John Shaffer is an educational
technologist based in Austin, Texas. He owns and
operates
Archetype
Performance Solutions a company focused on helping individuals and
organizations improve their performance. He also
occasionally writes a blog
Educational
Technology Digest.
John's Top 10 Tools as at 18
August 2008
Firefox
Its tabs allow me
to navigate through several information
sources in a short time. I love the addons
and extensions.
Delicious
I tag much of the
information I come across. I can then easily
sort the information at a later time, keep
what is worthwhile and dump the rest.
Skype Over the last several
months I have become much more of a Skype
junkie than previously. It helps me quickly
communicate with people around the world
either via voice or chat.
Google Calendar Like almost
everyone else, my life is busy. Google
Calendar is the best product I have found to
help me keep track of multiple schedules.
Moodle I have been spending
a large percentage of time over the last six
months with Moodle. I have set up once site
from scratch and have contributed to
developing a couple others. I know there are
other products out there but for now, I am
sticking with Moodle.
LinkedIn
My usage of
LinkedIn has increased over the last few
months. It has become my favorite networking
tool.
NoteTab There are several
different versions available. I use NoteTab
Light the free version. (Free is good.)
Much of the work I have done to post to a
Moodle site I have coded in NoteTab.
Bloglines
This remains my
feed-reader of choice.
Inspiration I know there
are other online mind-mapping alternatives;
I have tried several of them. Nevertheless,
since I first started to use Inspiration
several years ago, it has remained my favorite mind-mapping tool.
Basecamp
This has remained
a very useful tool for keep tabs on multiple
projects. Its been both useful and easy to
use.
John's Top 10 Tools as at 4
January 2008
I use Firefox, along with many addons and
extensions including FoxClocks, ScribeFire (which I
sometimes use to help me while writing blog posts),
FoxyProxy, Web Developer and others, as my main browser.
It forms the foundation of my personal learning
environment
I use
Delicious to keep track of much
of the information I need. I have many tags for
project information with which I can sort out
information for the various projects I am involved
with. I use the toolbar along with Firefox tabs so I
can quickly open multiple sites containing project
information
Google provides many tools (Calendar,
Notebook, Scholar, etc.) that help me keep on track
through my day and week. It is difficult to point
out one of the tools above the other. Many are quite
useful. Nevertheless, for the purpose of my top ten
tools, I would choose
Calendar as one of them
I have been on Blogger since 2004. I
recently looked seriously at changing to Wordpress
or Typepad but decided I had no compelling reason to
do so. I have only been writing very sporadically
but this year hope to be much more consistent.
Still, I think Blogger will continue to serve me
well.
Bloglines helps me sort through the
mass of information I try to keep up with.
I like to use
Pageflakes in
combination with Bloglines for a different view of
what might be of interest to me.
Although I wish I could say otherwise, I tend
to use PowerPoint as my main design and
development platform. Much of the work I do is on
the front end Analysis and Design phases, with
limited forays into development. Since this requires
a lot of interfacing with customers and clients, who
typically all have Office but probably do not have
other programs, I have found it easier to simply
stick with Office. Nevertheless, I welcome better
methods.
I have found
Basecamp to be a great
collaborative tool, also helping with project
management tasks, particularly while working with
geographically dispersed groups.
LinkedIn is my favorite tool to keep
in touch with, or at least keep tabs on, other
professionals.
I thinkNing is like Yahoo Groups on
steroids. It is a great tool for online communities,
one I hope to use much more during 2008.
