Free Educational Software for Mobile Devices - Dynamic Table

Introduction
Versions also available in Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.

This table seeks to bring together a range of information about free educational software for mobile devices - mobile phones and tablets - and can be used quickly and easily by teachers, parents, students and other interested parties. We attempt to list only applications that address school curricula, excluding, among many others, text editors, image editors and audio and video editors, although these programs can be used in the classroom with educational purposes. All applications are free, which means that are registered under a type of license that provides the source code. Users have the freedom to reuse, study, modify and redistribute the applications. The main licenses are GNU/GPL, BSD, MIT and Apache.

Interactivity
You can edit the table yourself, even without any registration. You can correct errors, add applications or use the "Discussion" tab to register criticism, suggestions and comments.

Click on the first line (title) from each column to sort the table alphabetically.

The Educational Stage column uses abbreviations: PS = Preschool, ES = Elementary School, MS = Middle School, HS = High School and HE = Higher Education

Instructions

 * Note that the table shows initially (or on a page reload) the applications ordered by Knowledge Area. When the first line (title) of a column is clicked, the table is reordered, but the previous ordering is partially maintened.
 * The last line of the table shows the total number of values in each column.
 * Even if the application's official webpage of the app is in English, the application itself can be available in Portuguese. Suggestin: if the application is not translated into your language, contact the developers and offer to translate it yourself.
 * The applications marked with N/L (No language) do not have any text in their interfaces.
 * The application's official webpage may show screenshots of the application. Such images are merely "pictures" of the application's screen, and it is necessary to download and install the application on your device.
 * All links provided here are of the responsibility of their mainteners. If a link is incorrect, please register the complaint in the "Discussion" tab.
 * The licenses column indicates "license families", since BSD, Apache and GNU-GPL have multiple versions (1.0, 2.0, etc.) that can differ significantly between themselves. Check the license version on the application's official webpage.

Introduction
In this initial stage of the table's launch, we use as main source of data the website F-Droid, a software repository that holds only free applications for the Android operating system. We evaluated all 1700 applications that were available on December 2015. F-Droid includes new applications on a weekly basis. The website respects user privacy and does not track personal, device or application data. All applications are divided into 17 categories, such as Science and Education, Games, Reading, and Children. It is possible to find applications that can be used for eductional purposes in many categories, including Multimedia, Navigation, and Internet.

Warning
The Android operating system has multiple layers. The Linux core, licensed under version 2 of GNU-GPL, has private blobs. The other layers contain components, or are themselves, non-free.

If you with to obtain greater control over your device's Android operating system, we suggest looking into the possibility of performing a root. This process allows you to gain access to areas of the system that are initially blocked off from users, giving you the abilty, among other things, to uninstall any manufacturer's applications.

Although it is not a complete or free source, the website androidrootguide.com provides instructions on how to root a number of devices.

We suggest that you look into installing the Replicant operating system, an Android distribution aligned with the philosophy of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation.

The CyanogenMod system uses non-free software libraries and provides instructions to install private software.

If you decide to attempt any of these operations, you do so at your own risk.

Research sources
Applications listed on this table were obtained through research in the following repositories and websites:


 * F-Droid - the main data source
 * Google Play Store - official Google repository, which contains many proprietary applications.
 * AOpenSource - a repository with only free applications.
 * This open source app list on XDA forum.
 * Prism-Break, with free applications that protect user privacy.
 * Droid-Break, with free applications that protect user privacy.

Alternatives to the Google Play Store
The Fossdroid repository has the same applications as F-Droid, only differing in its interface. Please note that the repositories below contain both free and non-free applications.
 * Yalp Store
 * Aptoide - This repository also has an application manager, allowing the user to download and update applications more easily.
 * APKMirror
 * APK Pure
 * APK Downloader
 * UpToDown

Use these repositories at your own risk.

Observations
The GNURoot app gives the ability to install the desktop Debian, Fedora, Gentoo or Aboriginal Linux distributions in your Android device. This allows you to install the desktop free educational programns listed here on your mobile device. The source code for this tool can be obtained ohere. The app Debian noroot is available specifically for the Debian distribution, along with its source code.

It is possible to use a mouse and keyboard on your phone or tablet by using an OTG cable.

The Android-x86 project allows the installation of the Android operating system on a desktop PC or on a virtual machine.

Acknowledgements

 * This table was originally programmed by André Ferreira Machado, coauthor of the research, evalutaion, selection and classification of the applications, and received an important contribution from Breno Neves for the HTML code enhancement.
 * We thank the help provided by Alexandre Oliva on better defining the types of software license and by Raniene Silva on programming tips on reordering columns. Frederico Golçalves Guimarães helped with suggestions on classifying some apps into their correct Knowledge Area and with edits the increase the clarity of some concepts.

This table is an integrant part of Free Educational Software for Mobile devices, contemplated by edict 21 http://www.ufrgs.br/sead/editais/editais-ufrgs-ead of Secretaria de Educação a Distância of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

CC-BY-SA License