Skip to main content

Graphics, Video, and Sound


Searchable
Fair Use Guidelines
this resource will help you understand what constitutes fair use of media that you find on the web for creating your own materials. You can also download Printable Fair Use Guidelines

3D Toad.com
Provides 360 degree rotational images. You can display objects and rotate them on the screen by dragging the mouse or zoom in on any section. Categories include: skeletons, dissections, dental hygiene, coral, fossiles, yoga, history, and more. Images can be shared via email or social networking and printed. new!

Accuweather's AP Photo Archive
Photos aligned to MD science and social studies standards. Here you will find photos from the news on almost any topic. To search, click on Search Archive, then put your search term in the "what" box at the top of the screen and press enter. Subscription required. No password will be needed if you log in from an MCPS computer.
x
Art Museum Image Gallery Subscription service to 155,000 images of fine art, photographs, artifacts, contemporary art. All of these images are rights-cleared for educational use. Subscription required. See your MCPS media specialist for subscription information. x
Britannica Image Quest Subscription required. No password will be needed if you log in from an MCPS computer. new! x
Creative Commons Search
Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Their portal provides access to search services to find media licensed under the creative commons license.
x
Discovery Education Streaming
MCPS has a subscription to this huge databank of graphics, video, and sound. All the media is aligned to content standards. MCPS staff can ask the media specialist for the login/password. You can attend an MCPS training (put "streaming" in the course title field of the PDO) or view the professional development resources within DE Streaming.
x
Enchanted Learning's Picture Dictionary
This is really a picture dictionary with small graphics for each word. Many of them have a credit right under the picture that goes with it if you copy it. They do not post a policy for use of the graphics. Click on the letters at the top of the screen to find pictures.
 
FREE Clipart
It's hard to find a clipart site on the Internet that isn't full of intrusive ads, but this is one of them. The selection is limited and it is not searchable, but the pictures are school-related and sorted by subject.

Image Quest is an online database from Brittanica of more than two million rights-cleared images from over 50 of the best collections in the world. It is a subscription service that is available to all MCPS Elementary, Middle and High Schools.
Internet Picture Dictionary
A good source of pictures to use with vocabulary lessons to support ELL, with clear simple graphics of many common words on white backgrounds.
x
Jamendo is a great place to find free music to use in your presentations. all music is free and legally usable. To find music that suits your needs, search descriptors of the tracks. From the "Music" menu, choose "Tags." x
Learning Magic Goodies Page
Four collections of photos are available and you can download them each as a set for free. They include birds, animals, farm stuff, and backgrounds.

Navify is a search site that links to Wikipedia articles and also searches for audio, video, and image files on the same subject. x
Pics4Learning
This site offers completely free photos for educational use and a great search function. You can even submit your own photos. Lesson plans are also included. This site is by the folks at Image Blender, which is one of the Tech Mod image editing tools.
x
Pixabay NEW
Free photos and videos you can use anywhere. All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty-free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.
x
Podcasting Resources
A Diigo list of links shared by media specialists in MCPS includes resources for finding royalty free music to use in your podcasts.
x
Royalty-Free Clip Art Collection for Foreign/Second Language Instruction
The art here consists of line drawings specifically for use with ESOL kids. Therefore the collection has representations of many verbs, adjectives and pronouns. This is useful, but the library is very limited. Free for educational use. They only ask that you credit them. You can click "cancel" when if it asks you to install the Japanese language pack.
 
School Clip Art
This site is free for teachers, but is limited and has no search function - if you try to use the search function on the page, you get routed to a site that costs $50 a year.
 
Soundsnap contains many sound effects and loops, organized in an attractive and easy to use interface. You can download 5 files a day with a free account. x
Teacher's Domain
an extensive library of free digital resources from public television and other leading media producers, designed for classroom use and professional development. You can store and categorize materials that you find. You must complete a free registration process to download materials.
x
UVic's Language Teaching Clipart Library
This clipart collection for teaching English includes 1500 images in categories like prepositions, body parts, etc. There is a good search engine. Click on the "keyword search" button at the top of the page. If you use the graphics on a website, they request credit, but the images are otherwise free to use.
x
Wikimedia Commons
This site is a repository of graphics, sound and video uploaded by the users. The vast majority of files are either in the public domain or under a liberal copyright license which allows you to use them as long as you give credit back to the authors.
x

Some of the websites listed require a paid subscription. These are noted with Subscription required. MCPS holds a subscription for all pay sites listed on this page except where noted. If you are an MCPS teacher, you can obtain login and password information from your school media specialist. In some cases, you will not need to log in at all if you are using an MCPS computer. See other websites to which MCPS holds a subscription.

This web page may contain links to one or more pages outside the MCPS Web. MCPS does not control the content or relevancy of these pages.