Learning in Hand Issue 29

Issue 29 • February 12, 2025

Twenty years ago, I launched one of the first elementary school podcasts. As the technology specialist at Willowdale Elementary in Omaha, Nebraska, I helped students create Radio WillowWeb, a podcast named after our school website, WillowWeb. Back then, few people had even heard the word podcast.

Radio WillowWeb was made for kids and by kids. Each episode featured a student host introducing a mix of segments—science, history, original poetry, jokes, and plenty of personality—all written and recorded by students. Recording and editing was done in GarageBand.

Podcasting was so new that I had to manually upload each MP3 file to the school’s server and hand-code the RSS feed. I still remember finally getting the feed to work during the Valentine’s Day parties in 2005—while everyone else was celebrating, I was at my computer, making sure Episode #1 went live.

The school’s server shut down years ago, so Radio WillowWeb disappeared from the internet. But I saved all the MP3 files, and for its 20th anniversary, I’m making them available.

Listen to Radio WillowWeb

The time, effort, and creativity students poured into their work shines through in every episode. That’s the magic of an authentic audience. Even after I left Willowdale, the podcast continued for a couple more years, carried on by students and staff who believed in its impact.

Screenshot of Radio WillowWeb Episode 1 page from 2005

Radio Reflections 🎙️

Sure, Radio WillowWeb made an impact on its audience, but the process of creating a podcast left an even bigger mark on the student podcasters.

While digging through my files, I found a 10-minute video where I interviewed students and teachers about their experiences with Radio WillowWeb. The video starts with a montage of audio clips from various episodes, and the interviews begin at 1:30.

Teachers highlighted how podcasting gave students a creative, engaging way to share knowledge while building essential skills. Students loved being on the podcast, having their voices heard, and receiving positive feedback from peers, family, and even national organizations.

Radio WillowWeb inspired countless other student-created podcasts. I was happy to share our show planning packet, which helped students create quick, focused segments that kept listeners engaged.

I could go on and on about the power of podcasting. The best part? Now, 20 years later, everyone knows what a podcast is—and there are tools that make the technical side easier than ever.

If you’re interested in starting a classroom podcast today, below are some handy links.

Screenshot of iTunes from 2006 open to the Radio WillowWeb podcast page

Passcode to Proceed 🔐

Google Forms doesn’t have a built-in option to password-protect a form—but there’s a workaround!

At the start of your form, add a required short-answer question.
Click the question’s options button (⋮) and select Response validation.
Change the drop-downs to Text and Contains.
Enter a passcode and an error message.
Add a new section, then place your protected questions in that section.

To access the protected section, respondents must first enter the correct passcode—the one you set up with response validation. You can change the passcode anytime. Pretty slick, right?

Give it a try with this sample form. The passcode is Iowa.

One important note: Every Google Form includes a disclaimer that says, "Never submit passwords through Google Forms." That’s a smart safeguard—hackers could try to collect personal passwords through a form. That’s why I call it a passcode instead. This way, I can reassure students that I’m not asking for their personal passwords. 😉

So why might you want to passcode-protect a form?

You want to share the form’s URL in advance but prevent submissions until a specific time.
You’re running a scavenger hunt, where players must enter the correct passcode to unlock the next question or clue.
You’re giving a digital quiz and want to prevent early access until students are ready.
You’re creating a self-paced lesson and want students to enter a code after completing an activity before moving on.

This simple trick gives you more control over when people access your form’s content.

Presentation Perfection with PPTMON 👌

PPTMON offers hundreds of free Google Slides themes and PowerPoint templates, including a dedicated Education category. You’ll also find templates in Creative, Minimal, Multi-purpose, Infographic, and By Colors categories.

I appreciate that I can see all the slides in a template before choosing to use as a Google Slides theme or download as a PowerPoint template. I also appreciate that many elements in these templates are editable.

No login required—just browse, download, and start editing. If you're always on the lookout for ways to make your slides stand out, PPTMON is worth bookmarking.

