TOP TOOLS
TOP 10 TOOLS 2007 & 2008
Gerry Paille

Gerry is currently employed by School District 60, Peace River North, in Fort St. John, British Columbia. He is seconded full-time to the Instructional Development and Research Group at Thompson Rivers University, which is located in Kamloops, BC, but continues to reside in Fort St. John. His current focus is in teacher training related to using technology in the classroom, and in instructional design for web-based and other courses. Gerry was also recently honoured by being chosen as part of Apple's Distinguished Educator program, Canadian class of 2007.

Gerry's Top 10 Tools as at 30 March 2008

1. Safari - Safari is my window into the Web. It runs very quickly on my Mac, most of the javascript issues are gone in the newest releases, and works great on my ipod touch.

2. Mail for ipod touch - Apple's mail app for the ipod touch/iphone is great and it allows me to be not so tethered to my laptop. 

3. iChat - iChat gives me a quick connection with colleagues, friends and family, and the video quality seems to be far superior to any other messenger application I have tried. I used iChat extensively to collaborate with, and get help from, colleagues when working on projects and have also used it with teachers and students in conjunction with Elluminate for teaching calculus at a distance.

4. Blogbridge  - Blogbridge is my RSS reader and is where I start my day, most days. It helps keep me current with what is new in technology and how exemplary educators are apply those technologies. I also use it to read about topics of personal interest.

5. del.icio.us - For me, del.icio.us seems to work best for keeping track of and sharing web sites of interest. I also like that I can use RSS to easily see what others are finding interesting and that the del.icio.us RSS feeds allow me to generate dynamic content on a Web page based on predefined tags. I have been showing teachers how to do this to created dynamic resource lists for and with their students.

6. flickr - I am not a very creative person, but Flickr provides me with an outlet for the little bit of me that just might be creative at times. I like the feedback that I get on my photos and Flickr also allows me to follow what friends and colleagues are doing in the spare time

7. Google Mobile Apps  - Google has done a great job making these apps work well on the ipod touch and I presume on the iphone as well (not available in Canada yet). I especially like Google Reader on my ipod touch and I also use gmail and iGoogle. Google Maps and Youtube links come installed on the ipod touch and iphone and they work great as well.

8. Wetpaint - I have used Wetpaint's free wiki application for creating sites related to presentations I have given and to encourage collaboration after the fact. The collaboration part has not always been that successful, but most find Wetpaint really easy to use. It has support for "widgets", but there is advertising. I have also in the process of copying a course from WebCT into Wetpaint and I think it is pretty functional, although I have not run this through any students at this point.

9. iTunes - My music collection and podcasts live here and on my iPod

10. Google Maps - I have been having some fun with my GPS (new Garmin Colorado) and geotagging photos and videos from YouTube to associate them with a map. Google Maps will read Flickr's geofeed and place the photos on a map. I think there are some interesting possibilities for using these technologies in learning.

Gerry's Top 10 Tools as at 9 August 2007

1. Safari - Safari is my window into the Web, so it is open all the time and is a companion to my RSS reader. It also runs very quickly on my Mac

2. Firefox - I use FireFox when Safari fails me (has problems with javascript and ajax at times) and for several add-ons such as the video downloader

3. iChat - iChat gives me a quick connection with colleagues, friends and family, and the video quality seems to be far superior to any other messenger application I have tried. I used iChat extensively to collaborate with, and get help from, colleagues when working on projects and have also used it with teachers and students in conjunction with Elluminate for teaching calculus at a distance.

4. Blogbridge  - Blogbridge is my RSS reader and is where I start my day, most days. It helps keep me current with what is new in technology and how exemplary educators are apply those technologies. I also use it to read about topics of personal interest.

5. del.icio.us - For me, del.icio.us seems to work best for keeping track of and sharing web sites of interest. I also like that I can use RSS to easily see what others are finding interesting and that the del.icio.us RSS feeds allow me to generate dynamic content on a Web page based on predefined tags. I have been showing teachers how to do this to created dynamic resource lists for and with their students.

6. flickr - I am not a very creative person, but Flickr provides me with an outlet for the little bit of me that just might be creative at times. I like the feedback that I get on my photos and Flickr also allows me to follow what friends and colleagues are doing in the spare time

7. GarageBand - A great tool that I use for creating and editing podcasts and enhanced podcasts

8. Wetpaint - I have used Wetpaint's free wiki application for creating sites related to presentations I have given and to encourage collaboration after the fact. The collaboration part has not always been that successful, but most find Wetpaint really easy to use. It has support for "widgets", but there is advertising.

9. iTunes - My music collection and podcasts live here and on my iPod

10. Pageflakes - I like the ease by which a Web page can be created by dropping flakes or widgets on the page. There are thousands of flakes available that make it easy for anyone to aggregate content, including RSS feeds, for many practical applications. I have been encouraging teachers to create activities for their students that use tools like Pageflakes to create dynamic and collaborative learning experiences.