AI Tools Academy
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Course updates

What's changed

Newest first

Changelog

What's new in AI Tools Academy. Newest first.

12 September 2026

Optional extras. Every lesson, checkpoint, cheat sheet, prompt library and certificate stays free.

New

  • An Extras page, linked from the top menu, the course menu, the home page and the footer.
  • Verified certificates (£12). Once you've earned a certificate, you can buy a verified copy from your Certificates page. It gets a unique serial and a signed verify link. The verify page shows "Verified" for a genuine certificate and flags any detail that has been changed. Free certificate links now say "Self-declared". A verified certificate also gets its own preview image when you share it on LinkedIn.
  • Printable cheat-sheet pack (£7). All six cheat sheets and sixteen desk cards as print-ready A4 and A3 PDFs, in light and dark. Every cheat sheet links to it.
  • AI for EAs, PAs and office managers (£19), coming soon. Thirty prompts, three worked walkthroughs and a page on what not to paste into AI, with a licence key that unlocks the prompts in My library.

Privacy

  • The privacy page now explains what happens when you buy something. Lemon Squeezy takes the payment. For a verified certificate, this site keeps the name, course and date printed on it against the order number, so it can't be reissued with different details. There are still no accounts and no tracking.

12 September 2026

The September currency sweep, plus a set of sharing and behind-the-scenes fixes.

Kept current

Checked every product's release notes for changes since the August sweep. Most of what shipped is additive, so these are new "keeping current" mentions rather than corrections:

  • ChatGPT: Box, Dropbox and SharePoint joined Google Drive as connectors; a temporary chat can now use your saved memory and be saved, so "temporary" no longer always means "no personalisation".
  • Copilot: the web and work chats merged into one view with a "Work IQ" toggle, and the app got a refreshed design.
  • Claude: memory now works across chat and Cowork, with a new "sensitive topics" setting worth checking.
  • Gemini: a new Windows desktop app; Google Vids can now turn a document into a narrated video; and a standalone image product (Pics).
  • Power Automate was quiet this cycle; nothing needed changing.

Sharing and behind the scenes

  • Every page, not just lessons, now has its own title and description when shared, so a link to the certificates page, a cheat sheet or the About page shows a proper preview instead of the generic one.
  • The sitemap now tells search engines when each lesson was last checked, so updated lessons get recrawled sooner.
  • Added a few more security headers.

20 August 2026

Completion certificates, and a behind-the-scenes SEO fix.

Certificates

  • A new Certificates page. Pass a tool at Power User level and you earn a certificate for it, six in all, including an AI Champion for finishing everything. Download it as an image, or add it to your LinkedIn profile in one click. You type your name once and it stays in this browser; it travels only inside links you choose to share. Each certificate links to a verify page that explains, plainly, that this is a self-recorded record of completing a free, open course.

Behind the scenes

  • Fixed the site's canonical and social-share addresses, which still pointed at the old Netlify subdomain rather than aitoolsacademy.co.uk. The old address now forwards to the real one, and shared lesson links get a proper preview image.

20 August 2026

The August currency sweep. Checked each product's release notes for changes since the mid-July sweep and updated the lessons whose specifics had moved. Only the lessons listed here had their "last checked" dates changed.

Corrections

  • ChatGPT, "Agent Mode in plain English". OpenAI retired the standalone Agent Mode toggle in August 2026 and folded the capability into ChatGPT Work, with the research side reachable through Deep research. Reframed the lesson so it no longer describes a switch that has gone; the supervision judgement it teaches is unchanged. Confirmed in-product that the toggle is no longer present.
  • ChatGPT, "A tour of the screen". The model choice was simplified again: instead of picking between Instant and Thinking models you now turn on a single Think control (a how-much-effort setting on paid plans). Updated the picker section to match what is on screen, and replaced an out-of-date model help link with the release notes.
  • Gemini, "A tour of the screen". De-pinned the named default model, since the Flash line has moved on since mid-July. The lesson now points at the model switcher on your screen rather than a version number that dates within weeks.

New capabilities noted (as "keeping current" mentions)

  • Copilot Notebooks can now generate a Word document, Excel workbook, PowerPoint deck or interactive mind map from a notebook's sources.
  • Copilot in Outlook now reasons across your whole inbox and calendar, not just one open thread.
  • Gemini in Docs can now generate and edit images inside a document and work with comment threads.
  • Gemini video generation and editing in Google Vids, including personal avatars.

Verified and unchanged

  • Power Automate and Claude showed no beginner-facing changes needing a lesson edit in this window. Their lessons stand as fact-checked in July.

15 July 2026

An audit-driven maintenance release: fixing what the July site audit found, and starting a run of behind-the-scenes improvements.

