Welcome to the seventh step in our free professional learning series on class and student blogging!

The aim of this step is to:

  1. Discuss copyright, fair use, and using images on blogs.
  2. Introduce you to Creative Commons.
  3. Explain how to find and add Creative Commons images to posts.
  4. Define free and public domain images, and explain how to source them.


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Introduction To Copyright, Fair Use, And Images In Posts

You can’t just use any image you like in a blog post.

Why? Because unless stated otherwise, the law automatically grants full “copyright” over any creative work a person makes.

Using images
Dexter the cat hates those that steal his photos…

You may be thinking it’s okay because as educators, we have a few more flexible rules, called “Fair Use”, to play by.

Fair use, in some cases, means you may have more flexible copyright rules if an image, text, video, etc. is being used for educational purposes.

The trouble is, most of the laws and rules that cover fair use and education were written well before the invention of the web. They don’t apply to use of copyright material on the internet. Using copyright material leaves you open to copyright infringement.

So what does this mean?

You need to:

  1. Learn what images you are and aren’t allowed to use, and why.
  2. Learn how to correctly attribute images you are allowed to use.
  3. Educate your students that you can’t just use any images online on your blogs (or other digital work).
  4. Show them how to source and attribute images they are allowed to use.

Understanding digital copyright is an essential skill we need to understand and teach our students.

Refer to The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons for comprehensive information on the use of images, curriculum docs, text and quotes, music, and videos.

The safest way to source images for your blog is to either:

  • Use Creative Commons images.
  • Use free (Creative Commons Zero) or public domain images.
  • Use your own photos or use images you’ve created.


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Including The Source Is Not Enough

A situation we commonly see on blogs is where someone uses an image they found online and then include a link to the site they got it from.

For example,

Image from Kathleen Morris kathleenamorris.com

Just because you link to the source of an image, does not mean you can use it. You would need to ask the image creator for permission.

Read on to find out about Creative Commons and ways you can find images to use — legally and ethically.

Introduction to Creative Commons

Creative Commons, founded in 2001, is an organization that provides free content licenses that people can apply to their work. These are known as Creative Commons licenses.

When you license your work with Creative Commons, you are allowing people to use it without having to ask permission, provided they use it in the manner stated in your Creative Commons license.

The reason people use Creative Commons licenses is to make it easier for everyone to share and adapt creative work without the concern of copyright infringement.

Watch this video on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons licenses are used for books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs, and other audio and visual recordings.

If an image, or website, doesn’t include a Creative Commons license, or isn’t public domain work, or doesn’t indicate that the content is free to use, then it is automatically implied that all content is copyright and you shouldn’t use it! Put simply — unless stated otherwise, it is copyright.

There are websites that provide public domain images that are free to use, or have their own free to use licensing, but you need to make sure you follow their terms and conditions of use.

For those wondering, unless a blogger includes a Creative Commons license, all content on that blog is automatically the copyright of the blogger.

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Creative Commons Licenses

There are several different types of Creative Commons licenses people use depending on what restriction(s) they want to apply to their work.

Here is a quick summary of the different types of Creative Commons licenses:

Attribution CC BY

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), remix (to adapt the work) and use it for commercial purposes provided you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NoDerivs

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and use it for commercial purposes provided you do not alter, transform or build upon the work and you attribute it in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and remix (to adapt the work) provided it isn’t used for commercial purposes, you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor and you distribute it under the same license.

Attribution-ShareAlike

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and remix (to adapt the work) and use it for commercial purposes provided if you alter, transform or build upon the work provided you distribute it under the similar license. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NonCommercial

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and remix (to adapt the work) provided it isn’t used for commercial purposes.  You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) provided you do not alter, transform or build upon the work or use it for commercial purposes and you attribute it in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Confused About Licenses?

If you want to add a Creative Commons license to your own work and you’re not sure what one you should add, try this license chooser tool. It also gives you the right license graphic to use.


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Flickr Creative Commons Images

One of the most common sources of Creative Commons images used by bloggers is Flickr (an online photo sharing website).

Unfortunately, it is often assumed the Flickr images are licensed under Creative Commons and are allowed to be used. This isn’t the case.

