Podcast Spotlight - Otwell Middle School Bulldawgs Unleashed

While I was at the GaETC Conference recently, I had the pleasure to be a guest on "Bulldawgs Unleashed" which is the podcast for Otwell Middle School in Georgia.

The podcast is hosted by Dr. Greg Walkup (A/V Broadcast & Film teacher) and David Miller (Otwell Middle School's Educational Technology Coach).

The focus of the show is to spotlight teachers, staff, and Otwell community members.

For the particular episode I was on, we discussed the following:

• My GaETC sessions, which you can access the resources for here https://bit.ly/curts-gaetc25
• My professional journey from middle school math teacher to EdTech coach
• My educational philosophy, including the importance of having a growth mindset
• The resources I share on my Control Alt Achieve website
• And tips for how I keep up to date on all the changes in EdTech, especially AI

Take a look below to listen to the episode and access other resources for the podcast.

My 2025 GaETC Sessions

I am excited and honored to be presenting at the Georgia Educational Technology Conference (GaETC 2025) in Atlanta, Georgia on November 5th and 6th, 2025.

I always look forward to an opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from others.

You can access more GaETC information and register for the conference at

https://conference.gaetc.org/

Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting at GaETC 2025, along with any associated resources. Please feel free to join me for any of these sessions. I look forward to sharing, learning, and chatting with you!

What's New in Google - October 2025

Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from October 2025, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our October 2025 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:

• Connect Google-using educators
• Share the latest Google Workspace news and features
• Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
• Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools
• Ask questions and get answers

The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the October 2025 meeting:

EdTech Links - Week of 10-27-2025

Each week I keep an eye out for the latest edtech resources through blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, user groups, and more. I then try to reshare these resources in many ways.

One way I share these is here on the blog in these "EdTech Links of the Week" posts. See below to explore the latest batch of resources, and be sure to share with others who may benefit.

If you want to make sure you don't miss new resources, you can:

🔗 View all EdTech Links of the Week: bit.ly/caa-links

📰 Sign up for my weekly email newsletter: bit.ly/curts-news
📧 Join the "Control Alt Achieve" email discussion group: bit.ly/caa-emailgroup

🔔 Get new blog posts automatically through email - FollowIt link

And as always, please let me know of any resources that you recommend. I would love to learn from you!

EduGem Spotlight - DOK Analysis

EduGems is my website where I share my favorite Gemini Gems for schools. 

You can access, use, and copy any of the Gems at https://www.edugems.ai/

I am always excited to announce new Gems, and today I am highlighting the "DOK Analysis" Gem.

📊 DOK Analysis

This Gem helps you quickly analyze any assessment to determine the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) level for each question, using the DOK 1-4 framework. This is perfect for gaining a clear understanding of the cognitive demands of your materials, identifying primary verbs, and ensuring your assessments promote the appropriate level of student rigor.

To use this Gem, you will have a collaborative conversation with Gemini. You'll start by providing the grade level and subject area and the specific assessment (which you can paste or upload). Gemini will then analyze each question on the assessment and provide:

• A direct quote of the original question
• The primary verb/cognitive task from the question
• The assigned DOK level for that question
• And the justification for that DOK level

After all the questions are analyzed, the Gem also provides a summary for the entire assessment with a total and percentage for each DOK level.

See below for a short video demonstration of this EduGem, as well as the link to access, use, and copy the Gem.

EnlightenAI - Your New T.A. for Grading and Feedback

I recently recorded a webinar about one of my favorite AI tools for education - EnlightenAI. (Disclosure - EnlightenAI sponsored this webinar, but all opinions were my own.)

If you are not familiar with it, EnlightenAI is an AI-powered tool that works hand-in-hand with a teacher to assist in guided grading and personalized feedback for student writing.

Here are a few key aspects of how EnlightenAI works:

• You can pull in writing assignments from a wide range of sources (Google Classroom, Illuminate, Canvas, Form, Docs, and more)
• You can provide the AI with your rubric, the assignment prompt and materials, exemplars, guiding instructions, and more.
• The AI will use that information to provide grades and feedback for student writing.
• You can override any grade and customize any feedback which will train the AI even more to learn your style and grading requirements.
• The AI will provide insights into strengths and weaknesses for every student, as well as customized lessons and activities to help address those.
• The AI can also provide instant writing feedback directly to students while they are writing to support revision during the writing process.

And all of this comes in a robust free version! To learn all about EnlightenAI, see below to watch my recorded 1-hour webinar and to access the resources from the session.

Using, Creating & Sharing Gems in Google Gemini

As I have shared before, Gems are a great feature of Google Gemini where you can save a common prompt to use anytime you need.

In addition to using the Gems yourself, you can also share them with others so they can benefit from them too.

To help explain all the details of Gems and how they work, I recently recorded a short 12 minute tutorial video about Gems that covers the following topics:

• ❓ What are Gems?
• 🎁 Premade Gems from Google
• 🛠️ Creating a Gem
• 💎 Using a Gem
• 🔗 Sharing a Gem
• 💻 My EduGems Website

See below to watch the video, and be sure to visit my new EduGems.ai website where I share dozens of my favorite Gems for schools.