The Guide to Teaching
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Using Newspapers in the Classroom
Date: Fri, 07 Nov 1997 13:24:05 -0800
From: Austin Jack Smith <ajax@otn.net>
Greetings,
I have finally achieved a goal that I have been working on for several
months. I now have a class of students that are all on the net, either
with their own email accounts or one of the many free email accounts.
Now when I see an article that is of interest to the students, or
something that I intend to cover in the next few lectures, I am able to
send it to my entire class in one fell swoop. It’s amazing to me when I
see how few newspapers students seem to read. I can’t blame them
because the only local newspaper is extremely conservative, not even
believing in public education, for instance, and limits itself to
roughly four pages of slanted news.
By providing my students some basic material and a lot of information
sites that require ongoing research on the students’ part, it often
seems as if textbooks are superfluous. This seems, to me, a system that
is close to the English lecture method, where the lecturer has much
greater latitude in his/her presentation..
At any rate, I feel that it has added a new dimension to my teaching
strategies, by allowing me to transmit to my students very timely input
of "fast breaking" news which seems to be happening in our discipline.
I feel that we need to provide our students with the wealth of the web
and, at the same time, require of them good research skills for using
the web. When I was doing my undergraduate work at the College of the
Pacific, at Stockton California, (now the Univ. of the Pacific), I was
fortunate to take a class taught by the College President, Tully
Knowles. [How often do we see that today?] Dr. Knowles often said, "A
college education is an in-depth instruction on how to use a library.”
I guess that dates me - I'm 71 - but applying that to today’s "library"
which I believe the web is fast becoming, it makes a lot of sense to
train our students in this vital research service.
I rest my case with the previous discussions on the Congressional pay
raise.
Researching this on the web soon put some misconceptions to rest and
explained the whole misunderstanding. Without the rapid ability to
research the original question, this could have drug on for years of
academic discussion.
At this time I’ve received highly favorable reactions from my students.
Most of them are very happy with this (new to some) method, and feel
their understanding of what is going on in the real world of political
science has been greatly enhanced. Their class participation is much
more informed, discerning, and makes me aware of how much this
additional information means to them.
I have listed below just a very few examples of my email to my class.
34. Party Politics, Should amendments to a bill before Congress be
restricted to the contents of the bill?
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=5820517-a39
35. Web sites where British au pair ruling to be posted
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=5818794-721
22. National Testing
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=5798917-210
23. Perot Sues Rep., Dem.& FEC
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=5803857-2c1
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Teaching Politics is published by William J. Ball (ball@tcnj.edu)
