Resources for Teachers - Privacy

Playing With Privacy

In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea that their gaming experiences may compromise their personal information.

Social Smarts: Nothing Personal!

A new smartphone is a big responsibility for kids, who have a lot to learn about using them safely, especially when it comes to protecting their privacy.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has created a graphic novel, Social Smarts: Nothing Personal! to help young Canadians to better understand and navigate privacy issues in the online world.

Getting the Toothpaste Back into the Tube: A Lesson on Online Information

In this lesson, students watch a short video that compares getting rid of personal information online to getting toothpaste back into a tube. After a short discussion of how visual analogies like this work, students discuss the meaning of the video (that information online is permanent.) They then read a series of short scenarios that help them identify four further principles of information online: that it can be copied, that it can be seen by unintended audiences, that it can be seen by larger audiences than intended, and that it becomes searchable. Finally, students create a simple animation that illustrates one of these principles.

Internet Time Capsule

In this lesson, students learn about the concept of "time capsules" and then apply the idea by selecting time capsule contents to represent both the time they live in and their own lives and tastes. They then extend this idea to online content, making a "time capsule" of any online content connected to them. Younger students finish the lesson by creating a group Internet time capsule, while older students finish by considering what online content they might like to remove or keep out of their "time capsules."