OPEN SOURCE AND FREE TOOLS FOR CREATING OER
AI and GenAI
AI and GenAI provide tools to create educational resources in a brand new speedy way. (See the GenAI Prism created by Brian Solis et al., ©2025
Whatever is AI (or machine) generated is considered public domain. Thus, anything you create using these tools can be incorporated into your OER.
Open Source and Free OER Development Tools:
|
Name of tool |
Link |
Function |
Type of License |
|
GIMP |
https://www.gimp.org/ |
Raster photo editing |
GNU General Public License |
|
LibreOffice |
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/ |
Office Suite: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, html docs. |
GNU Lesser General Public License |
| Apache OpenOffice | https://www.openoffice.org/ | Office Suite: word processing, spreadsheet, multi-media presentations, draw, database, math equations graphic user interface | Apache License 2.0. |
|
Linux |
https://www.linux.org/ |
Operating system (Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Slackware, Mint, Xubuntu, Arch,…) |
GNU General Public License (GPL) |
|
Visual Studio Code |
Coding |
(Microsoft) Free with Open Source (GitHub) | |
|
Grafana |
Data Visualization and analytics |
Free option gives access to the Grafana Cloud. Limited to 3 active users per month. | |
|
Notepad++ |
Source code editor |
GNU General Public License. |
|
|
Blender |
3D creation suite used for modeling, animation, and rendering |
GNU General Public License v.2.0 |
|
|
Shotcut |
Video editor |
GNU General Public License version 3.0 | |
|
Inkscape |
https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.4.2/windows/64-bit/msi/?redirected=1 |
Vector Graphics editor |
GNU General Public License 2.0 |
|
Audacity |
https://www.audacityteam.org/download/ |
Audio editor for recording and editing sound |
GNU General Public License 3.0 |
|
WordPress |
https://en-ca.wordpress.org/download/ |
Website development |
GNU General Public License 2.0 |
|
Godot Engine |
https://godotengine.org/download/windows/ |
Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine |
MIT license (Expat) |
|
Darktable |
https://darktable.org/ |
(Lightroom equivalent) Raw Photo editing and management |
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License. |
|
RawTherapee |
https://www.rawtherapee.com/ |
Raw photo editing |
GPLv3 license. |
|
Canva |
https://www.canva.com/free/ |
Graphics and Social Media |
Free online (limits options) |
|
Pixlr |
https://pixlr.com/ |
Image editing (with AI-photo editing tools) |
Free – non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide and revocable license to use the Services in accordance with these Terms |
|
Photopea |
Online photo editing |
Free account | |
|
Fotor |
Online Photo editor |
Free account – Non-commercial use only | |
|
Hugin |
Panorama stitcher |
GNU GPL v2 |
|
|
Luminance HDR |
Imports differently exposed photos and merges them. |
GNU GPL v2 |
|
|
Python |
https://www.python.org/downloads/ | Programming Language | Python Software Foundation License Version 2. |
|
Overleaf |
https://www.python.org/downloads/ | Online LaTeX Editor | Python Software Foundation License Version 2. |