The final list of top 100 tools for learning for 2010 is now out on Jane Hart’s website. I understand this list is more inclined towards tools that learning professionals use for their own learning as opposed to those used for creating learning programs or training sessions. I see great gains made by some of the tools while I have not even experienced them as yet.
A quick look at the top 10:
- Twitter – micro-updating tool
- YouTube – video hosting and sharing tool
- GoogleDocs – online collaboration tool
- Delicious – social bookmarking tool
- Slideshare – presentation hosting and sharing tool
- Skype – instant messaging and VoIP call tool
- Google Reader – RSS feed reader
- WordPress – blogging tool
- Facebook – social networking site
- Moodle – course management system
Some observations:
- The top 10 is like a who’s who of social and informal learning tools. The complete list has a very strong bias towards social tools. This skew is probably because the people who participate in this survey are those at the cutting edge of information technology tools and are also socially more active on the web. I believe this list does not apply equally well for the average employee at the workplace; but there’s no doubting social and informal learning tools are on the rise. It’s time for L&D to take notice and start including these components in their learning mix.
- As many as 18 new tools on the list this year indicates new tools are coming up (or becoming popular) every year. Get ready to discard some old tools and try out new ones. On my list to try out soon are Jing, Glogster, Voicethread, Animoto, Zotero & ipadio
- Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, Articulate still feature in top 50 – though all of them have dropped positions as compared to last year. Notably, Adobe Flash suffers a steep drop and I wonder if this is a reflection of the difficult economic times we have seen in last 18-24 months. We have seen clients choosing rapid development tools over custom Flash built solutions purely for cost reasons.
