National Aboriginal Day 2016

Every year on June 21, Canadians recognize the cultures, histories, and ongoing contributions of our First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. For 20 years, National Aboriginal Day has brought a country-wide focus to Canada’s diverse Indigenous peoples and the issues that they face.

From Ethics and Empathy to Making and Remixing: Extending Digital Literacy to the Secondary Grades

For more than a decade, MediaSmarts has been a leader in defining digital literacy in Canada. This is reflected in the elementary digital literacy framework we launched in 2015. The Use, Understand & Create framework is based on a holistic approach which recognizes that the different skills that make up digital literacy cannot be fully separated. 

New Series on Emerging Technologies

Keeping up to date with all of the latest technologies and trends in the media is exhausting, and it’s easy to fall behind. Our team at MediaSmarts conducts regular research, works with media networks, and follows current events to stay relevant. Both parents and teachers look to us for information and education materials.

Click If You Agree

When you sign up for a service on a website or use an application for the first time, do you read the privacy policy and terms of use thoroughly? Or, like most of us, do you click “I Agree” as fast as you can?

Happy International Women’s Day 2016!

March 8 is designated around the world as International Women’s Day, a day for recognizing women’s achievements, as well as the inequities that women face. This year, the United Nations’ theme is Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality, focusing on the UN’s 2030 Agenda. The theme for Status of Women Canada – #YouAreEmpowerment – is also about working towards gender equality.

Online peer intervention

One of the biggest changes in our understanding of bullying over the past few years has been our increased awareness of the important role that witnesses, or bystanders, play in any bullying situation. Research on offline bullying has shown that witnesses can be just as important as targets or perpetrators in determining how a bullying scenario plays out. This is especially relevant in the case of electronic bullying, where witnesses have many more choices in how they might engage: they can choose to be invisible, to join in anonymously, to re-victimize someone by forwarding bullying material – or they can choose to intervene, to offer support to the person being targeted and to bear witness to what they have seen

New tools for Aboriginal youth for making good decisions about sharing online

Today, Facebook, MediaSmarts and Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) released a series of newly translated guides for Aboriginal teens, which provide tips for sharing and making decisions online. The Think Before You Share guides were released in Winnipeg during the opening of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba.