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Unleash Your Creativity with Labs.Google!
Episode 180 • 8th April 2024 • Tech Tools for Teachers • Shanna Martin
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Hey everyone! We are back from spring break with a super fun episode! Have you heard about the amazing new playground from Google called Google Labs? It's a real treasure trove of cool, interactive experiments that will spark your students' imagination and encourage them to think outside the box.

On this week's episode, we give an overview of the Google Experiments replacement, and explore ImageFX, Instrument Playground, and DJ ModeFX!

Find all of the tools we've discussed in the EdTech Directory:

https://smartinwi.com/edtech-directory/


Get in touch:

https://smartinwi.com

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https://www.threads.net/@smartinwi

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techtoolsforteacherpodcast@gmail.com


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Transcripts

Shanna Martin:

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers

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podcast, where each week we talk about

a free piece or two of technology

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that you can use in your classroom.

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I'm your host, Shanna Martin.

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I'm a middle school teacher, technology,

and instructional coach from my district.

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Fuzz Martin: And I'm her producer

and husband, Fuzz Martin.

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And I'm really excited about this week's

episode because after today, we have

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to turn around We've hit episode 180.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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So we've got a complete 180 and

now we're going back the other way.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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So we'll start counting down.

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Yes.

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179 B and then when we get to 178 B,

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Fuzz Martin: We get to episode

360, we'll have come full circle.

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Oh, yeah.

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That's so special.

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Thank you.

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Good job.

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Very special boy.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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So we had two weeks off.

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It was spring break.

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Which was always fun.

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We enjoy spring break.

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I did not have two weeks off, but

we took two weeks off of the podcast

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because we needed the weekend before

the weekend after since Easter fell

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in there and we went to Disney.

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We did.

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So yeah, so it was a fun little

break, but now we are cranking

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into the end of the school year.

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Fourth quarter.

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The weather here is still

cold and gross in Wisconsin.

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We had a snow storm, snow day this week.

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So there's that.

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So this week, moving forward.

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Let's hope there's some spring

weather and it's pleasant outside.

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Fuzz Martin: Yeah, hope so.

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Some rain, some flowers.

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I mean, we're supposed to be in the 60s.

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Shanna Martin: I mean, but that's lies.

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Let's be real.

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Yeah.

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You know, our weather is never

what we think it's going to be.

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It's supposed to be, uh,

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Fuzz Martin: around, uh, 15 or

16 degrees Celsius for those

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of you in beautiful Canada.

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Or wherever you may be

listening, that's not the U.

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S.

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Shanna Martin: Yes, because, well.

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Fuzz Martin: You're very big in Greece.

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Yes.

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Portugal, Portugal, um,

New Zealand at one point.

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Shanna Martin: Hello from

other parts of the world.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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So, you know, it's fun.

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I appreciate all of my listeners.

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Yes.

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Thank you all.

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So let's talk about learning and some tech

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Fuzz Martin: tools.

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Great.

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And I was wondering why we were here,

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Shanna Martin: You know, a

little bit of everything.

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While digging, cause you

know, two weeks off is.

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A lot of time for me to be

trolling the internet on my

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phone, especially in airports.

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And we all know in past episodes, I

mean, we can pull up probably every

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single time that I have mentioned Google,

Google Chrome experiments, which I

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have always been a huge fan of, Which

originally is experimentswithgoogle.

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com.

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Yes.

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And over the past 14 years, so my podcast

has not been around that long, but over

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the past 14 years, Google Experiments,

they have created 1, 613 experiments.

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That's a lot of experiments.

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Which is awesome.

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However, for those of you that don't know,

Google Experiments has made a change.

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What?

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And they are no longer a thing.

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No!

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And they point out that in the In the

thought of change and experimenting,

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they're going to make a change.

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So Google Chrome experiments still

exist in like the past experiments site,

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however, Google now has a new place

to house cool projects and it is labs.

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google

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Fuzz Martin: labs.

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google labs.

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Shanna Martin: google.

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Fuzz Martin: Not even com, just labs.

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google.

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How do they get that?

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I want Labs.

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Shanna Martin: google, folks.

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Fuzz Martin: I want podcast.

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fuzz.

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Yes.

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Shanna Martin: Labs.

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google.

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Because you're not Google.

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Because I don't have a kajillion dollars.

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So, l a b s.

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google.

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That's all you gotta type in.

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Cool.

