What’s the best age to give a kid an iPod touch?
This is a question I get asked a lot, and to be honest, I don’t think there’s an easy answer. Every kid is different and every family has different thoughts and experiences.
This is a question I get asked a lot, and to be honest, I don’t think there’s an easy answer. Every kid is different and every family has different thoughts and experiences.
In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea that “hot” emotional states such as anger or excitement can make it harder for them to control how they act. They also discuss the concept of empathy and look at the ways in which digital communication can make it harder to feel empathy for other people. Students then read scenarios that portray two sides of an online conflict and consider how to resolve them, using their discussion to build a list of tools for emotional management and conflict resolution online. Finally, students create a media product that explains and reminds them of one of those tools.
You may not realize it, but you have a lot of power when you’re online: you can cheer people up, make them laugh, and help to make your school, your town or even the whole world a better place. The flip side is that what you do can make things worse, too. That’s why you have to think about what you say and do online, and try your best to do the right thing.
Doing the right thing online mostly comes down to the three R’s of respect: respect people’s privacy, respect people’s feelings and respect people’s property.
YouTube is a window into a world of wonder. There is so much great material to be found there, whether it’s for education, entertainment, or inspiration. But there’s also a lot of inappropriate stuff in amongst the cat videos and Kid President. Question is, how do we, as parents, help our kids safely navigate YouTube?
Making Your Voice Heard: A Media Toolkit for Youth is designed to help young people understand how the news industry works, why youth stereotyping happens and how they can access media to get positive youth voices and stories heard.
In this lesson students will identify and classify their own interactions with the Internet and will engage in a collaborative critical thinking activity that will have them examine the Internet from a variety of perspectives.
Level: Grades 4 to 6
About the Author: This lesson was written for MediaSmarts by Ethan Anderson
Duration: 1-2 hours
Students are introduced to Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, and given an overview of its strengths and weaknesses as a research source.
In this lesson, students apply the "5Ws of Cyberspace" to sources of information they find online. Assuming the role of a student researching a science project, students must authenticate the information in an online article about the artificial sweetener, aspartame.