Free Tools for Projects
Video & Animation Tools
Tool |
Platform |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Making Videos on the Web | PDF document | A Guide for Teachers documenting how you and your students can create videos without purchasing any software or video equipment |
| Animoto | Any browser | Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy. |
| ToonDoo | Any browser | Create comic strips and books in this easy, engaging, and collaborative environment |
| Sketchcast | Any browser | Sketchcasting is a new way to communicate something online by recording a sketch, optionally with your voice speaking. Any sketch can then be embedded on your blog/homepage for people to play-back, and you can also point people to your sketchcast channel (or let them subscribe to your sketchcast RSS feed). |
| Voicethread | Any browser | Amazing site that lets you import all sorts of media, record comments (both voice and text) and doodle (draw) over media, then share it |
| Jing |
Mac, PC | Screen capture program |
| Justin TV | Any browser | The largest online community for people to broadcast, watch and interact around live video |
| Screencast -O -Matic | Any browser | The original free and easy way to create a video recording of your screen (aka screencast) and upload it for free hosting - all from your browser with no install |
| Screenpresso | PC |
Screen capture software |
| UStream | Mac, PC | Live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size |
| The Super Hero Squad Show | Any browser | Create Your own comic |
| Pixton | Any browser | Click-n-Drag Comics™ from fully posable characters to dynamic panels, props, and speech bubbles, every aspect of a comic can be controlled in an intuitive click-n-drag motion. |
| Automatoon | Any browser | Easily create animations for websites and other multimedia projects |
| GoAnimate | Any browser | Make animated videos with ease |
| Muvizu | Windows – XP, Vista or Windows 7 | 3D animations made easy |
| Xtranormal | Any browser | Make movie just by typing |
| We Video | Any browser | Collaborative online video creation tool. You can upload your own media clips or use stock media clips to produce your video. What makes We Video collaborative is that you can invite other people to create and edit with you. We Video offers four different user plans. The free plan allows you to upload your videos to YouTube and Vimeo but does not allow local downloads. |
Image Tools
Tool |
Platform |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Aviary Phoenix Image Editor | Any browser | From basic image retouching to complex effects, Phoenix delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application. |
| GIMP | Mac, PC and Linux | A freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring |
| LiveBrush | Mac, PC | A drawing application. It employs an easy-to-use brush tool that reacts to your gesture. By combining simple motion controls with brush styles, Livebrush offers a fun and unique way to create graphics. |
| Paint.net |
PC | Free image and photo editing software. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP. |
| Pixlr | Any browser | Pixlr offers advanced web-based image editing tools as well as image editing tools to use on Android phones and on iPhones. Pixlr also has Firefox and Chrome browser extensions for creating screen captures. |
| PosteRazor | Mac, PC, Linux | The PosteRazor cuts a raster image into pieces which can afterwards be printed out and assembled to a poster. |
| Tux Paint | Mac, PC, Linux | Tux Paint is a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12. It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. |
| Inkscape | Mac, PC, Linux | An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. |
| Aviary Raven | Any browser | Use Raven to create fully scalable vector art appropriate for logos or tee shirt designs. |
| Sumo Paint | Any browser | Full featured photo editing / painting application, which works right in your favorite web browser. The only requirement is Flash Player (which usually comes preinstalled in any OS). |
| Draw Island | Any browser | Online tool for creating drawings and simple GIF animations. To use Draw Island just head to the site and select a drawing tool. You can draw free hand (or should I say free mouse?) or select pre-defined shapes to use in your images. When you're done drawing just click the save button to download your drawing or animation. |
| Awesome Screenshot | Browser extension | Great browser extension (works in Firefox, Chrome and Safari) for capturing, annotating, and sharing screenshots. Once you've installed Awesome Screenshot you activate it from your browser to capture a page or region on a page, draw boxes, draw lines, blur out information, and add text to your screenshot. |
| PskoPaint | Any browser | An image editing tool that uses the color schemes in your existing images to provide you with a custom palate of colors for touching-up your images. You can draw on an image, adjust the color saturation, blur the edges and more.Good selection of brushes and color blending tools. |
Audio Tools
Tool |
Platform |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Audacity |
Mac, PC, Linux | Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds |
