For many of us, Common Craft has been a learning fixture. 

We’ve relied on those delightfully simple and brief introductions to explain complex ideas from apps to zombies.

We’ve shared them in professional development sessions. We’ve used them to introduce concepts in digital citizenship.  They helped us introduce new technologies to classes. When we needed to explain what a wiki was to a wiki-reluctant colleague, Common Craft offered the go-to explanation.

For years I’ve tried to draw my own little cut-outs in homage to Lee LeFever’s work.  (In fact, the only paper files of any value I found in cleaning out my physical file cabinets, were my folders of CC-inspired, student-drawn cutouts.)

So I was delighted to discover that Lee, and his wife and business partner Sachi, recently opened up Common Craft’s art and resources to educators.

A reasonably-priced subscription, allows educators to use and embed the library of Common Craft videos (with English captions) and to use the Cut-outs to create their own explanations.

Membership offers access to 800+ original images, downloadable as either PowerPoint or zip files.

Membership also offers access to Common Craft’s Know-how resources–videos and PDFs–designed to guide users through the creation of explanations.  (A few of these are publicly available.)

The library is growing. Recently added content includes Cut-outs of  hundreds of maps and places–landmarks, states, continents, countries.

While no classroom or library model is available for purchase, an individual teacher subscription provides you, as librarian, the tools you need to create powerful explanational goodness!

Imagine what this could do for your flipping repertoire and for customizing/personalizing your introductions to inquiry strategies, digital ethics, new tech tools, and more.