Tech Coach Juarez

• Access Gemini from the left toolbar in Google Classroom to create a custom audio lesson by grade level and standard.
• Generate and edit suggested learning objectives, then personalize the experience with selected speaker voices and avatars.
• Listen to the text dialogue, save the audio directly to Google Drive, or convert it into a slide deck for class presentation.

Integrating audio into daily instruction is a powerful way to engage diverse learners and support differentiated learning. With Gemini built directly into Google Classroom, creating interactive audio experiences tailored to your curriculum is simple and quick.

To get started, open your Google Classroom homepage and click the Gemini option located on the left toolbar. Next, choose instructional material to filter your options and select the feature to create an audio lesson. From there, enter your target grade level along with the specific topic or academic standard you want to cover.

After entering your lesson details, click the button to generate learning objectives. Gemini provides suggested objectives to guide your content. Because these goals are fully editable, you can easily tweak them to fit your exact classroom goals.

You can also personalize the listening experience to make it engaging for students. Select custom voices and avatars for both the host and student speakers before generating the final audio.

Once created, the completed lesson appears as a readable dialogue that you can listen to using the play button. When you are ready to share it with your students, the export option lets you save the audio file directly to Google Drive or automatically convert the conversation into a slide deck for whole-class presentation.

Whether you want to build listening stations, support auditory learners, or offer an interactive review before an assessment, this tool provides a practical and creative way to enrich your teaching.

Watch the full walkthrough video below.

This blog post was drafted with the help of Google Gemini to help organize and flesh out my thoughts and ideas regarding how to create an audio lesson with Gemini in Google Classroom. I also used Gemini Notebook to generate a brief audio overview, perfect for those who want to listen and learn on the go.

If you enjoy this blog, you’ll love our new book, History Matters in an AI Era. Available now on Amazon, this book shares practical, research-based strategies for integrating technology into history lessons. You’ll learn how to use technology to increase student engagement and curiosity. Click here to get your copy today.

• Inclusive Learning: Captions visually reinforce spoken instruction, aiding diverse learners and improving focus.
• Instant Setup: Enable them in presentation mode via the three-dot menu or the Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + C shortcut.
• Customizable: Easily adjust the text size and position (top or bottom) for optimal readability.

In any classroom, keeping every student engaged is a constant challenge. Traditional lectures place a heavy cognitive load on auditory processing, creating invisible barriers for diverse learners. Fortunately, a simple, built-in tool in Google Slides can immediately transform how your students consume information: live captioning.

Enabling captions can be a great tool for supporting learners as you implement universal design (UDL) principles. For English language learners, seeing spoken words in real time bridges the gap between pronunciation and vocabulary comprehension. For neurodiverse students—such as those with ADHD or auditory processing disorders—captions serve as a vital visual anchor that keeps their attention focused when auditory distractions creep in. Even in a noisy room with poor acoustics, captions ensure no student misses a crucial instruction or concept.

Bringing this assistive technology into your classroom takes only a few seconds.
How to Enable Captions in Google Slides

• Start Presenting: Open your Google Slides deck and enter presentation mode.
• Locate the Menu: Move your cursor to reveal the presenter toolbar on the screen and click the three vertical dots (More options).
• Select Preferences: Hover over “Captions preferences” in the menu.
• Toggle Captions: Click “Toggle captions”. (You can also use the handy keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + C on Windows/ChromeOS or Cmd + Shift + C on Mac to turn them on instantly!).

Customization Options
To make captions as readable as possible, Google Slides lets you customize the layout to fit your classroom setup:

• Text Position: Under “Captions preferences,” select “Text position” to choose whether your captions appear at the top or bottom of your slides.
• Text Size: Select “Text size” to change the font size on screen. You can adjust the text scale to extra small, small, medium, large, or extra large to ensure even the students in the very back row can read along clearly.

By making live captioning a standard, default part of your daily presentations, you can create a more equitable, inclusive, and highly focused learning environment for every single student in the room.

This blog post was drafted with the help of Google Gemini to help organize and flesh out my thoughts and ideas regarding why and how to enable captions in Google Slides. I also used NotebookLM to generate a brief audio overview, perfect for those who want to listen and learn on the go.

If you enjoy this blog, you’ll love our new book, History Matters in an AI Era. Available now on Amazon, this book shares practical, research-based strategies for integrating technology into history lessons. You’ll learn how to use technology to increase student engagement and curiosity. Click here to get your copy today.

• Establish a consistent follow-up routine—roughly one week after coaching sessions—to help teachers retain information and maintain the momentum of technology integration.
• Utilize a streamlined digital workflow by logging interactions in Google Docs, using NotebookLM to generate interaction recaps, and employing Gmail templates to send timely, polished messages.
• Build stronger relationships by transforming infrequent site visits into a sustainable cycle of ongoing, actionable support that encourages educators to reach out for further help.

As an instructional technology coach, I work hard to support educators and introduce new technology strategies, yet maintaining that momentum is often difficult. Since I support a large number of teachers across roughly twenty schools, I am only able to visit each site every five weeks. This gap creates a significant problem for me. With so many demands on a teacher’s time and attention, the progress made during a coaching session can easily be lost. It becomes a classic case of out of sight, out of mind.

