Rob Hubbard is a creative elearning
architect based in the midlands, UK. He provides
instructional design, elearning consultancy services
and more through his company
LearningAge Solutions.
Rob is sick of dull elearning and wants to help more
people build better content
Rob's Top 10 Tools as at 23
January 2008
Flash - My
workhorse development tool. What can I say – Flash
rocks. I use this for prototyping interactivity,
building mock-ups for proposals and even for creating
artwork. It’s good with audio and now video. Been using
it for years and will certainly continue to do so.
Google Alerts
- I get regular alerts via email and this is the main
way I keep up on elearning news. I haven’t got into rss
yet and in the meantime this simple solution suits me
well.
GridMagic for Blackberry - I recently changed from
having a PDA phone to a Blackberry Pearl. It is great to
have my email on the move, however I couldn’t believe
the Blackberry wouldn’t let me view and edit Excel
spreadsheets on my phone and sync them to my laptop.
After much hunting about I unearthed this little
application which does exactly that. Indispensable.
MS Outlook - I
don’t have any beef with Microsoft, and find that
Outlook does everything I need it to. I love the way I
can sync tasks, calendar and contacts up to my
Blackberry. It has been great for managing multiple
email accounts and aliases.
MS Word - I spend
much of my time working in Word. The tracked changes and
compare functionality took a little while to work out
but I now find it indispensable. Storyboards and design
documents always go through many revisions and Word
helps me keep track of them all.
Photoshop -
I use an old version of Photoshop, but it does
everything I need. Took me a while to get my head around
it, but now I find it quick and easy. The 2-up display
when compressing images is really useful.
Skype - I have a
love/hate relationship with Skype. I love the fact I can
make free audio calls to other Skype users and low cost
calls to international landlines. I hate the issues with
sound quality and calls dropping, and still haven’t got
audio conferencing to work reliably. I love the way I
can transfer files and badger developers on the other
side of the world in real time. However it can also be a
real time-drain and a distraction (particularly for the
developers).
Sound Forge - My audio editor of choice. I’ve been
in bands and had a home studio for a long time and have
always used Sound Forge for editing recordings. I try
other audio editors from time to time, but I always
return to this one. I like the shortcuts and menu
structure, it allows me to work fast.
Udutu -
This is a relatively new free web-based elearning
authoring tool. The templates aren’t the prettiest so I
tend to use it as a SCORM wrapper, develop my
interactivity in Flash and import it. For a free tool
however, I think it is excellent, and have been raving
about it to anyone who will listen. You can publish your
content with a watermark for free, pay for Udutu to host
it, or export your course for free (no watermark) to
host on your LMS or web space.
Yugma - Free web
conferencing tool. I’ve run several course and document
reviews using this tool and it has worked well. The new
browser-based web conference tool dimdim might well give
them a run for their money though.
What are your
Top 10 tools for learning? Let us know and help to build the
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008
