It is easy to ‘ignore’ copyright law because of the effort it takes to properly document where information was found.  There is a free resource available (yes, we like those kind of resources) that makes it easy to document: KnightCite

With KnightCite, you still need to pull together the basic information such as authors, titles, publishing location and year, and more, but with simple entry into a form, KnightCite produces the proper documentation to include in your project. It also understands that some teachers may require the MLA citation style, others will prefer APA and some will ask for Chicago style citation, and offers help in all three styles.

The best part is that when you have entered the information, KnightCite produces the proper documentation for you to simply copy and paste into your project.

When it comes to photo organizing, editing, enhancing, and sharing; there are several tools available. I like Picasa (a free download from Google) for organizing my pictures but its editing and enhancing features aren’t especially strong. I do like the fact that I can easily upload pictures from Picasa on my computer to Picasa Web Albums online. You can choose to have your albums public – and link to them in your blog – or private – and invite those with whom you’d like to share.

Another tool that I’ve been using for editing and enhancing my photos is Picnik. The beta version was free for a while and then split into a pared down section of tools for free and the “Pro” version with expanded features for an annual fee. You can upload your photos from several sources including Picasa (yeah!) – and Flickr – and there are great editing and enhancing tools. These are now (almost) all free, including the ability to place text in – and frames around – your photos. Picnik offers several sharing options and you can download the edited or enhanced photos to your computer to use in other applications. The only downside to the free version is advertising – but we’re all used to ignoring that!