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.
I’ve been posting online and aggregating for a long time, so I do have quite a few “aggregation sources” and other links about myself. The one place where you can find me is my own website, NancyHanus.com.
But my Twitter Feed (@nhanus) and my Instagram account have also been around for more than 10 years. I use YouTube and Vimeo to upload video, and SoundCloud for audio, although must of the things I’ve uploaded have been on publication sites, so what you’ll find on my personal profiles are videos of my family (mostly my daughter doing gymnastics!)
One YouTube channel you might find interesting, though, is this one called JournalismVideo, which I created for my MSU journalism classes and study abroad trips in 2010-2011. I had actually forgotten all about it until I dug it up for this blog. If any of you want to upload a video for this class on this site, let me know!
A journalism video account on YouTube for student videos.
I use Nuzzel for aggregation, as well as Feedly and Google Alerts. Feedly has been ticking me off a bit lately because the service keeps trying to upgrade me — and really restricts what I can do and have access for free. As a result I don’t use it much anymore. I love Tweetdeck for aggregating tweets and seeing Twitter lists.
There are a couple of really cool sites that allow you to aggregate in fun ways, such as StumbleUpon, which let’s you “stumble” into really cool stories based on your interests. I suggest you give it a try! I also like Flipboard, which I use on my iPhone and iPad.
For my professional profile, I use LinkedIn. I also have a profile at Muckrack.com. I have a Google+ account, but there’s not much there. It’s a good idea to have one because it gives you good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but it’s just not something I keep up with.
While trying to introduce the famous designer Virgil Abloh, by saying he is Louis Vuitton’s first African American artistic director, the designer aggregated sources to link under his name to a page that has many questions and answers about who he is. He was one of the few black designers at the top of a French heritage house.
The aggregated source really helps people know this new designer is and why he is the new face of this very famous brand. Another aggregated source the brand used was when comparing him to other designers of famous brands, like Oliver Rousteing which is the famous director of the brand Givenchy and Balmain. The article linked a page of questions and answers about him also.
The article goes on to support all the people throughout the article to links and sources for people reading the article know exactly what they are talking about. If the readers have any questions about the people they are talking about they know where to find all the information. Overall the article has done a very good job of aggregating their article.
Ron French’s curated story about Betsy DeVos “60-minute interview” about how DeVos had issues with how fair public schools in Michigan are when it comes to funding and having safer schools. DeVos is known as the secretary of education, but in the video, she didn’t seem to know how Michigan schools are academically performing.
Ron French supported every detail he gave in the interview by linking to other articles in order to understand every point he made. When pointing out how schools in Michigan are doing he sourced his facts from an article called “Michigan’s K-12 performance dropping at alarming rate.” His aggregated source backed up every point he made.
French also aggregated a source when he was speaking about Brian Jacobs, and about the study that he made about Michigan not having high test scores. French stated all of his information about the subject and talked about the facts that Brian had in his study. French then linked Jacobs’ information page for people who have questions about him could know exactly what French is talking about.
As many people know by now, I enjoy the tech and video game world. Keeping up with all the new games is a tough task considering you not only have to keep up with the consoles but also the developers and publishers. The tech world is even harder because new advancements are made every day. One way I keep up is through the website Reddit.
Reddit is a site where any topic you can think of has a dedicated page. If you’ve heard of it, so has Reddit. All you have to do to start getting posts about your favorite topics is subscribe to their subreddit. Local news? r/Michigan. Politics? r/politics. Videogames? r/gaming. That is the naming convention Reddit uses, r/ what ever you want. And the subreddit I visit most often, r/pcmasterrace.
r/pcmasterrace, or pcmr for short, is the subreddit for all things computer. Originally started as a subreddit to provide information on how to build gaming computers and why they are inherently superior to gaming consoles, pcmr has grown into something quite a bit bigger. A place to show off new computers, new industry advancements, talk about the latest games, and still find advice on how to ‘ascend to the glorious master race’.
pcmr is not purely news, but it is set up like a news paper. Sunday comics, breaking news, ads for businesses and products, and even fluff pieces, you just have to look at the tags. Even better than a news paper though is the ability to discuss the posts with like minded individuals which is done in the comments section of each and every post.
Online Reporting, Research & Writing 