Issue 43 • September 17, 2025

What if I wasn’t a teacher? I think I’d make a great game show host. Luckily, teaching gave me plenty of chances to host games. I started with Jeopardy on a pocket chart with notecards, and later I used digital tools like PowerPoint and JeopardyLabs.

I used to spend hours writing questions and categories for my classroom games. Now AI can help with that work. This issue’s sponsor, Factile, can instantly generate a Jeopardy-style game, complete with buzzers, a scoreboard, and fun visuals.

Fantastic Factile 🤩

Thanks to Factile for sponsoring this issue!

Since the new school year began, I’ve been working with teachers who are looking for ways to make review time more interactive and engaging. One tool that consistently lights up classrooms is Factile, a Jeopardy game maker that turns lessons into a lively game show experience.

Teachers tell me Factile helps them review content in a way that gets every student involved. And now, Factile has rolled out new features that make the whole game-show experience more engaging and easier to use.

Here are a few classroom favorites:

🔔 Buzz-In Shuffle

In buzzer mode, the same team can sometimes dominate. Factile’s new Buzz-In Sequence Randomizer changes that! With one click, you can shuffle the order of who buzzed in, keeping the game fair, exciting, and giving every student a chance to shine.

📄 Jeopardy Games from PDFs

Got a reading passage, unit guide, or worksheet in PDF form? Upload it, and Factile’s AI (called AutoGen) will generate questions and answers straight from your material. You can even select specific pages, perfect for comprehension checks or targeted practice.

✏️ Redesigned Game Builder

Creating custom Jeopardy games is now easier than ever. The new edit page has been completely redesigned with a fresh, intuitive layout, making it simple to fill in questions and answers, organize categories, and build engaging review games.

🤖 Smarter AI with GPT-4.1

AutoGen now runs on OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 model. That means clearer, more accurate, and grade-appropriate questions, saving teachers valuable prep time.

You can try Factile for free today. Every new account includes 500 free AutoGen tokens to test the AI feature, and there’s a 7-day no-hassle refund policy on paid plans.

Privacy note: Factile protects all district, school, teacher, and student data. Data is never for sale, never used to train AI, and always kept secure. Factile complies with FERPA, COPPA, GDPR, and state privacy laws.

Targets that Tie to Tomorrow 🎯

I come across a lot of great teaching ideas on TikTok. One that caught my attention came from Chase Nordman, who shared an intriguing way to make I can statements more relevant and meaningful.

Chase suggests adding “so one day” to the end of your learning targets to help students understand why they are doing what they are doing. In his video, he shares two examples:

• I can write a five-paragraph essay so one day I can convince people of my ideas.

• I can identify the parts of a cell so one day I can make healthy choices for my body.

“One day” might mean tomorrow, or it might be years from now. Here are a few more examples:

• I can design and carry out a simple science experiment so one day I can test ideas instead of just guessing.

• I can analyze primary sources from history so one day I can evaluate information before deciding what to believe.

• I can recount stories and determine their central message so one day I can learn life lessons from what I read.

You might even invite students to come up with their own “so one day” endings, which turns the target into a quick class discussion about why the learning matters.

If you’d like help adding “so one day” to your learning targets, an AI chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT can be a handy partner. Try a prompt like this:

Give me 10 completed versions of this 4th grade learning target that add a real-life, student-friendly reason why the learning matters: I can tell the difference between first-person and third-person narrators so one day…

I like to ask for multiple suggestions so I can choose the one that fits best. At the same time, some learning targets stand on their own without a “so one day.” They matter because they grow knowledge and stretch thinking in the moment.

Piece by Piece Posters 🖨️

Prof. García, on TikTok, shared how to make big classroom posters with a regular printer. He demonstrates how to use the Image Splitter app in Canva to slice an image into a grid, save it as a PDF, and print it across multiple pages. The pages can then be trimmed, lined up, and attached with tape or glue.

This works well for visuals like anchor charts, graphic organizers, timelines, and motivational posters. Students can also design posters in Canva, split them, and assemble them in teams. It is an easy, low-cost way to add big visuals to your walls and to showcase student work.

Chrome’s Captions 💬

Another TikTok video recently taught me that the Chrome web browser has Live Captions. Chrome can display captions for any audio or video that plays.

Sure, YouTube has its own captions. But with Live Captions in Chrome, it does not matter if the source material lacks them because Chrome listens and generates captions automatically.

This is wonderful for NotebookLM audio and video overviews, for sharing student-created media, or for playing podcasts, games, and live streams. It is a powerful accessibility feature that everyone can benefit from.

Chrome’s live captions appear in real time, and they can also be translated instantly into a variety of languages.

To activate live captions, click the Media icon in the top-right toolbar and toggle Live Caption. Directly underneath, you will see the option to toggle Live Translate.

Don’t see a Media icon? It only appears once you start playing something with audio. You can read Google’s help article about setting up Live Captions.

When captions are active, a black box appears with the spoken words. You can move this box anywhere on the screen. I like to place captions at the top so students in the back of the room can see them more easily. You can also click the small caret at the bottom of the box to shrink or expand it.

As a teacher, try turning on Live Captions whenever you play media for your class. Even better, show your students how to enable Live Captions themselves.

URL Upgrades 🔗

Years ago I wrote Google URL Tricks, and it continues to be one of the most popular pages on my website. I often end up referring to it myself. The page gives instructions for modifying the URLs of Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings so you can share your file in different ways:

• Preview Link → share a clutter-free view of your document

• Make a Copy Link → force others to make a copy before viewing

• Template Link → share an easy-to-copy preview

• PDF Viewer Link → open a PDF version of your file in Google’s viewer

I worked with ChatGPT to write some HTML code that I embedded on a Google Site. It takes a shareable Google link, and with one click, you can get the modified version of the URL. I’m calling this tool Linking in Hand. 😉

I’ve bookmarked Linking in Hand so I have it handy the next time I want to make a Template Link or PDF Viewer Link (those are the ones I always forget). Feel free to bookmark it for yourself too.

Fall Fonts 🍁

It’s that time of year when fonts take on a fall feeling.

The fonts below are all Google Fonts, available in Google Workspace or at fonts.google.com.

If you enjoy swapping styles with the seasons, take a look at the font collections I’ve curated for Shapegrams. You’ll find Google Fonts for every season and plenty of special occasions.

I hope this issue leaves you with some things to explore and some ideas to think about. The next issue hits inboxes in October.

Smiles from Iowa,

Subscribe at learninginhand.com

AI gave me a hand with brainstorming, drafting, and polishing this issue. Of course, I reviewed and adjusted everything before sharing it with you.