Top 100 Tools for Learning – a meditation
The estimable Jane Hart, owner of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT) has just released her list of the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009.
The list has been compiled from the top ten tool contributions of nearly 300 learning professionals from across the world. You can see who suggested what by clicking here (I’m in there somewhere; I submit my list to C4LPT every March, for reasons lost in the mists of time).
The Top Ten Tools are:
- Delicious
- YouTube
- Google Reader
- Google Docs
- WordPress
- Slideshare
- Google Search
Jane also provides some analysis of how each application fares in these two sublists:
Astonishingly, there is only one LMS in the Top 100, and very few e-learning authoring packages are included in totality: Jing is the most popular Demo & Scenario Development tool, and Articulate is the highest-ranked integrated presentation environment. Audacity is the top digital media creation application (YouTube is a distribution platform).
This means that (to take the first app mentioned as an example) either every learning professional is so satisfied with Moodle that there is no need to use a different LMS in any circumstance (unlikely), or that learning professionals aren’t involved in day-to-day administration and management of their learning environments, or that learning professionals don’t really use LMSs.
Based on Jane’s data, somewhere between a one-fifth and one-eight (16%) of all respondents included Moodle on their list of suggestions, not a very high percentage by any measure, I think you’ll agree.
What this list says to me is that learning professionals:
- Are great consumers of content: most of the Top 10 Tools can be used as a means to aggregate or interrogate information
- Are great distributors of information: most of these tools can be used to engage in information-sharing, as well as onep and many-to-many dialogs
- Are – as you would expect – deeply committed to personal development and continuous learning
- Are very connected and maintain a strong sense of community
- E-learning content authoring is not especially high on most learning professionals list of priorities
- Do not rate content administration and management as important activities
…and finally:
- Learning professionals have no money: these tools are all free-to-use applications. I would hope that this is just a reflection on the times we live in, and not because learning and training organizations are so poorly funded that they have to rely on free tools to undertake their work.
I wonder if Twitter being the #1 Tool for Learning is a fad and not a trend: connectivity is all very well, but as much as anything else, learning is about context; context is one thing Twitter cannot provide, except self-referentially. I would hate to think of learning as being reduced to 140-character-sized sound bites of information: there is sublimation, and then there is the ridiculous.
The Greek philosopher Plato described a mythical beast, the Ouroboros (see image) as a
…being [that] had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to
be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself.
Is this one possible future for learning? Small bits of informational stuff, endlessly recycled via digital relays, communicated infinitely around a IT network, like an eternal game of pass the parcel. Learning, in other words, reductio ad absurdum.
“Well done Jane” for all the hard work aggregating the data, assembling this list, and providing the extra insight ans analysis: I strongly recommend that you check out her website and view the accompanying Slideshare presentation. I hope that my brief meditation on what I think that the Top 100 Tools list potentially represents isn’t too glum, but I really had hoped for a better balance between the acquiring and creating sides of learning.
Maybe next year.
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November 18 2009 08:30 am | e-learning
12 Responses to “Top 100 Tools for Learning – a meditation”
Jane Hart on 16 Nov 2009 at 4:45 pm #
Michael – thanks for taking the time to provide your analysis of the results; I enjoyed reading your post. I’d just like to say one thing, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Twitter will reduce learning content down to 140 characters. If you read the reasons why most people like Twitter, it is mainly as part of their own personal learning environment/network to keep in touch with others, find out new resources and links in their subject area, listen to thought leaders, ask questions and get immediate answers, and so on. Within formal learning it is primarily being used to keep students and learners up to date with course-related resources, etc. But of course, it can be used to deliver short pieces of content – a training tip, or piece of vocab (if you are learning a language). However, its use for learning (in the widest sense of the word) is still being explored – so I’m going to be really interested to see how it fares next year. Like you I’d like to find out if it is a fad and will start to move down the list.
Lisa on 16 Nov 2009 at 5:14 pm #
Michael, I listed Twitter as my #1 resource of my Top 10 list. Why? Well, for one thing – it led me to your blog. Resource mining and connections – I’m a Twitter believer.
As for part two…yep, we’re poor.
Michael Hanley on 16 Nov 2009 at 5:32 pm #
Hi Jane – thanks for your comments.
Great work as usual putting the list together. What’s fascinating about the list generally is how much it has changed since you published the 2007 version – always a sign of a confident set of people exploring new ways to undertake their activities. I wasn’t having a go at Twitter per se, rather, I was using to emphasise my observation about the imbalance between tools used as communications channels, and tools used to actually design, develop, deliver, and manage learning materials. While I agree Twitter has a place in learning, I’m not sure anyone knows precisely the most effective way to utilise microblogging for learning. There are some promising avenues of exploration – in the learning community #lrnchat is a great forum for real-time dialogue between learning professionals, and I myself use Twitter in a workplace context very regularly. Integrated into a holistic learning strategy I think that microblogging, IM etc are useful ways to keep learners up-to-date, or to maintain a mentor/apprentice relationship, or to remind/threaten students of approaching deadlines for assignment submissions, for example.
