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Did you sleep through high school physics class? Did you even show up? Physics isn't everybody's cup of tea, but that may be because it wasn't taught right. Unlike biology, where dissecting frogs is part of the drill, or chemistry, where evacuating the lab because of some foul smell is a regular occurrence, physics should be fun. After all, where else can you play with toy cars and watch springs for academic credit. But we digress.

Phun is a 2D physics sandbox that lets you create a virtual workspace to play with simple machines and forces applied to them. Build your own contraptions and see how they work. Make them go faster or slower. See what happens when you change the load on your machine. It's so much fun you might forget that you're doing real physics here. Oh yeah, you can let the kids work with it too. Who knows—maybe by the time they get to high school, they'll be eager to get into the lab.

Phun is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

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While FunBrain is a web site, in some ways it's more like a collection of games and tools for kids. Whether you're looking for math games, reading activities, or just plain fun, there's probably something here to appeal to you. Play games like Math Baseball (practice your arithmetic while scoring a home run), help Pearl and Flora with plural forms of words, and more. Web books and comics help with reading practice. There are also activities for younger kids, so everybody can have fun and learn at the same time.

FunBrain features a fair number of advertisements, so parents will want to keep an eye on their kids as they move through the site (but you already monitor your little ones when they're online, right?). They've got a good Privacy Policy in place, so you can feel safe while you're on the site.

FunBrain is a free service. Most of its content should be available for visitors with modern web browsers. Certain activities may require Flash or other extensions to your browser.

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Computers have added a whole new dimension to teaching. The abilities to drill for mastery of content, provide instant feedback, and work interactively between students are just a few of the opportunities available with computers. There is a potential downside as well.

Assuming that "no good deed will go unpunished", having students working on computers adds a whole layer of administrative attention that must be brought to bear. You don't need much tech support with a paper and pencil, but computer systems aren't so easy.

iTALC, the tool that provides Intelligent Teaching and Learning with Computers, can help make this part easier. Its ability to control machines remotely means that teacher can "look over the shoulders" of students, to examine their work and help coach their efforts. iTALC can also flip that around, putting the teacher's screen in front of each student at their remote workstations, making it an ideal platform for demonstrations. This functionality is not limited to a shared subnet, so remote systems can be included as well, great for students who are at home rather than school.

It can also lock workstations, so that students are paying attention to instruction, rather than being distracted by their systems. And at the end of the day, teachers can power-off an entire lab full of computers, saving lots of time.

iTALC is a free download, and runs under both Linux and Windows (Win2k or better).

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Math got you down? Kids having problems with their homework? Are you having problems with their homework? Maybe you need to do some math drills.

Math Drills is about a zillion free math worksheets–over 6,000 in reality. If you can imagine it, they probably have a worksheet for it. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division to be sure. How about integers, decimals, and fractions? Base ten blocks, order of operations, geometry and algebra. They've even got themes for different holidays–who know that St. Patrick's Day had so many math tie-ins?

These worksheets are great for teachers to supplement classroom instruction; for parents to give their young students extra practice. Use them over the summer to keep from getting "rusty".

Worksheets come with instructions and (importantly) with answers! They are all available as .pdf documents, so anybody can use them regardless of the platform you're running.

All the worksheets are free to download and use as long as they are "…helping you or someone else learn."

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Did you sleep through all the astronomy lectures in college? Do you still have problems finding the Big Dipper? Stellarium may be the answer.

Stellarium is an open source planetarium application available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Set your observing position and see the sky as it appears. Did you ever wonder what it all would look like from the moon? You can choose any moon or planet from which to observe, as well as any terrestrial location. How about a different time? Set the time and date, and you can travel back, or ahead, in time.

Now about that Big Dipper: turn on labels to show you what you’re seeing. Fire up the constellation overlays and see if that really looks like a goat up there (Capricornus), or just a bunch of stars. You can dig deeper and look at deep sky objects among the constellations.

Stellarium features over 120,000 stars, as well as all the planets and their moons. There is a scripting feature that allows you to record and play back your own shows, and you can even use Stellarium to drive a telescope.

It’s too late to improve your grade, but you still have time to find Orion’s belt.

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Computer-based dictionaries, spell-checkers, and thesauruses (thesauri?) are nothing new — after all, they come with the poplular word processors or can be acquired as add-ons. Independent products are available also: this is one of them.

Everest Dictionary's coverage is extensive: dictionaries are available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian. There are several specialized dictionaries, too: medical and technical words, Biblical names, synonyms and antonyms, "hypernyms and holonyms", the French Larousse, and (intriguingly) "English Romanian proverbs", among others. Translation dictionaries are also supported. There are 37 in all at present.

In action, all the standard vocabulary capabilities are implemented. As well, the Everest Dictionary supports instant translation within most Windows applications by use of a special keystroke combination; instant translation of given words; and instant, complete translation of the clipboard. There's a glossary section that the user can update and make available to the world. There's even a voice component to pronounce English words!

Support is by a help file and forums. The author, Daniel Vladutu, invites comments, suggestions and donations; he also states that e-mail support is no longer available due to the number of viruses and the constant barrage of spam that have come to his support site..

Get Everest Dictionary

In Pictures, a company that publishers computer books that rely primarily on pictures rather than words to show how to perform tasks, has released its entire catalog of books as free PDF files for a limited time. The titles includes books about Microsoft Office, web graphics applications, web programming, OpenOffice.org, and more.

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Ever wish that you could take a ride on a space shuttle? Celestia is a 3D simulation that puts you in the passenger seat for a ride around the galaxy. Celestia features all of the major astronomical bodies, along with many star clusters. If you can't find a particular celestial body, you can probably find it in the extensive add-on library. If you prefer sci-fi, you can download the Death Star from the Star Wars series and a laundry list of other fictional add-ons. The application is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and takes up 12MB of hard drive space. The universe is yours to explore with Celestia.

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