I’m always amazed at what people will give away for free. You can get a sound mixing program, an office suite, or even an operating system for your computer all for nothing. Though you pay nothing, this is not a case where you get what you pay for.
The latest potentially really cool open source software I’ve come across is The School Tool Project. This package aims to be the school administrator’s dream: attendance software, calendar and resource management software, and even mark books all bundled together and all for free. The setup was being tested by schools in Lithuania and Belgium last I heard.
I can’t tell you this is great software since I don’t know. It does, however, hold great potential, possibly replacing some of the very expensive school management software packages presently in use.
This is a project that should be fascinating to watch as it develops.
If you’re an elementary teacher, Spin and Spell is a great spelling website. There are a number of areas to choose from (home, clothing, transportation, etc) and a bunch of pictures associated with each. You click on a picture, and you hear it said. Then you spin the wheel of letters to spell out the word. When you’re ready, you submit your spelling, and you’re told if you spelt the word right or not.
It’s a nice spin (so to speak) on the old idea of a spelling bee. The only drawback is that all the words are fairly easy. It could be challenging for kids in Grade 3 or 4, but likely not much beyond that. As far as I can tell, there’s also no way to add your own words which would be incredibly cool.
It’s a great little site for practicing beginner spelling and it makes that practice just a bit more interesting than repeatedly writing out the word. That’s a great accomplishment.
As a kid I used to love to play with LiteBrite. There’s so many neat pictures you can make, and they all have that pretty glow to them. It worked well enough in the playroom, but we couldn’t leave it there, could we? Someone has gone and put up a pretty decent version of Lite Brite up on the Net. It’s not everything that Lite Brite is, but I could easily while away an hour or so on this site. This would be fun in an art class for doing all kinds of minimalist drawings, or even just playing with colors. You can save the Lite Brite works you make to show to others or to proudly look at later yourself.
This site is not run by Hasbro, and apparently Hasbro has yet to object to its existence, but given the nature of big companies it’s anyone’s guess how long it will still be here. Enjoy it while you can.
I’m really not sure whether this site is a tribute to the artist Jackson Pollock or a spoof of him. Either way, when I stumbled across it, it did induce me to go look up just who Jackson Pollock was and what this site had to do with him. I discovered his expressionist style seemed to involve an awful lot of paint splatters, and that’s why today’s featured website fairly brilliantly illustrates his style.
If you’re a fan of Pollock, you might see this site as too tongue in cheeck, but it did motivate me to learn about him and it might do the same for your students, too.
