The internet is a wealth of knowledge and resources. Did you know that as a Parent with a student at Primary School / Secondary School / College / University in the UK that you can purchase cheap software discounted over 80% (in some cases). Alternatively there are plenty of free programs that will perform just as well as industry standard software.

Office Software suite
As a minimum, the individual programs that make up an Office Software suite normally consist of a Word Processors, a Spreadsheet, a Presentation program and Database program. The suite may contain more programs and can be distributed in different bundles offering even more software. Make sure you read the contents of the box first to avoid buying something you will not use.

Microsoft have a huge install base of their Microsoft Office Suite and hold market share for Office suite applications. Microsoft Office familiarity is a skill that many companies look for from their new employees which is a good reason to teach your kids now. Microsoft recognise that a good way of securing more users of their products (and consequently more revenue) is to capture their users young and hopefully as they grow they will remain loyal to them. It makes sense therefore to offer cheap software to students. As an example Microsoft Office Standard 2007 edition in PCWorld is currently advertised on the PCWorld website for £321.99. Purchasing for a Student from an online retailer you can buy the exact same software for £35.33. Thats a massive saving. Its fully recognised by Microsoft and in fact Microsoft link to the online retailers from their own website. And Yes you will have the CD as well.

Microsoft XP/Vista Operating system from £40.62

For the cheepest Microsoft software take a look at www.software4students.com . You will need to follow the instructions on their website to purchase these products.

If you have a Student with an email address ending in .ac.uk, purchase Microsoft office for £38.95 from Microsoft.

Microsoft isn't the only company to offer Office suites. An increasingly popular (and FREE ) alternative to the Microsoft office suite of software is www.openoffice.org . This is supported by SUN Microsystems (a major commpetitor to Microsoft) and it works just as well as Microsoft office. Whats more this works across many different computer platforms so once you learn OpenOffice on a PC you will know how to use OpenOffice on a Mac.

Get rid of Malicious Software (Malware).
Just from surfing the internet and installing what we believe to be trustworthy software, sometimes we can expose our computers to Malicious software. Ad-Aware is a free program that can keep you safe from the most current password stealers, keyloggers, spyware, trojans, online fraudsters, identity thieves and other cyber criminals. Ad-Aware is free and can be configured to automatically scan you computer at regular intervals to keep you protected.

Find out more and install it from here Ad-Aware.

Other Discounted Programs
Other Software companies like Adobe, AutoCad, Quark, Wacom and more can also be purchased cheaply using similar student software retail programs e.g. www.studica.com . Why pay more for these products when as a Parent of a Student you are entitled to a discount.

Learn to program a computer.
Why not encourage your kids creativity and have them write their own computer programs. Once they understand the fundamental building blocks of writing programs such as loops (iteration) and comparisons (conditional statements) they can write simple programs. And these building blocks will remain with them regardless of whichever programming language they move onto.

MIT. researchers developed a program called Scratch for kids aged 8+ to learn and create their own programs. Its as simple as click and drag. "As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively".

Similarly Microsoft are keen to encourage the next generation of software developers (Microsoft call it "investing for the future"). Microsoft offer fully functioning versions of their Software Development tools completely FREE

Learn to Touch Type.
Want to teach your kids to touch type? Many years ago I used a program called Mavis Beacon to learn to touch type. The basic principle is to learn letter by letter playing letter games and running exercises. I think it was about 6 evening sessions before I made the switch at work from using single digit to touch type.

As a Free alternative, the BBC have an excellent typing tutor called Dance Mat typing. This follows similar principles of creating a fun envionrment in which your kids can learn to touch type.

This page was Last updated Mar 2009