Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010

Last week I put in my choices listing my 10 top technology tools to help build the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010.  

Jane Hart has, since 2007, been building an annual Top 100 Tools for Learning list based on the contributions of learning professionals worldwide.  She has asked learning professionals worldwide (e.g. teacher, academic, trainer, consultant, developer, practitioner, analyst, etc) and active in the field of e-learning, to put down their choices.

She has now compiled her annual list Top Tools for Learning and you can review it. I always find the results interesting, especially seeing the changes, what is up and what has gone down. She has again created a Winners & Losers 2010 page showing the tools that have gone up and down the list or fallen off it completely or are new entrants this year.

I put in my choices and it forced me to create a top 10. I found this very difficult to do. Although a few tools stood out and were constantly in use by me on a daily basis, the next level down is probably broader/more extensive. I also forgot to put in Corel photo-paint, probably because I use it so constantly to resize images for web use that I don’t even think about it. Also forgot YouTube and I probably should have put that one in too.

Top100 Tools for Learning 2010

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

Useful sites (weekly)

From Flickr Uploaded 2009-10-26 by vicky_n

• ClassChats.com ~ Connecting Students, Teachers, and Classrooms Worldwide  This is a social network that has been set up to help educators connect world wide. Many teachers are starting to use this site to match up with other classrooms and skype and video conference between them. Classrooms can communicate via chat, webcam, interactive whiteboard, forum posts, and more.

•   12 Key Messages for Education in a Social Media Age by Blog By Carol In June 2009, Edelman convened 100+ professors of communication, journalism, business and pubic relations to discuss how companies and organisations effectively engage with their stake holders through social media

• Social Media for Education Informative slideshow on the uses of social media in the classroom. It is helpful in identifying uses to which social media can be put for research purposes

• Intute – Blog – A Bakers Dozen of Practical Podcasting Tips Simple tips for producing a better quality audio podcast

• Educator Pln Twitter List by Shelly S Terrell on Listorious 

• Mashpedia, the real-time encyclopedia This tool matches reference articles from Wikipedia to materials from other sources like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, etc.. The purpose of drawing materials from multiple sources is to provide users with a comprehensive view of news stories and reference topics. 

• FlockDraw FlockDraw is a simple service that allows people to quickly and easily collaborate on the creation of a drawing. To use FlockDraw simply visit the site, click the “start drawing” button, and start drawing. To invite other people to draw with you, just send them the url assigned to your drawing board.

• WiseMapping | Visual Thinking Evolution ”Wise Mapping is a free collaborative mind mapping tool. Wise Mapping has fairly easy to use editing and sharing functions. Each cell created in a Wise Mapping mind map can be dragged and moved around in the mind map without losing any text or text formatting. Wise Mapping lets users collaborate on the creation of mind map. Mind maps made on Wise Mapping can be shared with others via email, url link, or be embedded into your blog or website.”

• Enterprise Social Software | Wikis, Microblogging & Feeds – CubeTree CubeTree is a free service designed for companies that would like to build a social network of wikis, shared items, and microblogs for their employees. On CubeTree anyone can create a network and invite colleagues. All colleagues must have the same email domain.

• Jabbster | Your private online meeting place Jabbster is a free service that allows groups to create private online communication networks. Within your private network you can host discussion boards, share photos, post an event calendar, and share bookmarks. Setting up a Jabbster group is quick and easy: register for an account, name your group, and send invitations to the people you want in the group. If you create the group, you are the group administrator and can delete any content or user from the group at any time.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Top Tools for Learning

It is that time of the year again. There are lists popping up everywhere. I started reading this last week and it coincided with some discussions about digital tools in other forums at work.

The Jane Hart has compiled her annual list Top Tools for Learning. It is always interesting to note the changes, what is up and what has gone down The Top 100 Tools For Learning 2009  can be found on this page as a list and also as a slide show. This final list (Nov 15th) has been compiled from the Top 10 Tool Contributions of 278 learning professionals worldwide.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

View more documents from Jane Hart.

