Interactive PDF Creator. Make Your PDFs Clickable - Flipsnack
This tool lets you add interactive elements to PDF documents
The power of generative marketing: Can generative AI create superhuman visual marketing content?
This abstract of a marketing research paper explains how they compared AI-generated images and ads to human-created ads. The AI images were not just comparable, they were better than what people created. While this research is specific to marketing, I think it's relevant to images we use in training and elearning.
First, we prompt seven state-of-the-art generative text-to-image models (DALL-E 3, Midjourney v6, Firefly 2, Imagen 2, Imagine, Realistic Vision, and Stable Diffusion XL Turbo) to create 10,320 synthetic marketing images, using 2,400 real-world, human-made images as input. 254,400 human evaluations of these images show that AI-generated marketing imagery can surpass human-made images in quality, realism, and aesthetics. Second, we give identical creative briefings to commissioned human freelancers and the AI models, showing that the best synthetic images also excel in ad creativity, ad attitudes, and prompt following.
Christy's Checklist for Attracting and Acquiring Freelance Clients
IDLance posted a recap from my recent webinar with them with a checklist of key points from my session.
How to create a simple 2-page business plan
If you're a freelancers, you're often a one-person business. You don't need a really complicated business plan, but you do need some sort of plan. This is a list of questions to ask yourself as a freelancer to clarify what you do, who you do it for, and how you make money. I did this for myself a few years ago, and I'm probably due for a refresh of my business plan now.
Inspiring Examples of Storytelling in eLearning
Great examples of how different perspectives (1st, 2nd, and 3rd person) can shift the feel of storytelling. Jonathan Hill also describes Vonnegut's "Man in a Hole" model for stories where a character overcomes a problem. I think that simpler narrative structure is much more useful for storytelling in training than the more complex "Hero's Journey."
![How to Create a Client Avatar for Your Freelance Business [Guest Post]](https://rdl.ink/render/https%3A%2F%2Fanti-sell.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F08%2Fcreating-client-avatars-bryn-bonino-avatar.png?width=350&height=&ar=&mode=&dpr=2){kind=avatar}
How to Create a Client Avatar for Your Freelance Business [Guest Post]
Questions to consider when creating a client avatar for your business, or a persona of your ideal client. Understanding your target audience makes it easier to articulate your value proposition and to market for their needs.
When AI and Disability Rights Collide: A New Frontier in Workplace Accommodation 🤖♿
This article is about accessibility and AI tools in the workplace, but it's good to keep in mind as we experiment with and evaluate AI tools for training purposes too.
"5 Ways AI Tools Create New Barriers
1️⃣ Inaccessible interfaces – Not compatible with screen readers or voice recognition software.
2️⃣ Rigid productivity metrics – Penalize neurodiverse work patterns.
3️⃣ Communication analysis – Misreads communication styles tied to certain disabilities.
4️⃣ Cognitive assumptions – Built around neurotypical thinking.
5️⃣ Sensory requirements – Require inputs (voice/vision) not accessible to all. "
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.
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.
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.
LanguaTalk: learn languages with 5-star tutors & AI (Langua) • LanguaTalk
AI-powered audio chats for practicing speaking as you learn a language. The system has built in corrections and tips to help you progress. This use of AI makes a ton of sense to me. A human tutor would still be better, but this would be great for practice on your own.
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.
The Accessibility Icon Collection - The Noun Project Blog
25 public domain icons about accessibility, including icons for accessibility testing, inclusive design, neurodiversity, screen reader, and transcription.
How to Master Composition in MidJourney: Camera Angles, Poses, and Optical Tricks
Expanding your language to describe images helps you prompt better in AI image generation tools like Midjourney.
Cheat Sheets For Writing Body Language
Describing body language is useful both for writing scenarios and for writing prompts for image generation tools.
New in Storyline 360: Course Cover Photos | Articulate - Community
Directions to change the cover image in a Storyline file. Use the first slide or other options to avoid the black box as your thumbnail image.
Neohaven Noodles
Neohaven Noodles is a business simulator built in Twine with a highly customized interface.
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.
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.
Create Consistent Characters within ComfyUI
ComfyUI is an AI tool for creating images, videos, and animations. This page talks about the workflow for creating consistent characters for stories.
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.
Episode 70: Community Hour + InGrasp Demo
Recording of Bryan Jones demonstrating the new InGrasp tool for creating custom character images for scenarios for the ONILP group.
Midjourney Prompts, SREF Codes Library and Examples
Library of Midjourney sref (style) codes. Look for inspiration or copy existing sref codes to generate your own images in that style.
Midjourney --sref codes
A library of sref (style reference) codes for Midjourney. Find a style you like and use it in your prompt to create images in a similar style.
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.
How REAL-WORLD CONTEXT changes the game
In this video, Marie-Jo Leroux compares two examples of games for training that address the same high level objective but with different context and constraints. The real-world context affects the game goals and mechanics.
Storyline 360: How to Embed Published Content in a Web Page - Articulate Support
iFrame code for embedding Storyline on a website
35 Midjourney Art Styles to Spark Your Creativity in 2024
Ideas for styles of art to include in your prompts for Midjourney or other AI image generation
2025 Learning and Development Work and Salary Survey - Blue Eskimo
Salary survey with additional questions about satisfaction and outlook. The respondents for this survey are mostly in the UK, and I appreciate having a different source to point to since most of my other sources are USA-focused.
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.