OpenOffice - a free alternative to Microsoft Office

Teachers sometimes ask about getting Microsoft Office for home use. Rather than buying Office, I would like to suggest a free alternative, OpenOffice.

OpenOffice includes powerful applications for making text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, databases, and much more. Given that the full suite is free, this is one of the best deals you'll find in all of computing.

OpenOffice has six full-blown applications; 1-Writer (a word processor very similar to Word), 2-Calc (a spreadsheet program similar to Excel), 3-Impress (a presentation program similar to PowerPoint) 4-Base database (similar to Access), 5-Math equation editor, and 6-Draw graphics program.

Let's open OpenOffice and see how it looks:


The OpenOffice interface is looks a lot like the MS Office interface, and even advanced Office users will find nearly everything they're used to in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Let's take a look at a few screen shots from three of the applications in OpenOffice:

Writer (similar to Word)


Calc (similar to Excel):


Impress (Similar to PowerPoint):

Most of your questions about OpenOffice can be answered at their website, but let's go through a few frequently asked questions here:

FAQ's
Can I open my Office documents in OpenOffice?
Yes. Writer opens Word documents, Calc opens Excel documents, Impress opens PowerPoints.

How do I get OpenOffice?
Download it at http://www.openoffice.org.

Is it available for Mac, Windows, and Linux?
Yes. It is available on several platforms, all free downloads.

It starts out free, but will it always be free?
Yes, OpenOffice is an open source software. It will always be free.

How do I update OpenOffice?
In the OpenOffice Help menu, choose "Check for Updates"

Where can I get training on how to use it?
http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org
YouTube.com has a plethora of very good OpenOffice tutorials.

Is Jordan District switching from Office to OpenOffice?
No. There is no current plan to move teachers from Office to OpenOffice.

Can I use Office and OpenOffice on the same computer?
Yes, you may have both programs installed on your computer and choose which program you wish to use.

Do I have to switch to OpenOffice?
No. The program is available for anybody to download and use as they wish.

Is OpenOffice better than Office?
The best thing to do is to try it for yourself and make that determination. Over 500 million people have downloaded OpenOffice. It is available in many different languages.

Is support available for my questions about OpenOffice?
Yes. http://support.openoffice.org

What is the coolest thing about OpenOffice?
In my opinion, Portability. A revolutionary feature of OpenOffice is that you can download a portable version, write it to a flash drive and keep it in your pocket to use on any computer you meet on your way. Can you imagine doing so with Microsoft Office?

Virtual Field Trips

Educational Funding is limited. One of the first cuts at your school could be a bus field trip with your students. Don’t worry, you can still take field trips electronically. Virtual field trips remove classroom walls and opens windows out into the world.
Virtual field trips can offer students more opportunities because you can take them to places they wouldn't normally be able to go to otherwise. In addition, virtual field trips may even boost students' reading comprehension skills and will expose them to different cultures and environments.

Below are a variety of links for virtual field trips. Try ending your school year by taking an exciting virtual field trip with your students. Have students experience different field trips and then create a multimedia presentation of their field trip to share with other students.
Please comment and share new virtual field trips that you have used.

Virtual Field Trip Collections

This organization hosts electronic field trips with four main parts: the Trip Journal, the Virtual Visit (a streaming video), an Ask the Expert tool, and a hosted Web chat.
http://www.efieldtrips.org

Ball State Electronic Field Trips
http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/search.php?institution=Ball%20State%20University%20Electronic%20Field%20Trips

Blackwell’s Virtual Field Trip Lists
http://www.vickiblackwell.com/vft.html

eThemes
http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00000995.shtml

Gail Lovely provides a hot-linked list organized into live journeys, "interactive environments," travelogues, e-museums, building and place tours, map-based visits, and read-along visits.
http://www.gaillovely.com/VirtualFieldTrips.htm

Lists of Virtual Field Trips
http://www.techtrekers.com/virtualft.htm

Scholastic Internet Field Trips
http://teacher.scholastic.com/fieldtrp/science.htm

Simple K12 Virtual Field Trips
http://www.simplek12.com/virtualfieldtrips

The Teacher’s Guide Virtual Field Trips
http://www.theteachersguide.com/virtualtours.html

UEN Virtual Field Trips
http://www.uen.org/tours/fieldtrips2.shtml

Virtual Webams (teachers should search and check these sites first)
http://www.virtualfreesites.com/cams.html


