Copyright Free Images

I was perusing the internet today, and came across a Wikipedia page that compiles a list of resources where one can find copyright free images. Seems like a good resource for instructors.

The Debate Over Making Lectures Available Online

In the Chronicle of Higher Education article, "College 2.0: More Professors Could Share Lectures Online. But Should They?", Jeffrey R. Young highlights both sides of the issue many professors are considering: whether to make their lectures available to students (and possibly the public at large) online. The discussion includes increased access to class content for students, copyright concerns, managing the recording process, and facilitating the free flow of ideas.

TinEye: Reverse Image Search Engine

TinEye is an interesting new search tool that may be useful for research and teaching involving the use of online images. According to the Tin Eye site, "You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks." This can be very helpful for locating copyright information for presentations and for finding the best resolution of images to display in D2L and in online class material.

Some news...

Some interesting things have come up in the context of data and the control of the data now that more and more data is stored "in the cloud."

• Student sues Amazon.com (seeking class-action status) for the removal of a purchased book from his Kindle, rendering his class notes useless;
• Thoughts on Amazon.com and it's "control" over purchased data, and implications;
• FCC looks at Apple's App Store and practices on approving and removing apps;
• Podcast of Talk of the Nation segment: "Who Really Owns Your Data?" (mp3, transcript)

All have relate to things we need to keep in mind as we start using more and more of the Web in our learning environments.

If only things could get pushed a bit further...

Tynt Tracer is a new service that does a number of things beneficial to content providers online:

1. Protects content from being plagiarized--though with just a little bit of knowledge, the plagiarizer can minimize that;
2. Drives traffic back to the original source of the information;
3. Gives credit to the originator of the content (the copyright holder?);
4. and can also improve your search engine ranking--What with all those extra links floating around back to your site and all.

It's kind of an interesting idea, and outside the "fair use" arguments that will abound, I thought, what a great tool for teaching about plagiarism. How?

Step 1: Create a website that provides ALL content that is to be used in the development of a short research project.

Step 2: Use Tynt Tracer to mark all the content that is copied and pasted from one site to another.

Step 3: Use the resulting projects to talk about plagiarism, and how copying and pasting is not the way things are done.

Could be interesting to give it a try.