Your Connected Life: A Teen’s Guide to Life Online
The Your Connected Life guide is designed to help students who are just entering high school balance the demands of their offline life with their digital one.
The Your Connected Life guide is designed to help students who are just entering high school balance the demands of their offline life with their digital one.
On the Loose: A Guide to Online Life for Post-Secondary Students supports young adults who are experiencing both new freedoms and challenges in their post- secondary life.
Video games are a big part of both boys’ and girls’ lives and they can be a very positive experience for kids and families.
Talk Back! How to Take Action on Media Issues gives you the tools to talk back to media companies.
In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea that their gaming experiences may compromise their personal information.
In this lesson, students learn about the “sneaky excuses” that can convince us to do things that we know are wrong. After learning about the different types of these excuses, students watch and discuss a series of videos in which the excuses are used to justify forwarding sexts without the original sender’s consent. Finally, students create their own videos in which the excuses used to justify sharing sexts with other people are illustrated and most importantly, countered.
As a parent, you may find some relief in learning that fewer youth take and send sexts (nude or semi-nude photos) than you may think. However, almost half of youth who have taken and sent a sext say that the recipient then forwarded that image to other people without their consent. This culture of sharing among youth is a major concern and can have devastating consequences for the person in the picture and the person who forwards it.
In this lesson, students consider the positive aspects of video games as well as the ways in which games may take time away from other activities they enjoy. Students are introduced to the idea of balancing game and screen time with other parts of their lives and learn about the reasons why they may be tempted to spend more time playing games or find it difficult to stop playing. They then keep a diary of their game play (or another screen activity if they do not play video games) that prompts them to reflect on their gaming habits. Partway through that process, they are introduced to techniques that will help them moderate their game play and deal with the difficulties they may feel reducing game time. Finally, students reflect on the experience and develop a plan to make their game play more mindful.
In this lesson students consider how well their favourite TV shows, movies and video games reflect the diversity of Canadian society.
Level: Grade K to 3
About the Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts.
Duration: 10-15 minutes per activity
This lesson is part of USE, UNDERSTAND & ENGAGE: A Digital Media Literacy Framework for Canadian Schools.
Overview