Google News – create and share

Google News is a way of pulling together news stories into one area.

Down the left hand side is a list of sections of potential interest; in the UK it includes: Top Stories, World, UK, Business, Sci/Tech, Entertainment, etc. You can click on these to load up that section, or simply scroll down the page to see the news sections in the initial page. You have the option of altering the configuration of these sections using the ‘Edit this page‘ link in the right hand corner.

However, here is the new interesting part that prompted this post. Now also in the right hand corner is the ‘Add a section >>‘. Click on this link and you are taken to the Custom sections directory, a directory full of specific news sections that have been created by Google employees and other people more generally.

Just highlighting the central section of the directory a little:

You can click on any of these links to load up news for that particular section. If it is useful and a section you might want to revisit, then you can click on the adjacent ‘Add this section‘ button and it will be added to your left hand list for easy future access. You can also pull the feed out to something else (your usual feed reader for example) using the RSS link at the bottom of the page.

You can order the Custom sections directory by: Highest rated, Most users, or Newest. And there is a search option on the right.

This has already become a powerful tool for accessing news of interest to your area, be that a subject area for students, teachers or lecturers of a particular discipline. How useful is that to say journalism or politics students?

Well, it doesn’t stop there, because if you’re logged into your Google account and then click on the ‘Create a custom section’ button:

you are taken to the Create a custom section page:

Now you can create your own news section, giving it a title and setting your own search terms; and then you can share this custom news section.

Here is a video (no audio) run through of the process provided by psychemedia on YouTube.

Subject Professor – Social Sciences and Arts

I first happened upon the Economics version of the “Professor” series of these Social Sciences and Arts sites, each of which has the subject preceding Professor. They include:

• EconomyProfessor.com
• PoliticsProfessor.com
• SociologyProfessor.com
• PhilosophyProfessor.com
• TheologyProfessor.com
• ArtProfessor.com

Each of the different sites is of the same format, generally with terms categorized into theories and theorists, or their equivalent for the particular subject. Each of the terms is then defined, in a similar way to that in a dictionary or glossary of terms. The definitions are trawled from primary or secondary sources, and you can suggest amendments or additions.

There also tends to be a couple of useful links out from each site, be that to a discussion forum or online journals, etc.

These appear to be useful sites to students of the subjects, however, these aren’t my particular subject areas, so, as always, you’d need to assess them against other sources to validate accuracy.