Creative Commons Image Sources for your IWB
You can’t beat a powerful image to add punch to your lesson. Whether you want something to put up to draw questions from the class or just to add extra emphasis to a presentation. I’ve written about this before – and linked to a few good sources of images such as The Big Picture.
To help find creative commons images, there are several tools now which will let you search Flickr for CC images. My Favourite is FlickrCC – enter a tag to search for and it will return a load thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail to see more information and to visit the original page on Flickr.
Other search engines which trawl Flickr include:
Compfight : http://www.compfight.com/
FlickrStorm : http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
Simple Flickr CC Search : http://johnjohnston.info/flickrCC/index.php
Flickr Creative Commons Search : http://flickr.com/creativecommons/
Remember to credit the original source of the image when you use it. I usually copy and past the full URL to the source image – you could also give the Flickr user name.
If you can’t find the image on Flickr, it’s well worth checking again in the future. About 5000 images get uploaded to Flickr every minute, so there’s a chance something more suitable will be there next time you check.
Some other sources of images include:
Geograph : A project to take photographs of every map square in the UK. Useful for finding photos of your local environment. And if there’s not many there, would be a good idea for a project to take some! http://www.Geograph.org.uk
PhotoEverywhere : Photos from all around the world. http://photoeverywhere.co.uk/
E2Bn Gallery : A community resource made by the educational community for the educational community. Worth a look. http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/gallery-e2bn.html
Animal photos : Does what it says on the tin. Photos of animals. http://animalphotos.info/a/
The Open Clip Art Library : A good source of clip art resources. Registration required, but it’s free. http://openclipart.org/
You can also use the advanced image search feature of Google Image Search to get it to check for licences and only return images that are covered for reuse, or commercial use. Go to Image Search and look for the “advanced search” button. Or click here.
The creative commons website also lists a stack of other image sites here : but I haven’t checked them all out.
You can also use the search engine provided by Creative Commons.org : http://search.creativecommons.org/
You can also use the Wikimedia Commons, plenty of images there that are covered by a creative commons licence : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Remember to check the licence of any image you want to use. On Flickr, it’s pretty obvious – look below the tag list and you should see “some rights reserved” or similar. Click on that link and it will tell you the licence that image is covered by.
Of course if you do use Flickr to host your own images, consider changing the licence so that others can use them under a share-alike licence too. You can do this for individual photos, or change the default settings for all your photos. It’s good to share!
I’ve also produced a printable guide to Creative Commons, and some sources of images and sounds.
A quick tip if you are doing an image seach live – on your IWB – in front of a class. Although you might be searching with the best of intentions – sometimes even the most innocuous search can throw up images that you may not want the students to see. Some search engines have a “safe search” filter, and the school filter may block them, but it’s always best to cover yourself just in case. Check your Projector remote for a Blank or a Freeze button (most should have at least one or the other) and freeze/blank the screen while you do the search on the computer. You can see the search on the regular monitor and check that nothing untoward is being displayed.
Happy searching!
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The Great IWB Debate
Just a quick plug for something Chris Betcher is trying to do. He runs a podcast called The Virtual Staffroom, and on that podcast he is trying to get a debate about the use of whiteboards called The Great IWB Debate.
You can read more about the debate over on the IWB Revolution Ning – and also offer your thoughts and experiences of the use of IWBs in the classroom.
if you’d be interested in signing up for the debate – you can do that via Chris’s wiki here.
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Wokingham Training Day
Had an excellent days training yesterday at the ICT Training Centre for Wokingham LA. The aim of the day was to look at “emerging technology in the classroom” and although the main thrust was going to be blogs, podcasts and wikis, we actually covered a wide range of sites and resources.
Two of the sites that proved a real hit were wallwisher and etherpad. Both could be used as back-channels to any lesson or staff development session and could be linked/embedded into the school’s Uniservity VLE.
We set up an etherpad to collate notes on the day to share with all the staff attending. You can view it here.
A lot of the course materials are held in the public area of the Wokingham LA website. You can access them here. Also check the Guides area of this blog.
All weblinks are up on my delicious at : www.delicious.com/dannynic/web2.0
The feedback I received from the day was very positive, and I hope we can do another day in the future.
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Two new digital storytelling tools
Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been all over the place this last few weeks…
But here’s two digital storytelling tools that you might enjoy, thanks to my amazing Personal Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter.
First, thanks to @NikPeachey for the link to this great comic book creator based on the characters and scenes in Spore. It works similar to Comic Life, and lets you choose characters and vehicles etc and add speech bubbles. It’s great fun.
Thanks also to @web20classroom for this very cute Story Maker, perfect for a IWB. Aimed at younger students, it again lets you choose characters and scenes but will also update the text of the story depending on characters chosen and their actions. Go check it out!
Happy storytelling!
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Smart Notebook Express
A quick heads-up. Smart have put the beta version of their Smart Notebook Express up onto the internet for people to try out.
The idea (I think) is to have a simple online way of accessing Smart Notebook files via your browser with no need to install anything on your computer.
You only get simple access – you can view, move and draw onto pre-made smart files. But it would be a very useful tool for teachers who have downloaded some resources from the internet and want to check their suitability, but haven’t got Smart Notebook on their home computer
It’s still in beta, so usual disclaimers apply. This may not work, or may not open every file. I also don’t know how long it will be available online in this format before being removed and tweaked for final release.
But do go and take a look : http://express.smarttech.com – it certainly looks useful.
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Stripping the audio from a YouTube video
Had a request at the weekend from a ex-student of mine for some help on how she could get the audio from a YouTube video and put it onto CD. I thought it might be useful to share the procedure I tried. It seemed to be pretty straightforward (ish)
Here is the original file on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=EWrmTQPuCdI
The first thing I did was to alter the URL of the YouTube Page.
I removed the www. from the URL and entered kick in front of the youtube.com to give this address:
http://kickyoutube.com/watch/?v=EWrmTQPuCdI
This site allows you to download YouTube files in different formats. For this one I am going to just choose MP3.
Click on the MP3 button, and then click on the green Go button.
The Go button will change to a blue Down button.
Right click on the Down button and select Save Target As (or Save Link As)
You can then save this MP3 file to wherever you want to on your computer.
You should be able to then put this file into iTunes and burn to CD if you want.
As an additional step – I had a problem playing the MP3 file on my computer. So what I did was to convert the MP3 file using Switch Sound Converter – a free piece of software that I thoroughly recommend.
I just used it to convert the mp3 file into an mp3 file – which sounds silly, but the file it produced worked on my PC OK 
not sure why….
Hope this helps!
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A guide to voting with Promethean ActivExpression
I’ve written a new guide for the ActivExpression voting kit produced by Promethean. It’s based on the help files that you can find within ActivInspire, but I’ve added some additional bits and pieces.
I’m delivering a short session on this at a college next week, so thought some handouts would be useful.
The guide is hosted on Scribd here.
I hope you find it useful! If you are interested in the other guides that I have written, they are all listed on my Guides page on this blog.
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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