Page 73 - Resources and Support for the Online Educator

CHAPTER 11 • Leveraging Technology for Teacher Efficiency and Effectivenes

Instructional Resources for Social Studies

Bringing History Home (bringinghistoryhome.org) has not been updated for several
years, but the K–5 curriculum offered on the site is worth exploring. The curric-
ulum at this site supports good instruction in nonfiction reading, visual literacy,
and writing.

Instructional Resources for Free Images and Sounds

Teachers and students need sites where they can acquire free-to-use images and
sounds for inclusion in their projects. During my research, I saw far too many
examples of students copying pictures from the internet without any consideration
of who owned the copyright. Teachers should direct students to sites where free
images and sounds with copyright attributions are easy to find and use in projects.

Images
Pics4Learning (pics4learning.com) has an extensive curated collection of high-
quality photographs teachers and students can use for projects in educational
settings. When an image is chosen, the copyright attribution information is
provided next to the image. Students will need to copy the information to add to
their projects.

FlickrCC (flickrcc.net) has photographs uploaded by individuals who have chosen
to use the Creative Commons license. Students can copy the attributions on the
same page as the photos.

Photos for Class (photosforclass.com) is unique in that the copyright information
is embedded in the photos, so it doesn’t require a separate step. The goal of the
site is to provide safe images for educational purposes with accurate citations. The
images are taken from Flickr and Pixabay.
Images from Pixabay (pixabay.com), Pexels (pexels.com), Kaboompics (kaboompics.
com/gallery), Unsplash (unsplash.com), Negative Space (negativespace.co), and
Gratisography (gratisography.com) are all published under Creative Commons
Open, which means they can be used for educational purposes without attribu-
tion. However, teachers should caution students that the sites do not necessarily
filter the search results for child-appropriateness.

262 Integrating Technology in the Classroom

Integrating Technology in the Classroom: Tools to Meet the Needs of Every Student 73