PhotosforClass is a fantastic site for images for you and your students. What I love about it is that every picture comes with the attribution framed at the bottom of the image. Makes being a good digital citizen and respecting the property of others as easy as search, click, and download!
Pixabay is one of my favorite go-to sites for beautiful public domain images that I can use for my own projects, or projects with students. Being a good digital citizen means always doing the right thing when online, and using images that are in the public domain is a great way to respect other's property. Though public domain images do not need to be cited, I always have my students credit the owner as well as the site.
Photopin is a great site for images to use on your blog (or any other site) because they are downloadable by the size you need, and they are creative commons which means they are free for you to use as long as you accredit the owner. The best thing about Photopin is the html code that you can embed on your blog that instantly and properly places the photo credit right where you want it!
Bring your class to this creative commons website when you need beautiful images that they can use for their digital projects. It's so easy to use and you can teach your students to attribute the image in their Photo Credits at the same time.
"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. " Browsable by subject or topic of photo you can find printable images and photos on everything from American Sign Language to the Weather.
"Compfight is an image search engine tailored to efficiently locate images for blogs, comps, inspiration, and research." Bookmark this and use with your students when they need to find images that are labeled for reuse with attribution. Teach responsible use and find beautiful images as well!
CCSearch is a way to search for images from other image search engines like Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, Fotopedia and more. Search through CCSearch and images are located through those other sights. Creative Commons Search is not a search engine, but it gives access to these other image search tools. A great way to find the images you need when you need them!
You Tube's audio library is my go-to music site for downloadable music. Search by duration, genre, ambience, then download your song. Songs that require attribution are shown with an attribution symbol and the information you need to copy and paste into your project. Need a sound effect? You Tube has hundreds to choose from!
Incometech is a fantastic site with all sounds of royalty-free music for your storytelling pleasure. You can filter by "feels", tempo, length, and genre. Listen to a preview then download and add to your latest and greatest project. Each song comes with an attribution that you can copy and paste into the project credits to cite your work.
Pond 5: The Public Domain Project
The Public Domain Project is an amazing resource for all things history related: media footage, audio, images, 3D files- all free for you to use. Search through thousands of historic media footage, sound effects, and more for your next creative project.
Want to create fast-paced music videos and slideshows? Animoto is the easy and fast way to do this. Upload your own images and/or video, add some text, select or use your own music and click "render" and in about 30 seconds you've got a 30 second animated movie. Sign up for the all-access pass or get an educator account and your videos can now be full-length. Use this with your students as a way for them to introduce and tell about themselves; show what they know about an area they are studying, advertise a book-- the possibilities are only as limited as your imagination.
Want to make an explainer video that looks professionally done? Then look no further than Moovly. Moovly lets you be as creative as you want to be adding text, images, transitions, audio, narration, and more.
Want to make an explainer video in 3 easy steps? MySimpleShow is a new tool that literally does the work for you. Start from a template, from scratch, OR from your uploaded power point and MySimpleShow adds photos based on your text. Switch them up, add your own, or keep as it, you then move on to step 3: adding narration. Again, record your own voice or use theirs and your video is DONE! Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
Infographics are a great way to turn text and data into visuals that your students and audience will appreciate because they pull out the important information into a visually appealing layout. Edudemic has pulled 10 of the best, easiest, and most popular into this article. Click to learn more about Easel.ly, Visual.ly, Piktochart and more.
PixTeller is an easy-to-use site that turns your quotes into beautiful printable posters, documents, banners, and headers that you can print and share. It's free to create an account and once there you can browse the selection of educational quotes or create your own.
Fake Movie Poster is exactly that-- a site to create a fake movie poster using your image and text. A great way to share information about a historical character, a character from a novel, a famous person, a number-- yes, what could you say about a number!, or even yourself. It's as easy as choosing a template, uploading an image, adding your text to the given prompts, and then sharing your creation. 1,2,3 go!
Picovico reminds me a bit of Animoto (see below) in that it is a fun and easy way to make great videos from your photos. Choose your style, add your images, include some text, choose the music from your own or their library, and voila, you have created a video you can easily share on Facebook or YouTube.
Poster My Wall is a great way to make collages with images and text. Select your template, add your images and text, rearrange as necessary and download your creation.
Mural.ly is a drag and drop images, documents, spreadsheets, links, and YouTube videos to create a multi-media mural sharing your learning around a topic. It's like a tri-fold presentation only hyper!
Haiku Deck now has a web version in addition to their already popular tablet version. Haiku Deck is a beautiful way to tell your story using images with some text. They have templates and create your own. Why give a boring presentation when you can create a Haiku!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then try ThingLink. ThingLink is a way to let your pictures tell the story- literally. Upload an image, then make it interactive by adding text, links, other images, audio (using audioboo) and videos from You Tube.
Voicethread is an online method of having a discussion. It is free to educators once you create a user name and password. There are examples on there from teachers around the world using it in their classrooms. You can upload your document and get comments, upload a drawing or photograph and have people discuss it or upload whole presentations. Use it in your art class and upload photos of paintings and have the class comment on what they see, use it in math class and upload a problem for children to explain how they solved it. Imagine using it with your class and a class you penpal with from another school or even another continent. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination.
"Poster Yourself" is their tag line but it is so much more than that! Edu.glogster offers you the ability to create an interactive, vibrant, colorful page that can hold images, podcasts, videos and text. There are multiple categories of stickers, frames, players, papers and walls (backgrounds) that you can use to personalize your glog. Think of the possiblilities for your classroom: create a glog for your "star of the week," let your "star" create their own glog in class, create a glog instead of the traditional biography report or poster, use a glog instead of a newsletter and let it include video highlights of your class, the ideas are endless!