Notable Software
From POINTS
Contents |
About this page
All of the software here is to our knowledge is Free.
Monitoring Software
iTalc
iTALC is a use- and powerful didactical tool for teachers. It lets you view and control other computers in your network in several ways. It supports Linux and Windows 2000/XP (Vista support will come) and it even can be used transparently in mixed environments!
Audio Recording and Editing Software
Hard Disk Ogg Recorder
HarddiskOgg 2.5: is a simple to use piece of audio recording software. It is very useful in a school or classroom setting. It allows recording directly to your desktop or laptop hard drive. It is released under the General Public License.
All that is needed is a microphone for recording your voice.
Uses
It can be used to create your own audio books where here is no current recording. A teacher can record themselves reading aloud. This recorded file can then be used to create a CD to be played in a CD player. A group of children can read along with the story as it plays. This will assist them to become better readers. They will both see and hear the words as they read them, assisting them with pronunciation, expression and helping them with those words they do not know. Even children can use it to create a radio drama type of production or create voice overs for a movie or slideshow.
This application is no longer maintained.
Supported Operating Systems: Windows
Audacity
Audacity is a powerful audio file recording and editing piece of software. It is a little more complicated to use than Hard Disk Ogg. But it allows recording directly to your desktop or laptop hard drive as well as the ability to edit sound files. Audacity is released under the General Public License.
Uses
Audacity can be used to add music tracks or sound effects to spoken voice tracks, to layer many tracks together. To cut out bits of tracks you don't want. To speed up or slow down the tempo of a track or to even change the pitch of a track.
If you wish to create the files you are creating with Audacity in the MP3 format. You will also need to Download the Lame codec and install it on your computer. There are a few ways of installing LAME in Windows - my personal favourite is to use the "kLite Codec Pack" which installs pretty much everything you need for playing videos and music in Windows.
Supported Operating Systems: Windows, Mac OSX, GNU/Linux
Image Editing And Manipulating Software
The Gimp
This Software is similar to Adobe Photoshop and many other photo and image editing programs. But with the bonus that it is free. Allowing those in lower socioeconomic areas and cultures who cannot afford to pay a lot for a proprietary program, to have access to a useful program both on their school and on their home computer.
The Windows version is available here.
The Mac OSX version is available here.
For Linux/Unix versions, look for your distributions specific methods.
Supported Operating Systems: Windows, Mac OSX, Unix, Linux.
