By Leslie Postal / Orlando Sentinel / February 16, 2015
A new PBS website aims to give Florida teachers, parents and students an easy way to find videos, documents and interactive tools to “help bring learning to life.” The Florida PBS LearningMedia site launched in December, with more than 100,000 “assets” that can be searched by grade, subject and even by the state’s academic standards.
The items on the site include clips from PBS shows, documents from the Library of Congress, and pictures from the Smithsonian, among others.
The subjects covered are the school basics — arts, health, reading, math, science, social studies and world languages, for students in pre-K to 12th grade as well as some adult-education topics.
The project is an enhanced, Florida-based version of a national site created by PBS several years ago, one that took station content and turned it into “bite-size chunks” that could be used in class lessons, said Michele Watson, director of education services for Florida Public Broadcasting.
The Florida Legislature last year earmarked $1 million to take the national site and make it searchable by Florida’s academic standards. The project fit with lawmakers’ push for more online learning in Florida’s public schools, Watson said.
The Florida site has about 40,000 registered users, and Florida PBS hopes that grows as more people learn about the free resource.
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