ABSTRACT
This chapter shows authors experience in building a vast online collection of curated amateur photographs and the myriad ways authors are incorporating the ever-expanding photographic collection into their teaching. The chapter shows best practices for incorporating FORTEPAN IOWA into school curriculums. Bettina and Sergey incorporate FORTEPAN IOWA in a core digital media production class, using images from the archive as a tool for learning photoshop and working with extremely high-resolution photographs. FORTEPAN IOWA is at its core a public history project. FORTEPAN IOWA has become an intrinsic part of their college-level classroom instruction at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). In 2012, UNI Department of Communication Studies launched a new interdisciplinary program called Interactive Digital Studies (IDS). The Code and Communication class is one of the four requirements for the IDS program. Bettina and Sergey objectives for Digital Culture and Communication course are to get their IDS students to understand the critical debates that are defining their digital culture.