  • Images marked as “All Rights Reserved” are copyrighted and require permission from the person who uploaded it to Flickr.
  • Images with “Some rights reserved” means the Flickr user has applied a Creative Commons license to their photo and you can use the image in the manner specified by the license.

If you look at images directly on Flickr always check to see which license applies to ensure you only use the image in the manner specified by the license.

The license is listed below the image.

For those you might be allowed to use, click on “Some rights reserved” for further explanation.

Flickr Licence

This takes you to the Creative Commons license where you can read how you are allowed to use the image.

Creative Commons

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Finding Creative Commons Images

A useful option for finding Flickr Creative Commons images is to use one of the great Flickr Search Engines.

Compfight

Compfight

Compfight is one of the most popular Flickr Search engines. It provides a range of search options including search by tags only vs. all the text, licenses, the option to show or hide originals, and turn on/off the safe content filter.

All images above the line returned by your Compfight search are professional stock photos — they aren’t free to use.  Those below the line are Flickr Photos.

Which images can be used

Photos for Class

Photos for Class

Photos for Class is a student friendly place for searching safe images from Creative Commons Flickr (and more recently, Pixabay Safe Search).

The downloaded images include attribution of the photographer and the image license terms.

Multicolr Search Lab

multicolor search

Multicolr Search Lab allows you to search Flickr images by color. This is a handy tool when you’re trying to match specific colors. All you need to do is select up to 5 colors.

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Creative Commons And Image Attribution

It’s a requirement of all Creative Commons Licenses that you attribute the original author. This means you can’t just use a Creative Commons image without correctly acknowledging the person who originally created it.

Within or at the end your blog post you must:

  • attribute the image,
  • include their copyright information,
  • and you should link the photo back to its original photo page.

Here’s an example of image attribution:

Pink Cake

Photo by Chotda licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
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Use The Pixabay Plugin To Add Creative Commons Images To Post

The Pixabay plugin is a quick and easy tool to find quality public domain images from Pixabay and upload them to your site with just one click.

Below is an example of an image inserted using Pixabay plugin.

elljay / Pixabay

Using Pixabay

Once you have activated the Pixabay plugin in Plugins > All you use it as follows:

1. Go to Posts > Add New (or Pages > Add New)

Add New Post

2. Write your post.

3. Place your cursor where you want the image to appear and then click on the Pixabay icon.

Pixabay icon

4.  Add your search term and press enter.

Add search term

5.  Click on the image you want to insert into your post.

Click on Image

6.  This uploads the image from Pixabay into your media library.

Upload Pixaby image to media library

7.  Select the Alignment, Size and then click Insert into post.

Size and alignment

7.  The image is added to the post with a link to the user who uploaded it to Pixabay.

ulleo / Pixabay

Pixabay Settings

You can change the Pixabay options in Settings > Pixabay.   In most situations, you would not change these settings.

Pixabay Settings

Add An Image From The Compfight Website

Compfight is an image search engine that uses Creative Commons images from Flickr.

Here is how to add a photo using the Compfight website:

1. Go to Compfight.

2.  Add your search term and then click Enter.

Search on Compfight website

3.  Click on Creative Commons on the search results page.

Creative commons

4.  Click on the Creative Commons image you want to use (from below the line).

You can only use an image from below the line.  All images above the line are professional stock photos and can only be used if you purchase them.

Comfight results

5. This launches a pop up image window.

Comfight photo

6.  Click on ‘Download‘ next to the size you want to use to download it onto your computer.

Image size

7.  Copy the HTML.

Copy paste the HTML code

8.  Go to Posts > Add New

Add new post

9. Place your cursor where you want the image to appear and then click on the Add Media icon.

Add Media

10.  In the Add Media window click on the Upload files and then Select Files.

Select File

11.  Find the photo you downloaded on your computer and then click Open to start uploading the image.

12. While your image is uploading you will see a progress bar.

13.  Once the image has uploaded paste the HTML code into the caption field.

Insert media

14.  Select the size you want to insert from the dropdown menu next to ‘Size‘ in the attachment display settings.

Select image size

13.  Click Insert into Post.

14. Your image will insert into your post and should look like the example below with the photo credit below it!

Photo Credit: Dustpuppy72 Flickr via Compfight cc

Free And Public Domain Images

There are websites that provide public domain images that are free to use, or have their own free to use licensing.

