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http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-program/ Royalty free music is a paid website that allows educational institutions free access to their website through their Free Music for Education Program. The major obstacle in using this website would be getting over the hurdle or having technology services approve the website and have a link placed on the school's website for students to obtain access. Teachers can use the website to teach students about the copyright rules and laws Once approved students of all ages would have a huge catalogue of sound effects and downloadable music and from a variety of genres at their fingertips. .

Educators who wish to use resources from this site need to visit this page: http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-resources.html

The Library of Congress: American Memory is an excellent source for a variety of resources, including images, video, and audio recordings. The resources are free, but be sure to check out its copyright notice at http://www.loc.gov/homepage/legal.html. This website would be useful in an 11th grade U.S. History class. While the site is a little hard to navigate at first because of the many resources available, it is an excellent way to incorporate Common Core standards with the many high quality primary resources.

WPClipart is a collection of images for students and others that is free of copyright concerns as well as safe from inappropriate images. There are currently 50,526 images on the site. I can see students in grades K-12 using this resource. The site is easy to navigate and search for images. There are tons of categories such as medical images, geography images, historical figure images, computer images, and on and on which is why I see this being helpful to all students grades K-12 and all subjects. Unlike some clipart sites, there are images on this site that are not cartoon like making them better for older students. According to the terms and conditions, the site is Public Domain and the images can be used and edited. No direct user-uploaded images are allowed. The only concern I see is that this site is trying to get donations through PayPal which I haven't seen on other sites.

This one feels like it is cheating, but it is the MOST powerful way to get copyright-free material for the classroom. Knowing how to use search operators might radically change your work efficiency. For example, if you need to create a PowerPoint on the Civil War, you could start from scratch and find images and text and important information. By using the search term "filetype:ppt" and adding the search topic "Civil War" afterwards, Google will only return links to actual PowerPoints already created on the internet. This search term can be used with any file type. If you are looking for an existing test over the civil war in Word, search for "filetype:doc Test 'Civil War'". This can literally save hundreds of hours of time and effort.

This site offers free downloads to music offered up by various artists for use in video projects both commercial and personal. If the music is to be used for commercial use, Jamendo simply reminds its users that all artists are protected under the Creative Commons License. I covered this license in my other post, however this license isn't only about attribution. The license allows the creator of the content to identify the exact usage for their material in commercial use. This allows the downloader of the music to still download the music for free, but with a blanket of customized protection for the artist. The audience I would use this site with would again be a high school broadcasting class. Many high school newscasts that are shown within the school every morning do not follow copyright laws. If the students producing these newscasts used Jamendo to download the music content for the newscast, the students would not only stay legal, but learn a very important broadcasting rule that would stick with them throughout their career. The quality of the content on Jamendo is mostly very well done. However, as with any music website, most of the music downloaded depends on user preferences. The production quality is usually very well done since these artists are attempting to push their music to the public to get their sound and style of music to the larger audiences.

This website contains collections of images from many different government agencies. For example, the National Parks Service, NASA, the U.S. Mint, branches of the Military, and many, many more. The photos could be very useful in Science, Social Studies, and probably other classes as well. From just some quick research, it looks like the collections of images might best be suited for middle and high school students. The website states that some of the images may be used without permission or fee but the user should read the disclaimers to make sure of the copyright status.

pdsounds.org offers a free sound library with a variety of interesting sound effects from a German bar to writing with an ink pen. The sound volunteers utilize recording equipment to capture hundreds of sounds for copyright free, public use and tag them with a set of tags that help in the search process. You do not need a membership to access the free sound files, and you are able to submit sounds to be added to the catalog. These sound effects are perfect for incorporation into presentations and videos. In my high school business education classroom, these sound effects will enhance our projects. For instance, if a student created a marketing video with still images of tea products, the tea pouring sound effect would be helpful. In commercials, the effects can be used to make the situation more lifelike...birds in the background of a kitchen scene, or cars in the background of a busy sidewalk. Students will enjoy searching the clip options and finding just the right combination. I give this site a 4 on a 1-5 scale, because of the variety of clips, the ability to post clips, and the ease of searching via tags and simple downloading. To improve, I would like to see thousands of sounds available for download.

www.videezy.com is a site with 20 to 90 second video clips that are free for download.  The categories include water, culture, sports, and animals along with many other areas that could be beneficial in a video based project.  The video clips do not have sound and they will integrate into narrated projects very easily.   Teachers can use the video footage in their flipcharts to engage students into the content.  A video clip of the Hindenburg disaster lasts about a minute, but gives students a visual of what actually occurred.  These video clips can also serve as backgrounds for text pages as students create videos.   Even with the great free choices, the site will pull up clips that are not free.  Working with video is always more challenging than photos and so this will be better for older students to work with.  High school and maybe upper level middle school students would benefit from this site the most.

This online repository includes hundreds of copyright-free graphics that would be worthwhile for middle-high school students & educators to use to add a multitude of interesting "bells & whistles" to their word documents, multimedia presentations, or websites. In my 5th-8th grade Library Media Center, social studies students are currently completing PowerPoints presenting their research about assigned Middle Eastern countries. I can foresee allowing students who have finished adding all assigned subject content to their slides, use this site to add "spinning globe" bullets, horizontal rule section dividers in the shape of "International Flags" or "Palm Trees," and "Textured Sand" backgrounds. All of the graphics were easy to navigate to from a large table on the index page and everything I experimented with downloaded and inserted easily, the quality of the images was excellent, and many of the animations would be relevant for school assignments. In the "Terms of Use" section, the creators advertise that, "Bellsnwhistles.com graphics are free for your use and if you use them we ask that you PLEASE DOWNLOAD what you need…Do Not link to our graphics." I did not encounter anything on the site that required royalty fees or additional software to load before gaining access. The only problem educators might want to mention to students before using is to make sure they insert only school-appropriate graphics…while nothing on the site was unsuitable for student-viewing, there was a "Foaming Beer Mug" divider and "Dripping Blood" Halloween images that students would need to avoid downloading into projects.

This is a copyright free/royalty free website that has a nice collection of free videos for all subject areas; these resources are appropriate for K-12. They are arranged by subject area so it makes it easy to find what you are looking for. While there are numerous free videos at your disposal, you also have the option of signing up for an account for a small yearly fee. This gives you access to even more resources such as lessons, quizzes, games, and puzzles. Also, with a subscription comes the ability to create presentations using images from their collection.

Stock.Xchng is a free top-level domain stock photo site from Hungary. The site allows images to be uploaded and shared among members free from copyright and royalties. It is appropriate for educational use in middle and high schools for students and teachers creating various forms of digital products. Some contributors require that they be notified upon use of their images. These individuals may not ask for compensation but merely want to build reference lists of where their images were used. The site requires an active email account to register and activate an account for downloads.

The photos are high quality and categorized for browsing or there is a search bar to aid in ease of locating a useable image.

Images on this site are protected under International Copyright Laws (see Terms of Use page), so users be appropriately advised. Images are royalty free.

WatchKnowLearn is a copyright free video repository that provides users with a variety of free educational videos. Users do not have to signup for a free membership, unless they wish to upload and share videos. The website is well organized and provides videos for grades K-8, in several different content areas. Therefore, this repository will work best in a K-8 educational setting. In addition, it will be exceptionally beneficial in a math and science classroom to introduce new concepts.