Since 2007 Jane Hart has asked working professionals for their top tools for learning — TopTools4Learning — and creates three lists from thousands of responses.
- Top 100 Tools for Personal & Professional Learning
- Top 100 Tools for Workplace Learning
- Top 100 Tools for Education
Work is learning, and learning is the work, so here are my top 10 tools for work & learning.
10. DeepL Translator: With an international clientele and blog audience, I often get references in other languages. I find this tool much better than Google Translate, though it is available for fewer languages.
9. Diigo: Social bookmarks are a quick way for me to save a web page and find it easily. I have thousands I regularly search but I find I am using it less every year, especially as my blog grows and I have more references here, such as my Friday’s Finds.
8: Slack: This social sharing platform, with activity streams, is a great way to stay connected and work in small groups. It’s a good platform for small communities of practice as well.
7: Apple Preview: This is the productivity tool I use the most, so I can focus on learning, not fighting with applications. It lets me annotate pictures, resize images, add signatures, and most importantly ensures I do not have to use Adobe Acrobat to open PDF’s, meaning one fewer vector of malware on my system. It is a huge time-saver.
6. 1Password: I call this a tool for unlearning. This password manager reduces my cognitive load by not having to memorize any passwords as well as create passwords that are much stronger than I could do on my own. It synchronizes across all my devices and helps keep my online presence more secure.
5: Zoom: I have a paid pro account and am using this very simple video conference platform to connect and learn, such as with our Coffee Club community of practice.
4: Keynote: Apple’s presentation application has enabled me to improve my slide presentations, through its simplicity.
3: Feedly: My latest feed reader, or aggregator, to keep track of blogs and news sites via RSS.
2: Tweetbot: Next to my blog, Twitter is my best learning tool and allows me to stay connected to a diverse network. I use Tweetbot on Mac and iOS as it has no advertising or tracking and has a cleaner interface. With all of its flaws, Twitter can be a good platform for learning if you actively filter and mute.
1: WordPress: Powers my blog (+3,200 posts), which is the core of my sense-making. It’s easy to use, has a huge community, and there are many plug-ins and additions available. I also use it to deliver my online PKM workshop.
Hi Harold,
Thanks so much for this post! As a new educational tech major, this helps narrow down the choices of apps/sites I should be using. Do you have any other suggestions specific to using educational technology in a history/social studies classroom?
Best,
Jess Barber
Hi Jess: I don’t work in academia or formal education. I would suggest following @gcouros on Twitter, or perhaps connecting with Will Richardson’s modern learning community. Here is how Twitter was used in a university history class, a decade ago: The Twitter Experiment
You went in some different directions from me…so interesting to both see and consider for my own use. Thanks for sharing. Here were mine for comparison – http://bwatwood.edublogs.org/2019/08/15/annual-tool-reflection/
That’s why we share — to learn 🙂