My Two Go-to Places for Free Sound Effects and Music

Some of my students are currently using the MIT App Inventor to create their own Android apps. It's a great way for students learn some programming concepts and have a working app at the end. I figured that some other teachers would like to know how it works so I published this tutorial last week. In that tutorial I demonstrated using Sound Bible to find free sound effects to use app projects and other multimedia projects. 

Sound Bible is one of my two go-to resources for free audio files. The other is Dig CC Mixter. My students use both of these resources to find music and sound effects to use in their projects. 

Sound Bible is a good place for students to find all kinds of free sound effects recordings. Students can download files as MP3 or WAV files. And best of all, students don't need to register on the site in order to download the files. But they do need to remember to cite the source of the sound effects as most are labeled with a Creative Commons license. Learn more about Sound Bible in my short video embedded below.



Dig CC Mixter offers thousands of songs that are Creative Commons licensed. The site is divided into three main categories. Those categories are Instrumental Music for Film & Video, Free Music for Commercial Projects, and Music for Video Games. Within each category you can search according to genre, instrument, and style. Here's a little video overview of Dig CC Mixter. 

Vintage Travel Posters and Google Earth

The Library of Congress offers thousands of historical images and maps that students can download and reuse for free. Most of the images and maps are found in these digital collections. Some of those images are arranged in collections on the LOC site in a section appropriately titled Free to Use and Reuse Sets. It's in that section that I found this collection of vintage travel posters. 

The vintage travel posters set on the LOC's website features twenty-one posters for destinations including national parks, New York City, Chicago, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico amongst other popular destinations. Most of the posters were produced in the 1930's and 40's. Clicking on a poster in the collection will reveal information about when it was produced and who created it. When you click on a poster you can download it in a variety of sizes and formats including JPEG and GIF. 

Applications for Education
When I first came across these vintage travel posters I immediately thought of using them in placemarks in Google Earth tours. I'd have students choose a few posters they liked then research a few activities that people liked to do in the areas featured in the posters. Then I'd have students put those posters into placemarks in Google Earth along with their writing about the popular activities in the area at the time the posters were produced.

Here's a video about how to put images like those in the vintage travel posters set into placemarks in Google Earth.