THE LEARNING TOOLBOX

THE LEARNING TOOLBOX

The Learning Toolbox offers recommendations and suggestions for tools to use for different learning activities. The Learning Toolbox consists of two parts:

1 - Personal Toolset: tools to access and view content as well as communicate with others (for your own personal learning/working)

2 - Producer's Toolset: tools to develop and deliver content and other learning solutions (for yourself and others)

Although the main recommendations and suggestions in this Learning Toolbox come from the TOP 100 TOOLS list, gaps have been filled by other tools mentioned by contributors in their TOP 10 TOOLS lists. .

The specific tools in your own Learning Toolbox will depend on a number of factors including whether you are in education or business, the work you do and the activities you undertake, the computing platform you personally use (PC, Mac etc) and that of your organisation, and of course your budget.

We are therefore preparing a GUIDE TO THE LEARNING TOOLBOX to help you identify the appropriate tools for your own Learning Toolbox. However, for organisations who want to implement an enterprise Learning Toolbox, we are happy to provide BESPOKE ADVICE.

Personal Toolset

Tool	Recommendation	Other suggestions
Web browser	Firefox	Internet Explorer | Flock | Safari
Web browser extensions	-	Zotero | Delicious Bookmarks | FoxLingo | Googlepedia | HyperWord | MeasureIt | Scrapbook
Calendar	Google Calendar	Microsoft Outlook (£) | Sunbird
RSS reader	Google Reader	Bloglines | NetNewsWire | FeedRaider
Email	Gmail	Microsoft Outlook (£) | Thunderbird | Apple Mail | Yahoo Mail | Eudora
Start page	iGoogle	Netvibes | PageFlakes | Protopage
Social bookmarking tool	del.icio.us	diigo | Furl
Podcast/music player	iTunes	Miro | Winamp
PDF reader	Adobe Reader	-
Social network sites	Facebook	LinkedIn | Eduspaces | Explode | MyBlogLog | twitter | Jaiku
Instant messenger	Skype	Google Talk | Adium | Pidgin | twitter | MSN/ Windows Messenger
Useful resource sites	Google Search	Wikipedia | Google Alerts | Google Scholar | Google Earth | Google Maps | Dogpile |
Desktop search/ organiser	Google Desktop	Copernic Desktop Search (£) | X1(£)
Desktop productivity tools	-	For Mac: Parallels (£) | Quicksilver (£) | Mozy (£)
Online productivity tools		Google Notebook | Backpack | iGTD | Toodledo | Trailfire

Producer's Toolset

Tools to create	Recommendation	Other suggestions
Documents & Spreadsheets	Google Docs & Spreadsheets	Microsoft Word/Excel (£) | OpenOffice | Zoho
PDFs	Adobe Acrobat Professional (£)	Adobe PDF Writer (£) | OpenOffice | PDF Annotator | PDF Online
Presentations	PowerPoint (£)	OpenOffice | Zoho | Keynote (£) | Freepath (£)
Flash-based (narrated) presentations	Articulate Presenter (£)	Slideshare | PointeCast Publisher (£) | PowerConverter (£)
Blogs	WordPress	Blogger | Edublogs | TypePad (£) | Jaiku | ScribeFire | ecto
Podcasts/audio	Audacity	Voicethread | Gabcast | gCast | Odiogo | Podomatic
Wikis	Wikispaces	PB Wiki | MediaWiki | Jotspot | Tiddlywiki
Mind maps	MindManager (£)	FreeMind | MindMeister (£) | Inspiration
Web pages	Dreamweaver (£)	Google Page Creator | Firebug | Web Developer | HTML-Kit | Notepad++
Animation	Flash (£)	Swishmax (£)
Graphics, image and photo editing	-	Photoshop (£) | Fireworks (£) | GIMP | OmniGraffle (£) | Paint Shop Pro (£) | Gliffy | Imagination Cubed | Picasa
Widgets for pages/blogs	-	FeedBlitz | CoComment | MyBlogLog | Polldaddy
Courses and tutorials	Articulate Rapid E-Learning Studio (£)	eXe | Course Lab | Authorware (£) | Content Point (£)
Quizzes and tests	Articulate Quizmaker (£)	HotPotatoes | Quia (£) | WebQuiz XP (£)
Screen capture	SnagIt (£)	Faststone Capture (£) | Skitch | Gadwin PrintScreen
Software demos/ screencasts	Captivate (£)	Camtasia (£) | Screencast-0-Matic | iShowU (£)
Course management	Moodle	Atutor | dokeos
Discussion forums	-	phpBB | QuickTopic | SMF
Web meetings/ conferences	Yugma	Elluminate | Adobe Connect (£) | GoToMeeting (£) | Vyew | Webex (£)
Social networks	Ning	Elgg
Group, team and project spaces	Yahoo Groups	Google Groups | Drupal
Virtual worlds	SecondLfe
File hosting/sharing sites	flickr | YouTube | Slideshare | Scribd | TeacherTube | Odeo

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