Some of these are licensed with a Creative Commons Zero license. This is the least restrictive Creative Commons license and means there are no restrictions on use and no attribution required (although it can be polite to still attribute a Creative Commons Zero image).

Public domain works are those works that:

  1. Automatically enter the public domain when created because they are not copyrightable.
  2. Their copyright has expired.
  3. Their creator has assigned their work to the public domain.

Public domain images are free and available for unrestricted use.

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Attributing Free And Public Domain Images

Public domain images and free to use images may not have a strict legal requirement of attribution, depending on the jurisdiction of content reuse, and depending on the terms and conditions of use of content from the website, but attribution is recommended to give correct provenance for most of these sites.

This means within or at the end your blog post it is recommended to attribute the image, include their copyright information and link the photo back to its original photo page.

Here’s a list of free and public domain websites:

All the images on Pixabay and Unsplash are Creative Commons Zero. They do not require any attribution and can be modified.

You need to refer to the terms and conditions on the other websites to see if attribution is needed and how it is meant to be added.

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Add Image From Pixabay

Here is how to add an image from Pixabay if you don’t want to use the plugin as described above:

1. Go to Pixabay

2.  Enter your search term and press Enter.

Add search term

3.  Click on the image you want to use (you can’t use any image in the sponsored images row).

4.  This takes you to the image page.

5.  Click on Free Download, select the size you want to download and then click Download. Save the image to your computer.

Click on Download

6.  Go to Posts > Add New

Add New

7. Place your cursor where you want the image to appear and then click on the Add Media icon.

Click an Add Media

8.  In the Add Media window click on the Upload files and then Select Files.

Add media

9.  Find the photo you downloaded on your computer and then click Open to start uploading the image.

10.  Select the size you want to insert from the drop-down menu next to ‘Size‘ in the attachment display settings.

Select Size

11.  Click Insert into Post.

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More Sources Of Free And Public Domain Images

Here are some good free and public domain image websites to use with students:

Openclipart

openclipart

Openclipart is a gallery of clip art images that have been released into the public domain that can be used freely, for personal and commercial use, without attribution.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository for public domain and freely-licensed educational media content, including images, sound and video clips.

Images and other media on Wikimedia Commons are almost all under some kind of free license (usually public domain, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation license).

Clicking on an image or media file on Wikimedia Commons takes you to the information page for that file. This is where you’ll find the information supplied by the uploader, including the copyright status, the copyright owner, and the license conditions.

The following image from Wikimedia Commons is license under GNU Free Documentation and Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0.

License information

The Commons

Flickr Commons

The Commons was set up to help share photos and images from the World’s public photography archives.  There are over 56 institutions contributing images to The Commons.

A special rights statement — ‘No known copyright restrictions’ — was created to provide a copyright framework allowing institutions to add their photos to Flickr Commons and define how the public could use their work through their own rights statement.

Once you’ve located an image on The Commons you should click on the ‘No known copyright restrictions’ beneath the image.

This takes you to the Rights Statement for the Institution who supplied the image.  This is where you’ll find information on how the institution would like the image to be attributed.

Attribution

Below is an example of attributing an image from The Commons.

River Cave, Margaret River [Western Australia, 2] [Frank Hurley] Courtesy of the National Library of Australia
River Cave, Margaret River [Western Australia, 2] [Frank Hurley] Courtesy of the National Library of Australia

Getty Open Content images

Getty Open Content

Getty Open Content images are all available digital images to which the Getty holds the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose. No permission is required.

The Getty requests that you use the following source credit when reproducing an image:

Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Here’s an example of attributing an image from Getty’s open content program.

Vincent van Gogh [Dutch, 1853 - 1890], Irises, Dutch, 1889, Oil on canvas, Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
Vincent van Gogh [Dutch, 1853 – 1890], Irises, Dutch, 1889, Oil on canvas, Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images is an American Stock photo agency which allows their images to be used for free for non-commercial use. Getty Images have no relationship with the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Getty Open Content images.

