JISC Get On Board Open Learning Bandwagon

Good to see that JISC have thrown their weight into getting open source learning into the virtual marketplace.

With any luck this will be the push required to make it "acceptable" to institutions to share their work.

Experimental Blog: JISC09 Last Post Open Learning Resources

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Free, as in speech

Image via Wikipedia

The Online College has a great post on free or open source tools particularly applicable to students.

From image editors to IDEs and to-do lists to web browsers you'll find something of interest here.

69 Free or Open Source Tools For Students | Online College

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Make Use of... Anything

Image via Wikipedia

Make Use Of is a great site with tips for doing all sorts of things on your computer. On the day I looked the front page had a link to:

• Best source code sites
• Grabbing MP3s from FLV files
• Making use of Research features in Word 2007
• Using Gmail offline
• Online image editing

Add it to your feed reader today.

Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips

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Open Source Image Programming

Image via Wikipedia

Processing is

an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for
learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

For anyone looking to teach programming images it looks a good bet.

Processing 1.0

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Microsoft SmallBasic

Image by via CrunchBase

Microsoft have released a new version of basic designed for children and novices called SmallBasic. It has only fifteen keywords to learn to allow newbies to get up and running quickly. The web site says that

Small Basic is a simple and easy programming language with a friendly environment that provides a cool and fun way of learning programming. From making turtles animations to running a slide show on the desktop, Small Basic makes programming natural and effortless.

Might be a good way of introducing programming to your classes.

Featured Windows Download: Small Basic Teaches Programming Fundamentals

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