How to use the learning layer


The learning layer helps teachers and students take up the discussion about journalism in the digital age by providing assignments, activities, questions and supplemental reading and research.

Click on the red buttons to get at the learning layer. You can print or email the content as individual elements or as chapter units. The layer should be readable on mobile devices as well as laptops and desktops. It also can be displayed on a large classroom screen.

Students, teachers, practitioners and citizens have equal access to the learning layer content. Assignments and other activities are organized on three levels: Flashlight, Spotlight and Searchlight. Some may find they roughly coincide with high school, community college and college-level teaching. But others may see them simply as different approaches to the same subject matter. Teachers should feel free to assign work from any or all of the levels as they see fit.

We call it the learning layer because it is literally that – a design layer within this HTML 5 package. It is the work of a team of graduate students as well as college and high school teachers as part of a joint publishing project of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.