Interactive resources

Classtools.net was created and is maintained by Russel Tarr, Head of History at the International School in Toulouse. This site provides free, customisable templates which users can edit to create educational games and activities and then these can then be embedded into blogs and websites.

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Free Images

Finding appropriate copyright free images for teaching resources can be very time consuming. Today's site started life as a project in 2005 when tourism lecturers were asked to contribute photographs adn similar digital media that could be used freely in education.

The Image Enriched Learning in Tourism Project provides a vast database of images relating to tourism, links to alternative images sites and also provides guidance in the use of imagery in lectures.

Online Courses

Hewlett-Packard provide free online classes covering a range of topic areas. These classes are usually 4-8 lessons long and can be completed at your own pace within the time-frame set by HP.

The lessons can be completed at your own convenience and include activities, reading, quizzes and assignments. HP also provide a Discussion Board for participants to communicate with each other for the duration of the course. The courses offered change over time so even if you do not want to do one on offer at the moment it is worth looking back later for new courses.

Free Poverty - Geography Game which Donates Water

The FreePoverty website seeks to help users donate water to people world who live in extreme poverty. Users play a game which tests their geography knowledge by locating places on a map. The more accurate the attempts, the more water is donated on their behalf.


FreePoverty's stated aims are "to:

- Provide clean drinking water to those in need
- Make users realize that they can make a difference
- Let users learn something about geography that they may have not known before"

Screencast.com (resource hosting)

Alongside the need to create teaching resources, there is also the requriement for file storage that can be used to access these resources on demand. Screencast.com offers this facility. Created by TechSmith, Screencast.com provides free online hosting for screencasts, videos, images and documents. Users can control how, when and to whom their content is distributed. Definitely worth trying if you have limited storage space. A free account provides 2GB storage and 2GB monthly bandwidth or if you want more from it there is the option to pay $9.95 for 25 GB and 200GB monthly bandwidth.

Fastone Capture (Screen Capture and more)

Some time ago I discused Snippy which allows you to take a snapshot of a selected part of the screen. Fastone Capture is an alternative (freeware) screen capture programme. In addition to copying the screen this software enables the user to further edit it by adding lines, arrows, shapes and text, captions, pictures, croping, rotating and to zooming in and out. This is particularly worth exploring if you may need to produce documentation based on screen views.

Prevent It (Health & Safety Advice)

Prevent It is a Canadian website which provides information about safety procedures at work. The site was created by the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board in Canada but has useful information for other countries.

The site provides interactive scenarios covering a range of health and safety issues at work. Each of these also provides links to advertisements, testimonials and additional useful information.