Moira Jenkins, Global Dimension web editor, has a few suggestions for finding great images.
When I ask teachers what they look for in a teaching resource they often say things like: “Well it has to be visual…”, or: “It has to grab pupils’ attention…” Turns out you teachers are always on the lookout for great images to inspire and motivate your learners! So I’ve put together some guidance here on ways to find photos of people and objects and countries, to engage your class with global learning.
Please do bear in mind, though, that despite the old saying ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, photos never really tell the whole story. They can give only a partial impression of people, countries or issues. (You could talk about this with your pupils. Does a picture of ‘cup of tea’ represent Great Britain? What photo would they use? How would they represent their locality, their school, their family or their life? What does the photo they choose include or exclude?) So when choosing photos, maybe you could select a range of images rather than just one: urban as well as rural; male and female; old and young; modern and traditional... Perhaps you could go out of your way to find pictures that challenge stereotypes. Surprise your pupils with images they weren’t expecting... and then discuss their reactions!
Think Global photo resources
Every time we produce one of our annual Global Wallplanners we create a photo-teaching resource based on the images we’ve used on the planner. You can find all of them here.Online photo resources supporting global learning
Leeds DEC has photo resources on their Global Schools website - downloadable photo packs from India, South Africa, Poland and Ecuador. RISC in Reading has an online resource bank which includes over 4,000 photos for teachers to use, searchable by topic and country. The Geographical Association has a selection of ‘photos for enquiry’ from China, Kenya, Lesotho and South Africa. Practical Action has a selection of photos illustrating their work for schools to use from a range of developing countries, illustrating transport, renewable energy, costume, climate change, water and sanitation, plants, recycling, farming and homes. You can find photos to help teach about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the Global Goals Resource Centre website - scroll down to the section headed "Global Goals Imagery provided by Getty Images" and you can download zip files with lots of great images in them. (To find out more about the SDGs, visit our World's Largest Lesson pages.)Searching for images online
It’s easy enough to find photos online, using a Google image search, for example. Usually you can right-click on any photo and save it to your computer. But most photos online have copyright restrictions meaning that you are not allowed to reproduce them (even for educational use). To focus your Google search on images that you are allowed to reuse, click on Search Tools > Usage Rights and select one of the ‘Labelled for reuse’ options. The photo-sharing site Flickr.com has similar search options. Once you’ve typed what you’re looking for into the search box and hit return, you can then click on ‘Any license’ and select ‘All creative commons’ to find photos that you can reuse. You could also look for specific organisations on Flickr; for example the following Flickr accounts share a lot of their photos under a ‘creative commons’ licence:- Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) – forests, forestry and conservation.
- DFID – UK Department for International Development – lots of photos illustrating DFID’s work and how DFID’s money is spent.
- Global Horticulture image library – horticulture and food production in developing countries.
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center – good for satellite images, aerial views and ‘planet earth’ images.
- UN Photo – photos from all around the world illustrating the UN and the people it works with.
- World Bank Photo Collection – photos illustrating development topics such as agriculture, education, environment, gender, health, trade and more...
