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Scholastic journalism aid regrowing news desert communities by reporting education issues, info

Posted by on Oct 23, 2023 in Blog | Comments Off on Scholastic journalism aid regrowing news desert communities by reporting education issues, info

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Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students: Part 4/4

My original blog idea started as a simple little suggestion to encourage high school student journalists to cover school board meetings and educational topics in communities without commercial media – those rural and urban areas considered news deserts. But it’s grown much bigger than that. These will be the weekly installments.

Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students

Part 1: We’ll explore what happened when a student reporter offered a story about her school to a local “news and digital marketing platform.” It was posted – and then….

Part 2: What do those involved with student media legal issues say about this? We’ll talk to the Student Press Law Center about what rights such young journalists have.

Part 3: How do the hyperlocal web outlets see their role when working with students – or do they see that as a possibility at all? 

Part 4:  Are there ways we – advisers and journalism teachers – can help students and communities get vital information, especially about local education? How can we educate those who might be working with student journalists but have no background in scholastic media and student rights and responsibilities

a sunflower field at sunset

The News Desert

‘If no one writes about what’s happening in their meetings, no one questions their plans and proposals and how they spend tax dollars, how will anyone know if they should remain in office – or step aside for those with better ideas?’ Photo by Jesús Esteban San José on Pexels.com

by Candace Bowen, MJE

This 4-part blog’s premise: Student journalists may be able to help communities in news deserts – places that have no local media coverage and thus no good insight into local government and nothing to help them make important decisions at the polls. 

Education seems like a natural coverage area for student journalists. School boards in particular make decisions that will impact a community for years to come, but if no one writes about what’s happening in their meetings, no one questions their plans and proposals and how they spend tax dollars, how will anyone know if they should remain in office – or step aside for those with better ideas?

One way is to cover more about school board decisions and other local government issues that impact the teen audience in our student media. That can be a plus – and blog content later in the year will cover some ideas about how to do that more effectively – and safely.

Having students intern or write for local community news sites, many of them grant-supported, is another way. The plus with this is the news gets to all the community. It also gives students another venue for their reporting But, with the background from the first three parts of this blog, it’s clear this won’t be easy. The question now is: How can we do — those who understand what student journalists want and need to be effective —to help the editors they might work with on these websites.

What things might such an editor need to know about a potential “employee” who’s 16 years old:

  • Just tossing them into [writing news] just doesn’t work,” said Rachel Dissell, a former student journalist and award-winning reporter with Signal Cleveland. She’s working now with 10 students from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and she knows they need foundational skills first.
  • For Dissell, that means first some lessons in civics and government. “Students need to understand the decision-making process.” She shows her students a video of a government meeting, and they discuss how to know who’s there, how to spell their names, how to attribute quotes or to paraphrase, and how to summarize what happened.
  • Ben Wolford, editor of the Portager, hopes to find students in each high school in Portage County to cover educational issues. He said he knows it will take coaching students from the inception of the story to who to talk to and what questions to ask. “They haven’t had a lot of experience dealing with the subtleties of sourcing like what to do if they say it’s off the record,” he said. Yes, that will be a lot of work, but he said that’s how he and others like him learned. 
  • Sourcing is a big challenge for anyone working with teen journalists. Dissell helps her students learn about attribution and paraphrasing and also about accessing data and using databases to support their meeting coverage.
  • Some other things we educators know, but the newsroom pros might not:
  • Teens are certainly capable, but sometimes, out of necessity have spread themselves too thin. Jobs, classes (AP or an extra load), home responsibilities, often with younger siblings, sports, clubs…..)
    • Some really top students have not had grammar and punctuation training the editors might expect.
    • Some really top students have not had the government and history background the editors might expect.
  • And then there’s the “long arm” of the school. As reported in Part 1 of this blog, not all editors would know students have First Amendment rights. “If students are going to be engaging in a total third-party activity in reference to the school district, if it is off campus, not using any sort of campus equipment, not during school hours,” as SPLC lawyer Jonathan Gaston-Falk said, the school can’t censor or regulate their speech.

