Top 10 list of e-learning tools

Thanks to Josh Fischman and the Chronicle of Higher Ed's "Wired Campus Blog" for highlighting this interesting survey by Jane Hart, Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (UK).

Ms. Hart surveyed an international group of 70 researchers, consultants. faculty members, instructional designers, etc. and asked them for their top ten e-learning tools. Pasted below are those that scored in the double digits. It is worth noting that with the exception of Powerpoint (#9) and Word (#14) , they are all free. Also, as the CHE points out, these products aren't marketed specifically for e-learning, or even the educational market per se.

As a library and educational technology administrator in a US research university, I see students and faculty making innovative use of these mostly-free tools for a variety of purposes, including (shock!) teaching and research . In some cases (here's a good example) they have moved right past the Blackboard CMS, streaming media, and e-mail services that we maintain locally at great cost. At what point will our service and resource focus start to shift away from these local systems and toward coaching students and faculty in wise use of more ubiquitous tools? What are the implications for security, privacy, and copyright? If you're interested in these topics, please comment below or drop me a line.

[followup note: there's discussion about the absence of *libraries* on this list at ACRLog and CHE Wired Campus Blog]

See also: Webware's top 100 list of applications, with a handy breakdown by category.

Position	No. of mentions	Description
1	42	Firefox Web browser
2	29	del.icio.us Social bookmarking tool
3=	23	GMail/Googlemail Web-based email
	23	Google Search Web search tool (for many this represents the whole Google family)
5=	22	Google Reader RSS/Feed reader
	22	Skype Instant messaging, VoIP call tool
7=	18	Blogger Blogging tool
	18	Wordpress Blogging tool
9	17	PowerPoint Presentation software (part of MS Office suite)
10	15	Bloglines RSS/Feed reader
11	13	Google Docs & Spreadsheets Web-based document creation and storage
12=	11	iGoogle Personalised start page
	11	Audacity Cross-platform sound editor and recordder
14	10	Word Word processing software (part of MS Office suite)