Free Tools for Projects
Video & Animation Tools |
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| Wideo | An online animation tool to create Common Craft style videos. The platform allows you to choose (or upload) the images, fonts, animations, and videos you want to use in order to create your own online video and then share. |
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| Pixorial | Create a video in Pixorial by uploading pictures and raw video footage then sequence, insert transitions, text, add a soundtrack using the Pixorial gallery or upload your own audio files. Pixorial also makes it easy to add text to each picture or video that you upload. Apply for the free plan for educators which provides a free pro account for teachers in addition to the 7GB free accounts for students. Platform: Any browser |
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| Powtoon |
Create Common Craft style videos by dragging and dropping pre-drawn elements into each scene Platform: Any browser |
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| Making Videos on the Web |
A Guide for Teachers documenting how you and your students can create videos without purchasing any software or video equipment Platform: PDF document |
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| Animoto |
Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy. Platform: Any browser |
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| ToonDoo | Create comic strips and books in this easy, engaging, and collaborative environment Platform: Any browser |
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| Sketchcast | 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). Platform: Any browser |
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| Voicethread | Amazing site that lets you import all sorts of media, record comments (both voice and text) and doodle (draw) over media, then share it Platform: Any browser |
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| Jing | Screen capture program Platform: Mac, PC |
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| Justin TV | The largest online community for people to broadcast, watch and interact around live video Platform: Any browser |
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| Screencast -O -Matic | 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 Platform: Any browser |
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| Screenpresso | Screen capture software Platform: PC |
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| UStream | 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 Platform: Mac, PC |
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| The Super Hero Squad Show | Create Your own comics Platform: Any browser |
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| Pixton | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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| Automatoon | Easily create animations for websites and other multimedia projects Platform: Any browser |
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| GoAnimate | Make animated videos with ease Platform: Any browser |
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| Muvizu | 3D animations made easy Platform: Windows – XP, Vista or Windows 7 |
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| Xtranormal | Make a movie just by typing Platform: Any browser |
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| We Video | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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Image Tools |
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| GIMP | A freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring Platform: Mac, PC, Linux |
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| LiveBrush | 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. Platform: Mac, PC |
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| Paint.net | 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. Platform: PC |
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| Pixlr | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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| PosteRazor | The PosteRazor cuts a raster image into pieces which can afterwards be printed out and assembled to a poster. Platform: Mac, PC, Linux |
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| Tux Paint | 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. Platform: Mac, PC, Linux |
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| Inkscape | 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. Platform: Mac, PC, Linux |
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| Aviary Raven | Use Raven to create fully scalable vector art appropriate for logos or tee shirt designs. Platform: Any browser |
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| Sumo Paint | 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). Platform: Any browser |
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| Draw Island | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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| Awesome Screenshot | 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. Platform: Browser extension |
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| PskoPaint | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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Audio Tools |
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| Audacity | Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds Platform: Mac, PC, Linux |
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| Sound Gecko |
Turns text articles into MP3 files. Using Sound Gecko you can take an article from a website, paste its URL into Sound Gecko, and then listen to a reading of that article. The conversion isn't instantaneous, but it is relatively quick. You do have to enter an email address in order to get the MP3 file. To remove the copy and paste part of the process you can install the Sound Gecko Chrome extension. Platform: Any browser, iOS (iPad, iPod), Windows phone |
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| Soundation | Allows anyone to create and remix sound tracks online. Soundation provides five tracks on which you can place music clips and sound effects to mix together. To create your original work you can select from Soundation's gallery of 400 free sounds, upload your own sounds, or record new sounds using the instruments and keyboard built into Soundation. When you've created a product you like, you can download it or share it in Soundation's gallery. Platform: Any browser |
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| Vocarro | Free 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! Platform: Any browser |
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| Loop Labs | Create your own music mixes using existing music loops and your own recordings. Platform: Any browser |
