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Tux Paint is "a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6 in the US, key stages 1 & 2 in the UK). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program".

	Click buttons to link	Free Downloads If you've visited this page recently it may be worth pressing ctrl and f5 to refresh your cached page, otherwise you might not see new stuff that's been added... All this software has been used by Magic Lantern in classrooms but I can't guarantee your machine/network will like them!
		miro is an open source video viewer. It allows you to search for, view and subscribe to the many online video channels - including Magic Lantern Learning on blip.tv (of course). They say it "is designed to make mass media more open and accesible for everyone".
		Audacity an excellent, easy-to-use waveform (sound) editor. Gets you round the problem of only having one additional sound track on Movie Maker and is a lot of fun too. You'll need the LAME MP3 encoder if you want to save as MP3 (and you do). There are also lots of useful plugins once you've got the hang of it...
		Rehan has some free/some cheap transitions/effects for Movie Maker. The MetaCreation transitions are free and very slick...
		Photo Story 3 allows you to make pan-and-zoom slideshows with stills, which can be incorporated in Movie Maker projects too if you wish. Only runs in XP. If you have an older machine see frame below
		To use Photo Story 3 you will may well need to update to Media Player 10 at least (also maybe DirectX too) if your PC a few years old. Try installing PS3 first and if asked for updates come back here... Well worth having anyway!
		The GIMP is a slightly tricky-to-get-started imaging program - but gives Photoshop Elements and Paintshop Pro a good run for their money - free! This button link leads to a list of mirror sites (I use Kent), since the GIMP link page is a bit confusing...
		Not so powerful as GIMP but easier to use is Paint.NET - they say it "... is free image editing and photo manipulation software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools."
		Inkscape is a vector graphics editing package rather like Corel Draw or Illustrator.
		Tux Paint is "a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6 in the US, key stages 1 & 2 in the UK). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program".
		Virtual Dub can do things Movie Maker can't - especially useful are its ability to convert file formats, crop video as well as a customisable array of filters...http://www.magiclanternlearning.co.uk/index.html
		Anasazi SMA allows you to make stop-frame animations using a web cam (or an AverVision visualiser)...
		MonkeyJam is "designed to let you capture images from a webcam, camcorder, or scanner and assemble them as separate frames of an animation. You can also import images and sound files already on your computer....MonkeyJam can also be used for StopMotion animation and has several features just for that. "
		Splendid blog with loads of free effects and transitions for Movie Maker 2
		Pivot Stickfigure Animator. Simple, easy-to-use animation program that's brilliant for learning the principles of stop frame animation without a camera. Create stickfigures, add backgrounds and save as GIFs for websites. There's now a version 3 available - it's beta (still has a few bugs) but several new features too... Ther are loads of examples and tutorials on youtube...
		Home of superb free Squirlz software. Morph", add reflections, rain, snow and distortion with excellent free software that allows you to save as stills or movies (avi) that can be incorporated in your movies *To see some beautiful morphing click here
		CamStudio captures as video whatever is happening on your screen. These Photo Story Tutorials were made using this software. save presentations etc as avi. files and include in your movie
		Podcast Autocue automatically scrolls your script up your screen. Place your screen just below your camera, roll the autocue and you can talk "direct" to camera like a professional... or not.
		Not strictly a movie programme more a programming language but Scratch "makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web."
		A free Vocoder - record your voice as a wav. find another wav. to mix it with and, hey presto... you sound like a robot/alien etc !
		Not just multimedia but the open source office suite - so brilliant you should know about it, if you don't already. Includes presentation and drawing software...
		Nvu is the WYSIWYG web page editor this site was built with...
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	Click	Assets
	FindSounds	Findsounds does just that... Can provide a huge range of sound effects Tip: go for generic names like "cat" or "crash".
		Sounddogs has a huge range of copyright free music and sound effects. High quality, full-length clips must be paid for, but short (30 seconds) clips can be downloaded free. There are also four useful FX packs available - sutable for Movie Maker and Photo Story (pack4 seems to be a compilation from the first three) These are wma. files so if you wish to use the FX in Audacity you'll need to convert them to wav. or mp3 files (see Media Convert below)
		I'm always amazed when people don't know about this...but plenty don't! This link takes you straight to the advanced search. If you're using the images for movies, you'll need large images.
		Need an interesting background for titles, credits or scenery? CGTextures has over 23,000 free - at the last count... From fur to wood, brick, metal , bricks etc.
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		Film/Digital Video
		Make Internet TV - lots of information about getting your movies onto the net. This button links to the tutorials on editing with Movie Maker but once you're there the whole site is very worthwhile...
		An extremely comprehensive set of video tutorials on using Movie Maker
		Pando allows you to attach HUGE files (up to 1gb) to emails making it possible to send high quality video files. The person you send to will also need this software but it's less than 2 mb. so send them a link in your first email with a .pando attachment.
		A bit techie perhaps but extremely useful ... Media Convert is a free online service looks as if it can convert just about any file type into any other e.g. wma to MP3 or wmv. to mov. but I haven't tried them all...
		The trouble with many online video providers is that you can't save and edit their movies (unless, like me you use blip.tv) Vixy will download the flv files that YouTube, and Google use and convert them to mpeg 4 files that movie Maker can edit - Handy!
		A free interactive website that teaches children under 12, their parents and teachers how to get creative through filmmaking!
		A collection of tutorials and online support forums for users of Windows Movie Maker. Lots of useful plugins in the Forums section - especially useful is bluescreen
		Don't forget there are all kinds of generous people out there willing and eager to teach you stuff for free - just add "tutorial" to whatever you want to know...
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		Heroes, Friends and Associates
		Hugh Lupton is one of this country's finest storytellers and one of my oldest friends. So he gets to be a hero, friend and associate...
		Cary Bazalgette worked for many years at the British Film Institute, latterly as Education Officer. We've only met in person twice but she's always been extremely helpful... and there's a link to Magic Lantern on her site. Several very interesting papers here.
		Burnt Cakes is "dedicated to better history teaching and learning". Alf Wilkinson from the Historical Association offered me the work that started me freelancing... Click here to see an example
		George Layton has written several classic collections of short stories for children: The Fib and other stories, The Swap and, most recently The Trick. Often funny, frequently moving and always engaging his stories read aloud beautifully. George kindly gave his permission for us to adapt and use the Balaclava Story as the basis for "Gamekids" - one of the Movie Kits.
		Philip Pullman. In case you missed the link from the quote on my home page. Quite simply, a remarkable author. Refreshingly outspoken about education too...
		Guy Claxton writes about learning - I was deeply impressed by his humanity when attending a conference in Bristol where he is a professor. If you're an educator you really should read: "Wise up - Learning to Live the Learng Life".
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