Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Top 100 elearning tools

Jane Hart’s collation of top elearning tools from over 150 contributors is now available as a pdf file via this site. The analysis makes for some interesting reading, in particular, that educators are using Web 2.0 tools more widely than their corporate counterparts. Also , that most of the contributors used most of the tools for their own productivity rather than for ‘teaching’. Jane Hart’s list has been useful to us here at CPIT as it provides a one stop shop for tutors just starting on using ICT in a more creative way in their teaching. Descriptions of the sites are succinct and provide enough information to allow for future exploration to see if the tools will fit well into the learning context for each tutor’s content area and student profiles.

A trawl through the list reveal a couple that I have not come across. Of interest to check out were Voicethread and Jing. Voicethread allows photos / text files to be uploaded and then commented upon via audio. Photos from flickr, powerpoint slides and word / excel and pdf files can all be uploaded. Audio files can be posted via mobile phones or through the use of text or webcam. All of the media can then be shared and comments can be left by viewers. I registered and had a quick look around. The interface is very user friendly. I would assume that displaying on a mobile phone would be difficult and at present, only phones in the USA are able to contribute voice files. However, the whole concept is very useful for digital story telling, moving it forward from just a collection of photos to providing the opportunity to bring in personalised stories with audio & video feedback and commenting.

Jing is a screen capture tool. It allows the user to take snapshots of their desktop and make a video of what they have done. This is then sharable with other users. Being in beta, it is free for the time being & requires the download of the jing software tool on to your computer. It’s a useful tool to help record procedures for using other pieces of software plus perhaps to also record presentations as well.

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