Ontario Health Curriculum: Media and Digital Literacy Connections for K-12

Submitted by MediaSmarts on 14 Sep 2015.

The new Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum released this year by the Ontario Ministry of Education is the first major revision to the subject area in almost 30 years.

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Body Image, Cyberbullying, Digital Health, Diversity in Media, Excessive Internet Use, Food Marketing, Gender Representation, Internet & Mobile, Marketing & Consumerism, Online Ethics, Professional Development, Resources, Social Networking, Video Games

Use, Understand & Create: Towards a Comprehensive Canadian Digital Literacy Curriculum

Submitted by Matthew Johnson on 31 Mar 2015.

Whether it’s to prepare for the future job market or just to manage the lives they already lead online, young Canadians need to be digitally literate. But what exactly is digital literacy, and how can we ensure that all Canadian youth are learning the digital skills they need?

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Authenticating Information, Cyberbullying, Digital Citizenship, Digital Health, Internet & Mobile, Online Ethics, Resources

How Young Canadians Get Their Online Media

Submitted by Matthew Johnson on 01 Oct 2014.

TV, music and movies have been a central part of young people’s lives for generations, and the Internet has only intensified that by delivering all of those directly to our homes – legally and illegally.

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Cyber Security, Digital Citizenship, Intellectual Property, Internet & Mobile, Young Canadians In A Wired World

Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age

Submitted by Matthew Johnson on 29 May 2014.

There’s a long-standing relationship between sex and the Internet. As far as back the 1980s, Usenet and local bulletin board systems were used to share pornographic text files and crude (in both senses) graphics, and people have been using digital media to form and carry out online relationships at least as long. However, just as estimates of how much online traffic and content is made up of sexual material tend to be exaggerated[1], our new report – Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age – from MediaSmarts’ Young Canadians in a Wired World survey of 5,436 students, shows that for Canadian youth, sexuality and romantic relationships play a fairly small part of their online lives.

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Cell Phones and Texting, Digital Citizenship, Internet & Mobile, Pornography, Social Networking

Sexting and youth: Confronting a modern dilemma

Submitted by Matthew Johnson on 29 May 2014.

It’s hard to think of a recent digital technology issue that’s captured the public imagination more than sexting. This may be because it combines elements of the classic moral panic with more modern “technopanic,” provoking worries not just about the morality of our children – and, in particular, young girls – but also about the possible effects of technology on how we grow, think and behave. As with most panics, of course, the issue is substantially more complicated and less sensational than we perceive it to be, and while it’s unlikely that our worries about sexting will ever seem in retrospect to be as absurd as our grandparents’ fears about crime comics, MediaSmarts’ new data shows that many of our beliefs and assumptions on the subject need closer examination.

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Cell Phones and Texting, Digital Citizenship, Internet & Mobile, Sexting, Sexual Exploitation, Social Networking

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