DS4OERS/OER process/Finding OER search

The challenge of finding openly licensed resources
As you will have seen in the copyright quiz above, the majority of content you find on the Internet is automatically protected by copyright. So we can't just make copies of resources we find online even if it is for educational purposes. Consequently, when searching for content online, we must develop our search skills to filter for resources that are openly licensed. Modern internet search engines provide functionality to help identify openly licensed content. However, even if an advanced search for openly licensed content lists a number of resources, we must always go to the original source of the material to verify that it has an open licence, or that it has been clearly dedicated to the public domain (for example, using the CC0 mark (Pronounced 'CC Zero').

Let's assume a teacher is looking for images of Cassava that they would like to modify for a worksheet on the economics of local food production.

Using internet search engines
As well as finding resources on dedicated image sites like Flickr, it is also possible to search for images using internet search engines to filter for openly licensed content. Sometimes, if you are unsuccessful in finding a suitable image resource on a dedicated image site, a wider internet search may help you find what you are looking for.

We will explore two options.

DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that protects a user's privacy and shows all searchers the same results for a given search term, rather than using algorithms developed from personal data that provide different results for each user.

Google Search
Google Search, or Google for short, is an internet search engine provided by Google. The order of search results is in part determined by a ranking system (popularity of pages). The search algorithm personalises results based on the user's search history. Consequently, two people using an identical search term will invariably generate different search results.

Associating Creative Commons licences with search filter labels
Internet search engines use generic labels to refer to collections of Creative Commons licences. When making OER, you must think about your re-use context and the compatibility of different licence types. In summary, you need to know what types of licences you are looking for.