I’ve been supporting Jane Hart’s Top 10 Learning Tools since I first heard about them. It appears I missed a few years here and there, but it’s interesting to see that it’s at least as far back as 2008! I see many tools that have passed on, or I’ve passed on. Let’s see where we’re at this year. And it’s the final, because this is Jane’s last go. Fare well, dear lady.
I’ve been categorizing them, for my own thinking. In ways that flux. I can’t see how that’s going to change…but note that I’m deliberately trying to move away from the mainstream tools. I’m finding that the big companies are increasingly aversive. Of course, that may be just a “get off my lawn” moment!
Writing
So, one of the things I continue to do is write. I use lots of tools, actually, but let’s talk about two of the most important.
Notes has become a place I store thoughts. I’ll create a note for something I’m thinking of while out for my walk, or at my desk. If I have a thought while I’m out and about, I may well lose it if I don’t capture it. So I do.
Word, however, is still my industrial-strength option, e.g. for books, because of outlining. I tried LibreOffice, and Pages, and Docs (trying to avoid Google), and … but nothing handles outlining with the elegance of Word. Sigh. So much for my effort to step away from Microsoft (though I’ve fortunately been able to turf the Teams app!).
Graphics
For some reason, I haven’t been creating as many graphics as I used to. Still, I occasionally try, and that’s still important to me.
OmniGraffle continues to be my diagramming tool. I continue to try to find another that’s less dear (Freeform is the latest), but nothing else seems to work as well. Mapping concepts to elements and relationships to arrows, in short re-representing, is key.
Keynote is a presentation tool, but it’s about visuals as well. I structure my talks this way, including diagrams and photos (royalty/attribution free from Unsplash, Pixabay, or Pexels), and some prose. But thinking how to talk about something forces me to think about it anew, and that’s more learning.
Social
As part of the Seek-Sense-Share cycle of Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM), being social is part of both the seek and share. Thus, social networks are ways I learn. For instance, today I just found out about the passing of Dolly Parton, which floored me; such a great person!
My probably favorite tool is Mastodon. I bemoaned the loss of Twitter, but it’s now a memory. Mastodon isn’t quite as lively as my next item, but it’s more intimate, and the underlying tech approach means it’s highly unlikely to be taken over by someone with an agenda (any, good or ill!). Fingers crossed.
Closer to what Twitter was is BlueSky. It’s bigger, so more different thoughts, though it still has the potential to be used for ill.
LinkedIn is, of course, the business network. That’s of course, what I try to use it for. Posts like this appear there, and there’s increasingly interaction there rather than here, but it’s not all of ‘me’, just ‘biz me’.
Slack is a tool I use to connect with folks on particular topics. So, for instance, both of my ‘sweat equity’ initiatives, Learning Development Accelerator (LDA) and Elevator 9, both use Slack channels for communication.
Project Management
While project management might not be considered learning, it does mean that it’s a way to manage my commitments, which frequently involve things that lead to learning.
Notion has been introduced for project management in the LDA, and it’s been a pretty good way to document and manage our tasks. We use Slack (above) for communication, but Notion has become a place to put and receive ideas, and give/get feedback. Both are part of the PKM idea.
Reminders has become how I manage my commitments to Quinnovation, LDA, Elevator 9, family, etc. If it doesn’t get in there, we never had the conversation! I’ve tried for a long time to manage same, and sometimes it’s a combination of Calender with Reminders, but it’s made it easier to meet my commitments.
There’s more. I’d put in Vivaldi as my browser, through which I surf the web, and DuckDuckGo‘s NoAI option as how I search. Wikipedia is undoubtedly my first check as a result of a search. That’d be three more, and they might be more frequently used than most anything else, but I wanted to focus on the apps and not the activity. I guess (he says, rationalizing post-hoc).
So there’s my last Top 10 Learning Tools for Jane. Maybe someone else will pick it up, or maybe I’ll do it again if something changes drastically, but it’s been interesting to think about mine, and to see the results she finds. As usual, it’s typically not formal learning, a lesson she likes to promote, and I’m not alone in thinking is interesting an important. So, what are yours?
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