Free E-learning Stuff
Free Rapid E-learning Developer Starter Kit
Get started experimenting with e-learning content development without costing you a cent. If you are an aspiring e-learning developers start with the free tools listed below. There are dozens and dozens of free e-learning tools and resources available on the internet. There are many different types of tools and resources and within each category there are many suppliers to choose from. As a result, one of the biggest complaints that I hear from beginners is that the choices are overwhelming, and that they don’t have the time to sort through them all. I am going to make it easier for you by suggesting one or two tools in each category. There may be better tools than the one’s I have listed, but it really depends on what you need to do with them. For our purposes, as a starting point, these tools are more than adequate. In some cases, these tools may be all you will ever need. The free tools listed below will get you started. They can be downloaded by clicking on the links that will take you to the specific resource site where it offered.
Rapid Authoring Software
First, you’ll need an authoring tool which is basically software that enables you to create courses that can be viewed in a web browser. Udutu is a decent online authoring tool that is free. This software can’t be downloaded to your computer so you have work online. Being an online tool is a slight disadvantage because you can only use it through the internet. However, all of the benefits outweigh this disadvantage. This tool will allow you to create e-learning modules online, and then download them to your computer. The other great thing about Udutu is that you don’t need to use presentation software like PowerPoint as a foundation. Typically, this feature is found in some higher-end authoring tools. However, if you prefer to use presentation software like PowerPoint as a foundation for your course, Udutu allows you to import it. I like this feature because PowerPoint is a standard for many businesses and it’s widely used.
Clip Art
You will definitely want to add some images to your e-learning courses to make it more engaging. Openclipart is a large collaboration community that create, share and remix cliparts. All cliparts are released to the Public Domain so they can be freely used in any project for free.
Photos
Photos are much more effective than clip art for creating engaging e-learning courses. As the saying goes ” a picture is worth a thousand words”. However, the challenge is to find the right picture to convey your message and that is not always easy to do. In fact, a good portion of the total time that is spent developing e-learning courses is spent finding the right photos. Therefore, having access to a good library of photos can not only save you time, but can also make your e-learning courses more impactful. Below is a link to a really nice assortment of free photos. The SXC site offers photos that are both free and royalty-free. Royalty-free photos means that you pay a one time fee for the photo and (in most cases) you can use it as many times as you like. However, both free and royalty-free stock photos still have license agreements that restrict certain types of usage. Caution: Be sure to read the License agreement on the SXC site as there are some restrictions for using their free photos.
Audio Narration (You will need to use a computer microphone)
Lastly, you may want to add some narration to your e-learning courses. Audacity is a free, simple to use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. It is perfect for recording audio narration and saving the files in any audio format, with the exception of MPEGs. However, it is possible to create MPEGs with Audacity by installing a free add-on called Lame. The link for this add-on can be found on the Audacity site.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
There are many other free e-learning tools that are available. Click here to find a large collection of other free resources.