Bertram (Chip) Bruce is a Professor in the Graduate School of Library & Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During 2007-08, he holds a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the National College of Ireland Chipbruce.wordpress.com. His research includes contributing to a conception of democratic education, meaning both the development of critical, socially-engaged citizens and of learning environments (schools, libraries, community centers, ...), which are themselves democratic. He's also interested in the history of technologies for learning as in Gladys Spencer's list from 60 years ago.  Chip's home page is www.illinois.edu/~chip

Chip's Top 10 Tools as at 19 May 2008 and 11 August 2007

1. Google Search - for general searching, but also the special features of maps, images, etc., especially important as it indexes collections such as JSTOR

2. Firefox - for web browsing, and especially, RSS feeds

3. Inquiry Page - home-grown system for creating and sharing inquiry units

4. Moodle - for courseware

5. Past Masters - online collection of full texts

6. Wikipedia

7. wiki tools, such as Confluence or MediaWiki

8. blogging tools, such as Blogger, Wordpress
9. synchronous communication, such as Skype, FlashMeeting, Elluminate
10. Email, and Listserv, or other email list tools