Creative Commons offers classrooms easy access to free and legal photos, graphics and music

When you discover an image online, there’s a high probability that the image has a license or copyright which forbids you from using it. To overcome this challenge, teachers and students should look for images with a Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that provides an easy way to give the public permission to use and modify others’ creative work. Plus, Creative Commons licenses work alongside copyrights. Whether you need images or music for student media publications, slideshow presentations or class projects, the Creative Commons website has a plethora to choose from.

Anyone can access CC-licensed materials by going to the Creative Commons’ website. From there, type in what content you would like to access in the “Find CC material” search bar. This search will access CC-licensed existing public commons for images, text, video and music. Select either “use for commercial purposes” or “ modify, adapt or build on” based on what kind of content you need. Then, select which outlet you would like to use to search for an image.

If teachers or students are looking for content to use freely and legally, there is a large collection of CC-licensed material available. Here are a few examples of some photos, graphics and music that are available for use:

Photographs: http://bit.ly/1Nvxah2

Clipart: https://openclipart.org/search/?query=sports

Music: https://www.flickr.com/search/?l=comm&q=music

Finding free and legal images and music for student media is not easy, but schools can turn to Creative Commons for help. Be sure to give appropriate credit for the images when you use and share them. You can also apply a Creative Commons license to your own creative work and allow others to use it for the purpose you choose. For more information, visit the Creative Commons website here.