Three Fun Labs.Google Experiments You'll Want to Use This Summer Break!

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher, technology, and instructional coach for my district.

And I'm her producer and husband, Fuzz Martin, and podcasting always puts me in a good mood.

Oh man, that's like not even

You never notice, uh Good and mood are spelled the same, but they don't rhyme.

Well, it's the last episode of season six, and clearly we've gone downhill.

We're talking about food mood today.

Oh, that's where you were going with that. I thought you were trying to, like, Google something, like, Google. No,

no, no. Food mood rhymes, but good mood does not. Food mood rhymes.

This is true. Yeah. But they're, they're, and

they're just one letter off. Uh,

wow. Okay. So we're at, it'll take,

it'll take a little bit, but, uh, we're here at the end of the year and, uh, and I'm out of puns. So thankfully we snuck on through to the end of season six.

And you have all summer to put them together.

Yep. Hooray. Gonna work on my puns over the summer, folks.

So anywho. It is episode 187, which is the end of. Season six.

Yes. Oh, I'm sorry.

I was like, we even prepped with the button this time, folks.

I love, I love the eyeballs like daggered to the sound effects machine. Let's try that again. Go ahead, do it. Do it. Do it.

All right. And it's the last episode of season six. There we go. Oh my. So if you can't tell, I'm already on summer break. Yes. I've had a week. It's not really been a week of relaxation by any means. I've been back to work three of the four days that I have had off. But really.

Because our other, our youngest child

is still

in school, so you're like, oh, I can get all this stuff done while she's still in school.

So everyone's like, oh, you started summer break? I'm like, well, I've actually been to school three times. Yeah, that's okay. So that's fine. I mean I'm getting things done.

You're still under contract till the end of June, right?

Well, I guess kinda. I don't know how that works.

I don't know how it works either.

Eh, paperwork.

Summer break.

So anyway, so we're talking, we're preparing for summer break today, but I decided this year, I've done many episodes in the past where it's suggestions for teachers or help for summer school or Additional support. So like episodes, we can go back in, um, like episode 60 and 93 and 94 and 123 and 155, I went back and checked, I've done a lot of episodes where it's support for students. So parents can work over the summer or kids can help, um, you know, to make sure that there's no like summer slide kind of stuff. But this year I decided why not make my last episode of the season instead of be summer practice focused. It's going to be summer teacher fun focused, because that is where we need to be. And there's more button pushing. So today we're going back to a website of fabulousness. That I talked about briefly earlier this season, and I wanted to share all the cool things that teachers can do over the summer that will be fun for them, and, you know, if you want to introduce it to your students in the school year, you're more than welcome to, but this is more for you, educators, and your summer entertainment. So we are using labs. google,

and

we're going to use some fun AI tools that are fun for you and fun for anybody who gets to experience you playing with these tools because they are so much fun. And so we have three to highlight today because I couldn't make a decision. And then I was like, you know what? Teachers can have all the fun that they want to in the summer. So the first one is for all of you foodies out there who like to cook or. Maybe don't have time to cook during the school year? Beyond like the regular routine of meals, but you can be adventuresome. And this is where the, this today's pun that comes in. Food

mood.

So if you go to labs. google, which again is super fun website, you're going to see all this stuff going on. You're not gonna find food mood in the top, like the other things we've talked about. You have to scroll down a bit, and you keep on scrolling, and then you gotta find the little square towards the bottom. Keep on keepin on. And eventually, you will find where it says food mood. And when you find it, click on it. Ta dee! So, food mood. Once you get there, it does switch over to Google Arts and Culture. Just so you know, you'll find links that kind of come back and forth between labs at Google and Google Arts and Culture, which is totally fine. But that's where, if that throws you off, that's where you'll find it. Food mood. It's an experiment. Launch it. So food mood combines. Two cuisines,

two cuisines

into one recipe, one recipe.

This sounds like a TV show

using Google AI. Oh my gosh. This could totally be a fun thing with your friends. Invite friends over for a barbecue or invite people over for like. You know, charcuterie, you know those charcuterie boards that people are building? You could do this with Food Mood. It would be amazing. Two cuisines, one recipe. It uses AI. All of our stuff uses AI today, just so you know, on this episode. I want A, and it gives you the sentence in the beginning. You can click on starter, soup, main course, or dessert. I have tried soup and dessert so far, so we're going to go with main course. Four. How many people, how many people do we want to cook for?

Uh, let's say eight.

