Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Jeez, there are sure a ton of ways to find images on the Web, as well as many places where you can find lengthy link lists to image collections.

I’d lay odds that most people, including myself, just use Google Image Search when they need to find an image. However, there might be instances when you want to use another tool — perhaps you’re a language teacher searching for just the right clip art or photography to illustrate a verb, maybe you have very young students and are concerned about what they might find on Google,  possibly you’re particularly teaching about copyright issues, or you want your students to easily connect an image to a writing exercise and have them send an E-Card. (Google has recently added an option in their advanced image search feature — go to the bottom left under “license” and choose “labeled for reuse”)

I thought a “The Best…” list might be helpful in one of those, or other particular, instances.

You can also find the links to sites on this list, as well as links to many other image sites, on my website under Images.

So here are my picks for The Best Online Sources For Images (not in order of preference):

Search by Creative Commons provides excellent explanations about what Creative Commons licenses are, and offers a way to search throughout the web for images that have them.

Flickr Creative Commons is another way to find Flickr images offered for use with a Creative Commons license. Flickr Storm is search tool for the same photos (be sure to click “Advanced Search” to make sure your results include only those with a CC license) — just perhaps in slightly more engaging way.

Smithsonian Images provides access to that incredible collection, and also allows you to use any of them as E-Cards.

Nations Illustrated has 8,000 images from around the world, and also provides an E-Card feature.

The University of Victoria Teaching Clipart Gallery has three thousand images specifically designed for language-teaching.

The Royalty Free Clip Art Collection For Foreign/Second Language Instruction from Purdue University is another place to find images useful for teaching English Language Learners.

The Japanese Language Course Support Site is a smaller, but useful, source of language-learning images.

Pics 4 Learning is specifically designed for teachers and students, and has thousands of images that can be used freely.

Clip Art ETC from Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse offers over 38,000 pieces of clip art for students and teachers.

Edupics is one more source of clip art for use in schools.

Photl.com has 160,000 copyright-free images available.

(Mathew Needleman also suggests Morgue File because “it has quite a few images and it’s not blocked in school”)

I’m also adding a direct link to Darren Draper’s excellent post (including additional resources) called The Educator’s Guide To The Creative Commons.

Here are two more simple ways to search for Creative Commons images:

Behold

Simple CC Flickr Search

PicFindr lets you search many photo sites simultaneously and, in addition to defining the image you want, you can define the restrictions for use. For example, I typed in that I was looking for a picture of a lion for educational use, checked the “none” box for licensing requirements (which means anybody can use it — even without crediting the photographer) and got several hundred images to choose from.

I’m adding Wikimedia Commons to this list.  It has four million images, and their reuse agreement states:

almost all may be freely reused without individual permission according to the terms of the particular license under which it was contributed to the project. Depending on what you want to do with it, you probably do not need to obtain a specific statement of permission from the Licensor.

Seems about as broad as you can make it…

I learned about 25 Places To Find Awesome Stock Photos from Lucy Gray, and decided to add some of the sites on that list to The Best Online Sources For Images.  The “25 Places” post has concise and accurate descriptions of the sites, so I’m just going to quote from them.  I’d also encourage you to check-out their entire list:

Free Foto: “Freefoto is made up of 117,600 images with over 150+ sections organized into 3,285 categories. There’s a search function, and usage is completely unrestricted. All you have to do is include an attribution link back to Freefoto.com.”

Free Digital Photos: “Free Digital Photos has a good search function, which is very important when you’ve got this many images under one resource. Photos are nicely grouped into categories for easy and quick browsing.”

Public Domain Photos: “Public Domain Photos is exactly that: a photographer’s domain for public display, all arranged by corresponding categories. There’s a really good search function available, as well.”

Free Historical Stock Photos: “Free Historical Stock Photos contains various historical images, including many by Matthew Brady (Civil War) and Dorothea Lange (Great Depression). This site also includes paintings and vintage posters. The images are gracefully categorized and easily findable with the use of a search function.”

Big Foto is the newest addition to The Best Online Sources For Images list.  It has a large selection of royalty-free images.

Photos 8 is the newest addition to this list. It has thousands of high quality public domain pictures and is easy to search.

100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images is another incredible list of resources.

Heritage Explorer has hundreds of thousands of British-related images available for free educational use.  You can read more about it at the Kent ICT blog.

World Images, according to its site, is a “database that provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains almost 75,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. WorldImages is accessible anywhere and its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes.”

Mashable has just posted a great piece, 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog.  I’ve already included in this post many of the resources they list.  However, they also listed some sites that are new to me, especially the ones that have freely-available video.  I’m also sure that a ton of additional sources will be accumulating in their comments section.  Because of that, for now, instead of just selectively adding some of their sites to my lists, I’m going to include a link to their post here.

All Our Stock has a bunch royalty-free images, and looks pretty good to me.

The Echo Enduring blog just posted a list of eleven sources of copyright or royalty-free images.I’m adding a few of them to this list:

Stockvault

Dreamstime

Stock.xchng

Feel free to contribute your own favorites, too, by leaving a comment.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

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