We could go and take photos, but photos for some of the terminology would have been impossible to get, as most of this work was done last winter. Like, photos of specific plants during winter. Also, the time invested in taking photos and adjusting them would be to much, knowing that there should be good photos available. We could buy photos from a stock company, oh wait, we are a public community college; asking for money to buy a couple hundred photos for one teacher and one specific class is not likely to be approved.
So what is available for free. The internet is the wild, wild west when it comes to finding materials and we do have an obligation and desire to obey copyright. Creative commons images and public domain images are the best source! It just so happens in the last couple years, the resources for creative commons images and public domain images have grown leaps and bounds. Very exciting. When I first started my position 11 years ago, there was very little available and easy to find on the internet in terms of creative commons or public domain images.
What is creative commons? You don't know, Only the greatest thing since sliced bread!
Public domain according to the Copyright and Fair Use Information provided on Stanford University Libraries website tells us that works no longer protected by intellectual property laws (a.k.a. really old stuff) fall under the public domain area. Meaning they can be used, edited, etc... Some works created by or for the U.S. government fall under public domain. My best advice about using public domain works, verify from a good source that it is public domain before using it. Just because you see on a website, "free, public domain" doesn't always mean it is.
Another term related to creative commons and public domain is Open Educational Resources, often referred to as OER. This is another area that is growing leaps and bounds, more and more educators are contributing to this concept of shared resources for education and that's exactly what OER is.
Now that we've discussed the terminology, let's find some images. Here are the sources I usually use to find images.
If your school is a Microsoft Licensed Products school, in most cases you will be using MS products to organize or layout your images. Start with finding images, via insert > clipart. I find PowerPoint the easiest to search for clip art with. The Microsoft Image gallery is actually a pretty good source. Search their online website, also, I sometimes find images that don't show up in my searches within PowerPoint. Within PowerPoint on the clip art panel, you will find a link to the gallery called "Find more at Office.com"
Many government sites provide photo galleries and the images can be used under fair use or creative commons for educational purposes. This url is a good place to start: http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml. Links to many US government photo galleries are listed. As the site states, be sure to check the usage guidelines for each gallery/image you use. If it lists a photographer, it's always a good idea to give credit to the photographer, somewhere in your work.
You can also search by state for Photo and Multimedia galleries through the USA.gov site. I also find a lot of good images on the USDA Agricultural Research Service Image Gallery. Another good options is the National Science Digital Library website. Many organizations provide an image gallery for educational use. The United States Antarctic Program Photo Library is yet another good source. The Earth Science World Image Bank is a great source of science images for education. The National Institute of Health is another government website that offers several photo galleries: http://www.nih.gov/about/nihphotos.htm
Some smaller photo sites that have been developed for the purpose of sharing images under Creative Commons are FreeFoto.com, http://morguefile.com/, http://pics.tech4learning.com/ (specifically for educators). Another is http://pixabay.com/, I have used this site a lot lately and find really good, high quality images.
A great source of creative commons images is flickr creative commons: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ and you can also use http://photopin.com/. Photo Pin is a really easy site to use, it searches the flickr creative commons images. I would recommend when you find the image you want, click the get photo and then copy the url, paste it in a new tab and just check the source of the image on flickr to make sure it is in fact a creative commons image. I do find good images this way and like their search features. Hope these sites help you find some great images for educational use. I'd love to hear what other resources you use?
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