Gemini For Education And Google NotebookLM Support Teaching, Learning, And Administration In K-12 Education

Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to interview four representatives at K-12 organizations and survey 206 respondents at K-12 organizations to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) K-12 organizations may realize by deploying Google Workspace for Education Plus.¹ Interviews were conducted with a head of digital, teaching and learning lead, technology advisor, and cloud applications engineer. This abstract focuses on Gemini for Education and Google NotebookLM, the no-cost AI offerings that are available in all editions of Google Workspace for Education, and their value to interviewees' and survey respondents' organizations.

K-12 school systems are increasingly looking to AI to support teaching, learning, and administration amid rising workloads, constrained budgets, and heightened expectations from teachers, parents, students, and staff. Interviewees and survey respondents reported that Gemini and NotebookLM supported day-to-day work across roles by increasing productivity, accelerating understanding of challenging material, and improving the quality of teaching and administrative output. Interviewees and survey respondents also noted that Gemini and NotebookLM enabled their schools to adopt AI securely and responsibly, with the security, enterprise-grade data protections, and control over organizational data required for institutionwide use.

Eighty‑two percent of survey respondents reported that Gemini and NotebookLM were “Important,” “Very important,” or “Essential” to their organization, as members across their schools used the tools to automate time‑consuming administrative tasks, plan and create lessons, summarize documents and difficult concepts, analyze data, and support more personalized learning experiences.² Interviewees emphasized that Gemini and NotebookLM augmented rather than replaced teacher expertise, while survey respondents reported that teachers saved more than 4 hours per week on average, nonteaching staff saved more than 3 hours per week, and 76% said the tools improved student outcomes.³

Key results from the study’s analysis include enhanced teacher experience, improved student learning, AI‑augmented assistance for nonteaching staff, and the secure and responsible use of AI at scale.

Key Results

The results of using Gemini and NotebookLM for the interviewees’ and survey respondents’ organizations include:

Enhanced teacher experience. Interviewees and survey respondents reported that Gemini enhanced teacher productivity and effectiveness, enabling them to streamline administrative tasks, make complex topics more relatable to students, and create lesson plans and rubrics, while NotebookLM helped them prepare and organize class materials more effectively. The efficiency gains helped ease burnout and allowed a greater focus on high-impact work such as teaching and student support. Interviewees and survey respondents further highlighted the following benefits for teachers:

• Robust adoption. Survey respondents reported robust adoption of AI tools among teachers, with an average of 59% using Gemini or NotebookLM daily or weekly.⁴

• Augmentation of teacher ability. Interviewees emphasized that AI tools augmented, rather than replaced, teacher ability. Sixty-nine percent of survey respondents said Gemini and NotebookLM moderately or significantly empowered teachers.⁵

• Gemini for lesson planning and improved clarity. Survey respondents further reported that Gemini supported teachers by improving clarity, making challenging topics easier to approach, and creating lesson plans and rubrics.

• NotebookLM for curriculum and content curation workflows in a single environment. Survey respondents said NotebookLM helped teachers reduce the time spent finding reference materials, improve curriculum review workflows, and devote more attention to student engagement. The cloud applications engineer elaborated: “Teachers create notebooks in NotebookLM to curate content right in there and share with their entire class. They don’t need to go to the copy center or send a bunch of links. They can fire away from there — add sources, remove them, [and] manipulate them in any way they want. That gets them a long way toward teaching them.”

• The ability to re-level and differentiate student learning material. Interviewees also noted that Gemini helped teachers re-level content for differing student needs. The cloud applications engineer said: “Using Gemini and NotebookLM is a huge win. It gives teachers the ability to differentiate assignments and create curriculum that appeals to different learning styles, backgrounds, and demographics.”

• Meeting students at their individual learning needs. The teaching and learning lead added: “We always talk about meeting students at their point of need, and we are finally actually giving teachers tools that will enable them to do that. ... We hear stories about how [Gemini and NotebookLM] spark teacher imagination and creativity.”

• Substantial time savings. Survey respondents reported average time savings of over 4 hours per week for teachers due to Gemini and NotebookLM.⁶ The cloud applications engineer added: “Gemini can easily make a teacher 25% more productive. Gemini jump starts creating templates, generating ideas, and making concepts more interesting to students.”

• Mitigation of teacher burnout. Interviewees also noted that the AI tools helped reduce teacher burnout. The teaching and learning lead said: “NotebookLM and Gemini help with the workload reduction piece. It’s the ability to have a little assistant helping you.”

Improved student learning. Interviewees and survey respondents reported that Gemini and NotebookLM improved the student learning experience as students used Gemini to quickly access accurate information and clarify complex topics, while NotebookLM helped students better understand material using trusted sources. Interviewees and survey respondents further highlighted the following benefits for students:

• Responsible, age-appropriate access to AI. Interviewees emphasized the importance of providing students with responsible, age‑appropriate access to AI, and noted that Google is one of the few vendors offering tools suitable for their students. The head of digital said: “[Google’s work to make AI safe and compliant for student use] is what enabled us to create a paper [promoting the use of Gemini for Education and NotebookLM] for our leadership team and an opt-in option for schools. There are other suppliers that can’t offer the assurances needed. We felt an urgency and moral imperative to provide safe access to our students [so they could] learn about how to use these tools safely.”

• Improved student outcomes. Seventy‑two percent of survey respondents said Gemini and NotebookLM moderately or significantly improved student outcomes.⁷

• Use of Gemini to support comprehension and organization. Survey respondents reported that students used Gemini to quickly access accurate information, clarify complex topics, and transform disorganized material into clear summaries and notes.

• NotebookLM for learning from trusted sources. Interviewees and survey respondents reported that NotebookLM helped students better understand material using trusted sources. Education and IT decision‑makers responding to the survey described students benefiting from NotebookLM as follows:

  • “Assists students in learning using reliable sources.”
  • “Effective in generating student-friendly summaries from complex documents.”
  • “Students receive simplified notes for difficult chapters more easily.”
  • “Helps in creating individualized review sessions before assessments.”

• Easier transition to higher education. Interviewees also shared that familiarity with Google tools helped students transition effectively to higher education. The teaching and learning lead noted: “Students find the transition to university really easy as a result of using Google. We hear those sorts of stories all the time.” The technology advisor added, “Students like Google a lot.”

• Preparation for future use of AI tools. Interviewees further noted that Gemini and NotebookLM were the modern AI tools they were likely to use later in life. The cloud applications engineer said: “I think [using Google is] a lot better than a bespoke AI suite for kids. Nobody is going to grow up and use that. They’re going to use a tool like Gemini.”

AI-augmented assistance for nonteaching staff. Interviewees and survey respondents reported that Gemini and NotebookLM improved the efficiency and work quality of nonteaching staff by enabling employees to automate administrative tasks, streamline data analysis and reporting, create content, and summarize documents. Interviewees and survey respondents further highlighted the following benefits for nonteaching staff:

• Substantial time savings. Survey respondents reported that nonteaching employees leveraging Gemini and NotebookLM saved more than 3 hours per week on average.⁸

• Gemini to streamline administrative and operational workflows. Survey respondents highlighted a wide range of Gemini use cases across administrative and support roles, including classifying incoming support tickets to speed response, structuring compliance processes, assisting with staff orientation and training, and expediting data retrieval, analysis, and reporting.

• Improved decision-making and work quality. Interviewees described Gemini as an assistant that helped administrators and staff improve the quality of their work and operate with greater confidence. The cloud applications engineer added, “Our leadership uses Gemini before sending out announcements and statements to make sure they’re complete and framed properly.”

• NotebookLM for working with complex information in a single, trusted environment. Interviewees said staff leveraged NotebookLM to quickly and accurately understand and act on complex information in a single, trusted environment. Interviewees and survey respondents highlighted NotebookLM use cases such as managing institutional reports more effectively, accelerating the completion of compliance and accreditation processes, identifying key dates and scheduling approaches, and providing stakeholders with more coherent and complete case files.

• Fast access to clear, actionable information. A survey respondent who served as an IT decision-maker said, “NotebookLM empowers our administrators to make faster, research-driven decisions.” Another survey respondent in school leadership added, “Lower-level staff now access policies without confusion [given NotebookLM].”

Secure and responsible use of AI. Interviewees and survey respondents emphasized that secure and responsible AI was critical for their organizations and that Gemini and NotebookLM provided the security, enterprise-grade data protections, and control over organizational data they required. Interviewees and survey respondents further highlighted the following benefits related to the secure use of AI:

• Confidence to deploy Gemini and NotebookLM broadly across schools. Interviewees said that security and enterprise-grade data protections were prerequisites for adopting AI tools at scale and that Gemini and NotebookLM provided confidence that organizational data was never reviewed by humans or used to train models when used by teachers, staff, and students.

• Google’s fully integrated AI stack. Interviewees explained that Google’s approach to owning and securing its own models contributed significantly to confidence in schoolwide use. The cloud applications engineer added: “That Google is not using somebody else’s model is a huge confidence builder. They’re using their own model and their own infrastructure. That gives me a lot more assurance that data is not going to be leaked out or shared.”