Thanks for visiting!
Welcome to your one-stop online source for FREE and low-cost resources for creating exciting multimedia content! The links below have been compiled as a resource directory for teachers, trainers, and developers. It is a work in progress--one that we hope will continue to evolve as we find new links and tools to add. We also welcome suggestions and contributions from our visitors. Please feel free to share your favorite resources so we can add them to the site. Have fun!.
Applications
Free (or cheap) programs!
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Open Office |
Totally free open-source office suite from
Sun Microsystems, complete with word processing, spreadsheet,
presentation, drawing, and database applications. Create and
open documents created in Microsoft Office. Save your documents as
HTML and PDF files as well. |
| Easy Office Premium | Inexpensive ($50) office suite, compatible
with Microsoft Office suite, features include PDF conversion,
anti-virus software, and email and contact management applications. |
| Portable Open Office | A compact version of the Open Office Suite
from Sun Microsystems. Designed for portable USB drives,
Portable Open Office is a handy tool for people on the go. |
| PortableApps.Com | Download lots of free applications designed
specifically for use on portable USB drives. Take your files
and your programs with you for added convenience and
security! |
| PhotoPlus | Currently you can download a completely free,
fully-functional version of PhotoPlus 9. PhotoPlus 9 features an
export optimizer, editable text, image slicing and image maps,
selection tools, smart shapes, third-party plug-in support, red-eye
removal tool, and photo enhancement tools. PhotoPlus 9 works on
Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, 2000, NT4, and XP. |
| DrawPlus | Free Graphic Design and Vector Drawing
Software. The award-winning DrawPlus 8 is the user-friendly drawing
program that opens up a whole new creative world. With its amazing
combination of powerful functionality, simplicity and professional
quality output, this free drawing software will give you the results
you want – fast! |
| ExtractNow | ExtractNow is a simple utility that allows you to extract multiple archives quickly and easily. ExtractNow is not a complete archival solution. It's main purpose it to allow the user to extract multiple archives easily. |
| IrfanView | IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and
innovative freeware application (for non-commercial use) graphic
viewer/editor for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003. |
| The Gimp | GIMP is 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.
GIMP is a popular open-source image editor originally developed for
Unix/Linux. Often lauded as the "free Photoshop," it does have an
interface and features similar to Photoshop. Because it's
volunteer-developed beta software, stability and frequency of
updates could be an issue; however, many happy users report using
GIMP for Windows without significant problems. |
| Free PowerPoint to Flash converter promptly creates web-friendly Flash (.SWF) movies from your PowerPoint content (.PPT, .PPS, .PPTX, .PPSX) keeping its visual parameters, animation effects and slide transitions, audio narrations, video and Flash objects after conversion |
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| Nvu Web Authoring | A complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users. Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. |
| WebPlus | Whether you’re looking to create a website to
promote your club, hobby or business or you just want to find out
how you can put your favorite holiday photos online, WebPlus 6 is
exactly what you need. Explore the endless possibilities of
designing eye-catching web pages when you download this free web
design superstar! |
| Educator Pages | EducatorPages.comis a free service that allows teachers to create their own web sites with an easy-to-use interface in minutes! Free version has adds, premium paid version does not. |
| Open Source as Alternative (osalt) | Find open source software alternatives to
well-known commercial software. This site is a good source for
finding free applications that can take the place of expensive
commercial products. A convenient directory allows visitors to
choose from software categories such as business, communications,
graphic applications, multimedia and audio, and web development.
