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Simply stated, open-source software is computer software whose source code is available under a copyright license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to freely distribute it to potential users. If you've never heard of open source software, you're not alone. Commercial, or proprietary, software has dominated the computer industry for many years. Most school personnel have understandably assumed that commercial software was the only option available.

Simply stated, open-source software is computer software whose source code is available under a copyright license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to freely distribute it to potential users. If you've never heard of open source software, you're not alone. Commercial, or proprietary, software has dominated the computer industry for many years. Most school personnel have understandably assumed that commercial software was the only option available.

"Welcome to the most popular online photo editor in the world! Open Pixlr editor (Advanced) OR Open Pixlr express (Efficient) OR Open Pixlr-o-matic (Playful)"

A few resources for the classroom, free and open source.

"Mibew Messenger (also known as Open Web Messenger) is an open-source live support application written in PHP and MySQL. It enables one-on-one chat assistance in real-time directly from your website."

Apps Taskonomy: Digging Deeper into the Application of Apps he iPad (or iPod touch or iPhone) with its apps opens many new opportunities for learning. At the same time, it offers a slightly different wrapper for older learning opportunities. Both can be worthwhile, but it would be a shame if teachers missed the former for the latter. And, if past experience and research is any indication, educators are much more likely to co-opt the new technology to accomplish the status quo. This activity is designed to help teachers think through both opportunities and to categorize those apps that lend themselves to either or both. Teachers will start by exploring a variety of apps, some that lend themselves to learning content such as math facts or spelling words and others that can be used in open ended content creation such as storytelling or photography. Then, teachers will examine a set of lessons that use these apps. Finally, teachers will use a "taxonomy" such as Bloom's Taxonomy, SAMR, LoTi, ETaP, Prensky, etc. and attempt to classify/categorize where the apps fall. Most likely teachers will need to contextualize the app to a particular use/activity. Ideally, teachers will realize that in most cases it is not the app itself, but the use that detrmines where it falls and that the apps belong in multiple places.

"Kansas Online Learning Program (KOLP) is an online public school open to all full time kindergarten through 12th grade students living anywhere in Kansas. The program is provided through Centre School District and is tuition free for Kansas families. KOLP also offers an Adult Learning that is open to all Kansas residents who have not received their high school diploma. Students enrolled in the KOLP receive:"

"A raccoon with the word "why" Phylo is a project that began as a reaction to the following nugget of information: Kids know more about Pokemon creatures than they do about real creatures*. We think there's something wrong with that. Apparently, so do many others. picture of a bird with the word "what" Phylo is: (1) a card game that makes use of the wonderful, complex, and inspiring things that inform the notion of biodiversity; (2) an exercise in crowd sourcing, open access, and open game development; and (3) FREAKIN' AWESOME! picture of a plant with the word "who" The phylo project is the product of the kind and (frankly) amazing contributions of many many individuals who have given art, science expertise, gaming advice, programming chops, and more. A card usually begins its life by someone submitting art to this Flickr pool, but you can also develop new games, help out with programming, or providing general feedback by leaving comments on the blog or forum. picture of a lady bug and the word "how" You can Start quickly by printing yourself a starter deck and checking out a set of rules. Alternatively, you can just collect and print the cards by going to the card section and "select"ing the ones you like."

Curriki is more than your average website; we're a community of educators, learners and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world. Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of 'curriculum' and 'wiki' which is the technology we're using to make education universally accessible. Curriki is built on the XWiki platform, an open source development platform and "Next Generation Wiki" application developed in Java and released the LGPL open source license. Curriki is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation. Download a summary of Curriki's history and mission: CurrikiBrochureApril2009.pdf.

GistWeb will give the gist of any web page's actual content. It's goal is to provide a "summary" version of any page, giving you the meat and discarding the fluff. This saves loads of time when doing research online. To use GistWeb, drag this -> Gist It! Open) and click your GistWeb bookmark. One last note: As a rule, GistWeb only works well on English documents. Using it on documents of any other language may produce low quality results.

"The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. This is the LearningSpace, where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others. "

convert your old cds to mp3 with one click. dead easy, open-source software.

Create a variety of web based questions including open ended and get student feedback and communication going.

Interesting editable open source textbooks

have created in class using iBA. I'd like to share them with you for several reasons: 1. To enrich the resources and samples available 2. We're open to your feedback in order to improve the quality of these products The one I'm sharing here with you was part of a Language Arts PBL in which students had to write a sequel to Lois Lowry's novel, the Giver. This was our first attempt to use iBA in the... Losing to Win Read a sample or download Losing to Win by Barbara Hernandez with iBooks.

Open Education Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student, ...

A very good alternative to Flicker: use pictures without worrying about licenses and copyrights.

LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.

An open source and free alternative to Photoshop ? No, much more than that.

Chem Reference is an online periodic table of elements that offers a couple of handy features for students. Students can select an element on the table to open a list of key facts about that element. Additionally, Chem Reference provides a simple visualization of the structure of each element. Students can also click through Chem Reference to the Wikipedia entry for each element.

"The app opens to a series of templates, which include basic, contemporary, modern type, classic, editorial, and craft. I'm assuming that you can also use custom created templates that have been downloaded from external sources as well. When a template is chosen, it switches into edit mode, which reminds me a lot of Keynote. There's a bar on the left that organizes all of your pages, and the window on the right displays the page currently being worked on. I chose to experiment with a picture book that also has some text. "