The News & Announcements page is an instance of the Blog feature. This may be as simple as creating a basic announcement for a unit or publishing regular information here for your class to interact with. There is even an RSS publisher to assist you. More information can be found in the eLearning Faculty Guide, beginning on p. 330.
To create an announcement, select "Add a new post" on the News and Announcements page.
Enter the appropriate information in the provided text box and note whether the announcement is regular or highly-important.
Once you are satisfied with the display of the announcement, you may opt to preview or save the announcement with the default settings or select "options" to be more specific in the audience, display time, comments, etc.
NOTE: email notifications are not part of the Blog feature. If you would like to notify students in an email, you may copy/paste the announcement into an email utilizing the Roster page. Keep in mind that the announcements you post will automatically be revealed at the top of the overview page once a student enters your eLearning course context (unless you choose a different default page).