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Bottled Video is a great resource for absolutely free video footage of just about anything you can imagine. They pride themselves on being there for students and other video producers who think that "if only we had this shot we could do complete this project".  Bottled Video could be used by middle school or high school students to add some neat footage to video projects. It's a high quality site with high quality footage so I'd give this resource an A+. Honestly, I didn't even know sites like this existed, but I'm glad to know now. Obviously projects would be the best way to integrate this resource into the classroom. I really think it would be easy to teach the kids to use as well. All they really have to do is include a line in the credits and they're good to go. As long as the school gives them ample amounts of storage to download the videos, I don't see any problems in using this one.

I've used Incompotech a few times for projects of my own and I'm happy to say that it's a great resource for free music. It has very detailed, yet basic, instructions on how to attribute the music to the creator and features some neat tracks (although some are little cheesy). Having used this one before, I can commit to saying that I'd venture to try this one out with middle school students and definitely high school students. With plenty of up-front modeling and lots of reinforcement along the way, I think this would be a great resource to make student-produced video  go from quiet and boring to emotional and energetic. As with any download, it would be important to know that the school offers each student enough storage to save these files, but that'd be the only major issue with this resource. None of the tracks have words (to my knowledge) so everything is school-appropriate. It's easy to use and is even searchable by genre and "feel".

OpenPhoto is a free source of stock photos that only require attribution. The photos are searchable and span many organized categories. Some of the photos are high quality, and others aren't quite what I'd call HD, but it's fairly easy to track down what you need. I see no reason why middle school and high school students couldn't use this site. Anytime they needed a picture for a PowerPoint or some other project they were working on, I could direct them to this site to get great photos that are easily attributed to the creators thanks to handy copy and paste instructions on the individual photo's site. I don't see many issues arising with this one. I'm hoping everything here is clean (haven't searched too deeply to ensure it's all school appropriate). Overall, it looks like an easy way to find pictures to add to presentations, projects, and other activities without infringing on copyright.

Soundzabound is website that has royalty free music for schools. offers a variety of music, audio themes, and sound effects for all levels of education. Such music can be used for podcasts, PowerPoint, videos, video yearbooks, digital storytelling, web design, and so much more. There are different types of license that can be purchased. A school for purchase a site license for teachers and students or a the district make a purchase for everyone in the district to use. Middle schools and high schools would benefit from this site because they can use such sounds to create a product for competitive events.

Ookaboo provides almost one million images that are searchable by concepts. The pictures are licensed under various Creative Commons licenses or are public domain, and are free to use for educational and other non-commercial use. You can find more information about using the photos at http://about.ookaboo.com/a/. This site would be great to use for high school students in a variety of subjects: world history, U.S. history, biology and environmental science. It could also be used for middle school geography classes. The photos appear to be of very good quality, and the website is easy to use.

EduPic Graphical Resource was created by a teacher and is a free image resource for educators and their students. There are over 6,000 different photos and illustrations to pick from. Most of the images seem to be geared toward middle and high school science and history classes; however, there are a few images for other subjects. A few examples of how I can see this resource being used would include a high school US History class studying Abraham Lincoln or washington monuments or a 7th grade Life Science class learning about biomes. The only downside I can see to this resource is that the main focus is on science and history so it would be limiting for certain subjects or grade levels.

This resource specializes in stock footage from around the world. All of the video clips are free to download and to use. There is no subscription or user login required in order to use the footage. This feature makes it ideal to use for educators looking to provide their students with a ready source of footage that they can use for their multimedia presentations. Students interested in media production and editing could create some fantastic presentations, especially if they have access to editing software and a green screen. The more advanced applications of the video clips could be used by high school students, but I could also see middle school aged students utilizing various clips to help with creating presentations for World History or Biology classes. For example, in my 7th grade Life Science class we do a project on the biomes of the world. Students could use the video files from the "Animal Footage" section to incorporate dynamic visuals into their reports. Students could also use footage from different continents to visually identify the various biomes for the class. Modeling of how to download, edit and embed the videos would be necessary to ensure that the students experience success with this resource, but that is just a matter of scheduling instruction time prior to the final projects being completed. The website is very easy to navigate and all clips are easily imported into any editing platforms. This feature makes it easy to use for educators who may have a variety of software on their school computers, depending on which school system they work in.

To use resources from this site, you will be required to pay an annual fee - at the time of this entry, $25.

This online database contains very high-quality "Public Domain," "Copyright-Free" photographs that are easily accessible from 10 different category divisions on the "Gallery Index" page; Abstract, Architecture & Cityscapes, Food & Drinks, Industrial & Machinery, Miscellaneous, Nature, Sports & Recreation, Technology, Textures & Backgrounds, and Travel. In the "Terms of Use" statements, the creators state that "Picdrome.com is a growing Public Domain digital photography collection, free of copyright and licensed under Creative Commons…all images are free to download for personal, educational and commercial use, without restriction." They also advise users to check the "Disclaimer" statement link regarding any additional licenses; however, in the disclaimer statement there didn't appear to be any other restrictions listed. Students in upper Elementary school through High school would be able to easily navigate and download these photographs that were relevant to project work they were completing. For example, my Middle School students would greatly benefit from the close-up photos of food from all of the food groups in this repository, when they complete "Family & Consumer Science" class projects that present visual examples of nutritionally balanced menus. The only problematic portion of the website is the banner advertisement located directly below the title/search box and right above the category links…it often advertises products and sites that require purchasing but, the banner looks so much like the website heading that it is easily clicked on by "mistake." Educators would need to forewarn students of this obstacle before giving them free reign of the site's valuable images.

