"I believe that creativity is necessary in today’s classroom. In fact, creativity is one of the important 4 C’s (Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity) that make up part of the foundation of a 21st century education. The remaining foundation is of course another C (Significant Content). I believe that when you put all of these C’s together you get two more C’s which make up the 'Common Core'."
Via Beth Dichter
This post is the first in series and discusses free resources that may be stored on a local computer or a network. The list includes Scratch, Sketc-Up, Gimp, 3 free office suites, Alice, a variety of tools that will help you make movies and more. Most are described in some detail and there are links to additional resources to help you learn the tool.
Additional posts will discuss Web 2.0 apps that may be used on the Internet (and across platforms), web apps and sites that promote literacy and student publication and web sites that promote student creativity.
A good list to help you start (or continue) bulding a "digital toolbox" for multimodal compositions. (I will steal some of these ideas for my delicious links!)