TOP 10 TOOLS 2007 & 2009
TOP 10 TOOLS 2007 & 2009
Frances Bell

Frances is a senior lecturer/ Learning Technology Fellow at Salford Business School, with research interests in online collaboration, particularly e-learning and social networking.  She blogs at Bell Blog.   and as Learning Technology Fellow at www.edu.salford.ac.uk/blogs/blbe/

Frances's Top 10 Tools as at 5 August 2009

1. Twitter - I Twitter daily using the Tweetdeck client on my desktop and on an iphone. It’s the vital tool in my personal learning network where I find and share ideas and links.

2. Firefox - I like Firefox for 'doing what it says on the tin' - most of the time, I don't notice it except when thwarted by Microsoft to deny features of the uni web mail to Firefox, and forced to use IE. It has a good supply of plugins, several of which I use (delicious, myendnoteweb, and it works much better than Safari on the iMac I am currently using.

3. Google Search - I rarely use another search engine and can't imagine using the Internet without this but who knows? I might be using Bing next year.

4. del.icio.us - l have this embedded in my browser and even have an iphone app for it. It’s the essential partner for Google and Twitter – see a good link, bookmark it, share it – this doesn’t work so well on the iphone. I like the network option too.

5. Wordpress – I now have two Wordpress blogs and though they are quite challenging to maintain, I love the availability of plugins and themes – Open Source at its best.

6. flickr.com (Pro) - I use this privately as a backup for my photo collection (worth paying for the pro version) and publicly for selected personal photos, and images that I use for work. Top feature is ability to search for CC-licensed images, and search in general has improved recently. I store a fe videos here but mainly use it for images.

7. Google Scholar- I start my literature searches here (citation rating is especially useful) and just wish it was better integrated with the substantial digital library that comes through my university.

8. Word has to be one of my top 10 tools as I use it so much but I am still getting to grips with the Mac version.

9. EndNote - (integrated with Word) - I can't imagine writing a paper without this reference management tool. I have recently started using the cloud version Myendnoteweb. This has good search/integration features and works easily on my Mac (with Firefox plugin), so I plan to use this with students next year.

10. Moodle - This was my introduction to Open Source software, when we used it to create CABWEB . This is a truly great example of an open source community with lots of active and helpful users (very few of whom are programmers). I am honoured to be moderator of Social forum at Moodle.org.

Frances's Top 10 Tools as at 30 July 2007

1. Google Search -  I rarely use another search engine and can't imagine using the Internet without this (but I am sure I could if pushed).

2. Firefox -  I like Firefox for 'doing what it says on the tin' - most of the time, I don't notice it except when thwarted by Microsoft to deny features of the uni web mail to Firefox, and forced to use IE.

3. Moodle - I have to put this up near the top as it was my introduction to Open Source software, when we used it to create CABWEB. This is a truly great example of an open source community with lots of active and helpful users (very few of whom are programmers). I am honoured to be moderator of Social forum at Moodle.org

4. Netvibes - I love having an online desktop accessible from anywhere any machine, as I spend my life trying to cope with working with differen computers. It helps me monitor forums and blogs through RSS feeds, and my Flickr feed to new posts tagged with knitting brings me joy daily!

5. Google Scholar - I start my literature searches here (citation rating is especially useful) and just wish it was better integrated with the substantial digital library that comes through my university.

6. flickr.com (Pro) - I use this privately as a backup for my photo collection (worth paying for the pro version) and publicly for selected personal photos, and images that I use for work. Top feature is ability to search for CC-licensed images.

7. Elgg/Eduspaces - My main blog is at eduspaces and I work on two projects that are powered by elgg - another great piece of OSS.

8. del.icio.us - another essential tool that I use through netvibes. I like the network option

9. Facebook - noone in education can afford to ignore this, bearing in mind its explosion in recent months. It brings to life the tensions between private and public in Web 2.0.

10. EndNote (integrated with Word) - I can't imagine writing a paper without this reference management tool. It also appeals to the latent techie in me that I can write new styles in code that takes me back about 20 years.