Each year, Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT) compiles a list of the top 200 digital tools used for learning. She compiles this list by asking for people from across the world to submit the top 10 digital tools for learning that they use on a regular basis.
Below, you’ll find the 10 digital tools I’ve found most useful over the past year (in no particular order) as well as a link for more information if you’d like to submit your own list to C4LPT.
1. WordPress
Beyond simply being the platform I use for this blog, it represents a medium and a practice that forces me to stay current on the learning and development industry in order to have enough ideas for 52 posts per year.
2. PowerPoint
It’s the go-to visual aid in 99.99567% of presentations delivered today, and when a deck is put together well, it can be an amazing learning supplement, engaging participants through real-time polling, offering reminders of activity instructions, and dynamically revealing content (among other things).
Plus, it’s an easy target for jokes (like Endurance Learning’s 2017 holiday card)!
3. Google Search
This is just-in-time learning at its very core. Any answer I need – whether it’s how to do something specific in Microsoft Excel or it’s finding an answer to a question that’s led to considerable debate at the dinner table – Google puts the answer at our fingertips.
4. Google Docs
Microsoft Word may have more features and easier formatting, but I’ve not found a better way to collaborate with my team or maintain version control than through Google’s suite of tools. The word processing application is the one my team and I use more often, thus the nod to Google Docs.
5. PollEverywhere
I’ve used PollEverywhere to enlist audience participation in workshops, keynote speeches, executive retreats, staff meetings, working group sessions and when I emcee’d a conference. It’s super easy to embed polls into a PowerPoint deck, people love the opportunity to participate and I’ve always found PollEverywhere’s customer service to be responsive, quick and friendly.
6. Kahoot
Similar to PollEverywhere in that participants can use their own devices and phones to participate, Kahoot is different from PolEverywhere in that you can keep score. They’ve made it easy to set up quizzes and track which individual or team is answering the quickest and most accurately.
I’ve never ever met someone who has used Kahoot as a participant and then not wanted to embed Kahoot into their own presentation the next time. My 5th grade daughter even used it in a class presentation and every one of her classmates wanted to use it the next time they had to present.
7. Slack
My company has used Slack as our primary mode of communication since we started. It’s dramatically reduced the emails in our inbox and allows us to “work out loud” so that we can be on the same page about a variety of projects.
8. Twitter
While LinkedIn gets an honorable mention here, I only wanted to put one social media platform on my Top 10 list. I’ve found Twitter to be the platform where I can go any time and come across articles, posts and videos that others across my personal learning network have shared. I’ve also found Twitter to be the easiest way to engage with thought leaders in the learning and development space as well as follow what’s happening at conferences that I can’t attend.
9. Snagit
I’m forever taking screenshots on my own screen in order to report error messages I’ve found and send to a helpdesk or to capture processes, screen by screen or step by step to insert into a PowerPoint presentation. I’ve found Snagit to take cleaner pictures than Microsoft’s standard snipping tool.
10. Zoom
There are a lot of ways to engage people in video conferencing and webinars, but for the past few years, Zoom is the platform that is the least expensive, crashes the least, has the smallest learning curve for new users and is just simple.
Those are my top 10, how about you? I’d love to hear the types of digital tools you’re using (please let me know in the comment section).
If you’d like to submit your own list, here is the link to C4LPT’s ballot.
Here is the list of the top 200 tools from 2017.