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| Vimeo Music Store | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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Productivity Tools |
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| Google Docs | Use for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets, presentations Platform: Any browser |
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| Survey Monkey | Create online surveys Platform: Any browser |
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| Tildee | A good site for creating, sharing, and locating tutorials for all kinds of technology-related things. Tildee provides a template and platform for sharing tutorials with others. Each tutorial you create is assigned a specific url that you can share with anyone. Your tutorials can include any combination of text, screen captures, and videos. Each tutorial that you create on Tildee is assigned a unique URL that you can share wherever you like. Platform: Any browser |
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| Neo Office | Full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs) Platform: Mac |
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| Open Office | The leading open-source office software suite for word processing,spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. Platform: Mac, PC, Linux |
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| ZohoWriter | Easy online word processor Platform: Any browser |
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| Sweet Search | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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| SweetSearch4Me | Search engine for emerging learners Platform: Any browser |
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| Sync.in | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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| Kwik Surveys | Eleven different types of questions. Can post survey on a blog, website, or discussion forum or email survey and track who has completed it. Platform: Any browser |
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| Wix | Free service for creating and hosting websites with great templates Platform: Any browser |
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Programming Tools
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| Sploder | Create video games is as easy as drag and drop. You can select as many elements as like for each scene of your game. Use the Sploder game tester to try your game and see how it actually works. Sploder has a YouTube channel containing some tutorials to walk you through creating games. Platform: Any browser (need Flash plugin) |
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| Scratch | 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. Platform: Mac, PC |
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| Alice | 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. Platform: Mac, PC |
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| Gamemaker | 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. Platform: PC |
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| Gamestar Mechanic | 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. Platform: Any browser |
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| Mozilla's Hackasaurus | 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! Platform: Any browser |
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Web Design Tools |
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| Weebly | Weebly is perfect for creating classroom websites, student e-portfolios, and websites for assigned projects. The drag & drop website editor is simple to use, and appropriate for use with students of all ages. Weebly enables your students to express themselves creatively using a variety of multimedia features, all within a protected environment that you control. Platform: Any browser |
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| Vidcaster | A place to build your own video website. Display all or some of the videos that you have uploaded to YouTube. VidCaster provides you with a nice selection of display templates as well as tool for creating categories of videos. VidCaster provides a nice way to display and share them outside of the YouTube ecosystem. Platform: Any browser |
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| Tackk |
Create simple webpages. Using Tackk you can create a page to announce an important event, to advertise an event, or to show off your best digital works. To create a Tackk page you do not need to register for an account, but unregistered Tackk pages expire after seven days. If you register for the service your Tackk pages stay up indefinitely. Tackk pages can accommodate videos, audio files, and maps. Platform: Any browser |
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| Wix |
Create and host beautiful websites. Templates and the websites you build with them are available in HTML5. That means that sites created in Wix are visible on all devices including iPads. Platform: Any browser |
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| School Rack | For teachers to build and host their own classroom websites. Unlike other free website solutions that are targeted toward a general audience, School Rack has features designed specifically for teachers. You can post assignments with full descriptions, expectations, and deadlines. This is an integrated feature, not an add-on page that you have to create yourself. School Rack offers students and parents free accounts to communicate with teachers. Once your students and parents have activated their accounts, you can directly message individuals or send messages to groups that you have created. Platform: Any browser |
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Utilities |
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| Netspeed Monitor |
NetSpeed Monitor is a free program that you can use to monitor the network activity of your computer. Learn more about it in the episode of TekZilla Daily. |
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| Darik's Boot And Nuke | Self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN is appropriate for bulk or emergency data destruction. Platform: PC, Linux, Mac PowerPC |
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| Spybot - Search & Destroy | Detects and removes spyware, a relatively new kind of threat not yet covered by common anti-virus applications Platform: PC |
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| Dictionary Toolbar | Look up words right from your browser toolbar. Platform: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari |
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