Over the last year some of my old favorite sources of media for classroom projects changed or completely disappeared. They’ve been replaced by some new and updated sources for free sound effects, music, videos, pictures, and drawings to use in classroom projects. That’s why I created an updated guide to finding media for classroom projects. 

People who are subscribed to my Practical Ed Tech Tip-of-the-Week Newsletter had a copy of the guide emailed to them on Sunday evening. If you’d like a copy emailed to you, sign-up for my newsletter and I’ll be happy to send it to you. A few highlights from the guide are included below.

The Library of Congress can be a good place to find images to use in classroom projects, if you know where to look on the site. I recommend looking in the Free to Use and Reuse collections. Those are collections of images that are thematically arranged. Here’s a brief overview of how to find images on the LOC’s website.

Pixabay is one of my go-to sites for public domain images. Pixabay also offers public domain video clips that you can download for free. To find video clips on Pixabay simply choose “video” from the drop-down menu that appears in the right edge of Pixabay’s search box.

Dig CC Mixter offers thousands of songs that are Creative Commons licensed. The site is divided into three main categories. Those categories are Instrumental Music for Film & Video, Free Music for Commercial Projects, and Music for Video Games. Within each category you can search according to genre, instrument, and style. When you click the download icon on a file you will be prompted to copy the attribution information that is required to include in your project. Here’s a little video overview of Dig CC Mixter