The Librarian's Internet-Art for Kid's Sake
Online pictures and clip-art...for kid's eyes only
Gail Junion-Metz -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2000
Kids are always in need of art--one week they need a snow leopard, the next week they need a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. It used to be that art was found in books. Nowadays kids can search more easily forpictures online. But many Web sites contain inappropriate images for young viewers. Here are five designed especially for children: Yahooligans! Downloader The Amazing Picture Machine Animal Photo Library NASA Image eXchange (NIX) Kids Domain--Clip Art Index Sites That Aren't Totally Kid-Safe The four sites listed below contain lots of kid-appropriate pictures as well as images designed for adults with some nudity and mild sexual content. I recommend that anadult help kids and young teens use these tools: AltaVista Image Search Corbis: Pictures on the Internet Lycos Multimedia Yahoo! Image Surfer
www.yahooligans.com/Downloader/pictures
Gr 2-6--A picture index tailored for young kids. Links to clip art may be located by topic or keyword. Sponsor: Yahoo! Don't Miss: The "Animals & Nature" section; the "Entertainment" section for popular movie and music stars; the "School Bell" section for homework assignments the "Sports" section; and the "How To" section for tips on how to save, copy, paste, print, and cite pictures (for bibliographic citations). Detour: "Downloader Sounds" at www.yahooligans.com/Downloader/Sounds. Kids will love "Body Sounds," "Sound Effects," and "Downloader Videos" at www.yahooligans.com/Downloader/Videos. Check out the videos in the "Entertainment" section. Plug-ins: Both audio and video.
www.ncrtec.org/picture.htm
Gr 4-8--A good homework-related picture search engine. Kids must understand what a keyword is and how to set up keyword searches. Searchable images are selected for theireducational value. Sponsor: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit organization specializing in applications of educational technology. Don't Miss: The "Lesson Ideas" link where teachers and homeschoolers can find sample lessons. The "Search Tips" link is a great search technique lesson for kids. The "Did You Get Odd Search Results?" link explains how keyword indexing works.
www.si.edu/organiza/museums/zoo/photos/phoset.htm
Gr 4-12--An easy-to-use picture index of animals at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. All pictures contain brief notes on each animal. Sponsor: National Zoo, Smithsonian Institution. Detour: The Animal Diversity Web at animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu. This is an animal image and information search engine for high schoolers, from the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
nix.nasa.gov
Gr 6-12--More than 300,000 astronomy and space-related pictures from various NASA databases. Kids must know how to perform keyword searches to locate images. Sponsor: National Aeronautics & Space Administration. Don't Miss: Pictures of individual astronauts and breathtaking images of the planets taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Detour: Young astronomers in grades 1-4 will want to visit StarChild at starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/StarChild.html, another NASA site, for great pictures of planets, astronauts, and rockets.
www.kidsdomain.com/clip/index.html
Gr 3-6--For great, safe clip art, featuring lots of holiday and seasonal images that kids will want to add to their home pages. Sponsor: The Kids Domain. Don't Miss: The "Fairie" section. Warning: A few of the icons in the "All Kinds of Icons" section appear to be copied from commercial images. Use them with care.
www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?mmdo3D1&stype3Dsimage
www.corbis.com
richmedia.lycos.com
isurf.yahoo.com
