Category: Software | Apps

Experimenting with Googles NotebookLM

If you’re looking for an AI-powered assistant that transforms how you interact with information, Google’s NotebookLM could be a game changer. This smart note-taking tool goes beyond basic document management by integrating Google’s advanced language model technology. NotebookLM not only helps you organize your notes but also enables you to generate summaries, track key ideas, and uncover insights you might have missed. Its real strength lies in its ability to understand the context of your documents, helping you connect ideas and extract meaningful information more effectively.

Screenshot 2024-10-14 at 12.21.26 PM.jpg

Imagine being able to ask your notes complex questions, instantly generate content ideas based on your research, or synthesize lengthy documents into digestible insights—all without switching tabs or losing focus. NotebookLM is designed to be an extension of your thinking process, helping students, professionals, and lifelong learners alike navigate their information more efficiently and creatively.

What’s even more exciting is NotebookLM’s ability to transform written content into audio formats, letting you create podcast-like episodes on the go. By simply selecting your notes or research topics, the AI can generate scripts and narrate them for you, allowing you to turn key insights into a podcast for easy listening. This feature is perfect for reviewing content during a commute, sharing your research in a new format, or reinforcing your learning through a different medium. With just a few clicks, you can repurpose your notes into a completely new experience.

Here’s how you can use it today to enhance your learning:

  • Summarize lengthy notes or documents: Instantly create concise summaries of complex information, helping you grasp the key points faster.
  • Generate self-assessment questions: Use NotebookLM to prompt questions based on your notes, so you can actively test your understanding.
  • Identify connections between concepts: The AI can highlight links between different topics, helping you see relationships and overarching themes in your material.
  • Extract key takeaways from research: Pull out the most important insights from large volumes of research, making studying and reviewing more efficient.
  • Create a podcast from your notes: Easily transform your research or key points into audio, so you can listen, learn, or share ideas on the go. Magic Feature – if you play with one part of the product, listen to this example based on this post. I love the interaction and engagement that is created. 
Example of the User Interface and auto prompts to get you started.
Example showing highlights from the post generated by NotebookLM.
Screenshot

In short, NotebookLM is not just a note-taking app—it’s an intelligent tool designed to help you engage deeply with your information and turn it into meaningful knowledge across multiple formats.

New App: RealityScan captures & creates 3models from your phone (in beta)

RealityScan, a free 3D scanning app, developed in collaboration with Quixel, that turns your smartphone photos into high-fidelity 3D models—in the most accessible way possible.

Capturing real-world assets for digital experiences has traditionally been complicated, technical, and labor-intensive. Now in limited beta, RealityScan takes what people love about RealityCapture—fast and easy 3D scanning—and puts it into the hands of anyone with a smartphone, turning their cameras into an endless source of creativity.

Example of 3D Chair created from a smartphone camera

Learn More: https://www.capturingreality.com/introducing-realityscan

Mac App: Presentify for Quick Annotations

Presentify is a Mac App I discovered last month and I’m loving it. Presentify allows you to quickly annotate, highlight or spotlight your cursor. Whether you are creating a screencast, presenting in Teams, or just chatting over slack, Presentify provides a way to quickly highlight and communicate an idea without having to switch or juggle tools, apps, or settings.

Why is this important? Unlike Zoom which has the ability for everyone to annotate on a shared screen, Teams, Webex, and Slack Huddles do not have the ability. When walking thru a concept, sharing a story, or reviewing prototypes, Presentify allows you to quickly annotate in the context of the conversation and save time, making it easier to share an idea or communicate feedback.

Highlighting your cursor – you can control the color

After activating the app, you have a simple tool bar where you can quickly select 1 of 3 colors, which you can customize, select freehand tool, arrow, shapes, text or erase what’s on screen.

Hitting the / key allows you to display Shortcuts and see the current keyboard setting or you can customize the keys within your preferences.

