Time to retool. Just had installed a new IMac in my lab with a new color laser printer. How things have changed from my TRS80 Radio Shack computer and "dumb" terminal days!
Almost ready to take the plunge and to migrate my personal Mac Laptop Pro to the MAC Lion operating system. So much to learn…
I am blessed this year with an unusually talented group of bright, young, fun, eager-to-learn, student assistants. Just had my office dual operating system Mac Laptop (OS10.6 and Windows7) recloned with Carroll software. Have been playing with an Ipad and an Kindle. Gearing up for teaching the Research Seminar next semester (hope I get a few students!), and most importantly, just sharpened a new box of pencils and added to them extended erasers! Some needed school supplies never change!
Time to revisit. I see that Jane Hart is about to announce the final polling results of her Top-Tools-for-Learning List. Always worth revisiting, so I examined each of the 100 tools listed and will be directing my research assistants to a subset of them before I "cast my vote." For me the critical questions are:
- Will mastering this tool increase the likelihood of my becoming a more effective teacher?
- Which of these tools will enhance my research and my research communication capabilities?
- Which of these tools do I want all my students to know how to use? (Which are best for freshmen versus seniors?)
- Which of these tools will be around in the next four years?
- Which of these tools serve me best when I am engaged in my nonacademic role as partner of Schneider Consulting?
- Among subsets of tool types, which best serve my needs?
- How much learning time do I or my students need to invest to use these tools?
- Are these tools portable across the browsers I most frequently use?
- Are these tools portable across the hardware I most frequently use and am about to explore?
- How much of the attractiveness of these tools to me is simply due to their "wow factor" and the fun they engender?
Stay tuned.
As of now I use youtube for music, and skype to touch base with family and friends. Facebook, I loved but recently deleted it for personal reasoning and focusing on school. Youtube was a basic finding, something everyone talked about, when I created my facebook, not everyone had one it was the beginning of high school a friend brought it to my attention, since my house rules were not to have a myspace, facebook was acceptable haha. Skype, came to my attention when I started college so that I could communicate with friends in different states, it is my favorite tool today as of right now. I use it to video chat my mother when I have questions regarding mental and physical health etc.
I enjoy the fact that some professors, including my mother our taking the time to experience and involve themselves into these today’s tools, I strongly believe it helps more people of older generations understand and keep up with the current findings in technology.
Seeing the top 100 tools for learning list, I realized that I use many of them every day. Today’s society is one that runs based off of social media that is perpetuated by the use of the internet. We are “connnected” all the time. I know that I recieve about 20 emails a day between school and other sources (like online shopping- hey you’ve gotta know when your favorite store is having a fantastic sale haha. If these weren’t forwarded to my phone the minute they came in I’m not sure I would know how to adjust. I throughly appreciate having so much information at just a few clicks of a Blackberry screen between the google searches, evernote application, facebook, twitter and emails. I like knowing that if I happen to stumble across a random question (like “can every animal jump?”) that I can easily find the answer to it right away (answer- no, the elephant can not jump vertically no matter how startled).
Being a freshman in college, I found a lot of the top 100 tools helpful. I use Facebook and Youtube on a daily basis. I started looking over some of the other posts that she had on there and some of them were really interesting. It was extremely helpful to know that i have so many sources available to me whenever i need the extra help.
The tools I use most are definitley facebook and the Microsoft tools. I find these to be helpful with important thinga along with the Google Search.
I enjoy using any tools that help me connect with others as well as make it easier to deal with tough times in school, i.e. YouTube, Facebook, etc. Any Microsoft programs are beneficial but are not used that often. I like the fact that a lot of the top tools are there to enhance or profound one’s social life, but they can be somewhat problematic. A few of the tools in the list are not known to me, therefore they must not be beneficial to a college student, but I can not confirm that without further research.
The top tools that I personally like are Youtube, Google Search engine, and Microsoft programs such as Word and Excel. Twitter is also a helpful tool, but it depends on where you are getting the information on Twitter. It is great to see the source of the information. All of these tools are useful, but will it help someone to become a more effective teacher? I don’t necessarily agree. It depends on the person. I think youtube and google can give really good information, but then again, the source has to be rechecked to see if it is good. The best sources to find are Full PDF Text found on google, with their sources listed. I learn the most when I see a Full Text and know that the topic for which I am researching, has reliable sources and not just opinions.
I was surprised to find some of those tools to be in the order they were. I find Google, Youtube, Facebook and the Microsoft programs to be the most useful. There are also many programs that I haven’t heard of that are probably helpful.