This may be the biggest a-HA moment those just starting to work with teens should know. No matter if the principal makes the school look bad, no matter if he or she finds an article awkward or embarrassing.

Bottom line: Is it true?

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Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students

Posted by on Oct 15, 2023 in Blog | Comments Off on Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students

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Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students: Part 3/4

My original blog idea started as a simple little suggestion to encourage high school student journalists to cover school board meetings and educational topics in communities without commercial media – those rural and urban areas considered news deserts. But it’s grown much bigger than that. These will be the weekly installments.

Content this week: Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students

Part 1: We’ll explore what happened when a student reporter offered a story about her school to a local “news and digital marketing platform.” It was posted – and then….

Part 2: What do those involved with student media legal issues say about this? We’ll talk to the Student Press Law Center about what rights such young journalists have.

Part 3: How do the hyperlocal web outlets see their role when working with students – or do they see that as a possibility at all? 

Part 4:  Are there ways we – advisers and journalism teachers – can help students and communities get vital information, especially about local education? How can we educate those who might be working with student journalists but have no background in scholastic media and student rights and responsibiliti

wittered tree on a dessert

“They’re getting a grounding in government,”

and building civic muscle. It’s an

exercise in democracy and getting them closer

to writing the whole story.”

Rachel Dissell, journalist

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Overcoming News Deserts

Content by Candace Bowen, MJE •Pullquote from Rachel Dissell, Cleveland journalist http://www.pexels.com/photo/wittered/trees-on-desert-80454/

Getting information about school boards and other educational issues to communities without local media has been a growing challenge. Living in such news deserts makes it hard for voters to be accurately informed about levies, school board elections and much more.

The idea of student journalists contributing local reporting isn’t new, but making it really work isn’t easy. 

Parts 1 and 2 for this blog series looked at what happened when a well-meaning high school junior tried to use a local news website to inform her community about what her school was doing to protect students from gun violence, then what happened when a district official intervened, and what a lawyer at the Student Press Law Center thinks of that.

Parts 1 and 2 for this blog series looked at what happened when a well-meaning high school junior tried to use a local news website to inform her community about what her school was doing to protect students from gun violence, then what happened when a district official intervened, and what a lawyer at the Student Press Law Center thinks of that.

But what do other editors and CEOs of a growing number of community-based and usually web-based news organizations think about working with students? Local set-ups can vary from media that is supported by advertising to those that are non-profits and sometimes have healthy grants, but they’re all working to counteract news deserts.

Training student reporters is like an extra job

No matter their set-up, the challenge is the same. How experienced are the students who would work for them? What do those students need to learn to be effective reporters? And, maybe more important sometimes, what do the professionals working with them need to know, especially about legal and ethical issues, to make the set-up work.

“You have to understand this isn’t like running a temp agency,” Ben Wolford, editor-in-chief of the online Portager, serving mostly rural Portage County in northeast Ohio since 2020. “In the early days, the bulk of our reporting came from journalism students at Kent State. We probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without them,” he said in a phone interview.

But Wolford understands even those students were not seasoned journalists, and high school students have even less experience. They aren’t ready for some of the intricacies of local politics, don’t know how to question if someone is telling them the truth or has an agenda, aren’t sure what “off the record” means.

The editors of media outlets with student journalists “have an extra job  – intern coordinator, editor, mentor to these people,” Wolford said. “If you think you’re going to get free labor out of those kids, you’re assuming the job of all those people who helped you when you were beginning. The students may be getting a few bucks, but I’m paying them with a lot of my time.”

It’s a big investment, but Wolford plans to grow a cadre of student high school reporters from as many area high schools he can attract so they can provide content for The Portager

Rachel Dissell is an award-winning reporter and Community and Special Projects editor for Signal Cleveland, “an independent, community-led, non-profit news startup,” according to its website.

 It’s also home to Cleveland Documenters, a program that started in Chicago and has grown to Detroit and Cleveland and eventually to other cities. These are adult residents who are trained and paid to cover public meetings in their communities.

