It’s survey time again.
Every year, Jane Hart asks people around the world to share the tools they use to learn. I always enjoy seeing the results. The tools change, but what interests me most is how people fit them together.
Here is my list for 2026.
These are not the newest or flashiest tools. They are the ones that keep earning a place in my workflow. They help me discover ideas, organize what I find, think more clearly, create useful things, collaborate with other people, and share the finished work.
Looking at the list, I realized I had not chosen ten isolated apps. I had chosen a system:
Discover. Organize. Think. Create. Collaborate. Share.
The tools are not ranked. Asking whether Feedly is better than PowerPoint is like asking whether a hammer is better than a refrigerator. The answer depends on what you are trying to do.
One more thing: none of these tools replaces sound judgment or a strong idea. I will spare you that disclaimer ten more times.
Here are my top learning tools for 2026.
1. Feedly
Feedly helps me build my own information stream instead of letting an algorithm build it for me.
I follow sources across learning, design, technology, marketing, behavioral science, cybersecurity, and several other rabbit holes. Feedly brings them into one place where I can scan broadly without spending all day bouncing between sites.
I am not trying to read everything. That way lies madness and several thousand unread articles.
I am looking for patterns and unexpected connections. A marketing article might spark a better plan for promoting a learning program. Research on attention might change the opening of a workshop. A visual-design example might offer a clearer way to explain a complex idea.
Some of my best L&D ideas start outside L&D. Feedly makes those useful collisions more likely.
2. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot
Yes, I am grouping the major AI assistants together. No, that is not cheating.
There is no single “best” AI assistant for every job. Their strengths keep changing, so I choose based on the task, where the source material lives, how much context is needed, and what I plan to do with the result.
I might use one to challenge a workshop outline, generate alternatives for a headline, turn a transcript into reusable content, or find gaps in an early draft. Copilot is especially useful when my work already lives inside Microsoft 365.
I think of these tools as thought partners, not answer machines.
They are most helpful when I bring them a real problem, useful context, and clear standards. A vague prompt can still produce polished prose, but polished is not the same as useful.
AI helps me reach a stronger first draft faster. The expertise, judgment, and final decisions are still mine.
3. NotebookLM
General AI assistants help me think beyond the source material. NotebookLM helps me stay grounded inside it.
That makes it especially valuable when I am working with a defined collection of articles, notes, transcripts, slides, or research. I can explore themes across those sources, identify gaps, generate a first pass at questions, or examine how the material might be organized.
One of my favorite uses is preparing for workshops and live events. I can load the relevant materials, generate possible questions, and then refine the best ones for a poll or discussion.
It is also useful during presentation planning. I do not need NotebookLM to design the final slides. I need it to help stress-test the story before I spend hours building them.
Is the sequence clear? Am I burying the useful part? What have I overlooked?
NotebookLM earns its place by helping me answer those questions while staying connected to the original sources.
4. Canva
Canva is my graphics superpower.
I use it for social posts, workshop assets, banners, promotional graphics, handouts, and the dozens of smaller pieces that surround a learning experience.
Those pieces matter. A course or workshop does not exist in isolation. People encounter an invitation, a title, a reminder, a community post, or a follow-up resource before and after the event itself.
Together, those touchpoints shape how the experience feels.
Canva helps me create that supporting material quickly and keep it visually consistent. It is especially useful when a good idea needs to become several related assets instead of one lonely graphic.
My favorite rule still applies: bad thinking with nicer graphics is still bad thinking.
When the idea is solid, though, Canva helps it look clear, connected, and worth someone’s attention.
5. Raindrop.io
I have lost enough good articles inside folders called “Read Later” to know that saving and curating are not the same thing.
Raindrop.io is where I organize articles, research, examples, visual inspiration, tools, and resources I may want for a newsletter, workshop, class, or presentation.
Its real value appears later.
When I need an example of a strong course title, research on attention, or a visual that explains an idea well, I can find it without reconstructing six months of browsing history.
That ability to retrieve matters more than the size of the collection.
A giant pile of bookmarks is not a personal knowledge system. It is a digital attic. Raindrop gives the collection enough structure to make it useful when a real project arrives.
6. Kit
Kit is the engine behind my Friday Finds newsletter.
It handles the machinery around subscriptions, publishing, and email delivery so I can focus on finding useful ideas and writing something readers can use.
The platform also reinforces a lesson L&D should borrow from marketing: creating good content is not enough. People still need to notice it, understand why it matters, and know what to do next.
That applies to newsletters, courses, workshops, job aids, and nearly everything else we make.
Kit helps me think beyond a single issue. It supports an ongoing relationship with readers. What do they find useful? What earns a click? What makes them come back next Friday?
Distribution is not an administrative step added after the “real” work. It is part of helping the work reach people.
7. PowerPoint
Yes, PowerPoint is still on the list. And no, I am not apologizing for it.
PowerPoint remains one of the most flexible creative tools available to learning professionals. I use it for presentations, visual explanations, workshop activities, prototypes, storyboards, job aids, and documents designed to be read rather than projected.
The blank slide can be a stage, a canvas, or a lightweight design environment. It gives me the control to turn an abstract idea into something people can see and understand.
AI slide tools have improved. They can help with outlines, initial structures, and the uncomfortable period before anything exists. But when the final product needs to be editable, precise, accessible, and genuinely mine, I still return to PowerPoint.
Old tools are sometimes still around because they work.
8. Craft
A presentation is built for the moment. A good handout is built for what happens next.
I use Craft to create digital notes and resources for workshops, classes, and presentations. These pages bring together the key ideas, links, examples, references, and next steps in a format people can use after the session ends.
That is important because slides and handouts perform different jobs.
Slides help me guide attention and tell the story in the room. They may rely on narration, timing, and context that disappear once the session is over. A handout needs to stand on its own.
Craft gives me a clean way to build that second experience. Participants do not receive a slide deck stripped of its presenter. They receive a useful resource designed for review and action.
The workshop may end at 3:00. The learning should not.
9. WordPress
WordPress powers my home base online and the website for my book “Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro”.
Social platforms are useful, but they are rented space. Algorithms change. Formats change. Reach changes. A website gives me a place I control for articles, workshop resources, downloads, and the growing collection of ideas I have shared over the years.
It also connects the different parts of my work: speaking, workshops, Friday Finds, my book, and the broader intersection of learning, design, and technology.
A social post may disappear from view in a few days. A useful article on my site remains searchable and available when someone needs it months or years later.
WordPress is not always elegant behind the scenes. There is usually a plug-in asking for attention or a setting hidden inside an elaborate scavenger hunt.
Still, it gives me flexibility, ownership, and a durable home for my work. That keeps it on the list.
10. Google Workspace + Microsoft 365
Not every valuable tool needs to be exciting.
Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, along with OneDrive, Word, Excel, Teams, and the rest of Microsoft 365, are where much of my everyday work gets done.
Workshop outlines take shape there. Drafts collect comments. Campaign assets get tracked. Project plans become more concrete. Collaborators add ideas, flag problems, and occasionally create four competing rewrites of the same sentence.
These tools provide the shared workbench for a project.
The choice between the Google and Microsoft ecosystems usually comes down to where the work already lives, what the organization supports, and what collaborators can access. I use both because real projects rarely respect software loyalties.
Most importantly, they save us from emailing files named something like Final_v6_REALLY_FINAL_UseThisOne.docx.
Yes, PowerPoint technically appears twice. Microsoft 365 is here for everyday work and collaboration. PowerPoint gets its own spot because, for me, it is also a distinct creative tool.
Honorable Mention: Zapier
Zapier helps with the repetitive work between tools. If information needs to move from one place to another, a routine action needs to trigger, or I am repeating the same mechanical task, automation may be able to give me some time back.
I do not want to automate everything. I want to automate the copying, pasting, transferring, and reminding that keeps me from doing more valuable work.
A bad process running faster is still a bad process. A useful process that no longer needs babysitting is a win.
The Real Tool Is the Workflow
The most useful part of this list is not any one app. It is how the pieces fit together.
Feedly helps me discover ideas. Raindrop helps me keep and retrieve them. NotebookLM and the AI assistants help me explore, test, and develop them.
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 provide the shared space where ideas become projects. PowerPoint and Canva help make those ideas visible. Craft turns the live experience into a resource people can revisit.
WordPress and Kit help the finished work reach an audience.
That is the bigger lesson for L&D.
A pile of apps is not a learning ecosystem. A connected workflow is.
Start with the problem. Decide what good looks like. Then choose the smallest set of tools that can help you get there.
No tool can rescue a weak idea. The right tool can help a strong one travel much farther.
Which tools would you genuinely miss if they disappeared tomorrow? Those are probably your real top learning tools.