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 freelancing, AI tools, accessibility, fair use, and storytelling (including some fun with a Choose Your Own Adventure story).
Freelancing
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. If you missed the live session, get the highlights of my advice in this article.
How to create a simple 2-page business plan
If you’re a freelancer, 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.
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.
AI tools
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.
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.
More about AI (accessibility and fair use)
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.
–Angeli Raven Fitch
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. Think about how AI training meets or fails these four factors. Note that it doesn’t have to meet all of them to be fair use, but each factor weighs in favor or against fair use. The courts haven’t given us any clear answers, partly because fair use is always a more subjective area of the law.
The four factors judges consider are:
–Rich Stim
- 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.
Storytelling
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.”
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.
Additional curated resources
Check out my complete library of links or my previous bookmarks posts.
Very informative Christy, thank you for the resources and I’m signing up for future posts! -Angeli