned and timed math tests may not accomplish what you intend), here’s a discussion guide for this show. 👉 e962-discussion-guide.pdf​

How to Differentiate Instruction in Elementary Math with Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson

Since we’re talking math and you have a wide variety of ability levels, this wildly popular podcast from the vault includes ideas for elementary math teachers. If you’re an elementary math teacher who thinks it might be a struggle to reach your different learners, I’d take a listen.

Free BBC Resources for Your Classroom: Dinosaurs, Bluey, Planet Earth and News

Kimmie Fink shares printables, virtual field trip ideas, and fun archaeological dig resources for students at the BBC Learning Hub.

• ​Bluey: Feelings, Friendship, and Other SEL Skills​
• ​10 Favorite Bluey Activities and Arts and Crafts​
• ​Walking with Dinosaurs Virtual Field trip​
• ​The Ultimate Planet Earth Playlist​
• ​Numberblocks Fun: Playful Math Activities for PreK–2​
• ​Alphablocks Letter Play: Early Reading Activities for PreK–2​

These resources are free and the videos are ad free from the BBC Learning hub. Create a free account in order to create playlists that you can send directly to Google Classroom. Episode 964 sponsored by BBC Learning Hub.

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Data-Driven Leadership That Changes School Culture with Dr. Deborah Dennie | Episode 960

Deborah Dennie was an NASSP 2026 Middle Level National Principal of the year finalist and she is a principal in Maryland. She talks about how to be data driven and how she helps everyone get on board to improve attendance. She has lots of ideas. I’ve also included a sample prompt for teachers and one for principals and admin teams and tips for anonymizing data in the blog post.

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Podcasts show notes are now full of curated free resources.

Additionally, some free tools for working with data like Attendance Works Data Tools, the Association of Washington School Principals AI Prompt Library, and how teachers can get Claude and ChatGPT for Free.

👉 Each day when I share a podcast, I’m curating resources, finding free tools and sharing prompts so that you have more than a podcast. So, episode 960 is at www.coolcatteacher.com/e960 so you can see everything. I’m just including the highlights here in my newsletter but I urge you to go deep!

VR and XR in Your Classroom | Episode 961

Virtual Reality. If your school is lucky enough to have VR headsets, then great. Meghan Freeman will help you get started. However, I’ve also curated a bunch of free “virtual field trips” that you can take on a chromebook or any device. I love doing scavenger hunts in this way!

Extended Reality. Here are some of the free extended reality (XR) field trips you can do on any device for every subject. I highly recommend “scavenger hunts” where you have a list of what students will find or observe:

• ​Museum of the American Revolution Virtual Tour — a 360° panoramic walkthrough of the whole museum.
• ​XR Guide — WebXR directory — use the search box at the top. This is a directory of experiences that run right in the browser, no headset and no app store required. Look for your subject.
• ​NASA at Home: Virtual Tours and Apps — NASA’s hub for virtual tours and apps, free like everything else NASA makes.
• ​NASA Commercial Crew Program VR Tours — my pick of the NASA collection, with versions built for grades 5–8 and grades 9–12. Here’s what makes these different from most free VR: every tour comes with PDFs carrying NGSS standards, math standards, and actual lesson plans.
• Here’s one from the Preparing to Launch America guide: Build and Launch a Foam Rocket, a 60-minute activity for grades 2–8 that carries NGSS standards K-PS2-1, 3-PS2-2, and MS-ETS1-1, -3, and -4, and walks students through the full engineering design process. This is an example.
• ​European Space Agency: International Space Station Panoramic Tour — a 360° walkthrough of the ISS. Pair it with the NASA tours and let students compare what they see.
• ​BBC Learning Hub Virtual Field Trips — a searchable collection of virtual field trips. The Walking with Dinosaurs Virtual Field Trip comes with a teacher guide and a printable paleontologist field journal so students have something in their hands while they explore. (They sponsored last Friday’s episode.)
• ​Google Arts & Culture — a huge repository of museums and field trips. If you don’t have headsets and want your students to experience some trips, go to the homepage, pick your subject, and explore.
• ​Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Virtual Tour — room by room through the whole museum, including exhibits that have since closed.
• ​360Cities Video Gallery — 360° video from locations all over the world. Good for geography, world languages, and “show me where this story takes place.”
• ​National Geographic on YouTube — and here’s a trick worth teaching your students: look for the 360 icon on YouTube. Once you know to look for it, there’s a whole layer of the platform you’ve been scrolling past.
• ​Ancient Rome: The Colosseum — a free experience that takes students inside the Colosseum. A favorite of mine for world history.
• ​Boeing FUTURE U Virtual Field Trips — 30-minute virtual field trips built with Discovery Education, with downloadable educator guides. Strong for CTE and career exploration.
• ​Discovery Education Virtual Field Trips — a long-running free collection across subjects.

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Making teaching more efficient

​Formative Assessment and Feedback That Move Learning Forward with Starr Sackstein

Starr has co-authored Actionable Assessment: A Step-by-Step Guide to Responsive Teaching and Student Growth with Michael McDowell. She talks about the kind of assessment that is truly formative.

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This is a conversation you’ll want to have at your school so I developed a discussion guide. 963-Formative-Assessment-Discussion-Guide.pdf​

Additionally, Four corners, The post-it round, think-pair-share, whiteboard responses, and reading records are five formative assessment strategies she explains and I capture in the show notes. If you want peer feedback strategies, go back and listen to this show, 5 Fantastic Peer Feedback Strategies for Your Classroom.

Leadership

With school starting back, our principals might need some ideas to connect better with students, teachers, and parents. We have a 2 part series airing on Cool Cat Talk right now to help. Part 1 just aired this Saturday with NASSP (now the National Principals Association – NPA). CEO Ronn Nozoe shares the results of the survey we did back in June with NASSP leaders and Cool Cat Teacher newsletter readers. (Thank you for participating).

Also, Muriel Summers who redesigned her school around the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and co-author of The Leader in Me with Stephen Covey had lots of ideas for promoting student leadership, even at the elementary level. I love her description of how it looked, felt, and sounded at her school as they changed the culture. (Or if you want the shorter version of Muriel’s interview, grab her Motivational Monday episode that aired yesterday on the 10 Minute Teacher.)

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Subscribe to this show on iTunes | Spotify | Audible​

Part 2, airing this week will have Sonia Ruiz and Amanda Jamerson two more award winning principals who will inspire and encourage you!

You can follow this episode at www.coolcatteacher.com/becoming​

Free Resources for the 7 Habits

• ​The Leader in Me Level 1 Annotated Teacher’s Edition (PDF) — This is a sampler. Open this one first if you teach the little ones. Habit 1 is a complete read-aloud lesson built around King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood and The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, with before-you-read, while-you-read, and after-reading questions written out for you, plus cross-curricular extensions in language arts, social studies, science, and art.
• ​The 7 Habits of Happy Kids (and teachers!) printable library — A K–5 teacher in Memphis put her whole set online: a classroom poster set, a 7 Habits clip chart, student certificates, character slips, bookmarks, coloring pages that pair with Sean Covey’s book, a Habit 2 goal-setting sheet, a Think Win-Win graphic organizer, graphic organizers scaled up for grades 3–5, and 7 Habits songs. Every one is a direct download.

