Susan is director of South Carolina
College of Education's Instructional Support office and
teaches an introduction to Educational Technology course
and an introduction to Special Education course. She has
taught face-to-face, through broadcast distance
education, and entirely online. (She loves to discuss
the pros and cons of each model!) She assists other
faculty members use technology as they plan and develop
their courses.
Susan's Top 10 Tools as at 28
August 2007
SnagIt -
Students like to see screen shots of what they will
see in a program or an online activity when I write
the instructions or provide a help sheet for them.
Breexe
Presenter (now Adobe Presenter) - Online students love the narrated
PowerPoint presentations with a table of
contents, search feature, and that shows the time
remaining on the
Camtasia
-
I can't count the number of 'Camtasia movies' I have made
demonstrating a web site - like I would have done
live in a face-to-face class.
OpenOffice
-
I have
gotten personal thank
you notes from students
for introducing them to
Open Office.org!
Audacity
-
I am a big believer in open source
tools and this one does everything the expensive
programs do.
GIMP -
Why pay the high price for the photo
editing programs when GIMP does it for free?
Breeze Meeting (now Adobe Connect
Professional) -
Live class meetings in which you
can share items on your computer and distant
students can give live presentations to the online
class (The instructor can allow the distant student
desktop sharing permissions.) You can also archive
presentations and post those for students to view at
another time.
Blackboard
-
I like putting
all my course materials in one place (even if they
are just links to other web-based resources.)
Students know to look there first before contacting
me.
PowerPoint
-
You can't get away from PowerPoint...
(I encourage the use of Impress in OpenOffice.org, but Breeze does not allow
me to convert Impress files to Breeze files.)
What are your
Top 10 tools - for
your own personal working and learning
and/or
creating, delivering or supporting others' learning?
Let us know
