Challenge for Week Three

This week you will learn how to upload images your your blog posts. There will be a focus on giving proper credit to the photos you use and an introduction to Creative Commons will also be given. Bloggers will learn about how to upload images from their digital camera and/or computer, and write a blog post that includes a Creative Commons image. Adding a photograph to your blog post is like adding icing to the cake. Adding an image to a blog post encourages your audience to read your post. A pictures speaks a 1,000 words, and this week will be an example of that. However, we can't use just any image we want. Why? The law automatically grants full rights of images to the original creator. So what's the solution you ask? Well, image rights can be granted through Creative Commons licensing, or photos taken by you may be used. What is Creative Commons, you ask? The group provides a free way for individuals and groups to license their work. According to their website, their "tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright — which makes their creative, educational, and scientific content instantly more compatible with the full potential of the internet. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law. We’ve worked with copyright experts around the world to make sure our licenses are legally solid, globally applicable, and responsive to our users’ needs."

Activity 1-Watch this short video to learn about the Creative Commons License.

Activity 2-Visit these Creative Commons websites.
Creative Commons Flickr Photos
Compfight-Click on Creative Commons on the left for images.
FlickrCC
Wylio-After you find the photo you like, click "Get the code" for the embed code.
Wikimedia Commons
Search by Creative Commons
Pics4learning

Search through photos to find a photo you like. Right click on your chosen photo, and click 'save image as.' You can save your photo to your desktop or other desired location on your computer for uploading to your blog post. Make sure to check the licensing agreement first. You want to make certain you have permission to use the image before you post it to your blog. You can also set limits within this site so your search will only locate Creative Commons images.
How do I add a photo to my blog?
Blogger-Click the add image button. Click, choose file to find your image on your computer. Pick your chosen layout, and then click upload image.
Edublogs-Find and click the add image button located on the 'add media' line of your new post. Select your chosen photo from your computer, and upload the image.
Blogmeister-To post a picture using classblogmeister, you will need to upload it to the internet. You can host your pictures on www.imageshack.com for free. To use imageshack, you can create a free account and upload your pictures. Once a picture is uploaded, click on “View Full Size” and copy the URL. You will need to paste the URL into a set of html code and post it in a new article. The code is:

Replace the hi-lited URL with the URL of your picture. Paste the code into a new article using Text mode. If posting multiple pictures, press “Enter” between each set of code. Giving proper photo credit is important, too. Here is one way to give proper credit to your photo. Photo by: Uwe Hermann licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Generic. Just highlight and copy the link in your web address window, highlight your text in your blog post, click on the 'insert link' button (usually shown by a globe and chain link) in your menu bar, and paste the copied URL into the window. The bottom of this blog post also demonstrates another way to give proper credit to a photo.

Activity 3-Visit two blogs from any of our blog rolls (list of blogs on right hand side of this website) to see how other bloggers use images within their blogs. Leave a comment on at least one of these blogs.

Activity 4-Now it's your turn! Create a blog post that includes at least one image. Write about using images within your blog. Why are images useful on your blog? Why is it important to give proper credit for images that do not belong to you? How do you think using images can help your students learn? What did you learn from viewing images on other blogs? Any other ideas about the use of blog images?

Activity 5-Leave a comment on this blog post about using images.

Original Image: Colorful Joy http://www.flickr.com/photos/robino/463790976/
by: robokow