News-O-Matic

Week of January 25th-January 29th

This week I introduced my students to the app called News-O-Matic. The app immediately had a very interesting effect on my students. All of my students wanted to be able to grab an iPad and read an article from the app. News-O-Matic is an educational daily news app for children that covers all the latest and current events happening in the world around us. The topics are written in a kid-friendly way and you can even change the language when you read the articles. News-O-Matic’s goal is to create ‘habitual’ readers who are being well-informed of the world around them. All of the articles in the app are reviewed by a child psychologist to ensure that the way the articles are written are appropriate and safe. Lastly, another addition to this app that makes it that much better is that it is interactive. Children can comment and write to the Editor-in-Chief, ask questions, and express themselves in the section of the app called the ‘News Room.’

I used this app during Daily Five. Students were allowed to use this app during 'Partner Reading.' They were allowed to sit EEKK (elbow to elbow, knee to knee) style and read the article of their choosing. This gave them time to discuss the article with their partner and understand it better. During Free Centers, some students wanted to read articles from the app. This app became a part of the Free Centers rotation giving them individual time reading from the app. News-O-Matic was a great addition to the Free Centers rotation and the students seemed to love being able to pick this from the list of apps to choose from.

To collect data on how these apps are being received in the classroom along with finding out if they are helping to increase the students’ motivation to read, I created a five question survey for the students to answer at the end of each week. I would say that overall, this app was a success. The students rated the app with an average score of 4.23 for question one which asked the students if they liked the app. I thought this score was pretty high considering it is out of a five point scale. When asking the students the second question, “Did this app make you want to read more?” eighteen students responded yes and four responded no. The third question, asked the students if they were motivated to read more because of the app. Again, the students responded with an average score of 4.05, which was once again, in my opinion pretty high. The fourth question asks the students if they think they are better readers because of this app. This question received an average score of 3.91 which shows that this app might have been a little challenging for a few of my students. Lastly, the students responded with eighteen yeses and four no’s for question five that asked if they would read from this app again. Overall, with these results, I think the majority of students really enjoyed this app and it motivated them to want to read more. I am surprised to see how this nonfiction reading app strategy has increased my students’ overall response towards reading.

News-O-Matic had a lot of positives, which made my students and myself love the app that much more. First, the length of the articles were perfect. They were not too long and not too short. By reading them, the students can definitely become more globally aware. News-O-Matic provides articles on all different types of topics like: sports, animals, U.S. news, around the world, wacky stories, discovery, and a few more. Another feature that I loved was the fact that with just a press of a button, the students could have the article read to them. I loved this features, especially for my students who struggle with reading. In the articles, difficult words are highlighted. If you were to press the difficult word, it tells the student how to say the word and what it means. Once again, this feature made my struggling readers not feel bad about themselves when they came to a word they did not know. Each article has videos, facts, and pictures to go along with them. This makes the article come to life for my visual learners. Each article also has some sort of interactive feature that allows the student to take their comprehension of the article to the next level. It could have to do with music, art, writing, or drawing which gives students a choice in their learning modalities of how they want to further their learning experience. The app also has a place where the students can ask questions and rate the article. This is important because it shows the students that their opinions are valued and important. There is another feature that allows the students to highlight to hold their thinking as they read, along with giving them the opportunity to save that article so they can come back to it at another time. News-O-Matic even has Spanish translation of the articles. This is a wonderful feature for my English Language Learners who can read in their first language. One of my students first read the article in English and checked himself by reading the article again in Spanish. He loved this feature of the app. Lastly, it has a world map of where the current event or article is from. This gives the students a better perspective of the world around them and where this story took place.

There were a few negatives or changes that I would make for News-O-Matic. The biggest change that I would like the app to implement would be to ask two or three questions at the end about comprehending and understanding the material covered in the article. This would be good for me to see if they are truly understanding what they are reading about or whether the article was too hard/easy for them. Another negative of this app is that at first it can seem a little overwhelming. There are a lot of pictures and took the students a few minutes to learn how to navigate the app. Lastly, I wish that this app specified the target grade or reading level of the text. For a few students, some articles seemed to be either too challenging or too easy for them. All in all, I feel like this app has few flaws and as seen from the scores that the children rated it, I think they agree too.

For next week, I want to be able to find more time to use the iPads and apps, besides during Daily Five time and the literacy block. Due to snow, we missed out on one day with this app, but surprisingly that did not seem to affect the scores that the students rated on this app. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy using this app and as a teacher, I definitely saw it have an impact on my students and their motivation to read. They wanted any chance that they could get to read an article from News-O-Matic. Hopefully next week, the students will be able to use the new app and try it out even more.