These tools are free and will help you create a fabulous range of interactive resources and learning opportunities suitable for the 21st Century student!
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it. It is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy, called a wiki. Wikipedia provides a good starting point for essays, offering clues to essay structure and follow-up links to primary research sources.
TES Resources provides over 50,000 free learning materials including lesson plans, activities, games, powerpoint presentations, teaching ideas and worksheets. You need to open a free account and then you can start downloading!
The Excellence Gateway is a government sponsored website bringing together more than 5,000 resources produced by teachers working in the post-16 learning & skills sector.
A fantastic educational site for all age groups. Very user-friendly. Contains news stories, interactive exercises and more than 7,500 video clips from BBC TV archives. Excellent ideas for literacy and numeracy.
A good-looking, easy-to-use site that offers hundreds of 'how-to' videos and articles on all aspects of practical life - the garden, the home, the family, style, food, health, money etc, all with distinctive colour themes. There are a few adverts on some site pages which can be distracting.
Picknik is a fast, easy, online photo editing tool that allows you to upload your photographs and edit then using a range of powerful artistic and manipulation tools. There is cropping, red eye removal, colour enhancement and touch-ups as well as the ability to produce sticker effects, frames and scrapbooks. Part of the Google community and linked in with Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Yahoo Mail.
A Yahoo-sponsored site that allows you to upload, organise and share your photographs. A useful site for celebrating educational visits or end-of-year yearbooks.
Picasa is Google's rival to Yahoo's Flickr and does the same thing - enabling you to upload, organise, edit, and share your albums with specific groups (e.g. classes, parents, years, etc). Very user-friendly. Allows you to have your photos all in one place. The program works with JPEG, GIF, BMP, PSD, and movie files and is compatible with most digital cameras; it detects your USB driver and imports pictures into albums. Editing tools include cropping (standard or custom), removal of red-eye, and enhancing–even switching from color to black and white. Create slide shows set to your MP3s.
Ever needed to see what's going on on the screen down to the pixel level? That's where the Magnifier comes in. Simple and easy to use, the Magnifier is always handy for when you need to see all the details. Perfect for visually impared or those with partial sight. handy for presentations or tutorials.
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.
FastStone Photo Resizer is a free image converter and resizer intended to enable users (especially digital-camera owners) to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text, and watermarks to images in a quick-and-easy batch mode. The application supports major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, and PNG. Drag-and-drop mouse operation is well supported.
Serif Drawplus 4.0 offers impressive vector drawing tools and fabulous photo effects when you download the DrawPlus Starter Edition. This version is 100% free. It is easy to use, great for designing web graphics and creative print projects, professional logos and comes with comprehensive 'How To' guides.
A vast library of FREE Microsoft images, clipart and Powerpoint templates.
High quality FREE collections of clipart which are ideal for Powerpoint presentations and handouts.
Music is a wonderful resource in lessons. BeeMP3 is a music search engine for locating an mp3-audio files over the Internet. The site boasts 800 000 mp3 files available for download with 10 000 files added daily. Use an audio converter (see link from DVDVideosoft) to turn MP3s into Windows 'WAV' files which Powerpoint accepts without issue. Audacity also provides an Mp3 to WAV conversion.
This is a simple tool to extract the audio from a video file (e.g. from youtube clips, DVD/video files, etc). Enables you to record background music, commentaries, live music performance, acting sequences etc). Simply add video files through a traditional browse dialog box. Choosing an output option is as easy as pressing a radio button. The output is limited to the big three in audio: MP3, WAV, and AC3. Bit rates, sample rate, and channels are easily selected from handy pull-down menus.
Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is ideal for cropping audion files for Powerpoint insertion, converting audion cassettes into PC files and for recortding voice-overs using a plugin microphone. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
iPadio allows you to broadcast from any phone to the Internet live. You can record lecturers, critiques, personal reflections, discussions or debates (limited time allowance) and upload these to your iPadio site, social network sites and/or VLE. You need to open an account first, and you will pay for the phone messaging, but free if your school or College opens an account for you!
Audioboo is a web-based digital sound archive that enables you to record and upload sound files onto a personal web space. You can use audioboo to upload and store impromptu interviews, ambience sound, music you have made yourself, a record of personal reflections and even a full radio show. Comes with its own App and can be accessed via iPhone and Android devices. Some have described this as facebook with sound!
A site for primary and secondary school teachers, entry and pre-entry teachers. Lots of games, puzzles and information on a range of subjects; the natural world, tons on history, art & design, and science and technology.
Puzzlemaker is a puzzle generation tool for teachers, students and parents. Create and print customized word search, criss-cross, math puzzles, and more-using your own word lists.
Tarsia is an editor that was originally designed for Maths teachers and enables you to create, print, save and share jigsaw-style and dominoes activities. It includes a powerful equation editor for building complex mathematical expressions.
Create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results graphically and in real time. SurveyMonkey provides free online questionnaire and survey tools.
Slideshare offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios.
Prezi is a web-based presentation application and storytelling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional slides. Text, images, videos and other presentation objects are placed on the infinite canvas and grouped together in frames. The canvas allows users to create non-linear presentations, where users can zoom in and out of a visual map.
Animoto is software that can turn your photos and video clips into professional slideshows. Animoto synchs with facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket. Add text, music and images with a touch of a button.
A fantastic centre for presentations, public speaking and Powerpoint. You can download hundreds of FREE Powerpoint templates.
