Free Stuff- copyright and educational
If you are a student looking for information for a project or a teacher who needs information for a class, or just curious- there is a wealth of quality information on the internet that can be used in creative ways. I am waiting—- waiting—– for the day when one of my adolescent clients gets caught with pornography or with highly inappropriate photos on their myspace and their parents assign them a feminist literature course in lieu on restriction…
Books/Literary Material
- Project Gutenberg- Over 25,000 free e-books whose US copyright has expired. Titles include Alice in Wonderland, The Prince, Ulysses, The Iliad, Pride nd Prejudice and more. There are also links to books in other languages – over 100,000 titles.
- LibriVox-Volunteers read chapters of books available on the public domain and they are available here as audio files- you can subscribe to them through one click and save them to your i-tunes. Listen to Aesops Fables or Shakespeare’s Sonnets. What a great (free) use of the internet for those that are too tired or ill to read and when TV is just not quality programming. (And, for the readers out there- you can volunteer to read here too)
Videos/Educational Talks
- TED: technology, entertainment, design. Talks presented in video format fromreknown speakers like Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Brian Green on topics from entertainment, and science to the arts and comedy. Presentations are published under the Creative Commons License and can be reproduced for free.
Photos/Clipart
- Openphoto- selection of photos in various themes and quality. Some are Creative Commons Licensed and and some are paid. But- if you need a photo for that powerpoint that is due to your professor tomorrow then I would start searching.
- Flickr- yes, you can post photos to flickr privately or give them an open license
- Old Time Clipart-Old fashioned line drawings, believed to be copyright free. Double check if in doubt.
Other Media
- Chicago Public Radio has some great “Stories on Stage” archives
- Legal Music for Videos-Link here to the Creative Commons site on what kinds of things you can do with music in the public domain, and what kinds of things you can do with music that is published under Creative Commons license… as in “I am making a video and I need a song”….
- The Speech Accent Archive- One of those random sites- native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph with accents from different languages, countries, regions and gender. They have quite a collection. Need Quicktime plug-in to listen.
Educational Courses
- Open Course Ware Consortium- University level material, courses- often including syllabi and assignments offered by leading universities in the US and abroad. The following Universities offer Open Course Ware classes- the list is not exhaustive:
What is Creative Commons? Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry.
Tags: educational