This is a website designed for free downloads of a variety of types of sound. You can click on the sound tab and browse and find what you would like to download and it is free. This website can be used in an educational resource for middle school or high school age students doing a video project or PowerPoint project that will require background sound. Some difficulties I have found is the sound quality can vary between some of the sound clips. In order to download the sounds you must register an account you'll be able to begin. This could also be a difficulty for some students in a school setting depending on the school's firewall and if the student has an email. The tool I have found most useful with this site is the search bar and assisting you with finding the sound clips you want to hear or download.

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 website has thousands of free images that are able to downloaded for free. Many of the images you will find on this site are high quality and well done. You can find an image for a variety of subjects. This website would be best used by students middle school or high school looking for images for a project or PowerPoint presentation. The difficulties a student might run into is the search engine used for this site. It can be very broad when looking for specific pictures. The best use of this website could be for a history class or science class. For example finding pictures for a WWII project can be done very easy for a student at the secondary level. A student would be able to find maps of where the war took place, famous images from the war, types of weapons used, types of planes, etc.

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.

Photo laboratory - this is a collection of exclusive photo images of high resolution. You can download any stock image at no cost or buy photo under royalty-free licence. This is a great resource for middle and high school students who are making a website or any other fictitious marketing products and need some "real-looking" pictures to include but maybe do not have the time or resources to take the pictures themselves. I think this could be used for any subject area as they have a wide range of pictures including all types of people and objects. I think it would be especially useful in my business classes where my students are always wanting high quality photos for their projects. Directing them to this website would be a great alternative to searching Google which is their first "go-to" search engine. The thing that I liked the most about this site is that the pictures do not look fake. They look more like what you would actually take yourself so I think that would be a positive and a draw to get more students to use them.

Resources in this site are free for any non-commercial use. Commercial use requires fee payments. Users are directed to check the Legal page for specific details.

The website rgbstock is an online free stock photo download site. I requires a username, password, and email account to activate for a free sign in. The photos contained can be used in middle and high school for teachers and students to create any digital project free from image acknowledgement. The site also allows its members to contribute photographs for free use.

The photos are high quality and the homepage contains a search bar to facilitate 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.

This website offers a collection of out of copyright recordings, which would greatly serve to enhance a podcast. The site is easy to navigate and allows the user to download the audio file (MP3) to his/her desired location. After this file has been downloaded to the computer, students could then import the file into Audacity in order to edit the audio file to better fit their podcast. Student created podcasts would be a great way for middle school and high school students to convey their ideas or topics to a class. These can be done as individual or group projects. I especially see this type of activity being well suited for a Social Studies context, especially as a way to present research information. The correct application of music, to serve as an intro in a podcast, could greatly assist in the development of a polished final product. However, I would recommend sticking with the instrumental music for most uses within the educational context. But, the creation of a podcast within a history course could be enhanced with the accurate incorporation of time appropriate music. I believe for these music files to be incorporated into a podcast, to benefit the listener, the creator must have a working knowledge of Audacity. However, with the ability to pair Open Music Archive with Audacity can give the individual the tools necessary to create a product that would benefit learners through the multimedia platform.

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 image repository offers a wide variety of categories. The categories are listed at the top of the home page and are easy to navigate. Most of the photos offered are by amateurs free of charge. This repository requests that users give credit for images by providing a link. This could be best used with middle and high school students. It could also be a great source for middle school social studies students and teachers as the topics are organized by continents. Big Foto offers a great source of images that are neatly organized and easy to find.

Science Daily: This site offers libraries for a very large variety of science topics. The site is intended to extend research on science topics. Depending on the particular science concept, I feel that the content offered in this site is suitable for middle school aged students and high school aged students. This site only focuses on science concepts so it would only be good for the subject of science. The photo's and videos are royalty-free. When you email the videos, they will email the URL that will take the viewer to the webpage for the video. The actual .mp4 file will not email. It is more so available for free streaming purposes and not downloadable purposes. Needless to say, the content is still very useful for education.

Freeplay Music is a wonderful site for downloading copyright-free music. It allows people to search by CD title, style of music, or feel/mood. Users can preview either a short snippet of the song (usually 30 seconds) or the song in its entire length. If the user doesn't like that particular song, s/he can continue scrolling through the suggested titles or click on other search options offered under the songs themselves. Once the person finds the song s/he wants to use, s/he has numerous options for download. All songs are downloaded as an MP3, but it is up to the individual to determine how much of the song s/he might want. The benefit of this site is its vast library. There are thousands of songs to choose from. The site states that all songs, with the exception of the Indie Artist section and the Sound Effects library, are available for educational use. The downside for the students is that it is mainly instrumental music. Students will try to search for contemporary "radio hits" and will come up short. I usually explain that those songs, while popular, often can be distracting to the video, slideshow, or website the student is creating. Freeplay Music offers a great selection of "background" music for educational projects. This site is perfect for middle school or high school. It could used by all subject areas as a supplemental component to almost any technology- based or Web 2.0 project. I can see Freeplay Music providing songs for Glogster, Prezi, Weebly, PhotoStory 3 for Windows, MovieMaker, or several other possible programs/sites.

Resources on this site do have restrictions for use. Please read the details in the terms of use page: http://freeplaymusic.com/licensing/termsofuse.php.