Ian is Course Director, Learning Management Systems and Organization, Education Media Design and Technology Master of Science, Full Sail University, Winter Park, Florida, USA

Ian's Top 10 Tools as at 5 September 2009

1. Udutu – Simply a SaaS revelation! Udutu is a flexible and easy to learn courseware creation tool. It can be deployed with LMS and LCMS functionality and has an exemplary business model. Udutu is Web 2.0 aware and millennial-learner (as well as teacher) friendly. The best part though is the generous and responsive nature of the company in developing and maintaining this service.

2. Wetpaint wiki – While the free ad-removal option for educators has been withdrawn recently this remains the consummate Wiki experience.

3. YouTube — An invaluable resource for the distribution of large video files, obviously — but also with ‘channel’ and annotation features that make it ideal for class grading.

4. Pageflakes – As a front runner webtop/ aggregator Pageflakes is a stylish alternative to Netvibes — and has a special Teacher edition.

5. Apple iCal — The standard Apple calendaring system has great interoperability and syndication features now.

6. Google Reader — Dependable and capable news aggregator.

7. Adobe Dreamweaver — the change to CSS in CS4 was rather high-handed but Dw remains the standard code generator as

8. Adobe Photoshop — is absolutely the standard image manipulation tool.

9. Microsoft Excel — the administration of my classes would be 20 times more difficult without this spreadsheet.

10. Mindjet MindManager — an invaluable mind map tool. The Mac version is not a match for the original Windows application — which supports a great API as well as variegated Import and Export options. Both OS versions are nearly indispensible to me now in organizing my thoughts and actions on a range of assignments, large and small.