Best-of-Class Toolkit for
Virtual Learning and Collaboration
What should such a kit include?
Virtual teamwork and online teaching are true crafts. Every great craftsperson needs a good toolkit.
After many years of researching the best of the best communications and learning technologies we have created a recommended toolkit for getting these jobs done and doing them right.
Further down the page, you will find brief descriptions of several specific brands of tool. But before you jump there, check out our thoughts about what ought to be in such a toolkit, regardless of brand. Watch for links to specific brands and click on any of the brand names you see to read more. These are the generic categories that will make your life easier, whether building and teaching an online course or planning, hosting and facilitating online meetings and events.
We continuously monitors the evolution and development of technology solutions for teamwork, meetings, and learning, looking for the best of breed among all the products on the market. It's a rare day when we endorse any product. To date, only a handful have made the cut. Each one has features that set it apart. We use these products ourselves and support them willingly with our own approach to making IT investments payoff.
The products described on this page are the ones we use ourselves and recommend to our clients. For the handful that we feel strongeest about, we have developed special focused training programs. You can identify these by looking for this icon: 
First, we have organized our generic reccommendations into two categories: content creation and content delivery. Then we have provided an annotated list of specific brand products below that.
Content Creation: Authoring and Editing
- Start with a basic text
editor that will allow you two or three different ways
to view a web page:
- view and edit source code
- preview in browser
- WYSIWYG edit
Being able to view the source code and make changes gives you the most control over the final look and function of your pages.
The preview allows you to see what it would look like in a browser.
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is like preview except that it also allows you to make edit changes. (We use Homesite, NVU and Kompozer as our in-house standards—mostly Homesite).
- An image creating, editing and archiving tool.
( SmartDraw
is a great image editing tool with compound clip art so you can take
pieces apart and make your own images. Picasa
is among the top free editors in this category.).
- A library of clip art and photographs for
creating high quality visuals for use in Web pages or PowerPoint
presentations. There are numerous sources of clip art. (iStockphoto is a popular one, for which you can often find discounts or free sample coupons. If you pick up a
copy of SmartDraw, it has one of the biggest clip art libraries built
in.)
- A web-page capture tool with a
way to capture images, text, and mouse movements from a computer screen
and to add annotations, hot spots and voice-over narration. (See SnagIt below).
- A PowerPoint recording tool to
capture live presentations for later, on-demand playback that
integrates the slides with narration and a picture-in-picture video of
the instructor. (Apple's iMovie is arguably the most consumer friendly. Windows MovieMaker is also good. Each of them is frequenlty bundled with new PCs. You can find an older, free, open-source tool called CamStudio online, though it is no longer in development. Adobe Premier is popular, but complicated and expensive. We recommend the very capable and reasonably priced Camtasia Suite from Techsmith.
- A PowerPoint compression tool to
compress the size of large PowerPoint presentations so that people with
slow connections can still view them without a loss of text features,
animation, and other effects. (See Impatica
for PowerPoint and PowerPoint to Flash
below).
- A web page building tool that is easy to learn, easy to use and doesn't require you to learn a programming language. Then you can assemble web pages from existing text, images and other media files. Your resultant web pages should be standards based so that they easily integrate with any standards compliant course-management or learning-management software. (See LessonBuilder
and ReadyGo Web Course
Builder below).
- A web-based document authoring tool that makes it easy to jointly author and annotate documents. (The standard for collaborative authoris is Adobe PDF. See below. But Google Docs is rapidly becoming a useful tool for this and it's free.).
- One or more brainstorming/concept mapping tools. (See Inspiration;
FreeMind, which is free, and Mind Manager below).
- Robust blogging and wiki software.
(See WordPress
and MediaWiki
below).
- Audio editing software for creating soundtracks, voice overs and audio podcasts. (See Audacity
with LAME and WinAmp
below).
- There are many other specialized tools that you might want, depending upon your circumstances, such as a file compression utility (think 7Zip or WinZip for windows, MacZip or Zipit for Macs) or file transfer software (FTP. Think FileZilla for Windows or Fetch for Macs).
below).
Content Delivery
- An online "space"
to support group learning and team work across distance or time zones.
(See Moodle below).
- A real-time, virtual classroom
for "same time, any place" meetings. (See Elluminate Live!
for Mac, Windows, Linux or Solaris or GoToMeeting for
Windows only below).
- Desktop video conferencing that is very basic and cheap and easy to learn and use. (See below).