Display and Draw 🖋️

Canva recently added a Draw on Page tool in presentation mode. Clicking the tool brings up five options: a thin marker, thick marker, highlighter, eraser, and color picker. Simply select a tool, choose a color, and start drawing.

It’s easiest to draw with your finger or a stylus, but if you’re using a non-touchscreen device, you can still draw with a mouse or trackpad.

Your drawings stay on each slide as long as you remain in presentation mode. You can move between slides, and your annotations will remain. However, once you exit, they are gone forever. If you want to keep your drawings, you'll need to take a screenshot before leaving presentation mode.

Ways Teachers Can Use the Draw on Page Tool

📝 Annotating diagrams, charts, and pictures – Label parts of a plant, highlight trends in data, or mark up an image for discussion.
📍 Highlighting key points – Emphasize important terms, main ideas, or student contributions.
🔢 Solving math problems – Work through equations, show step-by-step solutions, or demonstrate number patterns.
✅ Marking off completed tasks – Check off steps in a lesson, cross out completed objectives, or track progress.
🗺️ Labeling maps – Identify countries, states, landforms, or historical locations.
✏️ Filling in blanks as you present – Add missing words, numbers, or responses during live instruction.

Prompts to Pictures 🖌️

AI image generators transform your words into pictures, making them a valuable tool when you need a personalized illustration, quick logo, or custom visual to enhance a lesson, presentation, or project.

Many AI image generators offer free access, but with limitations. To help navigate your options, I’ve updated my chart comparing 10 text-to-image websites, highlighting their strengths and restrictions. Since AI tools evolve rapidly, this chart may become outdated sooner than later—but for now, it’s a handy way to explore your choices. And if you hit a limit on one platform, you can always switch to another to keep creating!

Better Bot Brainstorms 🤖

A prompt is simply a question or instruction you give to an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini to get a response. There isn’t one way to prompt a chatbot, but there are frameworks designed to help you get better responses from AI.

For example:

AI for Education uses the 5S framework
Designing Schools developed the SPARK framework
The AI Educator’s Guide offers the PREPARE framework

I was searching for a framework that dives deep into partnering with AI to complete the prompt and then give multiple ranked responses. I wasn’t finding exactly what I was looking for, and realized that I could come up with my own. I’m calling this the DIVER approach.

Educators might use DIVER for tasks like:

Brainstorming catchy titles
Writing sentences with vocabulary words
Developing engaging lesson hooks
Representing concepts with emojis
Generating discussion questions

With DIVER, you don’t need to use all five elements—just apply what makes sense for your prompt.

Demonstrate understanding 👍
Ask the AI to show its understanding of your request before proceeding.
Initiate step-by-step 🪜
Ask the AI to walk you through the process one step at a time.
Validate through questions 🙋
Ask the AI to validate its understanding by asking you follow-up questions.
Explore multiple options 🔀
Ask the AI for several options so that you have a range of possibilities to choose from.
Rate responses 💯
Ask the AI to critique its own work, ranking options and explaining why.

Here’s an example prompt that includes all five DIVER elements:

I am planning a field trip to a history museum for my 4th-grade class. Walk me through the planning process step-by-step. Ask me questions one at a time, and be sure to about the budget, museum, and learning objectives. After interviewing me, generate 15 different options for student activities, rate each activity, and explain the benefits of each. Show me your understanding by first summarizing my request.

AI chatbots don’t ask follow-up questions unless you prompt them to—that’s why I like to ask for a step-by-step process with clarifying questions. And why stop at just one response? Requesting multiple options and having the AI rank them makes it easier to decide which one to explore further.

Thanks for diving into this issue of Learning in Hand! As always, I really appreciate any time you encourage other educators to subscribe to this newsletter. Currently we have 2,159 subscribers, and I would love to double that number by the end of 2025.

Smiles from Iowa,

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Al was used to revise and proofread some of the text in this newsletter. It was also used to generate possibilities for section titles.