TOP 10 TOOLS 2009
Jim Buckingham

Jim is Senior Education Technology Specialist at Zayed Univesity's Abu Dhabi Campus sharing over 15 years experience with integrating IT into instructional design.

Jim's Top 10 Tools as at 15 November 2009

1. Firefox - The customization of my browser via the use of Plug ins allows me to create a navigation environment that works for me.. with my hand picked tools only a click away.

2. Zotero - A free open source, Firefox add on for doing "formal citation" work when setting up to publish. I find it easy to use, yet robust enough to compete with EndNote or Refworks and in my opinion, even comes out ahead of them.

3. Google Docs - A simple looking interface that is deceptively robust, Google docs has become my tool of choice for realizing online collaboration on just about anything I might have done before with MS Office, I'm especially excited by the use of Google Forms to carry out surveys and solicit feedback from students. I also like how the same Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms can be seamlessly embedded into blogs, wikis etc. for easy sharing with others.

4. Twitter - I'm discovering this to be a must for building and realizing my real time professional development network. Combined with TwitterFox, it allows me to easily follow leaders (that I want and choose to follow).. and be a leader for others to follow.

5. Wordpress - Wordpress themes provide so much versatility and flexibility that they help me make any self authored work on realizing professional looking but practical websites, blogs or eportfolios so much easier.

6. Wetpaint - Because of it's built in "support prompts", customizable interface and easy of use, I've made it a first choice for introducing the uninitiated to wikis to facilitate both professional and non profit collaborative use.

7. Slideshare - A great tool for making the old standby Powerpoint presentation accessible to so many from just about anywhere. Like Google Docs, it's ability to be seamlessly embedded into blogs, wikis etc. leverages its use.

8. Delicious - Now an old reliable for building and sharing bookmarks .. hard to supplant .. but perhaps Diigo is challenging.

9. Jing - An easy to use, screen capture program that is relatively innocuous on the screen but is always readily available when you need it. Ideal for putting together quick and dirty "show and tell" videos for remotely providing IT support to colleagues.

10. Widgets - A huge category - with thousands of examples to choose from but to not know about them or how to use them would seem a huge omission now in designing online learning. If judiciously chosen, I've found them to be a great way to realizing dynamic and engaging content on otherwise static websites, blogs or wikis.