Group items tagged

LIFE Magazine Photo Archives is a very exciting image repository with tens of thousands of free images. These images can be used in many different content areas. The images available on this site are free and high quality

LIFE Magazine Photo Archives is a very exciting image repository with tens of thousands of free images. Images come stocked from thousands of picture token over the years by Life Magazine photographers. This site is very user friendly and has resources available for all ages. The best group of students to use this resource with is students 9-12. They would benefit from these resources because it offers such a large volume of images. This would be very valuable for this group of students to research images for History. Because Life Magazine is so famous for capturing and writing about some of the world greatest moment, accomplishment, and conflicts student could use the images to create a time line. Each images could be used to represent a significant event during certain time period in history.

BusSongs is that one location (site) where you can go to find many childhood songs for your classroom. The songs can teach students about behavior, holidays, cultures, and many life skills. FCCLA students could use a song in a PowerPoint presentation to keep the students' attention or add them to a cd to use during instructional time. Some songs can be used for PTA meetings or graduation ceremonies.

The owners of this site acknowledge that some of the songs available on this site may be under a copyright protection (ie, these would be for the newer songs, not the older). Therefore, users are advised to communicate with the site to determine what rights protection there may be for music you intend to use. Read here for specific details: http://bussongs.com/about.php.

This website is a government site, so it is a public domain and provides all resources including photos, videos, animations and podcasts for free to the public. The acronym USGS stands for United States Geological Survey, which means the photos and resources on this site pertain to elements of the geologic structure in the U.S. This site would be useful for all audiences of school age in grades 4-12. I chose that range because with the real-life depictions of our country's geography, it could easily bore and audience that was any younger. They are excellent quality resources and precise photography at our disposal for nothing out of pocket.

National Marine Sanctuaries Media Library contains photographs of marine life. The content of this website would best be suited for High School and Jr. High School science classes. One area of interest on the website contains images of the human impact on marine life which could be useful for an Environmental Science class educating students on the effects of humans on our environment. The collection found on this website contains still images and some videos. The website lists that permission is granted to "any and all users (public domain)" for "unlimited uses." The images also include descriptions of the photos to help the user better understand the purpose of the photo.

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 site is more functional than the other two I posted. One of the unique features is its large collection. There are not only objects (photos or illustrations) but also materials/textures available. Another feature is that they have some pull-down menus to narrow down the search. We can select the images by the topic (animal, architectures, etc), dominant colors of the image we want, the number of items we want to see at once, etc. These functions meet the users' needs. The site also asks for donations of the images. The challenge might be the filter set by the districts. Almost all the time this is the case some teachers are discouraged. It is strongly recommended teachers check this site on a school computer before the intended use. If blocked, requesting unblocking may be the next thing to do. Furthermore, as a school or department it may be a good idea to secure several online repositories that are not blocked; therefore, any teachers can use at any time safely for educational purposes. Lesson Example: 3rd grade and above in Visual Arts Direction: In our life there are many signs. Common features of those signs are simplicity (restricted numbers of colors, shapes, lines, etc.) and clearness of a message (directly represented by an object). Suppose you are a professional illustrator and the city has asked you to create a symbol/sign useful to the community. Make sure to provide good reasons to back up your creation. (Ex. how your creation will promote the welfare of the city, reduce the crimes, or promote business, etc.) Search the needs of the city so that your creation is timely and meets the needs of the city. Save the resources. Image citation: Dario sign no baby carriages warning lift. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b17dario103.jpg

This site offers a variety of different video clips. Some clips are free and some have to be purchased before downloading. Many of the highlighted clips included animals, family life, transportation, and other Kindergarten Social Studies content. There is material that would work with all grade levels and subject areas, but Social Studies was the first idea that popped into my head. There are a lot of news clips and weather clips as well. There are a lot of cool clips that show tornadoes in actions. BBC Motion Gallery is connected to BBC news, so you are able to access clips and news from around the world.

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.

The images (photos and graphics) are available for FREE use within this site which is a teacher-designed resource for by teachers and their students; however, other use must gain permission. A slight risk (especially for minors) is the button that reads "Become an EduPic Host click here for more details" is a potential risk, because physical communication is sought by the web creator. This is an opportunity to have someone come stay in your home and possibly a camera man in order to come capture the scenery and have it posted on Edupic (the host receives a blurb/mentioning on the site). There is a section that allows you to quick search using hotlinks in order to quickly access related lists of images. Once you find a desired image, functions allow you to view a larger image, copy/save the image, copy the image URL, or find the image on Google (so you can find primary source information). There are cartoon-like images and real-life images, which can be used over a wide range of grade levels (K-12). The site also offers information on the Contributor's and provides access to the EduPic Blog.

This is a site for royalty-free images and other media for use in language classes. "The REALIA Project publishes faculty-reviewed media for the teaching and study of modern languages and cultures. Faculty and students at all levels are encouraged to contribute materials to our searchable, online database. The focus of the REALIA Project is realia: Materials which convey the everyday life of different cultures" (REALIA). After looking through a variety of categories, these photos would be great for a world literature class, history, or economics, etc. This is a royalty-free faculty-reviewed database of images contributed by teachers and students (College and Secondary) of diverse cultural and academic backgrounds. This site is more focused towards modern language based material (for teaching/learning modern language), but states they are open to other content areas. One of the unique characteristics of REALIA is that it was designed with Pedagogy in mind (provides some guidance for instructional integration). The images are exportable to Power Points or individual websites. Another beneficial attribute of this site is the ability to translate the images into English (there are many images that have writings in multiple languages).

This is a royalty-free website. There are three levels of purchase, gold ($59.96), platinum ($99.95) and pro ($199.95). A school may share a license for this price. This site contains clip art, power point backgrounds, animations, sound effects, sound/music and video elements. Images and GIFs come in various sizes. Many can be downloaded with or without a background, so it doesn't have that square box around it. Spice up your blog or bring your power points to life with this service. This site is good for any subject, any age or any grade level.

Dorret Goodwin, Animated Gif Archive This is a fun website that has thousands of free animations for educational purposes. I could see me using this in my high school Computer Application classes when they want to add some "life" to their projects. The website is easy to navigate since everything is listed alphabetically and I didn't have any issues with downloading the animations.