Cassidy | The AI Workspace for your team
Want to use LLMs like ChatGPT but need a more secure option? Cassidy is designed for working securely within organizations
2024
Consistent Character AI
A tool for creating character images with the ability to edit expressions, poses, head position, and more. Currently in beta. No free plan, but this has a lot more options than most similar tools.
I tried every email marketing tool — these are the best (2024)
Reviews of email marketing tools, narrowed down to MailerLite and Brevo. Well-organized explanation of the process of narrowing down the list and what features were important.
Free AI photo editor - Edit images online with AI | Freepik
Freepik's online image editor includes some non AI-features like cropping and color adjustments plus some AI features like generating variations and AI backgrounds. Limited generations and downloads on the free plan.
Fugatto AI Audio Generator - Create Unique Sounds and Music with AI
This tool isn't available yet, but it promises the ability to generate sound effects and other audio based on text prompts. One especially interesting feature for my work is the ability to change the emotion for an existing audio sample. Plenty of AI voice over tools can do neutral narration well now, but they're all limited for emotional variability. This could be an improvement.
Accessible typography
Breaking down myths related to typography and accessibility. One space after a period improves accessibility.
Alt Text: What to Write
How do you write good alt text? What images need alt text? This article from the NN group answers both questions. I learned something new about adding periods to the end of alt text.
End alt text with a period, even if it isn’t a full sentence. The period ensures that the screen reader pauses after reading the alt text.
Summary: Images are decorative, functional, or informative. Skip alt text for decorative. Describe the action for functional. Convey the message for informative.
SCORMBridge: Stream SCORM Content Securely and Seamlessly
This is a tool for distributing SCORM files without providing the actual full file, useful for licensing content to clients. This can also be used to update a single published source file and have the changes propagate through multiple LMSs for different sites.
AI Consistent Character Creator: Poses, Faces & Headshots
Another character image generator
ViddyScribe
AI-generated audio descriptions for videos. This is a way to improve accessibility and make videos more available to blind and low-vision users. Audio descriptions are time-consuming to create manually, which means most orgs skip them. This could potentially be a way to improve accessibility quickly and cheaply.
Shifting Focus from Learning to Performance
Tom McDowall shares an overview of Thomas Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model as a way to think beyond training and look at other interventions that support improved performance
BEM helps us shift our focus from learning to performance. Instead of just making sure people know stuff, we ensure they can actually do stuff.
BEM breaks down performance into six key factors. These are split into two categories: environmental supports and individual attributes or behavioural repertory. By looking at these factors, we can figure out what’s holding performance back and how to fix it.
Is XCL an alternative to the LMS? | Mark Berthelemy Consulting
Mark Berthelemy reviews Build Capable's new XCL tool. This is designed as a way to track training completion and other data without using an LMS, just a link to the course or resource. XCL is in beta right now, so some of the issues noted may get solved later.
MagicQuill
MagicQuill is an online image editing tool focused on AI inpainting of existing images. Upload and image and draw the shape of what you want to add or change in the image. The tool guesses what you want and generates a text prompt for you. If it guesses right, you can run it and generate the edited image. If it guesses wrong, you can tweak the prompt. Open source tool with a CC license; you can get the source code and run it on your own server if you want.
Leonardo: Color tools for design systems
Tool for generating and analyzing color schemes. This site includes a tool for creating color scales for data visualization so that all colors in a range have sufficient contrast. That's different from the typical color scheme requirements, so it requires a special tool.
eLearning Makeovers
Bianca Woods's slides, tips, and resources from her DevLearn session "Practical eLearning Makeovers for Everyone"
Rate My Site: Rate your site in seconds – get instant feedback.
AI-generated feedback on website design. Enter a URL and get a score and feedback on the visual design, layout and clarity, and content. The site provides recommendations for improvements as well. As with all things AI, the recommendations should be viewed with some skepticism, but I found it overall reasonably accurate for the few sites I tested.
Howard Lewis, Ph.D., CPT on LinkedIn: Learning Visual Design - Learner Perspective
Summary of research comparing learner perceptions for graphic (illustrated) versus photorealistic characters. Different image styles may be better for different audiences and goals.
User Inyerface - A worst-practice UI experiment
How fast can you navigate through deliberately terrible UI? It took me over 10 minutes (I got stuck on the validation.) A fun way to think about errors in user interface.
