Gemini for Teaching

[petrasvestartas]

Hi,

At ETH Zurich in Switzerland, Gemini Flash is available across the university, and students can use it free of charge for their studies. However, when we integrate LLMs into Jupyter notebooks for teaching, we pay for the API calls out of our own pockets.

For example, I added a terminal to the right of a Jupyter notebook where students can ask questions about the course materials. The assistant accesses those materials through MCP. If an API call costs $0.01 and each of the 100 students in a class makes just one call, that already costs $1.

Can educators get free Gemini API access or teaching credits for this kind of classroom use?
There is no really deep reasoning involved. The goal is to query fastly the course material.

[zw-g]

Not for this kind of setup, going by Google's current terms and program FAQs:

• Free tier: the Gemini API terms say "You may use only Paid Services when making API Clients available to users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom" (Use Restrictions). The API only counts as paid when it's called through a Cloud project with an active billing account, so the free quota can't back a notebook assistant for your students in Zurich.
• Teaching credits: Google Cloud's Teaching & Learning credits program includes Switzerland (eligibility) and gives up to $100 per teaching staff and up to $50 per student (faculty page). But its FAQ says the credits are for students learning to use the cloud themselves and "are not available for course infrastructure" (About the program), and not every Cloud credit can be spent on the Gemini API (billing FAQ). Ask CloudEduGrants@google.com, the program's contact address, whether a course-wide assistant qualifies before counting on it.
• Gemini Academic Program: it gives Gemini API credits and higher rate limits, but for research projects (details).

[petrasvestartas]

@zw-g

Thank you, I wrote both to your provided email and applied for the academic google program.

Do Google NotebookLM accepts MCP servers? Or it is strictly limited to the general knowledge ?

[zw-g]

Not your own MCP server, as far as Google's docs go. NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook. Its chat can use the apps listed under Settings > Connected apps, but the help page gives no way to add an MCP server URL. The Gemini app does take one by URL, but only for users 18+ in the US (custom apps). Google's own Gemini Notebook MCP server works the other way round: an agent can create notebooks and add sources through it, and "Retrieving information from a notebook" is still on its roadmap.

It isn't general knowledge either. It answers from the sources in the notebook, with inline citations (overview), so you'd upload the course material instead of serving it over MCP:

• PDF, Markdown, txt, docx, pptx, Google Docs/Slides, web pages and public YouTube videos work as sources, up to 50 per notebook on the free plan and 500,000 words or 200 MB each (sources). .ipynb isn't on the list, so convert the notebooks first: jupyter nbconvert --to markdown *.ipynb.
• For 100 students, set Share to "Anyone with a link". Anyone signed in to a Google account can then ask it questions (public notebooks). Sharing by email from a personal account stops at 50 people (sharing).
• There's no per-question charge. Each student signs in with their own Google account and uses that account's free usage limits, which refresh every 5 hours up to a weekly cap (usage limits).

The catch: students chat on Gemini Notebook's own page, not in the terminal next to your Jupyter notebook.

[petrasvestartas]

Thanks. The problem is that in such a restricted way the only small percent of students in academia works. We do software development and it feels really restrictive to use only Gemini Notebook. Hmm...

Probably I do not understand something ...

[zw-g]

For software development the free option is Antigravity, Google's coding agent, with each student signed in to their own account:

• Gemini CLI itself has no free tier anymore. Free individual access moved to Antigravity CLI on June 18, 2026, as this repo's README says.
• Personal Google accounts can use Antigravity on the free plan, Switzerland is on its country list, and users must be 18 or older (FAQ). The free plan gives each account a weekly quota (plans), so nothing is billed to you. A school account run on Google Workspace only works after its admin enables Antigravity.
• Antigravity also takes your MCP server. Put its entry in the course folder as .agents/mcp_config.json and it applies to that workspace (MCP). A remote server goes in serverUrl and must use Streamable HTTP.
• In the Antigravity IDE, students open the .ipynb in a notebook editor, run cells on a local or remote kernel, and ask the agent in the side panel (Jupyter notebooks). That's close to your notebook-plus-terminal layout.

The catch is that students have to install Antigravity's own app, IDE or CLI. Using an Antigravity login from other software breaks its terms (FAQ), so the terminal in your web page can't run on the students' quota.

[petrasvestartas]

Good to know, so the setup:

• Vscode
• Installed Antigravity
• Connected MCP in Antigravity

Would be free for students?

[zw-g]

Yes, on Antigravity's free plan, as long as each student signs in with their own personal Google account:

• The official Google Antigravity extension for VS Code works with any Antigravity plan, including the free tier (prerequisites), and the free plan costs $0/month (pricing). The extension reads MCP servers from the same .agents/mcp_config.json in the course folder.
• Usage counts against the signed-in student's plan, not yours (IDE extensions). Your MCP server only serves the course material, so there's no per-question API bill on your side anymore, only the server's hosting if it runs remotely.
• The free plan includes Gemini 3.8 Flash and "a meaningful quota, refreshed weekly" (plans). Google doesn't publish the numbers. A student who uses up the week's quota waits for the refresh. Topping up with AI credits is only available on Pro and Ultra (overages).

Two things to tell the students: they must be 18 or older (FAQ), and they should install the extension published by Google. The Marketplace also lists unofficial "Antigravity" extensions, and using an Antigravity login through third-party software breaks its terms and can get the account suspended (FAQ).