Tech Talk: Freesources

Free resources

WORLD WIDE WEB-For Halloween, we thought it would be fun to watch the scary-not-scary movie Pulse. In it, Maddie (Kristen Bell) is startled to find that her recently deceased boyfriend is still sending her messages via email and text message. This film might be a new classic for its depiction of technology novel at the time. All the characters carry flip phones, mobile devices around after pagers but before sophisticated camera lenses were added to the mix. Voice and text messages only. And they were probably charged 10 cents for each text! It was a simpler time, 2006.

I won't spoil anything by telling you that like all Pandora's box themed stories; there is no going back. As we begin to scale back our social media use, let's revisit what is amazing about the internet: free resources.

This compilation is by no means comprehensive. Divided into useful categories, I hope that you discover something new and recall the wonderment of having so much information in your pocket for the first time.

Spelling & Grammar

Did someone say distance learning? Find free grammar games, activities, tutoring, and lessons for K-12 on teacherscafe.com. Don't let the web address fool you; this is a resource for teachers and students.

Vocabulary.com is useful for learners of all ages. With it, you can add your vocabulary lists, including vocabulary from a book or collections of books. The website will build quizzes around those words, with tips on the word's etymology or pneumonic devices to help it stick in your memory. There is also an option to study the vocabulary found in common standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT.

Besides adding new words to one's repertoire, learning or relearning how to best structure sentences and the parts of speech incrementally is a relatively painless process on dailygrammar.com. Relatively.

Music

Musictheory.net is an excellent free resource for musicians new and old. The site's creators have made it even easier to learn music theory by creating premium apps for tablets and other devices, but anyone with a web browser can access everything for free. Start with lessons that explain basics like the staff, clefs, ledger lines, and notes, then progress to more advanced concepts such as scales, intervals, and varying harmonic and non-harmonic chord progressions. Reinforce that knowledge by practicing different exercises, several of which are customizable.

Reference

The New York Public Library's digital collection is completely free and available to the public. Many of the items are in the public domain and are free to download in multiple sizes; no login or account necessary.

Web Design

Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM)'s goal is to make the internet more accessible for all. WebAIM works to educate users on designing web experiences for those with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities. Simply copy and paste a link into their contrast checker to see if websites meet the standard contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Visit webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ to learn more.

Acting & Speech

George Mason University's speech accent archive is the perfect tool to make you feel as though you've traveled without breaking quarantine. There are audio files from all over the globe in which people have recorded themselves reading the same paragraph in several languages with their natural accents. The paragraph features a grouping of every vowel sound in common combinations, so you get a feel for how each accent compares. There are 646 entries for English alone. Find that and more at accent.gmu.edu.

Fun & Whimsy

Before we had our familiar haunts, the internet was a place to cruise and discover. Find new, arbitrary sites with a random website generator like uselessweb.com or random-ize.com. Through these sites I found the Coronavirus Ninja game (coronavirus-ninja.com), which I believe we can all agree, is the hero we need right now.