The EdTech Roundup
Connect:
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Editorials & Press
  • Ed Tech Sites
  • Lesson Plans
    • Elementary
    • Secondary
  • Former Weekly Podcast
  • About Me
  • Contact

myON News: preK-8 News Articles within the myON Literacy Ecosystem

6/21/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
For those unfamiliar, myON is an online, interactive, digital library with over 10,000 books for pre-K-12 students. Teachers can use myON to assign books, create projects, encourage reading, assess student growth, and now, students can read the news as well!  If you’re interested in reading more about myON in general, you can check out our previous review.

​This review will focus on their news feature, which delivers developmentally appropriate content, and is updated year-round with a daily news feed within the myON literacy ecosystem.

To create myON news, the myON team partnered with News-o-matic in order to offer students a daily collection of 5 news articles.  Each article is available at three different reading levels, as well as in Spanish.  The articles are organized by grade blocks as well, so you’ll have different articles for preK-3, 3-5, and 5-8.  In addition to the daily articles, there is also a 10 day archive of news stories, in case you’d like to have students go back and read something from the past 2 weeks.

myON news can be purchased as a standalone product, or as an add-on to the myON literacy ecosystem.  For those interested in trying it out, you can request a free trial here, or contact the myON team for additional pricing details.

Student Side of myON News

When students login to myON news the first thing they’ll see are the day’s stories.  They can select one they are interested in to check out the article.
​

Picture

Within each article, students have the option to have it read aloud to them in either English or Spanish, as well as change the size of the text.  The level of reading for the article will also be based on their specific Lexile level, which will have been determined by their teacher and/or the system when their myON account was initially setup.

Picture

Additionally, each article includes a map, which is great for helping students learn more about where the story is taking place, how far away it is, and some general information about the location.  It will use your location to give a fun distance measurement, based on the content of the article, which I really love.

Picture

On top of the map feature, most articles also contain video content as well as a slideshow of images. Plus, there is a fun fact as well as a call to action, or “Act.” These “Acts” ask students to take some sort of action based on the content of the article, and I think they’re great for helping students make real-world connections to the articles they’re reading.

Picture

Students also have an “About the author” button at the bottom, so you can learn a little more about who wrote the article, as well as a “Cite” button so that you can quickly and easily get the citation.  I’m always incredibly happy to see resources that make citing sources easier, as that’s such an important and necessary skills that is so often overlooked.

Picture

Finally, if students (or their school) are subscribers to the myON literacy ecosystem, they will also see additional book recommendations at the bottom of each article so that they can take their reading further with related topics.  And even if you haven’t purchased the full version of myON, you’ll still have a subset of books that are available to myON news subscribers.

Picture

Teacher Side of myON News

The teacher side of myON News is nearly identical to the student side, in that you can see all the news articles that are available each day, as well as the archived articles from the past two weeks.

The main difference is that teachers also have access to two different reports in order to gain some additional insights on how their students are approaching the news articles. 

Teachers can use the “Users to News” report to get an idea of how many articles their students are reading, and they can use the “News to User” report to see how recent articles are being read.  These can be helpful in gaining a big picture understanding of how students are approaching the articles, or for looking at individual students’ reading habits.

Picture

Overall...

myON News is an excellent addition to the myON literacy ecosystem.  I strongly believe that having an understanding of current events is essential for today’s students, and myON’s partnership with News-o-matic is an excellent way to provide this type of literacy. 

Plus, each article is vetted to ensure that the contents are age appropriate, so students will only see articles that are developmentally appropriate.  myON as a whole is an excellent literacy resource, and I think this addition of news content and current events only serves to make it an even stronger classroom tool. 

Whether you’re interested in using just the news component of myON on its own, or in conjunction with the rest of myON, it’s absolutely worth checking out.

Picture

The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I was not compensated for writing this review.


2 Comments
Bernell Murray
7/5/2017 10:25:09 pm

I love myON and my students love it even more. They have read so many books from many different genres. It has benefitted me greatly to see that my students are also assessed on the books they read and their data is collected and tracked. Keep updating! :)

Reply
Mike
7/6/2017 07:15:38 am

Hi Bernell,

Thanks so much for reading and happy to hear you and your students are loving myON! I'll definitely keep updating!

Mike

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Reviews

    Here you can find the Round Up's collection of in-depth reviews on the latest programs, apps, websites, and more.

    Make sure to click the review's title or the Read More link for the complete review!


    Picture

    Featured

    Picture
    Check out our featured review | ClassroomAPP: A Complete, K-12 Digital Platform for Online and In-Person Classrooms

    Teach.com

    Picture

      Subscribe

    Subscribe

    Connect


    Awards

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed


    Archives

    June 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013

           
​Except where noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Picture

Copyright 2020 | Mike Karlin, Ph.D.