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Originally shared by Julia Hollins on 15 Jul 13. The original post was removed and this one shared instead, due to technical issue with the original post. Thumb creator is source for royal free clip art. The first criterion used in selecting this website is that it had open access. The term "open access" is a new technology used with digital repositories. Most universities and libraries use repositories for educational purposes in hopes of becoming more engaged in developing scholarly communication. Second, open access is defined as free availability of scholarly literature on the public Internet, permitting anyone to read, download, copy, distribute, or print in full the text without restrictions (other than to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited Scherlen & Robinson,2008, p. 58 (as cited in Shields, Rangarajan, & Stewart, 2012). The clip art is royalty free and is apart of the open access. I thought it was a good resource for this class assignment.

A massive collection of digital reproductions of famous artworks, renderings of historical decorative objects, and more. Similar to the Getty's Open Content Program or Google Art Project, the National Gallery of Art's NGA Images site, "is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download," 37,000 open access images, many of which are featured at incredibly high resolution. Users can browse collections or perform an advanced search. NGA goes on to explain that it, "implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are now available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial. Users do not need to contact the Gallery for authorization to use these images," but are asked to include the following credit when using the aforementioned images: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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.

Beautifully rendered digital content including clipart, photos, fonts, templates, illustrations and more appropriate for student view and use but best suited to a teacher's purposes e.g. avatars for student labels or images for multimedia presentations. While the majority of materials on this site are not free, they DO offer free goods from featured artists every week! No membership fee is required. Content outside of the weekly features does cost money, but patrons are directly supporting, "independent creatives around the world," and are granted Creative Market's simple license with every purchase, the details of which can be found here: https://creativemarket.com/licenses/simple. Additionally, it is important to note that in certain cases, "portions of some products may be covered by an open source software license such as the GPL (GNU General Public License). In these cases, any portions of the product not covered by an open source license will be covered by this license."

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.

This is free educational blogging site. It could be used for any subject and grade level, but it is probably best for students ranging from 3-12 and higher education. It contains images, videos, audio, and visuals. This online resource allows students and teachers to collaborate, share thoughts and ideas, and so much more! There are tools within this site that allow you to upload quizzes, set due dates, and post assignments or required readings from the web. This website can be used to facilitate discussions about lessons you teach in class. For example, after reading a story or book with your students, the teacher can pose an open-ending discussion question on the blog. Students would then be asked to answer the question during center time or even for homework. Other students in the class will be able to read and respond to each other's posts to create a rich discussion. Teachers can also use the blog to post upcoming events, tests, or quizzes in the classroom and parents can use it to stay informed. Teachers can also use the website to post videos, podcasts, and documents they create. Students are able to view these things at home. This is especially helpful when parents are unsure how to help their child with homework because they do not understand the concept you taught that day. For example, if you introduce a new concept in math and assign homework that night, parents and students can watch a lesson you recorded to get a better understanding of the material. Using Edublogs is a safe and easy way to integrate technology in the classroom! As I reflect, I think about the possible difficulties this resource could possess. Being that it is not a program you can purchase and install on your computer, problems could occur with the being able to connect. Since it is a resource that anyone could use, a lot of people can be on the website at one time and cause it to "crash" or free up. Also, I think about routine maintenance or updates that must be d

Open Photo is an image related website that displays clipart and photo graphics from across the nation. It is a copyright free resource where individuals have posted their artwork so that others may use it for various purposes. Each is displayed by category and divided into their appropriate sections. It is intended for individuals of all ages. Users do have to create an account and they also are able to research the database for all photos by subject. These graphics can be used and inserted into projects, reports, and websites and used for means related to the user's needs. The graphics is medium to high quality, which is dependent upon the author's pictures and submission of the photo. The photos appear to have the ability to be used in other forms if needed for such use.

Images on this site are under Creative Commons Licensing, so each image may have specific restrictions. For reference, see the About page: http://www.openphoto.net/about/

Discover Yale Digital Content's site contains images from Yale's museum collections. The site describes itself as "a way to search across Yale's collections of art, natural history, books, and maps, as well as photos, audio, and video documenting people, places, and events that form part of Yale's institutional identity and contribution to scholarship." Often literature is intimately connected to history and historical events, art work, geography, etc. Using these images can help students form connections with the time in which a particular work of literature was written, helping to deepen their knowledge.  Discover Yale's copyright policy: "The mission of Yale University is to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge. Increasingly, this knowledge is in digital form. The Discover Yale Digital Content site is intended to promote discovery of digital content from across the University. Yale's policy on open access to digital representations of works in the public domain from museum, library, and archive collections is a commitment to provide unrestricted access to such content as it becomes available through normal work practices. Yale University will not restrict use of items digitized from its museums, libraries and archives collections which have been made openly available through the University's electronic interfaces, and which are no longer under copyright, except where other rights or restrictions apply."