Once you have found an image on Getty Images you can embed it into a post or page using their embed code


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Using Your Own Images

The alternative options for sourcing images from other websites are to upload your own photos or create images using online tools.

Image editing tool

Here are some ideas for creating your own images:

  1. Photo Editors like Befunkyfd’s Flickr Tools
  2. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle or WordArt.com
  3. Fun photo tools CutMyPic, Glitterfly, PhotoFunia
  4. Drawing tools like Google Drawings or Auto Draw

Note: Many online tools are 13+ so check the terms and conditions if working with younger students.


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Using Student Photos Online

Even though 99.99% of visitors to your class blog will be well meaning parents, students, community members, or interested visitors from around the world, the unfortunate reality is that those with bad intentions can also visit public sites. There are also cases where the personal background of a student might mean they need more privacy and anonymity than others.

Decisions on whether to use student photographs or not are often about protecting educators from having problems with parents, caregivers, or administrators who have concerns about cyber-predators.

Information that helps someone identify a student should always be shared with care.

Before using any student photos online, even on a private blog, you need to:

  • Find out your school, district or Education Department guidelines for sharing student photos online — make sure you follow these guidelines.
  • Find out if there are forms caregivers and students need to sign to consent to use of student photos online — make sure you have all forms signed by parents or caregivers.
  • Respect the wishes of caregivers and students while understanding consent to use photos can be withdrawn at any time.

Remember it isn’t possible to stop parents, students, and caregivers from downloading photos and sharing them on their social networks, even if you are using a private blog.  If you don’t want a photo shared on a social network then don’t upload the photo.

Our recommendations:

  • Don’t use student photos for avatars. There are many tools available where students can create their own avatars such as those listed on The Student Blogging Challenge.
  • If you do use any photos of students – don’t use their name in the file name and don’t refer to the student by name, even their first name, in the caption under the photo or in the post.
  • Avoid the use of any photos that can identify individual students. A safe compromise is to only use photo taken from behind students. Some teachers also like to add emojis over the students’ faces using tools like Luna Pic (desktop) or various mobile apps.

Here’s an example of the emoji approach from teacher, Rob Kelly.

Refer to Should You Use Student Photos Online for examples of student photos that are less likely to cause issues.


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Your Task

We’d like you to add your voice and ideas to our ongoing conversation about student blogging by completing the following tasks:

  1. Add a Creative Commons image or public domain image to a post. Or try using any of the tools mentioned in this post. Then leave a comment with a link to your post so we can take a look.
  2. Read through the most recent comments in reply to this step, click on a link to someone else’s post to check out the image they added. Then leave a response to their comment.

295 thoughts on “Step 7: Images, Copyright, And Creative Commons

  1. Hello,

    Thank you for all the information about copyright and Creative Commons. I believe I’ve moved to the next level with understanding after working through this challenge. Now that my students are blogging this year for the first time, not just me, it’s prudent for me to be more informed about copyright, Creative Commons, use of images and use of student generated photos.

    I took some time during this step of the challenge to examine the images on my blog and did some revisions.

    I love the Compfight plug-in. Here are 2 recent links to a post and a page with images sourced from Compfight:
    msboychuk.me/2015/10/14/read-this-if-you-dare/
    msboychuk.me/how-to-comment/

    Ms B.

  2. This challenge was very informative. Learning about graphics sites that are okay to share is be very helpful. I linked a youtube video showcasing the sounds of the mellophone in my Marching Illini post.

    1. Hi Mario, I love the clean, fresh, look and feel to your blog. From the feedback in the comments section, your task seems to have been a success!
      Eugene Brown, Edublogs Support

    2. I think the idea you had with the video and questions about their holidays after was really good. I might use this myself for after the Easter hols.

    1. Hi Mr. Learmonth,

      I like how relevant that amazing NASA sun photo is to your post. I love the Compfight plugin, too. It makes the search for and attribution of appropriate photos much easier.

      Thanks for sharing,
      Ms B.