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Easy enough.

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And it is so cool.

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So, labs.

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google is all of the cool

things like Google Experiments.

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I'm going to highlight

a couple of them today.

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But like the homepage I feel like you

just need to be on the homepage right now.

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Okay, because the home page the visuals

Like they float around the screen and

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they like bump around so you can like drag

and move the shapes and they like Move,

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but the links still work like they're

animated, but you control the animation

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on the home page That's like how you want.

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I don't know.

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I just thought it was cool.

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Like Not your usual homepage for

anything and there's like little

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things twirling around the screen

and it's just kind of cool.

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So Labs at Google will be similar to

your Chrome experiments kind of deal so

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there's all kinds of just cool things

that people come up with and submit to

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Google and they have a team of people

and Just all kinds of cool ideas being

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shared And so I'm going to highlight a

few of them today, but I'm not, I mean,

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I'm just going to highlight a couple of

them because like Chrome experiments,

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there's like all kinds of them.

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So the first one.

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For wherever you are on the screen.

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Cause that's something like I

referenced, like at the top, right.

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Yeah.

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I can't do that because when you go

to the site, it'll look, I don't know,

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look for the yellow lumpy star flower.

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Fuzz Martin: Yes.

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It might be different by

the time you get there too.

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Shanna Martin: It might

be it's I M a G E F X.

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So image FX.

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That's the product.

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And.

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Click try now.

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Yeah.

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sign in with my Google account.

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Yeah.

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So sign in with your Google account.

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I'm already there.

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So I have a Google account.

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Don't want any of those things.

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And we love a fun AI image creator and

this one you don't have to pay for, and

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you don't have like limits on stuff.

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Like a lot of them you do.

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So, and it tells you ahead of time, like,

make sure this is community appropriate,

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you know, all that kind of stuff.

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Cause sometimes we worry about

with our students, making sure

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that they're obviously appropriate.

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So you can choose, um, a crayon

drawing of a wolf in a nightshirt.

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Maybe we could use this for

Little Red Riding Hood and

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And you just click generate.

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And what I like about this one is it'll,

you know, it takes a second to generate

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the pic, the pictures that you choose.

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But then what's cool is when it's

generating the certain words,

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it then gives you dropdowns

to make changes to them.

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So then I can click the dropdown

and change my crayon drawing to

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a charcoal drawing, and I don't

have to type anything new in.

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I just click my little dropdown arrow.

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And then it resets and gives

me my next set of pictures.

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I said, generate, and it will do the

next set and it keeps them for you.

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And you can like scroll through the

images that you're creating and choosing.

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Is that fun?

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Like it's a little extra compared

to like what you've done before.

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Fuzz Martin: A photo realistic of

a woman podcasting with an electro

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voice, RE-20 and a pair of headphones.

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She's wearing a Wisconsin long sleeve

t shirt and has her laptop open

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in front of her as she podcasts.

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That's super cool.

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Shanna Martin: Is that fun?

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Yep.

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So I did a wolf in a night shirt and a

hat and I shifted from crayon drawing

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to pencil drawing, but they're so cool.

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And it is that we're like

passing our computers back

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and forth through each other.

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This is so weird.

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But then.

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Fuzz Martin: I can

change you into a hoodie.

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That's cool.

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Cool.

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Shanna Martin: And so you can

just make small adjustments and

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my hat, it gives me more specific

words, a cap, a crown or a helmet.

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My night shirt can shift from

pajamas to a robe to a tuxedo.

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So it's a really fun experiment

and you have your images there.

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So it's different than some of

those other AI generators that

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we've talked about before, just

because this has so many different.

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Options with it.

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Mm-Hmm.

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. Um, and it's very user

friendly and like protected.

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So that's a fun one to play around with.

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Fuzz Martin: So like I, oh man, I, I put

in what microphone you're using Yeah.

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Right now.

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Mm-Hmm.

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. And then in the dropdowns it gave me, so

you're using is, electro voice re 20.

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Very nice microphone, Uhhuh . The

other one that's similar to

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that in the market is the.

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Shure SM7B and that's one of my choices

and the audio technica, AT-:

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And the PodMic, which was your mic

you had before I went and spent

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three times as much on the mic.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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Shanna Martin: So that's awesome.

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Yeah.

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So it gets like super specific

for you, which is just cool.

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Like it's just a cool,

it's a cool image creator.

