Find Free and Fair-Use Photos
Grabbing images from Google is easy. You search, copy, and paste. It’s a no-brainer and
often the first thing students do when
creating any sort of digital project that
requires images.
But how do your students know if
they have permission to use someone
else’s photos? To be in alignment with
the digital citizenship strand of NETS•S
(Students understand human, cultural,
and societal issues related to technology
and practice legal and ethical behavior),
students need to understand copyright
and how to find royalty-free images that
are OK to use in projects.
One example of a digital activity
that requires royalty-free media is a
book trailer project I often assign to
my fifth graders. Students create 60-
to 90-second movie trailers of books
they have read. The trailer consists
of a series of images and text that
work together to tell the story of the
book that excites readers without giving away too much of the plot. The
trailer is coupled with a royalty-free
soundtrack (we use Soundzabound at
www.soundzabound.com) to add to
the drama and auditory aesthetics of
the final product.