  3. How easy is Compfight? I thought I was going to have issues because the site is blocked by the Education Department’s filter. The plug-in has no problems, however, and the searching facility and attribution is a breeze.

  4. What about images generated from screen shots on Google Maps. Are they allowed to be used if they are attributed to google maps?

  5. I find comp flight a great resource, it is excellent how you integrated it into the backend of edublogs. I haven’t added pictures of my students yet, only of their work or from behind while they were working. They are keen to have their photos up and we have permission to, but there is some good advice here of not having individual photos up nor naming the child underneath the picture

    1. Hi maistirscoile

      The Compfight plugin makes it really easy to add photos with attribution. Great to hear you find it helps!

      Sue Waters
      Support Manager
      Edublogs | CampusPress

    1. Well done, Dominie! I see you already have comments on that page. I love the fact that you are using your blog to inform, and ‘teach’ your students and parents.
      Eugene Brown, Edublogs Support

  6. I thought about this when I wanted to put a picture in the heading of my blog. I didn’t know how to act upon this so I finally took my own picture an used it.
    I have more knowledge about this now, but I will have to go through this post again when I need to inset one in my blog.

  7. I use pictures of my kids on my blog and class website. Many parents want to see what is going on in our classroom. Pictures are only used with written signed permission from parents and names are never used.

  8. Hi Sue,

    Interesting conversation to be had with students about copyright. I haven’t included any creative common images, however I have uploaded an image created using Tagxedo. Students and I created it for Harmony Day last term. It highlights our understanding of harmony. It can be accessed here http://pnpsstage1.edublogs.org/12-matthews/
    I intend to use more creative common images once I have had a more detailed discussion with the students about copyright.

  9. My students all found how to add images quickly, and I discovered we needed to have some copyright lessons early on. I still find some students struggle with being careful with their image selections, but they are usually pretty good about it. I don’t allow them to incorporate any personal images unless it is a work product that doesn’t give away any personal information. I think there are some kids that would like to add photos of their artwork, but I haven’t suggested that – I will add that to my list of suggestions!

  10. As a school we do use kids images on our website/blogs. We have written permission from parents to allow this. My class blog is one of the key ways we communicate between school and home and the children seem to be a lot more engaged when they feature. I do however avoid linking their image with any identifiable features.

    1. Indeed, if handled correctly there is a place for using student images on school blogs. My sons school operate a similar policy to your school, we gave written permission and his image has been used on their blog, but never with any identifiable information. We like seeing the pictures because we don’t get to see him in class, and he likes seeing that he’s an “internet celebrity” 🙂

      Elliott
      Edublogs Support

  11. Thanks for sharing this information. Do you mind if I share this on my blog with our college students? One of the requirements in the program is to create picture files to be used with young children. Too many of the students are finding images on the web, printing and using them without any attribution. This would be a great reference for future classes.

    1. Hi Dinah

      Glad the information helped! How did you want to share the information with your students? Did you want to share a link to this page or do you mean share it a different way?

      Sue Waters
      Support Manager
      Edublogs | CampusPress

  12. I like the idea of having student pictures on the blog, in theory. However, as a parent of two sons, I am not sure how okay I am with the idea of putting their images out there. I plan to use images on my blog ONLY while doing labs and it will be of the finished product, not the student faces. I think that you can never be too safe and if parents want to see hands-on, up-close action from the classroom — they should come visit. Visitors are always welcome.

  13. Hi there,
    I am not sure if this is okay but at the moment I use my own images or if I use a video or and image in link it to the site so people know it is not mine.
    Is this okay? Can I keep going this or is there something I can add to make it more legal?
    This is my site so you can check it out if needed:
    brookeroom10.blogspot.co.nz
    Thanks heaps,
    Brooke

    1. Hi Brooke

      If you embed a video from a service like YouTube or Vimeo it automatically provides a link to location on their service and attributes the original creator i.e. embedding a video isn’t an issue.

      For images it is better to use Creative Commons, public domain or free to use images and follow the guidelines from the original website to acknowledge the source of the image as their requirement can vary.

