Instructify

I’m an avid Microsoft Office user. I use Excel pretty much every day, and most of my posts on Instructify were composed using Word. Except for Word’s horrible table system, I really don’t have many complaints about it. But even a shill like me can’t resist the allure of OpenOffice, which does pretty much everything Microsoft Office does, except for free. Yeah, that’s right, free.

If you’re tired of receiving essays written in hen scratch on ragged notebook paper, tell your students to use OpenOffice Writer. Need to get organized, but don’t want to pirate your friend’s MS Excel? OpenOffice Calc will handle your spreadsheet needs. There’s a doppelgänger for pretty much any MS Office program, like PowerPoint and Access (I’ve never used Access and am not about to start just for this blog post, so you’re on your own as to how Access-ible it is). I wrote this post with Writer, and it appears to be compatible with all consonants and vowels. Best of all, I can save in MS Word format, so if I email a document to Bill Gates, he’ll be able to open it.

OpenOffice is a lot older than Instructify, so we realize we’re late to this particular party. Still, enough people don’t know about this great resource that we had to mention it. I highly recommend you give OpenOffice a try. Just think about how your administration will love you once you show them they don’t have to keep shelling out licensing fees to Microsoft. -BILL FERRIS

OpenOffice