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Emerging technologies

New tools and technologies, new ways of sharing, collaborating, accessing information and so on are constantly emerging. Some of these will disappear as quickly as they appeared, some will stick around. Here are a few we think might be useful for teaching, learning and/or research.

Most emerging tools are web-based and deliver on the promise that users can access them from any computer. Many of these require you to have set up an account, especially if you are uploading or downloading files. Some work as a toolbar within your browser (firefox) - but you might need to have these installed by an administrator.

Below a few examples of small tools that can prove helpful in a big way. See also our web 2.0 technologies page.

Share stuff

join.me: share your screen with others, or view someone else's screen. Quickly, easily.

dropbox: share files with others. Quickly, easily.

jing: make screencasts, then share them. Quickly, easily.

Environments

Moodle 2.0: we are envisaging a move to "Second generation Moodle" in 2012, which promises to supercede current Moodle functionality. Watch this "what is moodle" presentation on youTube.

Second Life: an example of a three-dimensional (3-D) virtual world or environment - can enable immersive learning.

Clever little things

diigo.com: highlighting the web, a personal research tool that can also make collaborative project work easier.

spreeder.com: a speed-reading tool. Train yourself to read faster or simply use to let text wash over you. Great for an initial fast read-through of new material.

wordle: a tool for generating word clouds - impacting images made from weighted words.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 - a ranking list compiled from votes of 545 learning professionals.

LucidChart - online tol for creating diagrams, charts and process maps. See our blog post for more detail, too.

Horizon Report

The annual Horizon report "describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years.". It gives a very useful overview of technologies to come.

2012 report

The NMC Horizon project reports are published under a CC licence, so permission to distribute the 2012 report was granted.

2011 report

The 2011 Horizon report can be viewed on the NMC website, as can earlier ones.

Learn Online Over Lunch

In 2011/2012 we will be running a series of weekly webinars (= online seminars) on free new online tools to support your research.

These will be advertised and you can book online. Visit our training page.

For more information email clt-support@lse.ac.uk

milk chocolate flock of sheep

Milk chocolate flock of sheep by net_efekt on flickr.