MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital media literacy and a registered charity, is excited to announce that the bilingual Teen Fact-Checking Network (TFCN) program - Réseau vérif ado in Canada will be continuing into 2026/2027! This international program was started in 2018 by MediaWise, a nonpartisan, nonprofit initiative of the Poynter Institute in the U.S., and has since expanded to Brazil, Germany, India, Spain, and Bulgaria.
In this lesson, students learn to recognize how the advertising genre is used to build brand loyalty for "parity products"—products like alcohol where there is little difference in taste or performance. Students learn to deconstruct the "Three Ps" of branding: Personality (the product's "vibe"), Position (the target audience), and Promise (the fantasy sold to the consumer). The lesson culminates in an "Ad Satire" assessment where students create a parody ad that "unmasks the brand" by flipping a glamorized media promise into a realistic social or medical consequence.
In this lesson, students learn the concept of the Dual-Shield Defense for cybersecurity: The Outer Shield (Technical Perimeter Defenses): Automatic, structural blocks that prevent risks from ever reaching a user's account or device. This includes DNS (domain name system) filtering tools such as CIRA Canadian Shield, ad blockers, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and device-level Stolen Device or Theft Protection. The Inner Shield (Human Cognitive Verification): Active mental habits that allow users to spot, analyze, and neutralize scams that get past the outer shield. This includes detecting psychological triggers (Urgency, Fear, Authority, Secrecy), applying the "Take Five, Tell Two" rule, and using robust offline verification protocols.
The good news is that violence in media is not directly linked to youth crime or aggression, but it does influence how we see the world. Talking to kids about violence in the media they consume – television, movies, video games, music and social media – can help them put media violence into perspective.
In this lesson, students start by discussing the phenomenon of “selfies” and serve as experts in advising the teacher on the standards by which the “best” selfies are judged. They then discuss a number of statements taken from interviews with youth that highlight issues of self-representation, body image and gender standards, and learn about “photoshopping” images. Finally, students apply what they have learned by modifying an image that is at least 50 years old to meet “selfie” standards.