NexGen News: How to Use It to Teach
NexGen News was created from an idea that all students should be able to experience news, and learn to digest it, without the need to be exposed to everything.
This was born as a way to offer a more curated news selection to students of a younger age so that they can enjoy the process — with parents and teachers comfortable sharing everything the site has to offer.
Of course, since this is designed for education, it goes a lot further with various resources that can help teach beyond the news itself. But at its most basic, this offers video and written news stories that children can use and enjoy to keep up with what is happening in the world — with lots of exercises to help develop critical thinking.
This guide aims to explain in more detail what you need to know about NexGen News to see if could work for your class.
What is NexGen News?
NexGen News is a school-specific news platform that delivers bespoke videos every two weeks for students to watch.
The idea was to create a space with newscasts that are for young people, presented by young people, to better create engagement.
All that, the site’s creators say, is in order to help young people to think critically about current events while also becoming contributing members of society.
The CEO and co-founder, Laura Segre, along with COO and other co-founder Michelle McGuire, hold multiple degrees, masters and a doctorate in teaching education disciplines. All that combines to offer a perfectly placed position to create something that’s ideal for student growth both inside and outside the class.
How does NexGen News work?
NexGen News uses YouTube-based videos to share the bespoke news in a two-weekly send-out. This means students know when it’s coming and can access it from nearly any device. And since it’s video, engagement is even easier for a wide range of students.
Each news video comes with a written article on the subject, too. These can be shared by the teacher with student accounts on their personal devices, or viewed as a group.
Lots of additional materials are offered for follow-up, including lesson plans for teachers as well as discussion questions and extension materials.
This is all ideally suited for middle school-aged students with the ability to expand or dive into the rich content, as needed by each teachers, to suit the class and students.
What are the best NexGen News features?
NexGen News offers some fantastic premium features that allow teachers to get more interactive with students digitally. This includes follow-up work to news pieces that can be assigned and graded with a lot of automation, which can be time-saving.
Specifically, there is the option to assign quizzes that are designed specifically for the news just digested. Also, there are written response questions that can be answered as a way to go deeper and assess student understanding.
The lesson plans, which are Common Core-aligned, helpfully offer a variation on the choices for ELLs and gifted students to ensure everyone is progressing at a pace that suits them.
Extension activities help to add even more value with options for writing, art, and tech. Plus, there are grading rubrics for assignments to help keep teaching planning time to a minimum.
How much does NexGen News cost?
NexGen News is a subscription service but does also offer some free content.
The free content allows you to have a try before you buy. This offers some free stories in video and written format. It also has follow-up questions, reading and writing tasks, lesson plans by grades, and follow-up activities.
Go for the Educator subscription tier at $239/year and you get the full video library, discussion questions, standards-based curriculum for grades, reading level differentiated news articles, Google Classroom and Clever integrations, plus a dashboard to assign and monitor student activities.
Go for the Educator Pro version, at $299/year, and you get the above plus auto-graded reading quizzes to assess comprehension, and self-graded writing prompts.
The School & District tier is bespoke priced, and adds data to track student performance, dedicated customer service manager, personalized school site training, and unlimited seats.
The Family package, at $120/year, gets you the biweekly newscasts, full video library access, discussion questions and activities.
NexGen News best tips and tricks
Go deep
Use the newscast as a jump off point into more depth on the subject area, watching the video to begin a lesson on that area.
Use the deck
Each lesson plan comes with a slide deck that is worth using in front of the class to work through as a group.
Quiz out
Either use the Pro-tier quizzes or write your own to assess the class and see how well uptake of the stories, written and video, are going.
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