Online Commerce
Kids don’t just see ads in media: more and more, they buy things right on their screens. This section looks at the ways that young people shop online and how they can be manipulated into spending.
Children and advertising
Kids are a highly desirable market for advertising: they control almost 150 billion dollars of spending in the U.S. alone and have a lifetime of spending ahead of them.
What is this cereal box saying? Printable activity sheet
This printable activity sheet introduces basic media literacy skills and concepts and is suitable for use in homes, schools and libraries. It can be completed independently, but children will learn more if you discuss the activity with them. Younger children may need help reading the instructions and completing the activity.
Don’t show them the money, talk about it
As part of digital media literacy, I think it is important to learn about financial literacy too. As our kids get older and we open bank accounts for them, they get jobs, buy their own items etc., having a sense of financial literacy is a must.
Media Literacy for the 2024 Provincial General Election in British Columbia
This lesson package is designed to be modular, allowing teachers to choose activities that are most relevant to their students. The lesson includes: an opening “minds on” activity that introduces essential concepts of election-related misinformation, helps students retrieve prior knowledge, and shows the relevance of the topic; several activities which teachers can choose from based on the needs and context of their classes; a closing activity that introduces students to different strategies for verifying election-related information, including the idea of turning to a best single source (in this case, Elections BC). They then learn and practice engaging in active citizenship by responding to election-related disinformation.
Tobacco Labels
In this lesson, students debate the effectiveness of health warning labels on tobacco products.
Mirror Image
In this lesson, students learn tobacco and nicotine advertising through the “rules of notice” of visual media. Students move from identifying factual design elements to interpreting their emotional impact and evaluating the broader societal implications of these constructions. Students then create an original counter-advertisement or parody ad that challenges industry narratives and unmasks manipulation.
Tobacco, alcohol and cannabis
“Advertising has always sold anxiety, and it certainly sells anxiety to the young. It’s always telling them they’re losers unless they’re cool.” (Mark Crispin Miller, The Merchants of Cool, 2000)
Selling Tobacco
In this lesson, students investigate how tobacco companies frame their products in different ways for different audiences.
Social media and baseball
In the past 25 years of becoming more of a fan alongside the superfan I married, I noticed some changes and trends. Especially when it comes to how baseball, the MLB and teams are using social media and engaging with fans.