Every year Jane Hart – owner and proprietor of the estimable Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies website asks learning professionals to submit their Top 10 E-Learning Tools for the previous twelve months.
So without further ado, here is my Second Annual Top 10 E-Learning Tools, in alphabetical order (‘cos every one of them is a winner!):
Adobe Acrobat Connect Enterprise - I could 
have picked any from the range of Adobe Flash-based content development tools, but I chose this application because of its multi-functionality, and because it manifests what Flash, Presenter, Dreamweaver etc can do. Enables collaboration, content storage, management, distribution, and (a certain degree of) tracking. A powerful content delivery platform to enable learning professionals and organizations distribute informational and training content effectively.
Audacity - I recommend this open source tool to 
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who wish to create podcasts and/or software demos when using a Rapid E-Learning approach. It's an easy-to-use non-destructive audio recording and editing tool, comes with a range of impressive plug-ins including Normalize and Noise Reduction (NR), as well as pretty good graphical equalizer (EQ). Audacity enables SMEs and training professionals create high quality audio quickly and efficiently.
Techsmith Camtasia- A SERIOUS rapid e-
learning authoring tool for demonstrations, simulations, evaluation, and scenario-based learning. Would be Number 1 Tool on this list if I went for a merit-based rather than alphabetical format.
Blogs - The platform doesn't matter – I use both the Blogger and 
WordPress platforms - but the concept of providing a means to create, share, and deliver content is the basis for a new way of learning. My e-learning blog, the E-Learning Curve Blog (unashamed plug) provides commentary and news on the domain of professional learning and development, as well as a handy personal knowledgebase.
Del.icio.us - Personal bookmarking at its best. If, like 
me you work on a number of machines in a number of locations, it is useful to access stored links and documents from a browser regardless of where you happen to be, once you have an internet connection.
MindJet Mind Manager Pro - Mind-mapping - 
using diagrams used to represent words, ideas, tasks, and concepts linked to and arranged around a central topic (and used to generate, visualize, structure ideas), is central to the way I work, research, organize, solve problems, and make decisions. I built the framework for my MSc. in Education thesis in Mind Manager. It is powerful intermediary in developing ideas, concepts, and course design.
Moodle - An institution in institutions! Martin 
Dougiamas' erstwhile thesis project continues to meet the learning management requirements of any number and type of organization. Social Constructivist? Virtual Learning Environment? Easy-to-use? Great Platform.
Sony Vegas Video - Easier to use than Premiere, more powerful than MovieMaker; Vegas is my post-production "weapon of choice" for 90% of the video elements that appears in courseware developed in my organization. Whether you're just "topping and tailing" a piece of video or creating the elements for a sophisticated soft skills course, Vegas is a must.
StatCounter - every 
learning professional knows that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This mantra has an extra resonance in the online learning world. StatCounter is a Web and blog analysis tool that enables me to understand the requirements of learners who use my courseware, as well as how visitors interact with my blog.
TextPad - I would have chosen pen and paper, but decided to keep this list digital; 
TextPad is an advanced text editor that enables users to create and edit text documents, XML, JavaScript and other interpreted content without the extraneous "bloat" of word-processing applications. I find it useful to develop content in this stripped-down environment before transferring to Word, PowerPoint, Blogger or some other application for final enhancement and publishing (this list was created in TextPad, for example).
What are your Top 10 E-Learning Tools?
--
9 comments:
There are a few tools I really like:
I use a couple of different wikis. The best is PBWiki. Just great for capturing a lot of thoughts and data.
I'm also accumulating ideas in a Google wiki. It's not as satisfying to use as PBWiki but I use a bunch of Google services and it's nice to have everything under a single login.
Those other Google services include Blogger, Bookmarks (which replaced del.icio.us for me), Analytics (equivalent to StatCounter), Alerts and Calendar.
I don't know if you keep your learning materials in XML form but I tend to throw everything into a simple XML format then use XSLT to produce websites, PDF files, etc from there. The XML editor I use is XML Copy Editor and for prototyping XSL transformations I use the excellent Kernow.
The wiki and the XML tools were instrumental, for example, in the creation of WordPegs, a very simple e-learning tool ;-)
Hi David,
Good to hear from you again! I hope all is well with you?
Given the range of applications and utilities in my 'box of tricks' choosing a mere ten is very difficult. For example, to track different aspects of my blog's metrics I use StaCounter, Analytics, Clicky, Liijit, Feedburner, and Sitemeter, but I find that StatCounter (apart from being Irish) provides me with reasonably granular information "at a glance" as well being only one more click away from more detailed data.
I'd suggest that you contact Jane Hart with your Top Ten Tools; she'd love to hear from you. YOu can find her site here.
All the best,
Michael
--
BTW (Great blogs!)
Kia ora Michael
Thanks for this list. While it's great to get confirmation that some of the tools I like using are also in a recommended list, it's even better to be introduced to those that I'm not familiar with, and you have listed a few here.
Catchya later
from Middle-earth
Céad míle fáilte Ken,
Thanks for your comment; have you submitted your Top 10 list? I'd be interested to see commonalities and variations between the tools we use to do our jobs.
Michael
--
Thank you for this list Mr. Hanley.
You've done a great work and i'm with great interest take a look on some of these tools.
Kia ora Michael
I'm of the old skule, as it were. I have been using a set of tools for years and still use them, but they are not ones often chosen by most elearning teachers:
- DreamWeaver
- PhotoShop
- ImageReady
All of these tools were used to build the Science resources introduced in this post, for instance.
I have had a fair bit of experience using Blackboard but it's not an app I'd recommend for a number of strategic pedagogical reasons.
Straight email, believe it or not, is also a much used elearning tool that I use with students who choose that means to communicate. I guess it all depends on what one calls elearning - it is a term that has many connotations.
In terms of learning (for myself) that's another matter. While the tools I use to help me with what I may develop in elearning, I could also include rudimentary things as Google searches, my RSS Reader, and of course Blogger, for I learn a heck-of-a-lot by just blogging alone. I couldn't learn that way without a similar blogging tool.
Catchya later
Hi Ken,
Thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful response. Being a bit 'old skool' myself, I know where you're coming from. One of the advantages of 11 year's experience in this domain is that like you, I've seen a lot of "pretenders" come and go in terms of e-learning tools. Equally like you, over I've stuck with the tools that work for me. I'd agree with your assessment of e-mail (as well as IM) as an effective learning channel. Ten tools isn't a lot to choose from, so I had to prioritise in my list. Exclusions from it included Fireworks as a graphic editor, DW for HTML, PowerPoint (used judiciously!), XMLSpy and a host of open source APIs and utilities I employ. Sometimes I feel we should call this domain "eLearning elearning e-learning" - not only does it mean different things to different people, we also call it different names! I bang on about this quite a bit, but here's my working definition of e-learning here:
http://elearningcurve.blogspot.com/2008/01/towards-definition-of-e-learning.html
Talk to you soon,
Michael
--
@Georgiy Thanks for your comments Georgiy - hopefully my suggestions will give you some ideas to pursue your own e-learning projects.
Michael
--
Thanks everyone. This is a great list. Moodle is used at my University for online classes and collaboration so I use it a lot. Another tool i like to use is scate ignite.
http://www.scateignite.com
Post a Comment