Humans are visual creatures. Teaching with images provides a powerful way to engage students emotionally. Images can also make an online or blended class more inviting. But understanding how to locate images that are licensed for re-use and understanding how to attribute them correctly is no simple task. Fortunately, there are more and more photographers who are sharing their works with a CC0 license and more sites that are making them easy to find and download.
What is CC0?
A creative work shared under a CC0 license has “no rights reserved.” This is the equivalent of public domain. As Creative Commons explains, “CC0 enables … creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law.” In other words, you may download and re-use works shared with a CC0 license for any purpose without permission and without attributing the creator (although this never hurts).
CC0 Image Repositories
Sharing is Caring
It sure feels great to have free cultural works available for us to use and remix, doesn’t it? Remember that feeling the next time you make something. Use the License Chooser to determine the right license for your work and give back to the community that has given to you.
Visual Hunt offers a meta search over several repositories with cc0-Images.