Products for multiple operating systems are listed, with many Mac
and Linux-based programs in addition to Windows versions. |
| Source Forge | SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 projects and over 1,000,000 registered users with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code. SourceForge.net has the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet, and hosts more Open Source development products than any other site or network worldwide. |
| ZamZar | A file conversion tool designed to assist in converting your files. The file formats are broken down into five distinct categories - Document, Image, Music, Video and Other Formats, Very useful tool. |
Audio
Find, record, or edit your own sound files!
| Audacity | Audacity® is free, open source software for
recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X,
Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. NOTE: To convert Audacity files to MP3 you will need to download LAME. Download for LAME: http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/ Editing Sound with Audacity - Video Tutorials Topics covered in this set of tutorials include: Downloading Audacity, getting the Lame encoder, linking the encoder, recording, projects, zooming, volume, solo, echo, WAV, editing, changing volume, importing MP3, fading and podcasting |
| AT&T Text-to-Speech | TTS, short for Text-To-Speech, is the
creation of audible speech from computer readable text. This
site from AT&T will create spoken audio files in several dialects
from user-entered text. Type or paste your own text into the
site and download a .wav file of the results. |
| TheFreesite.com | One of the most favorite types of sound files on the Web is the humble WAV file. It's really quite amazing what a variety of WAV files there are available out there. Odds are, you can name your favorite moment from a TV show or film and somewhere on the Web, it's available as a WAV file that you can download and enjoy again and again. |
Incompetech | Royalty free music created by Kevin MacLeod. Can be used in a variety of ways; presentations, videos, or just basic effects for audio projects. |
| WavCentral | One of the largest sources on the Web for free sound files. Choose from sound effects and sound bytes from TV shows, commercials, and movies. |
Graphics
Find images online, edit your existing images, or create them from scratch!
| Awesome Clip Art for Educators | Lots of free clipart, nicely organized by
subject. There are also plenty of links to other sites with
similar resources. |
| Google Image Search | Use the power of Google to search for image
files based on several parameters. Refine your search by image
size, file type, and color. Three levels of content filtering
are also available. |
| CoolText.Com | Cool Text is a free graphics generator for
web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a
lot of work. Simply choose what kind of image you would like. Then
fill out a form and you'll have your own image created on the fly.
|
| FlamingText.Com | At FlamingText you can create cool, custom
images for FREE to use on your website or in your e-mail. |
| flickr | flickr is an online photo
management and sharing application. Upload photos from your
computer or mobile device and share with family and friends. Plus,
the added feature of tagging photos helps to make them easier for
you and those who view your photos to find what they are looking
for! |
| Picnik | Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames. (A Google Product) |
| Picasa | Picasa is free photo editing
software from Google that makes your pictures look great.
Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as
pressing a button! |
| 3D Textmaker | It's an online 3D text banner creation tool.
This unique tool is completely online -- nothing to download or
install. Better yet, it's free! |
| Free-Clipart | Free Clipart Network - a site with access to over 25,000 FREE graphics such as animated gifs - backgrounds - clip art and icons - All FREE for you to download. |
| ToonDoo | TooDoo is a cool, comic-creating tool. It is a fun site for kids of all ages. |
| morgueFile | Free images for your inspiration, reference and use in your creative work |
| NASA Image Exchange | The NASA Image eXchange (NIX) is a web-based search engine for searching one or more of NASA's online multimedia collections.
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| NOAA Photo Library | The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collection spans centuries of time and much of the natural world from the center of the Earth to the surface of the Sun. Because of this broad base of scientific expertise and the geographic range under which NOAA science and observations are conducted, the NOAA collection includes thousands of weather and space images, hundreds of images of our shores and coastal seas, and thousands of marine species images ranging from the great whales to the most minute plankton.
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| Pics 4 Learning | Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection |
| SIRIS Gallery | The Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) Image Gallery contains a sampling of visual records that are part of the Collections Search Center. The Image Gallery includes over 530,000 electronic images from several archival repositories and museums at the Smithsonian. for personnel, educational and non-commercial use. |
| Stockvault | Images for personnel, educational and non-commercial use. |
| Tagxedo | Turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text. personnel, educational and non-commercial use. |
| Wordle | Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. |
Repositories
Sources for online learning objects!
