Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Another way to "see" the news.

For teachers looking for another way to "see" the news, or at least track the big themes, 10x10 offers this unique visual snapshot of the major stories. One hundred images along with the top 100 words give the viewer a glimpse of the news zeitgeist. According to their website:

 "Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an ... analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. ... The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input."
A great activity might be to have students create their own 10x10, (or maybe 3x3), of the top stories for their area, municipality, school, hobby etc. The results could be shared as a Powerpoint, a webpage or ... even an art installation!