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A little Friday fun. Thanks, Tracy Parish and Chad Udell.
A little Friday fun. Thanks, Tracy Parish and Chad Udell.
A structured prompt inspired by the first published Choose Your Own Adventure Book, The Cave of Time. Copy and paste into an LLM like Claude or ChatGPT and play an interactive version of a CYOA story.
4/8/25
·linkedin.com·
A little Friday fun. Thanks, Tracy Parish and Chad Udell.
OpenAI.fm
OpenAI.fm

Test out OpenAI's voices, available through their API. The "vibe" option lets you describe the tone, voice, and delivery. These voices do better at emotions than many of the other AI voices.

The cost is lower than ElevenLabs, but you need to use the API for actual production. I assume they'll create a web interface for use at some point in the future. OpenAI is vague about the data used to train its voices, which I assume means they didn't pay to license voice actors like ElevenLabs does.

4/8/25#AI#audio#text-to-speech
·openai.fm·
OpenAI.fm
Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors - Copyright Overview by Rich Stim - Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center
Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors - Copyright Overview by Rich Stim - Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center
As intellectual property is one of the topics to discuss related to AI, the question of fair use has become more prominent. This is a good overview of the four factors to determine if something is fair use or not.
The four factors judges consider are: the purpose and character of your use the nature of the copyrighted work the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and the effect of the use upon the potential market.
4/8/25#copyright#fairuse
·fairuse.stanford.edu·
Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors - Copyright Overview by Rich Stim - Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center
illustration.app - AI Vector Illustration Generator
illustration.app - AI Vector Illustration Generator
I haven't tested it out yet, but this looks like another viable option for creating vector illustrations in consistent styles. One feature I haven't seen elsewhere is the color palette generator. Give it a word like desert, nature, or neon, and it will generate a color palette that you can use in your images. You can edit and recolor images or make the background transparent directly in this tool.
4/8/25#imagegeneration#AI#images
·illustration.app·
illustration.app - AI Vector Illustration Generator
Teamed Career Resources Board
Teamed Career Resources Board
Teamed has collected a number of resources for helping instructional designers and others in related roles develop their careers. This includes training, degree programs, resources, coaching, credentials, and more.
3/11/25#instructionaldesign#career
·teamedforlearning.com·
Teamed Career Resources Board
Beyond Cutouts - Issuu
Beyond Cutouts - Issuu
Miranda Verswijvelen shares tips for creating and writing believable characters in interactive stories for learning.
Do not confuse traits with facts. Ages, shoe sizes and job titles do not make an interesting character. Are they impulsive or thoughtful, trusting or suspicious, assertive or passive?
Elements in backstory and traits that really matter for the story need to be released slowly: through flashbacks, dialogue, or actions. This gradual discovery keeps learners intrigued and invested.
3/11/25#storytelling#branchingscenarios#scenario#writing
·issuu.com·
Beyond Cutouts - Issuu
Broadcast and Media Volume 30, Volume 1 (Ultra-realistic media created by biomorphic AI) (2025-01-30)
Broadcast and Media Volume 30, Volume 1 (Ultra-realistic media created by biomorphic AI) (2025-01-30)
This page is in Korean, but you can use Google Translate to read the page. I bookmarked it for the article by Oh Jewook titled "AI-based virtual human-related technology and commercialization." The author used one of my collections of Midjourney images as an example of consistent character images (with citation and permission, of course). Very cool to see my work cited in such a different setting! I never know when I publish a blog post where it might end up being useful to someone else.
3/11/25#AI#imagegeneration
·kibme.org·
Broadcast and Media Volume 30, Volume 1 (Ultra-realistic media created by biomorphic AI) (2025-01-30)
LABS.GOOGLE
LABS.GOOGLE
Google Labs has an "Experiments" page with a collection of AI tools for a variety of purposes. These are very explicitly experimental and probably not ready for production environments. I also expect many of them will disappear later (this is Google, after all--look at their track record). Still, this looks like a fun site to spend some time exploring what tools can do right now.
2/11/25#AI#tools
·labs.google·
LABS.GOOGLE
StoryMate
StoryMate
AI-supported tool for creating interactive fiction. Add passages and choices and use the embedded AI tool to draft the story. This is a wrapper for ChatGPT with custom prompts plus an interface for building the branching structure and buttons connecting passages. The interface for the branching structure looks like Twine, so I wonder if it just is designed to look similar or if Twine is part of the code underneath. This would be easier to learn for beginners than Twine though, so even if you didn't want to use AI, you could create a branching scenario in this tool. I wasn't super impressed with the AI results in my quick tests, but maybe it will improve with time and better prompts.
2/11/25#scenario#branching#interactivefiction
·storymate.dev·
StoryMate
Accessibility personas
Accessibility personas
This site from the UK government includes a series of personas of people with different access needs and required supports. In addition to the personas are simulations where you try to complete tasks on websites as these people with disabilities experience them. You can see how poor design affects their ability to complete tasks, as well as see an improved design that makes it easier for users with disabilities to use websites. Even though this is more about general web content, a lot of this applies to elearning as well.
1/21/25#accessibility#diversity#web design
·personas-prototype.herokuapp.com·
Accessibility personas
How People Read Online: New and Old Findings
How People Read Online: New and Old Findings
Research from the NN Group on how people read online. Eye tracking patterns, how people scan content, recommendations. Overall, their findings haven't changed in 20+ years: it's critical to make online text easy to scan and divided into chunks with clear headings and hierarchy.
1/21/25#usability#writing#webdesign
·nngroup.com·
How People Read Online: New and Old Findings
Monetise your expertise - Graphy
Monetise your expertise - Graphy
Graphy is an online course builder for experts to build and sell courses. It's one of the cheaper options available. I've heard from another ID that you can include SCORM content, although I don't see that in their documentation. I also see some negative reviews related to poor customer support for problems. Still, for some clients who want something much cheaper than Thinkific or Kajabi, this might be an option.
1/21/25#lms
·graphy.com·
Monetise your expertise - Graphy
An alt Decision Tree
An alt Decision Tree
A more detailed decision tree for determining whether an image needs alt text and what that alt text should contain
1/21/25
·w3.org·
An alt Decision Tree
Save Data to Google Sheets from Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate eLearning Courses
Save Data to Google Sheets from Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate eLearning Courses
This is a Google Sheets eLearning Widget for basic tracking outside of an LMS. If I had stronger Javascript skills, I could probably figure this out myself. However, paying for someone who has already written the code will save me time, effort, and aggravation. This looks like a promising option for one of my current clients.
1/21/25
·cluelabs.com·
Save Data to Google Sheets from Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate eLearning Courses