Category: Class blog

Curated story on Betsy DeVos

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When reading Ron French’s curated story about Betsy DeVos, he presented facts that backed up what he was saying. For example, when answering how Michigan schools are really doing, he linked an article to the following statement, Michigan is “dead last among states in improvement in math and reading.” When looking on the article, we can see that Michigan, as well as West Virginia, South Carolina, and Alaska are struggling with maintaining the average growth.

French contextually linked articles and websites throughout his story. When reading, I didn’t know what the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) was, until he linked the website. It is a detailed data base of national and state assessments.

I liked that his story can be easily readable. It wasn’t overly complicated with statistics or bunched up with his own opinions. He presented the story as it is, with facts that backed up his word.

Buzzfeed treats #IBelieveHer proponents and critics unfairly

BuzzFeed aggregated tweets and public statements in the wake of the #IBelieveHer after two rugby players are acquitted of rape charges.

While the BuzzFeed story goes into some of the details of the case, the main focus is on the online discussion surrounding the #IBelieveHer hashtag.

The story allows people from both sides to speak, however when it comes to linking it treats each differently. For those on the side of the girl, it links directly to the tweets made, however when it comes to the opposed only screenshots with blurred names are provided.

Perhaps this was done to prevent backlash to the tweeters, yet to treat one side differently than the other seems unfair.

 

A good aggregation example

I found an article in the NY Times website titled NASA’s Webb Telescope Faces More Setbacks, and it is a good aggregation example. This article is a good example of an aggregated story because the article included a set of different resources and information about the covered story.

This article is talking about a NASA project which is a space telescope that has been delayed until 2020. This article is only telling the story of the telescope NASA project and providing multiple contextual links of resources to backup the story and to give the reader further information on the topic.

aggregation

Michigan schools fail to improve

Michigan schools are not improving. Even worse, they seem to be in decline.

Ron French’s story on Betsy DeVos’ “60 Minutes” interview aggregated stats that indicate Michigan’s school systems by and large have been in getting worse.

In some instances Michigan has been seen in last place among improvements in math and reading, according to French’s source at Brookings.edu. Third-grade reading scores have also been shown to be in decline, according to Bridgemi.com.

What these sources show is that according to experts and other reporting, despite Michigan spending money to improve, it is not working.

What French’s story shows is that studies from a variety of places, and statistics from multiple sources as well as experts, indicate the lack of improvement among Michigan’s schools.

Ron French Curation

Ron French is a writer for the Bridgemi website. Ron has recently written a story on the 60 Minutes report featuring Betsey DeVos.

Ron has used a few different sources to help with his story. Ron has not only used the 60 Minutes interview, but has adopted information from a few other sources such as the Detroit and Grand Rapids Summits.

He references these sources by not only hyperlinking them but giving them an introduction into the link they the reader my be wanting to click on.

There are also secondary links for the references and other stories that are related to the topic.