Improving Your Digital Life: Useful FREE STEM Education Resources

I decided to collect here useful information about FREE resources and software that have a potential to improve our lives and make STEM education more exciting. Too often we think “I wish I knew about it earlier”… So now, if I hear about something useful, I will share it with you and hopefully I will myself remember to start using it…

1. Free virtual science museums and interactive resources from around the world:

a) Natural History Museum, London

b) Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, including the virtual tour

c) 11+ Science and Tech Museums you can tour virtually

d) Best museums of Singapore (check virtual components) https://www.bestinsingapore.co/best-museum-singapore/

e) Exploratorium in San Francisco: https://www.exploratorium.edu/

2. Free education-related software from around the word:

a) For geometry teaching: GeoBoard and Geogebra. I find these resources very useful to help students visualize geometry and they are FREE.

b) Dynamic images: http://www.hetemeel.com/einsteinform.php

c) Love crosswords and want to create them for/with your students? Then use a FREE Crossword Software called  ECLIPSE CROSSWORD and it will guide you through the process. Very easy to use and will be fun for you and your students.

d) Today I have heard about a very neat software called
PrettyMay Call Recorder for Skype (PMCRS): The basic – FREE version allows you to record your Skype conversation (up to 15 min) and then convert it to MP3 file. This makes Skype interviews much easier. I hope it will be helpful to you.

e) Annotate – although I haven’t used this software yet, it looks very interesting. It is certainly worth looking at. Notice, the basic service is FREE, you need to register and get going. If you want to use it more extensively, then you will need to pay as you go.

f) eNoteFile is another software for note-taking and filing your documents.

g) Dropbox is a super useful FREE service for people who work in teams that are located in different places. I use this service a lot when I collaborate with colleagues all across Canada. So it is a virtual Dropbox, where you can store you documents so you do not need to e-mail large files to each other. Then your collaborators share “the key” from your shared dropbox and you exchange information easily.

h) Pdf Exchange Viewer:  http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_viewer

i) Wordle is a very interesting tool: “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.” See: http://www.wordle.net/

A few words: Those wishing to view PDF files on their Windows PC’s now have a choice when it comes to Viewing PDF files – the PDF-XChange Viewer is smaller, faster and more feature rich than the Adobe Reader which has until now been the Reader of choice for PDF files – we think that’s about to change !  Free for Private and Commercial use, provided not bundled with other software or for financial gain)- also available – PRO Version – Need extra features and Functions ?