      Sue Waters
      Support Manager
      Edublogs | CampusPress

      1. Thanks so much.
        I didn’t know that about Youtube, so I think that will become quite useful. This really clears up all my wonderings.
        Brooke

  14. Hi there,
    I am not sure if this is okay but at the moment I use my own images or if I use a video or and image in link it to the site so people know it is not mine.
    Is this okay? Can I keep going this or is there something I can add to make it more legal?
    Thanks,
    Brooke

  15. I found some nice public domain photos from nps.gov to add to my blog: http://ksandora.edublogs.org/what-we-learned/ and http://ksandora.edublogs.org/2015/03/14/every-kid-in-a-park/. I gave credit to nps and also added a link directly to nps.gov. That was something that I had not really thought to do, so it was helpful to learn that. One of my goals this year to teach the students that they need to give credit for the photos that they use in their National Park Prezis so all of this info on images has been very helpful.

  16. Thanks for all the guidance in finding images we can use. It is important for the kids to value someone else’s work and creativity not just written but also visual.

    1. http://compfight.com/ has a lot of great images you can use. After searching for an image, make sure the Creative Commons option is selected. The site will provide the attribution code you need to include as well. Have a look there and let us know if you have any more questions about where to find images.

  17. Lots to think about. I never gave that much thought to using others pictures from the internet. However, I am very diligent when it comes to paperwork with my students and posting pictures of my students any where online. I love the resources. I tried to post a picture but had a hard time. Will try again in the future.

    1. Hi Michele, can you tell us what type of trouble you had posting an image? I am sure it is something we can help you work out.

      1. I am not real sure that was so long ago. However, I did add a picture to my last post and will be adding video in the near future. Thanks,

  18. Sharing student images is something I have been very aware of / cautious of, especially as we are a very small school and students could be identified easily. I don’t use names at all now and will be using photos from behind whenever possible. We do have a form that parents sign to give permission for student work and images to used on line and all students in my current class have that signed. This will be our first class blog so parents will need to consider this as well.
    Love all the information about copyright/creative commons. I find it annoying though that most of these sites are blocked on our school system- will have unblock them again this year.

  19. Reading all this has got me a little scared about using images from online… I feel like I just want to steer away from it and use my students work samples or photos that I have taken to create the visual elements on our blog. Is this wrong? Am I being overtly cautious and paranoid about not wanting to cross the line of image rights?

    Ellen

    1. Hi Ellen. It may seem a bit scary, but as long as you are using creative commons images you should be alright. I really like the Compfight search. I set it for creative commons images and it provides the citation I need to include. It makes it very simple.

  20. Thanks for the great resources… fantastic for staff as this is one of the questions I often get. I love creating images with the students – tagxedo and pizap are used regularly in class. Some students take part in a photography club. Over the past 6 months we have worked with over 50 students – their photos have been included in exhibitions and to create cards, appear on the school websites and promotional material. Loved this challenge!

    1. Hi Jen

      It is frustrating that there is a variation on how to attribute images when sourced from different websites. The easiest option is to use Creative Commons images (as they have a standard format) or public domain (or free) images that don’t require attribution.

      Sue Waters
      Support Manager
      Edublogs | CampusPress

  21. I created a Wordle to use on my site—it is on the About page (http://msvotaw.edublogs.org/about/) I used the text from a history of our school that I wrote for our school website. I love word clouds and this was a great way to tie one in to my blog site.

    I do use student pictures, following our school system technology guidelines. All are with parent permission and photos that show students in groups, side or back view, no closeups, etc.

  22. There is a ton of valuable information in this section. I am so guilty of using Google Images, and while I attribute things I pull of the internet, I hadn’t actually thought through the permissions issues until I read this. I am much clearer on Creative Commons now, and am setting up a folder of Flickr search engines and Public Domain image sites for my students to use. Here is a link to a post where I used the Compfight plugin to add a photograph.

    http://julie7760.edublogs.org/2015/02/13/wikistruck/

    I love the ease of adding photos this way, with the code for the attribution already in place. And I really appreciate the clear and illuminating information on the legal aspects of copyright on the Internet. Whew!

