To better understand the digital skills young Canadians need as citizens and workers in the digital age, MediaSmarts and the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) are hosting a National Digital Youth Summit to hear directly from Canadian students on this topic.
The Summit is a follow-up event to a highly successful symposium organized by ICTC and MediaSmarts in 2014, which brought together industry, government and education experts to discuss how we can ensure Canadian youth have the essential digital literacy skills they need. Participants at that event expressed a strong interest in continuing this important dialogue to further explore the issues that were raised. With that in mind, and to encourage youth input and engagement on these issues, the partners are bringing together approximately 250 high school students from across Canada over a two day summit in Ottawa on October 22-23, to discuss and learn more about digital literacy, digital citizenship and cyber security and to participate in hands-on, minds-on learning workshops.
Questions we wish to explore with the youth participants include:
- What digital skills do they need and want to know?
- How and where do they want to learn these skills?
- What are the challenges and barriers they face in acquiring digital skills?
MediaSmarts and ICTC wish to thank our sponsors for their generous support as well as their extensive contribution of time and effort to make the National Digital Youth Summit possible: Google (Platinum Sponsor), Facebook (Gold Sponsor), TELUS (Silver Sponsor) and Willis College and Trend Micro (Bronze Sponsors).
We are also very excited to be working with, and would like to thank, the following partners who have also dedicated time and effort to help us make this summit a success: Encounters with Canada; Hive Toronto; AT&T; Groupe Média TFO ; Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP); Sisler High School (Winnipeg, Manitoba); North Winnipeg School Division, Microsoft; Landon Pearson Resource Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children's Rights; the Ottawa Public Library; and the Ottawa Police Service and more…
Videos, tip sheets and a report will be produced from the event, which ICTC and MediaSmarts will share with policy makers and stakeholders.