There have been debates about what should be and what is allowed to be used in schools. Recently one principal was asking about what should teachers be allowed to access whilst they are at work. She was basing her question around reports that many workplaces were banning social networking tools. I am disappointed some of the comments made by some educators, teachers and admin people. Many of those who can’t/don’t see the point are those that are not using these tools. They often have not tried to see what others may be doing and also seem to simply think Facebook or Twitter are all there is. They base their ideas around some of the more sensational news media reports without any or very little actual experience of the tools. I cannot believe that any learning (curriculum) decisions based on such limited and weighted information are going to create 21st century learning experiences in schools.

I find that I use many social networking tools to help me with my everyday work. Many times I have been able to obtain answers to my questions, help with problems and notice about interesting articles, events, etc. via twitter or other online devices. My personal learning network has increased amazingly over the past 18 months and I rely on it as one of the key ways to  keep my professional learning/skills up-to-date.

Useful Links (weekly)

Uploaded to Flickr by CanadianAEh http://tiny.cc/nCepf

• Tom March :: Thesis Builders Great online tools (from Tom March) to help students develope a thesis, topic and outline for a paper. 

• Make Awesome Images With Your Photos – JPGfun.com Amazing effects for images online. Allows for the creation of exclusive avatars and pictures, using your personal photos. Online photoshop alternative, makes difficult photoshop effects in two clicks. 

• Hetemeel.com : Dynamic images You can change the text on this image to whatever you like. Change the text in the form below, then click on “preview image”. The text in the image will change accordingly. You can align the text with spaces and enters.

• piZap – free online photo editor – free photo effects online editor Pizap is a fun free photo editor that lets people easily create wacky images with their digital pictures. PiZap was created as a tool primarily for social networking users who want to post their images to their favorite social networking sites.

• FOTOCRIB | Online Photo Editor Fotocrib is a web based photo editing service. Fotocrib currently allows users to: Create montages, add 3D effects, encrypt photos, create rounded corners, convert between jpeg, png, gif, pdf and postscript formats, send photos to email recipients and lots more.

• WriteOnIt – Fake pictures Online photo editing web site, easily create your fake pictures, captions and fake magazines and other funny jokes for you and your friends.

• LoonaPix.com. Make Funny Pictures and Add Photo Frames Online. This is a free photo editing online service. Add photo effects or photo frames to your photos online. LoonaPix.com is a photo processing online service, that lets you make your photos funny and unique.

• MagMyPic.com – Fake Magazine Covers with your Photo! Novelty Magazines and Novelty Gifts! There are 30 different magazines to choose from for now. You can select any of them and make an impressive, unique, custom fake magazine with ease.

• Effects – PhotoFunia PhotoFunia is a free, online photo editing tool and very easy to use. Just select an effect you like from over 100 different effects, upload your photo, and PhotoFunia will handle the rest for you. You upload any photo and just wait to see the magic. “Our proprietary technology automatically identifies the face in the photo and let’s you add cool photo effects and create funny face photo montages.”

• Digital Photo Effects – Photo505. Online Phoshop Effects. Photo Fun Huge collection of photo templates.

• PicArtia-:-Create photo mosaic Online and Free!(Free online Photo Collage Maker) This site is a powerful photo collage maker. Create your photo montage in 3 easy steps and than 2 minutes! 

• FunPhotoBox – funny pictures, funny photo effects. Make fun with your photos online. This site offers a free photo editing online service that allows you to add special effects to your photos.

• Huge list of free icons download links tags:freeware,

• AudioBoo Interesting app that allows for mobile podcasting. You can use an iPhone and this free application/web service AudioBoo to share some observations from the field! This is live-blogging at its best. You can insert an image and it also creates a google map of location where audioboo is recorded.

• PodcastAlley.com — The place to find Podcasts Podcast Alley is the best site to find all your Podcasts, podcast feeds, podcast definitions, podcast software and best podcast directory.

• Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Open Culture Download free MP3′s of great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors include Twain, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Asimov, HG Wells, Jules Verne, etc. Also see link to free audio and video downloads of university/college lectures on many different topics 

• Podiobooks.com – Serialized audio books in podcast form Free audio books delivered as podcasts. Subscribe for free to any book and start from chapter one

• BooksFairy.com: Best Places to Download Free Science Fiction Books The list of some very good collections of science fiction novels, short stories, ezines, and other sf related stuff. All ebooks are available for online reading and/or free download in various formats.

• Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students – ReadWriteWeb 

• TypeNavigator An interactive visual font search tool.

• Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary shake-up | Education | The Guardian Guardian article about the proposal that UK children should leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication.

• The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines – Copyblogger A long article about creating the best short tweets. Your headlines must: 1. Be useful to the reader, 2. Provide him with a sense of urgency, 3. Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow unique; and 4. Do all of the above in an ultra-specific way.

• 13 Tutorials & Resources for a Perfect Twitter Background | Design Reviver The popularity of the website means that you get to connect with tons of other users, but it also means that you’ll have to stand out to do so. For that, having a great Twitter background is recommended to make a great first impression. Learn how to do this with the following collection of tutorials. 

• Digital Storytelling – Ms. McGraw’s English Wiki Digital storytelling on Ms. McGraw’s English Wiki. This is very comprehensive wiki.

• MLEARNING-WORLD.COM Education For The iPod Generation 

• Skype in Schools / FrontPage 

• Twitter for Professional Development A Google Docs spreadsheet of educators using Twitter for their own professional development, and stating why.

• Multicolr Search Lab – Idée Inc. Search for photos according to colors you choose.

• ktitraci – home How to make glogster files within google earth 

• Wallwisher.com :: Words that stick A great way for teachers/students to collaborate and exchange ideas as it creates a virtual bulletin board in which students could place notes, links, videos for class projects.  collaborative

• Be Very Afraid Each year a selection of ingenious students using web2.0 tools – from primary to university age – are invited along to BAFTA in London’s Piccadilly to show and talk about the extraordinary things they are doing with new technologies in their learning. 

• Educators’ Guide to Innovation – Connecting Innovators A ning that will connect educational innovators from all over Victoria to share their amazing practice. This year, for the first time, six outstanding sessions will be offered live online and face-to-face simultaneously. This event will also connect you up to an active community of innovators in this Ning as part of Making Connections – a series of online events, facilitated and open conversations, collboration stories, and networks focused on education innovation. 

• hugin – Panorama photo stitcher An opensource tool to create panorama photos. Thegoal: an easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama Tools. With hugin you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more. 

• GoView™ Beta : Home Capture your computer’s screen, add audio, and embed into your website. 

• Top Visual Search Engines: The Most Interesting Ways To Visually Explore Search Engine Results – Robin Good’s Latest News Robin Goods’ post on the most interesting ways to visually explore search engine results

• Twitlonger – When you talk too much for Twitter Twitlonger is a simple service that lets you post those tricky messages that really do need more than 140 characters and send them to Twitter.

• World Digital Library Home National libraries from more than a dozen countries, in coordination with the United Nations’ education agency, put some of humanity’s earliest written works online April 21 with their launch of the World Digital Library, a web site in seven languages — English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian — that leads readers through a trove of rare finds. 

• TwHistory ”We believe that history is filled with exciting stories. We also believe that these stories can be told through Twitter; through the people who lived and experienced them. We go through journals, diaries, letters, and other original sources to deliver the day-to-day lives of people who lived through some of histories most exciting times. We broadcast this information through Twitter, and feel this is a new and exciting approach to understanding history. Instead of reading about a month-long campaign in a few hours, you experience it over the course of a month, in small, 140 character ‘Tweets’”

• TwitIQ.com – Smarter Twitter Web Application TwitIQ is an enhanced Twitter interface that provides insight into your Twitter stream and Twitter followers.

• moonflowerdragon: How to cite Twitter posts in APA style A useful description on how to cite tweets and blog entries using APA style guide.

