Free Online Learning Resources
for Educators and Training Professionals trying to become online instructors
by Andrea McEneaney & Chris Karel
Things are tough right now for the entire world. We’re being emotionally, mentally, and physically tested on a daily basis. Many of us are under a lot of stress financially. We’re stuck in our houses for the foreseeable future, never knowing what additional safety measures the next day will bring. We know we need to comply, and we know it’s not an overreaction. But that doesn’t make living life any less difficult during these extreme circumstances. We need online learning resources!
We’re wondering whether we’ll ever be able to go to our favorite bookstore or restaurant again, or whether we can promise our kids that they can look forward to seeing their favorite animal at the local zoo this summer. Every part of our personal life is disrupted! And on top of all that, we have to worry about work.
Companies, organizations, and schools that aren’t used to it are trying to figure out how to do their jobs remotely. It’s important for them to keep on keeping on for the sake of their businesses, employees, the larger economy, and their general sanity.
We get it.
Video for learning has become the norm instead of the thing we need to find a way to get into our business or school. The purpose of video for learning is that it engages the learner to improve knowledge, skills, and/or behaviors.
We Want to Help…Seriously
At Learning Carton, we realize everyone is focused on the basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy and rightly so. We are in a unique position to try and ease the mental load by sharing our industry’s expertise. As a business, our main focus is on video for learning. As humans, our focus is on helping our fellow humans thrive and not just survive. Everyone deserves a chance at thriving in these uncertain times, even though nothing is easy right now and everything seems impossible.
You know what, though? It’s not. Together, we can thrive.
Guide to Free/Low-Cost Online Learning Resources
We want to bring online learning resources to those who are trying to “do the remote thing” during these times, but also to those who are interested in making it work for the long haul. We want to take everything we’ve learned in the process of making video for learning and share it with anyone who is trying to make learning happen – by improving knowledge, skills, and behaviors – no matter who or where they are.
Making video for learning requires a lot of different skills including media recording (of course), collaboration, time management, graphic design, presentation-giving, etc. The list of utilized skills is long!
Throughout our time doing those things, we’ve curated a list of free and low-cost resources that make them easier. This guide is a collection of those resources, sorted by category, along with a brief summary of each one’s usefulness.
Image Design and Editing
| Tool | Description | Price |
| GIMP | An open-source tool similar to Photoshop. | Free |
| Canva | Great for graphics. Use Canva‘s drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts to design consistently stunning graphics. | Free to start |
| Adobe Express | Graphic design app for images, web pages, and video stories. Beautiful typography, Iconic imagery, professional themes. | Free to start |
| Fotor | Great for basic photo effects. | Free |
| Aurasma | Aurasma’s platform includes a powerful drag-and-drop web studio that enables anyone to easily create, manage, and track augmented reality experiences. Educators and students were some of our earliest adopters. | Free to start |
| Inkscape | Inkscape is a professional vector graphics editor for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. | Free |
| Jing | Whether for work, home, or play, Jing gives you the ability to create basic visual elements and share them with others. The software takes a picture or video of the user’s computer screen and uploads it to the Web, FTP, computer or clipboard. | Free |
| Plotagon | Plotagon lets anyone create amazing animated videos by choosing a scene, creating and adding your own actors, writing what they say and add emotions, sound effects and music. Plotagon puts an animation studio in the palm of your hand. | Mobile version has a low cost for a basic account |
| Sketchbook | Drawing app available on most platforms. | Free for Educators for 3 years |
| SnagIt | Create images and videos, capture your screen, edit images. | Free trial and discounted education pricing |
| Snapseed | Snapseed is a complete and professional photo editor developed by Google, for Android and iOS. | Free |
| Thinglink | With ThingLink, teachers and students can easily create interactive infographics, maps, drawings, and engaging 360 documentaries in a classroom setting, at home, or on field trips. | Free for a public account for teachers |