A bountiful library of FREE Powerpoint templates. Choose from Business, Finance, Abstract, Nature and Travel templates as well as a massive range of general themes.
Another vast library of FREE Powerpoint templates, flash tutorials, music and other tools for the savvy presenter. Also FREE word, excel and publisher templates.
Videojug is a vocational teacher's dream! With over 60,000 free, professionally-produced 'how to' videos and guides, it offers students online demonstrations of essential practical techniques and a medium through which such techniques can be evaluated and critiqued. Note: Videos are mostly US-based and come with adverts and thick American accents.
A FREE library of education videos primarily aimed at primary and secondary schools, although there is a growing number of college videos being added all the time. To download these videos (as WMV or Quicktime files) you need to set up an account - this is FREE. many videos now come with accompanying resource material.
An emerging leader in video and teaching support materials for primary school teaching, with some relevant materials for secondary schoolteachers and college lecturers. Set up a free account to begin downloading. Some videos are relatively short, and some are poor quality.
The world's largest video-sharing community and the richest source of video material for lesson planning on the web. Download youtube videos using a youtube converter and then turn the resulting flash file into a Windows Media Video file (WMV) using a WMV converter. The world's largest video-sharing community and the richest source of video material for lesson planning on the web. Download youtube videos using a youtube converter and then turn the resulting flash file into a Windows Media Video file (WMV) using a WMV converter. The world's largest video-sharing community and the richest source of video material for lesson planning on the web. Download youtube videos using a youtube converter and then turn the resulting flash file into a Windows Media Video file (WMV) using a WMV converter.The world's largest video-sharing community and the richest source of video material for lesson planning on the web. Download youtube videos using a youtube converter and then turn the resulting flash file into a Windows Media Video file (WMV) using a WMV converter.
Keepvid is a website which enables you to download Youtube and Teacher's TV videos. Its purpose is to enable you to embed video clips into Powerpoint presentations, electronic whiteboards or word documents. You simply copy and paste the URL address of the video into the URL box on the KeepVid webiste and click 'download'. You have the option of downloading the file in flash, Mp4 or Mp3 (audio version). Relies on your PC/PC network having the latest JAVA updates to work.
Every teacher should have their own Youtube Video converter. This converter, published by Biennesoft, is one of the easiest to use and can be downloaded to your PC. Use the converter to 'grab' videos from YouTube, Facebook, Google Video, Yahoo Video, etc and turn them into flash video files that can be played on a VLC player. Any flash video file can also be converted into PC friendly files such as WMV or MPEG (see WMV Converter) which can be played in Powerpoint or Windows Media Player.
This is the basic version. Allows you to download Youtube videos (normal, HD) and extract MP3 from Youtube videos. Converts files to useable formats such as AVI, MP4, MP3, MOV.
iWisoft Free Video Converter is a Free Tool that can be used to convert videos from one format to another. The Video Converter supports just about every known format, including AVI, MPEG, WMV, DivX, XviD, MP4, H.264/AVC, AVCHD, FLV, MKV, RM, MOV, 3GP, and audio MP3, WMA, WAV, RA, M4A, AAC, AC3, OGG. Videos can be converted to video or audio formats for playback on a PC, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, PS3, Xbox, Creative Zen, Zune, Archos or other device. You can also add watermarks and crop your videos with this Free Video Editing Utility.
This software is a Powerpoint to Video Converter. Play your presentations as video files. This link takes you to the free version. The most popular video formats (WMV, MPEG, AVI, Mp4) are watermark free, but HD and Blue-Ray outputs require you to purchase the full software to remove the inserted watermark.
A library of FREE conversion and editing software from DVD Videosoft. Very easy to use. Very easy to download.
Video DVD Maker is a quick and remarkably easy tool for mastering DVD disks from your own home-made videos right out of the box. Plus, Video DVD Maker allows you to deploy your video project on different types of disks, including CD R/RW, DVD R/RW and DVD R DL. The program enables you to capture video from a TV tuner, a web camera, a DV camcorder, or any other video device. You can save the captured data as an uncompressed AVI file, or use one of the compression methods to save it in the format you want. In addition to the video devices, you can import video from video files in different formats, including AVI, DIVX, XVID, MP4, MPG, WMV, ASF, to name a few. Video rendering is accurate and fast. As soon as the project is ready, you can burn it to a DVD disk. The DVD production can be burned in PAL or NTSC and you can vary the video/audion compression rates.
DVD Flick is a simple but powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles as well as a menu for easier navigation. Click here to download.
DVD Shrink is a free software solution for shrinking original DVDs onto recordable media. It is perfect for video-editing projects that need to be transferred to DVD disk or for backing up DVD films.
An excellent tool for ripping DVDs to create useable PC files.
Dictionary.com claims to be the world’s largest and most authoritative free online dictionary and mobile reference resource centre, boasting 50 million visitors a month to their English dictionary and thesaurus sections. However, the site offers significantly more: word puzzles & games, translation service, flashcards, etc. The site is compatible with the mobile iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and iPad applications and API data services.
Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. Teachers can ask students to contribute to a shared document and view the product online - excellent for project work, team exercises or collaborative research.
This tool can be found at Neil's Toolbox, along with plagiarism, research and clear writing tools, all of which are intended to support students and teachers.
WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. You can try WinRAR before buy, its trial version is available here.
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