A Day in the Life of the Jos
In the educational game 'A Day in the Life of the Jos', students in grades six to eight help the brother and sister team Jo and Josie with situations they encounter online as they go about a typical day in their lives.
In the educational game 'A Day in the Life of the Jos', students in grades six to eight help the brother and sister team Jo and Josie with situations they encounter online as they go about a typical day in their lives.
Framed around key concepts of media literacy, the That’s Not Me tutorial examines how entertainment and news media represent diversity and the impact these media portrayals can have on the value we place on individuals and groups in society.
Students in the junior grades lack sufficient critical thinking skills to surf the Web alone, but MediaSmarts’ Young Canadians in a Wireless World research shows that almost a third never or rarely use the Internet with an adult nearby. This is also an age where kids may be easily influenced by media images and personalities – especially those that appear "cool" or desirable.
Given their increasing use of the Internet to find information, now is also a good time to introduce strategies for determining authorship and authority of online information so they can recognize good health information, biased or hateful content, and online scams and hoaxes.
At this age media influences on gender norms and body image are becoming more intense. Children need to learn to apply key media literacy concepts to online spaces such as social networks.
In this lesson, students learn that video games are unlike other media because they are interactive, allowing players to do things and make choices. They then explore the idea of affordances and defaults by considering the “video game verbs” that different games allow you to do. They consider the commercial, technical, and genre reasons why some verbs are more often possible than others and then create a simple design for a video game in which players are able to do a wider variety of things.
We conduct qualitative and quantitative community-based research projects; design and facilitate program and resource evaluation; and mobilize the findings and recommendations from our research - all in collaboration with various community and academic partners.
Young Canadians in a Wireless World (YCWW) – formerly known as Young Canadians in Wired World – is Canada’s longest running, and most comprehensive research study on young people’s attitudes and behaviours regarding the internet, surveying over 20,000 parents, teachers, and students since 2000.
Young Canadians in a Wireless World (YCWW) is Canada’s longest running and most comprehensive research study on young people’s attitudes, behaviours and opinions regarding the internet, technology and digital media. This report brings together findings from the qualitative and quantitative portions of Phase IV and offers a series of recommendations based on this data. We end this report with some reflections and conclusions on Phase IV of YCWW, including lessons learned and offer some next steps regarding the development of Phase V and the state of digital media literacy in Canada.
Young Canadians in a Wireless World (YCWW) is Canada’s longest running and most comprehensive research study on young people’s attitudes, behaviours and opinions regarding the internet, technology and digital media. In this report we present findings related to digital media literacy and digital citizenship, including findings related to verifying online information , learning digital media literacy skills and ethical digital citizenship. Data collected in Phase IV of YCWW helps us better understand how young Canadians determine the reliability of the sources they come across online and whether they understand the benefit of some verification practices over others. This report also includes a brief case study on whether youth understand the business model and general operation of search engines like Google. We speak to the digital media literacy skills young Canadians are learning, from whom, and what skills they are interested in learning more about. Knowing more about how youth navigate and participate in online spaces gives us some insight into their ability to actively and positively participate in online communities as digital citizens. This report also solidifies the need for a national strategy to prioritize digital media literacy education in classrooms and communities across Canada.
Young Canadians in a Wireless World (YCWW) is Canada’s longest running and most comprehensive research study on young people’s attitudes, behaviours and opinions regarding the internet, technology and digital media. This report is the second of two reports focusing on relationships and technology. In it, we share findings related to sending, receiving, and forwarding sexts and highlight what the YCWW Phase IV survey data tells us about young Canadians’ motivations and attitudes for engaging in sexting. We also speak to the role of trust and support in sexting behaviours among youth, focusing specifically on the impact of adult involvement and supervision and the desire for further educational support on this topic. Finally, we share resources that are currently available on the MediaSmarts website regarding sexting and highlight current research in the field that expands upon what we offer in this report.
Within the Phase IV YCWW survey, questions related to sexting were only available to participants in grades 7 to 11 (n=659). Overall, the sample size for youth who indicated they engaged in sexting was very small; in most cases, n=110 or less.