Stay on the Path Lesson Four: Scavenger Hunt
In this lesson, students apply their searching and critical thinking skills to learn how to find legitimate online sources for downloading and streaming movies, music and videos.
In this lesson, students apply their searching and critical thinking skills to learn how to find legitimate online sources for downloading and streaming movies, music and videos.
In this lesson students learn how to create well-defined search strings and to use tools and techniques such as bookmarking, browser filters and search engine preferences to avoid unwanted material.
In this lesson students learn how to authenticate online information by comparing “facts” from the website www.allaboutexplorers.com with more authoritative sources.
The famous comedian Bill Cosby once said, “Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.” Cosby was certainly correct about the power of music, but he may have failed to recognize that characteristics youth become ‘passionate' about may not actually be separate from their musical affiliations.
It's been a busy few months for Facebook: a government investigation, another in a seemingly endless series of changes to the site's privacy controls, a New Yorker profile of its famously publicity-shy founder and the upcoming release of The Social Network, a thoroughly unauthorized account of its early days. With all of the publicity and controversy around Facebook – not to mention its still-growing popularity – it's almost impossible to remember what online life was like before it. In fact, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that those who began using the Internet after the introduction of Facebook and its competitors do so in a way that is fundamentally different from older users.
If anyone still doubts that youth need to learn how to evaluate online information, those doubts should have been dispelled by a recent hoax perpetrated by the group called the Yes Men. This group, which has a history of staging fake press conferences, decided to draw attention to Canada's position at the Copenhagen conference on climate change by creating a number of fake Web sites purporting to be, among others, the Copenhagen summit site, the Wall Street Journal, and Environment Canada's site. While it didn't take long for Environment Canada to make a statement exposing the hoax, by that time many journalists had reported the story as fact and the story had been widely distributed by wire services.
This is the second in a series of columns looking at the history and future of Web 2.0. In the last instalment of this series we examined the origins of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic and some of the issues around the definition of “user-created content.” Turning from the theoretical to the practical, we'll now take a look at just what is actually out there, and begin to examine some of the ethical and legal implications.
I’ve already written about YouTube and Instagram, but today I wanted to share some information about four other popular sites and apps that are on my radar right now: Snapchat, Vine, Tumblr and ask.fm.
Snapchat, the mobile app that lets users send "self-destructing" photos, has the distinction of being the only digital tool that does not have a single redeeming feature. While the moral panic associated with blogs, cell phones, social networks and online games has largely faded in grudging recognition of their more positive uses (indeed, research shows that many parents have actually helped their children lie about their age register for Facebook accounts), Snapchat is seen as the Q-tip of the digital age: its sole function is to do the thing that you're warned not to do on the box.
When I finished Grade 11 in June, I reflected on what I had learned in the past school year. I was taught how to solve quadratic equations, the origins of world religions and studied the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Oh and I know the legal requirements of marriage! But there was something I wasn't taught. Scrolling down my Twitter timeline, it hit me -- why was I never taught anything about social media?