“These sites contain material that is generally free to use, uncopyrighted, whose copyright has expired, or is uncopyrightable.  The last includes recourses from US government agencies, educational organizations, and companies that provide materials for students and teachers.” 

American Memory from the Library of Congress:  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

 “American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.”  Although the LOC provides some copyright information about the items in this collections, “it is the researcher’s obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the Library’s collections.”

NASA/Hubble Telescope: http://www.nasa.gov/

This site contains teaching resources and information for educators.  It also contains many image and video galleries.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Photo Library: http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/

This site holds Albums and Catalogs containing over 20,000 images.  Most NOAA photos and slides are in the public domain and cannot be copyrighted.

The NYPL Picture Collection Online:  http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/

“The digital collection of images presented here is taken from the in-print collection of images that New York Public Library has been collecting since 1915.”

Picture History:  http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco/

“Picture History is an on-line archieve of images and film fottage illunimating more than 200 years of American history.”

FreeFoto.com: http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp

”FreeFoto.com is the largest collection of free photographs for private non-commercial use on the internet.”

Pics4Learning.com: http://www.pics4learning.com/

“Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students.  The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers.”

Hall Davidson’s List of Library of Congress Museum Site: http://school.discovery.com/edtechconnect/halldavidson/resources/Museums.doc

SOUNDS

American Rhetoric (famous speeches): http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

“The site makes material available in an effort to advance understanding of political, social, and religious issues as they relate to the study and practice of rhetoric and pubic address deemed relevant to the pubic interest and the promotion of civic discourse.”

Find Sounds: http://www.findsounds.com/

A free site where you can search the Web for sound effects and musical instrument samples.

Free kids music.com: http://freekidsmusic.com/music.html

A collection of quality children’s music.  These are complete songs, not edited versions.  All music downloads on this site are free.

FreePlayMusic.com: http://freeplaymusic.com/

“The Free Play Music Library is a comprehensive collection of high end broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres, available for free download either online or can be purchased by cd.” 

Free Sound Effects: http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/noflash.htm

***AUDACITY

Audacity is a free sound editing software.  You can record more than one track (music, voice, more), copy/crop/edit it, and save/export it as a final project.  You can save it in different formats including mp3.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/screenshots - Click here for a tutorial with screen shots.

LAME Decoder for Audacity (you only need to download it and install it once.  It makes Audacity be able to download mp3 files.)

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&i=lame-mp3