Media and Learning 2013

IrfanView is a fast, small, innovative freeware graphic viewer that can be also used for editing. It is intended as free only for private, non-commercial and/or educational use (schools, universities and libraries) and for use in charity or humanitarian organisations.
The software is currently supported and a list of recent changes can be seen on the website. A FAQ page quite rich of useful information is also provided on the website.
Some IrfanView features:
• Many supported file formats
• Multi language support
• Thumbnail/preview option
• Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
• Toolbar skins option
• Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
• Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
• Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
• Fast directory view (moving through directory)
• Batch conversion (with advanced image processing)
• Multipage TIF editing
• File search
• Email option
• Multimedia player
• Print option
• Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF
• Change color depth
• Scan (batch scan) support
• Cut/crop
• Add overlay text/image (watermark)
• IPTC editing
• Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
• Screen Capturing
• Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
• Lossless JPG rotation
• Unicode support
• Hotkeys
• Command line options
• PlugIns

Language support can vary with the version. The current version supports the languages listed aside. English is anyway always supported.

Audiolingua is a collaborative bank of authentic audio resources, recorded by native speakers, for a freely pedagogical or personal use, according to the rights of use which are detailed in the legal notice. Its aim is to train oral comprehension for anyone who would like to improve this language skill and to provide language teachers with authentic resources.
The mp3 files are classified according to the reference levels defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. You can listen to the audio files online, download them one after another or also register to the podcast.
Audiolingua contains recordings in 10 languages.

Picsart, is a free photo editing app for iOS or Android powered phone or tablet. It allows editing pictures directly on the smartphone through its various tools. It can be used both on the pictures stored in the device memory and on the pictures uploaded to one’s social media accounts (Facebook, Flickr, etc.)
The app is available on Amazon, in the Google store and in the iPhone app store.
See the page http://picsart.com/terms about ownership and distribution rights.
For awards and topics related to Picsart content, also see the blog http://blog.picsart.com/

The French website 1jour1actu - Des outils pour mieux comprendre l'info contains hundreds of contents (articles, videos, activities, dossiers, games, interactive sheets) on many different topics, ranging from Art, Literature, History, Biology, Science, to media literacy, sport, actualities.
The contents are aimed at the use in primary education classrooms. Each content is composed by attractive images, clear and short texts and a list of related contents for further deepening.
The teacher section provides them with “The highlights of the week”, files to download for the use in the classroom and an overview of the news and activities of the week.

This guide, in the form of a free PDF, has been produced as part of the project Virtual Stages Against Violence (VSAV), which can be framed within the conceptual and methodological horizon of media literacy. Aimed at teachers and educators, the guide constitutes the Toolkit of the project and contains five units with a series of educational activities about the topics and problems already dealt with in both the online game and the theatre plays. As the whole project does, these activities aim at developing an increased awareness among young people of both the risks and opportunities of digital media and online communication.
The Toolkit offers innovative and participatory methods to support, integrate and enrich the work carried out by educational institutions such as schools. The chosen education tools aim primarily to an active acquisition of skills and not just an acquisition of knowledge. The Toolkit is therefore a valuable complement to develop educational activities, raised more effective as being part of a creative, interactive and transversal learning experience.

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Questa guida, nella forma di un PDF gratuito, è stata prodotta come parte del progetto Virtual Stages Against Violence (VSAV), che può essere inserito nella cornice concettuale e metodologica dell’educazione ai media. Diretta a insegnanti ed educatori, la guida costituisce il toolkit del progetto e contiene cinque unità con una serie di attività educative sugli argomenti e sui problemi già trattati nel campo del gioco online e delle commedie teatrali. Come anche il progetto stesso nel suo insieme, queste attività hanno la finalità di sviluppare una maggiore coscienza tra i giovani sia riguardo i rischi e le opportunità dei media digitali, sia riguardo la comunicazione online.
La guida offre innovativi metodi partecipativi per sostenere, integrare e arricchire il lavoro portato avanti dalle istituzioni scolastiche ed educative in generale. Gli strumenti educativi scelti hanno lo scopo primario di far acquisire attivamente delle capacità, non limitandosi quindi all’acquisizione di conoscenza. Per questo motivo la guida è un prezioso aiuto allo sviluppo di attività educative, rese anche più efficaci in quanto parte di un’esperienza di apprendimento trasversale e interattivo.

BurningWell is a repository for public domain images. Basically, this means that it is allowed to use the images freely for any purpose, commercial or private. It is not necessary to pay or to acknowledge or give credit to the photographer or to the website. When recognizable people appear in any of the images, the photographers have obtained a "model release" and assigned all rights to the public domain. This allows the images to be used in any manner, including advertising.
Most of the images are donated by photographers (both professional and private) from around the world who believe that great images should be shared.
BurningWell started in 2006 and contains today more than 1400 images.
N.B.: the search engine redirects to another website containing many images (over 6000) but most of them are not for free.

InTech is an Open Access publisher of academic books and journals in the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine (STM). It provides free online access to high quality research and help leading academics make their work visible and accessible to diverse new audiences around the world.
Currently InTech gives free access to 1827 books and 12 journals, collaborating with more than 70,000 authors. They are researchers and scholars from the best ranked universities in the world, including globally-renowned experts.
Initially, most of the publications were in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Manufacturing, Operations Research, Environmental Engineering, Nanotechnology, Computer Science, Renewable Energy and Electrical Engineering. Since 2010 the publishing program has been expanded to General and Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Materials Sciences and in particular Medicine, Biology and Biotechnology.
InTech is based on the principle of Open Access. It is a publishing model that does not charge readers for accessing scientific publications online. As a consequence, everything published as or in an open access resource is immediately available online for free. All use is fair use so long as the original authors and sources are credited. An Open Access article is more likely to be used and cited than one behind subscription barriers. Submitted works are published by InTech under the Open Access publishing model and Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (the author retains the copyright to his/her work and that can use it in any manner.)
All published resources on the website are accessible without registration. It is needed to submit contributions to the website.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net is a website to download free or purchased images. Condition to the free use of the photos is to publish an acknowledgement to FreeDigitalPhotos.net and the image creator. All images are available free-of-charge. In addition to the free images, all images are available to purchase in a variety of sizes. Purchased images can also be published without the acknowledgement.
Images can be manipulated, edited, have text overlayed, or be combined. For a detailed list of the permitted uses, see http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/terms.php.
No registration is required to download free images. The optional member registration gives access to some additional features.

Share My Lesson is a big web portal for high-quality teaching resources. Its database contains over 254.000 free teacher-created resources in a variety of formats (images, web pages, pdf’s, music, text files, etc.) for every level of education from kindergarten to high school and with a section for students with disabilities.
The portal provides an online community where teachers can collaborate with, encourage and inspire each other. The members of the community can download and share user-generated resources free of charge.

Tux Paint is a free drawing program for children (3 to 12) that combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. It is used in schools around the world as a computer literacy drawing activity.
The program runs on multiple platforms. It’s simple interface presents a number of useful drawing tools and at the same time relieve the user of the need to think about the technical details.
Sound and visual helps are available: fun sound effects are played when tools are selected and used and a cartoon mascot appears at the bottom to give tips, hints and information.
Parts of Tux Paint have currently been translated into almost 100 languages.
Stamps, starters and brushes are stored using popular open formats (PNG, SVG, Ogg Vorbis, etc.) allowing parents and teachers to create their own content for use at home or in the classroom - even using completely free tools.
The 'Tux Paint Config.' program allows parents, teachers, and school technicians to alter Tux Paint's behaviour using a simple, easy-to-use graphical interface.