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"3DTin is the simplest way to design 3D Models. You can work right in your browser. Save the sketches in cloud. Share it with friends with a unique URL. And it's FREE as long as you share your models with others under Creative Commons license."

Amusing comic/cartoons with a leaning towards STEM ... and CC licensed.

Having older students pick apart the Science/Maths in these humorous offerings can provide a stimulating activity. (but watch out for a few adult themes!)

A few months ago, two teachers, Santeri Koivisto and Joel Levin, decided to make the software more accessible and relevant to teachers. They joined forces to found MinecraftEdu and started offering discounted educator licenses to Minecraft. MinecraftEdu now offers a plug-in, which enables teachers to tailor the software to individual curriculum. And a fresh new wiki is dedicated to sharing ideas with topic suggestions such as "How To Use Redstone, (a fictional mineral) To Teach Electricity." Teachers can also work with others to co-develop lesson plans within the game software.

As our students grow dependant on Internet being a primary source for their  information, it becomes of urgent necessity that we, as teachers and educators, should know how to evaluate web content and decipher credible resources from spam and irrelevant ones. Regrettably enough, some of the teachers who are using technology in their instruction still don't come to grips with  the mechanisms used to sift through internet content. There is a crude analogy to this situation . A teacher who does not evaluate the web content he shares with his students is like a person driving a car without having a driver license, he can still drive his car  but he does not know the real dangers he is putting himself to in doing so.

"Awesome widgets for your iBook Timelines, mathematical formulae, interactive graphs & plots, crossword puzzles, quizzes, infographics, youtube videos... The possibilities are endless. No skills required Add stunning interactive content to your iBook, with zero skills. All you do is point, click and add text. Plugs right into iBooks Author Apple created a kick-ass tool, super easy to use. We'll make it even better! Royalty free Are you a school or teacher? We have a very affordable educational license! Selling your work on the iBooksstore? We charge a small fee per generated widget."

"Spongelab Interactive is a group of scientists, teachers, animators, artists, and programmers passionate about science education. We believe that cutting-edge technology and stunning interactive media should be available to everyone, regardless of fiscal constraints. Most of the content on our site is free. Like what you see? It's yours. To use anything identified as premium (usually full games, interactives or case studies) you can: Redeem the credits you have earned while using our site - each piece of premium content is marked with a "P" and can be redeemed when you select it from the search results page Buy a bank of credits through our PayPal ordering system - In the My Profile area, order blocks of credits in the Buy Credits section. Purchase a Site License - Get access to all content, unlimited student seats, all for $600 CAD, contact us and we do the rest. "

"We offer a wide variety of 100% free production music in eight genres: cinematic scores, corporate, easy listening, electronic, hip-hop, international, pop and rock. We're committed to helping you find the perfect song for your video, movie, film, video game, or media project. Our music comes with a royalty-free license allowing you to use the music in all types of productions for worldwide distribution, forever. There are never any fees."

A useful way for students and teachers to add richness to their video productions, without treading the murky waters of copyright infringement?

"Google is making image search more convenient for those who are seeking pictures to use in their publications - it is letting you sort images by licensing rights under 'Search Tools.'"

"Apple's new Device Enrollment Program (DEP) is a significant new enterprise initiative that removes one of the biggest, if not the biggest, roadblocks to iOS device deployments within businesses or schools: The need to touch each device to ensure that it is fully managed and locked down. The Device Enrollment Program was announced yesterday along with a slew of new IT-focused documentation and tweaks to managing Apple IDs for K-12 students and Apple's app volume purchase/licensing program. It offers the ability to configure iOS devices as supervised without using Apple Configurator, allowing for over-the-air management with these evice management capabilities. As such, this can be considered one of the most groundbreaking iOS management additions since Apple introduced MDM support nearly four years ago."

"If you go to the Getty Images website, you'll see millions of images, all watermarked. There are more than a hundred years of photography here, from FDR on the campaign trail to last Sunday's Oscars, all stamped with the same transparent square placard reminding you that you don't own the rights. If you want Getty to take off the watermark, you'll have to pay for it. Starting now, that's going to change. Getty Images is dropping the watermark for the bulk of its collection, in exchange for an open-embed program that will let users drop in any image they want, as long as the service gets to append a footer at the bottom of the picture with a credit and link to the licensing page. "

ToS;DR is still very new (started in mid-2012) so the number of sites that have report cards are limited, but it is an excellent example of the positive change that can occur through global connectivity and collaboration, and the project is actively growing. This is a grassroots project, created by citizens and volunteers who take their responsibilities very seriously; they engage in a peer-reviewed process of rating and analysing to create each rating, and they are committed to Creative Commons and Free Software licensing. While this site does not take the place of legal advice, it does help users make some sense of the pages and pages of fine print before we click, and ultimately that offers us the chance to make better online choices.

"The Copyright and Schools website is an information resource to help schools navigate copyright licensing and understand how copyright material can be used legally within a school - providing accessible, relevant and up to date information to support the curricular and extracurricular use of copyright content. "

"You may know that Flickr is one of the largest repositories of freely usable public domain and Creative Commons photos in the world, hosting collections contributed by libraries, national archives, foundations, museums, galleries, and individual users (I've uploaded more than 10,000 CC-BY-SA images of my own). However, with its latest redesign, Flickr has made is very difficult to copy the images it has been entrusted with, and nearly impossible to correctly attribute them in accord with their license terms. Today, we're fixing that. A little, anyway."

"For a long time, customers on volume licensing plans have just assumed its logical to keep paying for each desktop or notebook to get a copy of Office. But SoftWatch has highlighted in great detail what a lot of IT departments probably already suspected: That's an awful lot of expense for not a lot of return. Alternatives like Google Apps and Apple's free Office-like Pages, Numbers and Keynote come in at much lower prices and offer file compatibility along with much of the functionality of Microsoft's suite. While none are perfect substitutes, what IT has come to realize in the past half decade is that often productivity isn't about perfection."

"n this day and age, it seems everything online has a price associated with it. Whether you're subscribing to a pay site for full articles or clicking on ads in a blog, everything online seems to have money associated with it. Luckily there is still a large, and very healthy, movement online for media files listed under the Creative Commons licenses."

"This Friday's Reporters' Roundtable is on a topic that vexes us all: why are end user license agreements and terms of service so long and convoluted? To get ourselves in the mood for this show, we asked CNET fan (and Academy Award winner) Richard Dreyfuss if he'd help us out by doing a dramatic reading of the Apple EULA. He said yes. So, without further ado, we present to you,"

eBay says it may have to shut down Skype due to a licensing dispute with the founders of the internet telephony service. The surprise admission puts a cloud over the 40 million active daily users around the world who use Skype for business or to keep in touch with friends and far-flung relatives.

"This is an introductory practical guide for teachers looking to use Creative Commons licensed works and share educational resources under a Creative Commons licence."

"The purpose of the Open Content Toolkit wiki aims to share both contemporary and historical openly licensed content from media archives and collections around the world. The toolkit provides a space to explore, discuss and share examples of the use of open media at all school stages and at all levels of education."