So much of the world is online nowadays that people do not always realize that the images and links they find online are not always meant for the public. This section of the project outlines the role that copyright law plays in the dissemination and posting of images found online. I had previously learned about “fair use” laws in an education course I took a few years ago. “Fair Usage Laws” refer to an implied flexibility that an online image may have if used for educational purposes. This is a very wide-ranging definition, and as the lesson points out, it is also problematic because “fair usage” laws were written well before the invention of the internet and were not created with thought to internet copyright. This potentially opens a student or educator who uses a copyrighted image to copyright infringement laws. The main points of article encourage students and educators to remember 4 main points; be mindful of what images you are allowed to use, learn how to correctly credit any images you do use, educate students on the legalities of using public images in their work, and show students how to find images they are allowed to use through a variety of available online sources and also by providing a good example in your own work.

            Compfight is a valuable image-posting website that I have used previously many times. It is extremely user-friendly and includes filters for searching for images that fall under the “creative commons” category, which means they are free to use with proper accreditation. An example would be this picture of a dark-chocolate cake that I found:

<a href=”https://www.vecteezy.com/photo/11352404-a-piece-of-fresh-delicious-cake-with-nuts-and-chocolate-on-a-black-plate”>A piece of fresh delicious cake with nuts and chocolate on a black plate Stock photos by Vecteezy</a>

The proper accreditation for this photo is as follows:

Photo by chernikovatv341418 licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Plugins can be described as tools that can add to the functionality of a blog and improve the user experience by displaying features such as the ability to easily add pictures to your post and the ability to embed and cite documents. If you’re writing a blog and truly want the user to focus on a particular point in the text, plugins are an easy way to embellish the text in question and allow the reader to explore the points in question.

            The first example is the site called Lightbox for Images; this site allows the reader to click on a picture in the blog and the picture immediately expands to a full-size image with amazing detail and quality. If your blog is heavy on visual themes and you have a lot of pictures that are important to the subject matter, then this app is recommended as a way to visually highlight the image(s) so that the reader can hopefully have a better understanding of the image.

            The second example is called Pixabay and harkens back to the previous blog assignment on image copyrights. Pixabay is a tool that allows the user to quickly search and source public domain photos. As was explained previously, fair-usage laws do not always cover images that are used for teaching (especially if the image was found from a public website). Pixabay allows you to quickly search for a subject without leaving the page and without worrying if the image is available to use without copyright.

            The third example is called Embed Any Document and is extremely useful if you are writing a blog post that features many citations and copyrighted images. This site allows the author to embed any document into their blog without having to cut/paste, reduce the size, or convert the document to another format.

            Of all of the plugins I tried I really liked the Lightbox for Images site; as stated previously I am a very visual learner and I often appreciate when descriptive text is supplemented by a picture of the subject. Lightbox for Images allows me to post a small image in my blog and should the reader want to see it in better quality all they have to do is select the image and it will appear larger without taking the reader off the blog to another page.

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