Doris Duggins's List: Creative Common Websites For Us

Flickr is more than a website for amazing picture searches. Now you can look for videos as well. Their slogan is Share Your Photos and Videos and Watch the World. A great feature students and teachers can use is the geotags and the world map. Geography lessons will be enriched with this feature. In addition, students are now able to upload and organize photographs using mobile devices. Teachers and students can sign in using their Facebook, Yahoo, or Google IDs. Flickr would be a great website to use for lessons about the Five Themes of Geography. In particular the theme of Place comes to mind because it answers the question, "What will I see?"

The Internet Archive, in collaboration with the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, is working to keep "Open and free access to literature and other writings that has long been considered essential to education and to the maintenance of an open society." The site is not visually appealing but what you will find is treasure chest. Information on this site divided into four sections: moving images, live music archive, audio and text. Of special interest is the Cornet Instructional Films that were shown in American schools beginning in the 1940's. I found a nugget titled Right or Wrong Making Moral Decisions. Students can use films like this one in Civics class as they answer essential questions such as, "Is it Right to Hide a Law Breaker from Justices? It can be use in a Media Production class by having students create a 2011 version. It can be used to address and explore the issue of "snitching" by responding i to a CMT/CAPT writing prompt. Take a look at the Youth Media Section and the story Love of the Lei a lesson in rights - freedom of expression.

Are you looking for clipart that isn't your run of the mill clip art? Would you like something updated, contemporary and original? Then Open Clip Library is for you. Open Clip Art Library has a collection section and you can find various themes such as Presidents, Winter themes and Chinese New Year 2011. Once you use the site and become familiar with a particular artist you can search for him/her by clicking on the Artist tab. This website list five top priorities for users: Students are expected to upload their artwork, use the clip art and make comments, become librarians, develop an Open Clip Art Library and help develop their web engine- Aiki Framework.

I love music but absolutely don't know what site to use to find free music except Garage Band. To the rescue: Jamendo. Students love music and when given a project often will add music from their ipods. For students and teachers it would be easY and worry free to use a web site like Jamendo. One of the first things you will see on the site is this, "Discover the artists who are on Jamendo. They authorize free and legal download of their music." The site is divided into three sections: One for listerners, one for artist, and one for professionals. Students can create an account, use music from other artist, and publish their own music to be used by others. I have a beautiful Africa PowerPoint Presentation that needs music because it is a visual slideshow. Now I can add music without worrying about breaking a 20-30 second rule and so can you.

Books for free can be used for students who have difficulty reading or for students with vision impairments. Once I had a student with a concussion and he couldn’t read during our silent reading time. Having an audio book would have been a wonderful solution. Books can be downloaded to ipods or MP3 players. Have students misplaced some of your novels? Do you need multiple copies of a book? Who has money in their budget for more books? Well here is your solution. This site would eliminate the problem because you could download multiple copies of the book or you could download and make CD’s. I would use this site to download copies of Swiss Family Robinson to use with a lesson about Human Environment Interaction.