Great Tool offered free for the next 24 hours on GIveaway of the Day -- iSpring Presenter

Giveaway of the Day is a website that offers one free tool each 24 hour period. If you choose to download, you must install and activate the Giveaway license inside that 24 hour period before the deal expires. Usually this means you'll have a forever license for the product. Scrolling down the page takes you to the comments of those who've tried the product that day. They're a good guide about whether the program does what it says, if there are other free alternatives, and if there are any downloading issues. When you unzip the downloaded file, open the "Read Me" instructions first and follow them exactly. That will ensure you don't end up with a trial version, but get all the information needed to register your copy correctly.

Today's Giveaway is iSpring Presenter which is a great tool if you use PowerPoint. From the website: " iSpring Presenter works as a PowerPoint AddIn. It transforms your PowerPoint into a high end tool for creating engaging and interactive Flash based e-learning courses that can be viewed on virtually any computer or platform." It comes bundled with iSpring quizmaker. [Note: it does not work with the Open Office alternative to PowerPoint.] Here are links to a sample video and their tutorials.

Turning PPT into flash with all the animations preserved is a great way to display student's work without going to something like Animoto. You can publish it to Slideboom (keeping the account private if you wish) and pull in the embed code from there needed for students to display their work in their blogs or on a class website or wiki. The Slideboom Shop which has PPT templates is offering an 80% discount until Feb.3. They're still on the pricey side, but the graphs and charts might be good if students are integrating math or statistics into projects. There's also a free set and a weekly sample you can download free.

Finally, if you're into travel, KLM has a contest called "Pack Up Your Pals" where you can win a free trip by getting friends to validate your invitation. If you have long lists of Facebook or other friends, you can get multiple contest entries.