My Votes for the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

These are my tool choices to contribute to the top 100 tools for learning list for 2011. All bona fide teachers can contribute by following the rules on the contributions page. This year I am using the blog post contribution option so that I keep a record of my votes.

1. Windows Live Writer for blog posts like this and web page publishing on WordPress sites
2. WordPress blogs for research, comment and as a teaching tool
3. Google Reader for ongoing discovery of new information and trends from a large collection of blogs, as well as reading and assessing student blogs
4. EverNote for information gathering of all kinds that can be searched and recovered later with ease
5. Google Sites for research, curriculum planning, work group collaboration, educational materials dissemination and a host of other uses
6. Dropbox for file syncing and backup, and sharing with others both staff and students
7. Camtasia for screencast capture and editing
8. Twitter for personal use, research and teaching
9. Google Chrome and its apps and extensions from the web store for a whole range additional information gathering, editing and dissemination for a wide range of media and structured data
10. Diigo for link repositories, group sharing and web slide shows

It was hard to eliminate this second list of tools that I use a lot but just failed to make it into my top 10:

1. Yammer for private discussions with colleagues in my institution
2. PowerPoint for slide presentations
3. Archive.org for free media storage particularly audio and video
4. Skype for research, research students, and online project meetings
5. Slideshare for presentations for teaching, research and administration
6. Mendeley for references and PDF files of papers
7. SnagIt for screen capture and image editing
8. Elluminate for webinars
9. Adobe Digital Editions for online reading of PDF and ebook files
10. Windows Live Photo Gallery for image and photo collections and simple editing

On the whole I am moving all my app use online where the bulk of my data is stored in any case.