| FREE | FREE - Federal Resources
for Educational Excellence FREE makes it easier to find teaching and learning resources from the federal government. More than 1,500 federally supported teaching and learning resources are included from dozens of federal agencies. New sites are added regularly. |
| Library of Congress | The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
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| MERLOT | MERLOT is a free and open resource designed
primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to
online learning materials are collected here along with annotations
such as peer reviews and assignments. |
| PBS Teachers | PBS Teachers is PBS' national web destination for high-quality preK-12 educational resources. Here you'll find classroom materials suitable for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. There are thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations. These resources are correlated to state and national educational standards and are tied to PBS' award-winning on-air and online programming like NOVA, Nature, Cyberchase, Between the Lions and more. |
| Teachers' Domain | Multimedia resources for the classroom and
professional development |
| US National Archives | The National Archives features online exhibits, including the recently opened Discovering the Civil War that honors the 150th anniversary of the conflict that divided a nation. You'll also find an online exhibit on the Charters of Freedom, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and also see a special exhibit on The Influenza Epidemic of 1918. All this and plenty more at your fingertips from the National Archives’ online exhibits. |
| Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone |
| Wisc-Online | The Wisconsin Online Resource Center is a
digital library of Web-based learning resources called “learning
objects.” The digital library of objects has been developed
primarily by faculty from the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS)
and produced by multimedia technicians who create the learning
objects for the online environment. At present, 343 WTCS faculty
members have authored learning objects. The Wisc-Online digital
library contains 2,106 objects that are accessible to all WTCS
faculty at no cost and with copyright clearance for use in any WTCS
classroom or online application. Other colleges, universities, and
consortia from throughout the United States and around the world use
the library with permission. Current use of the learning object
repository exceeds 20,000 hits per day. Learning objects are
designed and developed by a team of instructional designers,
editors, technicians, and student interns. |
Video
Find video clips online--or create your own!
| Avidemux | Avidemux is a
free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and
encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD
compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks
can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting
capabilities. |
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| Camtasia Studio $199 Educational Price |
Screen Recording & Presentation software.
Teaching and demonstrating visually is much more powerful than using
words alone. But, getting the right group of people together for a
training or demonstration can be expensive and inconvenient.
Camtasia Studio lets you easily create compelling training and
presentations for Web and CD-ROM delivery, and you can do it without
ever leaving your office. It is the only product versatile enough to
record live PowerPoint presentations, personalized technical
training sessions, and rich software demonstrations. |
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| CamStudio records activity
from your screen and audio from a microphone into AVI video files
and can also convert the AVIs into Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
using its built-in SWF Producer. |
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| Digital Clip Factory | The Digital Clip Factory creates slide shows using the "Ken Burns" motion effects with, music and transitions. Burn your movies to DVD or publish them to the web."Pictures say more." True, if you use the Digital Clip Factory application to create those "Ken-Burns" effects you like and export it to a compatilbe Windows Media File. |
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| FLV Converter | Flv Converter allows you to convert Flash FLV format into one of the many output video formats. You can convert your flv encoded video content into the today's most popular and wide spread video formats which are used on desktop computers, mobile phones, laptops and removable devices and various audio players. |
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| Google Video Search | Part of the Google family. Use this tool to search for videos throughout the Google library which now includes YouTube videos. |
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| Jing | Jing is a free
software that adds visuals to your online conversations. Capture
your screen and audio to help demonstrate or use as a means of
troubleshooting. Screencasts can be saved locally or published to
the Jing site. Up to 5 minutes of video can be recorded using the
free version. |
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Windows Movie Maker (XP) Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 (Vista, Windows 7) |
Windows Movie Maker makes home movies
amazingly fun. With Movie Maker, you can create, edit, and share
your home movies right on your computer. Build your movie with a few
simple drag-and-drops. Delete bad shots and include only the best
scenes. Then share your movie via the Web, e-mail, or CD. |
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| Screencast O Matic | Screencast-O-Matic is an online screen recorder for one-click recording from your browser on Windows, Mac, or Linux with no install for FREE! Pro version available. |
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| TAKSI | Video Capture/Screen Capture for 3D Graphics.
