Business Services > Technology

Here's a grab bag of free OS X software that you or the teachers you support might find useful, fun -- or both:

3D Legos:
A wonderful 3D Lego building solution. Caution: It's addictive. Try the animal pieces.
http://bricksmith.sourceforge.net/

3D Rendering:
And then you can turn your 3D Lego models into 3D renderings with this free tool:
http://www.povray.org/

Math Practice:
Math Practice includes arithmetic, simple algebra and roman numerals skills. Each skill (add, subtract, multiply, divide, algebra and roman numerals) has three skill levels (easy, medium and hard).
http://customsolutionsofmaryland.50megs.com/mathpractice.htm

Spelling Game:
A free scrambled-letters spelling game:
http://customsolutionsofmaryland.50megs.com/spellogram.htm

Flashcards for Learning Words:
Backpack is a flashcard-like quizzing app for learning words. You can create you own list or download lists.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26481#screenshots

Shortcuts Manager:
Spark is a nice shortcuts manager. With Spark you can create Hot Keys to launch applications and documents, execute AppleScript, and more. You can also export and import your Hot Keys library, or save it in HTML format to print it.
http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/software.php?sign=Sprk&lang=2 <http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/software.php?sign=Sprk&lang=2>

Color Blind Tool:
To see what color blind students see when using your computer programs, here's a free tool:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27868

Laptop Battery Monitor:
Battorox provides information about laptop batteries including its capacity, current capacity, current capacity in percent, cycle count, voltage, amps and the flags.
http://www.branox.com/Battorox/Battorox.html