Sarah Frame is the Director of UELConnect at the University of East London and is responsible for all the  e-learning and distance learning provision for both on-campus and off-campus learners.  UELConnect is a commercially focused unit which successfully delivers e-learning consultancy to external clients.  Sarah's LinkedIn details are here.

Sarah's Top 10 Tools as at 3 May 2009

1. Twitter - I avoided Twitter for some time because I couldn't see the value in it, but since I talk about Web 2.0 technologies as part of my job, I eventually decided I should give it a go. And now I am hooked! And although I enjoy the social aspects, I have picked up lots of useful information about new tools, links to websites and quick answers to questions. My Twitter username is @sarahAE

2. Delicious - use delicious loads, and been particularly helpful for sharing articles with university colleagues, some of whom were completely new to the idea of bookmarking   

3. Google Docs - do more and more online now, particularly for collaboration purposes. Although now using Elgg much more for internal university collaboration on documents.

4. Facebook - can't imagine life without it! Like most other universities, facebook is a tool we must use since that is where our students are. We used it to good effect last year to help support new students and make sure they had easy access to the information they needed for their first weeks. But issues around privacy remain a concern and so we have recently launched an Elgg social learning platform which will allow us to offer learners the benefits of a secure space.

5. YouTube - I use YouTube clips extensively, some of them have really helped move thinking forward at UEL. Using Elgg means we can embed clips into the pages, and we are using YouTube with our development of mobile learning.     

6. iTunes - being able to download and listen to work related podcasts during travelling time really helps me, and much better than the old days when I carried piles of journals around in the hope of getting time to read them! We will shortly start to use iTunesU as part of our UEL aim to make learning even more accessible.

7. Google Reader - gave me a quick, easy way to get feeds on a wide range of topics.

8. Snagit - use screen capture frequently for creating presentations and demoing new tools, and this one is so much easier to use.

9. Slideshare - I find this gives me fresh ideas, from both content and presentation point of view.

10. Elgg - it has been really exciting over the past few months to be developing and piloting Elgg within UEL. We feel it enhances the sense of community across the university and opens up new avenues for collaboration, sharing and communicating. Although early days yet, it has been enthusiastically received by users on the pilot. We are still learning how best to use it to enhance the learning experience with students and have been able to adapt to use by a wide range of types of groups in the pilot. Blogs, wikis, video, podcasts, RSS feeds , social networking tools, discussions forums, bookmarking etc etc - and all in one place! The permissioning system is one of the best features of elgg and allows you to determine a range of access settings which is ideal for a university.