Resources for families and educators staying home during COVID-19
We’ve put together some of our best resources to help you and your family manage during these uncertain times.
We’ve put together some of our best resources to help you and your family manage during these uncertain times.
Even though you're competing against peer pressure and million-dollar marketing campaigns, research has shown that kids are less likely to get involved in smoking or vaping if they've discussed them with their parents. Talking to our kids about tobacco and cannabis advertising will help them to recognize when they're being advertised to and identify the tricks companies use to normalize teen smoking and vaping, and make their products seem safer and less addictive than they really are.
Here are some tips on talking to kids about vaping, tobacco and cannabis advertising.
If you’re wondering how to get started making media on your phone, tablet or computer, animation is a great place to start. You can start doing it as a family activity even when kids are very young and they’ll soon be able to do almost everything themselves.
For nearly thirty years, Canadian teachers have been at the forefront of getting students online and preparing them to use networked technologies safely, productively and responsibly. Many young Canadians have their first experiences with the internet in their classrooms and school libraries. Over the past decade, though, while digital tools have come to provide new opportunities for creating and distributing digital content, MediaSmarts’ research shows that most Canadian teachers aren’t making media in the classroom.
In this lesson, students examine two websites about unlikely animals and learn how to effectively evaluate online sources. They then create a fake website that demonstrates the misleading signals that are often mistakenly taken as signs of reliability.
In this lesson, students learn about the history of film editing and how shot composition, juxtaposition of images and the use of rhythm and repetition in film editing can affect the emotional impact of a film. Students begin by watching a video on the basics of film editing and answering questions to aid their comprehension. They then view and analyze a slideshow demonstrating basic ways in which the "building blocks" of film editing can affect a film's emotional impact, and discuss how this can affect a film's rating. Finally, students create their own film and/or storyboard, using the editing techniques they've learned to produce different emotional effects with the same collection of shots.
How can you help pre-teens understand the value of their personal information and empower them to take steps to manage and protect it? Data Defenders, an educational game for children ages 10 to12, lifts the curtain on data collection by showing how apps and games can find out all kinds of things about them and by providing steps they can take to control the collection of personal information online.
This Teacher’s Guide includes background information, learning expectations and points of discussion on the types of personal information and privacy-management strategies that are presented in the game. The guide also includes an overview of the Data Defenders game, and exercises and handouts to help students to develop skills and confidence to manage their privacy online.
The Data Defenders game teaches children and pre-teens about personal information and its value, and introduces them to the different ways they can manage and protect their personal information on the websites and apps they enjoy.
As your kids grow older, their gift requests may start to look a lot different than when they were younger. While they once circled all the toys in the holiday catalogues that arrived at the door, now they are sending parents text messages or Google Docs with links to their wish list items.