Five Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About Copyright
In no particular order, here are some of my go-to resources for helping students and teachers understand the importance and the key concepts of copyright as it relates to school projects. Stanford University LibrariesStanford University Libraries offers the most comprehensive collection of resources about copyright and fair use that I know of. You could spend […]
Can I Use That Picture? – A Short Guide to Using Pictures from the Web
A couple of weeks ago in my Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week newsletter I included a PDF guide to use in determining whether or not you can use a picture you’ve found on the Internet. To accompany that guide and provide some clarifications I then recorded a short video presentation in Canva. In […]
How to Correctly Use Google Images to Find Pictures for Your Projects
Last week a student in my Google Earth & Maps Crash Course emailed me with a question about using Google Images for a classroom project. Specifically, she wanted to know about licensing and whether or not students could use the images they found through Google Image search. The short answer to the question of can […]
A Good Place to Find Free Images and Music for Classroom Projects
In my guide to finding media for classroom projects I provide a list and description of my favorite resources. The next time I update that guide I’ll include Openverse. Openverse is the replacement for the old CreativeCommons.org search tool. The Creative Commons organization has handed-off oversight of Creative Commons search to WordPress. WordPress now operates Creative […]
How Not to Cite an Image Source – Eight Years Later
I originally wrote this blog post eight years ago. I was reminded of it yesterday when I saw a similar top ten list to the one mentioned below shared by a former colleague with whom I’m Facebook friends. This morning one of my Facebook friends posted one of those “ten signs you’re from…” Buzzfeed-like articles […]
My Updated Guide to Finding Media for Classroom Projects
Two Sundays ago my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter was all about finding pictures, videos, and sounds for classroom projects. As a part of that newsletter I included my updated guide to finding media for classroom projects. In my guide to finding media for classroom projects I provide overviews of my favorite places for students and […]
Why You’re Seeing More of My Face
You may have noticed that my face is appearing in more of the cover images for my blog posts and in more of the cover images for my videos. There is a reason for that and it’s not that I’ve discovered a new vanity in my mid-40’s. The reason is that in my on-going battle […]
How to Use Google Drive to Create a B-Roll Gallery for Your Classroom
The best way to have students avoid accidentally using copyrighted images or videos in their own projects is to use media that they’ve created themselves. One of the strategies that I frequently recommend to teachers as a way to help students avoid any copyright issues in their work is to use media from a classroom […]
Webinar Recording – Copyright & Creative Commons for K-12 Educators
Yesterday afternoon I hosted a free webinar titled Copyright & Creative Commons for K-12 Educators. The recording of the webinar is now available to view here on my YouTube channel. The recording is also embedded below. Here’s a list of the resources that I included in the webinar: Lessons from the $9.2 million copyright judgment […]
Copyright & Creative Commons for K-12 Educators – Free Webinar on Monday
Copyright is a topic that I’ve written about many times over the years. It’s a topic that I’m passionate about and I’m always happy to answer questions about. In the last few weeks I’ve had a lot of questions about copyright and Creative Commons. So to answer those questions and more I’m hosting a free […]
Addressing Two Common Copyright Misunderstandings
Long time followers of my blog know that over the years I have fought many many many battles with people who think it’s okay to republish my blog posts in their entirety without permission. I’ve been doing this for so long that at times I feel like I’m preaching to the choir. Then at other […]
Five Resources for Teaching and Learning About Copyright
In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week newsletter I shared a short guide to finding and using media for use in classroom projects like videos, slideshows, and podcasts. This morning I’ve already had a few requests for more information and more resources to help students understand copyright, Creative Commons, and fair use. […]
How to Use the New Creative Commons Chrome Extension
Earlier this week Creative Commons released a new Chrome extension that enables users to find Creative Commons licensed images without having to leave the browser tabs their currently viewing. With the CC Search Browser Extension installed users can find images from more than a dozen hosts of Creative Commons licensed works. The extension not only […]
Four Good Places to Find Audio Files for Multimedia Projects
Whenever I talk to students or teachers about using music in multimedia projects I emphasize that just because a song is available to stream or download through the Internet, doesn’t mean that you have the rights to re-use it. Therefore, you should strive to use public domain or Creative Commons licensed music. To that end, […]
ImageCodr Makes it Easy to Give Image Attribution
Properly citing Creative Commons licensed works can sometimes be a confusing, multi-step process. ImageCodr makes that process easier. ImageCodr generates properly formatted Creative Commons attributions for images that you find on Flickr. Once you’ve found a Flickr image that you want to use just paste its URL into the ImageCodr code generator to get a properly formatted image […]
How to Use Creative Commons Search
Whenever I talk to students and teachers about creating multimedia projects I always encourage using images that are either owned by them or are in the public domain. Doing that avoids infringing on someone’s copyright. It’s not always possible to find the right image for a project in your personal images or in the public […]