• Twitter Toolbox: 70+ Awesome Twitter Apps, Mash-Ups, Plugins And Services « Websites, Internet, Software Tips And Reviews Twitter Toolbox: 70 Twitter Apps, Mash-Ups, Plugins And Services « Websites, Internet, Software Tips And Reviews

• QuizEgg – Online Quiz Maker for Educators QuizEgg is a free, powerful and easy to use, quiz maker that enables educators to quiz their students online. lIt allows you to quickly and easily make sophisticated quizzes that can be published online, completed by your students (online) and then results viewed in easy-to-read reports

• TwitZap ”TwitZap lets you slice Twitter into channels of stuff that matters to you. Once your channels are set they will update in real-time, all in a familiar interface.”

• Twitterfall Twitterfall is a way of viewing the latest ‘tweets’ of upcoming trends and custom searches on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Updates fall from the top of the page in near-realtime. 

• TweetChat A great way to monitor your favorite hashtag through a chat like interface – somewhat like creating private chat room within twitter.

• Animations in the Classroom This free software allows you to create stick figure animations easily and without any artistic skills. Includes Pivot. Offers examples.

• The Hyperwords Company With Hyperwords for Firefox you can select any word on any web page and do useful things. (via Stephen Fry)This is a useful extension for Firefox and it even twitters! 

• ARKive Education – Homepage ARKive Education is a free-to-us. It provides downloadable, ready to use modules on a wide range of curriculum topics, suitable for geography, biology, environmental education and citizenship lessonse, multi-media resource bank for teachers and other educators.

• Visual Understanding Environment ”The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. It provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. “

• Creative Commons: A Quick Overview The Official Guide to Copyright Issues for Australian Schools and TAFE

• Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

• Copyright and Creative Commons-Special Guest Kristin Hokanson - 

• Addictomatic: Inhale the Web Find news, videos, photos, blogposts and more. Set out by source 

• ONLINE GRAPHS AND CHARTS | create and design your own graphs and charts online | INDEX Design and share your own graphs online and for free. A number of different chart types like: bar charts, pie charts, line charts, bubble charts and radar plots supported 

• amCharts: flash charts, stock charting software Flash charts for your websites and Web-based products. Download for free. 

• Many Eyes A collection of data visualizations and a new social kind of data analysis. View and discuss, or create visualizations from data sets. 

• Create free online charts with online chart builder ChartGizmo.com – Use our chart software for visualizing your data. Create stunning charts online. Create charts for your website, blog and social network profiles. Useful for visualizing financial, scientific or other type of data. 

• cooltoolsforschools – Graphing Tools A collection of 12 tools on the Cool Tools for Schools wiki

• Newsmap# Useful when discussing cultures as you can compare the leading news stories in various countries. Good for searching for current events and to see the emerging news. This offers meta analysis of the news. It is a good place to START research

• Oddcast – PhotoFace Portrait editor that allows you to make a Voki like animation from your own image 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Joining the on-line crew

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship. (Louisa May Alcott)

Uploaded to Flickr by desiretofire http://tiny.cc/ZgDmr

This could be, it seems to me at least, a good analogy for teachers and technology. By starting to learn about the technologies, by giving themselves time to “play” with the different tools, options and by reading about /talking to/sharing with others who have been using technologies in classrooms, they will feel comfortable to use them themselves. They will gain confidence in their abilities and more comfortable about being able to handle the unexpected.

A post that I found somehow reassuring was Love thy Luddite: The Importance of the Non-Techie or How I Learned to Stop Pulling Out My Hair and Love my Luddite by Mick Jacobsen

He discusses how he approaches bringing people into the on-line world under 3 points; 1. Listen 2. Don’t push too hard and 3. Respect.

The points he discussed rang true and I would add “patience” and empathy to the list of requirements. I must not be too anxious, impatient and too much of a technology zealot. I do try to avoid these traps but sometimes it is good to be reminded.

So, going back to the sailing/ocean theme, do we aim in schools, to try to stand tall, braced against the waves (of technology) 

Uploaded to Flickr by ziga-zaga http://tiny.cc/c5ErX

or are we learning to sail, charting our path and going forward (and bringing others with us)  

 

 

 

Uploaded to Flickr by sailorbill http://tiny.cc/qNowd