Professional Learner's Toolkit
Jane Hart recently shared her Modern Professional Learner's Toolkit, based on the Top 100 Tools for Personal & Professional Learning 2017.
Inspired by Jane Hart, I created my own Professional Learner's Toolkit:
FAVORITE WEB BROWSER: Safari is my all time favorite, but I also use Chrome, because of some features that Safari doesn't support - yet (e.g. new Google Sites)
FAVORITE SEARCH ENGINE: Google search - despite its algorithms, it's still my number one, using search operators helps a lot.
TRUSTED WEB RESOURCES: BBC for European News, New York Times and Washington Post for world news and Google Scholar for scholarly literature.
NEWS & CURATION TOOLS: Feedly is my favorite RSS and I try to check it on a daily basis, but it can happen that days go by and I don't have time to look at my feed. Pinterest is still my number one curation tool, despite its being closed to those who don't own an account with it.
FAVORITE WEB COURSE PLATFORM: Coursera, but I don't use it as much as I would like to! Actually, I use European Schoolnet course platforms much more frequently than Coursera, because its MOOCs are more specifically targeted at the teacher population: Teacher Academy and European Schoolnet Academy. (Don't ask what the difference between the two of them is - I thought I knew, but I don't, however, it really doesn't matter because both offer excellent learning opportunities and I highly recommend both.)
SOCIAL NETWORKS: Twitter, without a doubt! Almost 9 years on and it's still going strong for my professional development, definitely a tool that I couldn't live without! Facebook is my second fave and I admit, I'm addicted to it, not only because of chats with friends and colleagues, but because of all the sharing and learning. LinkedIn has become more important and more present in my professional social networking life.
PERSONAL INFORMATION SYSTEM: I don't have any - I used to have Evernote, but I stopped using when they announced that the free version will be available on two devices only. OK, two devices is enough, but I don't like limitations.
BLOGGING OR A WEBSITE TOOL: Blogger for more than 10 years and I still like it, but I also like WordPress for its sleek design and ease of use. I've experimented with lots of blogging tools, but these two are definitely the best. OK, maybe Wordpress is a tad better!
PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS AND APPS: Google Calendar is a tool I use on a daily basis. I also experimented with Trello and Slack, but they didn't stick.
PREFERRED OFFICE SUITE: Google Docs/Sheets/Slides without a doubt. Easy, fast, free and most importantly collaborative!
COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION TOOLS: Google Drive, WhatsApp, Adobe Connect Pro Meeting and Skype. I'm a collaborator at heart! I collaborate with my colleagues with pleasure (and I hope they like working together with me). The tools I use to collaborate don't matter so much, the most important is that we do IT together!
SMART DEVICE: iPhone forever! My iphone 5 is now 5 years old! It's still working very well, but it's slowly telling me I need a new device. Turning off the volume stopped functioning recently, so my phone went off in the classroom - which of course was embarrassing, so a new iPhone is on the horizon for 2018.
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| Image by Jane Hart |
Inspired by Jane Hart, I created my own Professional Learner's Toolkit:
FAVORITE WEB BROWSER: Safari is my all time favorite, but I also use Chrome, because of some features that Safari doesn't support - yet (e.g. new Google Sites)
FAVORITE SEARCH ENGINE: Google search - despite its algorithms, it's still my number one, using search operators helps a lot.
TRUSTED WEB RESOURCES: BBC for European News, New York Times and Washington Post for world news and Google Scholar for scholarly literature.
NEWS & CURATION TOOLS: Feedly is my favorite RSS and I try to check it on a daily basis, but it can happen that days go by and I don't have time to look at my feed. Pinterest is still my number one curation tool, despite its being closed to those who don't own an account with it.
FAVORITE WEB COURSE PLATFORM: Coursera, but I don't use it as much as I would like to! Actually, I use European Schoolnet course platforms much more frequently than Coursera, because its MOOCs are more specifically targeted at the teacher population: Teacher Academy and European Schoolnet Academy. (Don't ask what the difference between the two of them is - I thought I knew, but I don't, however, it really doesn't matter because both offer excellent learning opportunities and I highly recommend both.)
SOCIAL NETWORKS: Twitter, without a doubt! Almost 9 years on and it's still going strong for my professional development, definitely a tool that I couldn't live without! Facebook is my second fave and I admit, I'm addicted to it, not only because of chats with friends and colleagues, but because of all the sharing and learning. LinkedIn has become more important and more present in my professional social networking life.
PERSONAL INFORMATION SYSTEM: I don't have any - I used to have Evernote, but I stopped using when they announced that the free version will be available on two devices only. OK, two devices is enough, but I don't like limitations.
BLOGGING OR A WEBSITE TOOL: Blogger for more than 10 years and I still like it, but I also like WordPress for its sleek design and ease of use. I've experimented with lots of blogging tools, but these two are definitely the best. OK, maybe Wordpress is a tad better!
PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS AND APPS: Google Calendar is a tool I use on a daily basis. I also experimented with Trello and Slack, but they didn't stick.
PREFERRED OFFICE SUITE: Google Docs/Sheets/Slides without a doubt. Easy, fast, free and most importantly collaborative!
COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION TOOLS: Google Drive, WhatsApp, Adobe Connect Pro Meeting and Skype. I'm a collaborator at heart! I collaborate with my colleagues with pleasure (and I hope they like working together with me). The tools I use to collaborate don't matter so much, the most important is that we do IT together!
SMART DEVICE: iPhone forever! My iphone 5 is now 5 years old! It's still working very well, but it's slowly telling me I need a new device. Turning off the volume stopped functioning recently, so my phone went off in the classroom - which of course was embarrassing, so a new iPhone is on the horizon for 2018.