Today we reflected on our assigned film “Most Likely to Succeed,” discussed the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (FIPPA), and explored Open Education Resources (OER). Learning about copyright and how we as teachers can navigate around infringing on the rights of another’s work in our teaching was incredibly helpful as it isn’t something I’ve thought about needing to work around before. We were introduced to a number of websites that feature thousands of images, videos, audio, and resources for teaching that are free to use. This includes the Creative Commons library which is an extensive resource available online, and we were also given some tips about how to find if an image (such as one found on Wikipedia) is available for use. This is done by looking in the lower right-hand side of the page on an expanded image and looking for the words “CC BY _____” or by looking for these symbols:

These symbols (graphics also found in the Creative Commons website) are important to look for to determine if you can use the resource freely, edit it, give credit to the creator, or use it commercially or non-commercially. We were given time to explore and experiment with these sites and learn about how this knowledge could be made applicable in the creation of our own websites. We can use these free resources in our teaching should we be making PowerPoints, PDF documents, lesson plans, and other things for our future classes. We can also utilize these resources as UVic students in our program.

Some examples of free-use image sites can be found here, as introduced to us by Dr. Michael Paskevicius: