The News-O-Matic Impact: Roamschooler!

News-O-Matic celebrates its 1,000th edition on Friday, August 26. In order to celebrate, a group of teachers, parents, media experts, and kids contributed essays to describe the impact of News-O-Matic in their world.

Lilian Jochmann is a 6th Grade student in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She traveled the world for a year as a News-O-Matic “roamschooler,” reporting on her adventures across the globe. Here’s what she had to say.

School made me download the app on my iPad. Curious, I clicked on the little image of a yellow dog. That was the day I became hooked on News-O-Matic.

Over the next days, I read every article from the war in Syria to crazy pet stories to amazing kids around the world. One night at dinner, my parents were discussing some current event they read about in a mainstream newspaper. They were shocked when I chimed into their conversation and pointed out things they’d left out of the story.

They asked me how I knew about it, and I ran to get my iPad, showing them the app and article. Since then, my brother Gus and I have read the articles every day!

In fifth grade, our family decided roamschool, which is like packing school up in your suitcase. You homeschool while you travel. My friends were interested in learning about my adventures, so it sparked an idea. If they wanted to learn about where I went, other kids might want to too. I wrote Russ and asked him if I could write a couple articles for News-O-Matic that year. I was beyond ecstatic when he published my article, Roamschooler Around the World.

It was thrilling to hear kids write to Russ and draw pictures about my articles. From 2014-15, Russ published 8 of my articles on NOM! It so cool to be a part of the amazing news site that brought articles to kids!

When I visited New York on my roamschool adventure, I got the chance to visit Russ at the NOM News Room! I wanted to thank all the people who worked so hard to make NOM happen in person. I wrote a story for their blog, sat in on a meeting and even recorded a story for the “Read to Me” section! At the end, I got to go out for lunch with Russ! I loved it!

Even though I’m going on 13 and Gus is 10, we still read News-O-Matic daily. We learn about the election, the Olympics, Pokeman Go, and much more! This app makes us smarter and more interested in the world and I’ll always remember how much fun I had writing for it.