My top 10 tools for learning in 2023

Jane Hart is gathering votes again for her annual “Top 100 tools for learning“ ranking. It has been a while since I last contributed, it’s time to pick up this good habit again.

Here is my top 10 for this year (in no particular order):

Microsoft OneNote: although I have tried and tested more “fancy” (Notion style) note taking tools, for me OneNote is still the best note-taking application. The web version is powerful, there are clients for most common platforms, including Mac OS.
Wallabag: a self-hosted “Read Later” web application (or Pocket competitor), that allows you to capture websites via a “bookmarklet”, tag and store them for later. You can self host it, which is a privacy advantage.
WordPress: excellent blogging platform. Administration is a piece of cake, even for non-tech users, with e.g. the auto-update feature.
FreshRSS: I’m still old school, so still using RSS feeds. FreshRSS replaced the Fever app (which was no longer maintained by the author). It gathers hundreds of RSS feeds that would otherwise be impossible to follow.
Microsoft 365: the “swiss army knife” of productivity tools: enterprise-grade e-mail and calendar, SharePoint sites for collaborating or storing knowledge, and OneDrive for personal storage.
Freemind: open source mindmapping tool, replacing my earlier (too expensive) MindMeister
X (formerly known as Twitter): I was hesitating to keep this one on the list. The attitude of their new owner and the fact that Tweetdeck (the only way to filter out corporate BS and focus on the people you want to hear from) became a paying option have put me in serious doubt. Maybe the last year…
Microsoft Teams: my daily hub for “informal learning” and “knowledge sharing” with my colleagues. It remains a bit clumsy and managing the “firehose” of information is not always easy, but I’m learning to like it.
LinkedIn Learning: a very rich range of e-learning courses on various subjects. I like the variation in subjects, approaches, level of detail…
Obsidentify: not a “corporate” learning tool, but if you are interested in nature, this app helps you to identify wild plants and animals by simply taking a picture of them.
Merlin Bird ID: same as above, but this time an app for identifying birds by simply recording the sound of them.

Working in Learning Technology in the near future

Donald Clark wrote a very thought-provoking article, a must read, for people that are working in the world of Learning Technology (learning designers, architects, instructional designers…): Learning Designers will have to adapt or die. 10 ways to UPSKILL to AI….

It is time to learn new skills and re-invent ourselves…

Sonos controller update fails on macOS Ventura

After the installation of macOS Ventura (currently 13.1), the update of the Sonos Controller app would fail systematically with the error message: Sonos update failed – an unexpected error occurred.

This can be resolved by adding some permissions for the Sonos Installer:

  • Open System preferences
  • In the navigation column on the left, select Privacy & Security
  • In the Privacy section, select App management
  • Make sure that the switch is on next to Sonos Installer. This will give the installer the necessary rights to update the app.
Change the setting to ON for Sonos Installer

Free cycling maps for a Garmin Edge 800 GPS

I own a Garmin Edge 800, it is very old but still super reliable. And the best part is that you can update the maps regularly via the OpenStreetMap initiative. It allows you to use turn-by-turn navigation and have an accurate view on the routes you are following.

Garmin Edge 800 with OpenStreetMaps

This is the procedure:

  • Connect the device to your computer with the USB cable
    This should mount two storage devices on your computer: the built-in storage and the micro-SD card.
  • Download the most recent map from https://www.openfietsmap.nl/. Go to the Downloads section and download the region you need.
  • Open the zip file you just downloaded, and copy the file gmapsub.img to the Garmin folder on the SD card. Be patient, this took about 1 hour on my device.
  • On the GPS device, make sure to verify that the new map is the one that is active, especially if you have other maps on the card. There should only be one map activated. Check the readme.html file in the zip for more tips and tricks.

Update to Android 11 on Nokia 6.2 stuck on “Finishing system update”

I recently updated a Nokia 6.2 phone to Android 11.

After the update finished, a message Finishing system update appeared in the notification center, and it never went away, even after restarting the phone or waiting for hours.

In some discussion forums, people suggested to do a factory reset, but even that did not fix the issue, the message still appeared after the factory reset.

In the end, I removed the Micro SD card that was in the phone, and that magically seems to have fixed the issue, the update finished successfully.

So if you would experience the same issue, try removing your SD Card, that might help you out. Let us know in the comments if it worked for you!