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Free Software Alternatives
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Trevor Gontz
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Jul 14, 2008 12:25 PDT
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As I am new to this list an have not spent an extensive amount of time
reading through/searching it I hope that I am not making a duplicate
post!
I am posting to make other teachers aware that there are FREE
alternatives to many popular programs that are used in education!
I will start with basics. There is a free alternative to Microsoft
Office called OpenOffice and it can be downloaded at
http://www.openoffice.org/. Not only OpenOffice free, but it is open
source which means that you are also free to distribute it! This is
great because you can put it on a CD and give to students to install/use
at home!
Actually, from this point on ALL of the software I mention will be open
source.
If your school/district currently uses Blackboard but is considering
dropping it due to the cost, well there is actually a free alternative
to Blackboard that in most cases is actually K-12 schools! It is called
Moodle and it can be found at http://moodle.org/.
If you are a user of Inspiration there is a free alternative called
FreeMind. FreeMind can be found at
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.
There is a free program similar to ImageBlender that is called TuxPaint.
You can find TuxPaint here http://www.tuxpaint.org/.
Elementary/middle level Math teachers may want to take a look at Tux, Of
Math Command (TuxMath) - http://tux4kids.alioth.debian.org/
An high school/college math teachers may want to look at GeoGebra
(http://www.geogebra.org/) as a free alternative to Geometer's Sketchpad
and/or Cabri.
You should be getting the idea by now so I'll abbreviate for you!
Adobe Photoshop - GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)
Adobe Illustrator - Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/)
Others of interest:
Tux Typing - http://tux4kids.alioth.debian.org/
GCompris - http://gcompris.net/
Lastly, I am working on compiling a fairly comprehensive list at
http://www.helpfulstuff.org/content/view/14/169/.
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