How to Find Free Images and Stock Videos for Classroom Projects

How to Find Free Images and Stock Videos for Classroom Projects

Since I published my Getting Started with Green Screen in the Classroom blog post, I have received several questions from educators asking where they can find free images and stock videos to use for their green screen and classroom projects. There are many different websites available! Here are some of my favorites.

Photos for Class was created specifically for educational purposes. All photos are licensed by Creative Commons for public use and are age appropriate. A really nice feature is the automatic citation of the author and image license terms. 

😭My favorite thing about Photos for Class is the search filter. If students search for an inappropriate term, images of adorable dogs are returned. BRILLIANT!

Pics4Learning states that it is a "curated image library that is safe and free for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos and illustrations for classroom projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other projects in an educational setting."

Pixabay states that it is "a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist - even for commercial purposes". It is also available as an iOS app and Android app. Look for images, illustrations, vectors or videos by selecting the dropdown menu next to the search bar:

Pexels Videos has free stock videos that I sometimes like to use as animated backgrounds in green screen videos. They also have a free stock photo search but if students are looking for still images, I prefer Photos for Class, Pics4Learning or Pixabay. 

Reverse Image Search

Reverse image searches are great for finding the original source of any image. Simply upload any image and the search engine will track down the original source of the image as well as show re-uses. A few of these tools include:

Google's Reverse Image Search
Google Images
Reverse Image Search
TinEye

Even if images/videos are labeled appropriate for personal or commercial use, I still like to encourage students to provide credit at the end of their projects.

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