Gemini's new interactive whiteboards: an amazing new tool for inclusion and 1:1 support
This summer, Google gave Gemini a new capability: it can now generate interactive whiteboards from a plain English prompt, built around your own lesson or resource, complete with timers and quizzes. It's a small update on paper. In practice, it's one of the more useful things I've seen land in a classroom toolkit this year, particularly for inclusion.
In the classroom
A teacher can take a lesson they've already planned and turn it into an interactive whiteboard in minutes: the same content, but now with a built-in timer for an activity, or a quiz to check understanding before moving on. It sits well alongside a normal lesson rather than replacing any of the planning that's gone into it.
For 1:1 and small group support
This is where this type of platform can be super useful. A TA running a 1:1 session, or a small intervention group, can prompt Gemini with exactly what that pupil needs that day, the topic, the level, the format, and get back a bespoke, interactive resource built for that one pupil, on the spot. No searching through a shared drive for something close enough. No printing a worksheet that's slightly the wrong level.
Think about what that means for a pupil on an individual support rota: a resource genuinely built around where they are that day, not adapted from something built for the whole class. That's a meaningful shift for inclusion, not just a time saving.
Getting it right
A few things worth having in place before staff start using this with pupils:
Treat anything generated as a working resource, not a finished one. A quick check before it's used, same as you'd check any worksheet.
No personal or identifying details in the prompt itself. Describe the need, not the child.
Make sure TAs and support staff, not just classroom teachers, know this exists and are confident prompting it. This is as much a TA tool as a teacher one.
If you want a hand introducing this to your team, safely and with the right guardrails around it, that's exactly what the free October drop in sessions are for. Please sign up below.
Ben
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