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It's so, and it's easy to play around

with and I would feel okay with my kids

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using this one and not have any like.

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So long as they're searching

appropriate things, it's fine.

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So, okay.

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Back to labs at Google.

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So leave the yellow squiggly star thing.

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And then the green, I don't even

know, like hexagon again, like

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they move around the screen, the

instrument player going to next.

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So that's still from arts and culture.

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This one does still come

up from arts and culture.

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So this is why I wanted to point

this one out was that some of these

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new, like Google labs will shift

back and forth to experiments.

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So they're not like gone forever.

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So like blob opera and all of our

favorites, like they're still there.

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Okay.

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That was worried about that.

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So you can still pull up

some of the other ones.

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Um, and they'll still come up for you.

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This one is really cool.

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You pick an instrument.

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And it will compose music with the

specific instrument that you want.

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And you can change your AI generated

instrument, and then you can click next

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and you can type in like an adjective

and how you want it to sound like moody

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or mellow or whatever you want to say.

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And then it will.

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I don't know if you can hear this,

but it like comes up with AI generated

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audio clip for 20 seconds, based on your

mood and your instrument that you want.

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Yeah.

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And then you can click on the keys.

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Like if you want to add things in your

own keyboard, you can add different

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things into there and then click next.

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And then you can change your beat.

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So you can add your beat into there

as you choose to, and then you can

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add your pitch and you can make

adjustments to the ambience on it.

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Like Sound and then once you're good you

hit end and then you hit go and it comes

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up with this like cool Song that you can

play which is kind of really awesome.

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It is awesome.

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Yeah, so yeah There's all kinds of

I don't know if you can like you're

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me playing kind of sort of And

then you can record off of it, too

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Fuzz Martin: Yeah, that's pretty slick

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Shanna Martin: anyway, so there's all

kinds of like cool ways to introduce

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different types of music and sound and

mood and tone and all those pieces,

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which I think is great for music class.

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But also that goes with writing.

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If you're doing creative writing,

you want to talk about mood and tone.

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You can totally build

sound and to move in tone.

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In your creative writing lessons

or even your descriptive writing

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lessons or narratives like those

pieces You can hear the sound like

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make a sound for what your character.

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I want some suspense Topian book

would be listening to exactly.

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There's just all kinds of things.

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It's fun.

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And

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Fuzz Martin: now the situation

is resolved and everything's

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You know, hunky dory again.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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So how would that change the mood?

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What would that sound like?

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Mm-Hmm.

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So, I don't know.

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It's just super fun to

play around with it.

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Very easy, straightforward.

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It just lays it all out for you

and then you can play around, and

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you can change and you can record,

and all those types of things.

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So Very cool.

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So that was the instrument playground.

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And there's one more on the home screen.

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I want to show you because there's,

but wait, there's more, , on the, I

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think on the left side of the, Beaker.

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Nope.

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I'm on the right side of the beaker.

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Yeah.

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When you look at the site, you'll totally

understand what I'm talking about, but

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right now I'm trying to explain this.

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Okay.

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So there's a giant blue oval.

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It's called DJ mode.

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Music.

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Bye.

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Are you in

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Fuzz Martin: that?

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Is that the one I'm,

is that the one I'm on?

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Shanna Martin: Uh, is it music?

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FX DJ?

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Fuzz Martin: It says music FX

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Shanna Martin: radio for me.

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Yes.

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So when you're in there,

you can make your own music.

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Okay.

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So like there's mongoose, post

punk, indie, electronic, let's see,

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Fuzz Martin: I want a, uh, hip hop sports

theme, uh, with a lot of driving bass,

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Shanna Martin: all right, let's

generate, there's really no bass on

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your computer, just so everybody knows.

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You're gonna turn the bass

up on your soundboard.

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It's optimizing

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Fuzz Martin: my project.

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Ah, let's see.

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Chips help you explore other ideas.

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Okay, yep, we got that.

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DJ mode.

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DJ Fuzz.

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I'm still generating.

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Oh yeah.

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Welcome to Fuzz's DJ special with

special guest MC Shanny Shan.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And it gives me two options.

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And then you could change

that with the cards.

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Let's see.

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I want to make a romance

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Shanna Martin: theme.

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And then you can put a glockenspiel in it.

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Oh, clock

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Fuzz Martin: and spiel.

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I like that.

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All right.

