#58 - Lots of new AI activity!

Following on from my discussion of RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) last issue , last week the European Parliament Archives made 2.1 million documents available for search using Claude AI from Anthropic. I also think that it's interesting that they've gone with Claude rather than any of the other chatbots - perhaps because Claude was built from the ground up on ethical principles? Check it out at the link below...

Here's a search i did - the direct link to the search tool itself is HERE - took about a minute to return the following:

Recraft - a new image generator

Well worth a look - clearly a very powerful new image generator:

Here's one I created - pretty good - hard to tell it's not a photo...

COVE - a great ideation tool

Allie K. Miller flagged this one up to me recently - a new tool that enables you to create cards on an infinite whiteboard - great for ideating on a topic, pulling things together both individually or as a team.

Text and images can be included, and the card content can be updated by prompting or direct editing. Very easy to generate a lot of ideas very quickly using the built in idea prompts.

One thing I wasn't too thrilled to see - in the settings there's a toggle button that unless you switch it off, shares the info in your boards to the training data. I think this should be turned OFF as the default.

A free AI course from the European Commission

"Unlocking the power of teachers' digital competence: “Facilitating learners' digital competence” is a 15-20 hour online certificate course aimed at Primary (ISCED 1), Lower secondary (ISCED 2) & Upper secondary education (ISCED 3)

Target audience type:

Teachers, Student Teachers, Head Teachers / Principals

Check it out at :

Playing with NotebookLM

One thing I found out about Google NotebookLM recently was just how good it is at processing Youtube videos. You find the video you want to query on Youtube, add the share link for the video as a source to a NotebookLM notebook, and then within a few seconds you can ask questions about what's covered in the video, or use the 1-click prompts to generate a Briefing Doc, Timeline, FAQ's etc.

REALLY useful and a great way to access the information without having to spend the time watching through the video... Give it a go - you'll be amazed - and best of all - it's free!

CANVA gets some new stuff!

Some very useful new features were added to CANVA in their Droptober event.

Dream Lab - supercharged AI image generation

After their recent acquisition of the AI image generator Leonardo AI, CANVA have integrated this into their main offering as Dream Lab. Free CANVA users get 20 goes in here (the link is not visible in your account dashboard but you can access it here - https://www.canva.com/dream-lab , but Pro users get 500 prompts per month, each of which can create 4 images in a range of styles and aspect ratios. In the Pro account the Dream Lab icon appears in the left hand icon bar at the bottom.

Leonardo is a much more capable AI image generator that CANVA's previous one, but image generation needs careful prompting to get the best results, especially if you are looking for photo-realistic images. Investing some time in learning how to get the most out of image generators is time well spent if you need to create imagery for your courses...

Teacher and Student work-kits

Definitely worth having a good look at these - specially curated sets of templates for Teachers and Students

Claude will soon be able to drive your computer!

Sometimes we don't know the next big thing until we see it - was a bit like that yesterday for me when I saw the initial promo videos from Claude on their new feature "Computer Use". This is very early days but is clearly something that is only going to get more capable - and very quickly. Together with natural voice interaction this is the start of us really being able to interact with our computing devices and have them perform complex sequences of tasks using all the apps we have available to us. Scary, or exciting? Maybe a bit of both!

OK, lots more to come in the next issue so that's it for now...

EPALE - The European Adult Learning Network

Do you know about EPALE - the European Adult Learning Network? I'm one of the Irish Ambassadors for EPALE, and you can join over 100,000 educators across Europe in a free online community - it's a great way to get different points of view, participate in training from across the continent and stay up to date on educational thought. Create your free account at https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/user/login

Affiliate Links (stuff I use and recommend)

Perplexity AI - Best search and my go-to AI now... Uses the latest top AI models from ChatGPT, Claude et al, innovates constantly - give it a try!

Unriddle AI is a research site that lets you upload docs and then interrogate them.

Check out Humata - it's another AI that let's you work on your own documents and interrogate them .

Leonardo

My tool of choice for serious AI image creation is Leonardo. The user interface is easy and very powerful, enabling you to create just what you want in any style really quickly . It's recently been acquired by CANVA and is now part of that app as well.

Notion

This is my tool of choice now for collecting all the bits'n'pieces of information I squirrel away for talk, articles and presentations. I can then generate webpages in a snap and share them, and they update in real-time as I add new info to them! There's so much you can do in Notion - well worth a look:

Joe Houghton is an Assistant Professor at UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business where he directs the MSc programmes in Project Management. After a career in IT in multinationals, Joe switched into a portfolio career of University teaching, management coaching and training.

He has authored 7 books to date including "Innovative teaching with AI: Creative approaches to enhancing learning in education ", "Project Management made easy...: the ECCSR approach " & "Applying Artificial Intelligence to Close the Accessibility Gap: A practical handbook for educators & students! " His latest release "Study Smart with AI - 150 essential apps "is now available on Amazon! More on this in a future edition...

Contact Joe on email at [email protected] for any requests for training, seminars, workshops or keynote speaking.