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Below is a collection of links to free software that should be useable for classroom teachers. Some of it is maintained by communities of open source software developers and some applications are freewares maintained by individuals. Also on this page is a collection of free Mac Classic applications suitable for use in the classroom that I have permission or am legally able to host on this server. I also posted a few of my classroom files. Since some of the applications are getting really hard to find anymore, I've kept them here, along with some newer items. Be sure to check out my page of free Desktop Photos as well. Please send your suggestions for this page to : Astronomy Celestia - Free, space simulation software that can simulate perspectives from other points in space Stellarium - A free open source planetarium for your computer - This one is great for those times when you're outside and wonder about the name of a celestial object, or if it's a star or planet. Calendar Mom's Calendar - An excellent, freeware that provides a simple printable calendar - I used this one extensively when I was teaching. If you have to put out a printed calendar, this is the one to use! Pando Calendar - A freeware program that places a customizable calendar on your desktop Concept Mapping Tools IHMC CmapTools - Empowers users to construct, navigate, share, and criticize knowledge models represented as Concept Maps. (Free for educators) Course Management Systems (CMS) Joomla! - Joomla is a CMS that I read a lot about for use with businesses (often in combination with Moodle). I've not used it, but a buddy, Mark Crosby, used it to create the Electrical & Computer Engineering Site at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Another acquaintance, Paul Brumley, used it to create one of the nicest looking school sites I've seen, Randolph Eastern School Corporation. (Paul also runs a Moodle server for his teachers at RESC.) Moodle - Moodle is a free, open source Course Management System (CMS) designed to help educators create effective online learning communities. The word Moodle is actually an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, although the "M" originally stood for "Martin’s", as in " Martin Dougiamas," the original developer of Moodle (Martin's Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). Sakai - A collaborative, open source CMS developed originally by Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Michigan HTML Editors KompoZer - A WYSIWYG HTML Editor based on Nvu. It is maintained by a community-driven fork and is a project on Sourceforge. (Current Macintosh version: KompoZer 0.7.10 [11 MB]) Nvu - A WYSIWYG HTML Editor, based on the Composer component of Mozilla Application Suite and Gecko 1.7. I did a mini-review on Nvu and KompoZer recently on Educators' News. Image Editing Adobe Photoshop Express - This one is currently in beta. Adobe offers a streamlined, free, online version from its Photoshop series that is really excellent for simple retouching and cropping of photos. Picasa - Google's Picasa allows one to "organize, edit, and upload your photos to the web from your computer in quick, simple steps. Arrange your photos into folders and albums and erase their blemishes using powerful editing tools in Picasa." Picasa is currently available for Windows XP and Vista and for Mac OS X (Intel CPU only). GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. A variant of GIMP, GIMPshop, "intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop" is also available. (Note to Mac users: GIMPshop 2.2.11 requires Apple's free X11 installed from your system disks and from reports on the net appears not to work under Leopard.) The official GIMP site refers Mac users to the Wilbur Loves Apple Community for Mac downloads of GIMP. Math Fraction Calc - FractionCalc will perform standard operations on fractions, improper fractions, or mixed numbers. The interface is designed to be in a similar format to the way fractions are taught in school. Geometry - Geometry is a calculator which will calculate surface area and volume of a variety of geometric figures such as prisms, cone, sphere, pyramids, torus and cylinder. The software will perform calculations involving the pythagorean theorem, sine, cosine, tangent, special triangles, regular polygons, circles, arcs, triangles, squares, rectangles, distance, slope, midpoint, Trigonometry, and coordinate geometry. GridX - A math game in which players race the clock trying to fill a 1-100 number grid by applying any combination of the four basic operations to three numbers displayed. Microsoft Office Alternatives OpenOffice.org - A multi-platform, multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. (Open Office for Mac - also requires X11 from your system installer disks) NeoOffice - NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office. Other