Current Events: Looking at Our National News

Photo by Vince_Lamb

Today we will be looking at a national issue, the protests taking place in Wisconsin. We will be looking at two sites for information. Remember, we are trying to identify bias in reporting.

Fox News

CNN

Read at least two different stories from each site. Write a paragraph giving both sides of the story. Write a paragraph explaining if you think one or both of the sites are biased. At the bottom of the post hyperlink the stories you read by typing the title of the article and hyperlinking it.

Introducing Personal Learning Plans

We are going to use a google doc to do some brainstorming. Click here to edit the document.

New Zealand Earthquake

Photo by Geoftheref

Two days ago there was a huge earthquake in New Zealand. Here is a link to the Google News page with the latest information. Find two disparate articles (double click on disparate if you don't know what it means) to write a summary about. Make sure you use the 5W's and H to do the summaries so you don't miss reporting any information. Also, remember to hyperlink back to the original stories. If you don't remember how to hyperlink, ask another student.

If you would like to add a picture or two to your posts, geoftheref has several Creative Commons licensed pictures from the quake.  You must give attribution to geoftheref if you use his pictures. Notice how I attributed the picture above. That is an acceptable way to attribute a picture. The link for the picture takes you to the page I downloaded it from. The link to geoftheref takes you to his profile page on Flickr.

If you need to, you can list the 5W's and H like I have below on your post, but write the summary.

Who
What
When
Where
Why
How

As usual make sure you have the words spelled correctly. :)

Current Events Assignment February 17-21

Excellent job on the last assignment! This time we are going to try to look for a specific instance of bias in a news story. Follow these directions:

1. Find a news story that has obvious bias.
2. Write a blog post and hyperlink back to the story.
3. Copy/paste the part of the story you think shows bias onto your post.
4. Explain why you think it is biased.
5. Bonus points if you can correctly identify a cultural bias :)

Current Events Assignment February 14-15

Go to one of the current even news source links on the left side of the blog and find a story that you think is interesting. Make sure it is a big enough story that you will be able to find it from at least two other news sites from different countries.


Read the story carefully in all three newspapers and write a post to your blog answering the following questions:

1. What happened in the story?
2. Where did the story take place?
3. Is there a difference in the way the story is reported among the three sites? Explain.
4. Can you find any words or phrases that show a bias? Explain

Make sure you write your post as a good paragraph. You will have two class periods to do this so take your time (especially you, boys!) 

I should be back Wednesday, tired and cranky. :)