What I would add to the great ideas in the article:
Yes the students can make connections with current events each day. The teacher can design questions to start the discussion but students need to do the "thinking work" by reviewing the lesson/learning experience/unit's exploration/questions for the day and then researching and/or making connections to their own knowledge and understandings.
For homework they can post empirical evidence, primary resources, quotes or stats from experts, URL's, articles or comments on a collaborative Google.doc or an online bulletin board thread.
Teachers can use the homework responses to open the class and debate/discuss/come to consensus on which resources/creators/authors are most authoritative, which connections are most relevant to the unit, questions, content, or students' lives.
You can also analyze which connections challenge current thinking, or how connections can lead further small group or independent inquiries. Challenge students to show a perspective that is counter to the unit or their personal knowledge or beliefs.
Use their comments as a formative assessment of their information and media literacy, transfer, and critical thinking skills.
If you include your Librarian/Teacher Librarian in your plan ahead of time, he/she can create a pathfinder with links to high-quality international news sources, and can facilitate/co-teach and/or model information and media literacy skills to locate, evaluate, gather, organize/curate, analyze/question, produce/create, and share high quality information.
Each week students can volunteer, rotate, or be assigned to capture/curate and annotate the most relevant resources, evidence, discussion summaries and contribute to a an online legacy product to pass on to next year's students.
More ideas:
Facing History
50 Ways to Teach With Current Events - New York Times
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