eXe - Authoring Tool for Teachers

eXe is an excellent tool for teachers that enables them to create content and publish it as well. eXe is a pedaogogy driven software and is quite easy to use for a teacher. The teacher do not require any knowledge about HTML and can still create course websites in an offline mode for electronic distribution to students, etc. The best part about eXe is that there are very frequent updations to the package and new features are added regularly. The teachers would feel very comfortable using the tool. The software can be downloaded from http://www.exelearning.org/ . Few issues of concern are as mentioned below:

1. Firefox browser is required for eXe. Since eXe is an open source project and so it runs on Firefox only.

2. The course can be saved in .elp format ( eXe format) using 'Save' option so that it could be edited later.

3. For distributing to students the course can be delivered in various formats using 'Export' option.

4. Always exit the eXe using 'Quit' option under File.

Free Picture Story Tool

Sharing with you details on a free product by Microsoft - Photostory.
Photostory lets one create stories from Photos and is quite simple to use. Some of the essential of Photostory3 are :

• requires Windows Media Player 10 or above. Load/ Install media player before photostory


• requires a genuine Windows XP. Will check for a genuine license of Windows

Its fun to use Photostory, especially for those who are habitual of working on Power Point as Photostory is very similar to that. One can create a real experience out of digital photos, scanned photos, etc. using Photostory.

Photostory can be downloaded from

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Note : Photostory works only on Windows and the creation may become too heavy for use.

Anyway, enjoy the experience of a rare free (though with limitations) from Microsoft.

Narinder