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Top AI Tools for Business and Work (Updated 2023)
A curated list of AI tools for productivity and work from The Neuron. The tools are sorted into categories, with brief reviews of each tool.
Blog posts
AI Tools Directory
A directory of AI tools with search capability and categorization. This looks like a good place to look through what options are available and to find more specific tools beyond the ones that have all the buzz.
StudioShot | Premium headshots from anywhere
Another tool for creating headshots from existing photos. The person who shared it said she got 80 images for $30...but only about 10 of them were usable. They aren't probably good enough for hero images on a website, but they might be good enough for social media.
Secta Labs - Reinventing photography
This service turns other photos into more professional headshots. From discussion in a group where people have used these services, your quality of original images really matters. Some of the results end up with bad uncanny valley problems, weird jewelry and hair, etc.
Role-Play Training – Insights From Clark Aldrich
A lengthy article from Clark Aldrich on how to create Short Sims or branching role-play training. One of the most useful things in this article is the section "7 steps to create an effective role-play," where he breaks down his process for creating branching scenarios with time estimates for each section. While some of this is specific to iSpring, the process is similar to what I teach in my branching scenario course.
Perhaps the perfect way to learn is by doing something worthwhile that lines up with the real world, and very judiciously receiving some friendly guidance when we get stuck.
If you’re running a flight simulator and want your pilots to learn how to land an airplane in a snowstorm, Short Sims can only have introductory benefits. They can teach you some of the strategies.
With practice, you should be able to create an entire role-play in about 40 hours over two weeks. If you are going over that, you’re probably overthinking or over-executing it. Remember that you need to keep it simple.
ScreenToGif - Record your screen, edit and save as a gif, video or other formats
Free tool for creating screencasts as gif or other files. If you need a very quick demo of how to do something, this looks like a good option.
ID-Assist
A Google Doc add-on for using AI and NLP to help with instructional design tasks. This is an interesting concept, and I can see the value for things like summaries or course descriptions based on content provided. However, even their provided example has significant problems (weak objectives, low-level multiple choice questions, a truly terrible scenario). It might be worth playing with it to see where it can be useful, like speeding up the process of first drafts or generating ideas.
OneUp: Schedule your social media posts
Scheduling tool for social media posts with both free and paid plans
Stark: The suite of integrated accessibility tools
Plugins for checking for accessibility. Check for color contrast, alt text, typography and more. The tools also include a vision simulator so you can see how a site will look to people with color blindness. h/t Tracy Parish
Upload and share screenshots and images - print screen online | Snipboard.io
A free site for sharing screenshots without needing separate software. This is great for sharing on sites where you can't upload an image and need to share a link to an image instead. Just grab a screenshot and paste it in this website to generate a link to the image.
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2022 – Results of the 16th Annual Survey
Jane Hart's report on the top 100 tools for learning in her annual survey. Tools are categorized based on whether they are mostly used for personal learning, workplace learning, and education (although there's plenty of overlap and exceptions in those categories).
Viral Post Generator
An AI took for writing a viral LinkedIn post--the kind with one sentence per paragraph and some vaguely inspirational advice that the LinkedIn algorithm loves. Use the slider to control the "cringe level" of the text. While this is good just for a funny break in your day, I could see using this as an Easter Egg in a scenario or a mockup in an elearning course.
40+ Best Affinity Publisher Templates & Assets 2022 (Free & Premium) | Design Shack
Templates for Affinity Publisher, including brochures, project proposals, and ebooks.
Accessible color palette builder
While there are lots of tools for creating color palettes, this is the first one I have seen that so clearly notes the accessibility of different combinations. Even if you create the palette using another tool, you could check it with this free tool to note which colors have sufficient contrast when used together.
Tiiny Host – The Easiest Way To Host Your E-Learning Course
Need a quick way to share an elearning course? This looks like a very simple way to do so, much simpler than setting up an Amazon S3 account. This might work as an option for students in my branching scenario course to host their scenarios. However, on a free account, the uploaded content is deleted after 7 days--this is meant for quick reviews of sites, not for long-term hosting. You can do a paid account, but there are probably better options for the cost at that point.
Hack: How to Add Custom Characters to Scenario Blocks - Overview
While the Rise scenario block doesn't have a way to add your own customer characters, you can use this trick from Tom Kuhlmann. It's a bit of a kludge, but you can swap out the images in the published file. The image file names aren't obvious, but Tom shows how he uses PPT to keep track of which label goes with each image.
Fancy Font Generator
Generate text with different fonts to paste in other places like LinkedIn. This is one way to make a large block of text easier to read by adding headings and dividers, like in your About Me section on LinkedIn
Raindrop.io — All-in-one bookmark manager
Bookmark manager that takes screenshots and allows highlights like Diigo. Although I have relied on Diigo for a long time for saving and tagging bookmarks, the site hasn't been actively developed in several years. This might be a viable alternative.
Will training help? Ask the flowchart from Cathy Moore
Cathy Moore has created a new interactive online version of her flowchart to decide if a problem is best addressed through a job aid, better tools, training, or something else.
GuidedTrack – Home
A no code tool for building web apps and interactive surveys. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like you could use this for building branching scenarios. In the info for educators, it says you can make CYOA lessons that adapt content and grade automatically. You can start with a free plan to try it out.
GitHub - ChapelR/tw-analytics: Quickly add Google analytics to Twine games (and other web apps) from the command line.
This hasn't been updated in 2 years, but it's a tool for adding Google Analytics tracking to Twine games. While getting xAPI to work with Twine is still probably the ideal option for most learning applications, analytics data would provide a lot of useful info too.
Slido - Audience Interaction Made Easy
Tool for creating live polls, Q&A etc. during meetings. The free account would be enough for many events. h/t Matt Pierce (who used it in a recent session)
Share a secret - One Time
Need to securely send a password or other sensitive information? This site lets you create a secret link that can only be used once, and then disappears.
Formfacade - Customize Google Forms UI
Use Google Forms but customize the look and feel so it's more modern, plus additional features. This is a paid tool, but it's cheaper than Typeform for a similar style.
Video Caption Generator - Automatic Captions - VEED.IO
Automatically generate captions for videos for free
Lesson plans – Teaching with Twine
This post includes lesson plans for teaching students how to use Twine, either in a single 50-minute session or in two days with extra time for practicing in the tool. These plans are a few years old, so a few details have changed, but the overall structure makes sense.
Using Twine for Classroom Engagement - ACTion
This is a summary of a project at the University of Toronto using Twine to create an educational game, plus an overview of Twine.
Although Twine is a tool for creating “games”, this project goes beyond games and gamification to think creatively about how the functions of Twine can be used to create activities that allow students to more directly engage with learning content in a hands-on experiential format that may not be possible in a traditional classroom learning space.
Knight Lab
Free tools for creating VR stories, timelines, annotated maps and charts, image comparisons, and more. These are open source tools and may be a little clunky, but potentially worth exploring for short experiences. They're design more for journalists and media companies than training, but there's overlap in explainer journalism and elearning.
Harlowe Audio Library
Free tool for managing audio files with Twine and Harlowe
4 Online Tools for Estimating Learning Development Time and Price | Scissortail Creative Services, LLC
Kayleen Holt compares 4 different calculators for estimating time and cost for elearning development