http://zoo-m.com/flickr-storm

Flickr Storm allows users to search flickr for images shared under Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons enables and underlies a massive pool of content that is available for students to use in their projects, including images, videos and music. Whilst this site only focus on images from one Creative Commons source amongst many, it is a great way to get students thinking about licensing, sharing, intellectual property, theft, creativity and participatory culture. By encouraging students to borrow, create and then share, we teach them to value their own work, to share content without breaking the law and to create culture rather than just consume it.

http://engrish.com/

Students can gain a new appreciation of the difficulties inherent in learning English, by studying Engrish’s real-world, visual examples of English gone wrong. Whilst this site is mostly intended to entertain, it can be used to provide stimulus materials which help to engage students with their work.

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

A huge collection of images from the Life Magazine archives; made available through Google Images. Perfect for stimulating students.

http://gimp.org/

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), is a graphic editing tool that provides a set of tools almost as complete as Adobe’s Photoshop (without the hefty price tag). I use this software to meet all of my web and graphic design needs, and it does so simply and effectively.  One of the nice things about this software is that regular releases bring new features at a constant rate, meaning that if it does not do what you want today, it may do it in six months time.

http://picasa.google.com/

This free desktop photo management software from Google provides a fantastic way to manage a large photo collection. It incorporates basic editing tools, and makes it easy to open a file in a more advanced application (such as the GIMP). It’s integration with Google’s online web album system makes sharing images and video with friends and the general public a breeze.  One nice feature is that it allows you to share files under Creative Commons licenses, which are subsequently shown in Google Images searches.