I’ve also posted five leadership activities for exploring your culture on the blog post for Muriel’s episode. OK I was shocked at how Muriel involved her students in interviewing potential teachers, until I realized that when I was at Georgia Tech I was involved in selecting the Director of External Affairs and they listened to our feedback.

What’s coming up?

So, this week we have Alice Keeler talking about how to Vibe Code with Gemini, Nneka McGee talking about how to teach quantum physics to littles (not kidding), Todd Brekhus from Renaissance Learning talking about Renaissance Intelligence and Jerry Kolber from Who Smarted? Talking about the show and how to integrate podcasts into the classroom. Oh, and Monday, we’ll have Ashley Bendiksen talking about teaching boundaries to kids ages 5-9.

As always, I’ll share lots of resources for each of those episodes.

AI News and Ethics

I’ll admit that many of us are wrestling with what it means to write in the AI age. Now, on LinkedIn, people can mark your content “AI slop” (without any disclosure to you.) Substack has integrated with Pangram, an AI detector that is pretty good, however, false positives continue to be a debated issue. This summer, the winner of a short story prize was embroiled in controversy when it was said to have used AI, although the author denied it. Over 300 federal judges now require AI disclosure in their court cases.

A German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements generated in AI overviews. But do our teachers and students even know that Google AI overviews are full of mistakes? I sure do. I would never cite them after I had to remove one source from a radio show that turned up in my fact check process and I was prepared to cite one at ISTE and in my fact checking, discovered it was totally hallucinated.

And in a recent study, 40% of Gen Z and millennial respondents said they wished they could remove generative AI from the world while at the same time “AI Guilt” is a thing as recent college graduates (who were never caught, mind you) feel an immense amount of regret that they didn’t do any of their college coursework themselves. One person on reddit going so far as to redo many of her senior year assignments on her own. (Missing out on the feedback process, I would point out.) When researchers submitted AI-written exams into a UK university grading system, 94% went undetected and SCORED ABOVE THE AVERAGE REAL STUDENT.

And Katy ISD in Houston banned generative AI chat tools for grades k-6 and gradually allows teacher-supervised, authorized use starting grade 7. They also explicitly require that 8-12th grades cite all AI assistance in their work. (Now, that last piece was a requirement in my classroom and should be a given, IMHO.)

So, the first way I teach AI is to share the four paragraphs I just wrote with my students – hyperlinks and all. I have them read them and we discuss what they think. This is the first step of AI ethics as we openly discuss the issues of the day. But how do I start teaching AI? I summarized it here…

How I teach about AI.

I updated this post in July 2025 and 2026 to reflect what I had done each year. If you want to know how I teach about AI with kids with resources and handouts. Here are a few:

• ​Quick Draw with Google – they draw and it tries to “recognize” what they drew. The gold is in the data sets you can see when you’re done.
• Deep Fake Videos including one of “Elvis” and an ad with Bruce Willis in it. Both deep fakes.
• ​AI Vocabulary Set – I made and update this set of AI vocabulary words with levels.
• ​Spy the AI – test your knowledge of the AI vocabulary. I vibe coded this game. Here’s how.​

Encouragement for You

Educator, your job is so important! You are important. Your job is not easy. I’m here to help. Thanks for those of you who emailed me after some personal notes in my last email newsletter. I see you and I appreciate that you see me.

And isn’t that what teaching is about. Truly seeing our students and then helping them see the greatness in themselves and that they can persist and do hard things? Then, teaching them and working together.

I sat down with a student who is now a banker for me. We talked about my class. That was well over 15 years ago now. Like it was yesterday. He says they talk about the predictions and the technology change every time they get together as a class that we made in my classroom. Wow, that means so much to me.

And now, this means so much to me. This newsletter that took me three hours to write – by hand, I guess you would say, even though I typed it. Even though I just used a dash.

But I will say that I always use my AI fact checker tool I’ve built as a skill in Claude. It turned up some misspellings, asked me which court made the ruling above, and found at least one dead link. I think that’s useful. After I write, to have AI do a fact check for me based on how I’ve programmed it. That’s a win and I won’t apologize for being more accurate. And that is the thing, we need to focus on ways that AI can make us better humans not on ways that AI can be sub par copies of us.

We don’t get better by just getting by. Tomorrow is not better than today if today is worse than yesterday. OK I know, I know, my husband and I have been talking about circular Greek logic, so I’ll move on.

If you know me and have read my newsletter, you know what I sound like. And we have a human connection through these words. And I hope you’re finding lots of things you can do with your students and your team. And I hope you’re finding other educators who inspire you. You are amazing. You deserve lots of people who will support you with great handmade content. I happen to think human-crafted will always have a premium even as the world is trying to sort things out.

You don’t get something for nothing. You always reap what you sow, later than you sow, and more than you sow. If you plant watermelons, you don’t harvest corn. If you plant honesty, you will reap the benefits.

As always, if you have something to say, just hit reply. I read every message. Sometimes it takes a minute because of the incredibly robust spam filters I use but I will reply.

As always, I remain joyfully in your service!

See you later, educator.

Vicki

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Who Smarted? Why Human-Made Kids’ Media Still Beats the Bots

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

“Who Smarted?” OK, the name would make middle schoolers laugh. Yes, the topics might be gross to some of us adults. (Like who wants to talk about digestion even though probiotics seem to be the rage right now?) And yet, they cover topics that kids are learning, and if you’re a classroom teacher, you can sign up to listen ad-free. (And if you’re going to use this in the classroom, you need to take the ads off.)

In this show, we talk about the growth of the show, why human-created content is more important than ever, and how teachers are using podcasts to promote listening skills and screen-free learning and fun. Of course, as a podcaster, I think podcasts are great for transition time (so many people listen to this show in the car!). But transition time in the classroom is great for students. Also, search back episodes of the podcasts you love. When you have shows with a lot of content, there are great nuggets in the back catalog. I hope you enjoy Jerry Kolber talking about Who Smarted? Let’s learn!

…the AI demos I’ve seen are so cold. I mean, they are filled with misinformation, but they just also sound like a machine…

Jerry Kolber, creator of Brain Games (Nat Geo) and Brainchild (Netflix)

Table of contents

• Listen to the Show
• Key Takeaways for Teachers from Jerry Kolber
  • Resources for Building Listening Skills

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Jerry Kolber

Elementary students and middle schoolers. Get the ad-free classroom version.

• Building listening skills is important and screen-free is a great way to do this. Jerry says that teachers tell him they like to play episodes after they return from lunch or recess, or as the class shifts to the next subject.
• Question breaks. In the podcast, they run mini quizzes every three or four minutes. You can pause there and have students answer out loud. This builds listening, comprehension and brings teachable moments to the forefront as students ask questions. I love to encourage students to ask “good questions” (and every question is a good question except the one that was just answered – because if you repeat the one that was answered, you guessed it, you weren’t listening!)
• Co-listening is a great activity. Common Sense Media recommends this podcast as a great one for co-listening.
• Giving feedback. When a human makes a podcast, then you can offer feedback. If a bot creates a podcast, who fixes it? Right. But if a human makes one and you disagree or have another point, you can reach out and contact them. Even this point encourages students to understand the difference between bot-created and human-created content. There is a place and need for both, but humans have values and you can learn what to expect from them.

