“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action”
Herbert Spencer
Happy Friday! Bianca Baumann and I are putting the finishing touches on our DevLearn pre-conference workshop and I’m getting pretty excited about it. Sadly, the other workshop with Mathias Vermeulen didn’t draw enough people and has been cancelled. That is a giant bummer because I know how valuable that one if for literally everyone.
If you are going to DevLearn this year, please hit reply and let me know. I’d love to chat with you in person. Here is my conference schedule.
Thanks for reading.
What I’m Listening to: Last week’s playlist has put me on the path of LoFi Beats all week. Just enough chill with just enough of a beat.
(If you’re on Spotify, you can follow me here.)
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Last week’s most clicked item:
beautiful.ai add-in for PowerPoint
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Can Canva Compete With Microsoft Office?

Canva just announced a suite of new products to challenge Microsoft Office + every other productivity tool. I agree with Turner Novak that this might be one of the most significant product announcements ever. In addition to graphic design, Canva is getting pretty good at presentations and video editing and now they’ve launched whiteboards, websites, and docs. I never thought anyone could replace Office, but now I’m starting to rethink that.
Learn more about Canva’s Worksuite
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Virtual Icebreakers: 42 Fresh Activities From Top Facilitators

Tired of cringe-inducing icebreakers? The folks at Butter asked professional facilitators to share the virtual icebreakers they actually use to kick off their remote workshops. Here are the 42 activities they came up with. Bet you’ll find some you like.
Explore these virtual icebreakers
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Realistic Reasons to be Bullish on Nudging
Nudging’s value stems from its success in solving two hard problems. Changing people’s behavior, in a sustainable way & getting stuff done in large organizations,
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Bite Your LMS With Arist
In this Learning Tech Talks, Christopher Lind visits with Michael Ioffe from Arist to talk about the emerging trends coming out of forward-thinking LMS platforms that embrace tech that resonates differently with a new generation of learners and how organizations are finding success in ways previously unthinkable.
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How to send newsletters in Gmail with customized layouts and multi-send mode
Gmail now offers built-in email newsletter templates and the ability to send emails to multiple individual recipients without a BCC. Works great for newsletters and campaigns.
Learn more about sending newsletters from Gmail
- How to make classes more active and why it matters with Cathy Davidson on the EdSurge podcast
. - A learner’s journey with Connie Malamed on the Leading Learning podcast
. - How can we learn at speed to drive performance with Nelson Sivalingam on the Mind Tools L&D podcast
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- Simplified uses AI to help you write good copy faster
. - Bridge.audio is a site to organize and share your audio files in a beautiful way
. - Twemex is a browser extension for surfacing more insights from Twitter
. - Tiled is a great option for creating interactive content online
. - Blaze is a time-saving text replacement add-in for Chrome

- DevLearn – October 24-28
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