Creative Commons explained

Welcome back to the new school year! Understanding copyright continues to be an issue for many educators. I love this short video, which explains creative commons in a clear and simple way - excellent for both teachers and students.

Reverse image search

Teachers are becoming more and more copyright aware and wanting to model ethical use of digital images in their classrooms. Do you have an image and you are unsure where it came from? Would you like to check if it is an image you are free to use? Or perhaps you would like check how one of your images is being used across the internet? TinEye is reverse image search engine that is free for non-commercial use. Simply upload an image, or type the URL of an image and hit Search to see where it exists on the internet. Your image may not be found, but TinEye is constantly trawling the web and updating the image database all the time so try again at a later date.

The same people - Idée Labs have a range of other visual search engines. We love them all! You can search images that contain a set of defined colours, search for images that are similar to one you identify or search for images by tags. The results are displayed in a beautiful mosaic of colour. Try Idée Labs now, but be warned - you may be completely absorbed in image searching for some time!

Copyright - an important issue for teachers

Copyright is an important and, at times, confusing issue for all teachers. For example, many teachers think they can copy up to 10% of a textbook without any associated costs. Whilst Part VB of the Copyright Act allows teachers to copy up to 10% of the textbook, the NSW Department of Education and Communities does still pay the writer of the book for the portion copied. This includes paper and digital copies. With more and more schools now storing resources on school intranets and learning management systems (e.g. Moodle), a clear understanding of copyright is vital.
To support teachers in their understanding of copyright, we have included the following resources on our website:
• Copyright FAQs – summarises ‘the basics’, for individual teachers
• SMART Notebook presentation – examines the importance of “getting it right” with regard to copyright in the Languages classroom. Good for prompting discussion at faculty meetings. Note: If you are having trouble downloading the Notebook, right-click on the link and select 'Save As'. In the drop-down menu at the bottom, select 'Save as type: All files', then add .notebook to the end of the file name.
• Copyright in the digital world (PowerPoint) – provides comprehensive advice for all educators.
• Copyright for teachers – links to key copyright websites (includes a student-friendly version).

Copyright-free images
• Microsoft Clip Art: Teachers are free to use Microsoft Clip Art images in the resources they create for the classroom, as long as these resources are not sold.
• Creative Commons enables teachers to look for ‘free for educational use’ images from a range of websites, including Flickr.
• Photopin provides a similar service, making searching and attribution simple. Excellent for bloggers who like an easy-to-use interface.
photo credit: opensourceway via photopin cc