Creating a Media Library For My Students

All of us who teach at an elementary school level know how hard (impossible) it is to allow our students to just roam free online to look for images, video or audio.

In the past, a simple search for the innocent word “cow” on Flickr returned very questionable images for me, not intended for young eyes.

If we want to include many of the web 2.0 tools and foster the 21st century skill of creativity, we do need to find a way to give these younger students a way to search, be inspired and express themselves with a variety of media. They do need to be able feel the thrill of aimlessly looking until “inspiration” hits.

If we do not allow them to work with Creative Commons media files, teach them what it means and how they can use, remix and build on them, they will inevitably not know of their existence, nor the proper use of and for them as they grow older.

At this point, I have created a “media library” folder on a shared drive on our school server. All teachers have read and write privileges, student users have read privileges. That means, students are able to look at, import files into another program, but cannot add to the folder, delete or rename a file.

Inside the media folder, I have created subfolders named:

• images
• audio
• video

I have started to collect public domain images and creative common images, sound files and or videos and am organizing them in more subfolders according to themes or specific projects, such as

• fairy tales
• animals
• countries
• clipart
• landscape

I rename most files, so the name represents the content and add “by the name that the credit belongs to”or their specific creative commons specification. If it is public domain and no credit is due, then there is no “By” in the file name.

I am trying to encourage teachers to contribute media, that they are taking around campus, around town, in their own time in order to grow the digital media library.

Meanwhile, I am adding as much variety as I am able to.

Check some of the following links out for if you are creating a media library for your own students:

Sound/Music

• Kevin Macleod
• Podsafe Music Network
• 55 Great Websites to download free sound effects
• Incompetech-
  Royalty free music
• ibeat.org
  The production music and shots here, are available under Creative Commons licensing. This means some is public domain, some available for commercial use under attribution, and most under a non-commercial license.
• CCmixer
  Browse this site to hear some of the great remixes people have built from sampling music on this site, all licensed for use under Creative Commons license.
• Pics4Learning (Thanks Lesley Edwards )
  Pics4Learning collection may be used by teachers and students in print, multimedia, and video productions. These could include, but are not limited to, school projects, contests, web pages, and fund raising activities for the express purpose of improving student educational opportunities.

Images

• Flickr (Advance Search for CC) & Flickr CC
  
• Stock.xchng-
  Check licensing agreement. Most of the images are free to use without credit, others the owner wants to be notified and credited when being used.
  
• Every Stock Photo
• Free Range