Dissell said she uses the same training approach with the 10 Cleveland Metropolitan School District students she work with that is used with the adult Documenters. Before they write stories, she makes sure they are “getting the grounding to become watchdogs of local government.”  

Grounding students as watchdogs of local democracy

They use a template to see what interests them. It includes places to put three summary points of the meeting, follow-up questions, what didn’t make sense to them, what they didn’t understand. 

“It’s a little different than writing a full story at this stage. They cover a meeting, taking notes and crafting follow-up questions,” Dissell said. Currently, her students cover public safety meetings, learning what to listen for, how to use attribution, direct quotes and paraphrasing. Students in this program are paid, as are the adult Documenters.

“They’re getting a grounding in government,” Dissell said, “and building civic muscle. It’s an exercise in democracy and getting them closer to writing the whole story.”

Editor Sue Zake of the soon-to-be-publishing nonprofit news outlet Signal Ohio,had plenty of experience working with college journalists. Previously, she was student media adviser for Kent State University.  She said she would welcome student reporters, especially for education-related stories.

If someone complained about a story – no matter who wrote it – she said she would say, “Tell me what you think isn’t correct – what didn’t we do right?” Just because it doesn’t make the school look good doesn’t make it wrong, she said.

Those who spend public funds have to be accountable“Covering public venues like schools is important,” Zake said. “They are spending taxpayer dollars, so they need to be held accountable.” 

Mike Shapiro is CEO of TAPinto, a network of “more than 90 independently owned and operated local news and digital marketing platforms,” according to the company’s website. The Flemington/Rariton outlet where Emma’s story ran briefly is one such franchise.

The company’s website also says, “More than 2,000 towns in the U.S. have no local newspaper or local news site. As a result, there is a lack of local news reporting in our towns, less information available, and democracy suffers.”

a person walking in the middle of the hot desert

The company’s (website TAPinto) also says, 

“More than 2,000 towns in the U.S. have no

local newspaper or local news site. As a result,

there is a lack of local news reporting in our

towns, less information available, and

democracy suffers.”

Photo by Amine M’siouri on Pexels.com

The “marketing” part of the company’s description may be concerning to some. Journalists are taught about the importance of the “separation of church and state” –  keeping the advertising and news functions of media totally separate.

Shapiro said his media outlets are “advertising-based, enabling local businesses to tell their stories to the audience.” 

Could that be a conflict of interest, mixing news and promotion? Not in the 15 years since Shapiro started the company, he said. “When advertisers write about themselves, It’s labeled ‘sponsored content.’ We’ve never had any issues,” he said.

“If it’s newsworthy, advertisers we’re going to cover it if they’re an advertiser or not,” he said. The franchises in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Florida “must follow SPJ ethics and must run at least one original news story a day,” Shapiro said. Shapiro said he didn’t know about Emma’s situation “until many months later” when her former journalism teacher told him.

 “We don’t censor our own reporters, and, when students write for us, we consider them our reporters,” Shapiro said.

TAPinto doesn’t censor employees, wouldn’t limit student

He just submitted a grant proposal to the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium to enable TAPINTO to hire a program director to help train student journalists in New Jersey. His plan, he said, is to “start with 10 students in 25 programs across the state, especially those in economically distressed areas.”

Shapiro foresees three kinds of situations. Some schools may already have a program, and those would be able to have their publication hosted on the local TAPinto site. This is already happening with The Highlander from Governor Livingston High School on the Berkeley Heights site. 

Other appropriate support and training would be provided to schools that have an adviser or a journalism program but no publication or to students in a school with no program, he said.

In each case, Shapiro said, he will work with administrators to ensure they know they will have no prior review of student submissions. He hopes to “build a pipeline of reporters for New Jersey with these students.” 

Although they won’t get paid – he pointed out that would be hard with about 250 students per year – each will receive a certificate and a graduation a gift card “from someplace like Starbucks” at the end of the year and attend a banquet with a well-known speaker, encouraging them to go into journalism.

