It's Open Education Week

In honor of OEWeek, here are some awesome media resources, as well as a preview of this afternoon's Open Education Faculty Panel!

• Does the cost of a new textbook for your course exceed the cost of tuition for the class?
• Do you field questions from students about used books, as they try to keep their costs down?
• Do you find that some students fall behind almost immediately, because they aren't buying the textbook?

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," consider whether having a less expensive - or even free - alternative would help your at-risk students to increase their probability of success.
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Today, we have a cohort of faculty who have offered to share their experiences in adopting Open materials for their courses. Your colleagues will share not only how they came to use OERs, but also how their students have benefitted. We hope you'll make time to join us!

This afternoon's 2:30-3:30pm session will be held remotely, via Webex:
Some of our panel members will share their information asynchronously, while others will join us in real time. This session will be recorded, and the recording will be posted to the CTLA website.

• Use this link to join us, 2:30-3:30 today!
  • Meeting number (access code): 2483 121 4671
  • Meeting password: FSvQFGeW343

Now, the term "Open Educational Resource" (OER) can refer to something as broad as an entire course that you can use, or as narrow as a single handout, or even a single image or audio track that you can "remix" for use in creating your own course materials.

To get you in the swing of things for our special Open Education Panel later today, I thought I'd share some resource sites where you can find FREE media (both images and audio).

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The University of Washington resource, "Copyright free images," has quite a few websites listed, but here are some highlights that I have taken directly from this source:

FIND FREE IMAGES:
(Most of these descriptions are directly from the respective websites.)

• Burst
  A free stock photo platform that is powered by Shopify. Image library includes thousands of high-resolution, royalty-free images.
• The Gender Spectrum Collection: Stock Photos Beyond the Binary
  This collection aims to better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities.
• The Jopwell Collection: Intern Edition
  Features free stock photos of young professionals of color. Must give attribution to Jopwell.com if used.
• Morguefile
  Search image tags or browse by category.
• The Noun Project
  Database of icons that can be used for free with attribution.
• nappy.co
  Beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people. For free.
• Pixabay
  Free images and videos
• stock.xchng
  Stock photography contributed by members. Owned by Getty Images.

• Unsplash 
  Free high-resolution stock photos contributed by a community of members. No attribution needed, though is appreciated.
• Vecteezy 
  Includes free stock photography.

Flickr Creative Commons Search and Resources

• Flickr Creative Commons
  Flickr's Creative Commons portal. Browse by license type or choose "Advanced Search" to limit to Creative Commons content.
• Smithsonian on Flickr
  Showcases photos from different collections in its museums, archives, and research centers.

Open Access Photographs & Historical Images

• Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online
  Images from the Library of Congress, now in the public domain.
• Wikimedia Commons
  Historical and contemporary images contributed by participants. Millions of high-resolution images of art, architecture, design, people, historical events, diagrams, maps, and more.

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FIND FREE AUDIO
In the blog post "11 Best Royalty-free Music Sites for Your Amazing Videos," Animaker recommends sites for audio that may be of interest.
Here are a couple of examples:

• YouTube Audio Library*
• Amazon (this is actually "free or cheap," with many tracks under $1)

The 2019 Wix post, "10 Best Sites for Free Music for Videos," overlaps a lot of the sites listed by Animaker, but does also have additional resources.

* Back in February 2021, we posted "Where to find free music" - here's the video showing how to access the YouTube Audio Library. Pay attention to the type of license associated with music tracks that you select:

If you have other questions about Teaching, Learning, and/or Assessment, contact the CTLA! To submit a request for assistance: https://ctla.cgc.edu/help.html

HAPPY TUESDAY, EVERYONE!