Celebrities and World Issues - Lesson
In this four-day unit, students will examine the role of popular culture celebrities in creating awareness of world issues.
In this four-day unit, students will examine the role of popular culture celebrities in creating awareness of world issues.
In this lesson, students discuss reasons why they might be reluctant to intervene when they witness cyberbullying and identify ways that they can help without making things worse. They then use the interactive tool Impact! How to Make a Difference When You Witness Bullying Online to help them decide how to navigate scenarios relating to being a witness to bullying, and share their experiences to help them understand how important it is to think carefully before you act.
Level: Grades 9 to 12
About the Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts
Duration: 1 ½ to 2 hours, plus time for the assessment/evaluation activity
Parents could be forgiven for thinking that our children are born media literate. They are mediatized, certainly, even before they are born: it’s a rare baby shower that doesn’t feature Elsa or Elmo in one form or another. As for digital literacy, kids take to devices like the proverbial ducks to water, quickly becoming expert at finding the videos and games they want.
In this lesson, students consider the role of technology and media in their lives and then spend a week either tracking or limiting their media use. They then share their experiences and discuss how the ways that digital media tools are made may cause us to use them differently (or simply more often). Finally, students draw on those insights to create a mindful media use plan. In an optional extension activity, they interview other students for a video exploring their experiences and reflections over the course of the project.
This opening video to the Key Concepts of Media Literacy video series introduces students to the idea that the word media – which they may already know in the sense of the media industry (“the media”) – means channels of communication between a person or persons and their intended audience.
In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea of online advertising and look at the ways that marketers create immersive and appealing online environments that draw and hold children’s attention. After studying common advertising techniques, students play an educational online game that lets them put their learning into action by “creating” a site advertising a fictitious cereal, Co-Co Crunch.