Seeking freeware suggestions for educational purposes

[Muttocracy]

This probably belongs under the computer forum but I thought maybe more techie night owls and/or teachers would see it here. I managed a set of laptops for a teaching program a few years ago. They're now pretty obsolete, and my former boss asked me to clean off most of the software and files, install some freeware, and she'll be sending them to an orphanage/school in Africa via a charity group.

The kids there will not have internet access, so this is just an educational and fun opportunity for them. Learn a little about how a computer works, learn to type, use a mouse, some basic word processing, maybe some math/spreadsheet software. And be able to play a CD for education or for fun.

We have OpenOffice and that's going fine installing that. We're leaving the Windows OS on it (Windows 2000), which includes WordPad. Any suggestions for other freeware that I might consider? I don't have a lot of time, and the computers don't have much storage space, and need to be ready to join the rest of the cargo in a few days, but thought I'd ask for freeware suggestions.

Thanks!

[BlooInBloo]

1. Googling "educational freeware" brings up a LOT of hits. Did you look at *any* of them?

[Muttocracy]

6. Searches that generate huge numbers of hits are less useful

I could spend hours combing through sites of questionable usage trying to get traffic by having the right keywords, or get a few useful suggestions from smart DU users. There are times when Google is faster, and times when asking a question of humans is more efficient. I judged this to be the latter.

If you think I'm a lazy idiot, why not add me to your ignore list rather than wasting your time responding to me?

[BlooInBloo]

7. What if you just looked at the top 10?

:rofl:

[ColbertWatcher]

2. Gimp is free.

http://www.gimp.org

[Muttocracy]

3. I've known people who use that - is it pretty user-friendly?

As in, people who don't know computers really well yet wouldn't get too frustrated with it?

[ColbertWatcher]

8. I don't know. I basically taught myself how to use it, but ...

... I pretty much teach myself most of programs I use.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I can't really judge if it would be easy for kids to use it.

I'd say yes, because kids just "get" stuff we old people don't, but I cannot say with any definitive proof.

[Muttocracy]

11. yeah, having watched my neices and nephews learn new software

I know what you mean :)

[alfredo]

18. Tux Paint is more appropriate for younger students.

[alfredo]

19. Look at School Forge

http://www.schoolforge.net/

[Muttocracy]

26. thanks. nt

[alfredo]

35. Yer welcomed

[nebenaube]

4. Open Office. & freebsd/linux/ubuntu & gnome etc... n/t

[polly7]

5. What a nice thing to do

I suggest Irfanview -an excellent, simple graphic viewer, .... Piriform CCleaner - a system optimization and cleaning tool. These are the first two programs I install whenever I change computers, they're both quite small. I wish I knew of some good free games :(

[Muttocracy]

10. I'll take a look at those. The woman behind it

is a nun living in the US who escaped warfare in Africa and has gone back to oversee building this orphanage. I think the computers are actually too obsolete to be much use to American kids or libraries.

[RoyGBiv]

9. Go here ...

http://www.opensourcewindows.org/

It's sort of a laundry list of various, popular open source apps that are commonly used.

A lot of it is geared toward Internet functionality, but there's some good stuff there that isn't.

[Muttocracy]

12. Great! Thanks!

I owe you thanks for helping me with my home laptop purchase too, but that's a story for another thread :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. If you are keeping WIN, PaintNet is easier to use than GIMP

I use both in my win machine

[RoyGBiv]

17. Agreed ...

I like Gimp and so prefer it, but then again I'm used to it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Install Ubuntu on them, and that will have quite a bit of sofware in the packet

also Ubuntu works well with older computers, or BSD is the other choice

[ThePhoenix]

15. Paint.NET

I've read that most people that try Paint.net prefer it over Gimp.

http://www.paint.net

[woo me with science]

16. The website, sheppardsoftware.com

has great software that is free for teachers.

[ColbertWatcher]

20. I don't know about this company ...

WHOIS tells me (http://samspade.org/whois/209.92.71.17) that Sheppardsoftware.com is run by some company called "PAETEC Holding Corp."

Wikip*dia tells me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAETEC_Holding_Corp.) that PAETEC Holding Corp. is headed by a guy named "Arunas A. Chesonis"

Opensecrets tells me (http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.php?name=Chesonis%2C+Arunas&state=&zip=&employ=&cand=&all=Y&sort=N&capcode=vp38f&submit=Submit) an "Arunas A. Chesonis" donated to Ted Stevens, George W. Bush and in June, 2008 John Shadegg.

The most interesting thing is the vice chairman of PAETEC, Richard T. Aab, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAETEC_Holding_Corp.).

According to opensecrets (http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.php?name=Aab%2C+Richard&state=&zip=&employ=&cand=&all=Y&sort=N&capcode=8tk3y&submit=Submit) he donates to R's exclusively.

[woo me with science]

22. Ooookay.

Sounds like you don't want to use them, then.

You do fast research. All I know is that they make fantastic geography games that are posted in the DU Lounge all the time.

[ColbertWatcher]

23. "You do fast research." Meh, I'm not so fast.

Also, if geography games are what's behind Americans and peoples of The Iraq not having maps, then we're better off without them!

[woo me with science]

24. Bwah!

:rofl:

[ColbertWatcher]

28. ...

:P

[Muttocracy]

27. oh dear!!! I'll have to research the political implications... nt

[ColbertWatcher]

29. Sorry. n/t

[Muttocracy]

31. well, I did take the liberty of asking on a political board after all

I'm impressed with your research chain!

[ColbertWatcher]

33. LOL! It's the internets!

All the tubes are open for everyone to read!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8

[TreasonousBastard]

21. Open Office is pretty huge and complicated for...

what these kids would probably be doing. Wordpad is probably all the word processing they'll need for now, but Abiword might be the next step up if that's not enough. Think they'll really need spreadsheets and databases? If so, there are simpler and smaller ones around.

Here's a few other things they might find handy:

Calendar Magic http://www.stokepoges.plus.com/products.htm is a neat cross-cultural calendar app

Celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ and Stellarium (no URL handy now) are neat astronomy programs that aren't nearly as complex as Cartes du Ciel

Since there are nuns involved, and hence religion, perhaps Ocean http://www.bahai-education.org/ which is a searchable database of many religious (not all Christian) scriptures and writings.

Convert http://joshmadison.com/software is a really handy app to convert everything from temperature to energy units. Instant metric-English conversion, and infinitely more.

For graphics, I'd try Pixia-- I never could figure out how to work it, but I'm not a kid. It was developed in Japan for anime and there's some beautiful work done with it-- by people (kids, I guess) who've figured it out.

[Muttocracy]

25. thanks so much for your help - will review it tomorrow

tonight I'm focusing on getting old programs off to make some space.

[anigbrowl]

30. Ubuntu w/Gnome

[mwooldri]

34. EDUbuntu... www.edubuntu.org

the site's a bit bare but it's basically a customized Ubuntu distribution with educational software ready to go. There's a live CD option so you can try it out before installing. You can download it or pay to have it shipped to you on CD.

Mark.

[pokerfan]

32. Link to the Free Software Foundation

Educational programs: http://directory.fsf.org/category/educ

[napoleon_in_rags]

36. Do they have audio IO?

If so, you might want to put Audacity or Gloops on so they can play with some music and beats. That's part of learning too.
http://www.dontcrack.com/freeware/downloads.php/id/21/software/Audacity/
http://www.dontcrack.com/freeware/downloads.php/id/4439/software/Gloops/