A recent article in eLearn Magazine by Jane Hart, head of the Centre for Learning & Performance, delivers the results of a survey she conducted on the Top 100 Tools for Learning. I was pretty shocked at the results of this survey, to which 109 learning professionals replied. For some reason I wasn’t asked to be one of them (joke).

What shocked me? Out of the top 10 learning tools, none of them is an e-learning product! How can that be? We use several great tools to create a powerful e-learning experience, many of which earn us lots of client kudos.

The top tool, according to Ms. Hart, is (drum roll, please) the web browser Firefox (now imagine the sound of cymbals crashing to the floor). The rest of the top ten list included del.icio.us, Skype, Google Search, PowerPoint, Wordpress, Gmail, Google Reader, Blogger, and Word. Word? Really? PowerPoint I understand and could defend, but Word? Skype? I’m certainly a little confused here. We were talking about top tools for learning, right?

How does Ms. Hart defend these survey results? She says:

“Most of the tools are not dedicated learning tools, but rather ones that are being commonly used by people in their daily lives, which suggests to me that learning, working, and living are actually becoming one and the same thing. I believe that therein lies the enormous power of these tools for learning.”

Okay, I’ll buy that, but think there may be another answer as well. If you are developing e-learning, users really don’t need to know what tool was used to develop it. They just want something that works, that is effective.

Ms. Hart does mention many products that first came to my mind: Captivate, Articulate, Dreamweaver, and SnagIt. This is still just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Nowhere in the article does Flash come up, which is certainly one of the most important e-learning products to come along in quite a while.

So why was Firefox number one on the list? In trying to rationalize the thinking here, I could only come up with one good reason: Firefox is a more reliable browser to play back e-learning products developed in the programs that show up later in her list.

I can’t argue how important playback is for the user experience. As developers, we want to ensure a flawless user experience, and Firefox is just plain more reliable as a playback system. That I can’t and won’t argue. But I think we have to start recognizing the technology behind the mere means of delivery. There are so many great ways that e-learning is developed that maybe the next survey can be broken into development tools and playback tools.

Actually, l think I might develop that survey myself.