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A toolkit for 2010

If you're looking for the best way to train and teach then a ready made list of peer-recommended tools should help.

For the last three years I have invited learning professionals from around the world – both in education and workplace learning – to share their Top 10 Tools for Learning to help me build an annual Top 100 Tools for Learning list. The 2009 list was finalised on 15 November. Once again, several tools are appearing for the first time, so here are 10 that I think are useful, innovative, cost effective and certainly worth considering for 2010.

Follow the links to find out more about the tools and/or sign up. The Top 100 Tools list itself can be found at www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/ and here you will find links to pages about each of the tools mentioned below, where you will also find comments by the learning professionals who selected them.

1. Prezi - This is the highest ranked newcomer on the list. It’s a Flash-based app that lets you build amazing, non-linear presentations where you can zoom in and out of a visual map containing words, links, images, videos, etc.
   Cost: free and paid for plans
2. Evernote – This lets you capture things (web pages, screenshots, photos, notes, etc), which you can tag, store and find again quickly. It works across many different computers (Windows and Mac OS) and phones (iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, Palm Pre) that are used in everyday life.
   Cost: Free and premium accounts.
3. Dimdim – Already a winner of a number of awards, this web conferencing tool lets you deliver synchronised presentations, whiteboards and web pages while sharing voice and video. It offers remarkable value when compared to other commercial web conferencing systems.
   Cost: Free for 20 users, Pro accounts start at a low monthly charge.
4. Etherpad – Unlike other online documentation or wiki tools, this is the only web-based word processor that allows people to work together in real real-time. Etherpad does this by updating each document every half a second, which means a number of people can work together and see each other’s updates immediately.
   Cost: Free and paid professional and network plans
5. myUdutu – Using this course authoring software you can build a course very quickly and easily online, either alone or collaboratively with others. You can easily import existing content, PowerPoint presentations for example.
   Cost: The authoring too is free to use. You can build your courses, pilot and modify them, all for no cost. There is a small per screen charge if you want to host the course on the Udutu site.
6. Screenr – A number of these online screencasting tools have come onto the market recently, but this from the Articulate stable has quickly become a favourite. It lets you record on your Mac or PC, and then play on the web or an iPhone.
   Cost: Free
7. Posterous – If you haven’t yet got into blogging this is by far the simplest way to start. It’s a very simple blogging system. Just post to your Posterous blog using email and attach any type of file – photo, MP3, video, document, etc – if you want to include it. If you already have a blog elsewhere (for example, Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad) you can also auto-post to it, or even to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr.
   Cost: Free
8. Yammer – If you like the idea of Twitter but are concerned about it being public, this is for you. It is a private micro-blogging service providing the same functionality as Twitter, but for in-company use. Only individuals with the same email domain can join a given network. There are discussion boards and users can form and join groups. There are also Yammer iPhone app and Blackberry clients.
   Cost: Free, but companies can get admin rights to their networks for a small monthly per user fee.
9. Wordle – A word cloud generator that is small, fun and quite versatile. Input or copy in some text and generate a visual cloud of the most frequently use words. Then tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts and colour scheme.
   Cost: Free
10. Flip – Finally, this one is not software but a tiny little camcorder that lets you easily take videos and upload them (using the inbuilt USB) to the PC as well as YouTube, Facebook and other sites.
    Cost: varies depending on sizes and record time of the Flip

Jane Hart is a social media and learning consultant