Pick one 15-minute episode (I’ve given you five great choices below to select from) and play it Monday as students come back from lunch. Don’t introduce it, don’t assign anything — just press play. When the show asks its multiple-choice question (it will, every three or four minutes), pause and have students hold up one, two, or three fingers for A, B, or C before you play the answer. Search back episodes to find one that is about current topics in your classroom.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Who Smarted?+ free subscription for educators — The one to do first. Classroom educators get the ad-free version of the show free. Go to whosmarted.com, click Educators, and enter your school email (.edu, .k12, .org, .gov, or .schools). If your address doesn’t qualify, email WhoSmarted@WhoSmarted.com and they’ll help you sort it out.
• Who Smarted? — The main show. Short episodes on history, the human body, space, and whatever else kids are asking about, hosted by the Trusty Narrator.
• The Who Smarted? episode archive — Browse the back catalog by topic and find something that matches what you’re teaching this week.
• Who Smarted? on Apple Podcasts — Or search “Who Smarted?” in any podcast app. No subscription and no special app required.
• Atomic Entertainment — Jerry’s company, and home of Mysteries About True Histories (M.A.T.H.), the scripted series where two kids solve mysteries in their hometown using math, logic, and history. Worth a look if you teach math or social studies.
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press, 2024) — The book Jerry references on screen time, anxiety, and depression in kids.

Clinicians at the Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center, a nonprofit that runs more than 2,000 screenings a year, now identify communication delays in about 38% of the preschoolers they screen — nearly double the pre-pandemic rate of 20–22%. Staff point to missed face-to-face interaction during the pandemic years, more screen time, and fewer chances for back-and-forth conversation. This is one organization’s regional screening data, not a national study — but it matches what a lot of teachers are describing. WCNC Charlotte, August 2026

About Jerry Kolber

Jerry is the creator of educational TV shows including Brain Games (Nat Geo) and Brainchild (Netflix). He and his company focus on making learning fun and accessible for everyone. His podcasts Who Smarted? and Mysteries About True Histories are used by families, teachers, and homeschoolers around the world to get kids engaged and excited about math, history, science, and more.

Connect with Jerry: AtomicEntertainment.com | LinkedIn | Facebook

Before you put any content in front of students, ask who you would email if it were wrong. If there’s a name on the other end, you have a correction path. If there isn’t, you’re the only quality check in the room — and you should read or listen all the way through before you press play. That test works on podcasts, on AI-generated worksheets, and on whatever comes next.

Kids Podcast and Listening Resources for Teachers and Administrators

As always, follow your district’s policy on what you play in class.

STEP 1: Get the Ad-Free Classroom Version First

Do this before you play anything for students. The public feed is free but ad-supported, and the ads are not aimed at children (more on that in the safety notes below). The educator version removes them.

• Go to whosmarted.com/educator
• Enter your school email — .edu, .k12, .org, .gov, or .schools addresses qualify
• You get a promo code back within seconds for Who Smarted?+, which is the ad-free tier plus bonus episodes, at no charge
• If your school email doesn’t end in one of those, email WhoSmarted@WhoSmarted.com and ask — they say they’ll try to sort it out for working educators

STEP 2: Pick Your First Five Episodes

There is no published “most popular” list, so I built this from what Jerry actually named on the show — food and human-body episodes are the runaway favorites — plus one the show itself labels its most requested. Every link opens the full episode with a transcript on the page, which is useful if you have readers who need to follow along.

• Where was the first School? — Start here in August. Compulsory education, one-room schoolhouses, a boat school in Bangladesh, a kindergarten in Germany shaped like a giant cat. Perfect for the first week when you’re building routines anyway.
• How are Pickles made? — The food category Jerry says always wins. Fermentation, food preservation before refrigeration, and a real pickling recipe kids can do at home with an adult.
• What causes a Geyser? — Earth science with pressure, steam, and tectonic plates, wrapped around a true story about 1877 tourists washing their laundry in Old Faithful.
• What events were in the very first Olympics? — Ancient Greece, the city-state truce, and where the Olympic rings actually come from. Good social studies tie-in.
• Why is Roblox our most requested episode? — The show’s own title tells you how often kids asked for this one. Hand it to the student who says podcasts are boring.

Browse the rest at the full episode archive. That back-catalog point is the one I’d underline from this episode — with a library this size, there is almost certainly something that lines up with your current unit.

STEP 3: Build the Listening Routine

An episode playing is not the same thing as students listening. Here are some tips to encourage listening skills:

• Use it at a transition, not as a lesson. Coming back from lunch or recess, or the shift from one subject to the next. You are replacing noise, not adding a block.
• Stop at the question breaks. The show asks a multiple-choice or true/false question every three or four minutes. Pause it. Make students answer out loud or show fingers for A, B, or C before you press play. That is the whole intervention.
• Let them hear it more than once. Replaying an episode later in the week costs you nothing and might be something to do for your more popular episodes or if a lot of students didn’t catch something.

Tool Safety Notes

Here’s what you’ll want to know about this podcast from resources you trust.

• Common Sense Media rates Who Smarted? age 6 and up and gave it a Common Sense Selection award. Their reviewer flags exactly one content item: mild potty humor. Violence, language, sexual content, and consumerism are all marked not present. They also call it “co-listening at its best,” which is the same thing Jerry says he designed for. Read the full review.
• ⚠️ The free public feed carries advertising, and it is not kid-targeted. In several current episodes, the ad breaks included a children’s debit card and money app, a language-learning subscription, a website builder, a tutoring subscription, and a personal-finance podcast about couples arguing over money. None of that is inappropriate, exactly — but it is adult marketing, some of it financial, playing to a room of eight-year-olds who cannot opt out. This is the practical reason to get the educator version before you play anything in class.
• Episodes run about 16 minutes according to Common Sense Media’s listing, so plan for a little more than the fifteen minutes. I’m not going to criticize on that one (ahem, someone paying attention will get why I say that.) Their short “Trusty Trivia” episodes run closer to six or seven if you need a smaller block.
• No account is required for students. Kids never sign in and never enter anything. You play it; they listen. That keeps this well clear of most student-data questions.

Resources for Building Listening Skills

Listening is the one language domain we test and almost never teach directly. A few other places you can wbuild listening skills worth knowing about:

• Listenwise — Podcast and video lessons for grades 2–12 built specifically around listening comprehension, with auto-scored quizzes, interactive transcripts, and standards alignment. Strong for multilingual learners. It’s a paid platform with a free trial, and it carries ESSA Level IV evidence validation — worth knowing if you’re the person who has to justify a purchase.
• ASHA: Typical Speech and Language Development — From the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The Communication Development: Kindergarten–5th Grade page is the one to bookmark; it tells you what listening and comprehension should look like at each grade, which is what you need before you decide a student is “not paying attention.”
• Common Sense Media podcast reviews — Age ratings and content notes for hundreds of kids’ podcasts. Check here before you queue anything new for a class.

Other free kids’ podcasts worth a listen

If Who Smarted? lands with your students, Common Sense Media rates these in the same neighborhood: Brains On! (science, age 8+), But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids (age 6+), Tumble Science Podcast for Kids (age 7+), Forever Ago (history, age 5+), and NASA’s Curious Universe (age 7+). Rotate them so listening time doesn’t become one more thing that feels the same every day.

