Free and Open Source Educational
Software
 |
Website Overview: OSWINS DVD
is a collection of Free and Open
Source software for educational use that run on Windows. The
educational software varies from
mathematics to music, from science to graphics, from programming to
educational gamesi and includes office tools, business software,
network tools and security software.
The aim of this website is to make finding the
software easier by categorising them by Key Learning Areas used in
Education in Australia. In addition, under each category,
links to useful websites that provide information or free resources are
listed. |
How to use this
website: Files can be accessed
using the category index below or accessed via the file tree structure
on the DVD image using a file or
web browser. Many of the
applications are self extracting archives which install the
software. Some
applications are packaged into archives which have to be opened first
before installation will
proceed. The symbol 
indicates you can download the software directly from the DVD and the
symbol 
indicates the home
site for the software. Tools to create archives and extract files are
located in the misc tools
folder. Printer
friendly version of this
document
OSWINS DVD Table of Contents: Key Learning Areas
- The Arts (arts, dance, drama, music, painting, photography,
multimedia)
- English
(vocabulary,
online books,
mindmap,
educational tools,
reading)
- Health and
Physical Education (health
& fitness, health
software)
- Cultural
Literacy and Languages (Japanese, German, Spanish)
- Mathematics
(calculators,
graphs,
computations,
algebra,
courses,
tutorials)
- Science
(chemistry,
physics,
stars,
geology,
biology,
weather)
- Study of
Society and the Environment
(history,
geography,
government)
- Technology
(graphics,
programming,
manuals,
editors,
development,
cms)
- Desktop
(more office tools, communication tools, misc tools)
- Office
Tools (word processors, spreadsheets, communications, misc
tools)
- Networking (remote access, web tools, network management, virtual machines)
- Security (anti-virus, firewalls, forensics, diagnostics )
- Business (personal finance, ERP, point-of-sale, data mining)
- Engineering
(civil,
mechanical,
electrical)
- Open Source
Web Sites
This DVD is distributed in
the
hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Please refer to each package for its
software license. The
Licenses used on this DVD include:
If you connect to the
Internet
remember to use a firewall (such as ZoneAlarm),
anti-virus software (such as AVG)
and
anti-spyware software (such as Microsoft
Defender). You should find a security solution that best
suites your personal
requirements. Read the security
section.
The OSWINS DVD was
designed
to
be about 1.4GBytes so that it could fit
onto a pocket size DVD or USB drive. You can download the
OSWINS DVD (or two CDs - OSWINS
CD and OSWKIDS
CD) from http://os.cqu.edu.au/pub/iso.
For further
information about educational software visit the Centre for OpenSource
Development
taxonomy web site at http://os.cqu.edu.au/cosd.
The OS-school-DVD is a
combination of several CD and DVDs namely the OSWINS-DVD and the
ADIOS-CDs. These
are described at http://os.cqu.edu.au/oswinsdvd
and http://os.cqu.edu.au/adios
and you can
download the latest copies of these CD and DVDs from http://os.cqu.edu.au/pub/iso.
Try
software
first: The ADIOS CDs (included on the OS School
DVD) can be used to demonstrate open source software without the need
to install. To do this you reboot your computer from the DVD and it
will start Linux (requires 512MB of RAM). It may take a few minutes due
to the size of the image. Alternatively install QEMU
software and then run Linux within Windows (requires 1GB or RAM, for
more information see ADIOS-README.txt).
The default Linux image runs in
RAM and from DVD and does not use the hard disc drive. Linux will start
the KDE or XFCE desktop, this will allow you to run hundreds of
applications such as Leocad (toy bricks in 3D), Blender (3D modelling,
animation and rendering) and Kstars (planetarium). The Live Linux CD
component also provides non Linux users exposure to software which is
not available on Windows. For more informations about what is on the
ADIOS CDs see adioscds.html
or visit the ADIOS web site at http://os.cqu.edu.au/adios
for other themed CD versions of ADIOS.
Feedback:
If you have any comments or know of software or
sites that you think should be included on this list, please email the Author or fill
in the Feedback
form.
An expanded view of the open source software categories
Freeware
Copyright 2007-2008 GNU
General Public License
OSWINS DVD was built by Neville Richter - http://os.cqu.edu.au/oswinsdvd