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 […]
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 […]
How to Search the Smithsonian’s Open Access Collection
Earlier this week the Smithsonian launched a new open access collection. Smithsonian Open Access contains more than 2.8 million digital artifacts that you can view and download for free. While the Smithsonian Open Access homepage does have a couple of introductory videos, they’re more promotional than they are instructional. That’s why I created the following […]
New Unsplash for Education Collections – Library of Congress, NYPL, NOAA, and More
Unsplash is one of my top recommendations for places to find images that are in the public domain. Last August Unsplash introduced collections intended for educational uses. This week Unsplash added more collections that have great potential for classroom uses. Earlier this week Unsplash announced the addition of collections of images from the Library of […]
Explore and Download Thousands of National Parks Pictures and Videos
On my way home from the Oregon SHAPE conference I drove through Mt. Hood National Forest. If you ever get the chance to do the same, take it! On my drive I stopped at the Timberline Lodge to snap a few photographs and ponder coming back to ski Mt. Hood. Back at my hotel my […]
Unsplash for Education – Free Photos for Your Lessons
Unsplash is one of my go-to recommendations for finding public domain pictures for classroom projects. Thanks to Rushton Hurley’s latest Next Vista for Education newsletter I just learned that Unsplash now has an Unsplash for Education section. Unsplash for Education is comprised of ten curated collections of images for teachers and students to use in their […]
It’s Public Domain Day!
Happy New Year! This new year is important because many many copyrighted works are entering the public domain. Copyrighted works published in 1923 are entering the public domain today. That’s hundreds of thousands of images, sounds, novels, short stories, and poems! It has been twenty years since the last big batch of works has entered […]
An Extensive Guide to Copyright and Fair Use
On Sunday I published a guide to locating media for use in classroom projects. In that guide I provided basic summaries of the concepts of public domain, Creative Commons, and fair use. In the section on fair use I referenced Stanford University Libraries’ Copyright & Fair Use guide. That guide should be bookmarked by anyone […]
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 […]
My Top Six Sources of Public Domain Media
One of the questions that readers ask me on regular basis is, “where can I find images that my students can use in their projects?” Less frequently, but still fairly often I’m asked the same question about audio and video clips. In fact, I just answered those questions again on Friday. Therefore, I’ve made an […]
Pixabay Now Has an Office Plug-in
Pixabay is one of my go-to sites for public domain images. If you need a picture to use in your slideshow, document, or other multimedia project, Pixabay is a great site to search. Recently, Pixabay started promoting a new Word and PowerPoint plug-in. The new Pixabay Word and PowerPoint plug-in lets you search for public […]
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 […]
Public Domain Explained by Common Craft
Public Domain Explained by Common Craft is a new video that answers some common questions about the differences between works that are in the public domain and those that are copyrighted. The video also teaches how works end up in the public domain and some tips for finding media that is in the public domain. […]