Jane’s Personal Top 10 Tools for Learning in 2017

My 2017 (11th annual) survey of Top tools for Learning is open for voting here, and there have already been a few hundred entries, so I thought I’d share  my personal top 10 tools for this year. If you’d like to share your own 10 favourite learning tools here, then please send them to me at editor@modernworkplacelearning.com and I’ll collate them into some follow-up articles.


TWITTER is still the place where I can quickly and easily keep up with what’s happening in the world – and in particular what others are up to with their ideas and activities   around workplace learning. But I do prefer to use TWEETDECK rather than the web interface – since it’s so easy to set up different columns for my news feed, mentions, hashtags I follow, etc. This makes it much easier for me to get the overall picture of what’s happening in the moment. It’s still  the first place I turn to in the morning.


I also couldn’t do without FEEDLY – my RSS reader – where I aggregate well over 300 blog and website feeds. So this as another way important way for me to keep up to date with new ideas and thinking in workplace technology, the future of work, and other related topics.


WORDPRESS is the platform I use for all my websites – Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, my blog, Centre for Modern Workplace Learning, the MWL Magazine and 30 Day Learning Challenges. WordPress is a very powerful web publishing too and I have my own WordPress installations which I enhance with the use of a large number of 3rd party plugins . I also make good use of PIXABAY’s image library.


I use YAMMER to host the online workshops I run, since, for me, it is all about facilitating and guiding a social learning experience.  And I also want to show the workshop participants how valuable a platform it can be to underpin both informal social learning as well as formal (guided) social learning in their own organisations.


I am now making increasing use of ZOOM for video meetings, as it is really good to be able to see so many people’s live videos in one place – rather than just a list of names in a webinar tool. Whilst WHATSAPP has become my key communication tool with individuals and groups.


Recently I have become attached to a new web browser, VIVALDI as I like a number of the features that make it stand out from other browsers. If you don’t know Vivaldi, take a look at 9 reasons to switch to Vivaldi browser today.


Finally, I’m still in love with my APPLE WATCH!  People often ask me what it is about it that I like so much, and I say it is not just one thing – it is all the little things that make it a very useful productivity tool for me – reminders, alerts, notifications and so on.