Free Digital Tools and Learning Resources List

 

This page is a present for every visitor of my ePortfolio, and offers my unique collection of chosen and evaluated list of the best

Free Digital Tools and Learning Resources used in my professional practice, before, during and after the MET Program.

 

Most of these digital tools and resources are often used and highly recommended by my peers, instructors, and professional circles. 

 

These tools and digital learning resources are curated from the web, and are part of my personal digital learning and creativity collection, and I readily share them with you for the sake of supporting learning in general, digital literacy and artistic expression. You are welcome to explore these tools and resources for your learning needs and the creation and authoring of the variety of digital artifacts in the complex process of learning, training, entertainment, knowledge building, and education in general.

 

Here is the Free Digital Tools and Learning Resources List sorted by the categories:

(Note that due to web dynamic the resources are not hyperlinked).

 

Free Digital Authoring Tools:

 

WEB and HTML Authoring

• Wix - Free online WYSIWYG hosted website builder

• Weebly - Create and publish a website using a stunningly easy drag & drop website editor. Hosted

• Wordpress.com - Popular and sophisticated tool to create blogs and webpages. Hosted 

• Wordpress.org - Enterprise tool to create blogs and webpages . Open Source,

• Google Sites - Free online WYSIWYG hosted website builder

• Kompozer - Complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing

• LucidPress - Easily create brochures, flyers, newsletters, digital presentations and more. Free for Education

• Microsoft Expression Web -makes creating compliant standards-based Web sites faster and easier.

• SnapPages -The easiest way to create your own website online. Commercial plans available, Hosted

• Webs - Easy website builder to create a great looking personal, group, or small business website. Hosted

• Roxer - Create stunning websites in minutes. Hosted

• OpenZine - Make a free website that looks like a magazine. Create free web pages and group them with a magazine cover you create.

 

IMAGE & PHOTO Editing Tools (complete list here)

• Adobe After Effects : Create motion graphics and visual effects with the industry standard. Free Trial,

• Adobe Fireworks : Create, edit and optimize images for the web. Free Trial,

• Adobe Illustrator : Produce graphics for print, video, the web, and mobile devices. Free Trial,

• Adobe Photoshop : For managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. Free Trial, Download 

• alpoy : Avatar creator and animator. Hosted

• Aperture : Mac software for photographers. Free Trial,

• ChartTool : Design and share your own graphs. Hosted

• CoSketch : A multi-user online whiteboard designed to quickly visualize and share your ideas as image. Hosted

• Comic Life : Lets you create astounding comics, beautiful picture albums, how-tos… and more! Free Trial

• Toondoo : The world’s fastest way to create cartoons.  Hosted

• Voki : Create your own avatar and share with others. Hosted .

 

 

AUDIO Authoring, Editing, Streaming, Podcasting

• Audacity - Cross-platform sound editor and recorder. Open Source,

• Audio Acrobat - Create audio and video. Free Trial,

• Audio Conversion Wizard - “All to All” converter of digital audio formats.

• Aviary - Media creation tools: image editor, audio editor, screen capture. 

• BlogAmp - Audiocasting for the masses. Hosted

• Blurts - Instantly add life to static photos, tweets, emails, social posts and more by tagging them with a 30 second voice caption, Hosted

• Clipfair - free tool for ready-made activities for captioning and revoicing in foreign languages.

• Easypodcast - A GUI tool for easy podcast publication Open source

• ePodcast Creator - Complete podcasting software for beginners or professionals.

• Evoca - Record your voice on the web; capture your readers’ voices. Hosted

• Garageband - Turns your Mac, iPhone, IPad into a recording studio.

• Hipcast - Create audio and video for blogs. Free Trial, Hosted

• HuffDuffer - Create a podcast using audio files on the web. Hosted

• iSpeech - Convert text to Speech. Listen to any document, website or blog. Hosted

• Mixcraft - Multi-track audio recorder that enables you to record your band, create a podcast, etc.

• MP3myMP3 Recorder - Saves any audio you hear on your computer straight to mp3 or wav.

