Royalty Free Music

One of the concepts that I am focusing on with my students is the importance of digital citizenship. While teaching students about the importance of citing their sources, and reminding them to only use media that they have the right to use, it's important that educators make this process as easy for students as possible.

I recently spent an afternoon looking for an easy way for students and teachers to access high quality audio clips for presentations, without a lot of fuss. I am pleased to report on two very impressive sites. The first site is called Royalty Free Music.

Educators/Students who visit the link http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-clips.html must provide a live email address and complete a brief survey in order to download 30-second music clips. These clips are free to use for educational purposes, so long as the site is properly credited. I highly recommend this site!

The second site that I recommend is Freesound.org. Like the previous site, this one requires users to sign in with an email account. Freesound.org is notable because users may search for music that is licensed under Creative Commons. There is also a bookmarking feature within the site, making it easy for users to mark notable sounds for future reference.

Playing with Picasa

I played around with Picasa today, trying to learn how to use the filters.  It's not currently part of the tools available to students on their class accounts, but the software could be downloaded on individual PCs. 

It's pretty intuitive and fun, but I need to practice more!

 

Thing Link is Fun!

I am in the process of teaching my students how to use ThingLink. Students can embed copies of their tagged images right inside of their blogs! This would be a very useful technology integration project for middle and high school students.