Creative Commons? What is that, you may be asking. Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization that offers alternatives to full copyright licenses. So, what does that mean for you and your students? It means you can use quality images in your projects without worrying about copyright or fair use.

Below are sites you can use to find these CC images.

Behold is an image search engine that searches Flickr’s Creative Commons (here’s a rundown of the licenses) images. These images are licensed so that others can use them in blogs and other projects. All of the images are high quality, but a very small few are not little kid friendly.  This would be a great site for teachers looking for quality images for a lesson.

An advertising term referring to “dead” or used images, this site have a large collection of high quality images available for use under Creative Commons licenses. Most images only require attribution.

The Commons is a Flickr project to catalog the world’s public photography archives. Institutions around the world have uploaded their collections for use by the public. Institutions include The Smithsonian, The National Archives, NASA and the Field Museum. This collection is a wealth of historical images.

Flickr has a Creative Commons search that allows users to choose the type of licensing they want and search for such images. Licenses include Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works and Share Alike. Once you choose a license, you can search within it. Most  images are not professional, but good quality and monitored for public appropriateness. With millions of images, there’s bound to be something useful.

Happy picture hunting!