Freebyte’s Guide to Free Graphics Software offers an extensive collection of links to sites where free graphics-related software is available. This is free software for download and installation on your computer. (The site does not link to online applications.) The majority of programs listed run in Windows, but there are some for Mac and Linux.

The list of programs is organized helpfully by category, as illustrated in the screenshots below. The quality of the listed titles I am already familiar with is generally high, so I expect it will be worthwhile to explore more of the software listed here.

SchoolForge.net has an important and worthy overarching mission:

SchoolForge’s mission is to unify independent organizations that advocate, use, and develop open resources for education. We advocate the use of open texts and lessons, open curricula, free software and open source in education.

I believe this cause is worth supporting. One practical outcome of the work of the SchoolForge community is a website that lists, describes, and links to over 80 online resources that are free of monetary cost to educators. These are mostly downloadable programs that run in Linux and Windows, with a lesser number also available for Mac. Some of the listed applications are browser based.

Resources at SchoolForge are categorized in a helpful user-friendly manner. The screenshot below shows the main headings.

Accessibar is a toolbar that can be installed as an add-on for the Firefox browser with a set of tools to make the internet more accessible for people with special needs. Accessibar is especially useful for those with low vision. As with all toolbar icons in Firefox, the toolbar shown below can include text that names the function of the icon. All of the Accessibar functions can also be activated with keyboard shortcuts that can be configured by the user.

In the words of the toolbar’s developers, here’s what the Accessibar tools will do for you.

• Web page fonts and background colors can be changed from a selecton of 70 colors on current session
• Icons with configurable shortcut keys to increase and decrease Font size.
• Line spacing can be increased or decreased to five different spacing settings incrementally.
• All images (including Flash) displayed on a web page can be selected as being hiden or shown.
• All changes made to web page display can be restored to original page settings by pressing “Restore Page“.
• Changes made to the currently displayed web page persist until “Restore Page“ is selected.
• Integrated Text To Speech reader. Reads out strings hovered over as well as focused elements.
• Reader settings can be configured allowing the selection of the voice, volume, speaking rate, pitch, and voice range.
• Toolbar functions have configurable Hotkeys (keyboard shortcuts).

I tested Accessibar’s text-to-speech function, and I found it to work reasonably well. It does an especially good job of reading links and buttons. As a sighted reader, however,I much prefer to use CLiCk,Speak for reading passages of text. I wonder if it might be the same for individuals with low vision if they are able to use Accessibar’s tools to enable them to see the web page effectively. I added the CLiCk,Speak buttons to the Accessibar toolbar. The only drawback is that there are no keyboard commands for the CLiCk,Speak buttons.

FREE online resources and downloadable programs for learners.

Today I’m writing about a website that I’m really excited about. It is the kind of website that I support wholeheartedly, a site that I think everyone should visit! Many thanks to Sharon Peters for mentioning it on Twitter.

Open Source Living is a site that catalogues the best free open source software available today. Programs are listed by category, with a separate page for each category, eg. Web++, Graphics & Photo, Video, Audio, Documents, etc. For each listing, there is a brief description as well as a direct link to the download site.

There isn’t a category at OSLiving specifically for education, but I was pleased to discover programs such as Celestia and Stellarium listed under Entertainment. Under all headings there are programs with educational applications.

Open Source Living has been established by a UK based blogger named Andrew, and it is his intent that it be a community project. Andrew welcomes input via a forum, but his intention is to move the site to a more interactive WordPress platform. I am already familiar with much of the software listed by OS Living, but there are many titles there that I still need to explore. I will also be submitting some suggested educational titles such as Childsplay, Tux Paint and Tux Typing. It is noteworthy that OSLiving will only list software that complies with the Open Source Initiatives guidelines.

On my blog, I share educational resources of all kinds that are free of monetary cost. I believe that open source software is in a very special class of its own. When the code for programs is open, there is always far greater potential for the software to meet the needs of diverse users. In a recent post, I illustrated how this has been working with add ons that make the open source Firefox browser more accessible to individuals with special needs.

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff!

FREE online resources and downloadable programs for learners and their teachers.

Here’s a wiki that I have been waiting for. I’ve already signed up for an account, and I hope I will be able to find time to become a contributor.

DownloadpediA This is a wiki built on the Mediawiki platform, and it bills itself as “The Software Encyclopedia”. The focus is on free and open source programs. Listings are helpfully organized with concise but useful descriptions. The screenshots below show the main menu and then the contents of the Free Software page. The listings under Education are not extensive yet, but I expect this section will grow considerably over time.

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

The purpose of this blog is to highlight free downloadable programs and online resources of good quality that may be of value to educators and their students, especially those involved in special education.

Why, oh why do so many folks persist in using Internet Explorer?!? New add-ons that make Firefox invaluable as an educational tool, and that make it ever more accessible, just keep rolling out. Firefox is a wonderful illustration of the powerful potential of open source code; and HyperWords is a brilliant new add-on for Firefox. (Firefox add-ons are what used to be known as Firefox extensions.)

HyperWords (Downloadable Firefox Add-on) Once Hyperwords is activated, whenever you double-click on any word on a web page, a pop-up menu appears. This highly configurable menu offers an extensive range of options for the word. A partial list of these options includes: dictionary definitions or encyclopedia articles; searches; translations; unit conversions; maps. It is noteworthy that all menu commands can be activated with keyboard shortcuts.

