Images are a brilliant Web 2.0 tool to use to help Learning managers support their teaching and help students better engage in their learning.
Some great sources are:
http://www.istockphoto.com/

Royalty-Free Stock Photos, Illustrations & More

According to iStockphoto website they are the web's original source for user-generated, royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash. Whether you're designing a school web paper project, showing presentation, collaborating on a Wiki or blogging away to peers on class work, there are millions of affordable images, vectors and clips to help your student in class tell their story.

http://www.fotosearch.com/
http://www.fotolia.com/

Fotosearch and Fotolia are providers of royalty free and rights managed stock photography, illustrations, maps, video, and audio. They provide different stock agencies of "The World's stock photography at one website." This is great as students will be able to use these picture to support their web projects, school presentations, podcasting etc.

All these products can be licenced and easily downloaded for use in your presentations, promotional materials, websites, etc. When you purchase a license to use an image, video clip, or audio clip, you do so based on the license agreement of the publisher of that particular content. The license agreement will be presented to you before purchase confirmation.

Analysis of istock, Fotolia and Fotosearch

Pros

Cons

Millions of images to choose

Virtually any topic

Royalty Free: Which means that once you paid for the image you have rights to that photo for school, business or home use without the worrying about legalities or copyright ownership.

Most images are not free and only royalty free

Back to Free.

Share and stay in Touch

Upload and organise you picture in categories

Crop,fix and edit online anywhere in the world

Explore a whole world of photos to share

The Pedagogy of Teaching using images supports students' learning.

We remember visually more so that by using words.
On average we remember 30% Visually and 7% audibly.
Therefore it is imperative to support teaching by using images.

Integrating visual literacy instruction and scaffolding into classroom curriculum begins by asking a some simple important questions to start and engage the students'critical thinking process. (Jakes Online 2006)

What am I looking at?
What does this image mean to me?
What is the relationship between the image and the displayed text message?
How is this message effective?

Just as professionals ask critical questions of messages they examine, students should be just as critical of the messages they see too.

In the visual design and interpretive world, similar questions are asked during message creation as well:

How can I visually depict this message?
How can I make this message effective?

What are some visual/verbal relationships I can use?

(Jakes Online 2006)

When students internalise these important key questions, not only will students be prepared to recognise and decode coded and simple messages, but they will also be better prepared to communicate with a higher level of visual sophistication that will carry them right through the "multimedia-dependent" environment of higher education and the modern working and social world. (Jakes Online 2006)

For more information about the power visual literacy please have a look at our Visual literacy website myself, Amy Kennedy and Andrew Webb designed, edited and collaborated virtually online.

http://visualiteracy.weebly.com/index.html

NB* This video has no sound