As I read online, I bookmark resources I find interesting and useful. I share these links about once a month here on my blog. This post includes links related to AI image generation, free tools, accessibility, working with AI, assessment, feedback, and conferences.
AI Image Generation
AI Art Generator: Free AI Image Generator & Editor | OpenArt
Generate consistent character images in multiple scenes starting from a single image. You can also use image to video tools.This integrates with other tools and gives you the option to train your own AI model with your style for illustrations. The free plan is limited, but there are paid plans at different levels.
Say What You See – Google Arts & Culture
Learn how to write better prompts for images with this tool. Describe what you see in an image and see how close your generated image is to the original. This tool uses AI to analyze your results and how accurate you were.
Midjourney’s Image Editor Update: NEW Layers, Smart Selection, and More
Directions on how to use the layers and Smart Selection features in Midjourney for more editing control. This gives you more options to keep the parts of an image that you want but to regenerate or edit variations. You can also assemble scenes with layers.
FLORA + Gemini – Multi-Character Scenes
Rory Flynn (@Ror_Fly) on X shares a basic workflow for generating character images in Midjourney and using Flora and Gemini to create scenes with characters interacting. The thread shows a sample video with Runway as well.
FLORA
Combine AI text, image, and video generation tools together for more complex workflows. I haven’t tested this tool yet, but it might be worth using the free plan to experiment and see what’s possible.
Reflections and research on AI images
AI-Generated Images: Missed Opportunities and Moral Shrugs
Tom McDowell reflects on how much of our current AI image generation is very derivative and replicates specific artists. I agree with a lot of this. We could use these tools to create brand new and useful images, but there’s a lot of use right now that feels problematic.
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.
Free Tools
Note the additional free tools under the “AI Image Generation” and “Accessibility” headings as well.
Free Tools: Who Is Using What – And Why : Publications Library
Jane Bozarth’s latest ebook includes a collection of free tools used by people in L&D plus quotes about how they’re used. This is a great resource for anyone with limited budgets (and let’s face it, most of us have limited budgets at least some of the time).
Working with AI
The Human-AI Task Scale | Josh Cavalier
Josh Cavalier shared his Human-AI Task Scale showing a continuum of how humans and AI can work together. This makes so much more sense to me than a simple binary of “do it all yourself” or “AI does everything.” This reflects much more range and shows opportunities for different kinds of tasks and work.
How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025
How do people use generative AI? I was surprised at how much of the use is for interactions like therapy and personal interaction. “Personal and professional support” was the top broad category in this research, which also includes tasks like organizing your life, resolving disputes, building lists, etc. “Content Creation and Editing” was second, followed by “Learning and Education.” The popularity of learning on the list was also an interesting finding.
“Personal and Professional Support” is now the largest theme by far, stealing most of its new ground from “Technical Assistance & Troubleshooting.”
Accessibility
Accessible Color Palette Generator | WCAG Compliant
A free tool for generating color palettes that meet WCAG AA contrast standards for normal text with either white or black text (and it notes which color text to use).
Free Closed Caption Converter
Convert files between closed captions and transcript formats: SRT, VTT, TXT, DOCX. While most LLMs can also do this reformatting, this tool is a secure option for those who can’t use LLMs in their work.
Assessment and Feedback
A question of skill
My article for TD Magazine on one-question mini scenarios for assessment. This includes multiple examples of scenario-based questions and explains a process for converting traditional multiple-choice questions into scenarios.
Delayed and Immediate Feedback in the Classroom: The Results Aren’t What Students Think!
Megan Sumeracki summarizes research on delayed and immediate feedback on homework assignments. The “immediate” condition here means “immediately after the due date” rather than “immediately after completing the work.” Students who received delayed feedback did about 1 grade level better on the exams. However, they felt that the delay either didn’t help them or hurt their learning. Student perception of what helped them most didn’t align with what actually worked.
Logically if we think about feedback as correcting errors, then it makes sense that we would want pretty immediate feedback. But if we think about feedback as another presentation of the information, then a space ought to improve learning.
Timing’s not everything: Immediate and delayed feedback are equally beneficial for performance in formative multiple‐choice testing
Research showing that changing the timing of feedback did not have a significant effect. The conditions of this study are very different from the conditions in most corporate training and specifically in branching scenarios. However, I think it’s important to look at both the research that supports my views and the research that contradicts it.
Indeed, there is evidence indicating that feedback delivered immediately after an item may optimise error correction (at least in some settings),43 whereas delayed feedback may enhance retention and transfer for correctly answered questions by providing an appropriately spaced second learning opportunity.44 Again, findings are mixed, and others have found delayed feedback to augment learning equally for both correctly and incorrectly answered questions.41 Interestingly, there may also be a greater advantage to delayed feedback when an initial question is more difficult
Contrary to our hypotheses, the feedback timing effect was non-significant—there was no discernible difference between feedback delivered immediately versus delayed feedback.
Conferences
Conferences — Duets Learning
Hadiya Nurridin has collected a list of large and small conferences related to workplace training and elearning. She also shares resources for learning how to write better proposals and become known for speaking on a particular topic.
Additional curated resources
Check out my complete library of links or my previous bookmarks posts.