Go deeper on screens and young learners

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press, 2024) — the book Jerry names on the show.
• Why more kids are struggling to communicate — Clinicians at the Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center, a nonprofit running more than 2,000 screenings a year, now identify communication delays in about 38% of the preschoolers they screen, up from a pre-pandemic 20–22%. One organization’s regional screening data rather than a national study — but it matches what a lot of us are seeing walk through the door.

Other Shows for Elementary and Middle School Teachers

• Smart Ideas for Teacher Prep, Reading, Writing, and Screen-Free Fun — Cool Cat Teacher Talk Season 3, Episode 9. Jerry’s original conversation aired here alongside Dr. Jacob Kirksey, Malia Hollowell, and Nancy McCabe.
• Brain Friendly Reading Strategies That Actually Work — Malia Hollowell on science-based reading strategies for young learners.
• Cool Cat Teacher Talk — My radio and TV show, on YouTube and stations across the country.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If this episode gave you something you can use Monday, share it with a teacher friend who needs a better transition routine.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Click to read the full transcript

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

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How to Teach Quantum Physics to Littles (and Older Students Too)

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Quantum mechanics for littles. Yes, you heard that right. Littles. Yes. Littles. Just two weeks ago we talked about space with Mark Wagner and what we can be teaching about it. Now, we're talking quantum physics. Nneka McGee specializes in how to teach concepts relating to quantum mechanics to littles. No, she's not teaching algebra and advanced mathematics, but an understanding that is needed to move forward, yes.

This doesn't mean we stop teaching reading or writing or math. And you don't even need screens to teach this. Quite the opposite. You can use these concepts to promote conversation about future trends without a screen at all.

In today's show, Nneka will share examples of why quantum physics is important to all of us, the future of passwords, and security and some practical ideas we can use now. I'll be sharing lots of resources in these show notes so that you can bring some mini lessons to your classroom. Let's learn about quantum physics and how we can bring it into schools.

“There will be a breakthrough technology like ChatGPT or generative AI in quantum at some point. And where will we be as educators if we didn’t do what was necessary to help prepare our kids for that eventuality?”

Dr. Nneka McGee

Founder, Muon Global

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Ideas for Applying These Concepts in Your Classroom

Try This Tomorrow

Give every student a penny. Have them spin it and slap a hand over it before it lands. While it is spinning and hidden, it is not heads and it is not tails — it is both, and it is neither. That is superposition. Lift the hand and it collapses to one answer. Then ask the question that does the real teaching: what did we lose the instant we looked?

If this doesn't make sense, look at some of the lessons below to go deeper.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Muon Global — Dr. McGee's advisory firm, focused on emerging technology and access in education.
• AI for Young Learners: Balancing Tech Use with Authentic, Off-Screen Experiences — Dr. McGee's Jump Start Guide from ISTE (January 2026). This is the “AI for littles” work she describes in the show.
• AI + Learning Differences: Designing a Future with No Boundaries — the Stanford Accelerator for Learning white paper, released July 21, 2025. Dr. McGee was project lead and a principal co-author, alongside Elizabeth Kozleski, Christopher J. Lemons, and Isabelle C. Hau. Free PDF.
• Love to Learn: The Transformative Power of Care and Connection in Early Education by Isabelle C. Hau (PublicAffairs, 2025) — the book Nneka recommends for the early-childhood foundation. Isabelle is executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and a co-author on Nneka's white paper above, so that one link is doing three jobs.
• Quantum Computing for Babies by Chris Ferrie and whurley (William Hurley) — part of the Baby University board-book series. Ages 0–4, and yes, it is real.
• National Q-12 Education Partnership — this is the federal quantum education site Nneka mentions. It was launched in August 2020 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation, so it is further along than she recalls on tape. Everything on it is free.
• QuanTime — free K-12 quantum activities from Q-12, each designed to fit in a single 45–60 minute class period. Hands-on, online, and printable options. No background in quantum required.
• QISE K-12 Framework — the federal Key Concepts for Future Quantum Information Science Learners. Superposition, entanglement, and coherence — the three terms Nneka teaches — map almost exactly onto it.
• QCaMP (Quantum Computing, Mathematics and Physics) — the program Nneka calls out, co-founded in 2022 at Sandia National Laboratories by Megan Ivory and Jake Douglass. Teachers are paid a $1,000 stipend for the week. Students get $250.
• Dr. Nneka McGee on LinkedIn

Fact Check Notes

A note on two numbers from the conversation. Nneka cites brain development as “about 80% before kindergarten” and hedges it herself on tape — the figure researchers actually report is roughly 90% of adult brain volume by age five, which measures physical growth rather than learning capacity. Her underlying point stands either way. She also credits New York with “over $100 million” in quantum investment; the real commitment is $300 million to a quantum hub at Stony Brook, announced September 17, 2025, plus $60 million more for additional sites. She understated it.

And a word for my ninth grader. What she described on that presentation — attackers capturing encrypted traffic today so they can decrypt it years from now once quantum computers arrive — is a real, named threat. It's called harvest-now-decrypt-later, and NSA, CISA, and NIST all treat it as active. NIST finalized the first post-quantum cryptography standards on August 13, 2024, specifically because of it. She was right.

About Dr. Nneka McGee

Dr. Nneka J. McGee is an educator, researcher, and advocate dedicated to providing access and opportunities for learners exploring emerging technologies. As part of her doctoral studies, she researched the experiences of K-12 teachers implementing or planning to implement artificial intelligence in classroom learning environments. Since 2024, she has presented “AI for Littles,” focused on early childhood and elementary learners, to thousands of educators, providing practical strategies to introduce AI in age-appropriate, engaging ways. Dr. McGee recently served as project lead and principal co-author of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning white paper, “AI + Learning Differences: Designing a Future with No Boundaries.” She has served on multiple AI advisory boards and committees, including National AI Literacy Day, EngageAI Institute, and Foundations, Inc. She was named a 2024 K-12 IT Influencer to Follow by EdTech Magazine and was recognized as a 2024 and 2025 ASU+GSV Woman Leading in AI. Before founding her advisory firm, Muon Global, Dr. McGee taught middle school mathematics and served as chief academic officer at a public school district in south Texas.

Connect: muonglobal.com · LinkedIn

Quantum and AI Resources for Teachers and Administrators

You do not need a physics degree to do any of this. You need a penny, a paper plate, and about fifteen minutes. Everything linked below is free. Use school-approved tools for anything that touches a device.

UNPLUGGED ACTIVITY 1: The Penny (Superposition)

Lesson plans for grades K-12 teachers

One class period. Materials: one penny per student.

Spin the penny. Cover it before it lands. While it is spinning and hidden, it is not heads and it is not tails — it is both at once. That is superposition. Uncover it and it collapses into one answer.

For littles, stop there.

For middle and high school, push on the part that matters: a classical bit is only ever a 0 or a 1. A qubit holds both possibilities until you measure it — and the measurement is what forces the choice. Ask them what information disappeared the moment they looked.

Nneka is careful about this and so am I: the penny is a representation, not a qubit. It is an access point for someone who thinks this topic is closed to them. Say that out loud to your students.

UNPLUGGED ACTIVITY 2: The Plate With No Nose (Human in the Loop)

Grades K–5, adaptable up.

One class period. Materials: paper plates, markers, one image generator on the teacher's screen only.

Ask an image generator for a smiley face on a plate. Show the class what comes back. When it gets something wrong — a missing nose, three eyes, a mouth in the wrong place — that is your lesson, not your failure.

