30 January, 2007

Free Images for your Course

For finding images to use in WebCT areas, I've always used stock.xchng, which has almost always supplied me with the images I need for free. I've only had to mail the creator to let them know I'm using it, and I guess that's only good manners!

However Newman College's Elearning blog brought Yotophoto to my attention. This is the best service I've seen that brings together images from around the web that are, for example, public domain or which use Creative Commons licences. You still have to accredit the image to the creator in some cases, so check the licence for each image.

Yotophoto makes it easier to find images for icons (for example I struggled to find images which worked for WebCT Discussion areas), but you do lose some of the benefits of stock.xchng such as knowing the images will be large enough to use in full screen PowerPoint presentations.

Going beyond finding images, Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) have created quite compreshensive resources around using images in education. These include a quick presentation covering why you might use images and instructions on how to add them to a WebCT area.

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