Are there copyright-free educational materials I may use in the classroom?
Answer
Yes! There is a wealth of material which is either in the public domain or available under Creative Commons licensing, which generally means the work is available for free, subject to certain limited conditions, such as non-commercial use only and acknowledgment of the author. All Creative Commons licensed works can be used in teaching.
Suggestions include:
Creative Commons: directories of audio, video, image and text materials available under Creative Commons licensing
Project Gutenberg: the largest collection of copyright-free books online
Internet Archive : text and multimedia
Wikipedia Public Domain Resources
Wikipedia Public Domain Image Resources
Flickr Creative Commons: images available under Creative Commons licensing
morgueFile: free photo image archive
Directory of Open Access Journals
Incompetech (royalty-free music)
Musopen (music, sheet music).
For public domain material, you can also search online by typing the phrase "public domain" and the kind of material you’re interested in. Or you can use Google’s “Advanced Image Search” – simply use the 'usage rights' filter and select ‘images labeled for reuse’.