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Friday Finds
Fresh ideas, practical tools, and marketing-inspired thinking for people who design learning.
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It’s almost July 4th here in the U.S., so my corner of the world is full of fireworks, cookouts, and weather that feels personally committed to melting everyone. Wherever you are, I hope you enjoy your weekend.
This week’s Tools Edition is all about small upgrades that make L&D work feel sharper without adding more meetings, more budget drama, or another mysterious “strategic alignment” conversation to your calendar.
Thanks for reading!
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Supported by iSpring
Building a Distributor Training Strategy from Scratch
On July 14th, join iSpring’s free webinar to learn how to build a distributor training program from the ground up. Discover how to train external sales teams consistently, assess product knowledge, certify partners, and maintain oversight from headquarters as your network expands.
Register now →
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The L&D Polish Kit
Some tools help you make the thing.
Other tools help the thing feel finished.
That second group does not get enough love.
I’m talking about the small helpers that clean up the rough edges: the session plan that keeps time, the slide layout that shows the idea, the course add-on that makes an interaction useful, or the tiny video tweak that keeps you from looking like you’re calling in from a haunted aquarium.
None of these replace good learning design. Bad thinking with nicer icons is still bad thinking. A weak workshop with a cleaner agenda is still a weak workshop.
But when the thinking is solid, polish matters. It helps people follow the idea, trust the experience, and use what you made.
This week’s Tools Edition is a practical little kit for the work around the learning.
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Also supported by Neovation
Asked the right way, AI turns a blank page into a solid first draft or cuts an hour of summarizing down to a few minutes. That's time back for the work that needs your judgment, where you, the human, bring value. Join us for "7 Essential AI Prompting Habits" on July 29 at 1 pm ET / 12 pm CT / 10 am PT.
Register today →
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SessionLab
SessionLab helps you build workshops, webinars, and meetings as timed blocks you can move around without blowing up the whole agenda. It’s perfect for the moment when your “simple” 60-minute session suddenly has five activities, two discussions, a debrief, and someone wants to “just add one quick thing.” The real win is visibility: you can see the flow before you’re trapped inside it.
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Hidden PowerPoint SmartArt layouts
This is a delightfully nerdy PowerPoint find: hidden SmartArt layouts that do not show up in the normal desktop gallery, plus a downloadable deck with copy-and-paste-ready diagrams. It’s useful because many training slides are not bad because people lack taste. They are bad because people are trying to explain a process, timeline, model, or set of choices with a pile of bullets. Bullets are fine for lists. They are terrible at showing structure.
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Cluelabs
Cluelabs is for the moment when your Storyline or Captivate course needs to do more than “next, next, quiz, completion.” It can help with xAPI tracking, Google Sheets connections, email sending, PDF generation, gamification, widgets, captions, translation, and more. Powerful? Yes. Dangerous in the hands of someone with shiny-object fever? Also yes. The move is to solve one real problem, not build a tiny carnival inside a compliance module.
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Edge Light
Edge Light is a tiny browser extension that adds a soft ring-light-style glow around your browser tab, so your face looks better lit on video calls. Is this instructional design? No. Is it part of how people experience your instruction? Absolutely. If you facilitate, teach, coach SMEs, record walkthroughs, or host webinars, clear lighting makes you easier to see, easier to read, and easier to trust. People should be able to see your face without wondering if you’re broadcasting from inside a haunted aquarium.
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The Bottom Line
The last 10% is not decoration. It is where useful work becomes easier to understand, easier to run, easier to track, and easier to trust.
SessionLab helps you plan the experience. Hidden SmartArt helps your slides show structure. Cluelabs helps your courses do more than sit there politely. Edge Light helps you show up more clearly.
None of these tools is magic. That is probably why I like them.
They are practical little upgrades for the work around the learning. And sometimes that is what makes the whole thing feel sharper, smoother, and more useful.
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