Creating Content: Show me the freebies!

You're an innovative classroom practitioner. You embrace the transformative nature of technology. You want to encourage students to take risks, be creators not just consumers. BUT... you don't want to end up in trouble with the law. You've heard the ads about not stealing cars, and you know that somewhere, someone worked really hard to create that music/picture/book/film you loved.

Of course, the easiest way to ensure you're not illegally using someone else's work is to create it all yourself. From shooting the video, to taking the photos, composing the music and creating the sound effects. If your students create the content themselves, they are then free to use it however they wish. However, this is not always practical and this is where Creative Commons comes into play.


By teaching students how to search for and responsibly use Creative Commons licensed works, you are promoting good digital citizenship. Keep in mind that if your students are reusing works, they need to ensure the work is produced under a licence that allows for derivations as the No Derivatives licence does not allow for the work to be added to or changed in any way.

Where to find CC licensed works:

Music & Sound Effects

• Bensound - allows for music to be modified for use in a video, but not to be reused to create music (e.g. you can't add lyrics to it and release it). Some music is only available with a paid subscription. 
• YouTube Audio Library - YouTube has made it really easy to download music to add to videos (presumably in the hopes that you're going to then upload them to YouTube). They also have a sound effects section. 
• Free Music Archive - has a vast array of music, some created using the CC licenses. Can search by genre, length, and license
• MediaCollege - has a small collection of music and sound effects. Most of it does not require attribution
• Jamendo - mentioned in the video above. Costs if you want to use music to create content, so I suspect this has changed since the CC Kiwi video was made. 

Photos & Images

• Google Images - once you search for your image, you need to use the 'Search Tools' to search by usage rights. From here, you can select the license you need. You can also select what kind of image you're after (photo, clip art, etc)
• Flickr - after entering your search term/s, select the license type you require from the menu at the top left side of the results page

Video

• YouTube - after you enter your search term/s, select the filter and then select Creative Commons. This will search for videos licensed under creative commons
• Vimeo - again after you enter your search terms, you can filter results by the licence you're looking for using the "Refine results by" options to the left of the screen