Okay. Cause it maxes out at 10. Just so

you know,

I just clicked on 10. You said eight. Okay. Eight people mixing influences from. And you pick two countries anywhere in the world. It gives you a list. All right,

here we go. You ready?

They're in alphabetical order. So pick something towards the top. Cause I'm an E's.

Okay. We're going to go, uh, we'll go with, uh, Albania.

Okay. That starts with an A. Oh, you're

an E. You said you're an E.

Now I'm on Albania. Albania. And,

uh, we're going to go with Argentina. We'll see

where, I'm going to twirl it and see where it ends up. I can't pronounce it. Indonesia.

Indonesia.

Ready.

Yep.

Validate. And then it says let's. And you click the little cooking button. And then, food mood. The recipe is called Eastern Treasures, Albania and Indonesia. An aromatic main course with a blend of Albanian and Indonesian flavors, perfect for a special occasion. Serves eight. Time? It'll take a hundred and five minutes to make this dish. Go It's going to tell me my ingredients. Ground lamb, onion, garlic, dried oregano, cumin, red pepper, salt, cilantro, rice, milk, broth, turmeric, ginger, and almonds. What gives me this picture, this AI generated picture, and then gives me the recipe of how to make this. Looks like meatballs with kind of a rice something. It looks actually really good. And then for a flavorful dish, use a combination of ground lamb and ground beef. If you want to add, there's like little pro tips that it gives you. And it's awesome. It's like our full recipe based on. The two cultures and cook. What I love even more is the disclaimer on the bottom of all of these. This experiment uses AI to inspire your creativity in the kitchen. Recipes have not been developed in an actual kitchen or by actual chefs. Please use your best judgment and always prioritize food safety. How cool is that?

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

One more.

Yep.

Dessert? How many people?

Uh, we'll say four.

Four people.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh, Germany?

Germany!

And Japan.

I did Germany and Ireland this morning, and that's the one that I have put into my blog. Uh, Germany and Japan. There was some sort of chocolate amazingness that was this morning. And I really actually wanted to make it. I am searching in alphabetical order, Japan, Germany and Japan. Ready?

Yep.

Let's cook. Now, do we all see how entertaining this could be in the summer? So if you have time, you want to teach family members to cook, you can, you want to have a cook off in your family. You could do that or with friends, or you could just have everybody do this virtually or in some sort of cool Google meet. And then have everybody choose their food and then you can cook it and bring it to a dinner party instead of having the usual potluck where we have mac and cheese, we have baked beans, we have crockpot chicken. You could actually all come with like a really cool dish.

Yes.

Besides the fluff pretzel strawberry thing that everybody in Wisconsin makes. Like you could make this pretty amazing. Funeral potatoes. Yes. I mean, we can't give up funeral potatoes, but anyway. All right. Zenith of sweetness. Oh, what? This looks amazing. The dessert is perfectly balanced with two distinct cultures. Dessert making prowlessness resulting in the pinnacle of sweetness. There's some sort of chocolate, whipped cream, gelatin, more sugar. More sugar, matcha powder, coconut milk, strawberries. Yes. I

think I did. I think I had a good idea.

I think you did too. So again.

Hard to scrub dessert.

Yeah, I know. And this is like, and it's not a kajillion ingredients and it takes 55 minutes from start to finish, but.

It's not long.

No. It's not long. I mean, HelloFresh has some competition, maybe. Yeah.

You know, like, uh, frozen pizza takes, you know, 25.

This is true. You can make a really fancy dessert with your frozen pizza for your friend party that you're going to have.

Yeah.

So anyway, Food Mood, check it out. Check it out. Teacher Fun this summer. I think it would be fun. We're going to do this.

Food Mood.

We're going to have some sort of dessert off.

Good mood.

Yeah.

No attitude.

Do you want to keep going?

No.

Okay. So, number two, back to labs. google.

Yes.

Scroll down, get past the fancy page, scroll down and towards the bottom, you will find what is called poem postcards. Try it now. So again, it'll pop up. It links you to Google arts and culture. That's kind of like the, the gateway to get you to these things. Um, so poem postcards. What's cool about this, by the way, you could use this in your classroom just so you all know, but this could be fun to send random emails to your co workers throughout the summer and or send random poems to friends, relatives. Whoever you want to send random digital postcards to. It gives you a piece of art and you can change them. So if you click when you get there, so poem postcards, more art, there is tons and tons and tons and tons of classical art pieces that you can pick from. It's like step one, pick a piece of art because the poem will be based on that piece of art, so that's something to kind of know, like be aware of that. So like I pick Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh. Okay. Okay. I am choosing my poem. Which you can pick. There's lots of choices, but you have haiku, free verse, sonnet, limerick. Okay. I'm going to choose a ballad because that seems. Appropriate. And I want someone who loves pencils. Oh, nice. So now he's going to write me a ballad inspired by Starry Night about someone who loves pencils.

