Create Your Own Media

We encourage you to create your own media for your treehouses. You can take digital photos, sound recordings or movies and insert them into your treehouse. You can use a scanner to scan into your computer regular photos and drawings you have created to make digital files. You can also upload documents that contain graphs, tables or other data sheets that would be difficult to recreate in a webpage. Creating your own media is a great way to study the Earth's organisms. You may create media of a living thing that you are studying, or of yourself and others at work studying Life on Earth.

Find Media in the ToL Database

If you can't create your own media, you can find media in the ToL database to add to your treehouse during the treehouse editing process. To begin the process of finding media for your treehouse, first log-in, choose to edit a treehouse page (step #2) and click Find Media. When searching from within the Treehouse data entry form you will only find images that you are allowed to use in your treehouse. You don't need to upload these images because they are already in the database.

Find Media on the WWW

If you can't create your own media or find media that you want in the ToL database you can search for media on the WWW. Be aware that for most images and media on the WWW you must ask for permission to upload it to the ToL database and use on your page.

• TO FOLLOW COPYRIGHT RULES:

  IF AN IMAGE (on the WWW or elsewhere)

  • Does not have any copyright information listed with it, or any information about how it can be used;
  • Has a copyright owner listed (e.g. Copyright 2005 © Lisa Smith);
  • Is not clearly marked as in the public domain;
  • Says o.k. for educational use, but does not say anything about permission for posting the image on the web;

  YOU MUST

  1. Get permission in writing for your specific use of the media file. It is not ok to just cite the source of where you got the image. Use this letter to send to web masters, copyright owners etc. to ask for permission to use a media file. You will ask for permission to use the file and the terms of use for the media file.
     (Always respect the rights of copyright owners and use materials according to their instructions, or get permission in writing for your specific use. If you follow this rule you will be following copyright law. See Copyright Issues for more information on following copyright rules when you find copyrighted media on the WWW that you would like to use in your treehouse.)

We have a list of sites with images/media in the Public Domain that you can use on your treehouse page. Public domain means that the original copyright owner has given up their copyright for the public to use the work freely in their own projects.

Media you find on the WWW you will need to upload (add) to the ToL database with copyright and other important information about the image/media file. If you would like, you can use a worksheet to keep track of the media you want to use in your treehouse.