about.myon.com/myon-news ■ Retail Price: Contact sales@myon.com. Unlimited access licenses priced by building or district. Small-school pricing also available.
MyON News, powered by News-O-Matic, is the newest add-on to the myON digital literacy platform, although myON News can be purchased as a standalone product. Geared towards K–8 students, myON News delivers daily articles to students, Monday through Friday, on a variety of current event topics.
Quality and Effectiveness: Each weekday, there are five myON News articles. These articles are chosen from eight categories: sports, news (US and world), discovery (science and technology), arts, animals, wacky news, and kids in the news. Every article features a selection of built-in multimedia components. Components might include a map feature, a short video clip, an image slideshow, fun facts about the topic, a short author bio, or “acts,” which offers an extended learning opportunity. Students can explore these components before and after reading the article.
Ease of Use: The easy-to-use myON News interface retains its exact layout every day on the front page and within each article, which makes navigating around the site an easy routine for students to learn. Additionally, each of the eight news categories has a designated color code, so students learn to recognize article “genres” by color. Since it’s browser-based, there’s no need to download software. While myON News does require both teacher and student login, Clever instant login is available.
Creative Use of Technology: myON News uses the digital world to its advantage. Each article includes built-in multimedia components and other helpful features as well. Every article has exceptional voiceover recordings in English, Spanish, and French, a dictionary with audio pronunciation, and text size adjustment. Additionally, each article is paired with topic-related fiction and nonfiction ebooks, which students can read to expand their knowledge on a topic. Users who purchase myON News as a standalone product have access to fifty ebooks and teacher-created projects. However, myON subscribers have access to over 13,000 ebooks. Paired ebooks are matched by topic, not by Lexile level. Every ebook includes many helpful features, such as recorded audio and annotation features. Users can also save ebooks to a myList digital bookshelf.
Suitability for Use in a School Environment: myON News is COPPA-compliant and is designed to complement and support an existing curriculum; it is not a curriculum. Teachers can integrate myON News into the curriculum seamlessly at any time throughout the day (either in school or at home). Teachers also have real-time monitoring capability to view stats on each article. Students can view stats on likes and dislikes for the article after they rate the article. For those who purchase myON News as a standalone product, news articles are available in the different Lexile levels based on the grade level of the class.
OVERALL RATING:
The abundance of unique, built-in features and multimedia supports, along with its easy access and interface, make myON News a great choice for teachers to use to engage students in current news events.
TOP FEATURES
• The interface is browser-based and user-friendly.
• Pairs articles with related ebook(s) for further exploration of a topic.
• Offers an abundance of helpful, built-in features, supports, and resources for individualized learning.
