The+Newsstand

**Setting up the Newsstand** || Do you use current events in your lessons? Do you ask students to find current event articles to bring to class? Are you looking for ways to help student apply the terms, concepts and ideas from their textbooks to real-life examples? Connect the concepts?
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The Newsstand is a great way to get started!

Students are asked to use the Newsstand to find current event news articles relating to a concept of the class in any given week. So if students are reading about concepts such as "monopoly" or "elasticity" students find current event news articles relating to that term or concept. Student travel to the Newsstand and look through the headlines of newspapers, journals and magazines to find real-world examples of the subject of study. ||
 * The Newsstand is an RSS aggregator called Netvibes. It is a website that receives feeds from other websites that have regularly changing content. The Newsstand is composed of widgets. The New York Times: World Business Widget is shown to the right as is a widget from Fox News. Each widgets represent a different resources - website, blog or podcast. The information and updates from these various sites is displayed in the widget for students use. Students click on the link in the widget and are taken directly to the resource of interest.

RSS is a powerful tool used in a powerful way. Students are provided with the opportunity to transition and apply what they have read in their textbook to real-world examples. There is no faking it! If students did not understand a concept such as "elasticity" from their textbook reading, it is going to be difficult for students to find an article related to the concept!

Other benefits of an RSS:  Best of all, students are **//participants in the learning//**, empowered to seek new knowledge and understanding for themselves. Gone are the days of a teacher transmitting pre-defined information to passive students. Instead, students demonstrate understanding in the context of their own unique, individual experiences. ||  ||  **Activity 1**  View the tutorial and screencast **How to: Use the Newsstand**.
 * Stimulates interest because students are experiencing a new approach to learning traditional content by using the news, innovative approaches such as podcasts or video, and are applying current events.
 * Students practice the skills of evaluation by analyzing media and media messages.
 * Students experience different perspectives.
 * [[image:http://docs.google.com/File?id=dc7h72v5_326fqdcjthj_b width="75" height="75"]] Activity Details **



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Visit the Newsstands of some different courses. Notice the set-up and resources offered at these Newsstands.

Economics Newsstand Information Technology Newsstand Professional Development - Online Teaching Newsstand Economics Podcasts Newsstand General Science Newsstand

To build a Newsstand, start by creating your own list of important resources you want to add to your Newsstand for your students to use. A tutorial and screencast on building a Netvibes Newsstand is attached.
 * Activity 2 **



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You will no doubt come across sites from time-to-time that don’t provide RSS feeds enabling you to keep up-to-date with latest news stories or site updates. In these instances, it is possible to create your own feeds for these websites by using web-based RSS feed-builders such as Ponyfish RSS Feed Builder. A tutorial and screencast on Ponyfish is also attached.



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Once finished building you site submit the url to our showcase by click the link **Showcase** in the menu to the left**.**

** Expectations **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Submit the url of your public Netvibes page to our <span style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">**Showcase** page in the menu to the left**.**

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