Pencils.

Paint with pencils the starry night, the view from his window so bright, the swirling clouds and cypress trees, the moon and stars so serenely, a masterpiece born of his pain, a gift to the world of timeless refrain. And then. You click share poem and you send it to somebody so you can send it through Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, email, Tumblr, and

Tumblr,

our favorite. That's a blast

from the past too.

Google Classroom. Oh, yes. So you can link poems right into Google Classroom. So summer school kids, you can be like, poem of the day. Anyway, so you can send these fun little poem postcards and you can be, you can send them to your, again, co workers, someone who needs a brightened day. You know, everybody loves summer emails, but this would be fun ones to get. Like, you don't have to go to MorePD, you can get a cool poem postcard from somebody.

I wrote you one, Shanna.

Oh, my.

Based on Gustav Klimitz, The Kiss.

Great. What's the picture look like?

Uh, it's, uh, it's two people, uh, kissing. Oh. Great. Super. I don't think it was, I don't know if it would be super appropriate for, uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's an appropriate photo. It's like, like, here you go. See?

Oh, yeah, it's just art.

But it would make sixth graders, uh, giggle. Uh, two lovers entwined in a passionate kiss. See, that would make sixth graders giggle. Yes, it would. Uh, their bodies and souls entwined as one. Yes, still, still. The man's green skin and the woman's, uh, golden hair. By the way, uh, it was for someone who loves frogs.

Oh, okay. A perfect

match like frogs and lily pads. Oh,

it's like the princess and the frog. The setting

is lush, verdant forest. Pfft. Where the birds sing, and the flowers bloom, The air is filled with the sweet scent of love, And all is right in the world.

Cute.

With the world.

Nice.

Anyway, there you go. That's, uh, that's the kiss.

There you go. So it takes a part of the piece of the art, teaches a little bit about the art, writes you a poem, a line to something to point out to it, and boom, postcard. It'd be fun to send to somebody, I think, and you could just, Flood somebody's mailboxes with fun poems and then

send it to a politician. That would be

fun. That would be entertaining So and our third one. Send it to your

school board. I'm kidding. Don't do that.

Please don't do that

Um, send it to your principal and say hey, it was been a great year.

Like, I did PD. Yeah Please don't get me in trouble. Okay, so Our last one with labs. google.

This is my favorite. This may have been the one that I was really excited to talk about.

Okay. So it's called Say What You See. Not Say What You Mean. Okay. Anyway, not that we were singing that earlier or anything. Um, so it's called Say What You See. Again, scroll down towards the bottom. Again, it'll come through Google arts and culture. So, this tool, not only is it highly entertaining, but it's actually really beneficial.

And by this tool, you don't mean John Mayer, right?

Correct. Okay. Oh my goodness. Wow. We're just like full of jokes today. So, Say What You See helps you learn how to write prompts in this game, but for AI. Yes. So, I can't tell you, like, as a, as a tech coach or an instructional coach, I have teachers who want to start using AI, but they get really frustrated because when they're writing, AI is not producing what they actually need. So they want like a rubric written for them because rubrics are tricky and they're time consuming and they want to use some AI, like different AI tools to write a rubric. The problem is, the way they write the prompt, it doesn't give them what they need. So it's frustrating, and then it's not useful, and then you just do all the work over again.

Yep.

That's my teaching point. So, Say What You See is a game based on writing prompts for AI. So what you do is you go into the game, say what you see, there's like a little brain, I thought it was a pig or a cloud, but I'm pretty sure it's a brain, it's a brain, isn't it? Okay, so, start level one. So when you click on it, it gives you a picture, and it shows you, like, include the information, the medium, the subject, and the context. So, a painting of a dog in a field. Okay, the more descriptive you get and specific, the better. You will get AI to produce what you want it to. Okay. Level one,

but there's a trick. You only get 120 characters,

correct? So you can't go on and on forever because it's going to ignore you. I want you to tell me what you see in the level one picture. The first one

I saw ramen noodles, uh, here, I'll show you my whole thing. Here was my whole level one.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so these were my, my pictures that I did.