Cost $5.99 – 1 time fee

Learn more: https://presentify.compzets.com

Quickly Remove Backgrounds with macOS Monterey

Using a Mac with the M1 chips is allow Apple to create and expand its features to make it easier for everyone to do more. A simple example, you can now right-click on any image, in the Finder, select Quick Actions and Remove Background. After a couple of seconds, the image will appear in its silhouetted format.

Growing up with Photoshop and learning how to create an alpha key, this just makes me smile because anyone can now isolate an object in seconds.

Color Palettes made easy with Coolors.co

The COOLors site provides an easy way to explore, discover or pull palettes from a photo or image. It has a fun interface and allows you to test for certain types of accessibility. Watch the quick demo of how it works.

Watch the ScreenCast.

Working with Shades

While creating a palette, you can also select View Shades which allows you to quickly view shades of a color and select or copy for use in your palette.

Need some inspiration and looking for a color palette, select Explore Trending Color Palettes.

Give it a Try

Currently you can view from:

  • iOS or Android App
  • Chrome Extension
  • Web App
  • FUTURE Figma plug-in

It’s free but a Pro license available which removes add and provides a easy way to save and access palettes for $36 per year.

Test drive: coolors.co

#IDIODC Tech Tools & Toys for Learning Design & Development

Got to hang out with Brent and Chris broadcast of Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee this morning to talk about the latest tech gadgets and apps to improve creativity and productivity. You can watch the replay via CrowdCast.

We also let 100+ attendees jump into the Miro board to add their own tools, ideas, and grab links during the session.

Highlight overview of Miro

Next Steps:

The Learning Guild’s SpeakerChat – Sticky Learning Tools + Tech #guildchat #speakerchat

Over the past several weeks The Learning Guild has been alternating between their Friday 2 pm Twitter Chat and a Zoom based event where a guest explains, dives deeper and answers chat questions on topics that were presented during online events this year. I was a guest and this is a summary of several of the topics we covered and wanted to provide a summary along with links. A video will be shared on YouTube later this month so keep an eye out if you missed the session today.

We covered a range of topics, ideas, tools, and resources so watch the video for everything. Download a PDF summary.

Highlights during SpeakerChat

Design for Flexibility

  • providing feedback – be sure to allow the user to fail and learn from their mistakes.
  • don’t just say that’s incorrect.
  • look for ways to provide users a way to dive deeper, explore and share what they learn
  • provide tools for managers and leaders to utilize content to connect, blend and refresh on key elements they want to utilize in their toolbox

Keeping Up to Date

Growing up in a household of a teaching sparked a interest to always ask why, how, can I do it? So always be thinking about and breaking down what you do, why, how it works and what can you apply to your next learning experience? Tools that I use to keep up to date:

  • Feedly.com is my favorite tool to stay up to date with topics, I try to check in 1-3 times a day on my phone in-between meetings, tasks and typically will review on a tablet in the evening. You can organize contents, tags, keywords, you can even remove words that you do not want to be included which is handy when you want to focus on a particular top or area. With the paid version you unlock more functionality with team sharing, annotation. Check it out, free to download or try via the web site.

  • Sidebar.io is the second resource I use daily to keep inspired for creative ideas and to keep learning. You can sign up for a free email that delivers the 5 latest stories to your inbox which I love and will review weekly what I missed.

TechSmith Tools

We got a question about using Snagit and Camtasia for creating, capturing, and building media. We use Snagit just about every day and Camtasia as needed, one thing I wanted to make sure you check out is their community support, blog, education (for registered users) via TechSmith Academy and resources. Make sure to follow Matt Pierce @piercemr on Twitter.

Miro Play Activity

During the last part of the session, we invited 30+ attendees to experiment and add their thoughts around what they learned, what they wanted to share, and access to the resources. You can view the board and a gif below which shows the magic of 30+ people adding what they learned.

Download a PDF export of the board.

Miro.com ScreenShare board used during the online session.

