OVERVIEW
Millions of digital resources to use for teaching and learning. Without infringing © Copyright.
OVERVIEW The Open Content Toolkit links to millions  of contemporary and historical open-content items from around the world. Such open content offers enormous benefits for education. Students and teachers can use open media archives and web portals to find resources for their work, safely, creatively, without fear of infringing copyright. 

BACKGROUND 
Recently, there has been a significant increase in both the quality and quantity of online digital media resources. Developments in computing have increased opportunities for hosting and sharing digital assets. This new digital landscape is providing innovative opportunities for teaching, learning, research and media curation. Creative Commons licences have enabled and encouraged the global trend towards openness.

The popularity of local archives,  historical and cultural heritage pages/groups on social media platforms, suggests there is a growing appetite amongst the public for both historical and contemporary media content.

AIMS The toolkit is designed to provide a platform to explore, discuss, use and share examples of open media, at and for all levels of education. It is intended to be a truly cross-curricular knowledge resource. It is free and open to all with an interest in open resources, media archives, education cultural heritage and digital humanities. Please share widely.

EXAMPLES of open include: 
  • The British Library providing over a million images available, ready to use and download with no copyright restrictions.
  • Creators sharing 3D models, with Creative Commons licences that allow modification and remixing.
  • The Rijksmuseum encouraging the public to curate and remix their collection in Rijkstudio.

PURPOSE 
This Toolkit offers easy access to millions of online digital resources; including documents, maps images, video, audio files and 3D Models. Using these, educators can take advantage of the tremendous opportunities of including original materials in their teaching, using them in many different and creative ways. Hopefully they will be able to build on this and share their ideas.

There is something for everyone, along with some example suggestions of how to begin exploring the toolkit on the Getting Started page. 

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