![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/digital_citizenship.jpg\")
<\/a>With the incredible popularity and ease of digital mediamaking comes\u00a0great responsibility. As students unlock the power of digital storytelling and media creation, they seek to incorporate music, images and video into their productions.<\/p>\nBut it’s not as simple as just hitting up the Google.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1. Creative Commons is your new bestie<\/h2>\n
Creative Commons<\/a>: not just a website, but a way of life. It works in two ways:<\/p>\n Creative Commons created a whole system of content licensing that helps take the guesswork out of whether you can remix a thing. At the Creative Commons site, you can automatically generate your Creative Commons license based on your answers to the following questions:<\/p>\n You can display the automatically generated html on your website or portfolio, and it’s what you can look for to find out whether and how it’s okay to\u00a0use media.<\/p>\n Everything we create we license with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license<\/a>. That means that everything we create on this site can be remixed and reused, as long as you credit us and don’t use the work for commercial purposes.<\/p>\n But therein lies the rub: the license applies only to things we create: our blogposts, podcasts, images and videos. Things made by other people retain their copyrights.<\/p>\n The Creative Commons site provides a search engine where you can look for media to remix,\u00a0based on the answers to the questions listed above.<\/p>\n Ah, Google Image search.\u00a0So much raw, unbridled shiny in one place. Too much shiny, in fact. Filter your image search by Usage rights. It’s under the Tools menu. You can find things that are labeled for noncommercial reuse and noncommercial reuse with modification.<\/p>\n But it’s still your responsibility to check to make sure what Google believes is copyright-friendly is actually true. Take for instance, that cute little fluffball melted on the grass at the lower left. If I wanted to make him the star of my HaikuDeck presentation on how dogs are awesome, I need to doublecheck his permissions.<\/p>\n Start by clicking on his image. Google will tell you where they found the photo:<\/p>\n In this case, Google tells us they found Sherpy on flickr. So head on over to flickr with the Visit Page button.<\/p>\n Aha! Thanks to our browsing over at Creative Commons, we recognize those symbols. It’s a Creative Commons license! Let’s look at the terms. Flickr user Ilena Gecan<\/a> chose a Creative Commons license 2.0, which allows this particular photo to be shared and adapted for non-commercial uses, as long as attribution’s given<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other sites, like wikimedia commons<\/a>, pixabay<\/a> or publicdomainpictures.net<\/a> also display the licensing information in easy to find places.<\/p>\n Oh, background music. It makes everything better! But while Beyonc\u00e9’s songs speak to millions of us, rest assured she has an army of copyright lawyers who never sleep. Ever. So while Queen Bey is off the playlist, there are plenty of artists out there who release songs they’re willing to let you use free of charge.<\/p>\n Soundcloud.com<\/a> is a great resource for songs of all kinds, but when you search, you can filter the results by copyright-friendliness:<\/p>\n\n
How Creative Commons licensing works and why it’s awesome<\/h3>\n
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Take us, for example<\/h3>\n
![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/us.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFinding great remixables at Creative Commons<\/h3>\n
![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ccsearch.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n2. Okay, we lied: you can also just Google it, but Google well.<\/h2>\n
![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/a_cute_puppy_-_Google_Search-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/sherpy-1024x422.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/sherpydeets.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n3. Use Soundcloud’s search tools to find songs you can use<\/h2>\n
Here’s how to find\u00a0some<\/h3>\n
![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Search_tracks_on_SoundCloud.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"finding](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/trrg_\u2014_toothpick_samples_by_mikrosopht___Free_Listening_on_SoundCloud.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![wikimedia commons<\/a>,](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Maltese_puppy_blue_bow.jpg\"){kind=link}