TOP TOOLS
TOP 10 TOOLS 2007 & 2008
David Delgado

David is a developer of learning systems and online communities. He works at CICEI (Innovation Center for the Information Society) in the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain. He has been working in the e-learning field since 1997. You can find more about him at Eduspaces . These are the tools he uses most at work:

David's Top 10 Tools as at 22 April 2008 and 7 August 2007

1. Firefox   It is the browser I normally use. It is fast, secure, open source, and has lots of plugins to extend its functions. I hope that in a near future it will become the only desktop application I will use. In fact, all the others can be used on the Web, but perhaps they are not mature enough.

2. Thunderbird  My mail reader. Here is where I read several mail accounts I use. I also have some webmails (Squirrel Mail, Gmail, Yahoo...) but this is the most powerful and fastest tool for me to use my official mail addresses.

3. Google Search  The most important tool on the web for me. You can find nearly everything with it if you use the advanced searching tools. It comes with specific searches in images, video, groups (including the whole Usenet News), maps, scholar and many more. Right now, they are integrating results from all them in a single search.

4. Moodle  My main tool to develop normal courses and workshops, and even online communities. It has a lot of powerful tools for an e-learning professional to use.

5. Elgg/Eduspaces  Elgg. My main tool to develop social networks and informal learning communities. It is a good foundation to build your own Personal Learning Environment (PLE), and also an e-portfolio. It provides a blog, file sharing and a feed reader (rss/atom). It is good also to develop e-learning 2.0 strategies. I have 2 blogs on Elgg (English and Spanish ones). EduSpaces is a good international social network on education built on Elgg I am involved with.

6. del.icio.us  It is not only a powerful tool to store and classify my bookmarks, but also a powerful social network built around them, and a way to discover new sites.

7. OpenOffice  A good, open source, suite of office tools. It is Microsoft Office compatible and it is free

8. Skype  The best tool for instant messaging, international calls and video conferencing. Most professionals use this one. It is good also to have free calls to toll-free numbers in USA.

9. Slideshare  A very good tool to share and find very good presentations in Flash (many of them including the original document in PowerPoint, Open Office or Acrobat). It is the YouTube of presentations.

10. Google Reader  It is a good tool to manage lots of feeds in an easy way. You can even share them with others. I used Bloglines before, but I think Google Reader is better. I also use the feed reader in Elgg to share some of them.

What are your Top 10 tools -  for your own personal working and learning
and/or creating, delivering or supporting others' learning?  Let us know