I just wanted to share my experience using Notebook LM these last two days. I was very excited to learn there was a program that claimed to read my sources and which I could ask questions and have a conversation around them. To equate Notebook LM to a similar tool I would match it up with Noodle Tools which I have a lot of experience using personally as well as using it with students for their research projects. The first thing I realised about Notebook LM is that it assumes that you already know how to research. It does not provide any scaffolds for you to learn how to research. Noodle Tools on the other hand offers a graphic organiser for taking notes, teaches you how to create citations and reference your sources, and provides scaffolding for deep reading of your sources. I found this lack of scaffolding in Notebook LM a little concerning. I did not see anything in it that supported building student’s research skills. It was very much focused on doing the work for you. Which I can see being enticing in the upper high school grades (in my context the Diploma Program) when students need to produce demonstrate academic knowledge of a lot of content in a short period of time. I am concerned that it will be employed by younger grades who have not developed the skills necessary to engage in inquiry learning.

I also noticed that the items I uploaded to Notebook LM I already knew very well. This allowed me to have a decent discussion with the AI about the sources. I uploaded my school library’s strategic plan and discussed the challenges of implementing it. I also uploaded both the IFLA School Library Guidelines and the Ideal Libraries Guidelines and had a similar conversation. I found both of these conversations useful. I think it would have been a different situation though had I just encountered these documents for the first time, uploaded them and then had a conversation with the AI about them. This is not what we want our students to be doing when they engage in inquiry learning. We really do want them to be engaged with the sources reading them themselves.

Some other things I encountered include: the AI claiming that it follows up on sources found in documents and reads them. I had quite a long conversation about the AI’s research process. During which it claimed to be able to follow references in a source, read original sources, and incorporate this knowledge into the discussion. They cited the reference in the IFLA school library guidelines to Stripling and Pitts’ REACTS Model as a source that they had read and integrated into the discussion (64). After looking into the capabilities of Notebook LM I’m convinced that the AI was hallucinating. According to my understanding of the program it only has the ability to search from within the sources I present it with. When I mentioned a “research process” I imagine it just began discussing a research process. The manner in which they did was very convincing at the time.

At this point I can see Notebook LM being a research tool that could be valuable to my grade 11’s working on the Extended Essay once they are at the Construct stage of their projects. That is with the caveat that I can demonstrate it’s use in ways that do not remove the students from doing their own critical and creative thinking. Whether I do or do not include it in my teaching plan this spring will hinge on this.

Please note this post has been edited on December 25th 2024 to reflect my updated thoughts on this tool.