It's one thing to think about using AI-drafted staff communication while evaluating its tone and authenticity, it's another thing altogether to ponder if anyone reads our emails at all. The documents we are required to push out to staff have gotten longer at exactly the moment teachers have the least time to read them.
There is data underneath that. RAND’s survey panels found that only 45% of principals reported having any school or district policy or guidance on AI use, and just 35% of district leaders said they provide students with training on AI. So many of us are being handed a policy document and told to make it land, without a professional learning structure to land it in.
Here’s a hypothetical, though I suspect it will feel familiar: your district sends a 14-page AI acceptable-use policy in August with a note that all staff must review it. You forward it. You mention it at a faculty meeting. In October a teacher asks you a question that the policy answers on page 6.
Source:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4180-1.html
➡️ When you need staff to actually absorb something - a policy, a new protocol, a curriculum change - what format has worked best for you? And have you found a way to tell whether it landed, short of waiting for the question in October?
THIS WEEK’S RESOURCE: Turn Google Docs, PDFs, and Word files into video summaries in Google Vids
Announcement (Sept 2, 2026): https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/09/turn-google-docs-pdfs-and-word-files-into-video-summ...
Step-by-step help doc: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/17302692
Google Vids will now take a document - a Doc, a PDF, or a Word file - and generate a narrated video summary of it. AI writes the script, generates the narration, and pulls in visuals. You are not filming anything and you are not editing a timeline. You point it at the file and it hands you a draft video that you then edit like a slide deck.
To try it:
Step 1 - Go to vids.new, or open Google Vids from the Google apps menu.
Step 2 - Choose the option to create a video from a file, and select your Doc, PDF, or Word file from Drive.
Step 3 - Let Vids generate the script and narration. This takes a minute or two for a long document.
Step 4 - Read the generated script before you do anything else. This is the step not to skip - check that it did not flatten a nuance that matters or drop a compliance detail.
Step 5 - Edit any scene: rewrite narration lines, swap visuals, cut sections that do not apply to your building.
Step 6 - Share the video link with staff the same way you would share a Doc.
The use I would start with: that AI acceptable-use policy, or whatever your equivalent long compliance document is this fall. Generate a three-minute version, re-record the intro in your own voice with why it matters in your building specifically, and send the video with the full document linked underneath for anyone who wants the source. You have now given people a way in, without pretending the document does not exist.
One prerequisite worth checking before you plan around it, because this one does have an availability limit: it is on Education Plus, or through the Teaching and Learning Upgrade or Google AI Pro for Education add-ons. There is no admin setting to flip and no user setting, but if your district is on a lower Education tier you may not see it at all. Rapid Release domains have it now; Scheduled Release started rolling out September 5 and can take up to 15 days.
And the caveat I keep repeating because I believe it: a video summary is a way to deliver information, not a substitute for the conversation. If a policy is going to change how someone teaches, the video buys you the time to have that conversation - it does not replace it.
Give it a try and tell us what you pointed it at. I would also like to know whether your staff actually watched it, which is the only measure that really matters.
