Don't Deny It Any Longer, Let's Talk About Copyright

We've all seen it.....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs/3020966666/ 

The logo above usually means you're in for a jumble of lawyer-ese and threatened fines that limit our use of many forms of content.  It can be difficult as a classroom teacher to stay within the confines of copyright law, especially when all you want to do is show the world to your students.

So I've been gathering a collection of the best resources for understanding copyright, which you can find below:

From MakeUseOf:

Royalty free images: These images are not free. You have to purchase these images for a fee, but beyond that you can continue to use the image as long as you want. But this is a non-exclusive right as others may also purchase the same image for use.

Public Domain images: Images which are not covered by any copyright and are available free of charge are called public domain images. Images whose copyright have expired also fall under the public domain. To put it this way, any image which is freely available may not be a public domain image; but a public domain image is freely available for use without permission.

Creative Commons: Creative Commons images (or the licenses) should not be confused with public domain and free-to-use images. Creative Commons is a set of free licenses which cover fair use and allow creators to reserve some rights for themselves while freeing up the work for the benefit of the public. Learn more about Creative Commons on the CC website.

Copyright Confusion Wiki - Which will also link you to the Fair Use Reasoning Tool!

Photo, music, and sound effects sites to use for copyright-friendly material.

Links to create-your-own content sites such as Aviary, Wordle, ToonDoo, and more.

Let's also not forget about http://creativecommons.org which can be another information resource about using copyright correctly.

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's The Vexed Man (1770s or early 1780s). Photo by Jean-François Chénier on Flickr

Even though copyright can be somewhat overwhelming and difficult to understand, I would say that it's most important for you to be consciously aware of it and a constant learner of how to best abide by its terms.  I also think it's extremely important to pass this same attitude on to our students since the digital world we live in makes it so easy to come by copyright-protected digital content, and remaining fair to the creators of that content should be a top priority.

Can You Tell Me The Color of Joy?

The Color Of is a neat little site I stumbled upon a while ago.  All you do is put in a search term, and it generates the color of that term from tagged images on Flickr. The result is an interesting, and not always expected palette of color.  It's just in beta form right now, but I could see this being an interesting art activity...maybe do a search, then print out the resulting color and make a picture from just those scraps of paper.  Maybe even a writing activity, talking about how the color was achieved or how each part of the color represents a different part of the original search term.  Have fun with it!

Here are some of the searches I did:

and of course....

One more tool for finding great pictures...also really fun to play with!

Just a quick post today, I have a workshop to present in like 5 minutes!  Flickr is a site dedicated to storing and showcasing pictures uploaded by their users.  A great way to search for specific groups of photos under one tag (descriptor) is to use Tag Galaxy.  Tag Galaxy lets you search for a specific tag, say "penguin" for example, and then will show you your results in a very imaginative way....

Check it out!

Amazing pictures

I discovered last week, from one of the Massena teachers (thank you!), that Life.com has fantastic pictures available that are reliable and free to use.  I was just playing around with it and you can see pictures from all over the world and all different time periods.  I was looking at civil war, current politics, and pop culture pictures in the same visit!

I imagine that students can use this site as a reliable source for getting pictures that they can use in PowerPoints and other projects.  All you have to do is click and hold on the picture and drag it to your desktop.  As for citing, there is a LIFE watermark on every bottom corner.  Have fun!