Useful Software
In order to view or access some of the downloadable documents and resources that we offer on our site, you may need to download and install additional software. As such, we have provided the following list of software which you can download free of charge.
Please note: We provide these links for your convenience only. We do not endorse or provide support for any of the following products and cannot be held responsible for any problems arising from your downloading and/or installing of these products.
Adobe Reader
What is Adobe Acrobat Reader?
Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to open, view and print 'Adobe Acrobat' or 'PDF' (Portable Document Format) documents.
PDF is widely used for publishing electronic versions of hard-copy documents such as reports, leaflets, magazines, brochures and books.
PDF documents are platform-independent, which means that, regardless of what software or operating system was used to create the document, you should be able to open it on your machine and it will look exactly as the author intended.
What do SWGfL Use Adobe Acrobat Documents for?
We tend to use Adobe Acrobat documents for providing electronic versions of any publication which we also offer in hardcopy. For example, the contents of our 'SWGfL Reference Pack' are available in PDF format in the 'Our Services' section of our website.
Adobe Flash Player
What is Adobe Flash Player?
Flash is a technology primarily used for creating interactive, media-rich content to be streamed over the web. Traditionally, Flash content is 'vector-based', which means that the content is infinitely scalable (perfect for larger applications such as interactive whiteboards), and the file sizes remain small (perfect for delivery over the internet).
Flash has become a de facto standard for web-based multimedia content, and 80% of all computers already have Flash Player installed.
What do SWGfL Use Flash for?
Although we don't use Flash in our website; some of the resources available through our learning grid use Flash.
Apple Quicktime
What is Apple QuickTime?
QuickTime is Apple's alternative to Windows Media Player, allowing cross-platform access to a variety of audio and video formats.
QuickTime is installed by default on Apple Macs.
What do SWGfL Use Apple QuickTime files for?
Although we do not use QuickTime specific files on our website, some of the resources accessed via our learning grid may do.
Please note that the streaming Windows Media Videos that we use on our website are not compatible with Apple QuickTime.
Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer
What is Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer?
Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer allows read-only access to files created with Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT files).
Microsoft PowerPoint is used to create slide shows for presentation purposes.
What do SWGfL Use Microsoft PowerPoint files for?
Where we have held a conference or event, we encourage our speakers to provide their presentation materials for download via our website. The majority of our speakers provide their presentation materials in PowerPoint format.
Generally, where we provide a PowerPoint file for download, we also provide an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) download as an alternative, as the file sizes for Acrobat documents tend to be much smaller.
Real Player
What is Real Player?
Real Player is a cross-platform alternative to Windows Media Player, allowing access to a variety of audio and video formats. Real Player is the only mainstream media player to support the Real Media video and audio formats.
The Real Media format is primarily intended for the live streaming of multimedia content accross the internet, and is typically used as an alternative to the Windows Media format for webcasting live events.
What do SWGfL Use Real Media files for?
Although we do not use Real Player specific files on our website, some of the resources accessed via our learning grid may do.
Please note that the streaming Windows Media Videos that we use on our website are not compatible with Real Player.
RM Easiteach Reader
What is RM Easiteach Reader?
Easiteach Reader is a cut down version of RM's Easiteach that has been designed so you can view and share Easiteach files. Easiteach Reader is free to download and can be used on every make of interactive whiteboard.
What do SWGfL Use Easiteach for?
Although we don't publish any Easiteach content ourselves, we feel that this tool may be of interest to those who wish to share Easiteach activities with colleagues who use the full version of Easiteach, or download pre-created Easiteach lesson activities from the internet.
Windows Media Player
What is Windows Media Player?
Media Player allows you to download, stream and open a wide variety of multimedia formats, including sound and video files, DVDs and Audio CDs.
Windows Media Player is the most widely used player for its proprietary 'Windows Media Audio' (WMA) and 'Windows Media Video' (WMV) formats. These files can either be downloaded from the internet and stored on your computer for later playback, or they can be 'streamed' live over the internet, which means that you don't have to wait for the entire file to download before you can start watching it.
Widnows XP comes with Windows Media Player installed as standard; however you will need to ensure that you have at least Windows Media Player 9 installed to watch the streaming video files on this site.
What do SWGfL Use Windows Media files for?
All of the videos that we show on our website are published in streaming Windows Media Video format, using the SWGfL Streaming Media Service. For example, the keynote speeches from our Learning Platforms Roadshow and the SW Regional ICT Conferences are available as streaming Windows Media videos.