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Shanna Martin: Oh, this is going to

be like too much for people's ears.

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Yeah.

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Fuzz Martin: I'm sorry, but I'm never

going to stop playing with this.

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I'm going to just play with this until,

until I'm no longer on this earth.

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Yeah.

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This is that hip hop romance theme, a lot

of driving base, but we could say, uh, You

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want it to have soaring strings instead.

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Shanna Martin: So all these things.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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So this is fun.

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Fuzz Martin: Shanna's

had enough as a teacher.

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You will too

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Shanna Martin: make sure they're

using headphones is all I can say.

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Oh my gosh.

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It's so much fun though.

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Like it's so much fun.

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So you can DJ all that you want

and all your DJing amazingness.

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And it's just a fun way to create sound.

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Obviously you can play around

with different types of.

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Listening, um, different skills

and listening, different things.

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It's really cool.

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So that one's DJ mode in music FX.

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So that's like an option.

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So again, there's more, I'm sure there'll

be more than one episode on this one,

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but I want to point out, so this is

just the labs at Google homepage.

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That's all I've talked about is the

homepage and that's not even all of them.

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You can click I'm feeling lucky and

it'll just send you someplace and

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then you get to learn cool things.

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But if you scroll like at the bottom,

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Fuzz Martin: I clicked, I'm feeling lucky.

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And I got to a help support

page about Google messages.

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So, um, so,

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Shanna Martin: so there's that.

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So

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Fuzz Martin: there's

like, didn't win the 1.

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2 billion in the lottery.

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So,

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Shanna Martin: you know, it's fine.

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At least you might learn

something from the help page.

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True.

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Right.

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So there's a little pink arrow on

the bottom of this screen and the

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home screen of the home screen.

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And this then.

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Like experiment with the future of AI,

like there's highlights of different

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things coming out like January 24th.

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So it like gives you.

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Like upcoming or just past, you

know, things are on their page,

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but they have like AI and Chrome

and notebook, L notebook, LM,

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personalized AI notebook career.

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So there's like more AI

experiments and things like that.

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So we will talk more about some of these

in the future, but just so you know, like

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as you scroll down, there's lab sessions

with teachers that link to their, They're

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YouTube videos that explain kind of

where some of those comes from and, and

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the different things with Google labs.

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So labs, Google labs,

not Google, so much fun.

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And as we loved our Google

Chrome experiments, these are

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going to be super duper fun.

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And there is so many things.

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To look into.

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So we had some pictures

and some music ones today.

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There will be plenty in the future.

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And there's a lot of AI cool stuff

that you might want to dig into.

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If you're into finding out new

information about different

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ways to use AI in your life.

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Yeah, cool.

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Is that fun?

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That is fun.

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Labs.

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google.

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Fuzz Martin: Labs.

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google.

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Now I need to go update all the

things in the edtech directory,

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like chrome experience.

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Shanna Martin: I mean, chrome experiments

still exist though, but they're

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shifting to not adding more to it.

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Okay.

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They're adding to labs.

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google.

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Yeah.

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And it is

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Fuzz Martin: markedly fun,

more fun design than the,

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Shanna Martin: it's like a fun

website, like the homepage is.

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Yeah.

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It's just fun.

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Fuzz Martin: You'd say they

were experimenting with

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their design in the lab.

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Okay.

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Sorry.

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Shanna Martin: So fun.

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Well, I'm excited.

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We're back and a few more weeks folks

and the school year is going to be over.

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Yes.

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So hold on.

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Anyhow.

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Thanks for tuning in.

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This has been the tech

tools for teachers podcast.

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If you ever have any questions,

you can find me on the app

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formerly known as Twitter.

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That's Martin WI or on

threads or on Facebook.

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And if you want to get more information on

the links to the technology discussed in

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this episode, you can visit smart and w I.

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If you'd like to support the show,

please consider buying me a coffee

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or to visit, buy me a coffee.

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com slash smartinwi or visit

smartinwi.com and click on that

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cute little purple coffee cup.

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Your donations help keep the show going.

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Thanks for listening.

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Go educate and innovate.

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Fuzz Martin: The ideas and

opinions expressed on this podcast

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and the smartinwi.com website

are those of the author, Shanna

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Martin, and not of her employer.

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Prior to using any of the technologies

discussed on this podcast, please

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consult with your employer regulations.

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This podcast offers no guarantee that

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described, but we sure hope they do.

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