Among the many things my colleague Jane Hart does for our community is to compile the Top 100 Tools for learning each year. I think it’s a very interesting exercise, showing how we ourselves learn, and the fact that it’s been going on for a number of years provides interesting insight. Here are my tools, in no particular order:
WordPress is how I host and write this Learnlets blog, thinking out loud.
Keynote is how I develop and communicate my thinking to audiences (whether I eventually have to port to PPT for webinars or not).
Twitter is how I track what people find interesting.
Facebook is a way to keep in touch with a tighter group of people on broader topics than just learning. I’m not always happy with it, but it works.
Skype is a regular way to communicate with people, using a chat as a backchannel for calls, or keeping open for quick catch ups with colleagues. An open chat window with my ITA colleagues is part of our learning together.
OmniGraffle is the tool I use to diagram, one of the ways I understand and communicate things.
OmniOutliner often is the way I start thinking about presentations and papers.
Google is my search tool.
Word is still the way I write when I need to go industrial-strength, getting the nod over Pages because of it’s outlining and keyboard shortcuts.
GoodReader on the qPad is the way I read and markup documents that I’m asked to review.
That’s 10, so I guess I can’t mention how I’ve been using Graphic Converter to edit images, or GoToMeeting as the most frequent (tho’ by no means the only) web conferencing environment I’ve been asked to use.
I exhort you to also pass on your list to Jane, and look forward to the results.