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Returning to school can be a drain on any budget. However, you can get great software for your homeschool for free!

Here are links to many of the great programs listed on this page:

OpenOffice.org - Great Office Clone: http://www.openoffice.org/

Gimp - Super graphics tool: http://www.gimp.org (bonus free chapter on using gimp: http://www.aharrisbooks.net/pythonGame/Appendix_D.pdf)

Foxit Reader - Far better replacement for Adobe Acrobat: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/ (alternative for Macs: http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/)

Scribus Desktop publishing http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus

 

Don’t buy Software

This month’s theme is “homeschooling on a budget” In my family, that’s the theme every month. Life is expensive enough, and this homeschooling habit we’ve all picked up can get pricey.

 

This month I want to show you one area you can save real money without having to compromise quality at all.

 

Within the last few years, a new type of software development has been making a major impact on the computing world. In addition to traditional commercial software, teams of talented professionals often work together (sometimes with corporate sponsorship, and sometimes out of pure love of creation) and build free clones of popular software packages. You may think these tools could not compete with the efforts of major corporations, but you might be surprised. The tools I recommend are extremely well-designed, have been thoroughly tested, and have all the features of their commercial counterparts. They generally work on every major operating system, and they are entirely free. They do not have ads, and they will not require in-app purchases for full features.

 

Before you buy commercial software for your homeschool, look into these options:

Open Office / Libre Office

Perhaps the most important tool in a home school or business is the classic office suite. You won’t get far without a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program. The standard software for these tasks are the Microsoft Office Suite. These tools are well-known for quality, but they are expensive. The basic version of MS Office costs over $119, with more advanced versions costing upwards of $300.

 

Open Office (and a variation of the project called Libre Office) are free office suites with all the functionality of MS Office. They contain all the basic packages (word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software) as well as some other features only found in the expensive professional package (a database and sketch program.) The tools can load and save in multiple formats, including the standard Office formats. The word processor can read and write .doc and .docx files with no problems, for example. I’ve written entire books a(nd this column) in Open Office Writer, and the publisher can’t tell that I’m not using MS Word. Likewise, the spreadsheet program can do pretty much everything Excel can do, and certainly enough for most school uses.

 

Personally, I’ve found Open Office to be so powerful and useful that I don’t even install MS Office, even though I have free access to it from my work.

You can find open office for free download at

http://www.openoffice.org/

 

Libre Office is almost identical to Open Office. Either version will be suitable for homeschool use.

It is available here:

http://www.libreoffice.org/

Gimp

Gimp is an image editing program comparable to Adobe Photoshop. It has most of the features of its commercial cousin, with a few features of its own. Gimp is a powerful image editor, with professional capabilities. It comes with a number of useful features:

Gimp is a solid-enough program that I’ve used it for all the graphics in my books and games. It takes some effort to learn, but if you’re interested in professional-level graphics editing, you might not have to fork out the nearly $700 for the latest version of Photoshop.

 

You can download Gimp for free at http://www.gimp.org/

 

I’ve written a book chapter on using Gimp that I’ve made available on my web site (There wasn’t room for it in my game programming book, so I’ve posted it online.)

You can download that chapter for free from here:

http://www.aharrisbooks.net/pythonGame/Appendix_D.pdf

Foxit Reader

The PDF format has become very popular in recent years, but the standard program for reading PDFs (Adobe’s Acrobat) has earned a reputation for being one of the most frustrating programs in modern computing. It updates constantly, but never seems to add any new features, and has limited functionality. One of the first things I do on a new PC is replace Acrobat with a better-behaved PDF viewer. Foxit Reader is my favorite. It integrates directly with your web browsers, and it does everything you probably need without getting in the way. One of my favorite features is a typewriter mode that lets you fill in PDF forms to print them out. You can download this program from

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/

 

Foxit reader is available for Windows and Linux users. If you’re using a Mac, you’ll need a different alternative, like skim: http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

 

Note that a PDF viewer doesn’t normally allow you to create PDF files, but Open Office and Libre Office do allow you to save your files in PDF format, so this isn’t really a problem.

Scribus

Desktop publishing was a huge deal a few years ago. You don’t hear as much about it these days, but it’s still an important capability. Scribus is similar to Microsoft Publisher. It is mainly designed to be a page layout program, suitable for creating posters, brochures, newsletters, and other demanding layout problems. It has more control than a word processor, and better text-handling than a graphics program. Scribus is our go-to program at science fair time, or when making brochures or signs for the dance studio my daughter runs.

http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus

Tux Typing

Today’s kids end up typing earlier than ever. There are many great typing games out there, but you may want to start by looking into Tux Typing (http://tux4kids.alioth.debian.org/tuxtype/index.php). This is a fun typing game that his player catch fish by typing words correctly. It also lets you customize the word list to add your own words.

 

Wrapping up

These are just a few of the many terrific free apps available for you. Drop by my web site and let me know if you have any questions: http://www.aharrisbooks.net.

 

Blessings to you!