Lit & Tech

Teaching literacy with technology in an era of educational innovation. By Jen Roberts 🦋 @jen.litandtech.com

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Showing posts from June, 2026

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Google AI Educator Series: Free AI Lessons for Teachers

June 09, 2026

AI in Education AI literacy badges classroom AI edtech Gemini GES Google AI Educator Series Google for Education NotebookLM Professional Development professional learning teaching with AI

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Jen is available to speak virtually and in person depending on your needs and geography. Please reach out if you have an event coming up where her perspective would be helpful. Jen(at)Litandtech.com

Jen's Edutopia Articles

🗣️ When Students Use AI in Ways They Shouldn’t
✍️Authentic Writing in the Age of AI
⛔️ Proactively Limiting the Use of AI in the Classroom
🤖 What ELA Teachers Should Know About AI Detectors
📄 Using AI Tools to Give Feedback on High School Students’ Writing

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NBCT: Component 1: The three hour test

Stock Photo: Not from the testing center. In the summer of 2016 I began the process of National Board Certification. I stumbled upon a program from our county office that supports teachers through the process over two years. I just finished Component 1 and 2. For more on Component 2 see my previous post . While Component 2 is a year long process of collecting student work and writing about it, Component 1 is a test I took last weekend. This test counts for 40% of my overall NBCT score, and that's more than any other component. Of course it is a three hour test, and yes, every time I say that I hear the theme song to Gilligan's Island in my head. So just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful test... Actually, I can't tell you anything about the test. I agreed to a confidentiality statement when I sat down to take it. I can tell you about my experience, and how I prepared, and what the day was like. The testing center is a 20 minute dri...

NBCT: My Experience with Component 2: YA ELA

Assembling Component 2 Considering National Boards? I recommend the process, but you should know what you are getting into. Start early and get organized. In the spring of 2016 I began pursuing National Board Certification for teaching. I know eventually someone will ask me for my thoughts and advice about that process, so I'll capture them now while the experience is fresh. Because I teach 9th grade, and previously taught middle school for ten years, I decided to do my NBCT in the area of Young Adolescent ELA. (Yes, I also taught 11th grade for six years, but that was a while ago.) Though some do it in one year, I'm taking two years to complete my NBCT. Last summer, at a small local conference, I stumbled into a conversation about National Boards and happened to find out that my County Office of Education sponsored a support program. I was just in time to sign up. Through that program I got early advice and support to help me understand expectations and deadlines. Th...

Time Capsules in Water Bottles

I wanted to send my seniors off with something fun that would leave them with some lasting memories. I stumbled onto the idea of creating time capsules with water bottles. Some searching showed me some images, and I found some TPT resources that seemed more appropriate for younger students. So, I set out to make my own version. To make this work I needed 72 water bottles. My students were happy to bring those in, often in large bags, but I would not tell them why, just that we needed them for a project we would do at the end of the year. This built some suspense. I created the 'label' for the bottles in a Google Drawing and then added that image five times to a Google Doc. (Templates below) I printed that 15 times on a color printer because our school logo was in color. I cut those with a paper-cutter to get it done faster. I also asked a student to remove all the existing labels from the bottles and remove all the caps a few days before we did the project. Making su...

One Google Doc All Year Long: The English Journal

My students each share a Google Doc with me in September and they use that doc all year long. We call it their English Journal and it holds all of the small daily work we do. This is one of the secrets of my 1:1 classroom and it is such an ordinary part of our workflow that I have rarely thought to write about it. Let’s fix that. The challenge for any educator is knowing what kinds of work and thinking students are actually doing in our classes. The traditional way of gaining this insight was to collect papers: homework, notes, reflections, quick writes, exit slips, graphic organizers, etc. It all happened on paper and we collected it to look at--or at least to make students think we looked at it. The challenge for teachers switching to digital classrooms is that we still want all of that information and it is natural to assume at first that we just need to collect those things digitally. The result though, is a separate document for every daily bit of work students do. If y...

Group Creator: Group Students Fast, but Not Random

I want to have my students work in groups and with partners as often as possible, but the process of making their groups or choosing their partners took me a long time. I kept looking for a digital solution that would speed up the process for me, but I could never find one with the features I wanted. Then I figured out how to make a group creator that works for me and I'm also sharing it with you. My Group Creator runs in a Google Spreadsheet. (Don't panic, it comes with directions.) After you add your class roster and sort by a score you put in, you can click on the different tabs across the bottom to see the different groups students should be in. The tabs include both homogeneous and heterogeneous groups of six, groups of four, and partners. Directions Page Click this image or any other to see it larger. Roster Page On the roster tab replace the sample names with your own students. Then add a score that you can use to rank your students,...