✨ Registration for my winter Google Certification Academy + AI is open! ✨

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas, Reader!

The holiday season kicked off for our family last weekend with our local production of the Nutcracker featuring four of my five kids in various roles. It's holiday parties, family gatherings, and festive celebrations from here on out!

For the December EDU Update, we'll look BACK at what happened in the past year and FORWARD to some new tools you can expect to see in 2026.

Here are my favorite links and updates for December 2025!

🎧 Listen to this episode | 🎦 Watch this episode​

1. Improved Google Docs PDF Viewer - Google is making some nice enhancements to the viewer for PDFs, images, and videos uploaded to Google Drive. The new viewer will make it much easier to navigate large files and long videos.

2. NEW: Google Workspace Studio - This brand new tool will help you create powerful automations and agents for Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and more. I got early access, but everyone will get this new tool in early 2026!

3. Five advanced NotebookLM features - If you haven’t taken a look at NotebookLM, a LOT has changed! NotebookLM is a tremendous learning resource for your classroom!

4. Using AI to evaluate privacy policies - I recently started using a custom Gem to evaluate privacy policies for various technology tools that are requested by teachers. This custom Gem is trained with our specific requirements and it does the hard work for me!

5. Year in search 2025 - Google’s annual search trends video is out! Take a look at the viral moments from the past 12 months. This is a great source for easy topics or data analysis projects. Google for Education also posted an overview of EDU updates from the past year.

Registration for my winter Google Certification Academy is now open! The winter session begins February 3, 2026! I have made two important updates to this course for 2026: 🆕 Updated to reflect the NEW L1 and L2 certification exams! ✨ The course now includes Gemini for education training! This is NOT a boring, online course...it's a LIVE virtual experience with me and 20-30 educators from around the world. We laugh, learn, and study together! Winter cohort details: Date: Feb. 3 - 24, 2026 (Tues / Thurs) Certifications Covered: L1, L2 & Gemini Time: 8-9:30 PM EST (sessions are also recorded) Cost: $230/person (CC and PO orders accepted) Earn up to 11 CEU credits! Registration is OPEN! "Excellent class! Learned so much from the interactive format. Thanks for taking time to answer all questions asked." - Pat Barros, Elementary Teacher

6. The Game Show Advent - Ryan O’Donnel is an incredibly creative educator. This month he is sharing daily classroom game recommendations over on TikTok. If you need a fun review game or end of semester activity, check it out!

7. TextFX - Explore the relationship between words and ideas with this simple tool that demonstrates how AI uses word prediction to generate human-like responses. H/T to Jeremy Badiner for this discovery!

8. Gemini Vibe Coding Showcase - this thread on X has some fantastic examples of what you can code using Gemini, even if you have zero coding experience!

9. Top FB Post: Google’s Gemini certification is FREE until January 2026. Download my study guide and become Gemini certified (It’s pretty easy)!

10. Lock up the Christmas gifts! - one of our family Christmas traditions is kicking off Christmas morning with a “breakout” activity to sort Christmas presents.

Let me know what YOU think of these updates and new features! Leave me a comment on YouTube, X or Facebook!

That wraps up the updates for December 2025. Have a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year! I'll see you in January with the latest update for the first month of 2026!

John R. Sowash

📨 Did someone forward this email to you? Click here to add your name to my monthly email list!

​​​​​