Searching for Digital Media

From RSCWMWiki

Introduction

Digital media, such as video clips, still images and sounds can enhance the learning materials you produce and make them more engaging and informative; learners enjoy using digital media and the creative use of these materials can make interesting and fun learning activities. This article will introduce you to the key points to remember when searching for digital media materials. You will find advice on a selection of suitable specialist search engines as well as useful links to detailed advice and hints and tips on using digital media in teaching and learning. You must be aware of the copyright terms and any licensing permissions when using these materials and you will also be introduced to the basic principles of searching for licensed material to help you keep within the law.

Still images

Still images are quick and easy to use in documents, web pages, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) courses or other learning objects and most people have the skills to save, or cut and paste an image into a resource we're creating. You may also want to crop or edit the image to make it more suitable for the application you have in mind.

Finding a suitable image and checking its copyright status is more difficult and although many use Google as their first option for image searching, this is usually not the best choice. Many images returned by Google give no clue to their copyright status, so you should assume they are copyright and therefore can't be used. Google have recently introduced a usage rights option in their advanced search screen and this can be used to search for images which are licensed.

This interactive tutorial introduces you to searching for images on the Internet
JISC Digital Media have a comprehensive range of tutorials and resources on searching for, creating and using still images

Example search engines

Stock.XCHNG is an example of a stock photo site, with over 350,000 high quality images with clear terms of use. Many of the images can be used free of charge and there is also a collection of images available at cost.
Flickr is a popular photo sharing site, where individuals can upload their photos and share them. It's a huge site with over 3.5 billion images covering every conceivable topic. Most importantly the site makes use of Creative Commons (see below) licensing so you are clear whether you have permission to use an image or not. The downside of Flickr is that the vast image banks contains everything from very poor to very good quality images, so you need to be selective.

Video

There is a vast amount of video material available online, but the quality is potentially even more variable than still images and it is often difficult to find material of the right standard for use in teaching and learning. If you create your own material, there are a variety of options for hosting and delivering it to learners, these are dealt with elsewhere on the RSC Streaming video wiki.

Video material can either be downloaded or streamed to your PC and video search sites give you the option to do either or both. Copyright is an important issue to consider and downloading material is much more likely to be breach copyright terms as downloading introduces the potential for editing or changing the original video.

This tutorial from JISC Digital Media explains the use of video-hosting sites, such as YouTube and their pros and cons.

Example search engines

OVguide search engine for streamed video
Trooker a video search engine that allows you to save your clips
Commoncraft are short and easy to understand videos on a variety of complex topics. They are available free, for evaluation purposes, but you must subscribe for wider use.
BBC Open University online - a great source of quality video content
TrueTube debating site on PSHE-type issues
Videojug thousands of free, short videos on a vast range of topics.

Sounds

Sound clips have many uses in teaching and learning, such as in providing an exciting launch to a lesson or learning activity, or as background sound or music to a learning object. Copyright restrictions exist on many audio clips, so care just be taken once again to establish what rights you have to use the material you find.

Audio sources

The BBC is one of several media organisations, making samples of its material online, much BBC radio content is available in this way, through the I-Player.
In addition to the I-Player, the BBC Archive is an experimental archive of historic BBC radio and TV content.
The British Library Archival Sound Recordings archive is available to FE and HE organisations and has 45,000 recordings of music, spoken word and human and natural environments.
The Free Music Archive offers Creative Commons licensed music
FindSounds is a search engine for sound effects and musical instrument samples.

Copyright and licensing

All original material, when it is produced, is automatically protected by copyright law and in the UK, no registration is required to enforce this. The copyright owner has exclusive rights to re-produce, alter, communicate (including Web publishing) or lend the material, unless he/she gives permission, or licenses others. When searching for digital media you must not assume you have permission to use the material you find. You should check for a rights statement, which explains the permissions in place - the majority of resources recommended in this article have this feature. If there is no information about rights, you should contact the copyright owner for permission.

A number of licensing schemes exist for copyright holders to give permission for the use of their work, within a framework, for example the ERA License deals with rights to use broadcast programmes in FE and HE. The Creative Commons licensing scheme is particularly useful as anyone can use this scheme to control the use of their work and the scheme forms part of many commonly used digital media archives.

The JISC Legal service offer more information on copyright

External links

JISC Digital Media is the key JISC service advising on digital media matters and have a vast resource bank as well as, update services via RSS and training available.
The BUFVC promote the study, creation and use of moving images and sound in further and higher education.
There are over 3000 useful video-related resources on the Intute Web gateway
Flickr Commons An archive of copyright cleared digital images from some of the world's foremost public photo collections