To bridge this gap, I developed a system to check in with educators about a week after our coaching session. This timeframe is intentional. It gives teachers enough space to process the new information and try it out in the classroom while keeping the experience fresh in their memory. The feedback I receive has been mainly positive. Teachers frequently mention that they appreciate the reminder because they would have otherwise forgotten small but important details. This simple act of consistency has helped me build much stronger relationships with the educators I support.

My workflow relies on a few key digital tools to keep everything organized. I maintain detailed notes in Google Docs for every coaching interaction, keeping a specific journal for each school that lists the date, the teacher, and a recap of our conversation. After each day, I sync these journals with Google’s NotebookLM. This allows me to keep all my coaching data centralized and easily searchable.

To manage the follow-up process, I use Google Tasks within my calendar. I set a recurring reminder every Wednesday. Since Wednesdays are when I am not at a specific site, this day is perfect for roaming or administrative tasks. During this time, I prompt my notebook in NotebookLM to provide a summary of the interactions from the previous week. It generates a recap of everyone I worked with in seconds.

Once I have the summary, I go to Gmail. I have created a template specifically for coaching follow-ups. The structure of the email stays the same, and I simply paste the relevant recap and add the dates and names. I also utilize my district-sponsored subscription to Gemini, which allows me to polish the message for clarity and tone. This functionality is located conveniently within Gmail. (If your subscription does not provide this function directly in Gmail, you can accomplish the same goal by opening Gemini in a separate tab and prompting it to polish your message.) This step ensures that my communication is professional and encouraging.

By the end of the day, I usually receive several responses. Often, teachers express gratitude for the support or ask for further guidance. This system has transformed my coaching practice from a series of disconnected visits into a sustainable cycle of ongoing support. It keeps the learning active and ensures that the technology integration we discuss takes root in the classroom. By being intentional with my follow-up, I can make a lasting difference in the success and classroom experience of my teachers.

This blog post was drafted with the help of Google Gemini to help organize and flesh out my thoughts and ideas regarding how I use a variety of tech tools to manage my instructional coach workflow and follow up with educators. I also used NotebookLM to generate a brief audio overview, perfect for those who want to listen and learn on the go.

If you enjoy this blog, you’ll love our new book, History Matters in an AI Era. Available now on Amazon, this book shares practical, research-based strategies for integrating technology into history lessons. You’ll learn how to use technology to increase student engagement and curiosity. Click here to get your copy today.

Enhancing Surface Area Lessons with Simple Tech

• Physical Practice: Sixth graders used paper nets to physically build 3D polygons, establishing a tactile understanding of surface area.
• Digital Translation: Interactive 3D models were created using simple language prompts in Google Gemini without any formal coding knowledge.
• Reinforced Learning: These digital shapes were hosted on a Google Site, allowing students to virtually fold and rotate models to bridge 2D and 3D concepts.

The transition from 2D shapes to 3D thinking is a significant leap for many sixth-grade students. In a recent classroom observation, I watched an educator masterfully bridge this gap. The lesson focused on the Net Method for calculating the surface area of cubes, pyramids, rectangular prisms, and triangular prisms. The approach was tactile and effective. After some direct instruction, students cut out paper nets and physically folded them into 3D objects. This hands-on experience provided a solid foundation, but it also sparked an idea for how technology could further reinforce this spatial reasoning.

While physical models are indispensable, they can sometimes be fragile or difficult to manipulate repeatedly. This led me to explore how accessible AI tools could help a teacher create a digital companion for this lesson. Even without any background in computer programming, it is now possible to build interactive tools through a process often called “vibe” coding. By simply describing my vision to a tool like Google Gemini, I was able to develop a set of interactive 3D models tailored specifically to this math objective.

The goal was to create a digital version of the paper activity. I instructed the AI to generate models of the four shapes that students could rotate 360 degrees. This allowed for a full view of every face and vertex. To mirror the classroom activity, I requested a feature where clicking on a side would cause the model to unfold one side at a time into its 2D net. Once the students could see the flattened shape, a simple button would allow them to fold it back into its 3D form.

To make these tools easily accessible for the classroom, I embedded the resulting code for each model into a single Google Site. (All I had to do was use the embed tool for each model and paste the respective code.) Having all four shapes on one page meant the teacher could provide a single link to the students. This digital resource served as a perfect follow-up to the physical cutting and folding. Students who might have struggled with the precision of paper models could now interact with the shapes infinitely, observing the relationship between the flat faces and the volume they enclose.

The beauty of this integration is that it does not replace the hands-on experience. Instead, it honors the work students did with their guided notes and scissors while providing a modern way to practice. For educators, this highlights a shift in how we can approach edtech. You do not need to be a coder to create custom, high-quality digital manipulatives. You only need a clear pedagogical goal and the willingness to describe it.

When we combine tactile learning with interactive digital models, we can provide students with multiple pathways to understand complex geometric concepts. This teacher’s excitement to use the website was a reminder that the best technology serves the lesson, reinforcing the skills students have already begun to master with their own two hands.

This blog post was drafted with the help of Google Gemini to help organize and flesh out my thoughts and ideas regarding how to vibe code with Gemini to build 3D, interactive models of polygons, reinforcing the concept of the net method. I also used NotebookLM to generate a brief audio overview, perfect for those who want to listen and learn on the go.

If you enjoy this blog, you’ll love our new book, History Matters in an AI Era. Available now on Amazon, this book shares practical, research-based strategies for integrating technology into history lessons. You’ll learn how to use technology to increase student engagement and curiosity. Click here to get your copy today.