Most of those interviewed have even more ideas of how to train student journalists to cover the tough local stories that should be included.

Building civic muscle

 The fourth and final part of this blog will explore what these students need to learn to be successful, some ways they may be able to best gain that knowledge and what we, as journalism educators, can do to help them. What we don’t want is students covering only car wash fundraisers and winning football teams.

Of course, those won’t be censored or pulled down from a website, but they wouldn’t be serving the purpose of “building civic muscle” for the student journalists or getting vital information about a school district out to local voters.

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News deserts 2/4

Posted by on Oct 2, 2023 in Blog, Law and Ethics | Comments Off on News deserts 2/4

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My original blog idea started as a simple little suggestion to encourage high school student journalists to cover school board meetings and educational topics in communities without commercial media – those rural and urban areas considered news deserts. But it’s grown much bigger than that. These will be the weekly installments to follow the story.

Student journalists’ role in reporting on education grows where there are News Deserts  

Part 1: We’ll explore what happened when a student reporter offered a story about her school to a local “news and digital marketing platform.” It was posted – and then….

Part 2: What do those involved with student media legal issues say about this? We’ll talk to the Student Press Law Center about what rights such young journalists have.

Part 3: How do the hyperlocal web outlets see their role when working with students – or do they see that as a possibility at all? 

Part 4:  Are there ways we – advisers and journalism teachers – can help students and communities get vital information, especially about local education? How can we educate those who might be working with student journalists but have no background in scholastic media and student rights and responsibilities?

Part 2 blog

How far off campus does censorship’s impact reach

by Candace Bowen, MJE

The idea of having high school journalists fill the void in communities that have lost their local media sounds simple and fairly logical. This is especially true when it comes to covering school board meetings and issues like building safety. 

If a community has no local media to do this – if the area is what is considered a “news desert” — citizens would have a hard time making informed choices when they vote about local issues. Perhaps publishing more about school curriculum and district policies in area student media and disseminating it to the community would be a good idea. 

Also, in more and more places, hyperlocal often grant-funded news sites are appearing, and they sometimes look for student journalists who are on the “inside” to help with this reporting. Often that’s college students they recruit, but, more recently, it’s also high school journalists. This is a great idea but often has some challenges, as Part 1 of this blog showed.

When a media outlet agrees to print a student article, the long arm of the school might try and even succeed in preventing that from happening. What if the article “makes the school look bad”? What if administrators think they can censor work like that? 

Thus, the question to explore in this week’s blog: Can a school legally censor such student-written stories when they are published by news sites that have nothing to do with the school?

white and black typewriter on white table

“If students are going to be engaging in a total third-party activity in reference to the school district, if it is off campus, not using any sort of campus equipment, not during school hours,” Gaston-Falk said, … these things typically separate the activity from the school district. “The school has less of an expectation, less ability to regulate speech off campus,” he said.

The good news, in a word, is NO, they can’t, according to Jonathan Gaston-Falk, staff attorney with the Student Press Law Center. Even if a student has written about the school district, some things typically separate him or her from being under the school’s control.

“If students are going to be engaging in a total third-party activity in reference to the school district, if it is off campus, not using any sort of campus equipment, not during school hours,” Gaston-Falk said, … these things typically separate the activity from the school district. “The school has less of an expectation, less ability to regulate speech off campus,” he said.

A Supreme Court case from June 2021, B.L. v. Mahanoy, addressed this. According to the Student Press Law Center website, “Of particular concern — particularly since the arrival of social media and other online speech — has been the debate over how much, if any, authority school officials should have over a student’s speech when they are outside of school. This case is about where to draw the line.”

The Court ruled that the Mahanoy school district violated Levy’s First Amendment rights because her SnapChat post, repeatedly using an expletive about not making varsity cheerleading, did not appear to have created a disruption and was created off campus and outside school hours.

Thus, could a school communications officer or other administrator have any legal right to demand a professionally run community news site remove such student work?