• Odiogo - Odiogo mobilizes your media, transforming textual content into audio formats to PC, iPods/MP3 players and mobile phones! Hosted

• PodcastPeople - Everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. Free Trial, Hosted

• Podcast Wizard - Turns creating podcasts into a surprisingly easy and pleasant task. Free Trial

• Podium - A PC-based application, designed specifically for the education market. It is an easy-to-use piece of software that allows students of any age to create, edit and publish podcasts all from the same simple interface. Free Trial, Hosted

• podOmatic - Create and share podcasts. Hosted

• Propaganda - Produce your own professional-quality audio shows with Propaganda software. Free Trial,

• Scate Ignite -enables users to quickly create high-impact, dynamic web presentations and screen recordings that can be published as social media, videos, podcasts, interactive flash, html or SCORM elearning.

• SpokenText - Text to audio converter. Hosted

• StudioRack - A modular live audio and video production system forWindows for the more demanding podcaster, audio and video producers.

• VozMe - Convert text to MP3. Hosted

• Vocaroo - Free flash based audio recorder with no set recording limit. Records can be downloaded or emailed.

• WebPod Studio - podcasting software that produces both audio and video podcasts, for the Internet. Free Trial, Hosted

• YAKiToMe! - uses the world’s best text to speech (TTS) software.  Upload documents, cut and paste text or link to feeds. Text reader converts text to speech automatically. Hosted

• Blip.fm - Create your own music station. Hosted

• iPadio - allows you to broadcast from any phone to the Internet live. Hosted

• iRadeo - Start streaming your mp3 files, it’s easy. Launch your online radio station today. Download

• Peercast - A simple, free way to listen to radio and watch video on the Internet. It uses P2P technology to let anyone become a broadcaster

• Podlinez - A service that lets you broadcast podcasts from your phone. Hosted

 

VIDEO Authoring, Editing, Streaming, Podcasting (complete list here)

• iMovie - Video editing software (for Macs, iPhone and iPad)

• Animoto - Easily create a video by mixing together video clips, music tracks, and photos. Hosted

• JayCut - Edit your movies. Hosted

• Masher - Easily create a video by mixing together video clips, music tracks, and photos. Hosted

• Moovly - create animated videos and other multimedia content.

• Pixorial - Edit videos without downloading software. Commercial plans available, Hosted

• PowToon - Create animated video explainers – for business or education.

• WeVideo - Simple to use video editor, free and paid versions. Hosted

• Xtranormal - Make a 3D movie with unprecedented ease.You type. The 3D actors speak

• Jing : Always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere. Pro version available.

• Playback : For creating screencast tutorial videos in any subject using an iPad. Annotate your presentation slides as you talk.

• Screenbird - “record your screen like a boss” Hosted

• Screencast-O-matic : online screen recorder. Hosted

• ScreenCastle : One-click screencasting. Hosted

• ScreenFlow : Professional screencasting studio (for the Mac). Free Trial, Download

• ScreenJelly : Records your screen activity with your voice so you can spread it as a video via Twitter or email. Hosted

 

FREE DIGITAL RESOURCE LISTS

 

Sharing and Collaborating Sites

These sites offer a place for learners to find open educational resources as well as provide a place to share their collaborative works on projects.

• Apple Learning Interchange. Educators create and share lessons and activities here.

• MoodleShare. For teachers on Moodle, this resource offers lesson plans, activities, and even entire courses for K-12 and higher education.

• Connexions. The modules provided here can be used as lessons, books, reports, or classes.

• Free Curricula Center. Find educational material such as textbooks and instructor guides for higher education classes.

• OER Commons. This OER community provides materials for both K-12 and higher ed.

• Curriki. This site aims to distribute free curricula and educational resources to teachers around the world.

• Google for Educators.  Google has compiled an enormous amount of information and resources for teachers here.

• Open Educational Resources. Find classes, tools, and other resources at this site.

• iBerry. This “academic porthole” provides links to open resources as well as a news aggregator so you can stay on top of all the OER news.

• K12EdCom.org. This site provides open courseware curriculum material specifically for those in K-12 education.

• WiZiQ. Teachers can use this site for uploading content, teaching online, and more while students can find classes on just about anything.

• MERLOT. Get peer-reviewed online learning materials for higher education at this site.

 

Open Courseware Search Engines

Use these search engines to find more open educational resources and information.

• OER Recommender. Search for courses and other resources by keyword with the OER Recommender.

• Open CourseWare Consortium. This site will search all member institutions for open courseware classes.

• Creative Commons. One of the leaders in the OER movement, Creative Commons offers licenses for those who create open content and also provide access to several search engines to help locate material.

• OCW/OER Search. This Google search engine will look up open and free materials for higher education.