Fixes

  • Attribution and contact. The About page now names Tom Ayed, and a real contact address replaces the old placeholder everywhere it appeared.
  • Phase 6 restored. Confirmed the Cross-tool mastery phase is exactly eight items in the right order, with a clean Continue chain through to the whole-course exam.
  • Sample files repaired. Fixed a punctuation glitch across the Fernway pack, and rebuilt a mangled org chart, while keeping the deliberately messy sales export messy: that mess is part of the exercise.
  • Cheat sheets surfaced. Every one-page cheat sheet now has a home in the sidebar and a link from its phase's final checkpoint, and its own heading.
  • Links and glossary. Added a proper index page for the sample files, added a "knowledge cut-off" glossary entry, fixed a glossary link, and repointed two dead Microsoft Power Automate links to their current pages.
  • Clearer checkpoints. Trimmed the checkpoint intros so the pass rules are stated once, not twice.

Under the bonnet

  • Hand-written search descriptions for every lesson and checkpoint, a favicon and web app manifest, and sensible caching and security headers for the site.

14 July 2026

A currency catch-up on the June and July 2026 releases, plus a set of website improvements. Only the lessons listed here had their "last checked" dates moved.

New lesson

  • Phase 6, "The AI coworker". A new lesson on the autonomous coworker products every vendor shipped in 2026 (ChatGPT Work, Copilot Cowork, Claude Cowork, Gemini Spark). It teaches the category, not the branding: how a coworker differs from a chat and from a supervised agent run, the governance questions to ask at work, and when a plain flow still beats an agent.

Corrections and updates

  • Phase 0, The 2026 tool landscape. Fixed an error: Copilot no longer only "uses OpenAI's models". Since mid-2026 Copilot Chat can also use Anthropic's Claude and often picks the model for you. Added notes on model-picker tier names and on ads appearing in some free tiers.
  • Phase 0, Privacy and safe use. Added a short section on ads and personalised targeting in free AI tiers, and why not to opt in at work.
  • ChatGPT (Phase 1). Canvas lesson rewritten around the current inline editing experience (the side-by-side panel now survives only on legacy models). Added the 9 July 2026 desktop app and ChatGPT Work to the interface and Agent Mode lessons; refreshed the Memory lesson for the June 2026 rebuild; added Lockdown Mode to the security lesson, tied back to the Phase 0 prompt-injection teaching.
  • Copilot (Phase 2). Added a consistent "if you don't see Copilot in the app, it's licensing" note to the in-app lessons; widened Notebooks to Copilot Chat users; added Copilot Cowork and reframed the Power Automate handoff as a three-way choice (flow, agent or coworker).
  • Claude (Phase 3). Broadened the agentic lesson to cover Claude Cowork for non-developers; added a frontier-model note to the interface tour and Microsoft 365 write tools via connectors.
  • Gemini (Phase 4). Refreshed model defaults; expanded the NotebookLM lesson for its June 2026 upgrade; folded "Fill with Gemini" into the Sheets lesson; added the consumer agent layer (Spark, Daily Brief) and the AI Expanded Access add-on.
  • Power Automate (Phase 5). Noted Advanced Connector Policies replacing the classic DLP model, and refreshed the agent-flow direction for 2026 wave 1.

Diary note

  • Worth a re-tour of the Power Automate maker portal as 2026 wave 1 lands (April to September 2026). The agent-flow and Copilot Studio surfaces are shifting, so the written walkthroughs may drift.

Website improvements

  • Per-page titles and descriptions, a sitemap, canonical and social-share tags.
  • A mobile navigation drawer, so a lesson opens at the top on a phone instead of below the whole course menu.
  • A footer with About and Privacy pages, stating plainly: no accounts, no tracking, no cookies.
  • Download and restore your progress as a backup file (on the My library page).
  • The progress counter now shows the current phase, not the whole course.
  • A light and dark theme toggle in the top bar.

13 July 2026

All lessons checked against the live products in July 2026. We worked through every tool covered in the course and made sure the menus, features and steps match what you actually see today, updating the wording wherever the products had moved on. If you spot anything that no longer matches, let us know.

7 July 2026

Version 3 relaunch. A ground-up refresh of the whole Academy, built around getting real work done:

  • Three levels per tool: each tool now has a beginner, intermediate, and advanced path, so you can start where you are and go as deep as you need.
  • Workplace focus: lessons and examples are built around everyday work tasks, using safe, fictional practice material rather than real data.
  • Prompt libraries: ready-made, editable prompts for common jobs, grouped by tool and task.
  • Personal library: save your own prompts, notes, and favourites in one place and come back to them.
  • Test-out: already confident on a topic? Take a short test-out to skip ahead and only spend time on what's new to you.
  • Search: find any lesson, term, or prompt across the whole course in seconds.
  • Progress summary: a printable summary of what you've completed, to show a line manager if you want to.