Topico is a news-sharing app that’s aimed at helping students not only consume news media safely but also to help them learn how that works.
The idea is to offer a service that delivers current events to students while also helping to improve skills such as reading, comprehension, and critical thinking.
The company says that it’s mission is to “support news literacy for a better informed, and more civil society.” So pretty lofty goals above and beyond what it will be doing for individual students — but sensible aiming for big change at a scale with which teachers can work.
This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about how Topico could work for your class.
What is Topico?
Topico is a news curation and sharing app that highlights current events while encouraging skills using helpful teaching-focused features.
Teachers are able to curate articles from a wide selection of topics and sources, ideally suited to the subject or area being taught.
The idea here is that teachers and students can dig down into the news itself to probe questions such as how can a source be trusted, or why is this story being covered by many outlets?
This can be a great point to start discussions in the class that promote critical thinking. The app also has a social element that promotes sharing articles.
How does Topico work?
Topico allows teachers to create newsrooms in which certain stories can be curated. But there is also an option to follow a tag, allowing students to track a story as it evolves across different media.
By creating and organizing news article types into a single space, it can help to encourage students to make recommendations, based on that specific topic or story — keeping focused on building on the news in a relevant way.
So while this offers a social element to news consumption and sharing, it avoids the risk of getting lost in comments or public opinions that can detract from the actual news and journalism being shared.
What are the best Topico features?
Topico offers its own News Wizard feature that helps teachers and students to curate a Newsroom with specific stories, with ease.
Newsroom notifications allow students and teachers to receive push notifications on their devices when new stories are added. This can help students to keep abreast of a developing story, but also teach them how to filter when they want to open the app and when to ignore notifications — a useful life skill.
Teachers can set permissions on posting that can be a helpful control system. This allows educators to grant permission to students, co-workers, or friends to post — or to remove those rights when rules are not followed, for example.
Since Newsrooms can be Topico-wide, it allows students with permission to explore other news feeds and topics to learn from and be a part of those other communities.
Your profile picture has influence rings around it to show how you rank based on the recommendations of your posts, which is a fun, engaging way to make this feel sociable without the weight of direct contact.
How much does Topico cost?
Topico is available on iOS and Android as free apps that can be downloaded and used without any charges. Everything is kept secure and private as this is built to be used by educators and students safely.
Topico best tips and tricks
Follow together
Begin using the app as a class, on the big screen, to show how it all works in practice so students can feel confident exploring.
Topic up
Put students in groups, each working on certain topics, before having them present back what they’ve found and experienced.
Back it up
Break out lessons to teach about sources and practical journalism so students can understand why it’s better than social feeds.