Then hand out the plates. Every student draws the correct one. The takeaway lands by itself: the tool is useful, the tool is wrong sometimes, and a person has to check it.

What she did: Nneka built this out of an actual mistake she made while preparing a session. She kept the mistake and built the lesson around it. That is worth modeling for your students too.

TERMS TO KNOW

The terms in the show also line up with the QISE K-12 Framework.

• Superposition — a qubit holds more than one state at the same time until it is measured. The spinning penny.
• Entanglement — two qubits become linked, so measuring one tells you about the other no matter how far apart they are. Two coins that always agree.
• Coherence — how long a qubit can hold its quantum state before the environment knocks it out. The reason quantum computers are hard to build, in one word.
• Qubit — the quantum version of a bit. A bit is a 0 or a 1. A qubit is both until you look.
• Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) — new encryption designed to survive quantum computers. NIST finalized the first standards in August 2024.
• Harvest-now-decrypt-later — capturing encrypted data today to crack it years from now. The thing my ninth grader figured out.

For AI vocabulary, here is my full AI Vocab list, and my Spy the AI game for practicing vocabulary.

MORE Free Resources on Quantum for K-12

Ready to teach tomorrow

• QuanTime activities — free, 45–60 minutes each, built for one class period. Hands-on, online, and printable versions. No teacher expertise required.
• Q-12 Teaching and Learning Resources — the full free library.

Go deeper

• QISE K-12 Framework — what students should actually understand, by grade band.
• AI + Learning Differences (Stanford, 2025) — twelve recommendations, co-designed with people who have learning differences.

For your summer, and paid

• QCaMP — three-day teacher camp, $1,000 stipend, travel funds available if you are more than 50 miles out. Nneka is right that this matters: it means you do not have to choose between a summer job and learning this.

Other Shows for K-12 Teachers Teaching STEM and AI

• Cool Cat Teacher Talk, Season 6 Episode 3 — Dr. McGee's full conversation aired as part of this hour-long show.
• Episode 966: Vibe Coding with Gemini for Teachers with Alice Keeler — building your own classroom AI tools and keeping student data in your own Drive.
• Episode 954: How to Teach About Space in the Classroom with Mark Wagner — the space episode I mention at the top of this post.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If a teacher in your building has ever said quantum is over their head, send them this one — it takes a penny to prove otherwise.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis: How to Teach Quantum Physics to Littles and Older Students, too, with Dr. Nneka McGee. You can grab a single penny and teach superposition.

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today, we're talking with Dr. Nneka McGee, founder of Muon Global and one of the most fascinating voices in both AI education and quantum computing for kids. She led a Stanford white paper on AI and learning differences, wrote an ISTE guide for AI for littles, and her FETC session on Quantum 101 for educators blew my mind. So I had to get her on the show. Whether you're teaching kindergarten or high school, you're going to want to hear what Nneka has to say about preparing students for an AI and a quantum world.

So, Nneka, thanks for agreeing after our session to come on the show today.

Nneka McGee: Thank you for having me, Vicki. I'm excited to be here and excited to talk emerging technologies such as quantum and AI today.

Vicki Davis: So let me just ask you this. Some people would say… AI, quantum computing, like, okay, help me understand. Are they related? Are they not related? Why are you going from one to the other? Talk about it.

Nneka McGee: We've all heard at this point of artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence related systems. And I want to focus squarely on education. That's my world. The technical part is another show. It's focused on how we can help kids learn and grow about the technologies that will impact them in society. For me, the primary connection for artificial intelligence and now quantum computing are that these are technologies that will impact our students who are going through pre-K through 12 systems and even college.

And it is important to prepare our students because, for example, I'm an educator. Chances of me going into another career at this stage in my life is minimal. But for a student, a young student who is interested in the world, their pathways are limitless. And so we have to give them the tools that are necessary. And I believe that gaining an understanding in the foundational principles of first artificial intelligence and now quantum computing will help.

Vicki Davis: I don't think anybody would debate you on the importance of AI, at least not now, maybe three or four years ago. But quantum computing, give us an overview of what will quantum computing mean to our world. Getting into the details might be a bit, but why is quantum computing important?

Nneka McGee: When we think about quantum computing and then we think about classical computing, I want to make a distinction here. Quantum computing will not replace classical computing. Right. Quantum computing, at its heart, is designed to solve problems that are different and novel. And I'm going to give you a very specific example of quantum computing and what can happen. There is an encryption technology that we use that governs the Internet, governs all of these things that help us run banking technologies.

Because they use prime numbers and semi-primes and it's really technical, it takes classical computing millions of years. A quantum computer would be able to crack this encryption in a very short amount of time. Can you imagine what that would mean for every sector of our society to have this type of computing power? It's not there yet, but I can tell you that many companies, they're trying to get ahead. Of this eventuality that's going to happen once quantum computers have this capacity.

So that's just a stark example of something that can shake every aspect of our security in digital spaces and that they're working on it now. They're not waiting until it comes online. They're doing it now. That's a stark example of why it's important.

Vicki Davis: We're looking at basically none of our passwords really being truly secure.

Nneka McGee: Not only passwords, the mechanisms behind what makes passwords work in every aspect. Once you can crack those large prime numbers in the semi-primes that brought those prime numbers together, it's kind of like with the pennies in the activity we described. It's not exact, but it'll tell you basically at its heart. What happens is that it really takes computers a long time to factor. These are huge, huge, huge numbers. And so that's why it's difficult for a classical computer to factor these numbers.

Vicki Davis: So I'm going to check out something one of my ninth graders said. It just presented on quantum computing in my class. And all the things you taught me just helped me really help her, you know, get further along because it is a complex topic. The S in HTTPS, that secure piece, will be able to be cracked. And so all these people who are using something called packet sniffers today, so they're grabbing all these packets of data off the Internet.

And just putting it somewhere. People who are joining all this free Wi-Fi, like say you go to Starbucks and you join the free Wi-Fi, and yeah, you've got your encryption and you're using all the latest stuff and you've got your current operating system, but somebody's just grabbing that encrypted stuff out of the air. She said that basically when quantum computing comes along, it could be even possible to decrypt things that they captured back here in our current time.

Nneka McGee: She's correct in the sense that, yes, we will get to a point, particularly with quantum computing. And I don't know a better way to put it other than the security of the Internet and our digital world will be crackable at every level. It just will be. And there will be a point once quantum computers get to, you know, a state in which they can crack those codes where it'll be useless.

Vicki Davis: So we were talking before the show and you said working with teaching AI to kids and teachers for eight or nine years. And there are some similarities with eight or nine years ago in AI and where quantum is today in terms of interest. How do you kind of compare the two and where people are in terms of what they're ready to learn about?

Nneka McGee: Right. Well, even before, so, you know, before ChatGPT came online, and it's so interesting because in June of 22, I was part of an ISTE panel, about artificial intelligence and its future implications. And we were in a large room and there were a lot of people there, but there were still some empty seats and we always talk about, we said the nerds before the herds. We're thinking we're part of this amazing kind of emerging technology and we didn't know anything.

You think you know something and you don't know anything. For example, when I tell people. That the federal government has a whole website dedicated to educators for K-12 education dealing with quantum. People are like, really? So you're seeing that things are happening, but the awareness level needs to grow. So we need to get more people on board with understanding that this is emerging technology that people are working on and we need our kids to be prepared.