| FreeImages.com (sxc.hu) | Exactly what it sounds like! | Free |
Video, Animation, and Editing
| Tool | Description | Price |
| Camtasia | Easy screen recording and video editing | Free trial and then a one-time fee for educators |
| Adobe Express | Graphic design app for images, web pages, and video stories. Great for creating animated videos. | Free to start |
| Google Web Designer | Create engaging, interactive HTML5-based designs and motion graphics that can run on any device. Google Web Designer gives you the power to create beautiful, engaging HTML5 content. Use animation and interactive elements to bring your creative vision to life, and enjoy seamless integration with other Google products, like Google Drive, DoubleClick Studio, and AdWords. | Free |
| Blender | Blender is the free and open-source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. | Free |
| AfterEffects | Create cinematic animations, movie titles, intros, and transitions. | Free trial and then a discounted education rate |
| GIPHY | Easily create GIFs. | Free |
| Vyond | Easy platform to create animated videos. | Free trial, then paid membership |
| Hippani | Hippani Animator is a popular HTML5 animation studio. It’s easy to make scalable interactive animation, complex games, videos, presentations, apps and multimedia websites. | Free for starter edition |
| Powtoon | User-friendly and intuitive animation software. | Free to start |
| Reevio | Reevio is a video production studio in your browser which allows you to produce stunning videos and share socially in a few clicks. Whiteboard, explainer, infographics, motion text, access to libraries. | Free to start |
| Articulate 360 | Articulate 360 is an e-learning designer’s toolkit that comes with a suite of programs for course production. | 60-day free trial, then an annual fee |
| Screencast-o-matic | Create and share screen recordings. | Free to start |
| TextingStory | An iOS app where you can create a video of a text message conversation. | Free, with in-app purchases |
| WeVideo | WeVideo is the online video editor that makes it easy to capture, create, view and share your movies at up to 4K resolution for stunning playback anywhere. | Free trial for K-12 educators, then paid membership |
Media Recording and Editing
| Tool | Description | Price |
| Audacity | a free open source digital audio editor and recording computer software application, available for Windows, macOS/OS X, Linux, and other operating systems. | Free |
| Adapter | Convert video, audio, and images to many different formats. | Free |
| Anchor | Record audio from your phone and turn it into a podcast or radio show. | Free |
| Camtasia | Easy screen recording and video editing. | Free trial, then paid membership |
| FFmpeg | FFmpeg is the leading open-source multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mix, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. | Free |
| HandBrake | HandBrake is an open-source tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs. | Free |
| Script Timer – Words to Time Calculator | Estimates how long a script will be when spoken. | Free |
Media Sources
| Tool | Description | Price |
| Envato | Templates (presentation-video-graphic-web-cms), sounds, music, graphics, photos, video. We use it every week. | Free and subscription |
| Unsplash | Stock photography site with a special license that lets you use the photos for free under a wide variety of circumstances | Free |
| Pexels | Stock photography site with a special license that lets you use the photos for free under a wide variety of circumstances | Free |
| Morguefile | A free photo archive “for creatives, by creatives.” | Free |
| Pixabay | Stock photography site with a special license that lets you use the photos for free under a wide variety of circumstances | Free |
| Freesound | Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Browse, download and share sounds. | Free |
| The Noun Project | Vast library of visual icons | Free to start as long as you give credit, with half the price for educators for NounPro. |
| BenSound | Royalty-free music | Free with proper credit |
| EveryPixel | It is a powerful search engine that indexes 51 paid and free stock image websites, and allows users to search through a massive database of stock photos. | Free images available, but also has paid option |
| Gratisography | Quirky high-resolution pictures you can use on your personal and commercial projects, free of copyright restrictions. | Free |
| Incompetech | Royalty-free music | Free with proper credit |
| Open-i Biomedical Image Search | Open-i service of the National Library of Medicine enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections. | Price and license information depends on each individual image |
