I heart my PLN.  

No really, I do. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and let me tell you it takes a village of educator types on Twitter to raise my awareness of the mass amount of technology resources, ideas and potential for application in the classroom.

Enter Exhibit A: the sound files request.

Long story short, I was interested in compiling a list of free sound files to share with teachers that they could use in their lessons (specifically, within SMART Notebook). Being a complete lover of all things Google, I immediately googled my inquiry and voila! I garnered a bazillion pages (42 million, to be exact) responding to my request. The catch? Not all of them were "free" or even close to being public domain to sidestep that nasty copyright issue that keeps plaguing good intentioned folks like myself.  I was able to find one or two websites that sufficed for my purposes, but I was interested in creating a bigger list.

So I turned to the biggest resource I have -- my PLN.

And as with all other cries for help, they responded almost instantaneously! A HUGE thank you to the following tweeps for helping me out with my request last week: @Mr_W @butwait @pobrun @pookyy @mpondu @lynnjeffs and @jdornberg! All of these great folks were a huge help to me, and responded in less than 24 hours!

So without further ado, here is the list of resources that I've compiled for copyright-friendly audio/sound files.  Some of these were recommended to me, others I found all by myself lol.

- For adding music to your YouTube videos, try Audio Swap:

- For a website with a community of music published under Creative Commons licenses, try Jamendo:

- Scroll down to find a list of sites with royalty free music on this Wiki:

- For a compilation of sound clips, try Simply the Best:

- For links to 3 royalty free websites, look on this Wiki:

- To get more sound clips, try Free SFX (please note  some clips are licensed under Creative Commons while others are NOT for public use)

- A GI-NOR-MOUS list of copyright-friendly music and sound websites is found on the following Wiki:

- Another great list of audio websites is on this Delicious account:

I hope this helps all of you have been looking for a bank of sound clips, music and various audio files to help supplement the lessons in your classroom!  I know that the uses for these clips and songs are endless.

Vanessa