Bouncing around the web this morning, randomly looking for Microsoft Office tutorials, I came across a real gem I’d never seen before – GCFLearnFree.org, an absolutely fabulous collection of over 750 lessons containing extremely high-quality interactives, videos, and printable worksheets suitable for developing an entire instructional curriculum around. AND IT’S ALL FREE, brought to us by Goodwill Industries of Eastern NC. Let’s take a closer look…

This is the GCFLearnFee section on Microsoft Office. (How delightfully ironic that they include a Google Apps module here!) As you can see, many prior versions of Office are included.

Here’s the opening screen for the Excel 2010 tutorial. Note the Android and iPhone apps – how cool – this means that classes with Android tablets or iTouch devices can run these, too (though I think the resolution might be a little too small to be usable on anything other than a tablet.) You can see how the lesson material is organized.

Digging into a lesson, we see three sections: a short video, an interactive graphic, and a printable version (click here for an example.) The production values are absolutely first class, what you’d expect to see on a paid service. They are really, really well done.

And here’s the “MORE” … look at this list of topics! Each and every one is the same high quality.

Last, but not least, there are even FREE ONLINE CLASSES. How cool is this?

I am very, very impressed by GCFLearnFree.org - and knew I had to share it as soon as I could! These materials will benefit schools, homeschooling parents, community groups, and the general public – anyone interested in learning!

Hope this helps,

-kj-