As we said above, it's a rare day when FutureU endorses any product. To date, only the few described below have made the cut. Each one has features that set it apart. Each one gets our vote for being easy to learn and easy to use or a best-buy value. You may not know them all by name. Not yet. But, you can be sure that if a product appears on this list, it deserves a place in your future.
By itself, of course, even the best technology won’t guarantee success with distance education or virtual communication. Other essential ingredients are:
- A current understanding of the technology marketplace
- Careful planning
- Accurate needs and readiness assessments
- Participant buy-in
- Training in technology skills and best practices
- Superior content
- Skilled facilitation
- Professional evaluation
This is a fast-changing market. To avoid costly wrong turns, organizations as diverse as the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the California Virtual Campus have turned to FutureU for help in identifying the right solutions for their needs.
In addition to our tool kit of best-of-breed technology, FutureU delivers value-added services that address these markers of success. Our analysts, consultants, instructional designers, researchers and trainers are all seasoned professionals with national and international reputations. FutureU is here to help you identify and choose the most appropriate technology for your needs and to bring maximum value to that investment.
Recommendations
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SmartDrawImage library & drawing tool for charts, graphs, images, and PowerPoint. |
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PicasaGoogle's photo organizer. Lets you locate and organize all the photos on your computer, edit and add effects with a few clicks, and share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web. It's easy to use and free. |
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SoftChalk's Lesson BuilderCut and Paste from any "office suite" application and generate course pages with built in navigation. Add learning activities or media clips. Integrates easily with Angel, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, WebCT or any other SCORM compliant virtual learning environment. |
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ReadyGo Web Course BuilderEasy to learn, easy to use, template driven course content authoring tool. Integrates with most learning management systems including Avilar, Claroline, Click2Learn, Docent, GeoMetrix, Hospital U, ILIAS, KMS-inc, Knowledge Planet, LearnFrame, MaxIT, MeridianKSI, Moodle, OnTrack, Oracle, Pathlore, PeopleSoft, Plateau, Questionmark, Saba, Sun, Track-ED by MRT Multimedia, Test Track, THINQ, and Ynot Learn |
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Impatica for PowerPointPowerPoint file compression utility. Make your presentations more accessible to viewers on the Internet. |
DreamingSoft's PowerPoint to FlashInstantly convert any set of PowerPoint slides to Flash slides. Cheap, fast, easy to use. |
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TechSmith's SnagItThe leader in PC screen capture. |
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Techsmith's Camtasia SuiteEasily turn your live PowerPoint presentation into a Flash movie complete with audio narration and talking head video window. |
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InspirationBrainstorming and Creative Learning Tool. |
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FileZillaAn open source FTP software. Every bit as powerful and easy to use as WS-FTP, CuteFTP or any other commercial package...and it's free. |
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FreeMindOpen-source mind-mapping and brainstorming tool. |
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MindManagerA commercially licensed product with lots of bells and whistles. This is the product leader in the mind mapping market niche. |
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WordPressArguably the best blogging software available. WordPress.Com offers free hosting as does EduBlogs.Org. If you want full control over your WordPress installation, several ISPs offer hosting. We like SiteGround.com for its relatively quick email-based support and the fact that they will install WordPress for you. If you've already got a blog and find that you like WordPress, there are utilities to import files from Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, and B2. |
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MediaWikiThis is the free, open source wiki platform that WikiPedia, Peanut Butter Wiki, and a host of other wikis run on. Hosting is offered by several ISPs. We like SiteGround.com for its relatively quick email-based support and the fact that they will install MediaWiki for you. Instructions for how to install MediaWiki yourself on a GoDaddy Linux hosted domain can be found at Eric Hartwell's InfoDabble. |
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Audacity with LAME MP3 EncoderFor recording multiple audio tracks and saving them as a single MP3 file for podcasts or as sound tracks for a Camtasia production.
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WinAmpA free audio player. |
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Elluminate Live!Full-featured, real-time Web conferencing from anywhere. |
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GoToMeetingEasy to learn, easy to use, key-featured, Windows only web conferencing. |
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I-Visit Video Conferencing.Full-featured, real-time Web conferencing from anywhere. |
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MoodleProvides online course space with many learning tools and activity builders. Arguably the best course management software available. At the time of this writing (2010) there are more than 50,000 registered Moodle sites hosting nearly 4 million courses and 37 million users. (See http://moodle.org/stats/ for current information).
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