Of course, I will happily admit that there is author bias in my blog. One of the reasons I write is because I have strong (and I hope informed) views on technology in education. I would suggest that most bloggers write because they care about their subject. That said, I do adhere to the Scientific Method, and draw conclusions based on the evidence of the data, rather than on unfounded preconceptions.
While researching today’s post, I had a look at my 2009 Top 10 list: seven out of ten of my tools were directly associated with the “Three D’s” of e-learning I mentioned above. This definitely indicates my personal tendency to view learning as a creative/generative activity: I know for many others that the act of sharing knowledge & learning – in a sense, the conversation and connectedness in e-learning is how they best perform in the medium.
Actually, I’ll tell you the other thing that really surprised me about the list (and it only occurred to me as I was actually writing the post) – it was how many of the tools could be categorised as free-to-use. In an off-hand comment I said that
But now that I think about it, it may be a subject to be explored again.
Anyway, as you say, people use microblogging as part of their PLE / discovery learning / information acquisition strategy, so here’s a prediction: I would assert that a much more effective way to manage personal learning, communication, collaboration, and KM is via tools like Google Wave. If and when GW goes public I suggest that people will quickly migrate to this type of platform, leaving ineffecient, linear, difficult to manage microblogging behind. What do you think? Google Wave for “Number One, with a bullet” in 2010?
Best regards,
Michael
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Michael Hanley on 16 Nov 2009 at 5:36 pm #
Touché, Lisa!
See my response to Jane’s comment re: use of microblogging as a learning channel. Why do I feel that I just opened a can of worms?!!
Michael
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Jane Hart on 16 Nov 2009 at 5:58 pm #
Michael – do you know why people are using free tools? Because their (expensive) commercial tools are not providing them with the functionality/environment they require – so they are having to do their own thing- and free tools is the way to do it. As you pointed out very few cited a LMS as a favourite tool – only Moodle got any real, significant votes – and that was because it does actually provide a useful environment for people. I think organisations need to really need to take a good look at the tools they are “supporting” – are they are they really useful and enabling? Or are they things they have decided have got to stay in place for the next 3 years whatever!
Jane Hart on 16 Nov 2009 at 5:59 pm #
Sorry that should have read “because the expensive tools that the organisation are providing them with do not offer the functionality/environment” …
Michael Hanley on 16 Nov 2009 at 9:54 pm #
I don’t know everyone’s circumstances, so I can only speak from my own experience, and of projects I’ve been involved with, have discussed with colleagues and students, and have studied. I’m not sure that’s always the case that organisations just stick with a large (expensive) implementation. It’s true though that much of the functionality on many enterprise-level systems is pants, which is why it’s important to evaluate software, or take advantage of industry analysts’ reports, before you buy.
With over a decade’s e-learning experience I’m no starry-eyed ingenue, and I’ve learned the hard was about organisational politics, close-mindedness, short-termism and the other less appealing aspects of business life, but having written and submitted many BCs for LMS-type solutions for commercial organisations, I have found that most commercial institutions not really motivated to buy and maintain software solutions if the TCO is going to exceed performance benefits – they’re not really interested in maintaining inefficient solutions beyond a certain point; government institutions are different – they will hold 20-year-old mainframes in place with Sellotape if they can keep legacy systems going, but they don’t really do much e-learning on these old stovepiped systems: educational institutions seem to fall somewhere in-between, though I’ve found that they can be the most locked-down of all.
Here’s what I find curious: if organisations do over-ride the experience of their in-house learning expert – for whatever reason – and implement, say a SharePoint CMS, why would they allow the implementation of Moodle, or facilitate the use of free-to-use tools on their network? To do so costs organisations and institutions time (to maintain), resources, and money, so why support these as well as “officially sanctioned” solutions? We all know cases where the intractable head of whatever department thinks they’re king or queen of their own little hill and refuses to budge from a certain pet tool or solution, but is such a person going to allow a well-meaning and enthusiastic learning pro to unilaterally roll out a social media tool?
If I’m stuck with a particular platform (as I was in one case about seven years ago), I found ways to work around it – even using the LMS in question to suit my learners’ needs, though it wasn’t the way that it was intended to be used. Nobody could say I wasn’t using the system though!
As you know if you read my blog, I’m an ardent advocate of OSS software, and I have a lot of time for client-based free-to-use tools; web-based, not so much. I
always recommend to people to steer well clear of web-based free-to-use systems, because of the potential for personal, proprietary and commercially sensitive information to be publicly distributed. Would Intel distribute their quarterly corporate update on YouTube? Or would you create your tax returns on GoogleDocs?
I wouldn’t.
