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In completing a work-related project, I found some great sites that assist educators in locating open educational resources. Merlot is one of those resources. If you have not used it before, it is a community of resources designed to focus on providing learning materials for faculty members in higher education. As a member of Merlot, you not only have access to the free online resources, but you can contribute material as well. There are also opportunities to become a peer reviewer of the posted content. I think this is an excellent way for an educator to be assured that the learning materials obtained from Merlot has a stamp of approval from others in the discipline.

Teachers Pay Teachers is an open martketplace for educators who wish to share, sell, and buy resources, images, clipart, fonts, graphics and more created by fellow educators. The majority of this content is created specifically for instructional purposes rather than for student use. Users do not have to join to view content, but do need a free membership to download purchases. There is a huge gallery of free resources for download, accessed via the 'See What's Free' button on the homepage. In terms of copyright, an extensive FAQ page can be found here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Copyright-FAQ. A truncated version of general copyright terms explains that, "A Creative Commons license is a simple legal document attached to the individual works of the Teacher-Authors which let Teacher-Buyers know what they can do with the work. For more on Creative Commons, see http://creativecommons.org/. There is a special Creative Commons area for Education uses: http://creativecommons.org/education/." Thusly, it is best to locate terms of use on a teacher by teacher basis.

In completing a work-related project, I found some great sites that assist educators in locating open educational resources. The Orange Grove Digital Repository is one of those resources. If you have not used it before, it is a repository of instructional resources. It can be integrated with a Learning Management System and educators can import resources directly from a teacher's LMS. The collection of resources consists of open textbooks and open courseware. There are resources for higher education and K -12, both of which contain categories that are easy to navigate. Among the available content: videos, presentations, audio, spreadsheets, syllabi, assessments, and images.

This website has an abundance of royalty-free material available. The material resources offered range from photos, illustrations, as well as video clips. This website could best reach a wide-spread audience from K-12, and I mainly say that due to the variety that is offered. Also, there is an option to search by photographer or artist. So, if there is a particular style of art or artist that an educator may be most supportive of, or comfortable choosing work from, this will help filter out all others. The photos are arranged in a form of galleries which makes searching for photos much neater and concise, and the price range is from $2.50- $10 depending on the size. The qualities of the resources are superb. They contain great color quality, photo/video aspect, and variety.

University of Iowa might move to Unizin, a data management and learning software that allows professors to share technology more fluidly. Unizin is also university owned and recreates the idea of educational software by skipping the large corporations

Thousands of copyright free and copyright friendly images and photos for teachers and students. This site contains different categories of pictures. The rights belong to the owners of the pictures. Students and teachers are free to use the pictures for projects, teaching, posters, multimedia and educational purpose. This site also contains ideas, trading posts, activities and other resources for teachers and students. Latina

Pcs4 Learning is designed for education and is "copyright friendly" and searchable. It contains five popular categories, animals, food, education, space, and countries. Click on collections, however, and plethora of other categories appear. Click on the lesson plans link and teachers will find ideas for using pictures in lesson plans. A small sample of the lessons that appear includes symmetry, alliteration and ancient cultures. The pictures on this website have been donated by educators, students, and amateur photographers. Images here are suitable for grades k-12, any subject.

This is a wonderful social networking site for education. It is for students and teachers. The teacher can set up an online component to their traditional classroom. It allows the teacher to grade work and give instant feedback. Students can hold online discussions about course topics too. Students have backpacks where they can file any resources they would need to complete an assignment. Also teachers are able to create and post assignments that students turn in with the click of a button. A problem that can take place is that the Edmodo site may be down or the school network is not communicating well with the sites network. Edmodo provides a safe and easy way for your class to connect and collaborate, share content, and access homework, grades and school notices. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner

Pics4Learning.com has free images for educational use.  This site is useful for K-12 and has many different categories of images.  The images have photographer information, location, and date taken.  There is even a citation available in the image information to assist students with the proper information to give the photographer credit.  This would be extremely useful for younger students to learn how to cite their findings.  The site also allows easy download for Windows, Macintosh, Android, and iPad devices.  Users can also save directly to Google Drive.  Our system now has Google Drive accounts for all of our students and so there is no need for flash drives any more! The images found here would be great for foreign language classes.  Students and teachers alike could use these specific images to work with vocabulary presentations or reviews.  Science classes could use the animal images for classification.  Teachers using flipchart software could create containers for the images to be moved to by the students. The only issue I can foresee with this site is the number of images available.  Users might not be able to find exactly what they are looking for.  Fortunately, educators are able to take photographs and contribute them to the website.  This could be beneficial to teachers and students.

