Joan is a Social Media and Learning consultant. In her business, JNthWEB, she is also a writing coach, editor, and trainer. Joan also lectures about communication skills and web 2.0 and is fascinated by the web's communication and learning possibilities.

Joan's Top 10 Tools as at 21 July 2008

1. Firefox -  All the wonderful attributes of Firefox 2 plus I can now close then re-open Firefox and it opens all the tabs from before closing

2. Wordpress - a very sophisticated but relatively easy tool for my blog and e-portfolio - joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/ 

3. diigo - I'm trying this out to see how it compares to del.icio.us. So far, it's excellent

4. InstaPaper - currently my temporary step before saving to Bloglines, (where I'm SemioticExplorer.)
5. Skitch - take screenshots or photos and edit them, plus add arrows or text, and then embed the new image online. Very easy and handy.

6. Zotero - a free, academic, easy-to-use Firefox extension for collecting, managing, and citing research sources. Very useful.

7. Wisdomap - an attractive mind-mapping tool where I can also attach videos, images, files and sites. Good for planning, and early stage research assignments.

8. TweetDeck - allows me to follow several Twitter threads simultaneously. I'm at twitter.com/JoanVinallCox

9. WetPaint - another wiki platform that I'm trying out to compare with the excellent Wikispaces and PBWiki

10. Wordle - fun, fun, fun, and a good discussion starter.

What are your Top 10 tools for learning?
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Joan's Top 10 Tools as at 29 January 2008

1. Firefox -  I spend a lot of my day online, and this free downloadable browser is the one I use

2. Google -  When I have questions, I click on Google

3. Gmail -  my email of choice since my computer crashed and I lost all my computer-based contacts. Now I really like how tagging my messages works, and that I can access my messages and contacts through any online computer.

4. del.icio.us - I collect and tag lots of sites for future reference and use. My del.icio.us account is del.icio.us/shiftingsemiosis - if you are an educator or an academic, you might want to check out my tags.

5. Bloglines - This allows me to follow many educational blogs and learn about WYSIWYG applications that might be useful for my own learning or for my teaching. My Bloglines account is under the name, "SemioticExplorer" and my blogroll is on this blog of mine -webtoolsforlearners.blogspot.com/  

6. Twitter is microblogging and I love the brevity, immediacy, and the way I can organize it for my interests and collect interesting URLs through it. You can follow me at twitter.com/JoanVinallCox

7. Wikispaces is WYSIWYG and the easiest for non-techies to use, so I use it with my classes and other organizations.

8. Zotero is free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help collect, manage, and cite research sources. I'm finding it very useful.
9. kwout -  a very handy way to capture text and images for quoting in blogs and elsewhere online.

10. Skitch lets me take screenshots or photos and edit them, plus add arrows or text and then embed the new image online. Very easy and handy.

Joan's Top 10 Tools as at 26 July 2007

1. Firefox - I spend a lot of my day online, and despite a brief flirtation with Flock, this is the browser I stick with.

2. Google Search, Google Scholar, Gmail, Google Calendar, iGoogle, Blogger – I use all these parts of the Google empire.  I search through my university's library with Google Scholar; I use gmail since my computer crashed and I lost all my contacts and now I really like tagging my messages; we use Google Calendar at home so we don't double book each other;  iGoogle lets me keep my important bookmarks online; and I keep one of my blogs on Blogger.

3. del.icio.us - I collect and tag lots of sites for future reference and use. Furl is good, but del.icio.us and tagging fit me better

4. Bloglines - This allows me to follow many educational blogs and learn about WYSIWYG applications that might be useful for my own learning or for my teaching.

5. PB Wiki and Wikispaces.  Pbwiki was beautiful in appearance before it was WYSIWYG in use, so I set up my business website using it. Wikispaces has been WYSIWYG longest and is the easiest for non-techies to use, so I use it with my classes and others.

6. Eduspaces - This is my blogging community, filled with my peers. I started blogging there when it was Elgg, and have created Community Blogs there for classes because even early on my students could add audio files as well as discuss readings there.

7. Explode - My social network; it comes from Dave Tosh, Ben Werdmuller and Misja Hoebe, who created Elgg (now Eduspaces) and so much more. I am grateful to them.

8. Backpack - I like it because it sends me emails reminding me of monthly or yearly events I tend to forget, so I don't get overdrafts or miss birthdays. I use it for To-Do lists too.

9. Box - Since my computer crashed, I have been using Box as an online backup for my most essential files. It's also handy for sharing large files with clients or friends. Some of my students have used it to link files to their blog posts.

10. Engrade - Wikis and blogs replaced everything I used to get from using WebCT, except being able to privately share marks online. Now Engrade lets me post students' marks privately.