About this list
You will find several topic headings in this list. The first section includes a link to my list about creative commons - great links for learning and teaching students about creative commons.
Next you will find a section with links to libraries of photos you can search and use and a section with libraries of historical images too.
There is a section with links to photo editing tools and cool things you can do with flickr followed by sections with links to sources of educational clipart and webpage background images.
What is creative commons?
Sources of images and search tools
"Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection."
Pixabay is "a repository for outstanding public domain images... You can freely use any image from this website in digital and printed format, for personal and commercial use, without attribution requirement to the original author." A link back to Pixabay and the photographer's profile models appropriate attribution.
"Photographs, maps, paintings and posters span centuries and the globe. Audio recordings take you to North Carolina's past, the woods and ponds outside your school, and the streets of Southeast Asia."
A great source of photos and other images, many of which are licensed under Creative Commons licensing. With careful attention to the type of license (using the dropdown under "Any license," you can find many great images that can be legally used without permission from the owner as long as you provide attribution and adhere to terms of license for each photo.
Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.
"Behold is capable of recognising a number of visual concepts in pictures. You can ask Behold to return images that look like one of these concepts. This new type of search can be flexibly combined with regular text-based search." Visit the "About" page to see videos showing sample searches and how Behold can improve on the results from a flickr search.
This father and son team make their living selling beatutiful photographs, but if you check the link at the bottom of the page (Educational Use of Our Photos), you will see their permission to use their photos for school projects - with appropriate attribution.
"Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft (Mostly!) Images and Sound for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc."
Even though Google's image search will return lots of cool images, keep in mind that Google just searches the Web for images and displays what it finds. You should NEVER use an image you find this way without first checking out its source (the page Google found it on), the context, who owns the image, and whether or not you have permission to use it. Most of the time, the images are not meant for you to just take and use. Remember just because you CAN right click and copy an image, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
However the great news is you can filter results by usage rights - after you search, use the Tools button and the Usage rights drop-down list to limit your search to those labeled for reuse (or reuse with modification if needed). If you use Google, be SURE to take this extra step - you'll find many of the results come from flickr.
Historical image collections
Good collections for images to use in social studies and other subjects where you are looking for historical images.
Good resources for social studies - read carefully as you link from here to other sites about usage rights associated with images. To locate collections of photos, use the Advanced search and choose photography as a filter.
The mission of The Commons is to "increase access to publicly-held photography collections." Be sure to check out the participating institutions list for a list of all the organizations, museums, government agencies, etc. that have contributed. For each one, you can search images it has contributed - try using the "sets" link to see related images organized together. Check the license for each photo!
All photos in the LOC photostream have no known restrictions on publication. Check http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/195_copr.html for what that means and how to cite Library of Congress photos when they are used.
Digital images from Library of Congress. You must read the "rights" information to determine usage privileges.
Read about usage rights for photos from the Library of Congress collections.
"WorldImages database provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project... It contains approximately 100,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery... You are free to use these images for non-profit educational purposes, but we ask that you give credit to the copyright holders who retain rights to the images. These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License."
Photo editing tools & cool things to do with flickr
Free and quick online tool for editing images
Create a magazine cover for a digital photo
This cool tool allows you to search for Flickr photos, and then you can download the image "stamped" at the bottom with attribution to the photographer and type of license. It also provides a link to the original photo on Flickr.
Type in a location as your search term to find photos that have been geotagged in Flickr to see photos taken by others in that location.