So tell me about what you wrote for your gradient picture.

For my gradient, I, I put, cause I, I'm colorblind. I

know. That's why I So I just wrote

a blank screen with a gentle gradient and, uh, it came back with what the colors were, I think it's pink or something like that. Yeah, it

goes mint green to pink. And I was like, you can't see that.

So at first I thought it was broken.

Okay.

Uh, and then so I'm like, uh, it's a blank screen with a gentle gradient. And, uh, and then apparently it was like, Hey, you're right. Except for, uh, my color was wrong. So that one, I go, I was 70 percent right according to this. So, but my other two, I think it was, I don't know if I got the color of the bowl. Right. Um,

you said purple, it's blue.

It's blue. Okay. Yeah. So, but my, uh, my ramen spot on, huh? Look at that.

Yeah. Good job. So like when I did the gradient one, I get 88 percent of the match, but that's just because I can see the color change and you. Yes. But anyway, EV, besides the point,

yes,

it teaches you how to write what you see specifically enough. Yep. And accurately enough. So that way it then creates the image that you describe in your picture, and it'll tell you the percentage, how close you are, and how far you are from what your descriptions are. So for those of you who. are starting to use more AI in the classroom and who are using these different tools, this is a great way to kind of play a game and also train your brain as to how to write short descriptions that are specific enough for AI to understand what you want.

Yes.

And it's fun.

It is.

And then it's challenging because you're like, but wait, I want that to be 100%. I don't want that to be like 89 percent because those types of things drive me nuts. You can move on to the next one, but you're not accurate. So, this works on your accuracy as well. So yeah, what are you working on now? I can see you furiously typing and competing.

I'm starting level two, so let's see what happens. Level two. Let's see. Level two, fight! Fail. Oh, look at that, it's pretty close. Oh, I hit 77

percent match? Nice. Yeah, it

put a rider on my bronze horse, but uh

It's lifting the correct leg. It is. And it's missing a leg.

It is missing a leg. Your horse only

has three legs.

I don't know why that horse has three legs. Okay. Um, it didn't tell it to have three legs,

but All right. We're good. All right. So, that's our last one. So, that's Say What You See. So, that is the third one to kind of practice. And that actually, that tool will be really helpful for, again, training your brain and being able to write specific things for AI and some practice with writing some specific things for AI.

Yeah. I like that. That's pretty cool. And it's very helpful even, uh, even just for you as a teacher to learn how to do this better because this is definitely a skill that all of us will need as AI becomes more and more important. West

So there we go. Some of the cool things we can do with labs.google. I want to be able to share Some of these creations that they make from food mood. Yes. That would be amazing.

Yes. The appetizer for three that you're making from Antarctica. No, because in Antarctica you're not allowed to make. Did you know this? You're not allowed to eat anything from Antarctica. It all has to be shipped in. Did you know that? I learned that over the weekend. You're not allowed to eat anything native on Antarctica.

So it has to be. It

all has to be shipped in.

Interesting.

Yeah. You have to get all your food from Piggly Wiggly.

Yes. If you don't know what Piggly Wiggly is, it's a grocery store in the Midwest. And yes, yes, folks, there is a pig in the logo. And people, people have t shirts with pigs on them. I might get one. But that's not here nor there. So anywho, if you haven't started summer break yet, I hope you do soon and you enjoy your break and take some time to enjoy and relax the summer. If you are on summer break, yay, enjoy your summer. But for everybody, take a minute, relax, enjoy your summer. Educators deserve it. They work so hard. And, thanks for finishing season six with us. Yeah,

we'll check in with you sometime. Throughout the summer. We always do. Do it for the algorithm.

We do that. And also And for you. Because you have to work on your puns. And there's plenty to work on.

Yeah, I don't want to fall out of practice. Pun

practice. Because

we know I never make puns at home. Only here on the, on the Whatever this is called,

podcast.

I'll be here on the air. Fun's on the podcast.

And on that note, thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on the app formerly known as Twitter, XSmartWI. Or on threads or on Facebook or pretty much anywhere. If you want to get more information on the links to the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit smartinwi com. If you'd like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or two. Visit buymeacoffee. com slash smartinwi or visit smartinwi com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep this show going. New episodes. Coming in the fall. Thanks for listening. Go educate and innovate.

The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smartinwi.com website are those of the author, Shanna Martin, and not of her employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we sure hope they do. And we hope you have a great summer.