Copyright Free Resources

SchoolTube is a free media sharing website for students and teachers to upload videos for free for educational purposes. These videos can be categorized by age or subject matter to make finding them more simplified for users. I like that this website allows students to upload videos for classmates, morning announcements, course content, and study materials for tests. I also like that this website is easy to sign up for and easy to use.

Here are images from the Smithsonian's amazing libraries! Low resolution images from this web site may be downloaded free for "personal, research or study purposes." If you need a higher resolution image, there is a small fee, but the policy states that the downloadable images may be used for classroom and student purposes. There are some great things here for science, social studies and ELA projects.

Bonanza! I didn't realize this, but most of NASA's images are generally not copyrighted and in the public domain, which means they can be used freely. (It is not ok to use the NASA logo.) This site contains links to several different resources including photos, sounds, film clips, etc. These could be most useful in a science class studying anything space-related, or maybe in a creative writing/digital storytelling project.

Although Weebly is not simply a repository for royalty-free images, I thought it worth pointing out that it has a rich bank of free photos and images that can be searched and uploaded to your web site. Of course, when you search you have to be sure to click the "free" tab which is behind the photos that come up initially. As for educational uses, I use free images from Weebly on my media center site regularly, and whenever students are creating web sites as their "learning artifacts," Weebly is a great way to do it- this can apply for ELA, Science, Social Studies, or whatever subject. Another thing I like about the free image bank at Weebly is that when you choose and upload one of the images, the proper attribution automatically appears at the bottom of your web page. Brilliant!

The Digital Public Library of America contains photos, film clips and other items from digital libraries around the country (including Georgia). Many of these items are in the public domain, and some are under rights restrictions. There's a link in the "rights" field for each items record that contains that information including where to secure permission to use if needed. This site could be tremendously useful for projects related to American culture or heritage. There's a wealth of historical artifacts (think primary sources) here!

Vicfirth.com is a site that is beneficial for educating percussionists of all age and skill levels. Vicfirth.com is host to a variety of media teaching aids such as how-to videos, image clips, and audio files. There is also a large collection of demonstration videos. This site is most beneficial as a technology based tutor for the student percussionist/drummer. the student can learn or supplement their learning while moving at their own pace. This site is copyright-free for use thought they do advertise and give descriptions of Vic Firth products. I see no difficulties involved with the use of this site.

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.

This site provides free, stock video footage for users to download for commercial or personal use. This website though offers a different kind of stock video as well, motion graphics. Videvo offers a large library of basic motion graphics that are fantastic small additions or final edits to a video project. This site provides stock motion graphics that on the surface, seem very simple, yet are very complicated to build without knowledge of a program such as After Effects or Motion. The best audience for this site would be a high school broadcasting or a graphics class in which some high schools offer with basic skills of the programs previously mentioned. The quality of the video offered on Videvo is for the most part extremely well done. After some research on the site itself, some of the motion graphics do not always have great color detail or motion detail as you would expect in basic motion graphics. Those critiques though should not take away from the great graphics and stock video that is in fact offered on this site. Finally, although the footage and graphics are royalty-free, the website does require that the user attribute the Creative Commons License 3.0 to the author of the content where it is required. Basically, this means that not all of the content on this site requires any attribution whatsoever, but some do ask that users attribute through the Creative Commons License.

This site provides a wealth of royalty free video footage for use in advertising, blogging, websites and even presentations. This resource provides video, photographic and audio resources on a royalty-free basis. This means that the user pays for the initial download of the content, without having to pay the original photographer or artist for each use of the material. The terms of agreement on this website also provides a $10,000 Legal Guarantee that protects the user of the content up to that amount. I personally, would use this site with middle and high school geography students. In many cases, geography falls into a social studies or science class if I recall correctly. Many of the video clips available have amazing video shots of different landforms and natural formations of nature. In order to show multiple sequences of various land forms, this site would be great for having instant access to incredible video clips. The quality of the work in the video portion of this website is remarkable. All of the content is shot in high quality and is downloadable in a range of size and quality. This site allows the for user to download in various frames per second as well to determine the exact quality available to the user for download.

This site provides an immense library of clip art images that can be used by teachers and students royalty free. Each item comes with a choice of size and format and even gives instruction on how to use proper citations for school projects. This is a tool that can be used for projects or presentations made my teachers and students and could be useful in engaging learners by giving them visuals that are associated with the material that they are learning in any discipline. The only issue that I can forsee with using images from this site is making sure the proper citation is included in the project or presentation. But, this is is a teaching moment for many of us outside of our discipline in which we can stress the importance of giving credit to sources where we borrow images, ideas, video, and more.

This is an archive of images that can be used without worrying about copyright. Some images are free and some have to be paid for. In order to use an image you simply click the download button. There are over a thousand different pictures to choose from. This would make this resource wonderful for teachers of any grade level or content area. You simply type in or search for the type of image you are looking for and browse for the one that you like the best. The images are high quality and there is a plethora of images files and types.

This site contains copyright free/royalty free images. The small sizes (267 x 400) are free but if you'd like a larger size you will pay from $3.00 to $10.00. If you use the images, you must have an acknowledgement to FreeDigitalPhotos.net and the image creator. You can search for images by photo, illustration, or ID. You can also sign up to be a member and/or a contributor. Teachers of all content areas could find useful photos to enhance their lessons.

This site has an immense amount of images that are copyright and royalty free and of good quality. Teachers at any level could use them to engage student and enhance learning by incorporating them into their lesson in presentations or as conversation startes for a wide variety of topics. Student can also download and use these images for their own visuals for projects and presentations. For each image used, you must publish a credit to the artist. They only issue I think may come arise with that is if students are using this resource to find images that they could use they may forget to acknowledge the artist. One of the parts of this site that I really loved was it tells you how to recongnize the artist in the media you are using the artwork in. A great teaching moment!