Target Audience: Secondary, tertiary.

Language Proficiency: Intermediate to advanced.

Learning Focus: Reading, critical thinking, summarizing, writing.

Technology Needed: Web browser software and Internet connection.

Instructions:

Learners can get up-to-the-minute data in the form of local, national and international news; stock information; industry updates; economic forecasts; and more from leading sources such as Barron's Online, CNN, and The New York Times (for more, see links below). This information is available through the user's computer in "real time," 24 hours a day seven days a week. In some cases, readers may also have the option to sign up for free news bulletins as an email service.

Task: Learners work individually, in pairs, or in small groups and choose a 1-hour band of time on a particular date (it can be in or outside of class meeting hours), and a specific event that has happened during that time. This might be a report on a period of trading, a business-related news event, or an economic analysis of a particular geographic or socioeconomic region. Read the event as it is reported from two or more sources, then compare the sources from the perspective of data (fact), tone, and cultural perspective. Comment on the differences, or lack thereof. Do you feel any one report is more accurate or readable? Why, or why not? What personal interpretation or addition to the event can you add?

Expanded Options:

• Extend the length of time. Follow a high-profile news event over a longer period of time.
  
  
• Learners can copy paste headlines, abstracts, data and articles from the web browser directly into word processing, spreadsheet or database software. In this way, the information (cited, of course) can be manipulated for a variety of tasks, activities and reports.
  
  
• Use web browser search engines to locate archived audio recordings and/or videos on topics of interest. See, also, specific repositories such as American Rhetoric, History Place, Great Speeches, Voice of America (VOA) Learning English, Voices of Discovery from The Smithsonian Regional Program.
  
  
  
• Explore the concept of business "interdependence" through the lesson plan: Wheat Farms, Flour Mills, and Railroads: A Web of Interdependence. From the U.S. National Park Service, Teaching with Historic Places Lesson Plans.
  
  
• Focus the research on a particular business group such as women or on a particular technological innovation such as plastics in the home. By way of example, see: Building an Empire Bowl by Bowl, The American Experience, Tupperware!
  
  
• Focus the research on one or specific business leaders in the local community. By way of example, see: Two American Entrepreneurs: Madam C.J. Walker and J.C. Penney, Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry, and/or Andrew Carnegie, The Richest Man in the World.
  
  
• Focus on an industry that has become the "heart" of a local community. By way of example, see the historical descriptions of: Hopewell Furnace: A Pennsylvania Iron-making Plantation and Building America's Industrial Revolution: The Boott Cotton Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. This activity could involve research on similar legacy (historical) and/or comtemporary cases in the region.
  
  
• Have learners create a video as described in the article: YouTube Your Business with Online Video, by Darrell Zahorsky. For an even more authentic experience a (very authentic, as videos are not rated or screened by any outside agencies), learners can research other videos posted by businesses and even upload their own videos to YouTube, Science and Technology.

More Sources for News:

BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Barron's Online
http://www.barrons.com/

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/

The Economist
http://www.economist.com/

Google News
http://news.google.com/

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/

World News Network
http://www.worldnews.com/

Kay Westerfield, Global Communication Consulting,kwesterf@uoregon.edu