| Aviary's Myrna | Any browser | Use Myna to remix music tracks and audio clips. Apply sound effects and record your own voice or instruments! |
| Aviary's Roc | Any browser | Simulate dozens of musical instruments including piano, guitars and drums. Create music loops and patterns for use in Aviary's audio editor(Myna) or as ring tones. |
| Vocarro | Any browser | Ffree service that allows users to create audio recordings without the need to install any software or create an account. Just provide a microphone and go! |
| Loop Labs | Any browser | Create your own music mixes using existing music loops and your own recordings. |
| Vimeo Music Store | Any browser | Offers more than 45,000 music tracks. Not all of the tracks are free or Creative Commons licensed, but roughly one-third or more of them are. You can search for music by genre, license type, price, and length. |
Productivity Tools
Tool |
Platform |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Google Docs |
Any browser | Use for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets, presentations |
| Qlipboard | Any browser | Capture anything that you see on your computer with one click and then talk, write or draw on the images you have captured. With one more click, you can email or share these conversations through the web. |
| Survey Monkey | Any browser | Create online surveys |
| Weebly | Any browser | Easy drag & drop website editor. Videos, pictures, maps, and text are added by simply dragging them to your website. |
| Weebly for Education | Any browser | Create a classroom website & blog, manage your students' accounts, accept homework assignments online, keep parents up to date |
| Neo Office |
Mac | full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs) |
| Open Office | Mac, PC, Linux | The leading open-source office software suite for word processing,spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. |
| ZohoWriter | Any browser | Easy online word processor |
| Sweet Search | Any browser | Searches only web sites that their staff of research experts, librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved as high-quality content appropriate for young users. Only the best sites directed at elementary school students are included, and many of the results on the first page were created exclusively for kids. |
| SweetSearch4Me | Any browser | Search engine for emerging learners |
| Sync.in | Any browser | Sync.in provides a place for anyone to start a collaborative document without registering for the service. Once you've started your document it is assigned a unique URL that you can share with anyone with whom you want to collaborate. Sync.in gives each person his or her own text color so that you can keep track of who wrote what. If you want to go back in time to see how the document developed, you can do that with the time slider on Sync.in. Documents on Sync.in can be exported and downloaded to your local computer. |
| Kwik Surveys | Any browser | Eleven different types of questions. Can post survey on a blog, website, or discussion forum or email survey and track who has completed it. |
| Wix | Any browser | Free service for creating and hosting websites with great templates |
Programming
(Web Design, Games & Animation)
Tool |
Platform |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Scratch |
Mac, PC | A programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art - and share your creations on the web. |
| Alice | Mac, PC | Innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience. |
| Gamemaker | PC | Make computer games without the need to write a single line of code. Using easy-to-learn, drag-and-drop actions, you can make professional-looking games in no time. Games can have backgrounds, animated graphics, music, and sound effects, and once you get more experienced there's a built-in programming language that gives you full flexibility. |
| Gamestar Mechanic | Any browser | Game-based digital learning platform designed to teach the guiding principles of game design and systems thinking in a highly engaging and creative environment. Fosters critical 21st century skills such as systems thinking, problem solving, creativity, collaboration, digital media literacies and a motivation for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) learning. |
| Mozilla's Hackasaurus | Any browser | Hackasaurus spreads skills, attitudes, and ethics that help youth thrive in a remixable digital world. The X-Ray Goggles allow learners to see what the web is made of, remix and change their favorite web page. Students tinker and mess around with the building blocks that make up the web (html, CSS). Lots of great lesson plans to help you get started! |
Utilities
Tool |
Platform |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Darik's Boot And Nuke | PC, Linux, Mac PowerPC | Self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN is appropriate for bulk or emergency data destruction. |
| Spybot - Search & Destroy | PC | Detects and removes spyware, a relatively new kind of threat not yet covered by common anti-virus applications |
| Dictionary Toolbar | Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari (PC or Mac) | Look up words right from your browser toolbar. |
