7 Free Apps for Education

May 27, 2010 in General, iPhone/iPad/iPod, Mac by Angelina Roberts

This week @colinnapier has produced an invaluable resource for our students. Seven completely free applications to replace their expensive commercial counterparts. These applications have been put on CD for those pupils who would face problems downloading over 600MB of software. We tried to select applications that offered both Windows and Mac support.

The good news is this isn’t a list of applications with special offers for education, they are free for everyone to use.

So here is the list….. (Titles are clickable links).

1. Audacity (Windows and Mac)

Audacity is an open source free audio editing program, useful for working with music files and podcasts etc. We recommend you also install the Lame plugin included to enable you to export your files as MP3s.

2. Dia (Windows only)

Brilliant diagram software for making flowcharts etc. The application has great support via the community forums and is very easy to use with a large number of preset shapes to start from. This is the only application on the list with no Mac version though.

3. GIMP (Windows and Mac)

The GNU Image Manipulation Program is an advanced editor for images, in the same league as Photoshop but completely free. The application is really easy to use and has all the tools and features we need for image manipulation for animation, ICT websites and multimedia presentations. Definitely a worthy alternative to Photoshop in schools.

4. Kompozer (Windows and Mac)

Kompozer is a free fully featured HTML web site creation program. WYSIWYG allows easy site creation but you can also use the advanced code editor to make custom changes. Kompozer is very similar to Dreamweaver in operation.

5. Open Office (Windows and Mac)

Open Office is a complete replacement for Microsoft Office. It contains free versions to replace Word (Writer), Excel (Calc) and Powerpoint (Impress). All programs give the option to “save as” in MS Office formats.

6. XMind (Windows and Mac)

Free “Mind mapping” program to get ideas down for essays and coursework. Xmind can export maps as images making it perfect for inserting into Word, Pages or even webpages. Xmind is fully featured and we use it in both ICT and Moving Image Arts as an ideas manager for coursework.

7. Google Sketchup (Windows and Mac)

This is a fully featured 3d modeling program. Information and help videos are available on the web site.
If we have missed any great free applications that you currently use with your pupils please do post suggestions in the comments.