Pics4Learning is a safe, free image library for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos & images for classrooms, multimedia projects, websites, videos, portfolios, or any projects in an educational setting. I can see Pics4Learning being used for all grades. There are pictures of animals which would be good for science classes, pictures of countries that could be beneficial to social studies classrooms, and pictures broken down by subject including math and reading. Students could use these pictures for any of their projects, videos, or portfolios. I can also see teachers getting ideas from the "education" section under popular collections. I do not foresee any problems or challenges with this site. The pictures are easy to download and the option to cite each image. You just select whether you are downloading for Windows, Mac, iPad, or Android.

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

"Humanline.com is a visual library related to our civilization's history, art and science." These images resemble what one would expect to find in textbooks. Teachers, professors, and students can download and use these images for educational use, completely free. A search bar allows users to search tags and descriptions. The browse feature allows users to puruse images. The ideal audience would be teachers and/or students of social studies, art, or science. Any descriptions from the website must be quoted.

Images on this site are protected by International Copyright laws. Users are advised to refer to the Educational Use page in this site for when, where, and how you may use images - see: http://www.humanline.com/en/educational-use.html

School Clip Art: a free educational clipart resource. After reviewing this resource, I see it being beneficial for elementary age students and teachers. Teachers can use the clip art in their presentations, worksheets, and lesson plans. In addition, students can use the clip art to complete their assignments. The images are easy to save for both Windows and Mac users. The clipart is free, teachers and students just have to reference the website in order to use it. There are many categories to pick from and navigating the site is very easy. The only challenge I see is that the clipart would not work well for students over 5th grade because of the cartoon like nature of the images.

This website provides thousands of resources for educators. This is a sight created by the federal government to promote educational excellence. What ever the idea, topic, or lesson plan may be about, I am sure you will find the perfect resource you can use.

Edupics offers free downloadable coloring pages, pictures, and photographs.  The website images are clearly classified and easy to navigate.  There are word search and crossword puzzle image downloads, which would benefit primary and middle grades. There is even a collection of school appropriate animated videos. The color online tools available appear to target the primary age group, however, there is a variety of content appropriate for making any subject interactive. The only limitation I see to this site, in comparison to others is the limited content available.

Free coloring pages, crafts, drawings and photographs. Children can use these images to learn about many different subjects. Pictures for educational use. This site is loaded with pictures, ways to create coloring pages, already created coloring pages, puzzle maker, games, and crafting ideas. This site is geared to the k-5 education setting. You can do a multitude of activities with this site and the resources available. The pictures can be used for any activity. There is no fee listed, and you do have to create a login.

This website is loaded with opportunities for teachers. It is a very well organized, searchable website that contains pictures that may be colored, photos, black and white printables, crafts. This site is Great for all grade levels pre-K through high school. For social studies teachers, it has religious categories, history, famous people... Science- animals, energy, environment and more... Language arts- emotions, fairy tales, film and television...

8 Helpful Assistive Technology Tools for you classroom

KidsKnowIt is a copyright free video and audio repository that provides users with a variety of free educational videos and resources. No membership is required to access any resources. The website is user-friendly and provides videos and resources for grades 1-8, in several different content areas. Therefore, this repository will work best in a 1-8 educational setting. In addition, it will be extremely helpful in a science classroom, to assist with introducing acids and bases.

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.

It's as simple as joining the team. The Copyright Alliance Foundation has complied a library of free curricula to be used in the classroom that actually teach copyright education and can be incorporated across many subjects and grade levels. This is a wonderful tool for instructors who not only have to be careful with adhering to copyright guideline themselves but should always ensure their students have the same understanding and knowledge to adhere to copyright guidelines in media and literacy. The library of curriculum breaks downs activities by grade levels and is catered for grades K-12. This is a robust tool that gives resources but also gives links where to find more resources from the free curriculum they provide like those suggested at www.isafe.org. . This tool is a must for anyone in the K-12 setting. While the site does request donations they are not mandatory and usage of the curricula do not carry any fees.