Sean's Top 10 Tools as at 24 February 2008

1. Moodle: Robust open source course management system which is easy to use, easy to set up both users and courses and does not require specialist/expensive hosting/implementation. We use Moodle to 'house' many of our courses for clients.

2. Google Calendar: Invaluable for recording my own project-management information as well as sharing availability info to a wider audience. It also integrates with other Google Docs and even sends reminders (free) via SMS. I use Google Calendar to track my own time-on-task as well as give to work colleagues so they will see my availability.

3. eXe: eXe is a simple website authoring tool which can be used by course designers (part-time online, full-time teachers) to create the bones and basic content for courses. eXe is simple and robust and can create SCORM or IMS standard packages for integration into VLEs such as Moodle, WebCT and Fronter. I use eXe myself and we (my team) use it to show content writers how to use to empower them to create much of the course content.

4. Vegas: While iMovie and MovieMaker2 are pretty good, Sony Vegas is a good choice among all the middle-level video authoring tools, to produce eLearning video content. It is intuitive, not too expensive, and powerful (to a pre-After-Effects point) ;) We use Vegas to edit and produce interviews, presentations and scenarios.

5. SurveyMonkey: Cheap, simple to use polling facility which is simple to set up (eg survey or poll, easy for users to use and which collates results into an Excel file to make your life so much easier. We use this for general polls, surveys, focus-group type activity and during/post course feedback

6. Skype: For general VOIP communication with others or for conference calls for a small number of participants, Skype is perfect. We use this for conferencing, recording participant oral feedback, and plan to use it for facilitating mentor-related activities.

7. Flash: While HTML and general authoring tools have matured enormously over the past 10 years, many fall short in the areas of multimedia, interaction and engagement. Here Flash is a powerful tool in areas such as language learning, integration of user voices, slick presentation and general engagement for online games.

8. Camtasia: Camtasia is excellent for creating 'screencasts' - on-screen video tutorials with narration of an audio overlay track. It sports many supporting features / enhancements and can output to Flash - perfect for web delivery. We use Camtasia to create any tutorials that can be screen-based.

9. Articulate: To spice up PowerPoints for delivery online - this is a nice tool in my arsenal for publishing pre-existing online content. We are keenly aware of the limitations of over-use, and try to have these presentations as content support/reference rather than the main thrust of my courses.

10. Arrow: While there are many mailing list managers, this one gives you total control and is desktop based. It can import a list from excel and set up your mailing list in minutes. Think about what learning might take place with properly seeded and facilitated Communities Of Practice - and Arrow can help you achieve this. We use Arrow to facilitate over 30 mailing lists, sending between 30 and 40 thousand educator emails per day.