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Those clever folks at the University of Nottingham have been at it again! A while ago I asked via the Xerte Teachers JISC mailist what the best way was to correctly attribute images sourced via Flickr Creative Commons in a Xerte Toolits learning object. The suggested solutions were useful, if a little clunky, and mainly involved adding snippets of html to Xerte pages (some other solutions are proposed by Ron Mitchell in this learning object). However, Patrick Lockley and Julian Tenney at Nottingham have now come up with a far more practical and elegant solution.

The tool is distributed online via the JISC-funded Xerte Public E-learning Repository (XPERT). It is essentially an Ajax web search for images, video and audio that uses custom APIs to search for Creative Commons-licensed content from Flickr and Wikimedia Commons (the Flickr content should be ’safe’). Where it goes (way) beyond, say, an advanced search for reusable images in Google, is in the way it allows you to embed the attribution in the image itself, select an optimum size for using in Xerte Online Toolkits, and even choose to embed in a Powerpoint slide.

To test the tool, do the following:

  • go to http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/attribution
  • enter your search term in the search box and click the search button
  • wait for 5-10 seconds for the results to appear
  • choose a suitable image/sound/video and click ’select’
  • click on your output option (e.g original size with attribution, a size optimised for Xerte, Powerpoint etc.)
  • the image will open in a new tab or window where you can save it (or embed the code if you use that output option)

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This is a very useful tool for anyone searching for a way to correctly and efficiently attribute open content. Even better for Xerte Toolkits users is the news that the developers are planning to integrate the tool into a wizard in an upcoming release.