Still Images
Aug 1st, 2009 by Michele Brannon-Hamilton
Pictures can change a boring text page to an exciting learning environment if the photos are chosen to suit the theme and there are not too many of them. When I first decided to add photos to my Moodle site, I was excited about the interesting photos I found online. Then the rules of copyright crept into the scene and I was left wondering which photos I could actually use. It shouldn’t have been a surprise since I’m a freelance writer and I’m very familiar with the copyright of my own work. In writing, we have all kinds of rights to worry about like first North American rights and second rights etc.
However, I find that I’m not comfortable with the copy rights of images even those that have creative commons licences. Therefore, I decided to use all my own images in my Moodle site. I got out my digital camera and took photos that would represent each module of my site. Then I uploaded the images to the Moodle site and tried to link them to my splash page.
That’s when the real fun began. I couldn’t get my images to display properly. Someone pointed out that my image files may be too large. I thought I had shrunk them in the Moodle window but I really needed to shrink the actual file sizes first. I realize this is an area where my knowledge is lacking. Therefore, I want to learn more about digital images and copyright. I would also like to learn Photoshop and Dreamweaver so that I can change files and code them to display properly. There’s so much more to learn!