Museum Virtual Field Trips

1000’s of Museums Online
http://www.museumstuff.com/

National Air and Space Museum
http://www.nasm.si.edu/education/online_fieldtrips.cfm

Examples of Virtual Field Trips
http://www.thwt.org/virtualtours.htm

Historical Virtual Field Trips

Henry “Box” Brown Underground Field Trip
http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/fieldtrips/brown.html

Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trip
http://www.history.org/trips/

George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate
http://www.mountvernon.org/learn/index.cfm

Online Field Trips from Think Classroom
http://www.thinkport.org/Classroom/trips.tp

The National WWII Museum
http://www.nationalww2museum.org

Smithsonian’s History Explorer
http://historyexplorer.americanhistory.si.edu/

Utah and National Parks

Glacier National Park
http://sd5.k12.mt.us/glaciereft/

National Parks Electronic Field Trip
http://www.nationalparks.org/npf-at-work/electronic-field-trip/

Windows into Yellowstone Wonderland
http://www.windowsintowonderland.org/

Utah National Parks
http://www.uen.org/utahnationalparks/

Science Virtual Field Trips

Exploritorium
http://www.exploratorium.edu/

Adventures in Medicine & Science (AIMS) Program of Saint Louis University http://aims.slu.edu

Cleveland Museum of Natural History
http://www.cmnh.org

Monterey Bay Aquarium
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/cam_menu.aspx

This site lists a collection of mainly science and health-related VFTs and online labs.
http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/virtual.php

Mote Marine Laboratory
http://www.mote.org

NASA Digital Learning Network (Kennedy Space Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson Space Center, and Goddard Space Flight Center)
http://dln.nasa.gov/dln/content/catalog

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI)
http://www.omsi.edu

Additional Distance Learning Field Trips

Center for Puppetry Arts
http://www.puppet.org

"eMedia" A Resource Wonder

I am so impressed with the resources provided to teachers and students through UEN (Utah Educational Network).  I have to confess that when I was teaching in another state I discovered many of the lesson plans and materials that are provided. 

eMedia is another one of the resources that you can use in your classroom without causing you an anxiety attack over “one more thing to learn”.  eMedia is an ever-growing selection of videos, movies, images, documents and more that are correlated with Utah Core Standards and appropriate for school.  This can save you hours of looking for materials. 

The materials are organized by grade level, subject, type and standard. There are even popular series here.   Many have lesson plans.

If you have questions there is a starters guide to eMedia.  Have fun exploring.

Earth to Jordan Teachers---literally :-)

"How geeks show they care" http://www.geogreeting.com.
(if the movie doesn't play, click here)



Do you want a fun, 'earthy' way to send a greeting to a friend? Then go to GeoGreetings:

Be prepared to spend a lot of time when you go there. You will be hooked and you will want to send GeoGreetings to all your family and friends.

It's fun to spell words using buildings that are shaped like alphabet letters. These building have been found on Google Earth by avid searchers. The letter A is found in Bangkok, B is located in the Canary Islands, C is in Germany. D is a lake in Moscow, and so on. Utah gives us the letter K --found in Salt Lake City.

Student will love this site. They might even enjoy seeing their spelling list written in GeoGreetings. Maybe they can find letters or symbols elsewhere on Google Earth.

Just for fun: Take a look at this heart-shaped island found in Croatia!

Printing large posters on regular sized paper

Have you ever heard of PosteRazor? There might be other tools out there that do the same thing as PosteRazor. PosteRazor is a tool that will allow you to take an image that you would print on a normal size piece of paper and turn it into an image that can be as large as you want.


Here is an example from PosteRazor. First you start with any picture file, like this one.



Then using PosteRazor you break it up into a bunch of smaller images, like this.



When you are done, instead of printing the image on one page, it will print out on multiple pages and when you put the pages together the image will be much bigger. Don't worry about the pink colored lines, they are only shown above to represent the multiple pages that you will use when you print it. If you put it together correctly you will never see them.

In order for PosteRazor to work the item that you want to make bigger needs to be a picture file (a .jpg, a .png or some other picture format). The way that I accomplish this is by creating the document using a tool like Word or Pages and then take a screenshot. The screen shot is saved as a picture file on your computer.

Once the image has been saved on your computer you can use PosteRazor to make it larger. PosteRazor talks about DIN A4 paper size. DIN A4 is the same as a 8.5in by 11in piece of paper. Click here for the PosteRazor website. Click here to download PosteRazor. Click here for PosteRazor screenshots.