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Community Review for Checkology Virtual Classroom
My Take
Checkology pulls in myriad resources that would have taken us hours to re-create -- months or years, in fact. They use timely, current sources such as the Daily Show, CNN, Twitter and Infowars, among many, to focus on the type of information (news, opinion, propaganda) rather than focusing on the politics. This definition-driven exercise, which looks at current sources as well as current debates, is intrinsically relevant to the students because of its timeliness and the well-designed user interface. It's easy to use as a teacheror a student. If we had more time, we would use the entire curriculum as well as the "bonus" extension activities, incorporating more "offline" projects which the students could produce such as their own newspaper.
How I Use It
The 8th grade Social Studies teacher and the Library Media Specialist partnered to use checkology as a parallel track to the American History unit. Between units or as appropriate, the teachers would plan lessons which linked to a topic in the curriculum (civil rights or immigration) or simply as a break from the topic at hand.