Computing in the News
CITN additions – allow some discussion; don’t cut off a strong and engaged discussion
- choose engaging topics & give them a selection of 3-5 to choose from
- can show a video
https://teachglobalimpact.org/news/
Update page with
links from PD and remove/replace old links in sidenote. --MF, 7/30/26
Find appropriate news articles to share with your class. Choose a mix of news stories—some which show the promise of technology and others which expose negative aspects.
- If you subscribe to a newsletter (such as ACM TechNews), you will regularly receive a digest in your inbox. Going through this email with students is one way to conduct a Computing in the News opener. This is a good way to touch on a wide variety of computing ideas and areas of interest for students.
- Going to a news site (such as the Technology Section of the New York Times) and skimming through for an interesting article together is another way to conduct a Computing in the News opener. Go through the article, highlighting some major points, then ask students to respond to some of the ideas.
This is meant to be a quick, daily activity; read just the headline and the first paragraph or two. Part of the goal is to impress upon students that every day things are happening about social implications of computing. So it's important not to let the news stories turn into long classroom discussions. The social implication lab topics are the place for those.
You should pick the stories for the first week or so. Each day, try to find a story about something beneficial or exciting that computers are doing and another story about something problematic that computers are doing (or, more precisely, that people are doing with computers). After the first week, assign the task of picking stories to students in rotation.
News Sources: