TOP 10 TOOLS 2008 & 2009
Jane Challinor

Programme Leader - leadership and management development. Supporting academic staff in the development of e-learning programmes at De Montfort University in Leicester.

Jane's Top 10 Tools as at 6 August 2008

1. itunes - educational podcasts: I found a series of Spanish podcasts that have transformed my learning of the language, convincing me there has to be more value in this medium than I currently exploit more with my own students

2. Twitter - the place for links, updates, chat, sharing, collecting opinions, professional and social networking

3. Ning - I have been part of two really valuable Ning communities for learning this year: I really like its flexibility, the attractive designs available. I intend to use it with my own students in the coming year.

4. Skype - invaluable for tutorials with my students  and yet again for my own Spanish language studies: I meet with a teacher on line every fortnight to practice conversation

5. elluminate Vroom - free on line classroom (for up to three people)

6. Wimba create - bit of a fan currently - using to develop on line learning materials for Blackboard-hosted courses.

7. Camstudio - screencapture software (free download) which can be edited in movie maker with separate audio if needed. 

8. Slideshare - upload powerpoint presentations and documents to share easily with others. Source of great learning resources too

9. Googledocs - brilliant tool for collaboration and sharing

10. Blogger - still there as my blog tool of choice

Jane Top 10 Tools as at 4 September 2008

1. Netvibes – my personal pin board and something I would now not cope without – like your filofax in the 90’s, but better. I can watch students’ updates to our wiki, link to my favourite blogs, collect all my favourite websites and bookmarks with a Delicious widget, check my i-calendar, see updates on Twitter and watch Facebook updates when I have  a break - all on one very pretty page on my desk top….

2. Delicious: already mentioned above, but deserves a number of its own: I could not be doing the job I am doing without it. I work in different locations so “favourites” would not be enough to organise my essential websites, and tagging makes everything findable (eventually!) Not sure about the new site yet…..

3. Wetpaint – ad free wiki for education, nice templates, easy edit, and my students love it.

4. Blogger – I use this for a private learning log, a public “salsa” blog, and members only discussions on the module I am teaching.

5. Facebook – mainly for my salsa students to keep in touch with other fans worldwide. I add links to salsa music videos and other resources, publicise social events by other promoters: creates a great “club” atmosphere. But I ban most applications – they are just irritating! I have not yet incorporated into my university teaching…..but I think the day is coming!

6. Grou.ps – never really seen this spoken of (I found it by accident) but its amazing: blog, wiki, discussion board, photo gallery, links, file uploads – no ads, private or public: already incorporated into my teaching as a flexible “use for anything” site. I managed to get some “old school” academics using it as a tutor development site and they love it!!! Now I recommend it to students who are looking for free sites to keep in touch with their virtual teams.

7. Jing – I use the video capture relentlessly to teach my students how to handle web tools and show our IT dept the problems I am having!.

8. Freemind – to plan projects, to outline the module curriculum for students – free and publishable as a pdf so it can be sent to anyone without special software needed to read it.

9. Survey Monkey – the free version, for quick and small scale surveys of students and colleagues

10. New Favourite I found through 25 tools: Udutu – I have only used this once so far but I plan to come back for more. Incredibly easy and attractive course authoring tool, free, uploadable onto Blackboard….I think this will change how I present e-learning programmes.