People can say what they want to say, but when you hear the word quantum physics, yeah, people are like, that's not a place I want to go again. You see the government investing funds. You see states, New York, invested over $100 million in quantum technologies. Places like Colorado states are starting to invest heavily in quantum technologies and preparing at the college level for people to enter the workforce or build careers in quantum and quantum-related technologies.

And you can do a lot at the college level, but if you haven't prepared kids, how are they going to succeed? Yeah. I mean, because if they don't have strong grounding in mathematics and physics, some understanding of those topics, where are we? How are we sending them to our colleges to prepare for these hundreds of millions of dollars that are being invested? And there will be a breakthrough technology similar to mark this, tag it, do whatever you need to do.

There will be a breakthrough technology like ChatGPT or generative. AI in quantum at some point. And where will we be as educators if we didn't do what was necessary to help prepare our kids for that eventuality?

Vicki Davis: So you're talking quantum, Nneka, but you also talk AI for littles. Now, some people would say, hey, okay, quantum, no, and AI for littles, like, why? So what do you do with littles? Because typically littles is like kindergarten, right?

Nneka McGee: Yeah, even not. So when we think about, you know, early education, you're thinking as early as three years old. A great book I would recommend that kind of gets into the heart of it is this book by Isabelle Hau.

Vicki Davis: I've had her on the show. She's amazing.

Nneka McGee: She is amazing. and one of the things that she talks about is how when we look at brain development in our kids, I want to say it's like 80% occurs before kindergarten, yet we talk about kindergarten readiness, right? And so it doesn't mean that we're teaching linear algebra to young kids, but the key is what that tells us about brain science and what Isabelle is talking about in Love to Learn in terms of even with artificial intelligence and relational intelligence is this is a great time through concrete activities, hands-on activities, to give kids understanding and foundational skills with topics where technology and interacting with the technology may not be appropriate or necessary.

I've stressed with AI for littles and what I did was gather together different types of hands-on activities that teachers could use with the youngest learners. And one of them, the one that I use the most. It was a mistake. It was early DALL-E, which is the visual. Basically, they married ChatGPT and DALL-E together, but it used to be separate. Right. So I just wanted to show a plate, like how easy it was to enter a prompt, make smiley face on a plate.

So I enter in these instructions and the image that comes back is a plate without a nose. And I said, this is the most I have built a whole lessons. So I do this lesson and basically I say, hey, you can do all of these things. Any kid with a marker, doesn't matter how long, how big the marker is, they can draw on a paper plate. And then you show this image to say, hey, even though artificial intelligence is great, you still need a human in a loop.

Not only does it make mistakes, but you need somebody to make sure your instructions don't cause someone not to have a nose, right? I built those series of hands-on lessons. I did the same thing and then started to do the same thing with quantum computing and understanding of quantum principles. And I start with the basic superposition, entanglement, and also with coherence. When it came to hands-on activities, those were three terms that people would connect with and that I could use very simple materials.

Vicki Davis: And you use a penny. I had a student, the one who did the presentation, was struggling with what's a qubit? How does it even work? And I pulled out Penny and did what you taught me, Nneka. And she was like, oh, I understand. And she even used that in front of the class to explain a little bit about how it works. No computer. Here's a penny. Let's explain these terms. These are things that kids can understand. And I know it shocks people.

How young have you taught lessons on quantum?

Nneka McGee: Thank you for sharing the story of your student, because a lot of times people say, well, do people take things back from conferences? It's so exciting to know that you took something back to a conference and it led your student to gain an extra understanding to a point where, what does she do? Have a conversation through a presentation about the impact of what quantum computing will mean for the future. We've worked with kids, when I say four or five, five-year-olds, the same lessons that we go over, we have done with kids.

These are not just pull them out of the air and then present them. There are things that I've actually done with kids, and that's so important. And there are certain things that I stress, and I think that I stress to you. First of all, even with the penny, It is rudimentary. It is a representation that can allow an access point to an individual who may think that quantum mechanics and quantum computing is inaccessible. And that's the bridge that's going to be very hard.

My life as an educator to ensuring that students have access and opportunity to math and science is like the core of what I do. That is why it's important to present accessible activities. There's a quantum physicist who. And I shout her name, Dr. Megan Ivory. I don't know if she had co-developers, but she is one of the main point persons for QCaMP. These QCaMPs, not only do they help students, but they help educators. And they pay educators to spend time to learn about these novel topics so that they can go into their classrooms and support kids.

Recently in New Mexico, they had an event where they created activities even for younger kids to be able to explore. So you have this ecosystem, infrastructure and education that is being developed in whatever I do to get more people to embrace that this is coming in ways that are accessible, entry points that are digestible. That is my task.

Vicki Davis: What is the most surprising thing that kindergarten and first, second grade teachers find as they go to your workshops or sessions for either quantum computing or AI?

Nneka McGee: Well, the first thing that surprises them is that they can introduce these topics in a way that is accessible.

Vicki Davis: That is so exciting. We shouldn't be playing king of the hill. We should make a bigger hill, especially when it concerns the future of children. Dr. Nneka McGee will put everything in the show notes, much that we could talk about, but her resources just for teaching lessons, you know, these are the kind of conversations we need to be having. You can teach quantum computing and teach AI. And yes, you can even teach them to little.

So thank you for the work that you're doing and the conversations you're having and for agreeing to come on the show. So this is really exciting. Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter.

Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post How to Teach Quantum Physics to Littles (and Older Students Too) appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

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Vibe Coding with Gemini: Build Your Own Classroom Tools

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Alice Keeler created the Educator AI Assistant, a Google Sheets add-on that does not collect any data in just two days. In today's show, Alice Keeler talks about how she vibe codes with Gemini to create extensions and tools for teachers and the classroom. Vibe coding is “all the rage,” and everyone is talking about it. But how do you do it? If you're interested in vibe coding, you'll want to listen to the thoughts Alice shares relating to the big-picture issues.

I recently had Donnie Piercey on the show talking about how he vibe codes for his fifth-grade classroom. However, this show is different. It specifically relates to Gemini, surfaces privacy issues we should be concerned about, and casts a vision for what school IT departments are becoming (or might need to become).

I do have to share that this was recorded in the middle of last year; however, I've included the timeless elements in our conversation. The principles of AI that relate to what we do to protect privacy and to help our schools succeed are constant. Some of the tools have changed, and they will continue to change. We mentioned how some of the tools from the “Web 2 days” that we used daily and discussed constantly don't exist anymore. That will happen again. But teaching is just as important as ever, and with vibe coding we have a superpower if we dig in.

If you're vibe coding in your classroom, I hope you'll share with me what you're doing by contacting me. I'd like to hear your story!

I want my toolbox to small. I don't want to sign up fro 10,000 different products.

Alice Keeler, Google Developer Expert for Google Workspace

Table of Contents for These Show Notes

Table of contents

• Table of Contents for These Show Notes
• Listen to the Show
• Key Takeaways from This Show
  • Resources Mentioned on the Show
• Beginners: Start By Making a GEM
  • Description Field
  • Instructions Field:
• Learn More About Gemini and Vibe Coding
• Transcript of this Show

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Key Takeaways from This Show

Here are some of the things we talked about on today's show:

• How expertise matters, but not quite as much as you might think, when it comes to vibe coding.
• Alice's concerns about the rapid emergence of new tools built by AI and if they are actually protecting student data.
• The benefits of vibe coding extensions for your own Google Drive and how it can protect data. Notes about how you need to work with your IT department and some features that may not be available to classroom teachers.
• What “citizen programming” is and how vibe coding fits into that approach that has been discussed for years. Also, how it impacts the IT Department of your school.
• The benefits of moving from off-the-shelf solutions to those your district creates for itself and an example of a district who built their own system.
• What we learned from Web 2.0 days that applies to AI days today.
• The importance of using tools that are maintained by the developer and examples of development tasks that are done when you create an extension or add-on.

