Open Office does almost everything that Microsoft Office does, and is free. It is probably the best example of Open Source software. This software was created by dedicated volunteers. The support for the software is better than you can get at Microsoft, in most cases. Open Office comes in Japanese too, as well as many other languages. More and more companies, governments and organizations are using this software, because it does everything they need it to.
Mind Maps are used instead of Outlines to organize your thoughts, usually for a project or a paper. This makes mind mapping simple, almost as simple as a pen and paper. The great thing is that you can share them with others, and they can change them too. bubbl.us
Audacity is software for using sounds. You can record things, and edit them, and then save them and send them to other people. It is free, is available in English, Japanese and many other languages. You can use it with Windows, OSX (Macintosh) or Linux. I use it 3 or four times a week to make an audio podcast (like an Internet radio show). But you can use it in a few minutes to record your voice, or have your students record their voices, and send them to you for homework. Audacity uses lots of different sound formats, but most people use MP3, because it makes small files that any computer (or your iPod) can use.
On this sample here, you can see the buttons that look like a tape recorder. Use them to record and save your files. You can edit the sounds much like a word processor, cutting out parts you don’t like or adding background music if you want to get fancy. You can then use the sound files in presentations like PowerPoint, or to make examples for students, or put up on the Internet for people to download and listen on their iPods.
When your students are learning languages with the web, they will need to listen to sounds and to speak into a microphone. The easiest way to do this is to buy a headset, which is a set of headphones with a microphone coming out one of the earpieces. There are hundreds of models, and they aren’t very expensive, ranging from Y1,000 to about Y10,000.
Many manufacturers make models that are good enough for language learning for about 3,000 to 5,000 yen ($30-50).
A few simple things you should pay attention to when buying:
1) Get stereo, ones with speakers on both ears, not just one.
2) Get a noise canceling microphone if you can, it helps when you are in a noisy room.
3) Get a USB model, one that plugs in using the USB. The quality of sounds is better than the old fashioned ones with the “regular” plug.
Sony makes decent ones, but they are usually overpriced. I like Plantronics, and people I know in the radio business like them for podcasting too.
Web 2.0 is a way to say people are using the web in a different way now than they did a few years ago. More on the details of this later. But with that, there are hundreds, no, thousands of new tools, just for language learning. I will include my favorite 100 in this series, but there some people might like to explore more widely. For that you need to find a good directory of learning tools for web 2.0 activities. Here it is. Learning tools
