From my observations of some student presentations I invigilated recently I know there are clearly issues with students knowing and understanding what is legal and what is not when you use and re-use content or images you find on the Internet.

Many of us already know about Creative Commons content and how it works, but I found this presentation, with audio slidecast, that I have also made available to staff and students alike, in the vain hope it’ll make a difference. It is well worth listening to the 20 minute slidecast that accompanies this presentation, it brings the static pages to life.

If you want some background on what Creative Commons is, please see my previous post and video on “What is creative Commons?“.

Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know. View more webinars from Rodd Lucier.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Plugin #4: Creative Commons Licence
2. Video: What is Creative Commons?
3. Be a better online educator by thinking like an online student

Note: In this series I’ll delve into some of the better plugins available for WordPress that I am already using, or about to start using. I’m aiming to highlight 30 of the better plugins.

One of the biggest gripes I have when I visit a website is the wait for the images to load before I can scroll down the page and read the text. So when I saw this plugin described on Twitter (and I’d seen the style used on websites like Mashable) I thought I’d give it a try. Why not – if I get annoyed when websites take too long to load, I’m sure others do too?

The plugin is called “jQuery Image Lazy Load“. As you visit the webpage the placement holder for the image is created, but the image is not loaded until you scroll the part of the page into view, and then it fades the image into view gracefully.

Nice and easy!

Note: Since installing I have noticed that images do not show, at all, if you are accessing on anything like an iPhone if you are also using the WPTouch plugin – all you see is a grey box where the image should be!

Do you have something similar working on your blog? Have you been using this and think it’s wonderful, or have a bad experience and want to warn me off it? Please comment below.

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If, like me, you really really REALLY hate the clip art that you can see in old (and some fairly new) materials, websites, presentations, etc, then where can you go to get, and legally use good quality images and illustrations?

Well, try some of these for size;

1. Stock.XCHNG – www.sxc.hu/
   With a growing library of over 400,000 images, it is probably as good a place as any to start your search. Be careful to read the T&Cs when you register though.
2. OpenPhoto - www.openphoto.net
   Well categorised and well documented, OpenPhoto has almost everything you could ask for.
3. Flickr – www.flickr.com
   Used by many for family and friend photo sharing, it is also used by some of the world’s best photographers. Be sure to use the advanced search and select the “”Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” box before searching.
4. FreePhotoBank - www.freephotosbank.com
   Good for abstract, background, and digital artwork.
5. Unprofound - www.unprofound.com
   Good resource, not as large as some of the others, but fewer restrictions on the use of images.

There are more, and no doubt you use some regularly, so please post them below.

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