- keeping the momentum of the project going and not getting bogged down (especially with the younger kids) with citations
- keeping the focus on the project and not spending too much time searching for a copyright friendly image
- plus I was just getting started teaching and there were all the things that go along with that to contend with
Any application with clip art such as Microsoft Office and Pixie is helpful. With the younger students I use applications like Haiku Deck because it makes searching and using creative commons images easy and automatically cites the source. I also like it because it is simple to use and helps students to have an aesthetically pleasing presentation. Another app that automatically cites sources is Weebly when you use the "search" for images function. I encourage the fifth grade students to use that function when they are building their own websites.
When I work with younger students (grades 1-4), I coordinate with the classroom teacher to determine what photos the students need for their project. Then I create a page of images that students can use. I include the citation information and we reference the project back to that page. Here are some examples:
- Favorite Foods (Grade 1)
- Great Americans Project (Grade 2)
For the older students, I try and find image search engines that help them find copyright friendly images (creative commons or public domain) and/or help them with the citations. The two I recommend most frequently are Wikimedia Commons and Comfight.
I like Wikimedia Commons because it encourages people to contribute copyright friendly images and in most cases they provide the citation information, so students can just copy and paste it. | I like Comfight because it lets people search for creative commons only images and it provides html citation information. They can also click on the image to get the citation information. The images are from Flickr, so there are more everyday photos (e.g. puppy, kitten, vacation spots) than Wikimedia Commons. |
It is very exciting to see a movement by organizations to open up their image collections and make them available to the public in a copyright friendly manner. This is happening with museums, libraries and other organizations. I add links to the different collections to my student site under "clip art and images" which they can find under "research".