The Education edition
This is a real edition from 27 October 2026, at the Practical level, in plain language.
A US school allows AI if students explain how they used it, and Google is bringing Gemini Notebook to chat and to Classroom.
US school allows AI, but only with permission and a statement
Evanston Township High School in Illinois has changed its AI rules for the 2026-27 school year. This follows new policy for all schools in the US state of Illinois. Students may use AI for schoolwork if the teacher approves. They then add a statement explaining how they used AI. Use without permission or without a statement counts as plagiarism or dishonesty. The punishment can go as far as a failing grade for the course.
One student tells about physics. He may use AI to program the path of a rocket. For every step of the code, he has to explain what it does.
Writing the rules took two years. The school talked with teachers who think differently about it. At the end of October, teachers get training on when AI helps learning and when it does not. According to the school, parents can also help their child with AI. This is a US school, so this is not a rule for the Netherlands.
Ask your IT administrator or school leadership whether Gemini and Gemini Notebook are both turned on for your group, because the link with chat only works then. Also ask whether the new sharing settings in Classroom, such as those for trusted domains, are already visible at your school, because it is not yet clear if and when Dutch schools will get this.
Classroom: teachers see how students use Gemini Notebook
Google Classroom has a Gemini Notebook that the teacher controls. The teacher now gets summaries with insights. This helps them see better how students work with the notebooks they have assigned. According to Google, this helps show what a lesson is worth and plan lessons. Administrators also get adjusted sharing settings, including for trusted domains. The item is in a list of Workspace news from the past week. Read more →
Gemini creates notebooks and adds sources from the chat
Google has linked Gemini Notebook to the Gemini app. From the same chat, you can now create a notebook, add material and ask questions about the content. This works with ordinary typed commands. Google announced this on 23 October. The link is available for personal Google accounts, for Workspace Individual subscribers and for all Google Workspace customers. You call it up with @Gemini Notebook. Gemini can also choose the link itself if a question fits. You can create, edit and delete notebooks, add or update sources and save important notes. A list of sources shows which material Gemini uses for an answer. For the Netherlands, this matters: in the European Economic Area (EEA), the link is off by default. Users turn it on themselves under Settings and then Connected apps in Gemini. For work or school accounts, Gemini and Gemini Notebook must both be on for the user's group or organizational unit. Access to only one of the two is not enough. Read more →
Major PHP vulnerability temporarily takes many websites down
Many websites went offline as a precaution, including RTL Nieuws, DigiD, MijnOverheid and the website of the Tweede Kamer. The reason is a serious vulnerability in PHP, a programming language that many websites run on. It involves two flaws in the interpreter. That is software that translates programmers' commands for the computer. Both flaws get a score of 9.2 on a scale of 0 to 10. The makers of PHP first announced that a fix would come on Wednesday. Hackers used that announcement to find the exact vulnerability. They then released information, so that abuse became relatively easy. The vulnerability seemed to be exploited for hours already. Around four o'clock in the afternoon, a fix came, a so-called patch. Until then there was no watertight solution, so many owners took their sites offline. No concrete cases of abuse are known yet, but that cannot be ruled out. Websites should be back online quickly once they update. Ethical hackers found the vulnerability and reported it to the makers of PHP. They also used AI. Read more →
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