That seems pretty unlikely, Gaston-Falk said.

If the adults running those news sites don’t know about students’ First Amendment rights, and the students themselves don’t know their rights, unlawful censorship could easily happen.

Gaston-Falk encourages students, even those working for news outlets beyond their high schools, to contact the Student Press Law Center with their legal concerns.

Adults at the news outlets are also encouraged to contact SPLC lawyers and find out when an administrator’s authority ends inside the schoolhouse gates.

person walking on sand dune

If the adults running those news sites don’t know about students’ First Amendment rights, and the students themselves don’t know their rights, unlawful censorship could easily happen.

Part 3 of the series will explore the knowledge and views of some of the adults who run these websites and how they see their role when working with student journalists.

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A four-part blog:

Posted by on Sep 25, 2023 in Blog | Comments Off on A four-part blog:

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Emma’s story Part 1 of 4
One student journalist attempts to reach a larger audience

person foot prints on sands photo
Photo by Min An on Pexels.com

One student journalist attempts to reach a larger audience

by Candace Bowen, MJE

My original blog idea started as a simple little suggestion to encourage high school student journalists to cover school board meetings and educational topics in communities without commercial media – those rural and urban areas considered news deserts. But it’s grown much bigger than that. These will be the weekly installments to – follow the story

Student journalists’ role in reporting on education grows where there are News Deserts  

Part 1: We’ll explore what happened when a student reporter offered a story about her school to a local “news and digital marketing platform.” It was posted – and then….

Part 2: What do those involved with student media legal issues say about aa597this? We’ll talk to the Student Press Law Center about what rights such young journalists have.

Part 3: How do the hyperlocal web outlets see their role when working with students – or do they see that as a possibility at all? 

Part 4:  Are there ways we – advisers and journalism teachers – can help students and communities get vital information, especially about local education? How can we educate those who might be working with student journalists but have no background in scholastic media and student rights and responsibilities?

by Candace Bowen, MJE

She reached out to TAPinto, “a network of local news and digital marketing platforms,” opening in towns that have no local newspaper or news website. The franchise currently has nearly 100 such outlets across the nation, many in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Florida. 

It was spring 2023, right after yet another school shooting, when junior Emma Levine decided those in her New Jersey community needed to hear local student voices about this issue. 

a person walking in the middle of the hot desert
Photo by Amine M’siouri on Pexels.com

Emma didn’t work on her student newspaper, though she had taken journalism and hopes to have that as her college major in another year.

“The whole idea behind what I wanted to write was to reach more people, to be a student voice.”  She said she hoped to show how her school was reacting to school shootings. To do that, she interviewed a student, a teacher and the school’s principal at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in New Jersey. 

All three of her interviewees knew her purpose and her plan to have this published in TAPinto so community members would know what the school was doing.  She carefully double checked her facts with all three. “I wanted to be sure it was correct,” she said, and she did make one minor change. 

The article was posted on a Wednesday, and, by Friday, Emma heard from her editor.  She said “it had to be taken down.” According to Levine, “The school’s communications officer insisted the three interviewed had no idea this was to be published.” So the TAPinto editor removed the story.

The editor wanted to know “what else I could write” because Emma was considered an unpaid intern. But Levine said she was “super determined to get it back up, even if that meant making some changes.” She tried talking to the superintendent, communications officer and principal, but none of that happened until June.

“I thought it was important to get the piece out there,” Levine said, but the communications officer said the superintendent had “grave concerns” about what was posted in the article. Because Levine was working for “an outside entity,” she should have gone through the communications officer to get to talk to the principal. And, no, even taking things out wasn’t a solution.

Levine said she “took that hit and moved on,” writing two more articles for TAPinto during the summer. The principal later approached her about being “the student voice as part of an internship for credit through the school.” She said she told him that was “great idea” but she didn’t want credit for this. She never heard more about that proposal.

Levine does encourage other students to try to write for their local news outlets. She said she learned a lot about how the (news) process works.