An Overview of the New Creative Commons Search Tool
Whenever I talk about using media in videos, slideshows, podcasts, or any other media, I always emphasize the importance of using media that is either in the public domain or carries a Creative Commons license. The Creative Commons organization recently launched a new search tool that indexes nineteen sources of public domain and Creative Commons […]
21 Places to Find Media for Classroom Projects
Yesterday, people who subscribe to the Practical Ed Tech newsletter received a copy of my guide to finding copyright-friendly media for use in classroom projects. The guide includes explanations of Public Domain, Creative Commons, and Fair Use. In the section on using self-created media I included an example of how I unintentionally committed a copyright […]
Find Free Photos by Searching on Every Stock Photo
Regular readers of this blog probably know that my go-to places for free images are Photos for Class, Pixabay, and Unsplash. But those aren’t the only places that you can find free images to use multimedia projects. Rather than lucky-dipping through other sites you can just head to Every Stock Photo for find a picture. Every Stock […]
YouTube Makes Copyright Clear as Mud
Larry Ferlazzo recently shared a video that YouTube produced about options for using music in videos. The video started out well but quickly became a muddy pile of confusion. While I was able to follow it, I think that a lot of people who aren’t already familiar with copyright regulations would tune it out. But, […]
How to Find Free Music for Classroom Projects
Dig CC Mixter is a good place to find music for use in classroom projects like videos and podcasts. The music that you will find on Dig CC Mixter is Creative Commons licensed. And, as I demonstrate in the following video, Dig CC Mixter makes it very easy to give proper attribution to the artists […]
Jamendo Can Help Students Understand Copyright
Copyright is one of the topics that I always cover in my webinars and workshops about making videos with students. The subtopic under copyright that many students struggle to understand is how copyright affects the music they can or cannot include in their video projects. That confusion is often rooted in the idea that someone […]
Three Places to Find Public Domain Video Clips
This afternoon I received an email from a reader who was trying to help one of her colleagues with a classroom video project. They wanted to know if it was possible to download YouTube videos or to make a screencast of a YouTube video to then use in another video. My response was to point […]
Copyright Lessons for Students and Teachers – Best of 2017
As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in September. As many of you know, I spent […]
5 Good Alternatives to Google Image Search
Google Images tends to be the default image search tool of students and adults who haven’t been introduced to better options. Google Images is convenient, but it’s not the best place for students to find images that are in the public domain or images that have been labeled with a Creative Commons license. Here are […]
But I Gave You Credit… Lessons About Copyright
The blog post that I published yesterday in which I listed people and organizations who have recently stolen my work has elicited quite a few responses already. A couple of those responses have included, “you were given credit at the end.” That comment shows a baseline misunderstanding of copyright. Copying and pasting entire blog posts […]
Copyright for Teachers – Webinar Recording
Last night Beth Holland and I hosted a free webinar in which we talked about copyright concerns that frequently appear in schools. As you can see the video of the webinar (embedded below) it was a casual conversation during which we shared some stories, fielded some questions, and shed some light on common misconceptions about […]
Search Safely on Pixabay
Pixabay is a site that houses over one million free images and videos that have been uploaded by users around the world. All content found on the site is licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 license which means that you can use any of the content in any way you wish, even for commercial purposes. […]
Copyright Lessons for Students and Teachers
As many of you know, I spent much of my week dealing with a copyright infringement issue. As a result of that I have been doing more reading about DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) than ever before. One piece that I read was this article from attorney Sarah F. Hawkins. The article didn’t have much […]
How to Search for Creative Commons Images
screenshot of CC search site Last week, through Larry Ferlazzo, I learned about a new Creative Commons image search engine. The search engine is a part of the Creative Commons website. One of the best aspects of the search engine is that the results generated include a quick way to copy the correct image attribution […]
Creative Commons Explained In Simple Terms
Whenever I give a presentation or run a workshop about student video projects, I spend time explaining what Creative Commons licensing is and its benefits for consumers and producers of media. Sometimes in my workshops I use Common Craft’s explanation of Creative Commons licenses and what they mean for consumers and producers of media. I’ve […]
Clarifying Canva
Last week I received an email from a reader who had seen my video about how to use Canva. She had questions about copyright regarding graphics made in Canva. Here’s what she wrote, I just read your post on Canva and was trying to get their contact info to ask if I could use Canva […]
ImageCodr Helps You Create Correct Image Citations
Creative Commons licensing makes many photos available for re-use that we otherwise could not use. The trouble is properly citing Creative Commons licensed works can sometimes be a confusing, multistep process. ImageCodr aims to make that process easier. ImageCodr generates properly formatted Creative Commons attributions for images that you find on Flickr. Once you’ve found […]