When talking about digitized presentations, lots of people think the only way to get it done is with PowerPoint. However, there are some great non-powerpoint tools out there. Zoho Show and Google docs both offer free and easy to use web based presentation tools. A couple business oriented presentation tools are SlideRocket (in beta-stage, sign up for free) and KinetiCast (pay for product, 15 day free trial with limitations). For people who are creative and don’t fit in the plain Jane PowerPoint box, Voicethreads is definitely the way to go.

Every man hopes he will make the right choice when faced with imminent death.
Every father wants to be a hero to his kids. Joseph Richardson did both.

Angelo Thomas - Villian

Need another free art tool? Look no further - Pencil looks like a great alternative for people tired of piddling around with MS Paint. Check out the gallery for some samples of what can be done with Pencil.

Pencil - Traditional Animation Software

This will make your day -

Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky had never hit a home run in her career. Central Washington senior Mallory Holtman was already her school’s career leader in them. But when a twist of fate and a torn knee ligament brought them face to face with each other and face to face with the end of their playing days, they combined on a home run trot that celebrated the collective human spirit far more than individual athletic achievement.

Read Full Story by Graham Hayes from ESPN

You gotta love websites like iconbuffet. What could be better? They ask for nothing. They do good work. I can use it for free. Who could ask for more?

I finally think I’m doing it right. First semester I taught web site development via tables and MS FrontPage. What a clunky, cumbersome bunch of goo. This semester I switched to straight file editing with Notepad and all kids used .css based layouts. Definitely a better fit

Our work flow went something like this: First we read through Web Page Development. This page gives an overview of what it takes to get on the web plus a link that specifically discusses the Five Main Technologies used in web development. Kids work comes together when they cut their teeth Editing css and html on the Refresh template by Erwin Aligam. I hope to have some of their work posted by mid-May.

Open Google Earth (which is free), hit alt+ctrl+a and a really good flight simulator opens up. Need to have Google Earth 4.2.

If Google is your home page, you may like to switch to Google Dark (recently renamed Dark Search) as a colorful alternative to Google.

The best thing about GIMP is all the cool plugins and addons out there. We’ve spent the last couple days learning to use GIMP and customizing the scripts and brushes. Still looking for cool pattern addons. The best two sites I’ve found recently are

Techzilo’s Brush Sets and
The Glinted Brush’s GIMP Beginner’s Guide

Help us collect good GIMP resources - post your finds in comments!

Eureka!! The GIMP runs smoothly from a flash drive. This means GIMP for my classes. Life is good! I have to be honest, I downloaded the GIMP a couple of releases ago and I was underwhelmed. It seemed clunky and difficult compared to Photoshop and Fireworks. Today I put some time in getting to know version 2.4.5. Not too shabby.

Check out The Gimp
Get right to business and download GIMP 2.4.5

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