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TOP 10 TOOLS 2008
Steve Yuen

Steve Yuen is a Professor of Technology Education at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in the United States.  He joined USM since 1984 and developed a new Master of Science in Instructional Technology program in 1998.  Steve served as the program leader for the Instructional Technology program at USM for eight years until 2006 and has taught numerous graduate and undergraduate courses on a wide-variety of technically-advanced subjects.  Steve was a Senior Fulbright Scholar to Taiwan in 1992-1993 and was named “2002 Mississippi Technology Educator of the Year” by Mississippi Educational Computing Association.  He was the past president of Chinese American Educational Research and Development Association (CAERDA), the Founding President of Society of International Chinese in Educational Technology (SICET), as well as a board of director of Mississippi Educational Computing Association (MECA). His current research interests are: e-learning 2.0, educational technologies for new generations, mobile computing for learning and instruction, Web 2.0 and social computing for learning.  Please feel free to visit his Web site as well as his blog Tech Learning to find out what he is doing.

Steve's Top 10 Tools as at 22 January 2008
 

  1. Firefox.  My favorite browser.  It is customizable with a great collection of extensions, plug-ins and add-ons.  It is fast and more secure way to surf the Web.

  2. Wordpress.   A great open-source software for creating blogs.  I use Wordpress for my blog which is hosted by Wordpress.com for free.  Wordpress provides a variety of attractive themes, plug-ins, and widgets.

  3. Slideshare.  A fantastic Web 2.0 tool that lets students and instructors to upload their presentations and share them online through a YouTube-like interface.  Also, it is a good place to discover presentations and slideshows from others.

  4. Ning.  An excellent online service where I create and customize my own Social Network for students in my classes.  Ning has customizable themes and templates.  Also, it offers a public or private option.

  5. Wetpaint.  A great place to create a free wiki that can be a private or public site. Wetpaint Education Wikis are Ad-free for teachers and students. 

  6. Google Docs. A web-based word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation program that makes collaboration more efficient.  It is a free online creation tool which is great for teachers and students.  Also, Google Docs allows mobile access.

  7. del.icio.us.   A social bookmarking site that allows me to store bookmarks on the Web instead of inside my Web browser.  Also, I use del.icio.us to share bookmarks with students, colleagues, friends, family, and the del.icio.us community.

  8. Camtasia. A powerful screencasting software that I use frequently to create instructional videos for my students.  Camtasia allows screen recordings, audio, voice narration, PowerPoint, Picture-in-Picture and webcam video. Also, I can edit and enhance my video with callouts, titles, credits, zooming, panning, quizzes and additional audio tracks.

  9. VoiceThread.  A Web-based digital-storytelling application that enables me to share my stories or slideshows through audio, images, videos, or text with others online.  VoiceThread allows visitors to make comments on my stories or slideshows in: voice with a microphone, voice with telephone, text, audio file, and video with a webcam.  I have used the VoiceThread as an online discussion tool in my class and it works quite well.

  10. Skype. A great telecommunication tool that lets me use my own PC to make free voice-over-Internet and video calls to my students and colleagues (who are the Skype users as well) anywhere in the world.
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