SpeakerChat Series on YouTube

Check out the SpeakerChat Series on YouTube which features Mike Taylor, Sarah Mercier, Richard Goring and Carla Torgerson in the first series.

Share Your Thoughts about SpeakerChat

Please reach out to twitter.com/learningguild or @learningguild on Twitter to share your thoughts if they should continue the series. I VOTE YES and would love to see more interactions to continue and dive deeper into the latest community challenges, sharing ideas, and looking at how we can continue to grow.

A Game-Changing Tool for Online Collaborations with Miro.com

Miro is one of those tools that gets me so excited about the possibilities and how it can help teams get stuff done because it works transparently, for the most part, and allows you to create, brainstorm, gather feedback or quickly collaborate on the next steps. The tool works via your browser or you can download an app for your desktop or mobile device. If you have an Apple Pencil, Surface Pen, or similar you can draw, annotate more naturally on screengrabs, elements, or just write some notes.

In the past 90 days Miro has launched several new features:

  • It allows you to invite additional non-registered users for collaborating, gathering data, and participation without having to add them to a paid plan. This is a game-changer that opens up the possibilities of how you utilize the platform outside your primary team.
  • Visual tables which allow you to use rows and columns to organize text, graphics, icons, and screengrabs
  • Attention management which allows the board owner to gather all collaborators to a particular part fo the board to focus their attention
  • More integrations including Jira, Confluence, Trello, Airtable, Notion
  • Use your mobile device to convert handwritten stickies to virtual sticky notes that are editable

How I Use Miro:

  • Team brainstorming where we review concepts, gather ideas, organize concepts
  • Tracking stakeholder meetings, notes, and export as PDFs to share post meetings
  • Brainstorming: voting via collaborators
  • Quick wireframing using the PEN tool and lo-fi using the add-on
  • Creating tables to organize ideas
  • Moodboards to capture concepts, research, and feedback
  • Webinars to involve participants in sharing, brainstorming and collaborating
  • Working with journey mapping and mind maps for projects
  • Capturing stickies from my wall to share with remote team

This week launched a new MIROVERSE where you can share your templates with the community so that they can learn, get new ideas and personalize for your team.

Why are you still reading this? Jump over to Miro.com, sign up for a free account, and start to plan your team’s next collaboration session.

View & Download Presentation: Using Your Mobile Device to Create Amazing Content #ATDTK19

View & Download the deck from the presentation on Thursday, Feb 7, 2019.

Are you looking for amazing ways to use your mobile device to create content? In this session, you will learn how to use your phone or tablet to brainstorm, sketch, take notes, collaborate, create audio- and video-based media, and animate using several mind-blowing apps. You’ll leave the session feeling inspired and have the practical information to apply one or more apps when you get back on the job. 

– Explore several apps to enhance creativity on your mobile device. 
– Discover several free and inexpensive apps to improve brainstorming, productivity, and collaboration. 
– Apply these apps immediately on your next project. 

Tool: Zoom Meetings for Collaboration (Desktop / Mobile)

We moved to Zoom last month and loving it. I work with several teams every day brainstorming, reviewing, and focusing on creating new experiences for our audiences. We had been a Webex house for several years and during a recent visit to San Francisco last month saw a billboard with Zoom.US on it and decided to check it out. Wow, it is powerful, what I love in the first couple weeks:

  1. Using an iPad Pro in a meeting with an Apple Pencil to quickly communicate, highlight, sketch or visualize a concept while someone is sharing their screen. Great for quick feedback and communication. Previously, would have to switch presenters, files or take a picture we can now focus on the creative side. (Quick video highlight below demonstrates remote view, while I am drawing on an iPad, viewers can see the highlights, and we can brainstorm the user experience.)
  2. Recording can be automatically saved to your desktop or the cloud and shared immediately.
  3. Quick visual feedback with icons or via chat.
  4. No problem sharing an invite and having first-time users view in their browser or quickly install and video chat with no roadblocks to date (using with several users around the world.)