Gauntley’s Best 3: Reference Websites for Secondary Schools - News and Media

News and Media as Reference

Online news and media are central to our life and education. However, in a world glutted by the sheer number of news and media sources, it is hard to pick those which are of lasting value - for today at least! 

Students engaged in inquiry and research need assistance in selecting relevant, authoritative, and diverse media, either to jumpstart a project or widen its scope and perspective. Browsing and searching online news and media sites and portals require sophisticated skills in reading media, especially to make sense of bias, interface features, interaction of image and text, and archival conventions.

RSS Feed Readers/Aggregators

I have come to rely on RSS feed readers/aggregators to organize my daily doses of world media. An ideal pre-assignment for inquiry and research would be for groups of students to create a reader page and discuss its effectiveness and relevancy for the task at hand. You might want to check out Heinz Tschabitscher’s About.com Guide to see what is freely available. Engage students in class analysis of the different features, advantages and disadvantages of each application for a richer experience.

Personal Favorites

Here then are some of my favorite world news, book reviewing, film, and image websites, including sources particularly of interest to teachers and students making news, not just reading it. Sometimes, I am amazed by the generosity of certain organizations, companies, and institutions in supplying such excellent educational resources. The National Film Board of Canada, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and PBS are three of the best examples below. 

As usual, I have added this series to my Pages section for convenience. 

• Book and Entertainment Reviews from St. Ambrose University Library
• Book Spot
• CBC News
• Edublogs
• Edutopia from the George Lucas Educational Foundation
• EduWeb (Digital Games and Interactives)
• Global SchoolNet
• Globe and Mail
• Image Finders and All-Purpose Picture Files from St. Ambrose University Library
• Images Canada
• La Presse
• LIFE Photo Archive Hosted by Google
• Media Awareness Network for Teachers 
• MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
• National Film Board of Canada
• National Post
• New York Times
• PBS Teachers
• The Times (London)
• Toronto Star