Online Reporting, Research & Writing

Area code locator is a verification tools

They are always coming up with new verification tools due to technology advancing every day. You are probably using verification tools daily and don’t even realize. Facebook can be a verification tool if you are using it to learn information on someone. There are tools to see if you are reading fake news?

The verification tool I researched is area code locator.

It helps you pinpoint states and cities that use a certain area code. Area codes are important. If you don’t have the correct area code you will not be connected to the correct person. It shows how many people are using that area code, usage, and the carriers.

Gun control situation encourages students to walk out in protest

Across the nation, gun control has been a controversial issue that many citizens have an opinion about. The #ENOUGH movement sprouted from it and motivated students to walk out of class in protest saying the school shootings have to be stopped.

Celebrities like singer, Zendaya took it to social media to show their support:

The future. #rp

A post shared by Zendaya (@zendaya) on Feb 23, 2018 at 11:10am PST

Students from different grades, schools, and universities made it a duty for themselves to stand up to legislation as they look upon the gun control situation. Samantha Raphelson from NPR reports in an article on the issue, a student said, “Stand for us, or beware, the voters are coming.” Students have lost hope that adults will act so they took matters in their own hands.

Following this movement, another one sparked up called #Marchforourlives which was in protest of gun violence in California.

The New York Times reports on the #Marchforourlives movement in California.

The New York Times reported in an article about the march that more than 30,000 people marched through downtown Los Angeles. The cause brought all these citizens together because they needed to express their feeling of danger.

The Times also describes a young girl who held up a sign reading, “Am I next?” Signs like this were held with different messages that captured the purpose of the march.

RON’S STORY

Ron French’s currently did an article about a 60 min story about Betsy DeVos about public school in Michigan. Currently, Michigan schools need funding, Which will help the teachers.

The Funding will also help students, and school buildings, so it can be a safe as good academics ready for the students learning the process.

Betsy Devos is U.S. Secretary of Education. She has been doing this for a long time, but in the 60 min, video clip.She seems to lack knowledge of how Michigan school are performing academically.

Ron French decide to help Betsy and other understand how Michigan school k -12 are truly doing from 2003- 2015

Ron also shared links from his articale site call bridage about Michigan summits from GrandRapidess and Detroit and what they say about the school education system.

Grand Rapids summit: West Michigan leaders join the chorus for state education reform
Detroit summit: Getting past politics to give Michigan the schools it deserves

Doing this help clear up some misunderstanding that Besty may need to know about the school system and how other views the system. Why it is important to give funding to the schools that are struggling curttlly all of the michgain schools.

The New York Times’ take on aggregation

The New York Times aggregates in many of their articles such as the one I recently read on how the benefit of caffeine on one’s physical performance is dictated by their genes.

In order to support the stance on caffeine the Times took, they aggregated sources in order to present credibility and logos.

One of these aggregated sources is linked under the words, “a new study of the genetics of caffeine metabolism,” which brings readers to a scholarly journal abstract which summed up the research done on the effects of caffeine beside different types of genes. This is a reliable and informative source which improves on the article itself.

Another aggregated source is linked back to an article The New York Times wrote on the buzz caffeine could give different people depending on their genes. This source roughly covers the same topic, but doesn’t involve the physical performance aspect, which makes it a strong choice as a source to aggregate because with it comes another variety of supportive information.

The New York Times aggregates an article it previously wrote in order to support new information.

Overall, I think The New York Times put together a good aggregated article that expressed ideas and information while backing it up with different sources.

Betsy Devos’ interview calls for curated article by Ron French

Aggregation and curation develop Ron French’s article in Bridge Michigan as he formulates a “cheat sheet” for United States Secretary of Education Betsy Devos’ interview on “60 Minutes”.

French aggregated in order to support information he provides throughout his article and guides readers to these aggregated sites in order to maximize understanding in each point he makes.

French aggregated sources like himself when he mentioned that Michigan school test scores were not improving which contradicted Devos’ statement about the advancement of scores as students move districts by school of choice. French approached this by first stating who did the research, Michigan State University in this case, and then linked an article he wrote that summarized the research within the phrase, “didn’t improve test scores”.

Another aggregated source French includes in this cheat sheet is another finding that supports Michigan’s poor test scores. He presented the information by introducing the analyst, Brian Jacobs, who put the study together. French summarized his findings in a short sentence in this article but linked Jacob’s faculty page to a phrase that described him professionally. If readers wanted to find out more about Jacobs, they could then click the link and read up on him.