News Project

         Each group will be responsible for one week in the news.  This assignment has several parts.  The first part is reading.  You will be reading two sources of news for a week: the Galesburg Register Mail, which you will have to buy, and Education Week, which you will read on-line (www.edweek.org.  Education Week has the most news, so I would suggest that you divide the work of reading it equitably among your group.)

         For the second part, from your reading, you will create some kind of visual summary of the main topics that appeared during your week.  You will need to display this for the class to look at while you do your news report.  (Butcher paper banner, poster board, ets.) You will also create a "News Log," which lists all the news stories that appeared that week. You will hand that in to me with your paper. I'd recommend that you cut-and-paste from EdWeek, but you'll have to type the stuff from the local paper.

         The third part is for your group to give a "news report." At the beginning of the class period prior to the one in which you do your presentation, you will distribute one article you want the whole class to read.  Choose a story which your group thinks ties in with the issues of the course and challenges our thinking about schools.  When you do your presentation, you'll want to give an overview of the current issues about education in the news for your week and then help us focus on the article you distributed.  Your group will lead a class discussion of the article.  You'll have 20 minutes for the presentation and ten minutes for the discussion of the article.  See that you stick to your time.   At all times, keep your focus on the "education news."

         The final part of the "News Assignment" is for each member of the group to write a two to three page overview of the week"s news, highlighting themes you see in the articles.  Are there common concerns across the country?  Are there issues that are specific to the Galesburg area?  What relationship do you see between what you have read and what we are discussing in class?  This review is not just a list of the articles or a summary.  You need to look for major trends and offer a critique of what you are seeing in the news sources.  This part is individual work, but be sure to list who else was in your group after your name on the first page of the paper.  Also be sure that your name and a page number is on every page of your paper.

           Your prime purpose in these oral reports and written overviews is to briefly tell what is in the news and what we, as education scholars, can tell about society and education from keeping up with the news.

         To receive a grade for this project, you must do all four parts. Your grade on these papers will be a combination grade reflecting both the quality of the paper and the presentation.  I will grade these with an A through F scale.  The grade criteria are as follows: A = Excellent/Superb; B = Better than Average, goes beyond the requirements; C = Meets the requirements, but doesn't go beyond them; D = Doesn't meet the requirements, but shows some effort; F = shows little to no engagement in the assignment.  For each presentation, I will ask each member of the class to fill out a critique sheet using that scale and turn it in to me at the end of the class period.  I will provide a form, of which you will then need to make copies.