Digital Media Literacy for Democracy
Level: Grades 9 to 12
About the Author: MediaSmarts

Level: Grades 9 to 12
About the Author: MediaSmarts

The new Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum released this year by the Ontario Ministry of Education is the first major revision to the subject area in almost 30 years.

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.

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.

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.

There are four main strategies to help kids become resilient to online risks. We can:
Curate our kids’ media experiences;
Control who can access our kids and their data;
Co-view media with our kids;
and be our kids’ media Coaches.

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.

In this lesson, students their personal experiences with alcohol influencers and then analyze some examples of paid and unpaid influencer posts featuring alcohol. They learn about the CRTC Code for Broadcast Advertising of Alcoholic Beverages to understand current Canadian regulations and then explore the ethical and regulatory issues around regulating alcohol promotion in social media.