Resources Mentioned on the Show

• Educator AI Assistant — the Google Sheets add-on she built in two days. Collects no data. Still in beta.

• TemplateTab — the add-on she references, 26M+ installs

• All of Alice's add-onsAlice's add-ons in the Google Workspace Marketplace

• Teacher Tech with Alice Keeler — her blog
• Alice Keeler on LinkedIn
• Alice's books on Amazon
• Free Teacher Tech newsletter
• Vibe Coding for Teachers: No Coding Skills Needed — Donnie Piercey, e940

About Alice Keeler

Alice Keeler is a Google Developer Expert and educator specializing in Google Apps Script, automation, and custom EdTech solutions. As the creator of 37 Google-approved Add-ons, she develops powerful tools that streamline workflows for educators and organizations.

Alice was a featured speaker at the Google Cloud NEXT 2023 Developer Keynote, showcasing her contributions to the developer community. A Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and AppSheet, she is widely recognized for her deep knowledge of Google Sheets and automation, earning her the title Queen of Spreadsheets.

With degrees in Mathematics and Educational Media Design and Technology, Alice combines her technical expertise with a passion for making Google technologies more accessible. She actively shares her knowledge through speaking engagements, development projects, and global training sessions, empowering others to harness the full potential of Google tools.

Teacher Tech blog  ·  Educator AI Assistant  ·  LinkedIn

Beginners: Start By Making a GEM

Classroom teachers, IT Coaches, and curriculum directors

A GEM is a special custom AI prompt that is pre-programmed for a specific purpose. Read Alice's information on Gems in “What are Google Gemini Gems

Before you start making one, try a Gem like one of those found at on Alice's shared GEM site or Edugems, made by Eric Curts.

Make a Gem to Align to Your Standards.

1. Sign in to your school account and go to your Gem Manager.

2. Find an online PDF of the standards you're using for your class this year and attach it to the gem you're making. Attach only your grade or course section. It will work better if it is a narrow file and not a huge file with hundreds of pages (which may not even upload to Gemini).

3. Use the following prompt and make sure you attach the PDF standards to the gem. Edit the prompt so that it is asking what you want it to help you do. (In Alice's article on GEMS, Alice gives the acronym PARTS (Persona * Act (Task) * Recipient * Theme * Structure)

TIP: Pick a better model like Thinking or Pro and not fast as you start with it. You can also feed in sample lesson plan templates that you like and other lessons you've created that are examples of best practices.

TIP: use a file name like best-practices-template.pdf and standardsname-grade.pdf.

Then set up the GEM with this as a starting point. Edit the instructions to fit your situation and needs.

Description Field

Attach or paste your lesson plan. Name the standards you are teaching in this lesson, by code.

Instructions Field:

You are a standards integration analyst. You examine a teacher's lesson plan
against the standards document attached to this Gem and report where those
standards are actually taught, where they are only mentioned, and what would
strengthen the match.

Use only the attached standards document as your source of standards. Do not
generate standard codes. Do not quote standard language that is not in the
attached document. Do not substitute a standard from memory or from another
state's framework. When the teacher names a code, find it in the attached
document and quote it verbatim before analyzing it. If a named code is not in the
attached document, say so and stop rather than guessing.

For the lesson plan provided, do the following in order.

1. Confirm the standards. List each standard the teacher named, with its code and
its verbatim text from the attached document, so the teacher can check the match.

2. Build a coverage table with one row per named standard. Columns: the standard
code, the specific activity or step where it appears, and a rating of Taught,
Mentioned, or Absent. Taught means students do something that requires the
standard. Mentioned means the standard is named but no student work depends on it.

3. Check the verbs. For each standard, name the cognitive verb the standard
requires and the verb the lesson actually asks students to perform. Flag every
mismatch and state the direction — the task sits below the standard, or above it.

4. Name the evidence gap. For each standard, state what a teacher would look at to
know a student met it. If the lesson produces no such evidence, say so plainly.

5. Search the attached standards document for standards the teacher did not name
that this lesson already does substantial work toward. List up to three, each with
its code and verbatim text, and name the activity that supports it. Mark this
section clearly as suggestions to verify, not claims of alignment.

6. Give three integration moves, ordered by effort:
   - One change that can be made tonight in under ten minutes using what is
     already in the plan.
   - One change for the next time this lesson is taught.
   - One larger redesign worth considering when the unit is rebuilt.
   For each, name which standard it strengthens.

7. Suggest one way to raise the rigor without adding class time, tied to a
standard already in the plan.

8. List anything in the lesson that is not serving a named standard. Do not
recommend cutting it — some of it is classroom culture. Report it so the teacher
can decide.

Report in plain language a teacher can skim. Do not rewrite the lesson plan.

Then, remember, to test your gem. Part of customizing tools using AI is that we ideate, prototype (what you made above), and test. When you test and find mistakes, then you can revise the instructions and try again. Send the link to someone to test.

This is an example of a GEM I'm testing to help parents configure student devices at home. You can see I selected the thinking model for this gem. Several administrators are testing this before we would even consider giving it to parents. I've attached some safety information relating to the school in the “knowledge” section which is where you would put your standards from the example above.

Learn More About Gemini and Vibe Coding

A GEM is just a start, you can go so much further with vibe coding than this. Recently, I described when I vibe-coded my AI terminology game for ISTE. (Here's how I did that one and here's the game.) If you want to do something like this, look at Alice's tips for vibe coding with Antigravity for Google.

• Google Gemini for Teachers Quick Start Guide – August 1, 2026 Alice posted this which also includes 10 prompts to get you started.
• Getting Started with Vibe Coding Using Antigravity – Alice is now taking us further. First, she talks about enabling canvas to let you create an app for your classroom that does something like this Gem that she made. Then, if you want to go to a higher level, Antigravity is what Alice is using now. Antigravity is not where you start and it does require you install it on your computer and it will not work on a chromebook. She goes through every step.

Make AI-friendly handouts. I taught my students to vibe code games to reinforce what we were learning in class. This means that for almost all content, I produce a PDF and put it into Google Classroom so they can access the material to make their games. Good data helps the AI you're programming to focus and produce better results. Students are making their own review games in all kinds of AI tools, but most will not take the time to get good information on what they should be studying. I think of these PDFs as handouts for the AI tools my students are using!

Transcript of this Show

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis: Today on Tech Tool Tuesday, we're talking about vibe coding for Gemini for teachers with Alice Keeler. Remember, go to the webpage for this episode for a lot of amazing resources at coolcatteacher.com forward slash E966.

