As schools open their doors in the fall, there’s no doubt that some will be starting with a slightly tighter wallet than in years past. Some schools will handle the tough economy by cutting programs, others will be cutting jobs, and most will be finding it tougher to get their hands on those high price tag items for their classrooms. With this in mind, here is a roundup of the five free resources that could make things a little easier in the classroom.

Curriki

If you’re deciding to go without new textbooks this year(or if it was decided for you) Curriki could offer you some good options for new supplemental materials. Recently covered Curriki, is a free online community for educators and boasts 15,000+ teacher created resources that are being shared freely. Their content includes tests, single lessons, units, and even full courses. Considering that a lot of their content is reviewed by Curriki staffers as well as users like yourself, you can pretty much guarantee finding something new to polish up your old content.

Open Office

Office software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint come with a fairly hefty price tag, and that doesn’t include the yearly licence. Fortunately there’s a high quality free alternative. Open Office offers Word, Excel, and PowerPoint-like programs that feature many of the same bells and whistles that their high priced brethren include. A tighter budget might be a good reason to switch and save some money in the classroom, or even more if it could be done throughout an entire lab.

ePals

Since prices on gas alone will keep many buses from heading out for field trips, maybe a “staycation” style field trip would suit your classroom needs. ePals features a vast network of classrooms across the world and a platform needed to connect them for a wallet-loving $0. Which means that your students can communicate with other students all across the world without ever getting up from the computer. Their platform includes the necessary tools for secure communication, blogging, and collaborative projects that are just about ready to go right out of the box.

Whether you’re on a budget or not, ePals will complement just about any classroom. It just makes it better that it’s free.

Blogs and Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are two other free resource that will benefit students in any classroom whether your on a tight budget or not. Both will allow students to have a voice beyond the walls of the classroom, giving them ownership of their content and solid motivation to write. A couple sites you can score a free one include wikispace and edublogs. Both offer the security needed to get it done safely.

Check out TTB’s guide for setting up a student blog using Edublogs.

Free Content from Universities

Several colleges and universities already offer a lot of free content. Life Hacker posted a fairly large list of some of the better resources out there. You can find art galleries, virtual microscopes, and even some free courses to complement what you are doing in the classroom.

If you are still in a bind for cash you could always:

Sell your original lesson plans

Beg for money.

How are you saving money in your classroom next year? Let us know in the comments.