VISIWIG | Visuals for busy designers
Online tool for creating quick patterns, textures, and icons. The images created with Visiwig are free for personal and commercial use.
Blog posts
VEED
This browser-based video editing tool is aimed at marketers for creating quick social media videos. They have a free account level which includes a watermark. This might be helpful to students or others looking for a way to create a quick sample for their portfolio without spending money.
Share everything you know - Chris Lema
Chris Lema writes about the benefits of blogging and sharing your knowledge generously. While this isn't explicitly about training or learning, it is a form of working out loud or showing your work. And while this is about blogging, the same concepts apply to any other method of sharing: videos, podcasts, etc.
Articulate Storyline to Create a Customized PDF on the Fly? – Rabbitoreg (Zsolt Olah)
How to create a PDF from Storyline variables using the PDFMake Javascript library
Storyline 360 - Generating a PDF Certificate using JavaScript - Articulate Storyline Discussions - E-Learning Heroes
Directions and sample file for creating a PDF certificate
REQ: Javascript Date Variable Help. - Articulate Storyline Discussions - E-Learning Heroes
Notes on Javascript date formatting and how to add 365 days to a date (e.g., for an expiration date on a training certificate)
Pulling first name from LMS - Articulate Storyline Discussions - E-Learning Heroes
Javascript snippets for pulling names from the LMS so they can be used in a Storyline module
How To Create A Printable Certificate Of Completion In Articulate Storyline
Video tutorial plus transcript and files for creating a printable certificate of completion in Storyline
Virtual Holiday Backgrounds | 21 best free background, holiday, light and christmas photos on Unsplash
Free backgrounds from Unsplash for Zoom or other virtual meetings
You're Hearing Voices: Episode 28 - Anu Gopu (e-Learning and Instructional Design)
Podcast interview by voice over artist Dan Hankiewicz with guest ID Anu Gopu. Anu talks about her journey into instructional design and how to condense info from wordy SMEs who want to include everything. Anu also talks about who she learns from in the field (including me).
CALC / Contract-Awarded Labor Category
See how much the GSA has paid in past awarded contracts for the US federal government. You can use the filters to see hourly rate comparisons by education, experience, role, keywords, etc. You can also export the data in CSV for further analysis.
How to Find Your Next 20 Clients Online in 63 Days
Specific tactics for finding new clients as a freelancer or consultant. This is broken into three phases: an initial phase to get your first 5 clients and learn what you like the best, a second phase of defining your ideal client, and a third phase of scaling by partnering with others and teaching new audiences. eLearning and instructional design freelancers may not even need the third phase (which includes a lot of building a large audience), but I like the targeted alternatives to cold emails here.
<p>If you don’t know who your ideal client is, answer these three questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Who is doing work you respect?</li>
<li>Who would be fun to work with?</li>
<li>Who could give you additional exposure if you worked for them?</li></ol>
3 Best Laptops for Instructional Design – 7 Things to Know
Scott Winstead's recommendations for laptops for instructional designers. The Acer Aspire is #3 on his list. That's what my last 2 laptops have been, and both have lasted 5 years. I probably will switch brands for my next laptop, but they have been solid options for me in the past (although I did not have lower end options like Scott reviews).
Best Laptops for Instructional Designers in 2020
Devlin Peck walks through the important factors for picking a laptop for instructional design and elearning professionals. His top 3 recommendations are a Dell XPS 15, MacBook Pro, or Surface Pro, but he lists the recommended specs so you can find other brands that meet the requirements.
Interleaving: How Mixed Practice Can Boost Your Learning – Effectiviology
A non-technical explanation of interleaving, with an overview of the research and theory supporting it and ideas on how to implement it to improve learning.
Interactive Video Generator
Create JSON files for interactive video with questions at cue points. These interactions can be reported with xAPI
LearningDojo | Learning Development Training
Video xAPI trackers and wrappers. Free templates from Jeff Batt at Learning Dojo
6 PowerPoint productivity boosters from BrightSlide | BrightCarbon
The free BrightSlide tool from BrightCarbon offers a number of useful features for working in PowerPoint
A Simple Pricing Strategy for Online Courses
This article outlines a process for setting a price for selling online courses, and then evaluating and adjusting based on the data.
AnswerThePublic
Answer the Public describes itself as a "Search listening tool for market, customer & content research." It's a way to see what search terms people enter about a particular topic or brand. If you're wondering what questions people have about a subject, this would give you data about what they search for online. You can only do one search per day for free; otherwise it's $99/month for unlimited searches (which only makes sense if you're doing a LOT of market research).
Watch "Creating a Branching Scenario Quiz with Camtasia" on YouTube
Matt Pierce shows how to create an interactive video with custom feedback. Matt notes this is challenging to troubleshoot and needs to be planned in advance, but this is an interesting possibility.
19 Great Resources for Diverse Stock Photos - DreamHost
I have shared some of these sites before, but several of these resources for diverse stock photos are new to me. Some of these are collections within larger stock sites or agencies that contribute to stock sites.
Branching Scenarios: Yes, No, Maybe? – The H5P PB Kitchen
This is another post about Alan Levine's branching scenario built in H5P and Pressbooks. At the bottom of the post, Alan provides links to several other examples of branching scenarios built in H5P.
An H5P Branching Scenario That Might Break the Boat – CogDogBlog
Alan Levine built this very complex branching scenario in H5P and Pressbooks. This includes some scenario images and descriptions, plus a separate tracker where you have to fill out forms with info and keep track of finances and other notes. Alan's blog post explains how he built the random events (which were originally a card draw in the physical version).
Avatar Maker - Create Your Own Avatar Online
Free tool for creating avatars. I don't see licensing info, so it appears to be free to use. This only creates head shots, and the choices are limited. The SVG version of the download has editable layers, so you potentially could edit it for other expressions.
Rewordify.com | Understand what you read
Paste difficult to understand text into the yellow text box, and this website will give you a simplified version. While this is intended for people learning English vocabulary (or teachers helping students), it might be helpful as an instructional designer. It doesn't do anything for absurdly long sentences (in fact, sometimes the simplified version is longer), but you could use this to take a first pass edit on complex SME language.
Descript | Create podcasts, videos, and transcripts
This tool is geared mostly for podcast producers, but it might have some applications for elearning. When you record audio, it generates a transcript. If you want to edit out some text, you can edit it via the transcript rather than editing the wave forms.
The other interesting feature is "Overdub," which uses an AI generated synthetic voice based on the real voice to fill in changes. If you need to make minor edits in wording, you can use the synthetic voice rather than re-recording the sentence and replacing the audio. You can certainly hear the difference, even in their demo, but i bet for quick edits it would be good enough.
Arist: the text message learning platform
Create courses via text message
Klixel8
Company that creates "High-Res eLearning": virtual environments with very high resolution photos that you can zoom in and explore. Click hot spots to move around or select objects. You can add multiple choice questions or link to other resources and activities. Currently all custom development, but this is good inspiration for creating similar projects in other tools (maybe without the high res zooming).
How to Write Natural Dialogue in 11 Steps, With Examples!
Tips for writing dialogue, with examples from novels
And one of the best ways to cut out that boring fluff is to enter the conversation as late as possible.
When writing dialogue, it’s also good to bounce quickly back and forth between speakers, like a tennis match.