 

Open Courseware

These institutions offer open courseware available for anyone to access.

• TU Delft OpenCourseWare. Find free classes focusing on engineering and technology here.

• Stanford Engineering Everywhere. See what Stanford has to offer in computer science, artificial intelligence, and electrical engineering courses.

• Harvard Medical School Open Courseware Initiative. If you have students planning to go pre-med, then these classes will be an awesome resource.

• MIT OpenCourseWare. Teachers and students can access almost 2,000 courses from MIT. Just for high school Highlights for High Schools.

• Tufts OpenCourseWare. Tufts University has a selection of life science courses on their site.

• Sophia Project. Find eight open courseware classes at this site modeled after the MIT OpenCourseWare project.

• UC Berkeley Webcasts. Be sure to search through the archives to find all the classes offered by UC Berkeley on this site.

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare. Johns Hopkins offers a variety of free public health courses here.

• Notre Dame OpenCourseWare. Notre Dame offers a few beginning level liberal arts classes on their site.

• Open Learning Initiative. Carnegie Mellon provides access to several classes in a variety of disciplines.

• Utah State OpenCourseWare. See the classes Utah State University has to offer here.

• Open Yale Courses. Find introductory classes from Yale here.

• Open UW. Check out the classes offered by the University of Washington here.

 

Online Academic Video Sites

These sites provide educational videos free of charge that will help inspire your teaching.

• Open Vault. Teachers will discover content produced by public TV and radio on this site.

• Nova Teachers Watch Video Online. Teachers can choose from short videos or longer videos from the Nova magazine and TV program.

• YouTube EDU. YouTube has a special section devoted to education-related videos.

• TeacherTube. Rest assured that all the videos here are made by and especially for educators.

• Teachers TV Videos. These educational videos cover a wide range of topics and are sponsored by an organization from the UK.

• Teacher’s Domain. Get video and audio segments from PBS programming just for educators.

• Learner.org. Find tons of free videos to enhance your teaching here.

 

Online Lectures

Find open lectures online from top universities and public media around the world.

• Academic Earth. Find video courses and lectures from major universities on Academic Earth.

• Forum Network. This site provides free video lectures from public stations, community partners, and respected speakers.

• MIT World. MIT publishes open lectures and events that occur at MIT on this site.

• TED. Find inspirational lectures given by fascinating people from all walks of life on TED.

• Lectr. This “knowledge sharing community” posts educational video lectures from classes around the world.

• Princeton University WebMedia. Get video and podcast lectures and events from Princeton on this site.

• Free Science Videos and Lectures. These videos and lectures vary from basic to complex and stretch across several different scientific fields.

• Intercollegiate Studies Institute Lecture Program. Support the mission of ISI–to promote and sustain a free and humane society.

• VideoLectures.NET. This European project shares open education through academic video sharing.

• LearnersTV. Not only can you watch video lectures here, but you will also find science animations and lecture notes.

• Harvard@Home. While these videos haven’t been updated in the past year, the site has awesome video lectures from Harvard events.

 

Online Reference Material

These open resources are a great way to access reference material for the classroom and for student use.

• Purdue Online Writing Lab. This online writing lab has a vast amount of knowledge for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills.

• Open Directory Project. This OER project provides links to thousands of open resources online.

• Internet Public Library. Students and teachers can visit this online library to find reference material on a wide range of topics.

• FREE. The Federal Resources for Educational Excellence is a repository for all teaching and learning resources from federal agencies.

• Dictionary.com. Get an online dictionary plus much more with this tool.

• The Math Forum @ Drexel. This awesome resource will help both teachers and students with their tools, practice problems and puzzles, and offers a teacher exchange.

• Online Etymology Dictionary. This online resource provides the origins and history of many words and phrases.

• Bartleby.com. Get access to a massive list of reference books on this site.

• Awesome Stories.This site provides original sources from national archives, libraries, universities, museums, and government databases that are just right for research projects.

• Fact Monster. Get the facts as well as several reference resources on this site.

• Dynamic Periodic Table. This interactive periodic table is easy for any student to use and offers detailed information on each of the specific elements.

• Refdesk.com. Discover facts, quotes, news, and use searches for a variety of other information all in one place at this site.

• Graphing Calculator. Students won’t need to invest in an expensive graphing calculator when you share this online resource with them.

• Library Spot Grammar/Style. Students and teachers will appreciate the tutorials, how-tos, and style guides provided here to help learn proper grammar and style.

