Exploring Topico: Guide to Utilizing It for Teaching Recent Events
Topico is a news curation and sharing app that focuses on current events, offering teaching-focused features to encourage skill development in educational contexts. The app is available for free on both iOS and Android platforms.
Key Features of Topico for Classroom Use
Topico offers several features that make it a valuable tool for educators. Here are some of the key features:
- Curated News Content: Topico highlights relevant current events, providing educators with timely and authentic information to present to their students.
- Skill Development: The app includes features aimed at encouraging analytical skills related to news consumption and interpretation. These features can help students develop critical thinking and media literacy skills.
- Sharing and Interaction: Topico allows students to engage with and share news items, promoting participation and discussion.
Best Practices for Using Topico in the Classroom
To get the most out of Topico in the classroom, consider the following best practices:
- Integrate Current Events Regularly: Use Topico to bring daily or weekly current events into lessons, fostering ongoing awareness and discussion.
- Encourage Critical Thinking: Guide students to analyze sources, identify bias, and compare different news perspectives using the app’s curated content.
- Facilitate Collaborative Learning: Use the sharing features to enable students to discuss news stories in groups or through class forums.
- Develop Media Literacy Skills: Assign tasks where students critique or summarize news items, helping them understand key journalistic principles.
- Align with Curriculum Goals: Pair Topico news items with relevant curriculum standards to reinforce subject matter through real-world examples.
Topico also has a social element that encourages sharing articles among users. Influence rings around user profile pictures indicate ranking based on post recommendations. Users can create newsrooms on Topico to curate specific stories, and teachers can set permissions on posting as a control system in newsrooms.
The app's primary goal is to help students learn news consumption and critical thinking skills. It aims to foster a focused and relevant approach to news consumption and sharing, avoiding distractions from comments or public opinions. The News Wizard feature simplifies the process of curating newsrooms with specific stories.
To ensure privacy and security for its educational user base, Topico maintains a focus on these aspects. Lessons about sources and practical journalism can be integrated into Topico usage to enhance student understanding.
For deeper strategies for lesson integration or examples of assignments using Topico, exploring teacher reviews or official guides from the app’s developers would be beneficial. Pairing Topico with complementary platforms like Google Classroom could streamline its integration into lesson plans.
- The teacher can use Topico's News Wizard feature to curate specific stories for the classroom, fostering a focused approach to news consumption and learning.
- By setting permissions on posting in newsrooms, teachers can control the interaction and engagement of students in the app, promoting a secure and educational environment.
- The teacher can encourage students to collaborate and critique news items on Topico, using these discussions to develop media literacy skills and critical thinking abilities.
