Today, Google announced that Currents is now available internationally. Google Current now offers translation of text too.
Applications for Education
Using Google Currents can be a great way for students in global studies courses or any course that discusses current news to stay informed of the latest news about a wide variety of topics. Some of the content providers that could be quite useful for that are The Guardian and The Atlantic.
I installed the app on my Samsung Galaxy Tab and tried it out this morning.
Here is the BBC’s promo video for their free Android App.
H/T to Androinica.
News 360 is a free news aggregation service that you can customize for your interests. You can read your personalized news feed on your phone, tablet, or desktop. The mobile app is available for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry Playbook, Android phones and tablets, and Windows phones. You can also read your News 360 feed on your computer. You can find the Android tablet app here and the Android phone app here.
To get started using News 360 you do have to register with your Twitter or Facebook credentials. Then select the types of stories that you’re interested in reading. News 360 will use that information to serve up the stories that are most likely to appeal to you. You can create multiple interest channels. For example, I created a channel for sports stories and one for education stories.
Watch the video below for a short overview of News 360.
Teachers who use current events as a part of their regular instruction could use News 360 to keep up with stories that are relevant to their students. Teachers who have students give short presentations or reports on current events (many social studies teachers I know do that), could have students create News 360 accounts to discover news stories that they can share with their peers.
By default, World Newspapers is set for you to browse for newspapers within your country. I used the app to browse newspapers in Maine and Arizona. I was surprised and slightly impressed to see that even small, local, weekly publications were indexed and available through the World Newspapers Android app. The app includes tools for quickly sharing stories with others, bookmarking articles, and translating newspapers.
Learn more about the World Newspapers Android app in the short video below.
The visual layout of the newspapers when you read them through World Newspapers does leave something to be desired. Otherwise World Newspapers is a good app for social studies teachers and students to use to find current events stories from all over the world. Whenever I have used current events in my courses, I’ve required students to read accounts of the same story from domestic and foreign news outlets for the purpose of comparing perspectives. The World Newspapers Android app should help students find stories to compare.