Even if the data is safe from the public (no guarantee), the organisations that host these services – Twitter, FaceBook, Google, Microsoft etc have access to your info. For example, Google automatically scans Gmails to add context-sensitive advertisements to them. Google is technically able to cross-reference cookies across its information-rich product line to make dossiers on individuals. Would they do this? I don’t know. I do know that they adhere to China’s censorship laws. Just because they say they’re not “evil,” it doesn’t follow that they are not. Similarly, if you sign up to the hosted version of Adobe’s Connect solution, you lose all your data as soon as you end your subscription – potentially thousands of hours of knowledge, content, and expertise, stored on Adobe’s servers.
Anyway, I’m interested to know what you think about microblogging being superseded by wave-type solutions – which interestingly, Google plans to make open source.
M
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Lisa on 17 Nov 2009 at 4:02 am #
As one who works on four different LMSs (yes, I said four) in my work as a freelance online educator, you’ll note I didn’t put an LMS on my list. While there maybe an element or two I like in each one, there are certainly many elements (usually starting with their gradebooks) that actually hinder/confuse rather than aid learning.
Institutions make decisions that often revolve around institutional control – control of students, control of access, management of systems and data, etc. For these issues, LMSs may provide administrators with some handy tools – but this list was about tools for learning – not for management,security and control…
One other thought – those who often make the final decision on adoption of LMSs are rarely, if ever, the faculty who have to use them. Perhaps if everyone who purchased site licenses had to teach a course using the LMS, much more institutional research would go into finding educator-friendly, student-centered course systems.
Michael Hanley on 17 Nov 2009 at 4:20 pm #
Hi Lisa,
Yep – I feel your pain; I’ve worked with nine different systems (3 commercial, 6 open source) over the last 18 months or so. I came to the conclusion some years ago that for most organisations and institutions, the “M” is the key; it really is about learner management rather than about learning management. Equally, I know one particular college that used to provide Adobe Presenter for lecturers to create courseware from PPT slides, but has an IT policy that forbids the use of streaming media over its LAN because of students hogging bandwidth by watching YouTube videos.
Go figure.
It’s indeed true what you say about institutions’ choices – but if they were really that concerned about educator- (and education) friendly environments and learnercentricity, summative and end-of-semester
exams would have been superseded years ago, as this mode of assessment has been demonstrated time and again to be a less than optimal method of evaluating students’ knowledge; exams are a good way to process large numbers of individuals in a standardised manner though, so they’ll be with us for a while yet.
In retrospect, I think I must have misunderstood Jane’s survey about my top ten tools – I interpreted it to mean the tools that I find most useful in enabling me to perform effectively, rather than my favourite app or utility (an adjective J used in one of her comments). For example, there is one tool on my list – Delicious – that I find essential to do my job, but which I find is a nightmare to use – its categorisation functions are dreadful, its metatagging is very poor, and its UI affordance is questionable. Yet, in the past it met my requirement to capture and track links, hence its presence on my 2008-2009 lists.
It might be worth differentiating between ‘favourite’ and ‘effective’ tools in future versions of “Top 10 Tools” because the two categories can be quite different.
Anyhoo Lisa, thanks for taking the time to comment. One of the best things about the C4LPT list is that it provides a great context for debate: I still think that microblogging is of limited – but some – use, and I have deep reservations about free-to-use (as opposed to open source) software, and I’m sure I haven;t convinced you to change your views, but wouldn’t it be a boring world if we all thought the same way!
Michael
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virginia Yonkers on 18 Nov 2009 at 11:22 pm #
My favorite LMS was absorbed by Blackboard about 6-7 years ago: Prometheas. It was a dream in terms of features that every student and instructor could want. It linked to our library directly (for online articles). I could see when and where my students had been on the LMS (some of these capabilities can be found on other LMS’s) and the layout allowed you to input the start/end dates of the course, days, and times, and up would come a calender with the dates automatically populated into individual day schedules.
From there, I could input a number of features for each day (customizing the activities for the day) along with links to all the resources needed for that day.
There were a number of “views” then that could be used by the student or teacher. With one click, a student could see what was due on any given day, a schedule of assignments, a bibliography of resources, even the linked activities (i.e. discussions by day or semester).
I have never seen an LMS that matches this. I think of LMS’s now as the apartment houses of learning. I have my own little place which uses the same basic structure as other users, but I can customize it somewhat. But I’ll be penalized if I change too much.
Then there are the condominiums. You can pay to have the LMS customized to better fit your needs, but it still fits the same format and you need to pay for upgrades and make changes whenever there is a new upgrade.
I want my own house that is going to meet my own needs. I might want and need a lawn mower, or might decide to pave over the lawn. MY choice. These are the apps and tools that most people use now. Not only that, but when something new comes out that meets my needs better, it is not a hassle to change tools. Just move on. Or go to a different neighborhood without any commitments to pay for a broken contract.
AhsanShankar on 20 Nov 2009 at 1:17 pm #
Nice article and thanks for sharing here
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009: The Final List | Upside Learning Blog on 08 Dec 2009 at 7:38 pm #
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