BP4_20091102_ResearchingWeb2.0Tools

Figure 1. Thy News Homepage. (2009). Source: http://thynews.com/

After taking a look around Go2Web2.0 , I settled on a 2.0 tool named Thy News. Thy News is a simple tool that allows users to add news from different news feeds around the world as well as audio podcasts. It reminds me a lot of Google reader but with a more specific focus on news feeds. The site is laid out like a traditional newspaper and you can move the sections around the page just like iGoogle. You can create a personalized URL for your Thy News to share with others or to check your news feeds without having to sign in. Thy News has recently added some social features that allow you to add what others consider worth reading.

Thy News is an excellent example of a Web 2.0 tool that would benefit the classroom. I remember the days of cutting out news articles of current events that related to a school assignment, pasting it in a notebook, and writing a report about the article and how it applied to what I was learning in school. With Thy News, current event reports can be done digitally without asking the kids’ to cut up mom and dad’s newspapers. In the morning, as students come in they could get on the computer, pull up the class Thy News page and read an article they find interesting or listen to a podcast that applies to what they are learning. They could then blog about what they’ve read and include a link to the article for reference. This could be done daily or thoughout the day to allow students to stay up to date with current events and to share their experiences through their blog to prove their mastery of the content. You could also make it specific to a subject area (science section of a local newspaper for example) and ensure that the sources students are accessing are scholarly.