Professional tool

1 Definition

• (In this context) we define a professional tool as a software tool that is used in a work context to produce some kind of contents and that has been mainly developped for this purpose.

• In education, and in particular in the school system, professional tools seem to be the most popular category of educational technologies.

• Given the huge almost 50-year effort spent for various educational technologies this may come as a surprise. There may be several interrelated explanations:
  • Such tools are used in the real world and therefore did demonstrate their usefulness for given tasks that exist in both worlds.
  • Such tools are used in the "real world", therefore augment authenticity and learner motivation.
  • Such tools are well suited to support project-oriented learning scenarios, i.e. they support activity-based teaching
  • Teachers know how to use them (e.g. they use them to prepare courses or demonstrations (e.g. presentation tools) or they did learn them during their studies (e.g. statistics programs).

2 Different types

• Office tools (word processors, speadsheets, presentation tools)

• Some writing tools

• Some cognitive tools like concept maps and note-taking tools like the Scribe note-taking application

• Internet publication tools like web-pages, CMSs and associated search technology

• Reference managers, links managers, etc., in particular those who allow to share informations with others.

• Internet communication tools like E-mail, Forums, etc. (see CMC).

• Computer-assisted design tools

• Simulation and modeling tools

• Visualization tools

• Data processing tools, like statistics programs

• .....