Jane Hart has derived a framework for the Modern Professional Learner’s Toolkit, based on the results of her Top 100 Tools for Learning survey results.

After reading Harold Jarche and Clark Quinn’s personal toolkits, I was inspired to share my own.

Trusted Web Resources

This one could get quite large and is ever evolving but here are a few of the places that I frequently find myself. YouTube, Wikipedia, blogs from people in my PLN (see the news & curation section below), and Stitcher for listening to podcasts and other audio resources.

News & Curation Tools

Feedly is the most important component of my personal learning toolkit. It allows me to efficiently keep up with the things I’m interested in while keeping out most of the noise that would otherwise clutter my PKM process. You can see what how my PKM process works along with the interaction of my primary tools here.

I supplement finding and saving some news items by using Pocket to flag things I want to circle back to later and Refind, for discovery and generating a curated newsletter of the most share-worthy things I find.

Web Course Platforms

I haven’t spent much time on any web course platforms but I’ve found some real gems on Lynda.com (aka LinkedIn Learning). I get free access via our totally amazing local library. Check with yours to see if you can too.

Social Networks

Twitter is the social network that regularly gives me the most value. LinkedIn is the other one that I am active on and you should be too. (LinkedIn is often one of the highest search results for most people. So if you haven’t polished up your profile it is well worth investing some time to do that now.)

Personal Information System/Blogging & Website Tools

For me, these two categories have merged together. My website, run with WordPress, is the hub for my personal information. I keep notes and write blog posts in Google Docs. Other personal information sources you’ll find here include slide decks and documents hosted on Slideshare and resources curated on Zeef.

Smart Device

I use my older model iPhone to capture ideas and drop in on what’s happening while I’m on the go. I do a lot of my reading on my iPad.

Productivity Tools & Apps

This is another large and ever evolving category. In addition to the Google Suite, a few of my current favorites include Grammarly, Buffer, and Sortd.

Office Tools

I live in PowerPoint and use it for a ton of different things far beyond just slides. Otherwise, the collaboration features of Google Doc and Sheets usually outweigh the more advanced features of Word and Excel.

Communication & Collaboration

Lots of things to fit in this one. As I mentioned, the collaboration features of Google Docs can be a huge time-saver. I do a lot of file sharing with Dropbox and Box.com. Conversations happen on Skype and Slack with meetups via Google Hangouts, YouTube Live, Zoom and others.