Tx Making use of an Online News Database

[Micheal Jorden]

The Tx Education Agency has made a deal with the new York Times. This deal permits the use of a digital database.

This database differs from the others than the usual typical database. It isn't based on MYSQL or Oracle programming knowledge, and won't be employed by IT professionals or database managers (at least most likely). No, this database is for your kids. In essence, the creation is an interactive website that will search news articles -- right back to 1851. If a student wants to write a paper on the Gettysburg Address, for instance, he can pull in the paper's Aur Sunao News entire text, and, the various news stories discussing it to assemble relevant information. Students can also now access modern content, stories, related multimedia, and source content related to all of the news recorded during the last a hundred and fifty plus years.

Tx also plans to eventually use the database to provide vast amounts of varied educational content to schools all over the state. The $1 Million contract, which initially purchased statewide use of the website, might change based on usage numbers (though these increase will tend to be very slight).

This is a small footnote in the ongoing story of weeding out textbooks. Books are getting old and outdated faster than publishers can release them. Information technology principals change every day, listings across the world are updated, and hardware improves with the times. With an up to date, valid news database similar to this, Tx will have a chance to provide quality information for children in their public schools for decades to come. At least that is what Anita Givens hopes. Given's is the agencies chief of textbooks and technology. She states that the "statewide licence allows for economies of scale that we just don't see in a other kind of agreement. inch This makes a lot of sense for Tx.

Down the line, this project will open up the opportunity for "ePortfolios, inch where students can display their class room projects and writing tasks. They will even be able to store large multimedia files and band/choral tasks with this new technology. This treatment solution most excites Robert Scoot, who says that the ePortfolios are "going to be a pretty big deal in many years... It's an opportunity for teachers and students to show what are the results on every other day besides test day. inch

The program should help to save money in the long run -- at least that's what nys is hoping. "It's a system to organize future content, inch Scott said. "Stay tuned. We'll be adding more apps. inch.