Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock these past few years, you’ll have already noticed the growing omnipresence of AI-powered tools in both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Take NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebooks) for instance, a hugely powerful and immensely popular tool with Irish teachers, particularly in Workspace schools. And whilst Copilot Notebooks, a similar tool for M365 users, has been around for some time, until recently it required a full Copilot licence (which I’d imagine few schools could afford to bankroll for their staff). This certainly created a sense of FOMO (as Gen Zs would say), so much so that it resulted in some teachers, understandably, bypassing M365 and using personal Google accounts to access Gemini Notebooks (the artist formerly known as NotebookLM). Not an issue in itself, necessity you could argue. However, where the lines get blurred is when a teacher uploads school material to personal accounts outside the enterprise-protected productivity suites provided by their school, so-called ‘Shadow AI’, basically the AI version of Shadow IT.
Thankfully, as highlighted the walkthrough below, Copilot Notebooks are no longer confined to schools that have purchased additional Microsoft 365 Copilot licences. All schools using an M365 for Education tenant now have access. So, if you looked at Copilot previously, were put off by the spectre of additional licensing costs and decided it wasn’t worth it, now might be a good time for another look. Below is a high-level overview of what Copilot Notebooks do, how you might use them and how they differ from more generic AI tools.
What is it, a OneNote replacement?
A quick search of this blog for OneNote and you’ll get a plethora of posts going back years waxing lyrical about its numerous virtues, and too right. OneNote is a Swiss Army-like tool and the go-to app in M365 for many teachers, so are Copilot Notebooks the successor? No., OneNote isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and will continue to be the go-to place for organising and managing class content, with its pages and sections capable of housing whatever type of media you throw at it. Instead, Copilot Notebooks adds an AI workspace where a selected collection of material becomes the context for what you ask Copilot, putting you firmly in the driving seat when it comes to source material.
What can I actually do with it?
Say you’re preparing a lesson on the Normans with a senior class. You could upload the Primary Curriculum Framework and the Social and Environmental Education (SEE) specification for context, together with existing lesson plans, textbook extracts, relevant PDFs, primary sources and even PowerPoints you’ve used before.
You could then ask things like:
- What are the main reasons given in these sources for the Norman invasion of Ireland?
- Create five questions to check students’ understanding of this material.
- Compare how these two sources describe the arrival of the Normans.
- Using only these sources, help me organise the material into a lesson for my class.
- Can you create a short PowerPoint and poster with the key points of this lesson using these resources?
For teachers, I think the control that Notebooks offer is a real boon. You choose the sources and put boundaries (guardrails, to use the buzzword) around what the AI is working with. That means less scope for it to wander off into information you haven’t checked, and potentially less of the “hallucinating” problem we sometimes associate with generative AI. You still need to keep the human front and centre in the loop and check what Copilot produces, of course, but it’s a country mile from simply opening an AI chatbot and asking, “Tell me about the Normans.”
Why bother?
Granted, we are certainly not short of new shiny AI tools in the education space, and it’s becoming almost impossible to keep track of them all and indeed, anyone already accustomed to the M365 ecosystem could be forgiven for thinking, I’m already using OneNote, I don’t need another Notebook tool. But it’s not a case of one or the other. Copilot Notebooks are like super-smart companions for your existing content and, more importantly, the functionality is already baked into the tools you are using. No new sign-ups, no moving content and no Shadow AI.
I’d argue that’s enough of a reason to give it a spin .and a good place to start is Mike Tholfsen’s latest walkthrough above.: