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Jane Hart has made a fantastic contribution to the learning professional's community with her ongoing top 100 tools list. During this week's Learning Trends conference she takes that list and pulls out the "25 Free Tools Every Learning Professional Should Have in their Toolbox".
The discussion that followed included the question: Is anyone worried about free tools that could go away?
A while back, I wrote a piece for Seb Scholler's blog about Free Stuff in a Commercial World, which discussed the need to understand the business model that was behind the free tools.
It's important to note that free tools fit into two broad camps:
Tools that fit into either of those two groups can also be in two other groups:
- Solid business model or an active development community
- No obvious source of funding or active support
In the spirit of consultants all over the world, I've put together two grids that may help other learning professionals decide whether a particular free tool is right for them.
The first takes the ideas above and populates it with free tools (please note these are my current opinions only - I'm prepared to have them changed!)
| Closed source | Open source | |
| Solid business model or an active development community | Google docs, Zoho, Jing | Moodle, b2evolution, Joomla |
| No obvious source of funding or active support | Frappr, Delicious | Nvu |
Where would your favourite tools sit?
Of course, there's also longevity and reputation to consider - the longer a tool has been around the more likely it is to stay around. And the more people that think highly of the tool, the more likely it is to stay.
The second grid looks at the purpose for which you are considering the tool:
| Solid business model or an active development community | No obvious source of funding or active support | |
| Short term tactical goals | Would easily transfer to long term if required | Ideal for experimentation |
| Long term strategic goals | Probably a sensible choice | Living dangerously |
Basically, you need to consider how important the tool is to you. If it's going to take a long term investment in terms of time and data then you need to be pretty sure it's going to be around for a while.
Of course, this is exactly the analysis you'd need to do for any paid-for tool. It's not rocket science, just a matter of undertaking a process due diligence before you make your long term choices.
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