Announcer: This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: I am so excited today to be talking with my friend Alice Keeler. She is the queen of spreadsheets and yes, Google gave her that name and she has her cat on camera. For those of you who are watching YouTube, well, I am the cool cat teacher, so there you go. She is a mom of five, author of eight books. She blogs at alicekeeler.com. She has an AI teacher toolbox that you definitely want to check out at educatoraiassistant.com. It not only creates lesson plans rubrics, but it collects no data. All of her data collection-free add-ons are at alicekeeler.com. Forward slash codedbyalice. You sent me a text the other day that said, how many? 37. 37 add-ons.

Alice Keeler: And it just feels like so many, I can't keep track. I'm like, is it really that many?

Vicki Davis: Yeah. And you start as a math teacher.

Alice Keeler: I taught myself to code. And now with Vibe Coding, I'm killing it with the Vibe Coding. So Vibe Coding would be that when you use AI to code. So I go to Google Gemini and I'm like, this is what I want. I code Google Workspace, right? So Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides. I know how to code. So my prompts are pretty good. This is what I want the add-on to do. Honestly, Vicki, the other day, it was really disappointing because it worked the first time. No edits. I'm like, how boring is that? But it also is like, how quickly can I get out new features and improve the functionality and things that I kind of know about, but I don't know? I can actually incorporate those things really quickly into my add-ons and into my code. So Vibe Coding is coding with AI. So it took me two days to create this AI teacher toolkit. So what I wanted to do is to have something that collects no data. I feel very squishy about all of these products that have seemed to have popped up over the last year. There's some rumors about some companies just signing whatever the schools give them. But are they? I mean, it's easy to sign something, but what are they really doing with your data? So I want my toolbox to be small. I don't want to sign up for 10,000 different products. So what can I do with Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, stay in the Google ecosystem if you're a Google user? This is the ecosystem you're in. It's in your own Google Drive. You should, like, keep your data with yourself. So what I coded was the ability to, it's an add-on for Google Sheets, that will allow you to create lesson plans, rubrics, respond to an angry parent, lesson plan simulator that turns your lesson plan into a D&D adventure. Honestly, anything you want, like, literally anything you want. IEP writer, Dungeons & Dragons, any of those things and more because I have a feature that allows you to describe what you want, what tool you want, and it will create the prompt for you and add it into your toolbox. In my particular case, everything is sitting in your Google Drive, in your Sheets. So, I mean, like if it's in your Google Drive, we have a lot of PII in our student drive, right? Like all the student work, rosters, everything, Google Classroom has that PII.

Vicki Davis: Now that vibe coding exists and people can write their own extensions, There are bad actors that can write extensions that can take information. So how do we determine which extensions we really want to trust? And do we just write them ourselves?

Alice Keeler: I think you should write them ourselves. I mean, it took me two days to write this teacher AI toolkit. Now, granted, I have a lot of background knowledge and things that helped me to do this. I don't know that your average person with no knowledge could just pull this off tomorrow. But that's what's really exciting is that school districts can look at these tools and be like, we want that, but we want the privacy. They can literally have somebody with honestly very mediocre skills in coding, put one together, distribute it out to the whole school district, and you know it's safe because you made it internally and you published it. And it's so easy to publish internally. Now, you have to have permissions. Like, probably as a teacher, you don't have the ability to make a cloud project at your school. So you're going to want to work with your IT department, Either get them to do it because it's insanely easy to do that. We're in a really exciting time of more security because it's really doable. If these companies can pop up overnight, why can't your school district make that themselves and then share it with other school districts? Like, it feels to me like the democratization of EdTech right now. I'm really excited about it.

Vicki Davis: Programming we've been talking about for years. The rise of citizen programming, which is basically vibe coding, means that by describing an app or a tool that you can create it adds another layer of what IT departments will do, which is the approval of apps, programs, websites, all of these things to deploy them. Because if you can do that, you can have more safety and more security. But, you know, there are some IT departments who say, hey, we're not programmers, we're computer fixers. Right. That's got to change.

Alice Keeler: I think that's true for every job. It's not just the IT department. What does the job of teachers look like moving forward now that we have this democratization of ed tech and all of the things? So I would hope that the IT department is always moving forward because technology moves fast. So what we were doing in the IT department 10 years ago, 15 years ago, was obviously not the same today, right? How many of them were writing AI policies 10 years ago? None of them. And I hope they all are now. So let's just assume that's happening. But getting them on board with the citizen coding, with the vibe coding, is that you have people from your community, your school district, contributing to solve your really unique problems. Yeah. And anything you buy is pretty much off the shelf, right? It addresses your problems, but does it really solve what you need it to do? Now, I'm just doing it with Google Workspace, but of course, you can vibe code in anything. You can vibe code Python and different things for whatever your applications are. What could we do if we were to vibe code and create these tools that we know that they're safe because we made them ourselves and worked on them internally? Some of it's going to be too much. I don't know that I'm going to recreate PowerSchool anytime soon, as much as I need. But there's a lot of things that we can look at. And like, that's a cool feature. Could we build it internally? Could we band together with some other schools? I know like Fresno Unified and their Microsoft school. They're awesome. They do make their own power school. And so they do it all internally. It's gamified. And so it does happen. And it is possible. But Fresno Unified is the third largest school district, I think, in the state of California. So they have a lot of resources. But better yet, if we were to just, you know, make a conglomerate that we work together.

Vicki Davis: One thing at ISTE that perplexed me, I guess, a little bit is I'm a big one for using like the actual direct model. Like if I'm going to be using Gemini, I'm going to go straight to Gemini and use it. If I'm going to be using Claude, so many of these tools built on top of models, A, they don't tell you which model they're using. B, they don't tell you how they're using the data. And you're not transparent to like, where is this data going and who's using it? And then you've got the issue of, listen, you and I have known each other a long time and we lived through the web 2 era. So many apps that we talked about daily in the Web 2 era, including one of them was Wikispaces, bought by TES and then went away. Daily tools, big players, thinking they're going to be here forever. Right. And then they went away.

Alice Keeler: Right.

Vicki Davis: And that's going to happen again. And as OpenAI or Gemini or whoever updates these app models, it'll break. And then we start from scratch.

Alice Keeler: When I, when I connected up, I put in my code, a link that says model name and I click model name. So it's really easy for me to update which model. So, and so all I literally have to do is swap out, not even a line of code is just a text string have to be actively supporting, but I hope that you're using tools that are being actively supported anyway. So for example, my add-on template tab, I have 30 something million installs on that. [Editor's note: the Google Workspace Marketplace listing for TemplateTab shows 26M+ installs.] So what that does is it takes your roster of students on the first sheet, and then you design your graphic organizer on the second sheet in Google Sheets, and then it'll replicate your graphic organizer for each student on your roster and put their name on the tab at the bottom. So at some point, Google had changed the way that they handled folders and moving files and some of those things. And so they are deprecated. So I go in and I look at my code and some things are like lined out because they're not supported anymore. So in that case, I did have to update my code, but not because of AI per se, but just because that's how software works.

Vicki Davis: Your point is really valid. Like this is helping me understand is that the value of, is this being actively maintained and updated so that you can have access to the new models? So Alice Keeler at alicekeeler.com, what she's great at is helping people become massively efficient with Google Workspace. So if your school is Google Workspace, you should reach out to Alice. She can help you just be a game changer. We're not going to get more people, so we got to get more efficient. We got to streamline admin so that we can free up resources to have more people in the classroom. So thanks for coming on the show, Alice.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you.  Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Vibe Coding with Gemini: Build Your Own Classroom Tools appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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