Multimedia Learning, GenAI: ID Links 5/12/26

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 Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning, water use for generative AI, AI images and voices, and automating repetitive design tasks.

Principles of Multimedia Learning

Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning – Educational Technology

This article summarizes Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning with a few tips for instructional design aligned with each principle.

Personalization Principle – Using a conversational style in multimedia content makes learning more effective than a formal tone.

Use a relaxed tone with contractions.Speak directly to the audience using “I,” “you,” “we,” and similar words. —Dr. Serhat Kurt

Style of language Formal Versus Conversational

This guide provides a summary of the personalization principle with a focus on the writing or speaking style. A polite, conversational style is more effective for learning in general (with some exceptions noted). I appreciate the examples in this guide so you can compare the difference between formal and conversational style.

Water use for generative AI

How Much Water Does AI Use? An Expert Analysis of the Real Footprint.

The water use for AI data centers isn’t as big of a problem as it’s often made out to be. Don’t let the exaggerated claims about water use distract you from larger issues (including energy use, which is a real environmental consideration). We can push for improved efficiency and make choices about when and how we use AI to reduce that energy use

For 11 weeks, I tracked all of my AI use. One hundred sessions. I counted the tokens processed and applied publicly available numbers on per-token energy and water intensity from Epoch AI and operator-reported data from Microsoft and Google. Anyone can run this math.

In those 11 weeks, I built an iOS app from scratch and wrote policy briefs on extreme heat for nonprofits I work with. I produced documentary pitch decks and drafted a 15,000-word climate fiction piece about the Colorado River collapse. I used AI every single day, often for hours at a time.

Total lifecycle water footprint of all that work: about five gallons. That accounts for everything: the water used to cool the data centers, the water consumed at power plants to generate the electricity, and the water embedded in manufacturing the hardware.

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You may have read stories about how data centers use lots of water, and how these massive warehouses of computer servers are being built across the country to help with the expanding use of AI. Here is the part that I think gets lost in the discourse. All U.S. data centers combined—not just AI, all of them—account for roughly 0.3 percent of total national water withdrawals. Agriculture consumes approximately 80 percent of Colorado River water.

AI images and voices

Seven Prompts No AI Image Generator Can Get Right

Really interesting research on the limits of AI image generation. Hands and text are both much better than a year ago, but multi line text (especially with numbers) fails because text isn’t generated sequentially. AI images approximate rather than counting, and all models fail with prime numbers. Reflections are also approximate; there’s no geometry behind them.

Vois – Professional AI Voice Studio

While Vois doesn’t have as many voices as some other platforms, it has several other advantages. It runs locally on your machine, so there’s no risk of content being used to train AI. You can tag your script for multiple speakers, making it easier to manage dialogue. You can also buy just the credits you need rather than paying a monthly or annual fee, and you only use credits when you publish (not for each iteration and typo fix).

Automating repetitive design tasks

7 Ways to Automate Repetitive Design Tasks with Affinity and Claude

I use Affinity as my primary tool for editing images. Affinity now can connect with Claude to automate repetitive tasks like renaming layers and prepping files. It looks like a great way to speed up some boring tasks so you have more time on the fun work. This is currently in beta and free, but will probably become a paid feature later. Still, if it saves time, it may be worth a paid upgrade.

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