Hyperwords comes with a tool-bar that installs on the main Firefox toolbar, but I did not find this helpful. It was easy to uninstall it by going to the Tools Menu, selecting Add-0ns, going to Hyperwords and hitting the Options button. This button opens the door to numerous ways of personalizing Hyperwords.

The folks at The HyperWords Project have put together the following helpful 1-minute demo video:

It is worth noting that HyperWords is by far the easiest Firefox extension that I’ve ever installed. All you do is go to their website (in Firefox, of course) click on the button that says “Activate HyperWords”, and then follow the on-screen prompts.

150

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

As I wrote in a post last June, I’ve been a loyal Winamp user since Justin Frankel first put it out back in 1996. Now that I’ve discovered the VLC Media Player, I think I’m finally ready to move on. Although I didn’t know I was looking for it, VLC is the superior media player I’ve been waiting for. I don’t think you can go wrong with this one.

VLC Media Player (downloadable program) This is a cross platform open source media player that works flawlessly with a wide variety of audio and video formats. I have set VLC as my default media player, and so far it hasn’t encountered anything that it can’t handle with ease. The interface is straightforward and unobtrusive. Unlike recent versions of Winamp, there are no features of VCL that have been designed to market anything to me.

The VLC player is extremely versatile. The Wikipedia entry sums this up nicely:

“It is a highly portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats….It is one of the most platform-independent players available, with versions for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD, Windows CE…”

In terms of access, the VLC player can be operated with mouse gestures or configurable keyboard commands.

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

Mozdev.org describes itself as “…a software development community dedicated to making quality applications and extensions freely available to all computer users.” With Mouse Gestures, Mozdev has definitely made the web more accessible to computer users who cannot use the keyboard or an ordinary mouse. Once again, access options have been enhanced because Mozilla’s Firefox and Thunderbird programs are open source.

Optimoz Mouse Gestures (Firefox and Thunderbird Extensions) These downloadable extensions enables a user to navigate and execute commands in Mozilla’s Firefox browser or in its Thunderbird email client without having to rely on the keyboard, menus, or toolbars. (Mouse Gestures also works with Chatzilla, Mozilla’s chat program. I’m only mentioning this and not discussing it furtner because I have no personal experience with Chatzilla.)

Mouse Gestures has the potential to make web access considerably faster for anyone. For the individual who accesses the computer with a head mouse or a track-ball, the helpful potential is tremendous. The user simply holds down a mouse-button, normally the right button, and then moves the cursor in a particular direction to move from one web page to another, to move between tabs, to open links, to select and open email files, to adjust text size, etc. The process is illustrated in the screenshot below. (Click on the screenshots for a better view.)

It is reasonably easy and straightforward to configure Mouse Gestures for individual preferences by selecting Extensions and then Options under the Tools menu in Firefox or Thunderbird. Pre-programmed gestures can be disabled, and new gestures can be created and added. The developers facilitate a “Gesture Exchange”. Some of the mouse gestures available on the exchange for working with email in Thunderbird are shown below.

It is significant that gestures can be creted and/or customized for individuals who find it difficult or impossible to move in certain ways. The developers of Mouse Gestures have provided good, but not exhaustive, documentation on their website. At the moment, Mouse Gestures works only in Linux and Windows. The developers have indicated that they would be pleased if someone were to volunteer to write the code for Mac.

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

Here is yet another set of free but very worthwhile educational activities that have been put together with early learners in mind.

Childsplay (downloadable program) This is a suite of 14 high quality educational games designed for young children. The games have been carefully crafted and have considerable kid-appeal. The user interface is simple, uncluttered and attractive. At least three levels of challenge are available for most games.

Some games re-enforce the learning of letters or numbers. There are several types of memory games. More than one game provides practice in locating the keys on a computer keyboard. It impressed me that some of the games provide excellent practice in using a computer mouse. Childsplay also makes good instructional use of specific sounds in its activities.

Do not be alarmed if your screen resolution changes when you open Childsplay. This change is automatically reversed when you exit.

Childsplay is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Don’t be confused when the website talks about the individual games operating as “modules” within Childsplay. At least for the Windows version, you can download a bundled installation file that includes everything.

The screenshots below give some idea of what to expect with Childsplay. You can click on a thumbnail to enlarge it, and use your browser’s back arrow to return.

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

The free downloadable program I am featuring today comes from Tux’s friends in the open source Linux community. It offers numerous well designed early learning activities for young children. Some of the activites are available for Windows as well as for Linux users.

Gcompris (downloadable program) This is a free suite of attractive interactive learning activities. Each activity is brightly coloured and accompanied by gentle music. The user interface is simple and uncluttered, and and all activities come with a set of basic instructions for teachers and parents. Gcompris comes to us from France, but it is available in numerous languages.

The games, puzzles and mental challenges of Gcompris are organized under the following headings: Discover the Computer; Discovery Activities (colours, sounds, memory); Experiential Activities (based on physical movement); Mathematics; Puzzles; Reading; Strategy Games.

All activities are available at multiple levels of difficulty. The developers say they have targeted Gcompris for children aged 2 to 10. As I tried the activities, however, I wondered if many children under the age of 5 would be able to use Gcompris independently. Perhaps this says more about me than about Gcompris, but I was stretched just a little in completing one of the puzzles at the higher levels of difficulty.

Gcompris has been developed primarily for Linux operating systems, but it is also available for Windows. There are approximately 100 activities in the free Linux version and about 25 free activities for Windows. I tested the Windows version, and found that there was considerable variety and plenty to work with. Windows users must pay €20 to activate the full suite.

Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge, and use your browser’s back arrow to return to this website.