Scott Johnson’s ICT Skills for Teachers

Some software you may like to try

Comic Life – a trial version of the latest version of Comic Life for Windows is available from http://plasq.com/comiclife-win (Choose ‘Download 30 days free trial’) A Mac version is offered on the same page.

Photo Story 3

If you have bought a copy of Windows but do not have Photo Story 3 on your home computer you may download a copy from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/PhotoStory/default.mspx

MS Image Resizer

You might want to try Image Resizer. Image Resizer enables you to resize one or many image files by right-clicking on the image and then making a couple of choices. Image Resizer does not give you as many choices as PhotoShop, but it is very easy to use and it is free to download.

Image Resizer is one of the Microsoft ‘PowerToys’ listed at
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx from where is can be downloaded, and is explained at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/tips/eschelman2.mspx

While you are on the website check out the other ‘Power Toys’ too.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a new (in 2008) web browser for Windows that has some nice features. It can be downloaded free of charge from
http://www.google.com.au/chrome

Picassa 3

Picassa provides an easy way to organise and edit your photos and create collages and slideshows. Then, if you create a Picassa Web Album you can share your share your images with friends or with everyone.

Download Picassa 3 from http://picasa.google.com/

Log in to your Google account and then go to http://picasaweb.google.com/home to upload photos to the web.

Information and ‘Help’ files may be found at http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14609&hl=en

Snippy

Snippy is a useful little tool that you can download, install and use to ‘cut out’ and copy irregular sections of a page that you can then paste into a document. Snippy works with Windows XP and previous versions of Windows.
Snippy can be downloaded free of charge from
http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/
http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/SnippyDownload.htm

ArtRage 2

ArtRage 2.5 comes in 2 editions. ArtRage 2.5 Starter Edition gives you 8 painting tools and lets you create, save, and print as many pictures as you like and doesn’t limit their size. It is great to use with a Tablet style (or any touch screen computer) computer, where it can be like ‘clean finger painting’, but also works well with a plug in tablet and stylus, and even with a mouse. The full version is available to be purchased, and you will receive plenty of encouragement to pay your money and buy the full version as you use the Starter Version. The Starter Edition can be downloaded from at no cost from
http://www.artrage.com/artragedown.html

Audacity

Audacity is used to record and work with sound files. Audacity is available to be downloaded from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ You will also need to download the LAME encoder to create .mp3 files from your Audacity recordings – Instructions and link at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3 and file at http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/

WinFF

WinFF can be used to convert your videos quickly, easily,
and all at once. You can for example convert mpeg, flv, and mov files all into avi fles, all at once. WinFF is available for Windows 95, 98 , ME, NT, XP, VISTA, and Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat based GNU/Linux distributions.

Read about WinFF at http://winff.org/html/ and download it from http://winff.org/html/downloads.html

CamStudio

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create AVI video files, then, using the built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

Read about CamStudio at http://camstudio.org/ and scroll down and download it via the link that is almost half way down the same page.

While you are on the site check out some work by the same person:

Track that Tweet http://trackthattweet.com/

AudioFlash V1.2 http://www.audioflash.org/ http://www.audioflash.org/AudioFlash_v12.exe