As for myself, I am a big fan of YouTube, Microsoft word, anything Google (i.e. earth, docs, etc), Skype, and of course the favorite for many college students Facebook. These are my favorite because they are used by myself daily, so it makes it easy for me to work them, and accomplish much with them. Facebook honestly does not help me learn much other than events going on in friends lives though. I have also started using WordPress for certain assignments for classes. I do not know much about it, but it seems like it could be a useful tool depending on how you use it. I was, in a way, surprised about Twitter being the number one tool to learn. It seems like it is just a service for saying what you are doing at certain moments. Twitter does not seem like a learning device, but that just may be because I do not know very much about it.
I have used many of the top 100 tools including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google Docs, Wikipedia, Skype and of course the trio of Microsoft Applications: Word, Powerpoint and Excel. It truly surprised me that Word and Excel aren’t higher on the list, but I believe this is because of the fact they have been used for a long period of time.
Unlike some of the other newer tools that I’ve never heard of like Prezi, Dropbox, Diigo and (Edu)Glogster which are all in the top 15! I hope that in the future, some of my professors will use these newer more technological tools of the 21st century.
Being a sophomore in college, I have not used many of these tools. When doing school work, either papers or presentations, I have used the Microsoft software including word, powerpoint, and excel. After reading about Prezi, and hearing about it last year from an upperclassmen, I think Prezi would be a great tool to use for presentations, but the knowledge for most isn’t there. Many people have experience in word and powerpoint because that is what is used in elementary and high schools. For research, I personally use wikipedia and google search. I occasionally look at blogs when it comes up as a link in the google search. I think if more people were educated about finding blogs, then they might be more beneficial for more people.
I noticed how the social networks like twitter were on the top of the list. I didn’t think that twitter would be number one because I see it as a social network and for following celebrities or friends. Facebook is also one of the top 20 tools, which I think should be higher because I think it is more popular than facebook and there are more options on facebook.
Out of the Top 10 of the technology tools, I use/have used seven of them. I have used YouTube, Google Docs, Skype, Prezi, Moodle, and Dropbox. I also use Facebook. We have started using Jing in the Student Activites office to make it easier to show others how to fill out the required forms. I am debating on starting a Twitter account. I am surprised Facebook has not been voted higher on the list.
I was surprised to see that twitter was the most beneficial tool. I feel that Facebook should have had a higher ranking as well. Most websites now have sharing options that can share to either Facebook or Twitter, so it is very easy to share information with others, as well as find information others have posted. Finally, I believe wikipedia and youtube should have had a higher ranking. Both are very easy to use and can provide very useful information, as long as it is a reliable source.
After looking at the list of top tools for learning i was surprised because i have only heard of about half of them. For me, the tools i use the most are Microsoft word, Facebook, you-tube, Google, and Skype. I hope to in the future that I will become more familiar with some of the other tools listed.
As a college student I use Facebook and Skype which are two of the more popular programs for communication purposes, but I will also use Microsoft programs, Wikipedia, and Google for school purposes. I think I will try some of these other tools and programs sometime in the future to see how they compare to the ones I use at this time.
Top tools for learning had differnt websites that I never heard of because I know the basic websites like Google and Facebook. I use those two the most but now I think I will try different websites.
As a college student, I use a lot of different tools. Most of these tools in this list I have never heard of, but the ones I have heard of and think will be at the top of the list are: Facebook, Youtube, Skype, Wikipedia, Google Search, Microsoft programs (such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint). I am curious to find out which tool will get the most votes and which ones will follow it.
I was surprised to see some of the top votes. Alot of them I haven’t heard of before. I think the top tools for me and any college student would be facebook, twitter, youtube, Microsoft programs, skype, google search, wikipedia. I will be interested to find out what the top 100 turn out to be.
The top tools that I use as a college student are Facebook, the Microsoft programs, and Skype. I find that using a social media outlet for learning can be somewhat distracting because of the conversations, but can still prove to be usefull.
The top tools that I use as a college student would be Facebook,Skype, and all of the Microsoft programs like Word, Excel,Google, and Powerpoint.
The top tools that are most used by college students are twitter, Facebook, Skype, Google +, Wikipedia and any Microsoft application: Excel, Word, PowerPoint. Out of those most used and are familiar with only Excel, PowerPoint, word and Wikipedia are most useful for learning because they do not come into conflict with a conversation via the social media. Wikipedia serves as a useful tool only when researched carefully because anyone can write anything in a Wikipedia blog. Therefore taking the time to find credibility from that site is important.
I feel that some of the top tools are Youtube, TED, Microsoft Word,Powerpoint,and Excel, Wikipedia, and Google Search. These are definitely the most useful for learning.
I am also excited about the results for the Top-Tools-for-Learning List. I wonder which tools will be beneficial and which are easy to use.