Alternatives to microsoft...

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of students in my French 9 class last week. We were in the library, working on their Francophone country project and most were still at the research stage. I had shown the class some samples from last year; one of which was hand drawn by a former student and it was by far the most visually appealing of the lot.  I was speaking with a few of the boys in the class about the samples and they were shocked to learn that another boy had done that sample.  "I can't draw like that! What am I supposed to do?".  I suggested to them that they type up their sentences/information and then cut and paste into their brochures. A couple of them responded "but I don't have Word (or Office) at home! I can't type it up!".  Firstly, I was more than a little surprised that they didn't have MSOffice on their computer at home and secondly I was surprised that they didn't have the alternative or hadn't heard of it.  It is really that unusual to be using OpenOffice?  None of them had heard of it before.  I have only been using it on occasion over the past year or so, but I know that our school district is planning on switching over to Ubuntu in the next year or so, and therefore we will all be using OpenOffice at work then too.

I guess I'm always a little surprised when I am a little ahead of the 14 year old set when it comes to computer programs!

Have you heard of OpenOffice/Ubuntu before?  Do you or do you know anyone using it regularly, at home or at work?

Prezi!

I was at a summer teachers conference this year and someone did a presentation using Prezi.  It's a neat web-based presentation program that is a) easy to use and b) WAY more fun than powerpoint.  I'm sure powerpoint will hold its place in the realm of presentations for a while to come, but Prezi is fun, visually appealing and free for educators!  Well actually, it's free for most anyone, but educators get a more, shall we say, souped-up version with a few more features. 

I tried it out with my French 10 students the other day, and they were enthusiastic about it. One of the Prezi's biggest selling features for students is that you don't need to carry around a "nerd stick" when you want to present at school.  Just login to the site and your presentation is ready to go.  All this when I showed them my mediocre intro to our new unit in class; mediocre in that my prezi creating skills need some work.

Give it a try!  Tell me what you think!