• Searching for Stuff. Find what you need with this simple search site.

 

Social Media Tools

Use these social media tools free of charge to help students work collaboratively in dynamic ways.

• Edublogs. Get a free blog for your class on this site that is only for those in education.

• Class Blogmeister. This free service, designed just for educators, will have you creating a class blog in no time.

• Blogger. While this Google-based blogging platform isn’t education-specific, it is free and easy to use.

• WordPress. If you are a more experienced blogger looking for more creative opportunities, then check out free WordPress blogs.

• 21Classes. This free service helps you create classroom homepages as well as manage blogs for students or the class as a whole.

• Twitter. Twitter has become an incredible tool for connecting teachers and students in collaborative learning environments.

• Edmodo. Edmodo is like Twitter, but just for those in education.

• QuoteURL. This Twitter tool helps organize tweets so they are all on one page–helpful for Twitter-based projects.

• CiteMe. Students can use this Facebook app to learn about properly formatted citations of APA, Chicago, or MLA.

• DoResearch4Me. If your students are relying too heavily on Wikipedia, use this Facebook app to find information from online sources.

• Hey Math! Challenge. For struggling math students, have them use this Facebook app to watch Flash movies explain difficult math concepts.

• Flashcards. Teachers and students can create flashcards for any subject they are studying with this Facebook app.

• Class Notes. Share your class notes, assignments, and reminders with this app.

 

Wikis

These wikis are all about sharing educational information. While some are on specific topics, others provide more general educational resources.

• WikiEducator. Get free content here or sign up to learn how to create and contribute your own content.

• eToolBox. This wiki from Wissahickon School District is all about integrating technology into the classroom.

• Wikiversity. With over 12,500 resources available here, you will find projects, research, and more on this wiki.

• Digitally Speaking. Teachers will find ideas and resources for using technology in the classroom in innovative ways on this wiki.

• Educational Origami. Become a part of bringing 21st century learning into the classroom when you visit this wiki.

• Welker’s Wikinomics. Economics teachers and students can find tons of information on this wiki and are also invited to contribute.

• Flat Classroom Project. This project wraps up its fifth year promoting global communication and collaboration between classrooms.

• GoAPES. This wiki is for secondary and college-level teachers of life sciences.

• Salk’s Periodic Table. This unique wiki is an interactive periodic table.

• Kidpedia. Kidpedia is an online encyclopedia written for and by kids.

• Qedoc. This wiki provides learning resources on a variety of subjects, including foreign languages, history, math, science, and business.

 

Online Books and Texts

These online books and texts offer a new way of providing information to students–free and sometimes open to editing by anyone.

• Project Gutenberg. Find tons of free books online here, including everything from classics to text books.

• Open Textbooks. The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources provides links to over 450 open texts appropriate for the community college level.

• Wikibooks. Find textbooks that are not only free to learners, but open to editing by anyone.

• International Children’s Digital Library. This resource provides free online books to children around the world.

• Read Print. Teachers and students will find tons of books, stories, and poems available for free here.

 

Professional Online Education Networks

Join in a professional network for even more ways to collaborate on open education.

• NextGen Teachers. If you’d like to be part of an organization that is all about teachers making positive changes in education through technology, then check out this network.

• Edutagger. This site facilitates knowledge-sharing by allowing users to find interesting articles and tag them to share with other teachers.

• Classroom 2.0. This popular and very active professional networking site focuses on collaborative technology in education.

• Education Leadership. Become part of the discussion about what makes effective leaders in education here.

• Passionate Teachers. Passionate teachers share ideas, strategies, and resources to promoting quality education on this site.

• TeachAde. Get professional resources and connections with other educators here.

• The Schools United. Educators around the world connect here to collaborate, communicate, and share resources for education.

 

 

General Learning Resources List (click to open)

 

 

 

I will do my best to regularly research, maintain, update and keep current this digital tools and resources list.

 

Enjoy Free Learning!

 

Resources shared and curated from:

 

http://c4lpt.co.uk/directory-of-learning-performance-tools/web-pagesite-tools/

 

http://www.edudemic.com/the-100-best-and-free-online-learning-tools/ 

 

Zivkovic M. (2014). Digital Tools and Resources Collection. Retrieved from the author personal resource library.

 

Recommended digital tool resource websites:

 

http://c4lpt.co.uk/directory-of-learning-performance-tools/find-out-about-anything-and-everything/