Taksi is a utility that allows you to take screenshots and record
video clips of your favorite games and other 3D-graphics
applications. Very similar to Camtasia, but does not capture
audio. |
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| YouTube Downloader | YouTube Downloader is software that allows you to download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and many others and convert them to other video formats.The program is easy to use, just specify the URL for the video you want to download and click the Ok button!It also allows you to convert downloaded videos for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3.You can use YouTube Downloader to download the videos of your choice from home, at the office or in school. | |
Presentation Tools
Lots of tools for taking your presentations to the next level!
| Presenters' Resource | Download free
PowerPoint templates, get ideas for better communication and more.
Find links to online reference and research tools. If you’re a
traveling presenter or an educator, there are additional sections
just for you. |
| Presentations.Com | The online home of
Presentations Magazine, a comprehensive presenter's resource
providing instant access to up-to-date information on technology and
techniques for effective communication. Here you'll find articles on
industry trends, new-product reviews, best presentation practices
and how-to's. Access association information, an events calendar and
links to other resource sites, plus the interactive Buyers Guide, to
help you locate a presentation-product manufacturer or dealer near
you. |
| Prezi | Online
presentation tool that utilizes flash based delivery for robust
presentations. |
Web 2.0
Tools to stay current with Web 2.0
| BLOGGER | Blogger gives you an easy way to share your thoughts — about current events, what's going on in your life, or anything else you'd care to discuss — with the world. Has a host of features to make blogging as simple and effective as possible. (A Google Product) |
| Dabbleboard | Dabbleboard is an online collaboration application that’s centered around the whiteboard. With a new type of drawing interface that's actually easy and fun to use, Dabbleboard gets out of your way and just lets you draw. |
| Delicious | The Web is a big place, full of new and interesting things to discover. The problem is finding the good stuff and keeping track of it all. This is where Delicious can help.
Delicious is a Social Bookmarking service, which means you can save all your bookmarks online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking.
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| DIIGO | A powerful research tool and knowledge-sharing community. Diigo's highlighting, bookmarking and site sharing tools are a subset of features in a rich collaborative application that puts information discovery and the writable Web at the center of discussions among colleagues, friends, and like-minded people. |
| Dropbox | Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones and even the Dropbox website. |
| LiveBinders |
LiveBinders is your 3-ring binder for the Web
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| QR Code Generator | |
| StoryBird | Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. Read them like books, play them like games, and send them like greeting cards. They’re curiously fun
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| Twiddla | Twiddla is a web-based meeting playground. Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly |
| VOKI | Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile, website, presentations and in email messages. (VOKI is intended for non-commercial use) |
| WAXMAIL | Works with Outlook and Outlook
Express. Send voice emails as opposed to typing by using WaxMail.
Your voice messages are attached as MP3s. |
| WIGGIO | Working in groups is inherently frustrating. Wiggio is easy and straightforward - it provides everything you need to work productively in your groups, without bogging you down with complexities, help menus and unnecessary features. Everyone will be able to use Wiggio, regardless of how tech-savvy the group members are. |
| WORDPRESS | WordPress can be used to create websites or blogs. Many use Wordpress for blog sites. |
Xtra Links |
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Helpful Links to find Cool Stuff |
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| Give Away of The Day | Basically, every day Give Away of the Day nominate's one software title that will be a Giveaway title of that day. The software is available for download for 24 hours (or more, if agreed by software publisher) and that software is absolutely free. That means – not a trial, not a limited version – but a registered and legal version of the software is completely free for our visitors. |
| Top One Hundred Tools For Learning (2011) | Provides a listing of a recommended top 100 tools to be utilized in the learning environment. Many of which have already been listed on this site. |
Site Contributors
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Dr. Chandler C. Newell Graphic/Web Designer |
Robert Keown Instructional Technologist |
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