Mahara | ePortfolios

Mahara is an open source ePortfolio and social networking web application originally created by the government of New Zealand. It provides users with tools to create and maintain a digital portfolio of their learning, and social networking features to allow users to interact with each other. Mahara content management system provides users with blogs, a resume builder, a file manager and a view creator - a tool to help users create arrangements of their content in a particular way for others to see.

The eportfolio site http://myportfolio.school.nz, provided by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, free-of-charge for all New Zealand schools, is powered by Mahara

Geogebra | open source Mathematics software

What is GeoGebra?
GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. It has received several educational software awards in Europe and the USA.

Quick Facts

• Graphics, algebra and tables are connected and fully dynamic
• Easy-to-use interface, yet many powerful features
• Authoring tool to create interactive learning materials as web pages
• Available in many languages for our millions of users around the world
• Open source software freely available for non-commercial users
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Libre Office | Free Productivity / Office Suite

"LibreOffice is a comprehensive, professional-quality productivity suite that you can download and install for free, with no fear of copyright infringement. There is a large base of satisfied LibreOffice users worldwide, and it is available in more than 30 languages and for all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux.

What's outstanding about LibreOffice?

• LibreOffice is a feature-packed and mature desktop productivity package with some really great advantages:
• It's free – no worry about license costs or annual fees.
• No language barriers – it's available in a large number of languages, with more being added continually.
• Supports large number of file formats, including Microsoft Office, OOXML, and RTF – both loading and saving."

Sculpture and Sine Waves

This is one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long time:
"Reuben Margolin is a kinetic sculptor, crafting beautiful pieces that move in the pattern of raindrops falling and waves combining. Take nine minutes and be mesmerized by his meditative art -- inspired in equal parts by math and nature. "

EDvent Calendar: Day 4 (Google Streetview)

Have some fun courtesy of Google Streetview. Explore the ruins of Pompeii:
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...or take a stroll through the Colosseum:

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 ...while Google Art Project takes the power of Streetview to the world's best art museums:

Have fun!!

Open Source Physics: Tracker

I discovered this neat tool when learning about the physics of Angry Birds. Not only does Tracker identify and track objects frame-by-frame through a video, it also records and graphs this data for you. It comes with quite a few experiments installed and, in the hands of a good Physics teacher, would form the centre of a very interactive unit on motion and movement. I can imagine students the world around grabbing their cellphones to record video of all manner of objects 'bouncing'. Hmmm. Does my glass of chocolate milk fall at the same rate as a bowl of noodles?
It's an easy-to-use tool that allows students to become better askers of questions and designers of experiments instead of becoming better memorisers of someone else's data.