TOP 10 TOOLS 2007, 2008 & 2009
Clive Shepherd

Clive is a consultant, based in Brighton in the UK, who has an interest in all aspects of technology-assisted learning and communication. Clive is now the Chairman of the eLearning Network in the UK.  Clive blogs at Clive on Learning.

Clive's Top 10 Tools as at 15 April 2009

1. Outlook 07: I continue to stick with Microsoft Office tools because they work and I know them back to front. Outlook is essential to the way I organise my work - I use it for email, RSS feeds, to-do lists, contacts and my calendar (but not my notes - see below

2. Evernote: A new one for me and becoming central to how I work. Evernote is how I store all my work in progress, notes and research. Ideal because it has a desktop client but synchs up to an online database

3. Twhirl: This is my desktop Twitter client. It's much more convenient than using the Twitter website and beeps happily away in the corner of my screen.

4. PowerPoint 07: The latest version of this ubiquitous tool is a big step forward as far as I’m concerned. Not only is it essential to my presentation work, I export from here into Articulate, Camtasia and to all the major web conferencing packages. I'm now also experimenting with Prezi and FreePath.

5. Adobe Photoshop: I use Photoshop CS4 for photo editing and am beginning to feel comfortable with its complexities. Alongside it, I use Photoshop Lightroom to manage and edit my photos, as well as make routine edits.

6. Adobe Premiere CS3: I have got the video bug and love working with the best tools available, so I’ve invested in Premier and After Effects. Way over the top but what the hell?

7. Moodle: Who ever thought I’d own my own virtual learning environment? Moodle is much better than Blackboard, which is amazing considering the time and money the latter have had to come up with something better. The software continues to improve, although it’s already got everything I can think of.

8. Blogger: I didn’t choose my blogging tool, I just took the easy option and used the one that Google provided. It seems absolutely fine. I now supplement it with a desktop blog editor called Windows Live Writer, which I prefer to Google’s own editor.

9. Articulate: This is my favourite tool for rapid design, particularly in it's mbetter integrated and more versatile 09 version.

10. Adobe Captivate 4: This is the tool I normally use for software screen captures (although I also dabble with Camtasia). The latest version is packed with features.

Clive's Top 10 Tools as at 3 August 2008

1. Outlook 07: I continue to stick with Microsoft Office tools because they work and I know them back to front. Outlook is essential to the way I organise everything I do - I use it for email, RSS feeds, to-do lists, contacts and my calendar

2. PowerPoint 07: The latest version of this ubiquitous tool is a big step forward as far as I’m concerned. Not only is it essential to my presentation work, I export from here into Articulate, Camtasia and to all the major web conferencing packages.

3. Adobe Premiere: I have got the video bug and intend to make much greater use of it professionally and personally. I love working with the best tools available, so I’ve invested in Premier and After Effects. I may even get a pro camcorder with a decent lens and mic. As is essential for Adobe pro tools, I will have to put in some serious time to learn my way around this application.

4. Adobe InDesign: I’ve had to put this tool in my list in place of Cubase 4, because I’m not finding the time to do any music at the moment. On the other hand, I am beginning to feel pretty comfortable with desk-top publishing and this tool is one of the best available. I’m already using it for eLearning Network flyers and magazine inserts, but the real test is going to be laying out a book from start to finish.

5. Moodle: Who ever thought I’d own my own virtual learning environment? Moodle is much better than Blackboard, which is amazing considering the time and money the latter have had to come up with something better. The software continues to improve, although it’s already got everything I can think of.

6. Blogger: I didn’t choose my blogging tool, I just took the easy option and used the one that Google provided. It seems absolutely fine. I now supplement it with a desktop blog editor called Windows Live Writer, which I prefer to Google’s own editor.

7. MediaWiki: I have used this for the 30-minute masters project and have no complaints, particularly now I’ve discovered how to stop being spammed. I’m also using this wiki to gather notes and assemble my next book.

8. Adobe Photoshop: I now use Photoshop CS3 for photo editing and am beginning to feel comfortable with its complexities. Alongside it, I use Photoshop Lightroom to manage and edit my photos, as well as make routine edits.

9. Articulate: This is my favourite tool for rapid design, although I would like Presenter, Engage and Quizmaker to sit a little more comfortably together aesthetically. It’s now working comfortably with Vista/ Office07, which is a relief.

10. Captivate: This is the tool I normally use for software screen captures (although I also dabble with Camtasia). No complaints really, although in my view the output could be more nicely presented

Clive's Top 10 Tools as at 7 January 2008

1. Outlook 07: I continue to stick with Microsoft Office tools because they work and I know them back to front. Outlook is essential to the way I organise everything I do - I use it for email, RSS feeds, to-do lists, contacts and my calendar

2. PowerPoint 07: The latest version of this ubiquitous tool is a big step forward as far as I’m concerned. Not only is it essential to my presentation work, I export from here into Articulate, Camtasia and to all the major web conferencing packages.

