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Issue 45 • October 15, 2025
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I wear many hats, which makes it tricky to give a short answer when asked what I do for a living. Since I have ChatGPT’s memory feature turned on, I asked the AI to explain my work in two sentences: You’re an education and technology consultant and the AI Coordinator for your local school district, helping teachers and students explore AI in thoughtful and responsible ways. Through your workshops, keynotes, newsletter, and Shapegrams resources, you make tech integration engaging and accessible for educators. Not bad! Then I asked it to sum me up in 10 words or less: Edtech consultant and district AI Coordinator helping teachers use technology. My main job is presenting at conferences and schools. I love speaking to teachers and students, and I am always updating my presentations to stay current. If you are planning an education event or PD experience, please keep me in mind. Whether your event is next month or next year, reply to this email and let’s talk about how I can help. And if someone asks you for speaker recommendations, I would be grateful if you passed my name along.
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AI helped me code another app! I worked with Gemini to make Ghost Writer, a web-based tool that forces writers into a flow state. If you stop typing, your text disappears and is gone for good. You set a goal for either time or word count. Once you start, you have to keep going until you reach that goal. Meet it, and you can copy your text. Miss it, and your work is lost forever. Ghost Writer is inspired by The Most Dangerous Writing App. I used that app many times, but I wanted shorter and more flexible goals that would work for elementary students. With Gemini’s help, I was able to create my own web app. Teachers can use Ghost Writer when students need to get ideas flowing without worrying about spelling, grammar, or formatting. Some possibilities include: Prior knowledge write: At the start of a lesson, have students quickly type everything they know about a topic. Post-lesson brain dump: Students capture what stuck right after a reading or activity. Quick write: Use a prompt such as “Describe the setting with your five senses” to spark vivid responses. Rough draft builder: Push out a first version of a persuasive paragraph or short story before revising. Think-pair-share starter: Give students a short burst of uninterrupted thinking and typing time before they turn and talk with a partner.
Another benefit is that Ghost Writer makes writing harder to fake. Since students can only pause for a few seconds, there is no time to copy and paste from AI. The words they write are authentically theirs.
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When a student borrows a pencil from the teacher, it’s likely the pencil won’t be returned. Teachers have put in place some brilliant systems to try to keep their pencils from being misplaced. Tracy Johnson posted on Facebook that she began naming her pencils. She wrote, “They don’t care if a pencil is missing, but if Carol or Jerry are missing, everyone is worried!” MakerWorld, a top site for 3D models to print, has a Customizable Name and Emoji Topper for pencils. You simply enter a name and select an emoji. While the tool is designed for Bambu 3D printers, you can select any model and then download the STL file to import into your 3D printer software. Teachers on Facebook say they have the most success when students name the community pencils, sometimes even giving them backstories. I came up with some names myself, with a little help from AI. You can see them in the photo below. There are a couple that really make me giggle. While these are called “toppers,” they actually slide onto the pencil, allowing access to the eraser. A pencil “sleeve” is a better term. Before you ask, my printer is a Bambu Lab P1S. I have an AMS (Automatic Material System), which allows me to print in multiple colors.
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A Venn diagram shows the logical relationship between sets. You can easily draw one in apps like Google Slides, Canva, or PowerPoint by overlapping ovals. Typically, the ovals have black borders and transparent fills. A technique I like to use is building Venn diagrams with ovals that have no borders and semi-transparent fills. This works especially well with primary colors, since the overlap creates a secondary color.
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Setting each color to about 50% transparency gives them a lighter, pastel look. I like how the mixed colors visually represent the overlap between the two objects. When I showed this technique to my fifth graders, they wanted to try it themselves. We often used graphic organizers, but they were usually supplied by me or taken from the textbook. I discovered that when students built the organizers themselves, they enjoyed the process more and felt a stronger sense of ownership over their work.
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One concern with using AI is cognitive offloading, where the AI ends up doing most of the thinking for us. In many ways, that is the point of artificial intelligence. However, we can flip that around by using AI as a partner that asks the questions and pushes the human to do the thinking. To help students use AI in this way, I created a one-pager called Prompt Gemini to Help You Think. It organizes prompts into four categories: Study and Review Understand and Explore Get Feedback Think Deeper
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When used alongside Gemini’s Guided Learning mode, these prompts help ensure that students are the ones doing the learning, practicing, and reasoning. And while I wrote the one-pager with Gemini in mind, the same prompts work just as well with other chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude.
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When presenting in Google Slides, PowerPoint, or Keynote, press B on your keyboard to pause and show a black screen. Press W to pause and show a white screen. Pressing any key resumes your presentation. I use the B shortcut often as I stray from what’s in my slideshow. If my slide doesn’t illustrate what I’m currently talking about, it’s nice to blank the screen to refocus attention on what’s I’m currently saying.
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Of all the hats I wear, my favorite is being the creator of Shapegrams. Shapegrams are a series of digital art lessons and challenges inside Google Slides. If you are on the haunt for Halloween activities that are both fun and educational, Shapegrams has plenty to offer. Smiles from Iowa,
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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.
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