Using Digital Content
We believe students should be creators with technology and not just consumers, so FCIT provides a wide range of digital assets for students to build their projects and, consequently, their understanding. But with well over 100,000 pieces of free digital content for the classroom, FCIT’s collections can be a bit overwhelming. The purpose of this blog is to highlight important areas of digital content and provide suggestions for using these digital “building blocks” in the classroom. Expect to find posts featuring FCIT’s clipart, photo, audiobook, and map collections among others. Your guide for this blog is Dr. Roy Winkelman.
Trace-Based Case: Florida Tourism
How does tourism impact Florida’s economy and growth? This is one lesson in a new series of Trace-Based Cases, critical thinking inquiry lessons, created by the USF Stavros Center, demonstrating the use of digital content in the classroom....
Immigration and Migration
This is one lesson in a new series of Trace-Based Cases, critical thinking inquiry lessons, created by the USF Stavros Center demonstrating the use of digital content in the classroom. Trace-Based Cases begin with a trace of something from the past, like...
Civil War Resource Collection
The Florida Center for Instructional technology offers over a thousand Civil War resources for the classroom. Our collection includes texts, audiobooks, maps, photos, and illustrations. All are available for free classroom use. Audiobook of Lincoln's Emancipation...
From Many Lands: Multicultural Education through Miniatures
The From Many Lands website is a great resource for reading and social studies at the elementary and middle school levels. Easily navigated by young students, the site pulls together engaging stories, interesting photos, and some basic...
Steamships Then and Now: Using Text Sets in the Social Studies Classroom
Collections of texts tightly focused on a specific topic are known as "text sets." They may include varied genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and so forth) and media (such as blogs, maps, photographs, art, primary-source documents, and audio...
Hidden Gem: 21,000 Digital Buttons
This month's "Hidden Gem" collection is from the Presentations ETC website. The Buttons section of this site includes over 21,000 images that can be used across subject areas from kindergarten counting exercises to high school application interface...
Using ClipArt ETC for Flyers and Newsletters
We all want to reduce paper usage and waste, but there are times when printing is necessary. You may be serving a community that does not have ready access to digital devices. You may be in a situation where posting announcements in public places is the...
In Their Shoes: Identifying with Historic Characters
One of my favorite activities from our Hispanic Heritage iBook series is in the San Marcos iBook (Download). After students have read about the difficult time Florida Governor Don Pable do Hita Salazar had supervising the construction of the Castillo in...
8 Real World Examples to Help Students Visualize Proportions from FCIT Resources
Understanding how to represent proportions, including fractions and percentages, is an important real-world math skill. FCIT has contemporary and historic photos, clip art, maps, and many other free resources that can provide examples of proportions as...
Historic Florida Maps and Google Earth
Old maps and new technology can be an exciting combination in the classroom. You may have noticed that many of the historic Florida maps on FCIT's Maps ETC website include a link to a "Google Earth" file. If you click the "Google Earth" link, a...
Using Digital Content
Teaching and Learning with Technology