A handful of the best
A handful of the best is one of the presentations I ran at uLearn09. The basis of this presentation is a collection of open source, free or great proprietory tools that I use in my classroom.
While the “software for schools” deal does provide a basic productivity suite for computers in schools and an OS it is a very limited selection of the tools that many learner need and use regularly. Here is my list of some of the tools that I use: (NB some require registration, and others like Comic life will require purchase but are well worth the investment)
|
Product |
URL |
Win |
Mac |
FOSS |
| Audacity (Audio recorder) | http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ | √ | √ | OSS |
| C-map tools (mind map) | http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html | √ | √ | OSS |
| Comic Life (comic creation) | http://plasq.com/comiclife-win | √ | √ | Com. |
| Cartoonist (image manip) | http://www.vicman.net/cartoonist/ | √ | Free | |
| Freemind (Mind map) | http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download | √ | √ | OSS |
| Gantt project (time & project management) | http://ganttproject.biz/ | √ | OSS | |
| Scribus (DTP) | http://www.scribus.net/ | √ | √ | OSS |
| Shape Collage (Image manip) | http://www.shapecollage.com/ | √ | √ | Free |
| Fotosketcher (image manip) | Http://www.fotosketcher.com | √ | Free | |
| Google Sketchup (3D modeling) | http://sketchup.google.com/ | √ | √ | Free* |
| Rasterbator (image manip) | http://download.cnet.com/Rasterbator/3000-2192_4-10771005.html | √ | Free | |
| SAM Animation (animation) | http://www.samanimation.com/ | √ | √ | Free* |
| Read Please (audio reader) | Http://www.readplease.com | √ | Free* | |
| Open office (productivity suite) | http://openoffice.org | √ | √ | OSS |
| Not covered in the presentation but worth considering | ||||
| Google Earth (GIS) | http://earth.google.com | √ | √ | Free* |
| Scratch (Programming Multimedia) | http://scratch.mit.edu/ | √ | √ | √ |
| Photostory (Multimedia) | Http://www.microsoft.com | √ | Free* | |
| Acrobat Reader (audio reader aspect) | Http://www.adobe.com | √ | √ | Free |
| The GIMP (Image editor) | Http://www.gimp.org | √ | √ | Free |
