Helpful Tools

On the following pages, you'll find a range of tools that can help with the design and maintenance of your site. Members of the Sydney eLearning Team regularly seek out and test new software tools that may be helpful to staff.

Open-source and freeware software is available online for people who may only want to use a program once or twice. Online photo editors, and PDF converters can be very useful if you are moving between computers. There are freely available software solutions online for people who want to use image editing software, make html pages or create PDFs for elearning, use Quizzes online or use audio editing tools.

Image Editors

Photoshop elements is an easy to use photo editor if you are a regular image user or using a scanner to create your images. The license can be purchased for university use through IT Assist.

Many of the social networking sites that specialise in photography such as Flickr, or Fotolog have photo editing tools built into their software that are free and easy to use. Alternatively you can download GIMP (open source software downward based on the Photoshop program) or use Picasa (a free photo editing software download from Google for PC users).

Quiz Editors

The Sydney elearning LMS has a built-in Quiz editor that allows you to make many different question types (Multiple choice, matched, calculated equations etc) and will import them between your sites. If you need a higher level of functionality, we recommend Respondus which is available to all Sydney University staff.