    1. Hi Julie, who of us hasn’t been guilty of doing a ‘Google slam’ on the images. While I am in the midst of teaching my Year 5 and 6 students about the extra searching tools that allow you to obtain copyright free images in Google, the other sites mentioned in the blogging notes will be highly beneficial to my students (not to mention me). I loved your idea about using Minecraft to teach Roman history. Unfortunately Minecraft is blocked at my school – but I’m working on it.

  23. In regards to using student photos online, I didn’t think much about it until this post. My students can be very ego-aware and BEG to include pictures of themselves, but usually my default is to focus on showcasing their work instead of the students themselves. I believe that speaks more volumes than their physical appearance, especially in the setting, but I can understand wanting to show ownership proudly (and I think that’s a good thing to foster). I think this links well with teaching students about the subtleties of digital citizenship and their digital footprint. Having a portfolio of work accessible online is a great thing, but not if it endangers their very life or comfort. At our school every student must give consent to have their image appear online and we have to reference a document each time we’d like to publish anything, but I will continue to ask students to focus on displaying their work and to work creatively with images instead of posting their own likeness.

      1. Hello, Jason!
        Thanks for your tip.
        No, I already try to put on wordpresse with embed code switching the post to code view and then pasting in the embed code, without success…
        On blogger I do that way anda I have success.
        I’ll explore the issuu tool to verify it’s not some option I have chose.

        🙂

        1. Hi Sonia

          The reason why the code from Issu won’t work is because you are using a free Edublogs blog.

          You can only add embed code to posts, pages and text widgets on Edublogs Pro blogs and student blogs attached to a Pro blog via My Class. We can’t allow it on free blogs due to misuse by spam blog creators (people who create blogs to promote products and websites).

          WordPress.com doesn’t allow the use of embed code on their blogs which is why you can’t add to their blogs.

          Sue Waters
          Support Manager
          Edublogs | CampusPress

  24. I think it is okay to post pictures of students on 2 conditions. The first is that you have written permission from the parent or guardian to allow to use pictures of their children. The second is that the child should only be identified byt they first names. Last names should never be used.

  25. I’m always looking for sites that provide images that are free to use. I knew about Flickr but I didn’t know about the search engines mentioned here. Being able to cite the source by simply copying and pasting the html code was wonderful. It will be so much easier for my elementary kids to add the correct attribution by using this method. I did several searches and found something that I could use in almost all of them.

    I added a picture of a video camera as part of a posting reminding students that their digital media projects are due March 18th. You can see it at http://swiseman.edublogs.org/

  26. I use pixteller.com gor my posters with quotes and really love it. Also, I talk a lot about copyrights and it’s in our blogging rules as well.

    1. Hi tkahn2004

      Sorry you had issues with this challenge. The issue at work sounds like a web browser problem.

      Common causes of web browser issues are using an old web browser (like Internet Explorer 7, 8 or 9) or add ons/extensions installed in the browser. Are you able to try Chrome or FireFox on your computer t work to see if changing web browsers helps?

      Thanks

      Sue Waters
      Support Manager
      Edublogs | CampusPress

  27. Below is the link to my post that has a creative common image for testing.
    http://amyard.edublogs.org/2015/03/02/35/

    I really think it would be easy for teachers to use the compfight plugin, unfortunately that is a pro feature so it was not something I could play with.

    Just like with any student photos parents would need to sign the photo release form for students to be shown on the web. I think all people just need to be careful about what the post. It may be that teachers do not post names and parents can go find their children on the blog. I do love the idea of students being able to add pictures and posts of things they are doing in the classroom to share with the world. Internet Safety must be a topic covered if teachers plan to allow students to share identifiable information on the web.

  28. The images I have in my posts are power point slides that are saved as jpegs. These are normally our school announcements that the broadcast team creates. With the students creating these, we do not need to worry about copyright laws. On our website, we posts pictures daily of students. Every student needs a photo release form in order to have their picture placed on the Internet. Fortunately, that has not been a problem at our school. In addition, the photos that week are used on the daily broadcast as a blast from the past video. The students really enjoy this aspect. I am in favor of using photos online but am very leary of using names or locations of the photos. You can never be too safe!

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