Emma said, overall, she learned some “big takeaways,” including that “education is about putting out fires.” She was not being supported as an opportunity-seeking student. Her hardest takeaway, however, was that a lot of education is about “putting out fires.”

“My principal wasn’t going to bat for me – but my journalism teacher was,” Levine said.

person walking on sand dune
Photo by mostafa meraji on Pexels.com

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Localizing Book Banning, 2023 Constitution Day Activity

Posted by on Sep 17, 2023 in Blog | Comments Off on Localizing Book Banning, 2023 Constitution Day Activity

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Created by Scholastic Press Rights Director Kristin Taylor, MJE

Focus: One of the key skills of a good reporter is the ability to localize national news. This activity can be used on Constitution Day as part of a larger discussion of students’ access to information or another time as practice localizing news.

The topic: Rising instances of book bans across the United States.

Research: Remind students that the first step in localizing a national story is to do their research. You can either give them time in class or assign the research as homework. Here are some sources for initial research:

Discussion: Have students discuss their findings, separating facts from opinions in the various sources and what they learned about their own state’s laws or local news connected to book bans.

Localization: From here, students should brainstorm possible approaches to a localized version of the story. How are book bans impacting your school or community? Have any books been added or removed from your school or town library? Has the school curriculum changed or been adjusted because of pressure from the community? 

Students should engage in the normal reporting process, collecting data through surveys, seeking expert sources (librarians, curriculum specialists, town and state officials) and weaving their national research into their local reporting for a feature article or broadcast. Whether they map out a plan for an article as practice or actually create it for publication is up to adviser/editor discretion.

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Ai, Fair Use and the First Amendment

Posted by on Sep 16, 2023 in Blog | Comments Off on Ai, Fair Use and the First Amendment

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by Mark Dzula

Description

Writers are on strike in Hats against AI companies, and consider what’s at stake in each situation.

  • Students will consider the four factors of fair use to determine if companies are on solid legal footing when they make this claim when they utilize large data sets to train AI bots.
  • Students will research and weigh the role of precedent to predict how the courts may rule in these cases, including work with primary source documents.
  • Students will propose guidelines that safeguard the First Amendment and protect the rights of content creators in the face of rapidly developing AI.

Common Core State Standards

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid, and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.7 Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account. 
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper). 
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose. 

Length

One eighty-minute block, with HW

Materials / resources

Day 1 step-by-step

  1. Opening activity: Determining transformative use. Teacher flashes examples from Copyright Fair Use Examples on the board, asking ‘was this a case of fair use?’
  2. After brief discussion, pull up the four factors of fair use, discuss each aspect. Consider grouping into four groups, one for each factor. Groups discuss, then share out their understanding of each factor. Using precedent from the cases presented in the opening activity, determine more nuanced and specific understanding of the limits of fair use.
  3. In-class reading (choose one):
    1. ChatGPT maker OpenAI faces a lawsuit over how it used people’s data
    2. Sarah Silverman Sues OpenAI and Meta Over Copyright Infringement
    3. With Warhol, It’s Time to Transform Transformative Use
  4. Reading Response: How might our understanding of the four factors of fair use be impacted by the reading materials, especially given the capacity of AI to consume large data sets for training and to rely on human-generated content (copyrighted or not). How might the rights of citizens and creative workers be respected?
  5. HW: Write 2 page double-spaced opinion piece on AI, copyright, fair use, and the First Amendment. What should companies do as they pursue AI? What should creators expect? How might they safeguard their material? What should citizens keep in mind as they allow companies access to their data? Compelling essays will provide examples (cases, precedent, etc) and consider prospective counter arguments.

Teacher notes: 

A lesson or previous practice with persuasive writing in legal settings may also help students feel prepared to execute the lesson well.

This lesson could be extended by requiring the students to go much further in-depth with their research. Another class could be devoted to a mock hearing, with role play with students acting as judges (and assuming their POVs) and well as litigants (assuming their POVs) in the cases described in the reading materials. 

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