Musopen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. They provide recordings,sheet music and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Their mission is to "set music free". At Musopen, they obtain recordings of public domain music that have no copyrights so that visitors may listen, re-use, or in any way enjoy music. Most of the music is of classical piano or symphony pieces. Clips can be searched by Composer, Performer, Instrument, Period or Form. Downloading clips requires users to have an account, which is free. The audience for this site is open ended. Anyone from Elementary School students to the oldest of the population can easily discover music which can be used in any project they wish. It is very easy to search and download the .mp3 version of the music for use in project creation. The quality of the offerings it is excellent. Additionally, being Classical in nature, they do not "get in the way" of an overall project. This is extraordinarily beneficial if using the music as a background piece. This blessing is also the limitation; you do not have a wide range of genres from which to choose. If you want something outside the Classical field, you should investigate other free-music sites. To test this resource, I created a test podcast with the free application Audacity in which I spoke into a microphone to record my voice. I was then able to add a piece from this site as background music for the podcast. It worked very well. Teachers and students will find this to be just one of the many uses for music from this site. It is appropriate for similar presentations whether they be Prezi productions or videos published on YouTube-type sites. The only limitation is the range of possible music styles. If a classical piece is your preferred choice, however, Musopen is a wonderful site to visit

Download royalty free music for use in films, YouTube, and other projects, with no copyright restrictions.

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.

Librivox might be my favorite of all open source, copyright free resources for the Language Arts classroom. Started as a non-profit to benefit the blind, Vibrivox has created an amazing database that allows readers to record individual chapters of a novel or story that is in the public domain. These files are then made available to the visually impaired or anyone in need of an audio version of a written work. I use this resource extensively for students who are reading below grade level or have significant processing difficulty. I have also had several students "donate" their readings to the database as a community service project to benefit the overall community. If you are looking for public domain eBooks for your classroom, Project Gutenberg is another great resource.

Teacher Tap is much like what this group has collaborated to do. It is an online repository that list several other resources that those in the education field can you to locate copyright free and royalty free images, clip art, text, and music. It can be used for anyone in an education setting and for some personal use. Upon review of the site, all links lead to relevant sources that can be used individually or in conjunction with another. The home page provides the sources in a broken down list format and even identifies the sites that have varying restrictions. I chose this site a something to be used because it provided another list of multiple sources that should be bookmarked. Additionally the content appears to be better for those in a K-12 setting but can still prove very resourceful to those that are in a collegiate setting as well. This is a great source to other sources. There is absolutely no fee for access to the compiled list provided.

I re-located this resource, that has been around since the year 2000, while searching for AUDIO files for adding to multimedia presentations for but, the site also advertises that, "you can find over 1,000 pages of free resources, tutorials, PowerPoint templates and backgrounds, graphics, sounds for presentations and much more for everyday use and productivity." The sound clips are simple enough for students in grades 5 - 12 to use however, many of the other resources are probably more appropriate for educators. After brief teacher modeling, middle & high school students could easily click on the midi sound files, listen to the preview that opens in Windows Media Player, right-click on the sound title they wanted, "save-target-as" to a file, and insert the free sound clips into their multimedia presentations. Students will also appreciate the wide variety of clear-quality, relevant sounds, a few of which sound like renditions of background hip-hop/rap music that I believe they would enjoy like, "Dr. Tekno," "Nightfunk," and "R&B Bassbeat." In the "Terms of Use" the owner, Nan Shastry, states that "items marked 100% free" can be downloaded free for "personal or business or educational use" but users may not resell downloads, make available as downloads on your website, or link to items without prior permission. While the sound files and many other resources are 100% free, students who try to branch out and download many of the PowerPoint backgrounds or animated graphics will encounter zip file popups that ask/require them to evaluate "WinRAR" software for a 40-day trial before purchasing it, to continue using the download. Educators could mitigate this problem by distributing a list of preferred download link titles from the site that students could easily access without any difficulty or, by simply instructing them to click "cancel" or "close" on any of the downloads that require purchasing.

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...

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.

Photo Pin is a search engine that allows you to search by tags. Its photos are taken from Flickr using API which searches for creative commons photos. When it opens up, there are check boxes to search for specific license types. Even typing in benign words like sink rendered many photos to choose from and most of the pictures were artistically taken. The images come in various sizes and the HTML code is right there when you open the photo. Be careful not to click on the images above the line. These are sponsored images and will ask for a fee. Some images contained scantily clothed and provocative individuals when a few choice words were entered into the search engine. Because of this, this site should be reserved for high school students only.