| Picjumbo | Picjumbo is free stock photo site created by designer & photographer Viktor Hanacek in 2013. | Free to start |
| Stencil | Image making tool | Free to start |
| Stocksnap | Stock photo library free from copyright restrictions | Free |
| Vecteezy | Vector art library | Some images are free with attribution, some require payment or subscription |
Productivity and Project Management
| Tool | Description | Price |
| Trello | Card-based project management tool | Free |
| Microsoft To Do | Digital task management/to-do list | Free |
| OneNote | Digital note-taking app | Free |
| Basecamp | Project management and team communication | Free to start for personal use |
| Dropbox | Cloud file management and storage | Free to start for personal use |
| Google Drive | Cloud file management and storage | Free |
| Google Keep | Google’s digital note-taking app | Free |
| Harvest | Time-keeping and invoicing tool | Free to start |
Collaboration
| Tool | Description | Price |
| GoogleDocs | Cloud-based group document-sharing and editing | Free |
| Free international messaging and video calls | Free | |
| Zoom | Web-conferencing tool | Free to start |
| Google Sheets | Cloud-based group spreadsheet-sharing and editing | Free |
| Bitrix24 | Cloud-based tool for internal communication, tasks, projects, customer support, client management, and e-commerce | Free to start |
| Join.Me | Web-conferencing tool | Free trial then paid membership |
| Skype | Free international messaging and video calls | Free |
| Ziteboard | Online whiteboard for collaboration | Free to start |
| Teams | Microsoft’s web-based chat, video calling, and collaboration | Free to start |
| Slack | Web-based chat, video calling, and collaboration | Free to start |
| Mural | Digital workspace for visual collaboration | Free to start |
Presentations and Data Visualization
| Tool | Description | Price |
| Prezi | Works well with meeting software, great for non-designers | Free to start |
| Google Slides | Google’s alternative to PowerPoint | Free |
| Oomfo | PowerPoint Plugin for charts | Free |
| Haiku Deck | Clutter-free presentation software | Free trial then paid membership |
| SlideDog | Combine different presentation artifacts into one space | Free to start |
| Slides.com | Create, present, and share slide decks | Free to start |
| SpeakerDeck | Upload slides as PDFs and creates presentations for you | Free |
| Keynote for iCloud | Apple’s presentation software | Free |
| Vcasmo | Create a presentation that is compatible on web, mobile, and iPad | Free to start |
| Visme | Make professional infographics and presentations | Free to start |
eLearning Platforms
| Tool | Description | Price |
| TalentLMS | Free to Enterprise LMS that grows as you grow. Easy to use with powerful tools to scale with your needs | Free up to 5 users, up to 10 courses |
| Moodle | Popular open-source Learning Management System (LMS) for creating online courses | Free |
| Canvas | Popular Learning Management System (LMS) for creating online courses | Has a free-for-teacher account option |
| CourseSites | Use the Blackboard Ultra experience for free | Free |
| Latitude Learning | LMS designed to train the people that sell, service and use your products | Free for 1-100 users |
| OERCommons | Offers infrastructure for curating and creating Open Educational Resources (OER) courses with OpenAuthor | Free |
Summary
We may not know when it will end, but this situation won’t last forever. However, the skills, knowledge, behaviors, and resilience we’ve gained through this major global challenge will remain and enable us to improve our quality of life (and work) in a lasting way. These online learning resources will help you get comfortable in the new normal.
Together, we can thrive. This is what we do!
Helpful Links
Are you new to learning about video for learning? Consider reviewing our four-part series, Video for Learning Fundamentals.
Part 1: The Case for Video
Part 2: We Need Learning Video Production Skills
Part 3: 5 Phases of Video Production for Learning
Part 4: The Glossary of Learning Video Terms
Join our feedback loop
What did you think of the list? Did you find it useful? Did we miss anything? Is any of the information out of date? Let us know, you won’t hurt our feelings! In the coming weeks, we’re going to do our best to share resources and break down information in a way that will help you thrive and not just survive in this new landscape of your training and education world.
If you liked what you read, and would like to join the conversation, please consider subscribing to our newsletter to receive free learning resources delivered to your inbox every two weeks.
I love feedback loops. As Elon Musk said, “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”
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