Quick overview: Do you or your students use digital images from the Internet in class presentations or projects? If so, do you know if you are legally allowed to use these images in your classroom?
What is the problem? Most images found on the Internet are not copyright free, even for non-commercial educational use. In this blog posting, we’ll explore two methods of searching the Internet for digital images that ensure you or your students are not breaking any copyright laws.
How does it work? Flickr and Google Images are two popular websites that contain millions of digital images available for download. To address copyright concerns, Flickr allows the photographer (i.e. – original author) to assign a Creative Commons license to any photographic image they’ve placed on the Flickr website.
What is Creative Commons? Creative Commons is non-profit organization that has put a licensing system in place so that individuals, companies, and institutions have access to a straightforward and standardized method of attaching automatic copyright permissions to their creative works. Creative Commons is NOT only limited to images, but can also include works of text, sounds, and video. I recommend that you click on this link to read more about the different types of Creative Commons licenses.
Video Tutorial: For more information on how to search and use images from Flickr and Google Images without breaking any copyright laws, please click the large play button below:
