Digital storytelling, the DS106 daily create, and content curation have led me to embark upon a project I’ll call Museum in a Box. Because I know I will not be able to do this daily or even weekly, I’ll try for a year of monthly museum displays in a box. Each month will have a theme and I’ll decide how to document each display as I go along. My box is a David’s Tea Sampler pack which has 12 small clear-lidded canisters, but the box could be anything – an egg carton, one of those weekly pill reminder cases, a subdivided tin, etc.
Natural History is this month’s theme, so we have the Museum of Natural History in a Box. Documentation of this museum is via a photograph on Flickr.
Flickr photo by *s@lly* by-sa
Top row from the left: Hydragea flower, coral, lavender, acorns
Middle row from left: Milkweed seeds, wasp’s nest, alder catkin?, amethyst
Bottom row from left: money plant seed case, sea urchins, beech nut case, olive roll shells
Sadly this is the last week of ETMOOC. I had fun and learned lots. For my last “assignment” I wanted to create something that combined images, text, music and voice so I tried several new tools to do this – Prezi, Screencastomatic, voice memos on my phone and finally loaded the result to YouTube.
There are many places on the web where you can find images that have been licensed in such a way that you can use, share and/or modify them without requesting permission. Most of these images are made available under Creative Commons licenses. Ideally when you use an image licensed under Creative Commons you should attribute (in the way specified by the creator), indicate the license type and provide a link to the work. If you want more details, this wikihow page goes into greater depth.
Here are a few ways that you can search for Creative Commons (CC) images on a few popular web sites.
Flickr
To search Flickr for CC images, use the advanced search option. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the type of Creative Commons images that you want to find.
If you want content you can modify or mash-up or use commercially, select the appropriate sub-options, otherwise just go with “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”. Any search you do from this point in your browser session will give you CC images. You should see the following at the top of your search results:
Google Images
To search Google for Creative Commons licensed images, you will need to use the Advanced Image Search page. Scroll down to the bottom where you will see the following:
Click on the drop-down arrow and select the type of images you would like. You have the following options:
not filtered by license
free to use or share
free to use or share, even commercially
free to use, share or modify
free to use, share or modify, even commercially
Wikipedia Media Commons
Wikipedia Media Commons is a database of 16,370,108 (as of today) freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. In addition to images it also contains sound and video files. You can browse the Commons for featured photos, or search by keyword. Once you have found an image that you like, click on the thumbnail or title of the image to get to the page that provides you with detailed information about how you can use the image. Each image will have a Permission (using this file) section. This will tell you re-use options. Here are a couple of examples:
Allowing Others to Use your Images
In the spirit of openness you might want to allow others to use your images. There are many ways to do this. Here are just a couple.
Wikipedia Media Commons
The Wikipedia Media Commons is looking for people to contribute images. They are not just looking for photographs, they are also looking for people to contribute diagrams and to help with the upkeep of the site. More information can be found on the main Wikipedia Media Commons Page.
Flickr
My photo recently licensed as Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike
In Flickr you can set the license on your photos to allow re-use. By default Flickr sets the most restrictive license on your photos (all rights reserved), but you can change this default in your settings, in the privacy and permissions tab, under defaults for new uploads. If you change this default you need to be sure that everything you upload is your work.
If you prefer, you can change permissions on individual photos in Flickr. When viewing the image, you will see an owner settings box as follows:
Click on the edit beside All Rights Reserved to change the permissions on the photo.
Other Places to Find Images
There are lots of other resources that you can find re-usable media files. Let me know if you have a favourite.
I know that we are not looking at open access/copyright until next week, but I saw this video and thought that I should make a note of it before I forgot. John Green, author of The Fault in our Stars, talks about one of his copyright experiences and about remixing.
I can see now that my initial attempt at a definition of digital literacy was too narrow and that my academic librarian bias is all too evident in the narrow focus on “information”. To remind myself to look beyond just one aspect of digital literacy I created this peacock to try to pull together and visualize Doug Belshaw’s elements of digital literacies combined with some of the concepts discussed in Howard Rheingold’s webinar on Literacies of Attention.
Revised definition – Digital literacies are a complex spectrum of abilities that enable an individual to responsibly disseminate and gain knowledge in a digital environment by being able to find, use, analyze, synthesize, explain, and create tools and resources. Key to these abilities is the confidence to quickly learn and adapt to using a wide variety of tools and resources in many different and constantly changing formats and situations.
Before going off to explore more on the topic of digital literacies, I thought I would try to formulate my own broad definition which I can reflect on later when I have done some reading and interacting with other ETMOOC participants.
A digitally literate citizen is one who can responsibly find, use, synthesize, explain, create and disseminate information. Key to this will be the ability to quickly learn and adapt to using a wide variety of tools and resources in many different formats that are in constant flux.
I briefly scanned the table of contents of Belshaw’s thesis and noted a section entitled “eight essential elements of digital literacies”; that may be a place to start.
After struggling all day we finally found the pass in the mountains. Notes that we had made prior to the expedition were helpful but did nothing to prepare us for the grandeur of the landscape. By nightfall we arrived at a small church in a village where we stayed for the night dreaming of further adventures tomorrow.
This animated gif was made using GIFSoup. After looking through lists of possible online and offline options and scanning various complex sets of instructions, GIFSoup looked like a good choice and was remarkably easy to use. GIFSoup
Vibrant Outlook 