3. Adobe Premiere: I have got the video bug and intend to make much greater use of it professionally and personally. I love working with the best tools available, so I’ve invested in Premier and After Effects. I may even get a pro camcorder with a decent lens and mic. As is essential for Adobe pro tools, I will have to put in some serious time to learn my way around this application.

4. Cubase 4: Music is my original love and I’ve spent 1000s of hours with Cubase, one of the world’s most popular sequencers and digital audio workstations. Cubase absolutely eats up processor power, hard disks and memory, giving me the perfect excuse to buy the world’s most powerful PCs. I also own Wavelab, which is a professional stereo audio editor on the same continuum as the freebie Audacity (except it’s at the other end).

5. Moodle: Who ever thought I’d own my own virtual learning environment? Moodle is much better than Blackboard, which is amazing considering the time and money the latter have had to come up with something better. The software continues to improve, although it’s already got everything I can think of.

6. Blogger: I didn’t choose my blogging tool, I just took the easy option and used the one that Google provided. It seems absolutely fine. I now supplement it with a desktop blog editor called Windows Live Writer, which I prefer to Google’s own editor.

7. MediaWiki: I have used this for the 30-minute masters project and have no complaints, particularly now I’ve discovered how to stop being spammed. I’m also using this wiki to gather notes and assemble my next book.

8. Adobe Photoshop: I now use Photoshop CS3 for photo editing and am beginning to feel comfortable with its complexities. Alongside it, I use Photoshop Lightroom to manage and edit my photos, as well as make routine edits.

9. Articulate: This is my favourite tool for rapid design, although I would like Presenter, Engage and Quizmaker to sit a little more comfortably together aesthetically. It’s now working comfortably with Vista/ Office07, which is a relief.

10. Captivate: This is the tool I normally use for software screen captures (although I also dabble with Camtasia). No complaints really, although in my view the output could be more nicely presented

Clive's Top 10 Tools as at 7 July 2007

1. Office 07: Unlike many of my colleagues I have never been a Microsoft hater. I use Office (Word / Excel / PowerPoint) so much that it has to be on the list. I really like the 07 suite with its new interface and wouldn't swap it for any cheaper alternative. I particularly like the RSS feeds facility in Outlook. I'm going to include Internet Explorer 7 under this heading, which is probably the tool I use the most after Outlook – the improvements such as tabbed browsing mean that it has caught up with Firefox.

2. Flash: I am a closet programmer and secretly prefer code to words, although I'm on the wagon at the moment. I’ve had wonderfully obsessive experiences with BASIC, Pascal, JavaScript and more recently, Flash ActionScript. I must stop thinking about it.

3. Pinnacle Studio: This is a cheapy video editor. I’ve also got Premier Elements but haven’t used it as much. I just love how easy it is to create great looking movies, with input straight from my hard disk-based camcorder

4. Cubase 4: Music is my original love and I’ve spent 1000s of hours with Cubase, one of the world’s most popular sequencers and digital audio workstations. Cubase absolutely eats up processor power, hard disks and memory, giving me the perfect excuse to buy the world’s most powerful PCs. It also works on Macs, which some of my friends use, except theirs keep crashing (yah, boo, sucks!).

5. Moodle: Who ever thought I’d own my own virtual learning environment? Moodle is much better than Blackboard, which is amazing considering the time and money the latter have had to come up with something better. I use it any chance I get because it’s so easy to use and always works

6. Blogger: I didn’t choose my blogging tool, I just took the easy option and used the one that Google provided. It seems absolutely fine. What else can you say?

7. Photoshop Lightroom: I’ve just got this and now use it to manage and edit my photos. It looks so cool it was definitely worth upgrading from Photoshop Elements.

8. Illustrator: Still learning this tool, but I’m determined to make it my first choice for creating artwork. I’ve used an old M/S tool called Image Composer for ten years because I knew how to use it, but this is the d’s b’s.

9. Articulate: I had to choose a couple of authoring tools and this is the one I use for rapid stuff. I particularly like the Engage module, which creates sexy looking materials with just a few clicks. They just need to get this working with Vista/Office07
   [Editor's Note: Gabe Anderson, Director of Customer Support at Articulate and one of contributors has asked me to point out that Vista and Office 2007 are supported now]

10. Captivate: This is the other tool I use, for software screen captures. It seems to do everything I want quite effortlessly, so what more can you ask for.