Some things work really well for e-learning; other things, not so good. How to find out what’s truly valuable?
Jane Hart, head of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, in Somerset, England, wanted to know. So in July she asked 64 e-learning experts to list their top 10 tools.
The most frequently cited item in her survey was the Firefox Web browser. Next was del.icio.us, the social bookmarking tool. That was followed by Web-based e-mail, specifically Gmail from Google.
What’s interesting is that none of those programs are education-specific. Skype instant messaging, Google search, and Eblogger were also very popular. What they all seem to have in common is that they are tools for sharing information.
So is information sharing really the same thing as e-learning? —Josh Fischman
9 Responses to Top 10 E-Learning Tools
Bob Bacardi - April 9, 2012 at 2:31 am
My kids have introduced me to all sorts of TV shows I probably wouldn’t otherwise have watched. Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness is one such show. It features a recurring character that repetitively repeats the same words, saying them twice, two times, or even three times: “What would you know about the charred, burnt insides of my hurt, searingly seared rubble of my soul? (Everything I ever loved) was scattered like dust and dirt in the wind is scattered.” It kills me.
Laura - April 9, 2012 at 10:07 am
Isn’t the quotation from The Forsyte Saga (can’t italicize here) actually Galsworthy, not Soames Forsyte, on Soames’s automobile?
Carol Saller - April 9, 2012 at 10:57 am
It’s the writer Galsworthy making the character of Soames speak. Galsworthy isn’t using the first person. I’m not sure I understand your question.
Brian Throckmorton - April 9, 2012 at 12:40 pm
For thousands of leads to more discussion of this topic, google “elongated yellow fruit.”
Jonathon Owen - April 9, 2012 at 1:24 pm
I once edited a book wherein the author used the word “pusillanimous” three times. Once would have been one time too many for this particular book.
Richard Grayson - April 9, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Monty Dartie *was* subcutaneously oily. Remember how he ran off to Buenos Aires with all those gambling debts and that woman? And all his other escapades? And his pretensions? And obnoxious remarks?
Winifred, so wonderfully steady with everyone else, couldn’t help saying to her husband at times, “Monty, you are the limit!” — a shocking curse back in the day.
Still,he was more fun than Soames’ car.
dank48 - April 9, 2012 at 3:13 pm
How about a contest for most obnoxious unneeded, pointless coinage to avoid harmless repetition? My candidate will probably be unfamiliar to most CHE readers: wheel gun, used to avoid one more use of revolver. In sixty-four years and many hours spent at long-distance paper-punching, I have never ever heard a human being speak this witless neologism.
The hallmark of this phenomenon, it seems to me, is that the variation is so clumsy that it slows the reader more than repetition might have. The cure is much worse than the original problem, if any.
vijayofnvw - April 10, 2012 at 5:58 am
I make a living writing for business. Years ago, when I moved from occasional poetry and fiction to the sobering world of corporate communications, I was very conscious about avoiding repetitions. My boss(es) would get very irritated at this needless nitpicking. A couple of years later, the same group asked for my help with a specific paragraph in a document. Reason? They were bothered about one word appearing twice in that short paragraph. The word? Repetition!
Paula Gordon - April 10, 2012 at 7:44 pm
I was just thinking about this over the weekend. It seems that even the editor of the Passover Haggadah* was plagued (ahem) by the wish not to repeat himself.
In relating the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the Bible is quoted sentence by sentence, followed by explanations, using these phrases: as it is said in the Bible; as the Bible relates; as the Bible states; as the Bible recounts; as the Bible tells; as it is said; as the Bible says; as the Bible records; as it is said in the Bible; as the Bible states; as it is said; as it is said; as is written in Scripture — all in so many paragraphs.
This section of the text as well as specific typos (bruning anger, the the), which we dutifully read every year in deference to the written word, contributed to my awareness at an early age of the choices (and mistakes) one makes in translating and writing.
We also recited “To Him It Is Fitting, To Him It Is Due” in a Southern accent — not sure how or when that tradition started, but it still makes me giggle to think about it. The folks who read only the Hebrew are really missing something.
Thanks so much for your educational and entertaining posts. I read them religiously!
* Rabbi Nathan Goldberg. Passover Haggadah: A New Translation and
Instructions for the Seder. New York, NY: Ktav Publishing House, Inc.;
1966.