Introduction

• web browsers
• search engines
• chat rooms
• FTP
• images & animations
• regular video & audio
• streaming video & audio
• electronic whiteboards
• MUD's & MOO's
• videoconferencing
• web authoring tools
• push technologies
• site capturing
• intranets

References

Images and Animations

Much of the rhetoric about the quality of the Internet as a research tool for young people is false; many agree finding appropriate, credible, and free information on the Internet is difficult and time-consuming. For digital images, however, the Internet truly is a vast and usable resource, for young people. Most web sites contain images that can be saved independently from the page and the images can be incorporated into students' projects. Although there are ethical and legal issues when using images obtained from the Internet, many images on the Internet are in the public domain and many uses of Internet images fall within the fair use clauses of the copyright laws (Ackermann & Hartman, 2003).

For educators, Internet images can be a valuable source of media to support their teaching and Internet images can be an important component of students' research projects. Because of the ephemeral character of Internet sites, educators are well advised to maintain their own collections of useful images gathered from the Internet. It is important educators model proper citations when using images collected from the web as well.

Educators who plan to aloow students to use images form the Interne in research projects should be aware of strategies for finding useful images. Most search engines allow users to search for images of almost any topic, but those images may not be filtered by a school Internet filter and even if the option for safe filtering on the search engine is used, it is possible that inappropriate images may be returned when performing seemingly innocent searches. In addition to using the filtering options on search engines and ensuring students use those filters, teachers should direct students to web sites where appropriate images can be found.

Resources for images:

• The Library of Congress (n.d.) maintains a large and searchable database of images from all aspects of US history and culture.
• Internet Archive (n.d.)is a site where users can access a large collection of digital media, including images and animations.