Published: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 12:14 PM CDT

From P&D Staff Reports

Students at Sacred Heart Elementary School learned some new things about the news Tuesday.

Beth Rye, the new media director for Yankton Media, Inc., spoke with Elizabeth Koerner’s second grade class about the Press & Dakotan, stressing the importance of newspapers in the children’s lives.

Yankton Media owns the Press & Dakotan.

The presentation was part of the Newspaper in Education (N.I.E.) program in which the Press & Dakotan participates to provide daily newspapers to classrooms to be used as teaching materials. It is a cooperative effort between newspapers and thousands of schools in the United States.

N.I.E. believes newspapers in the classroom encourage children to read critically and reflectively, to be involved in public affairs and to gain an understanding of the world around them.

One way the Press & Dakotan attempts to appeal directly to children is its Wednesday Kid Scoop page.

“We discussed why the newspaper is important, what kind of information is in the newspaper, and other ways one can use newspapers, such as recycling — or even making bishop hats!” Rye said.

The students were shown both the print edition and the electronic edition of the Press & Dakotan, and discussed the differences between the two.

“One example was that the newspaper is delivered to their door each morning, whereas the e-edition is sent to an email address,” Rye said. “We discussed other features on the e-edition, such as emailing stories to a friend, searching through archives online, using key word searches to find specific topics and the ability to have the stories read to you via the computer.”

Koerner noted that the class could start using its interactive smartboard to do the word searches on the Kid Scoop page each week instead of making additional paper copies to hand out.

To see or purchase photos from this event, visit spotted.yankton.net.