How I Use the NotebookLM Slide Deck Generator to Study More Easily
Once again, a new feature is available on Google’s NotebookLM, the AI tool that works like a personal assistant and only references the hardware you provide it. This one is a slide builder, which can be useful if you need to give a presentation quickly, but I use it a little differently to help me remember new information.
Generate a slideshow in NotebookLM
First, you need to know how to generate a deck. If you’re not familiar with NotebookLM, it’s basically like ChatGPT, but instead of pulling answers from the vast Internet, it relies solely on the PDFs, links, videos, and text you enter as resources. This makes it the perfect tool for working on a specific project or studying for a course, since you don’t run the risk of being inadvertently misled by a random, unrelated source.
You can use the chatbot functionality as you would with ChatGPT, asking questions and getting summaries of your documents. You can also automatically generate flashcards, videos, infographics, mind maps, fake podcasts and much more.
To generate slides, it’s the same process you would follow to create them: in the left panel, select all the sources you want the tool to extract from. In the right panel, select Slide deck of the menu. After a few minutes, you will get slides that you can download in PDF format, just like downloading a PowerPoint, and you can upload them to Google Slides or PowerPoint to create a simple presentation.
What do you think of it so far?
Why I love NotebookLM’s slide presentation feature
I’ve mentioned before that while I love NotebookLM and use it every day for work and personal activities, I can’t stand its app. It just doesn’t work as well as the browser version, which is a shame because the browser version works SO GOOD. I pretty much ignore the app and don’t use NotebookLM on mobile or, when I do, I use my mobile browser to access it, which we all know is an annoying workaround that never really translates to a smaller screen.
Credit: Google/Lindsey Ellefson
However, with the PDF slide, I get a ready-to-use study guide complete with visuals, which I can send to myself via iMessage and study on the go. When I generate my own study materials without NotebookLM, I almost always do it in Google Slides, then download the full PDF and review the slides like a giant study guide, so this new feature makes a lot of work easier for me.