Bibliographer - An application that generates bibliographies in standard MLA format. Enkoder - Posting your email address on a website is a sure-fire way to get an inbox full of Spam. The Enkoder helps protect email addresses by converting them into encrypted JavaScript code, hiding them from email-harvesting robots while revealing them to real people. Both a Mac OS X application and an online app are available. Unscrambler - An application that will unscramble those scrambled word assignments you lost the answer key for! (I recommend this one for LD teachers who have workbook pages that require unscrambling words. When I was teaching, my kids had "always permission" to use Unscrambler on such assignments.) Periodic Tables Smell-O-Mints - Smell-O-Mints is a Periodic Table of all the chemical elements known at this time for Macintosh. Click on an element symbol to get a little more information on the item, like atomic weight, radioactive properties, and atomic number. You can use the popup menu to switch between the basic table and a table of solids, liquids and gasses, and more. Periodic Table Classic - This Windows application contains all the elements of the Periodic Table along with images of the elements in their natural state, as well as lots of other information and interactive displays. RSS Reader Vienna - A freeware, open source RSS/Atom newsreader. This is the application I use when writing Educators' News. Server Software MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP) - Installs a local server environment in a matter of seconds on your Mac OS X computer. Note that the MAMP site clearly states "MAMP was created primarily as a PHP development environment for Macintosh computer and should therefore not be used as Live Webserver for the Internet." The Moodle Organization also offers a free MAMP download with Moodle pre-installed. TeX Editors TeX FoG - A tool that helps TeX and LaTeX users type equations without the need to remember all the commands. Texmaker - A free LaTeX editor, that integrates many tools needed to develop documents with LaTeX, in just one application. Text Editors TextWrangler2 - A freeware text editor for Macintosh from Bare Bones Software, the makers of BBEdit. Older Mac Classic compatible versions of BBEdit Lite, the predecessor to TextWrangler, are still downloadable from the AusMac Archive. Web Browsers Camino - An open-source GUI-based web browser based on Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine and specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system. Firefox - An open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation available for Mac, Linux, and Windows. This browser provides Windows users a great alternative to Internet Explorer (and likewise, Mac users to Safari). Flock - Built on the Firefox engine, Flock is a a free, social interaction oriented web browser. iCab - An interesting, alternative web browser for Macintosh with versions for OS X and older versions for the Classic Mac OS Opera - A cross-platform web browser and Internet suite which handles common Internet-related tasks. Safari - Apple Computer's web browser supplied on new Macs...also available for Windows. ZAC Browser - This is a browser developed especially for some autistic children. It limits choices to just a few items such as an acquarium, stories, music, games, and TV. Currently, this one is Windows only. Years ago, I put up a page of Mac OS 9 freebies that I had permission or was legally able to host on my server. Most of the titles were Mac Classic applications suitable for use in the classroom. I also posted a few of my classroom files. Since some of the applications are getting really hard to find anymore, I've kept them here, along with some newer items. The following are Mac OS 9 and earlier third-party items that I used to load on our student take-home machines. Board Games (28K) by Daniel E. Gisselquist GNU Chess 4.0 (160K) port by Dan Oetting Josh's Apple Game (132K) by Eric Long Math Flash Bash (84K) by Samuel Davidoff PhrazeCraze Plus (117K) by Brad Pettit RiskII (57K) by ?? SnakeByte (466K) by Pierre-Luc Paour The Solar System (844K) I heavily relied on ClarisWorks/AppleWorks when I was teaching. I still revert to AppleWorks when I can't get graphics to behave in Word and save the file as a Word document! Obviously, the ClarisWorks/AppleWorks libraries require the application for use. Cartoon Characters (178K) AppleWorks 5 library Cold Frame Plans
Cold Frame Plans w/ photos
Days to Go
Lesson Plan Templates (45K) AppleWorks 5 format-Mac Minicalendars (44K) AppleWorks 5 document Paycheck (13K) AppleWorks 5 format Personal check (10K) AppleWorks 5 format Small Flashcard Masters Spelling Worksheet Templates (1.4 MB) AppleWorks 6, Pages, and Microsoft Word formats included Worksheets for use with JPL's Welcome to the Planets CD
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last updated 2/17/2009
©2009 Steven L. Wood