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 3
August 2008
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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!).
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
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?
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.
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.
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]
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.
What are your
Top 10 tools - for
your own personal working and learning
and/or
creating, delivering or supporting others' learning?
Let us know
