Blog Juice for Educational Technology

CNN Student News is a great resource for teachers to cover current events. It is a 10 minute, commercial free newscast covering the major news stories from the previous day. This newscast is geared for students. It is broadcast each day, Monday through Friday, at 3:12 am on the CNN Headline News channel.

We have been promoting the use of CNN Student News in our district for years, with limited success. A small percentage of teachers have been dedicated enough to set their VCRs to record the newcasts on a daily basis. We even set up a VHS recording and duplication system in our district tech office to handle those times when there was a high interest story and teachers who didn’t get it recorded wanted copies.

About a year ago we purchased a TiVo for the district office so that every episode was recorded onto the DVR and could be easily retrieved on request.

CNN has now made it much easier for teachers to use CNN Student News - it is available as a podcast that can be subscribed to using iTunes.

Once you subscribe to the CNN Student News podcast, every episode will be automatically downloaded to iTunes (Mac or Windows). You can play it in a small window or full screen (just click on the small video to enlarge it). With a video projector in the classroom, students can easily view the newscast.

Since it is availble as a podcast, it is in digital format. You can pause and start the video by pressing the spacebar. You can also jump to parts of the broadcast by clicking on the “scrubber bar” instead of fast forwarding like you do with a VCR recording. You can archive the MP4 files in case you want to cover a topic later in the school year.

CNN Student News also provides free curriculum materials to go along with each newscast, from a full written transcript to questions and resources put together by educators. This can be found each day on the CNN Student News web page.

CNN Student News

http://www.cnn.com/EDUCATION/

How to use CNN Student News

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/08/13/student.news.how.to/index.html

Archived CNN Student News video

http://www.mefeedia.com/feeds/21273/

Educaton/Extra!

http://www.cnn.com/EDUCATION/extras/archive/index.html

CNN Presents Classroom Edition

http://www.cnn.com/EDUCATION/cnn.classroom/archive/index.html

To tape CNN Presents Classroom Edition, set your VCR for 4:00-5:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Mondays on CNN Headline News.