Creating next-generation training: 4 expert insights into immersive, scenario-based learning | We Are Learning
Recording of my webinar on scenario-based learning with Stine Snekkenes of We Are Learning
A Quick Guide to Using Tweego
One problem with Twine is that it can start to lag when your story gets too big (often around 300 passages). For larger games, it may be better to break it up into multiple smaller files. This guide explains how to use Tweego to combine multiple HTML files created in Twine into a single file.
A Modern Developer's Workflow For Twine
A developer shares his workflow for working with Twine. Instead of writing in Twine's visual editor, he writes in a text editor and uses VSCode. For larger games (~300+ passages), Twine's visual editor doesn't scale as well. This workflow also includes some information about how he handles version control.
If you give FLUX1.1 a prompt like "IMG_1018.CR2" you get back images that are so very hard to tell they're AI.
An odd tip from Twitter/X--use a file name with an extension for raw images as part of the prompt to generate realistic looking photos. I assume this is somehow prompting the model to look for those raw photos, but I wouldn't have thought of trying this.
Game On: 6 tips for choice design in branching scenarios - Issuu
Miranda Verswijvelen's article for Dirtyword magazine on choice design in branching scenarios. Lots of tips here based on designing game narratives and interactive fiction. I disagree with her point about not starting with the ideal path for writing (although she acknowledges that may make sense for beginners when you're learning how to write scenarios). For game design, I think she's right. For training design, there is typically an ideal path we want people to take. Good to read some thoughtful criticism though, and I love Miranda's work.
Excellent choice design will increase the engagement of your learners in the story, intrigue them about consequences and entice them to replay to check out other paths.
Choices in branching scenarios consist of three closely interconnected parts:Framing: the information the learner uses to make the choiceOptions: the possible choicesOutcomes: what happens due to choosing one of the options.
Choices can offer diverse acceptable ways to achieve the same goal, giving learners opportunity to personalise the experience.
An extra path can also replace boring “try again” situations: the consequence shows your choice was not ideal, but you simply continue and get another chance further in the story to make a better informed, similar choice.
Clear and confined parameters help to make the choice feel integral to the context, while still leaving room for personal expression and emotional connection.
One of my favourite narrative designers, Jon Ingold from Inkle Studios, introduced the accept – reject – deflect model. For example, in a conversational choice where someone asks you a question, this could mean the following:Accept: continue the current conversation, e.g. simply answer the questionReject: react negatively or refuse to answer. Deflect: change the topic, e.g. ignore, bounce a question back or refocus attention
BreezeDoc | Document signing is a breeze.
This is an alternative to DocuSign that looks like a good option for freelancers and small businesses. The free plan is limited to 2 documents per month, but the lifetime licenses are pretty cheap to increase that number.
Free Image Vectorization
Convert PNG files to SVG. Useful for converting AI-generated PNG illustrations to SVGs for editing. Works best with flat illustrations without much detail.
Taxonomy of Narrative Choices by Clara F-V
An interactive game in Twine showing some types of choices in interactive stories
🤖 Generative AI Resources for All! 🧠
James Finder collected resources for learning about generative AI, including cheat sheets, newsletters, YouTube channels, and courses
The politeness effect: Pedagogical agents and learning outcomes
Using polite language in elearning improves learning outcomes.
The polite version yielded better learning outcomes, and the effect was amplified in learners who expressed a preference for indirect feedback, who had less computer experience, and who lacked engineering backgrounds. These results confirm the hypothesis that learners tend to respond to pedagogical agents as social actors, and suggest that research should focus less on the media in which agents are realized, and place more emphasis on the agent's social intelligence.
Disabled And Here: free stock images (with attribution)
Free stock images of people with disabilities, emphasizing people of color. While AI images are already usable for many purposes, I find that images of people with disabilities are still hard to generate. Images of actual disabled people are still useful. These are mostly photos, plus a few illustrations.
StoryArtAI - AI Kid Stories Art Generator
StoryArtAI is an AI image generator designed specifically for creating illustrations for children's books. This probably isn't the most useful tool for workplace training or adult learners, but it might be useful for K12 educators. The tool includes support for creating consistent characters and detailed prompting tips.