New Free Art Programs

I have always been a fan of free graphics programs from the gimp through to irfanview, so I'm always on the look out for more.

Painting programs

Smoothdraw - Similar to Artrage - it provides natural painting and drawing with interactive tools and effects. - A nice freeware application that is perfect for eBeam or use with your Wacom Tablet

ArtWeaver - Again a natural painting/drawing tool. The interface is more like Corel paint.

Animation Programs

Synfig - Synfig is a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation. Not sure how easy this is to use but I'll download it and give it a bash.

animpixels - Feeling retro. This program helps you create cool isometric art and animations - Sim City style.

K-3D - A 3D modeling and animation tool, again I haven't had a chance to play with it - but it is free!

For these and more try this site http://creativenerds.co.uk/freebies/25-free-must-download-design-programs/

Curtin University Lecturer

Ahh the fun I have.

On Wednesday I had the pleasure... nay the privilege to give a talk and demonstration with my boss (Paul Broadbridge) to a range of university lecturers about interactive lectures.

We pulled out all the toys for this one... eBeam, TurningPoint, Graphire Bluetooth Tablets and our latest toy - the Wacom Interactive Pen Display.

Paul and I work in a very different way to most technology sales people. Because we were both teachers (Paul has had a lot more years at the coal face than me), we focus on sound pedagogy and using technology as an enabler.

We had a lot of fun and we have a lot of visitors coming down to our office in the next couple of weeks to talk about how they can use technology to augment their lectures.

Mind the gap!!

I keep forgetting how cool TED.com is.

I was watching a few videos while the other half was watching a chick flick in the lounge room. (yes we only have one TV in our house and sometimes even that is too many).

And came across this little gem - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Followed it up and went to his website - this is the coolest way to play with statistics I have ever seen. Click on Gapminder world and you can visually see a whole range of data and how it related to other data all from places like the UN and it's agencies.

OK so not strictly something that I would use on an interactive whiteboard but - well you can - each bubble is clickable and the whole graph is interactive. Actually it would work quite well with eBeam or a Wacom tablet now that I think about it.