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"The difference between "copyright free" and "royalty free" Given that at least part of the controversy surrounding the painting which was awarded the American Watercolour Society Gold Medal this year concerns copyright I thought it might be helpful to outline the difference between "copyright free" and "royalty free" - as this seems to be something people get confused about. What is copyright? I'm not going to try and define copyright as such - as meaning varies depending on which country's laws prevail over the work in question. You can find out more about copyright and access the different websites providing legal definitions in my information site Copyright and Orphan Artworks - Resources for Artists For the purposes of this post, the wikipedia summary will suffice. Copyright is a form of intellectual property which gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation; after which time the work is said to enter the public domain. Copyright applies to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete. Some jurisdictions also recognise "moral rights" of the creator of a work, such as the right to be credited for the work Wikpedia - copyright"

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".

This site is a public site that allows users to upload their own pictures they want to donate. All pictures are free and are copyright free. Pictures can be used for private or commercial use. Pictures are categorized into groups according to the topic of the photo. This site would be a great site to use with students because the pictures are taken by other amateurs, perhaps students. There is a large variety of pictures to pick from so students could create a power point, digital story, digital poster, or even video to name a few with these pictures. This site could be used for any academic area since there is a wide selection of pictures to choose from. Students and teachers could even add their own photos to the site so that others can use them for their projects. As a SLP, I would benefit from using these photos to help students develop language skills. Students could easily be presented with a picture daily and answer questions/describe the picture. I definitely plan to use this site in the future. One possible problem with this site is that there is no way of monitoring what type of photos may appear under a specific category. I searched the site for several minutes and only came across one photo that may be questionable for younger students. However, this site could easily be used with younger students with teacher assistance. I feel that the advantages of this site definitely outweigh the possible disadvantages.

Please note the following statement on the home page: "...please be aware that some photos do require a model or property release."

Motion Elements provides some nice background stock footage, some computer generated background footage and some title imagery. Examining the site in closer detail, I would describe the target audience for this site to be fairly universal. While scanning through the vast offerings I did not see any content that I would deem "inappropriate". I would suggest, however, that older students have an easier time with the general concept of video production that younger students, so this site may benefit them more. The free videos are of very good quality, but there are only about 5 pages of them. If you want to diversify your options, then videos can cost from $20 to $50, so I would stay with the free ones. One the plus side, the free clips do contain high definition (HD) content. If they have something you can use, you will be highly pleased with the quality. From a technical standpoint, the video clips that I downloaded to try were all in .mov format. .mov is an extension associated with Apple and its QuickTime platform, so use of these clip on Apple products, Macs for example, is certainly possible. However, I was able to easily add downloaded clips into Windows Movie Maker for editing as well with absolutely no hiccups, whatsoever. This means that not only will teachers and students benefit from easily downloaded clips covering a vast variety of subjects, they should have no difficulty using the clips on any computer platform they may be limited to in their educational setting.

This a great website for students of all ages to use is it holds a wide variety of photos. It is functions just like wikipedia users can add their own content to the directory. The best feature about this site is the images are seperated into categories, for example a search on fire seperates the images into additional categories, fire, fire making, fire fighter etc. If an image is not in the directory then the site provides a definition of the word. The wiki media commons also has a selection of audio and video footage available for users to download. The only negative about the site will be making sure the students are not distracted by the language tabs on the page. Users of this resource are advised to read the terms of use details, which can be found on this page: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

The link provided is the hidden search engine provided by Google that will enable the user to search for copyright free images. This search engine can be used with a member from any audience but definitely those in the teaching sector. The wonderful part about this search engine powered by the Google Analytic team is that it searches multiple sites like http://www.teachnet.com/how-to/..., http://www.sxc.hu/, http://gallery.schoolcenter.com/, http://www.pics4learning.com/, and http://www.musicgraphicsgalore at one time. Once visited the search tool can even be added to your Google homepage or a blog or webpage. This feature is highly effected and can be utilized by the Advanced search tools in the regular search engine Google also provides. There is no fee to use or add this resource deeming it very effective and a needed resource. Suggested for K-20 sectors.

NASA's photojournal is a copy-right friendly website that allows students and teachers to view images of each planet and the universe, as well as spacecraft and technology. Also included in this site are animations of happenings in space. This website would be ideal for science instruction on space and could be used for all grades. Not only are the images appealing, the information tagged with each image is very informative.

I will definitely use this website, as well as my students, to create presentations for our space unit.