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NewsCurrents Online is a weekly current events background and discussion program for classroom and individual use. A new issue of NewsCurrents Online is made available to subscribers every Friday night for 35 weeks from September through May. Each week, NewsCurrents covers five or six stories in the news and of relevance to students. Each story is explained using appropriate visuals, including news photos, maps, charts and graphs, debate frames, and editorial cartoons. The teacher's guide that accompanies each issue provides background information and questions. The guide is written on three learning levels, making the program suitable for students in grades three though twelve. NewsCurrents online also provides teachers with additional activities and lesson plans based on the news of the week.
As a NewsCurrents Online subscriber, you have access to all of the features of the NewsCurrents Online program. Those features can be accessed by using the buttons at the left of your screen. Each of these buttons is described in detail below: NC Online Each issue of NewsCurrents Online includes 20 news images, broken into 5 or 6 stories and additional features. These images include news photos, maps, charts and graphs, debate frames, and other pertinent visual or graphic information. This button takes you to the current week's lineup of images for NewsCurrents Online. Click here to preview the images, as well as to access them for classroom presentation. Guide The teacher's discussion guide that accompanies each issue of NewsCurrents Online. This guide is available for you to download, view, and print. The guide is broken into 20 individual "frames," each corresponding with one of the NewsCurrents Online visuals The guide is written on three distinct concept and vocabulary levels: Basic, General, and Advanced. This allows the program to be used effectively with students in grades three through twelve. It is possible to keep the guide and the visuals on your computer screen simultaneously. Cartoons Reproducible activities and lessons designed for classroom use that feature editorial cartoons on subjects relevant to the week's news. Print them out from your computer, copy them, and use them in class or as homework assignments. These activities are designed to foster analytical and critical thinking skills. Map A reproducible map activity based on the news of the week. Print out the News Map and questions each week and assign this map activity to your students. This activity helps to tie world events to geography skills. Activities Additional research activities based on the news events of the week. These activities include report/essay questions, research questions, and debate questions. Forum A place for you to come and share your views, and hear what other teachers have to say. This electronic bulletin board is an opportunity for teachers to comment on the NewsCurrents Online program and stories in the news, as well as share tips and other resources. Students Activities designed for students to do online, in their spare time, during class, or at home. The features you'll find here include the "Story of the Week" - a preview of the main story in that week's NewsCurrents Online issue; the "Who Am I" feature for that week, which allows kids to guess the name of a person in the news; Web Links, or links to prescreened Web sites that are relevant to the stories covered in that week's NewsCurrents; the interactive NewsQuiz, where students can test their news knowhow online; and online polls on topics covered in NewsCurrents Online.
Let's face it: we all know how much pressure teachers are under to use the Web and get their kids online in constructive ways. The problem we're hearing from many of you is that once you have the hardware, it's tough to find valuable educational content online. NewsCurrents Online is revolutionary. It's a classroom discussion program that is also an Internet-based program. You control the lesson, yet you still have all the benefits of Web-based technology, with the interactive activities and research links that we provide every week. NewsCurrents Online is also flexible to allow you to customize it to meet the needs of your students and the resources of your school. Depending on the technology you have available, you can set your computer monitor up like a TV screen in front of the room and allow all your students to view the images together; you can project the images from your computer onto the wall or a screen via a computer projection device; you can have your students cluster in small groups around several computers in the room; or you can have your students follow along on individual laptops as you conduct the lesson from the front of the room. You can even give your students access to your password and have them access the stories at home or in their free time to do additional research, if you have an advanced and motivated class. The choice is yours.
Other programs merely report the headlines or topics they feel are important. At NewsCurrents Online, we give you the background to fully explain today's headlines to your students. Who really understands what's going on in Kosovo? Or why the stock market is on an apparently endless ride upward? Or what to make of the Y2K bug? The editors of NewsCurrents Online do. And we explain the background behind today's headlines to make sure your students understand, too. We've found that this time-tested method provides distinct advantages over other programs. For one thing, students are more interested in the news when they understand what's going on. Again and again, teachers tell us that their kids begin to read the newspaper and follow the news on their own once they begin using NewsCurrents Online. Conversely, providing the background behind today's headlines gives a current, relevant context to the lessons you want to teach on economics, history, geography, science, and a range of other subjects. In addition, most other programs are designed for passive reading or viewing. NewsCurrents Online is a discussion program, which means it not only transmits information, it reinforces students' analytical, verbal, and critical thinking skills by making them form opinions, discuss, and debate the issues of the day.
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