The E-learning Curve at Edublogs

As you’ll know if you viewed my post on Jane Hart’s Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4PT) I feel that the more exposure learning professionals have to the range of tools at our disposal, the more effectively we can develop effective learning solutions for our customers.

In a similar vein, I’ve just received a nice e-mail from Fiona King at College@Home about a similar list of tools.

I’ll let herself explain:

I realize this is out of the blue, but we just posted an article, “100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner.” I thought I’d bring it to your attention in case you think your readers would find it interesting.

If you follow the link to the web page, you’ll see that Fiona has arranged the tools according to VAK learning style and by tool type:

• Visual Learners
• Mind Mapping
• Charting and Diagrams
• Videos and Photos
• Auditory Learners
• Podcasts
• Presentation Tools
• Audio Tools
• Text Readers
• Audio Books
• Kinaesthetic Learners
• Note Taking Tools
• Bookmarking
• Interaction
• Collaboration

I have to state at this point that in my view I would question the effectiveness of the VAK-type learning style approach - see Coffield’s article Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning (link below) evidence for further information, but as a set of sensory categories for Fiona’s purpose, they work just fine.

I think that even for those among us who would be familiar with a lot of the tools here (many of the “usual suspects” are on the list), there will be one or two new tools, and even useful new information about old favourites; did you know that Adobe Acrobat 8 has a text-to-speech reader, for example?

Me neither.

But I do now.

_____________

Links:

100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner

_____________

References:

Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., Ecclestone, K. (2004). Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning. A systematic and critical review [Internet] Available from: http://www.lsda.org.uk/files/PDF/1543.pdf Accessed 12 June 2008

–